Forum Section Specifically for Trades/Goods/Services

Tristyn

After browsing Lusternia's forums, I thought it would be a good idea to have a forum section specifically for merchants and buyers to get together and post "ads". Not everyone is around IG at the same time, so they could be missing out on some awesome stuff. It would also allow the other forum sections to be less cluttered with ads. Please let this be a thing! It would really help me out!

Skye

We used to have one in the old forum, I think people found it kinda meta or something

Cooper

There is an in game ad system for this. 

Nim

This makes me wish the game had bullitin boards or something. News is more like announcements, given the lack of threads, than an actual board. It'd be super cool if it were an in-game object, but also likely to be used a lot less.

Jovolo

Cooper said:

There is an in game ad system for this. 

This is my response. Adding an ad board that reflects in-game ads to the forums would be highly meta. At most it might be an idea to add it to the features in the ironrealms.com login system alongside news and messages.

Tristyn

While I can see how it could be considered "meta", most games do have an area that makes trading easier and it works pretty damn well for them. There are also some things you cannot just shout over market too, like trading credits for another type of monetary source. Also, with this, artisans like @Kresslack can easily market his descriptions towards others that he may not be able to sell to for IG reasons. All of the possibilities.

Tristyn

The IG Ad system is okay, but hardly anyone uses it. I would like something that streamlines what people want and that is easy to use. The problem I see with the Ad system is people think they have to have some fancy Ascii to post anything up there. Or they think they cannot post things for smaller objects like jewellery or clothes. Hell, quite a few people don't even know it exists.

Cooper

The problems with the ad board you brought up aren't problems with the ad board, they are problems with people not using it effectively. I'd bet that less people view the forums than look at ads anyway. 

Santar

I agree, revamp the ad system.

Tristyn

Actually, no, people look at the forums more than they view the ads. I've gotten 75% more commissions just posting my designs here than anything I could do in the game which has already netted me my first million alone.

Trey

I used to make -bank- advertising weapons and armor in the Prosperian Bazaar on old forums. Oldbies will remember my trading-credits-for-chinese-food days. That said, entirely too meta/OOC to be justified.

Quisse

What about moving the in-game advertisements to just a new news section (that people can config to ignore, like Poetry or whatever), so ads will be more prominent and searchable?

Tristyn

Quisse said:

What about moving the in-game advertisements to just a new news section (that people can config to ignore, like Poetry or whatever), so ads will be more prominent and searchable?

There isn't enough likes for this idea, it would make advertisements more visible to the public instead of being obscurely tucked away. It would also probably invite more people to use it too.

Lorielan

While the ad system may be underused, a news section would come with the hazard of being only accumulating and likely not hold anymore information than ads currently do today.

At least with the ads the customer knows the information is relatively current, so they're not likely to try and message someone who's dormant, or who no longer offers the particular service posted simply because the seller could not remove their post when they ceased providing whatever they were selling.

It would likely be better to offer suggestions to refining the ad system rather than trying to create an OOC market (a board here) or creating yet another newsboard that most will ignore.

tl;dr Ads are easily accessible, flexible in terms of information they can relay, relatively current by way of being deletable and decaying. Refinements to the existing system are a better way to take this idea.

Penwize

How about this for refining the ad system, then?

Add ads to the news system in a similar capacity to how Messages are added.  That is, when you type NSTAT, you see another category that reads:

Ads:
  Ads                  5/6

This simply lists currently unread ads.  Whenever an ad is modified by a seller, it marks is as unread for everyone.  For further interest, add the number of unread adds to the GMCP char stat output.

Herenicus

We advertise coding products and that doesn't seem to trouble our meta when friends sudden learn how to prioritize curing like they've been doing it for years. I guess I don't see the big deal in adopting Lusty's system if it's working for them. Maybe they tried revamping their in-game ad system, too. Does anyone know?

Sena

Herenicus said:

I guess I don't see the big deal in adopting Lusty's system if it's working for them.

The issue isn't whether or not it works, it worked great for 10 years here. The problem is IC trades/communications being done on the forums. The administration at the time (I think Maya was in charge then, but I'm not sure) thought that IC wares and services should be bought and sold in-game. A lot of players agreed, and there was very little complaint about the market section being removed.

There could be a market section for OOC things only, but the tech support and art sections provide appropriate places for most OOC services, and trading credits for real money isn't officially supported, so that leaves very little need for it.