by Matt » Tue Feb 22, 2011 10:23 am
AR15's system tracks offers. This differs from our system. So, essentially if an offer is stored, you can get feedback from the party who was actually involved in the transaction. We don't track offers. To be honest I'm looking at AR15's site and I'm seeing a lot of people with 0-0-0 feedback, the majority of the ads. I don't think it's really working that well for them.
It's not really as simple as just using the system they use either, because they're on an ASP.NET platform, we're PHP. There's a lot of great PHP solutions, even some that emulate eBay, but I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel. We want to host the information about what is for sale, not host the transactions themselves. AP doesn't want to be liable for your deals. We're not eBay. We don't have an army of lawyers.
Our market pretty much sucks right now. We're flooded with underpriced crap AEGs and China is undercutting everybody else. Back when there were 2 major AEG brands you could basically sell a well kept upgraded AEG for the same price you bought it for brand new. Knockoff gear was few and far between and wasn't worth buying in most cases. This is not true today. If you are having trouble selling your AEGs or your tactical gear, it may not be the classified ads system that's causing the problem.
I think we need some strict moderation, which our next system will allow, and some more features for sorting and finding what you want. We'll have a lot of new features, but at the moment I'm not sure feedback would be feasible. Our moderators can enforce the rules on using the forum and using the classifieds system, and if people can't follow the rules they will be excluded from using the classified ads system.
