This feature would be most helpful in the marketplace forum where there is a constant struggle between trying to balance people putting out information about the goods they are trying to sell and people just bumping their threads to get more attention.
When your thread slips to page 2 or 3, it's very common to assume that there is a lack of interest and that if you changed the terms of your sale more people may become interested. Assuming there is a non-trivial price change, most people will make the change either in their OP or in a new post (and often, if they change it in the OP, they will post to alert others to this).
Occasionally, members and mods will think that this posting was done simply to give a "bump," even when the price change is significant and both the old and new price are listed.
The alternative to this is to simply edit your post to change the price and hope that someone will notice the changes (most likely through a forum search) and finally make you an offer. More often than not, though, threads that creep past the second page will never be seen again unless the original author posts to them again.
If, however, it were possible to have the email alerts work when a post is edited (perhaps even only if the initial post is edited), and we could convince people to subscribe to threads in the marketplace they may have interest in, this problem could largely be solved. No longer would it be necessary to do anything other than edit your first post for people interested in your goods to see any changes in price. As another benefit, it would also reduce the number of threads that get bumped by sellers noting the fact that a particular item has been sold.
As someone who is currently struggling to find the right balance between letting people know I have sweetened a deal a bit and just assuming that no one wants to buy my stuff, I think that this change could make things much simpler.
I don't know if there is anything built in to vBulletin to allow this, or any hacks to introduce it, but if there is I think it should be strongly considered. This would also allow a tightening of the marketplace rules, and sellers would need to instruct interested parties to subscribe to the thread to learn of any changes.
Just my $0.02 US, but I think they're being well spent.
Thanks.
When your thread slips to page 2 or 3, it's very common to assume that there is a lack of interest and that if you changed the terms of your sale more people may become interested. Assuming there is a non-trivial price change, most people will make the change either in their OP or in a new post (and often, if they change it in the OP, they will post to alert others to this).
Occasionally, members and mods will think that this posting was done simply to give a "bump," even when the price change is significant and both the old and new price are listed.
The alternative to this is to simply edit your post to change the price and hope that someone will notice the changes (most likely through a forum search) and finally make you an offer. More often than not, though, threads that creep past the second page will never be seen again unless the original author posts to them again.
If, however, it were possible to have the email alerts work when a post is edited (perhaps even only if the initial post is edited), and we could convince people to subscribe to threads in the marketplace they may have interest in, this problem could largely be solved. No longer would it be necessary to do anything other than edit your first post for people interested in your goods to see any changes in price. As another benefit, it would also reduce the number of threads that get bumped by sellers noting the fact that a particular item has been sold.
As someone who is currently struggling to find the right balance between letting people know I have sweetened a deal a bit and just assuming that no one wants to buy my stuff, I think that this change could make things much simpler.
I don't know if there is anything built in to vBulletin to allow this, or any hacks to introduce it, but if there is I think it should be strongly considered. This would also allow a tightening of the marketplace rules, and sellers would need to instruct interested parties to subscribe to the thread to learn of any changes.
Just my $0.02 US, but I think they're being well spent.
Thanks.
