Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms One for the 'Moderators... For Sale advertisements

I think some people are expecting a lot from a free site which is looked after by a group of volunteers who give their time freely.

I know that a lot of people, like I do, make donations to it's running cost.

I would hate to see this site become more commercial with reams of adverts and annoying pop-ups. Lets enjoy it for what it is, an excellent resource for Morgan owners.

Tim, Richard and Mr Scrambled.
Well said gentlemen I totally concur.I can add no more.

+1.

Yes a moment making a small payment in support stops us being inundated with noise. It is surprising how intrusive the adverts on other sites are getting these days. If you use an ad-blocker they pop up big "you must permit ads" and some of these can be your recent browsing due to the google cookie monster.

For a laugh I sometimes deliberately shop for something totally bonkers like plastic chickens and then go to these sites to see if they find other sources for them! It is also then interesting to see who else pops these adverts up.

Imagine the humour if we did have advertising can you guess given our profile what might be popped up?

I find it hugely entertaining whenever I see somebody complaining that the XYZ website is carrying adverts for gay sex toys or whatever, without realising that the adverts they see are driven by their internet search history.

Interesting friends you have Tim.

Just to clarify, the For Sale & Wanted section is not for contributors only, I have just set it up so that contributors do not have to wait to have their ads approved. This is less of a privileged and more of an assumption, on my part, that if someone is willing to contribute to the running costs of TM, they are less likely to be a spammer. However, now that the secret benefit has been revealed, we may find that the TM community is inundated with sheepskin coat wearing spammers who are willing to donate 0.50 pence to bypass my system.

The long and the short of it is that (a) a lot of pending posts were lost (all those who messaged me have been contacted and asked to re-submit their ads) due to a glitch during the last month (6-weeks), (b) I have been very distracted and TM has taken a seat on the bench as a result and (c) I am massively tired of having to point people in the direction of - THIS - only to have them totally ignore one, or all, my requests.

Being totally frank, I feel like the site is being used as a free eBay, Gumtree or any other old place to hawk junk. In far too many cases, people post something, sell it and we never see them again until they want to sell something else for free. That isn't being part of the community, that is taking advantage.

To those who do support the site in your words, donations and actions... thank you. I am always humbled by your approach to this community and appreciate the support more than I can say and it does mean a lot.

Thank you

If it's a pain for you Simon, then I'm sure we'd understand if you decided to simply shut the facility down.

One alternative (if the ACL feature in the software allows it) is to implement a Newly Registered Users list such that when one registers on TM one is also added to the new users list, which has a post count parameter. When the user reaches the post count (Say 50 posts or whatever) then they would automatically be deleted from the new users list.

Then all you have to do is deny posting access to the For Sale forum to anyone who is on the new users list.

That way one would only be able to sell stuff if one had made a certain number of posts. It would take a determined junk hawker indeed to stick around for that long.

We appreciate all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes

Simon we really do. Thanks again.
John