After months of trying every trick in the book to clean these forums up without success, we have regretfully decided it is in the best interest of the message board as a whole to close them to further posting of ads. Too many members have either not read or ignored the rules governing these forums. The rule violations are so many we cannot keep up with the need to moderate these forums.
In addition, we have been invaded by dealers who have taken advantage of our efforts to provide participating members a place to swap and sell items they no longer want or need in order to promote their business for free at the expense of the advertisers who pay for this message board.
Also, we have recently been made aware of the fact many of you are using our message board as a photo storage site and are "linking back" to us from other message boards to promote the sale of your item. This practice is against our long standing rule against doing so. Linking back absorbs bandwidth which directly affects the experience here for all members, whether they participate in the Swap & Sell forums or not.
IF these forums reopen, those of you who use the Swap & Sell forums should review both the General Rules forum here:General Rules Forum as well as the specific rules governing the Swap & Sell forums. Those rules are posted in a thread that appears at the top of each Swap & Sell forum.
IF these forums reopen we will have zero tolerance for members who fail to abide by the rules. To those of you who are dealers or are engaging in the practice of linking back, if we determine you are either, your membership privledges will be revoked without hesitation. That determination is at our sole discretion. There will be no negotiating, no reinstatements.
For those members who are regular, contributing members and have followed the rules, we apologize to you for having to take this drastic action. We are well aware of your desire to follow the rules here so that everybody benefits. You shouldn't have to pay the price for others' abuses but the situation has become so untenable we have no other choice. The Swap & Sell forums have become unmanageable.
This message board was started by the founder so his taxidermy customers could keep in touch and have a place to meet and discuss and debate matters hunting and fishing and every now and then swap or sell something to a friend. It was never intended to be a Craig's List that also had a couple of forums devoted to hunting and fishing. We are going back to our roots, with or without the Swap & Sell forums.
Please do not start threads in the other forums to complain about the closure of the Swap & Sell forums. Your thread will be deleted and repeated violations will result in moderation action against your user account. If you have comments or complaints, do so via PM to any Administrator or Moderator
Topic: GON..Sell/Trade/Swap..history? (Read 467 times)
