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We've made some progress toward re-working the Trading Post this week.
Below, you'll find a list of changes we've made to the Trading Post so far. Note that it's still not open to new submissions yet.
1. A Single Subforum For Listings
Listings are all under a single subforum right now. Previously, that were multiple subforums that were just sitting there empty. So what we've done is use the same structure we've used across the forum: a broad general section that uses prefixes to separate out the subcategories.
As the Trading Post is populated over time, we can revisit the idea of having multiple subforums for different types of services, but we'd prefer to go in more unique direction with our Trading Post.
2. All Previous Trading Post Prefixes Are Now In The Service Listings Section
All previously available prefixes are now in the Service Listings section. We'll be adding more prefixes to this section over time.
For those of you who don't know, the prefix feature is great because if you want to find similar threads, you can either click on the prefix or use the search or sort feature to find specific prefixes.
3. Approval Reviews Have Been Removed
This is something we may bring back under the @Trading Post account, but I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks about this. Here's my reasoning for removing them:
Below, you'll find a list of changes we've made to the Trading Post so far. Note that it's still not open to new submissions yet.
1. A Single Subforum For Listings
Listings are all under a single subforum right now. Previously, that were multiple subforums that were just sitting there empty. So what we've done is use the same structure we've used across the forum: a broad general section that uses prefixes to separate out the subcategories.
As the Trading Post is populated over time, we can revisit the idea of having multiple subforums for different types of services, but we'd prefer to go in more unique direction with our Trading Post.
2. All Previous Trading Post Prefixes Are Now In The Service Listings Section
All previously available prefixes are now in the Service Listings section. We'll be adding more prefixes to this section over time.
For those of you who don't know, the prefix feature is great because if you want to find similar threads, you can either click on the prefix or use the search or sort feature to find specific prefixes.
3. Approval Reviews Have Been Removed
This is something we may bring back under the @Trading Post account, but I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks about this. Here's my reasoning for removing them:
- The approval reviews were adding an exorbitant amount of time to the review process. I'd rather the staff here spend the time reviewing the service instead of writing up lengthy reviews, and short "Thread approved" or generic messages are just unacceptable.
- The approval reviews came across as endorsements. A problem I had elsewhere is that my approval reviews were often used in the same vein as customer reviews but sellers. These reviews were always meant to just say, "We looked this over to ensure that the quality is as advertised or better" and not "This is the most amazing service in existence and we say you should buy it".
- We're continuing with the pre-approval process as our main review process, we just need to add this in after we test it. I mentioned before that we don't want to just have the old top-level service review process as I've personally always found this to be a scummy review process and it causes too many issues, especially when a service gets rejected.
- We want to streamline listings even further. Right now, we have those fields in every listing that have the basic info everyone needs to make a decision, but we really don't want our Trading Post populated with long cartoon sales graphics. At the same time, traders should have some creative liberties with their sections. Rather than take this away entirely, we're looking into having pre-defined formatting for sales listings that expands upon the current system.
- This next one is more complicated, but we want to address the issue of listings that drop in quality. Simply adding in a renewal fee is not enough as many of us are very much aware of here, so what is the solution? Well, once we finish working out the pre-approval process, we can actually do re-reviews that only require the trader to show us.
- We're considering adding a specific services list to the Trading Post page. This page needs to be updated since we restructured the Trading Post today, but a specific service list based on the prefixes will make searching for specific services even easier.
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