[Spooky]

I say this with the most amount of love @Oni , but The Marketplace for SL needs some attention. Its quite bare and dry when the only place to advertise your products/service is in the “Regular Sales” & “Premium Sales.”

I personally know a lot of GFX artists, Selly shop owners, and a lot of other people who strictly sell on forums for a living, who would all love to advertise their stuff here on SL (which would only help push activity here!) but its quite underwhelming.

We could have a Graphics Market, Accounts, Programs & Tools, Virtual Game Items, OG Accounts, Auctions, Coding Services, & Many More.

And then on top of this the only way to bump your posts, is manually posting LQ comments.. As a shop owner and someone who owns a lot of products, as well as planning to open many many more, this is quite discouraging for me to want to list my products here. I can imagine that some other sellers might feel the same way, and I certainly do not speak for everyone.

But I can promise right now if you asked your most active people in the Market about how they feel towards these suggestions; They would agree.

The autobump feature wouldnt even disrupt any Organic activity. It would only promote the Top Products/Services on SL. You could make it to where you can only bump a post if its a HQ response related to the topic of the thread or you could have people pay to bump. People buy Points, Sinister has a bot to bump the post automatically or have it to where the person bumping the post automatically posts a message, which would then bump the post.

This would benefit both Points and the activity of Sinister. I only see this as a win.

(PS AN EASY EXPLOIT TO FARM POINTS IS POSTING IN BOTH REGULAR AND PREMIUM SALES AND BUMP BUMP BUMP! EZ )


OG Suggestions :

https://sinister.ly/Thread-Undecided-Sub...um-Section

https://sinister.ly/Thread-Bronze-Reques...ing-button

[Oni]

The problem with these suggestions, isn't that they're intensive for me (it's only a few clicks). The issue is that we'd be adding 5-10 additional subsections on top of the 100ish we already have. I'm open to adding one or two sections based on activity, but I don't see many people posting threads for graphics or OG usernames. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

When we add sections, I'm always playing it by ear. The most active niches, tend to get more sections. For example, Sinisterly started without a Market or any Cracking sections. Over time these developed and we improved our offerings. Because these are niche-specific, I'd also have to consult with our sponsors (who pay for the site) about changing the layout.

(PS AN EASY EXPLOIT TO FARM POINTS IS POSTING IN BOTH REGULAR AND PREMIUM SALES AND BUMP BUMP BUMP! EZ )

We already capped how much people are allowed to bump, so it's very rare people upgrade off the points they get there. Nonetheless I will be removing NSP for those sections.

[Spooky]

The problem with these suggestions, isn't that they're intensive for me (it's only a few clicks). The issue is that we'd be adding 5-10 additional subsections on top of the 100ish we already have.  I'm open to adding one or two sections based on activity, but I don't see many people posting threads for graphics or OG usernames. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

When we add sections, I'm always playing it by ear. The most active niches, tend to get more sections. For example, Sinisterly started without a Market or any Cracking sections. Over time these developed and we improved our offerings. Because these are niche-specific, I'd also have to consult with our sponsors (who pay for the site) about changing the layout.

I can agree with that. It would look like a ghost town or spam if there was a whole dedicated subforum and only a handful of posts.
But something like adding a Graphics Market in specific would improve Post Quality. Graphics in specific are important. If people have kickass Userbars for their group, their Sales Thread looks professional and trustworthy, Avatars are HQ, this all reflects the User’s Experience with Sinister.

I personally like to use graphics when posting my threads. It makes the legit stand out from the wanna be sellers. And if you are buying graphics from sellers on SL, to apply on your SL Threads/Topics, this would be the move.

Maybe the AutoBump idea could fix this, because it is discouraging to not post your Product/Service when you see a kind of melting pot of topics and a shit ton of LQ bumps all lumped into a single sub. It’s not a good impression for new users & potential buyers.

We could try implementing only the Graphics Market subforum and test to see how the engagement is. You could gauge how it looks and feels, if it looks spammy, unprofessional etc. There are definitely enough threads on SL that could make up at least 2 pages of results in the potential Graphics Market. Just gotta move them.

[Oni]

The problem with these suggestions, isn't that they're intensive for me (it's only a few clicks). The issue is that we'd be adding 5-10 additional subsections on top of the 100ish we already have.  I'm open to adding one or two sections based on activity, but I don't see many people posting threads for graphics or OG usernames. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

When we add sections, I'm always playing it by ear. The most active niches, tend to get more sections. For example, Sinisterly started without a Market or any Cracking sections. Over time these developed and we improved our offerings. Because these are niche-specific, I'd also have to consult with our sponsors (who pay for the site) about changing the layout.

I can agree with that. It would look like a ghost town or spam if there was a whole dedicated subforum and only a handful of posts.
But something like adding a Graphics Market in specific would improve Post Quality. Graphics in specific are important. If people have kickass Userbars for their group, their Sales Thread looks professional and trustworthy, Avatars are HQ, this all reflects the User’s Experience with Sinister.

I personally like to use graphics when posting my threads. It makes the legit stand out from the wanna be sellers. And if you are buying graphics from sellers on SL, to apply on your SL Threads/Topics, this would be the move.

Maybe the AutoBump idea could fix this, because it is discouraging to not post your Product/Service when you see a kind of melting pot of topics and a shit ton of LQ bumps all lumped into a single sub. It’s not a good impression for new users & potential buyers.

We could try implementing only the Graphics Market subforum and test to see how the engagement is. You could gauge how it looks and feels, if it looks spammy, unprofessional etc. There are definitely enough threads on SL that could make up at least 2 pages of results in the potential Graphics Market. Just gotta move them.

It's a consistent principle that we add sections in response to actual activity, and not speculative activity (as this allows natural growth). Across the first 5 pages of the market, there are not many graphic designers advertising their services. While on average a subsection is sure to get a good amount of posts each month, other niches are more deserving of a subsection.

Subsections shouldn't substitute the search feature, and people shouldn't be able to bump their thread without posting. These are not new features by any means (see this). For me it's just adding a couple of plugins, but I'm against that functionality. I could also require post-count for specific sections (i.e. cracking), add hide tags, or do many other things I don't agree with. But if I did all that, we wouldn't be Sinisterly.

[mothered]

Further to all the above and In a nutshell, adding sub-forums must be at the right balance (not congested and just enough to attract attention) and warrant activity to justify their Implementation.

Otherwise, It will defeat the purpose of their existence.