IRON HEART FORUM MIGRATION - Help Us Make the New Forum Even Better
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When I check the forum to see the "Unread Topics", I often see sales threads that I'm not interested in at all due to the sizes of the items that are being sold simply being too large (or small) for me. While it is possible to mark single forum threads or an entire forum category (i.e., the "Buying and Selling" section) to be ignored and thus not to be displayed in the future, it would be even better to be able to mark forum threads to be ignored depending on the size of what is being sold in the respective sales thread (e.g., if I'm interested in sizes XS, S and M, I'd want to ignore all other threads).
Moreover, it'd also be great to be able to filter sales threads by location (i.e., to name the two most basic filters: EU and non-EU countries) in order to ultimately only be notified of those items that the OP is willing to ship to or one's willing to make a purchase from (e.g. a forum member from an EU country will be able to ignore sales threads if the OP of the said sales thread is located outside of the EU or if the OP simply doesn't wish to ship outside of where they're located).
Here are two suggestions to fix both of the above mentioned "problems":
Option 1: By creating subcategories of locations (EU, Non-EU, etc.) and making additional subcategories under those (Size XS, S, M, etc.)
Option 2: As some people prefer, however, to a) post multiple items with various sizes in a single sales thread AND they might be willing to ship to anywhere in the world (which would make my requests obsolete), this second option might be better, but also more technically demanding: Making a tag system where each user can select a single or multiple tags from a preexisting list of locations (doesn't have to be countries as it would be too much work. Instead, e.g., EU, Non-EU, etc. would suffice) and sizes (XS-XXXXL etc.). While this option might be better, I'm not sure if the current forum system allows for such tags to be filtered as "ignored threads".
Overall, I understand that the sales section of the forum is already a generous and useful offer of IH for the forum members and putting in more work might not be favorable. At the same time, however, it is also one of the most frequently used and appreciated sections of the forum. That is why my suggestion should hopefully be in the interest of those that want to buy or sell items more efficiently in the future without having to constantly mark sales threads as read when they're not even interested in them due to the size difference of the items being sold.
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@cityofdelusion As a mod, a great deal of my time is spent cleaning up and monitoring the marketplace.
Individuals would make my job much easier if they followed the listed rules for ads, marked their items as sold, or deleted the ads when no longer relevant.
I can’t imagine the nightmare of making the marketplace any more fragmented than it already is.
Tags may be useful, but only if the users followed the guidelines for using them. Given how many people can’t follow the guidelines now, I can’t imagine adding any more complexity to it.
Also, many sellers have multiple items listed, size ranges varying across the board, and many have had ads in place for a few years who regularly add and delete items at will.
I’m not saying your ideas are bad, and I do like the thought of some of them. Reality makes the ideas a little difficult from my end to fathom and I fear the work that will go into monitoring it.
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No worries, it's only a suggestion after all that I believe will make everyone's (but the mods) experience here a little better.
As for the rest of the problems you mentioned: I think that most of them would be solved if when creating a sales thread, there were multiple input/text/upload areas (e.g., to enter a price, condition, description, location, size, photos etc.) that would require a mandatory input before being able to publish. In other words: The forum would require you to either fill those areas or not allow you to post at all.
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Sometimes I remember a post (by another forum member or myself) on a certain topic, but I'm unabel to find it again. Would it be doable to have a search function looking within someones posts for a term?sorry, stupid me. saw that it's already possible via the advanced search function
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