Bumping posts in gear swap

[Austin]

Hello,

I am a frequent user of the BPL Gear Swap forum and had a question about bumping. In the rules of the forum, it requires that simple bumps cannot be used without providing a substantial price reduction.

Lately, I have noticed some posters bumping their posts multiple times without providing such a price reduction. Is it my place, or anyone's, to politely ask them to follow the rules listed above the threads?

Thanks!

Austin

[Ken Thompson]

You can always report their post if bothersome. Little flag button in top right above text box.

[Justin Baker]

I usually bump every other day in the evenings with a price drop. After 2 or 3 bumps with no interest, I usually wait a week and bump again, wait another week and bump again.

Bumping is important because it prevents unsold items from getting buried in sold items, but it should be done in a way that isn't excessive or annoying. I appreciate other people bumping their items, I could have been gone for a few days and missed the first post.

[Austin]

Thank you guys for helping me clarify this topic. I also appreciate bumps, but was wondering about the validity of their "bump" without that accompanying price drop.

[Roger Caffin]

> wondering about the validity of their "bump" without that accompanying price drop.
That is banned. Read the Rules about GearSwap.
Please report it using the red flag button.

On the other hand, posting a price reduction is legit.

Just a thought: if several decent price reductions have not found a buyer, maybe the horse is dead? (At least, for BPL members.)

Cheers
Roger Caffin
Online Community Monitor
Backpacking Light

[Ed T]

I don't understand this, as far as wanting to buy threads.

So if no one with your item happens to see it before it makes it off the first page you cannot bring it back up? How are you ever going to find what you are looking for if it's not a popular item?

[Roger Caffin]

> if no one with your item happens to see it before it makes it off the first page
> you cannot bring it back up?

The alternative is not pretty: everyone in a bumping race. Not having that again.

If you want to buy or sell, you can also do a search for the item. Regardless, most people seem to manage.

Cheers
Roger Caffin

[Ed T]

I belong to a myriad of online forums and never have I seen a rule like this or a forum where bumping is actually an issue.

Considering that we actually pay to post, I think a rule such as a bump once a week is allowed would be entirely more reasonable.

---

Bumping is banned. Period. Get over it.
Price reductions are permitted – even encouraged.
Reposting is permitted after 4 weeks.

Cheers
Roger Caffin
Online Community Monitor
Backpacking Light

[Cayenne Redmonk]

It's another super wonderful rule, made by the moderator, on a whim, with no input from the forum users.

It's only enforced when the moderator feels like doing something.

There are other rules on this forum made by the moderator that few, if any, members here support.

Rogers odd rules are one of the things that can't be changed or debated. The value of the community here is that page loads are ad views.

[Ed T]

Deleted by poster:

On second thought, my comment below conveys my thoughts better.

[Richard Scruggs]

Re Roger saying that: "The alternative to [the 'no-bumping' rule] is not pretty: everyone in a bumping race. Not having that again."

Agreed, so long as gear swap threads are intermingled with other threads.

Another alternative is to create a separate forum universe exclusively for gear swap threads, and banish gear swapping from the main forum used by all other threads.

And then let all the gear swappers wage unholy bumper wars to their heart's content in that separate forum universe.

[Justin Baker]

"Bumping is banned. Period. Get over it.
Price reductions are permitted – even encouraged."

A price reduction bump is still a bump Roger.

[Dave T]

"It's another super wonderful rule, made by the moderator, on a whim, with no input from the forum users. It's only enforced when the moderator feels like doing something. There are other rules on this forum made by the moderator that few, if any, members here support. Rogers odd rules are one of the things that can't be changed or debated. The value of the community here is that page loads are ad views."

I'm going with a big +1 on this.

Pretty sure most folks support reasonable bumping on WTB and FS posts. I think we all know what reasonable is, and it is historically well-followed by all involved. But Roger has to (randomly) bug out about it. Without reasonable bumping, items of interest quickly drop off – not sure how anyone can direct folks to use the "search" function at BPL with a straight face.

Also, the OP has been here for all of two months, and is getting wound up about this? Because you aren't getting the price-drops you want? Or…? "Lately I've noticed…"?

[Marko Botsaris]

The really skillful sellers know to sell multiple items in their threads – and to encourage questions – auto bumps. Of course there is a certain point beyond which there are too many, or too many useless items in a sale thread and the pain of actually looking at the sale goes past the critical threshold. Diminishing returns. I'm sure someone can mathematically justify the optimal number.

I think Roger's thoughts are very pertinent – there are large number of WTS/WTB posts, but an even more huge number of viewers. If you don't get a bite, maybe the best idea is to abandon the fishing hole, or else come back and try again somewhere down the line to hit a whole different set of fish… er…people. Also, many, many sites have a no-bump rule, and while it can be debated how important it is to enforce this, depending on the circumstance, don't be so provincial as to suggests that this is something that just came out of thin air. If I was R I'd probably be damn tired of explaining things to all the people who "know" a much better way.

Also, and I think this is important, this is not EBAY. Facilitating your sale should not even be on the top ten list of relevant worries here, IMHO. There are too many more important issues to the site as a whole. If you don't like it you have many other options on how to buy and sell stuff. Personally I have always REALLY wished there was an option setting to put the classified stuff in the same category with chaff – invisible in the "New Threads" list. I (and I assume a lot of people) almost never want to see those mixed in with the "new threads", and when a real new thread is only every tenth posting the SNR will be too low to bother coming to this site except to buy and sell stuff. Likewise I'm sure the people who mostly (at a particular moment) want to buy and sell would be happy to have the new items in the classifieds isolated as well.

On some sites the rules say you are supposed to delete the whole thread once a sale is concluded or abandoned – not just write "SOLD" in there. That helps keep things cleaned up a bit. I know there have been numerous debates over that and related issues on here – some people like to look up the price of a similar previously sold item to judge what the "market rate" might be, while others feel this information just decreases the SNR.

Some sites have the "advanced" web feature of outlining all the posts in a forum that have appeared since the viewers last visit. That can help quite a bit for those obsessed by the classifieds – or other parts of a site. Having threads in the classifieds auto-delete after a certain amount of time, and/or after a certain amount of no activity would be a great idea to go together with a hard rule on no bumps. Lots of potentially good ways to manage things when the SNR starts to go down as the traffic goes up. But I've been on here too long to expect the BPL web software to ever change or improve. The good news is that if we go another decade or so it may be considered "quaint" or "retro" instead of just backward. Things go in cycles.

[Ed T]

It is not my intent to offend any of this site's staff.
If my post(s) have, you have my ok to delete them.

But, I must say this.
As adventurous people, we all know what it is like to try and fit tripping into our daily lives, schedules, and budgets.
And, for a site that is subscription based posting, I feel that subscribers are reasonable in expecting to be able bump a thread once every week or two in order to find something they are really looking for in a hurry and/or on a budget.
By on a budget, I mean without having other items to buy/sell in order to boost traffic on your thread.

For example, for people doing MYOG with cuben, it is difficult to find materials right now because of the cubic tech buyout.

[BlackHatGuy]

Folks who are looking to buy can always click "Forum Index" in the upper left of the page, and then click "Gear Swap" on the ensuing page to view only gear swap threads – page after page of only gear swap threads.

I agree with others that gear swap should have its own section like chaff instead of being mixed in with the 'regular' threads. But folks have been asking for that for quite some time.

[d k]

Unfortunately, the search function is of limited value unless you can specify a date range (or is there a way to do this that I'm missing?). I've tried searching for things only to have most of my hits be from 6 or 7 years back!

[BlackHatGuy]

Search using Google. Not sure about PCs since I don't use them beyond work, but in Safari on a Mac:

In the URL bar, type (as an example): cuben "gear swap" site:backpackinglight.com

hit return, and you'll get thousands of hits.

But in the menu near the top left on the results page (Web, Shopping, Videos, etc.) click on "Search Tools"

That brings up a sub menu under the one you just selected Search Tools from.

The far left of that sub menu is "Any Time"

Click that, and it brings up a submenu with various choices, including "Custom range", which lets you put in a specific date range to search.

Enter your date range and click "Go" and you'll get results limited to posts within that date range.

[d k]

Aha! Thank you – why didn't I know that? (don't answer…)

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Justin

> A price reduction bump is still a bump Roger.
Semantics, semantics … Not here.
A price reduction at BPL goes by the far more fancy name of 'price reduction'.

Yes, you can post price reductions every day if you want – but note that the reduction must be a minumum of 2% of the asking price. One could imagine that this would soon show what the appropriate market value for the item would be – unless the item was something no-one wanted. I guess then the value at BPL would be $0.

Cheers

[David Thomas]

I too, would like FS and WTB posts to be in a separate forum like chaff or at least have the option to forego all the ads of stuff to sell.

Sometimes sellers seem almost indignent that a stranger won't pay 80-90% of retail to a stranger, for an old – used item without the guarantees and return privileges offered by retailers.

[Michael Gunderloy]

I'm really hoping the fabled redesign gives members fine-grained control over what to see. Choose forums to monitor, choose to mute threads. The software here is years behind the times.

[James Marco]

For just being able to get rid of swap, it would be worth the change.

[Monte Masterson]

"Sometimes sellers seem almost indignant that a stranger won't pay 80%-90% retail to a stranger, for an old- used item without the guarantees and return privileges offered by retailers."

You are so right David. I've always thought that if an item is priced right, there should be little or no reason to bump.

I work in the horse business and I see it all the time. Probably 4 out of 5 people trying to sell a horse have it priced way too high. When they tell me how much they're are asking I think to myself "you're wacked out of your mind".

If you have a mint cuben MLD or ZPacks shelter to sell, you might get 85% retail, but not for anything else. I notice a lot of sellers who ask near new price for used items that aren't desirable and not get any action. Then they'll do 6 bumps with a measly $5 drop without getting 1 reply.

I've sold items months after they have been posted because of the search function that many buyers employ. I certainly use it when looking for something.

I'd like to see the mods enforce the bump rule more strictly. If you can't do a 2% price drop with a bump, then I don't know what to tell you. That's more than fair.

[Marko Botsaris]

"Sometimes sellers seem almost indignent that a stranger won't pay 80-90% of retail to a stranger, for an old – used item without the guarantees and return privileges offered by retailers."

Also, and it may be just my imagination, but do we have a lot of people on here who are primarily or exclusively classified posters, who sell seemingly unending supply of new, even tagged stuff, often in multiple copies (more often very similar items that seem mutually exclusive for a single person), that feel like they may have "fallen off the back of the truck"? LOL

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