[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by WWWD

Probably more the half the traffic generated on this board comes from the buy and sell forums,

exactly my point.. do you believe that more than half the traffic on this board should be for people to generate revenue? I feel the primary purpose of this board has drastically changed over the years. when I first got her there was maybe 1 or 2 for sales a week now thats all you see. where there used to be multi page discussions on things and tons of DIY stuff there is now only the occasional real discussion and even less DIY and they are low post affairs at best. If you look at the membership list you will see a ton of people with under 5 posts, you look at the posts and they logged on to sell stuff, did there selling and left.. what did that contribute to the board... In my opinion (and it is exactly that and opinion) this board and its posts should benefit everyone not just 1 person who gets a deal cuz some one who got into the hobby with out the time and or dedication needs to sell off there stuff.

as for frags and such ya they are valid posts but in the same sense, you have some one selling frags every month for a year making money and thats ok, but some one like me cannot list my Ca reactor or skimmer for sale just because I have a company name and it is deemed to be competing with the sponsors. Well isn't some one who sells frags several times a year doing the same thing? what about people who keep having tanks for sale, like 10 tanks.. are they not basically being a wholesaler?

all theres rules came to be because the sponsors didn't like people selling cheep products on the board with no overhead as it is hard for them to compete and they are paying for the right to advertise there products on the board where other people are not..

So you can see the amount of traffic generated by the buy and sell my not make sponsors happy as it is basically taking business from them.

Maybe a fee isn't the best way, maybe you should only be allowed to make 1 or 2 topics per month in the buy sell, maybe they should have to go to the mods for approval before they are posted and have a locked buy and sell so all you see is the original post and all replies are done by PM. Who knows maybe we should drop the rest of the board and just have buy sell as that is what gets the most traffic on the board anyways.

just as a comparison yes I do use the Buy and sell my self, but only 0.006% of my posts are in the buy and sell, the rest are in the forums involved in discussion and what not, which personally I hope some of which will benefit other users, as reading others posts when I started out was a benefit to myself.

Steve