moratorium on new vendor forums

[mkawa]

we will not be creating new vendor forums in the near future. we need to refine our procedures and rules regarding vendors forthwith; mind you, we have scheduled a series of meetings wherein we will mostly make fun of the d-squad but also talk about this and solve the problems that need to be solved, but in the meantime, we're taking a break on making new vendor forums. it is nothing personal, we just have too many of them, and they're getting a bit out of control.

[Latin00032]

Ok.

[MOZ]

I agree, a vendor and small time seller are not the same.

A vendor is a proper company or individual with a business license and selling orders in bulk over a period of time.

Many of the current "vendors" are just individuals providing some service or products in small quantities every now and then.

[mkawa]

i would be remiss to post this announcement without also posting this:

[SpAmRaY]

Maybe in all the meeting you guys can come up with something better than just having 60 posts for classifieds.

[mkawa]

the first meeting will probably just be us making fun of the d-squad, but yah, second meeting, first agenda item, for sure.

[bueller]

Maybe in all the meeting you guys can come up with something better than just having 60 posts for classifieds.

A local forum I post on only allows users to see the classifieds if they've been members for 3 months, that cuts down on idiots spamming.

[demik]

will you be talking about enforcing your VTOS rules?

and you know exactly what the hell im talking about.

[Photekq]

'tiniest_violin'
'motherf*****'

That's pure gold.

[SpAmRaY]

will you be talking about enforcing your VTOS rules?

and you know exactly what the hell im talking about.

Sounds like they will be talking about dongs.

[mkawa]

ray's got it. basically an hour full of dongs. maybe 15 minutes about pens.

[Halverson]

ray's got it. basically an hour full of dongs. maybe 15 minutes about pens.

Can I come?

[mkawa]

NO

[Halverson]

Harshing my buzz professor Gucci....

[HendyZone]

Hi mkawa
seems like not opening for new vendor forum at the meantime

am i possible to make commercial sale in classified ?
i promise i just make only one classified thread (like i have done) and just edit the title with some new item 

Thanks GH 

[aggiejy]

I think we should have one vendor forum, and each vendor gets a thread.  (New threads would go through approval like the Group Buy forum, etc.)  If you look through most vendor forums, this would work without hardly any headaches.  There are a couple exceptions (Techkeys?), but overall... seems like the most scalable and clean solution. 

As a huge plus to both the customer and vendor, a user can much more easily monitor vendor threads and announcements by watching a single forum.  Vendors get more eyeballs, customers have an easier time keeping up.

Just my 2 cents.

[SpAmRaY]

I think we should have one vendor forum, and each vendor gets a thread.  (New threads would go through approval like the Group Buy forum, etc.)  If you look through most vendor forums, this would work without hardly any headaches.  There are a couple exceptions (Techkeys?), but overall... seems like the most scalable and clean solution. 

As a huge plus to both the customer and vendor, a user can much more easily monitor vendor threads and announcements by watching a single forum.  Vendors get more eyeballs, customers have an easier time keeping up.

Just my 2 cents.

Would that stop vendors from having moderator powers to see when people report things that are none of their business?

[Michael]

I think we should have one vendor forum, and each vendor gets a thread.  (New threads would go through approval like the Group Buy forum, etc.)  If you look through most vendor forums, this would work without hardly any headaches.  There are a couple exceptions (Techkeys?), but overall... seems like the most scalable and clean solution. 

As a huge plus to both the customer and vendor, a user can much more easily monitor vendor threads and announcements by watching a single forum.  Vendors get more eyeballs, customers have an easier time keeping up.

Just my 2 cents.

This doesn't make much sense if there are multiple products, announcements, etc. How would one thread look when you need to cram a million things into it?


I agree that the way it is currently formatted needs improvement, but only using one thread isn't a good solution, imo.


Perhaps organize it the same way as any other forum - just have a 'Vendor Section' instead of a strip of vendor forum names, like there is currently. Within that link, it would take you to the list of vendor forums like we currently have, then to the subforum like we currently have. Just a cleaner way of displaying them.

[aggiejy]

This doesn't make much sense if there are multiple products, announcements, etc. How would one thread look when you need to cram a million things into it?

Fair point. But, it's easy to underestimate the power of the first post.  It can be updated with all of the products, announcements, etc.  The rest of the thread is people's questions/comments/etc.  You make an announcement in the thread, copy a direct link to it, and recap it in the OP.  Granted, it does require some clear organization and communication/writing, which judging by many Group Buys people seem to have problems with. :-o Many vendors only have one or two products and almost do this already. But sure, there are drawbacks if you want a thread for each product.  But it's my opinion that if you need more than a thread, it probably belongs on your own website/etc.  It's just junky here, and a mess.  It can't scale.

[Michael]

This doesn't make much sense if there are multiple products, announcements, etc. How would one thread look when you need to cram a million things into it?

Fair point. But, it's easy to underestimate the power of the first post.  It can be updated with all of the products, announcements, etc.  The rest of the thread is people's questions/comments/etc.  You make an announcement in the thread, copy a direct link to it, and recap it in the OP.  Granted, it does require some clear organization and communication, which judging by many Group Buys people seem to have problems with. Many vendors only have one or two products and almost do this already. But sure, there are drawbacks if you want a thread for each product.  But it's my opinion that if you need more than a thread, it probably belongs on your own website/etc.  It's just junky here, and a mess.  It can't scale.

I guess I fail to see the need for it to scale when it works like any other portion of the forum. It's no different than people making multiple threads within 'media' or 'keyboards'.


It's content contained within a section. It's no different with a vendor subforum.

[aggiejy]

Would that stop vendors from having moderator powers to see when people report things that are none of their business?

YES! Which is a bug as it is anyway, they shouldn't see anything.  Much less call other members out because of it.  You report as many threads as you like.

[aggiejy]

I guess I fail to see the need for it to scale when it works like any other portion of the forum. It's no different than people making multiple threads within 'media' or 'keyboards'.


It's content contained within a section. It's no different with a vendor subforum.

I suppose you're right in that regard.  I guess I mean the part that doesn't scale well is to keep creating new vendor forums.  We've stopped doing it lately, but there have been a *lot* of requests.  Not all of which you would agree with adding!! (We'd be the next Taobao if we opened the flood gates)  But yeah, if we wanted to just keep adding them, then we could eliminate the broken out "Child Boards" section from the home page and it wouldn't look bad. 

I still argue you lose visibility as is though.  But, perhaps my browsing habits are different than most.  I don't usually scan the "Unread", which is about the only way I ever see things buried in vendor forums.  I instead browse by forum.

That said, looking at your forum (and Techkeys, etc), I can see how it wouldn't be ideal to move to this format if you wanted to do a contest thread, etc.  That's certainly a drawback. 

Just stating my opinion here.  I have no clue what the other mods and admins think.

[jdcarpe]

I think commercial vendors should be separated from 'artisans.' People who sell keycaps, cables, keyboard modification services, etc. should not be considered commercial vendors. Vendors are for people like Matias, CM-Storm, Ducky, etc. who want to have a presence on our forum, but are in essence corporations. Artisans are for community members like Bro Caps, TechKeys, CtrlAltStore etc. who want to sell things for profit, but are essentially small operations.

[aggiejy]

Yeah, that probably makes sense too.

[Tym]

I understand the need to de-cluttering but I personally would prefer to keep our sub-forum. As a single thread for what we're running doesn't really work.

[aggiejy]

Tym: Yeah, there's certainly a valid use for it.  Hmm.  I guess just removing the sub-forums from the homepage block (so you have to click into "Vendor Forums") would appease me good enough.

There's still the issue about who should get a forum and who shouldn't I suppose. jdcarpe's idea of segmenting vendors from artisans perhaps is a good start.  (Though, I think some could be hard to define.) 

It's just that this page could eventually have a *lot* more forums on it if we keep granting new ones.  It'll make vendors virtually undiscoverable, except by "Unread" list, or links from elsewhere.

Not sure of the perfect solution.

[tjcaustin]

Tym: Yeah, there's certainly a valid use for it.  Hmm.  I guess just removing the sub-forums from the homepage block (so you have to click into "Vendor Forums") would appease me good enough.

There's still the issue about who should get a forum and who shouldn't I suppose. jdcarpe's idea of segmenting vendors from artisans perhaps is a good start.  (Though, I think some could be hard to define.) 

It's just that this page could eventually have a *lot* more forums on it if we keep granting new ones.  It'll make vendors virtually undiscoverable, except by "Unread" list, or links from elsewhere.

Not sure of the perfect solution.

Maybe start by pruning those that haven't posted in said sub forums in 6 months to a year?

[aggiejy]

Yep, that's a good first step. We should make an "Inactive" group somewhere where those get moved to.  (So they can come back if needed.)

[SpAmRaY]

Also all these new wanna be vendors are they just people who have access to goods and don't have 60 posts? Otherwise they could just post a thread in the classifieds.

[aggiejy]

A lot of them are from China or elsewhere.  They may have a small online store, or can get various goods.  Lots of proxies/agents want one, etc. 

I guess the balance is that we certainly benefit as a community when we have "makers" that build new stuff and add to what's out there.  We also benefit from having a direct line of communication from larger vendors like Cooler Master, Matias, Kinesis, Unicomp, etc.  Resellers aren't necessarily bad either, but unless they are unique in some way or have some exclusive products, I'd argue they are less helpful.  (It's hard to throw everyone in big buckets though, since each case is so different. Any some resellers came *from* our community and support it in various ways.)

It's hard to draw the line as to what is good for the community and what isn't as far as vendors go.  We don't want to turn into a spammy storefront for every vendor that happens to sell keyboard-related products.  We don't want to police vendors as to their business practices, ethical behavior, etc.  But how do you not if shady stuff is going on?  So part of the scalability issue becomes dealing with that as well.

Am I over thinking it?

[kmiller8]

Yep, that's a good first step. We should make an "Inactive" group somewhere where those get moved to.  (So they can come back if needed.)

like this?

[CPTBadAss]

I think it's a good discussion to have aggiejy. I'm not quite sure how to offer a suggestion though. It's a bit complicated isn't it? I think the first step is to move some of the inactive vendor forums into an "inactive zone" like it was suggested before but I'm not sure how  to define a vendor forum.

For example, Binge is very active in the community but has his own website to sell his wares. Does that mean he needs his own forum here as well? At what point do we give say domoaligato or Greystroke a forum? I'm not quite sure.

Maybe a vendor forum definition could be a person who chooses to sell their wares through GeekHack primarily and any major large vendor that the general public would recognize (i.e. Matias, Cooler Master, Matias)?

[aggiejy]

Good questions. But that makes me think immediately of techkeys.  Brad uses his forum here for quite a bit, but has his website.  I personally like that he has the website... much better experience than buying over the forum.  So I don't know if that's a great way to delineate.

[rowdy]

You mentioned that it is preferable for vendors to use their own web sites where available, but not all have a discussion forum there, and to install and maintain one might be too far out of their area of expertise.

At least here if Techkeys (for example) wants to announce a new product, he can start a new thread in his vendor section, and people can discuss that product there.

[Michael]

Started to work on a couple possible solutions. Here would be the first part, and I am working on the sub forum to this piece

[Ragnorock]

^ I like dat. I'm no commercial vendor, and in my current subforum I get very little traffic compared to what I used to before I became a vendor and just listed my leftovers in the classifieds. I would also like to see a fairly strict requirement for a new community vendors since that seems to be the original reason for this thread... something like a member for at least 6 months and >300 posts... community vendors should be established members of the community, not a bunch of randoms looking to hawk their wares.

This would involve having classifieds in the community vendors section I assume?