The For Sale/ Wanted boards - update from M Towers and post your ideas/thoughts here

[JustineMumsnet]

As you may know we have in mind a complete overhaul of the For sale/ wanted boards as they seem to be making many folks' lives (ours especially) a misery.

Clearly it makes sense for us to have classified ads - why not re-cycled used stuff? That should in theory be good for buyers and sellers alike (and it's very green too). But equally clearly, at the risk of understatement, it is not functioning well at the moment.

However, complete overhaul is going to have to wait a wee while as Tech's got quite a lot on... (We are hopefully bringing you improved local listings, blogs and more in the next few weeks and months).

In the meantime do give us your ideas for how you'd ultimately like to see For sale/ wanted working. (I know some of you have already posted some sensible (and not so sensible thoughts around and abou but we'd be super grateful if you'd re-post the best of them here so everyone can see, discuss and refine.)

So... what rules would be fair/enforcable and assist in the smooth working of the thing? (nb we are never going to enforce a no huns policy I'm afraid, so do be realistic - MN is for all parents even those with poor grammar and spelling.)

Should we re-house somewhere off Talk? And will it be used/useful if we do? Can we make it work on Talk if not? What would make it easier to use/ more functional?

Should we charge and if so how. What would you pay to use and how would you like to pay it?

Which other boards do this successfully and what are the best ideas/functionality should we pinch?

To ease the pain of waiting for overhaul, next week we will introduce a couple of quick fixes that might hopefully smooth the operation a little, namely we're going to insist that everyone who posts a for sale notice pays a CAT and we'll break down the boards into categories so things are more easily searchable.

In the meantime, please hang on in there and if it all gets too much there's always the hide thread/topic option .

Thanks for your input and your patience.

Peace and love,

Mumsnet Towers

Can the facility to make up the thread title be removed, so you are forced to post the sale item under a catagory.

If I see "I need to make £0.01 in my paypal by this pm" one more time, I am going to scream.

wabbit maybe then they could be allowed to edit the advert rather than post again...

I think a freecycle on here would be excellent. No payment and swaps allowed. Therefore if no money changes hands, no one can get ripped off. However, postage would have to be paid for and if the person giving the item away, weighs it, there would be no nonsense about overcharging for P&P.

Example: next girls cardi, pink aged 3 W 400g. Wrap in black bin liner and post for 1.50. Job done.

Actually I belong to a forum which has certain sections that you cannot enter until you have posted 150 times and you have to have a password.

Alternatively, you could have a committee made up of a few volunteers who decide whether someone merits being allowed to enter.... it would save MNHQ the hassle.

Waits for nuclear fallout

Justine, are you actually really trying to transmorph into a sales board rather than a parenting forum??

This is just getting ridiculous, now you have a feedback forum, so on top of for sales and wanted, for each and every single trader and transaction you have a thread in active convo where they praise eachoters items and sales forte after the event?

Will the madness ever end?

I am thinking it is time to head back to the fluff of Netmums, at least it is not starting to look like a mini ebay community board.

MEGA THUMBS DOWN TO MUMSNET FOR THIS RIDICULOUS FEEDBACK FORUM IDEA?

Freecycle only.

Anything else, ebay.

My twopenneth worth:

(1) Yes deffo you must have CAT to sell
(2) Contribution of 10p per item listed, bought in advance online (same payment method as CAT) OR if you are being really smart, you could buy say £10 worth of MN credit and use it to pay for stuff and transfer (I can hear Tech sobbing as he reads this ).
(3) Use of ebay listings through google ads as side bar ads - that way if you are looking at a MN ad for a pram, you get to see the competition, MN makes a few pennies and hey you only go and look on ebay at the same time to compare prices, what are sellers losing.
(4) The immediate removal of anyone using the word 'hun'. Possibly using ejector seats or similar method!
(5) Categories: Clothes (divided by age), furniture, transport, other stuff. That's as complex as it needs to be
(6) Sellers MUST describe items in title (and not use blardy stars look) Each listing can only describe either a bundle of similar items of one item. But can link to other listings.
(7) FFP I love it, I've used it, it's great. But can we have decent headings and categories and also if post a ballpark postage cost?
(8) Bumping should be a shooting offence.
(9) Perhaps make more of the local selling bit?

ok, please tell me what CAT is? (no sarky remarks about a furry thing that Miaows! lol)

I do think people should be allowed to sell but not those people who just come on here to sell and have picture rails and stuff (whatever they are).
I have bought on here (jumperoo) and sold (dd's brownie uniform).
I think it should be for odd things that someone else may want.
Not your entire wardrobe on some site, that sucks and people are getting ripped off by sellers who dont care about the essence of MN and helping each other out

CAT is a service whereby you can contact a mumsnetter through Mumsnet itself - you click 'contact a mumsnetter' and mumsnet forwards a short message and your email address to that person - providing they have opted to receive email.

I am infrequent user of the for sale boards and I do use ebay also. To be honest I would rather sell on here than ebay but it doesn't always work out like that. the reason I would prefer here is I feel it goes to someone who actually wants the item and not an ebayer who I have in the past suspected of reselling it on....not all ebayers do this.

I would have no problem with a sepereate section as it does sometimes annoy me when you come in to talk but I would like to see it continue

FWIW I think that if there was a serious competitor to MN as it was pre-Sales then you would have lost a lot of oldtimers and would now be the virtual carboot sale. There are plenty of places on the web to sell, and frankly I am automatically suspicious of traders who target an unregulated site like this one - why wouldn't they go somewhere like ebay where there are so many more buyers. There are fewer communities where you can post "I need a top notch hotel with childcare somewhere warm tomorrow" or "When does the Boden sale start" and get the right answer.

Will read thread in a mo

Ideas, apologies for repetitions:

Might there be a way of limiting the number of items offered in one for sale notice, and the number of notices in a week/month/whatever? or a sliding scale of charges whereby an increased number of items for sale in one ad/in a certain period of time increases the charge to advertise (which could possibly increase exponentially), so that from a certain volume upwards it just doesn't pay? Maybe (I know this is getting horrendously complicated) there could be a waiver of charges for regulars with a certain number of posts on other parts of the board.

Otherwise I'm with Marina. I hide for sale (not wanted, although it is an increasing source of to me), but have become aware of all this hoo-hah and was quite frankly revolted by the way in which the for salers set upon Aitch. I'm just imagining a newbie clicking on active conversations and what a quite simply false impression of MN it would provide. If it is kept, it should definitely be taken out of talk.

sorry, meant will read thresd properly in a mo

I have been on here for a while(ashamed to say selling occasionally only) but must say the whole ethos has changed in the last 6 months and is just like bounty in my opinion.

• To many please buy my things or stuff supposed to be FFP(and then they want £5 post or something stupid)

• too much bumping and individual posts

• flipping name changes leaving people wide open to get ripped off

• to much Hun(sorry that makes me cringe)

I can understand why the 'real' mumsnetters are fed up as the minute they try and sell the next minute their post is way down the page

The only way i can see it working is the monitoring of % post on sale only boards(more than x percent then poster gets warning) but that would take a bit of admin time

Can't you just move the 'classifieds' back to the classifieds section? I only use the talk area.. maybe people who post could make a donation of 20% of the sale price to charity.. then you could change the charity every month.

Though I expect if people actually had to pay to advertise it might be more feasible to change the charity every Quarter.

There are lots of good causes that specialise in children/baby health issues..

just a thought.

i STILL THINK ONE FOR SALE POST A WEEK WOULD WORK. oops

If you have more than one thing to sell, stick it all in the same post .... but no reposting, no bumping, etc until next week where it counts as next weeks post if you repost it.

I like the idea of a form or using an advert, to avoid bumping etc.

But I worry charging a fee for every sale will stop the genuine mums trying to pass on toys/clothes and not affect traders at all.

What about a upper limit for total sales in a month ? Maybe £100 ? So genuine mothers with the odd buggy or set of clothes to sell can post adverts and sell but the traders will be forced to go else where, like Ebay.

Mums could report sellers to MNHQ if they are selling too much stuff much in a month and get them banned, hopefully mums would be able to sell their stuff without the traders out bumping them.

I think CAT, categories and a limit on number of posts will be fine. I don't hate the existence of for sale boards- tehy've always been there but the whol problem issue is a recent phenomenon. What I hate is the way they've been taken over by a completely separate set of people who can get quite defensive of 'their' area, when it's not 'their' area, it's a section of MN.

(oh I'd have used to for sale boards lately with buying baby stuff but I am actually too put off by the hun bunch and the rip offs that have happened)

There is NO sense of humour in that entire area. Lots of 'I'm so offended!' 'You're so immature!' 'We're supposed to be grown women' 'Let's all group cuddle!' over there that in enough is enough to warrant getting rid of it entirely.

[tongue firmly in cheek, please Google for further explanation]

Me too Peachy, Apart from one poster I discussed a sling with I havent bothered with any of the other stuff and probably could've bought loads of baby crap if I didnt have to trail through pictures, be called hun xxxxx and have to suck up to people that won't abide by their own self-imposed guidelines!

Scrap it, or charge.

Or have a minimum membership time before anyone is allowed to post eg: a month.

For sale one gimp mask in black.