1. I've read several threads down from this one (at the time of posting) about an Auction section; frankly that sounds fantastic. But until some system like that can be made into cK, I've got a few suggestions with the current Auction threads to make things a little more fair for all (chime in if you disagree).
For the most part, everything is running fine, though going through searches of past auctions, a few of them seem skewed. That, or missing details that would save bidders and sellers time instead of PMing.
A) Sellers should clearly state an auction end date and time, including time zone (as opposed to vague deadlines like "Tuesday", or "tonight").
The time zone listed would help, as not everyone will have their settings configured the same, and posts don't have an exact timestamp now, just "minutes ago/hour ago/day(s) ago", etc.
Since the first post will likely be edited to update with the current asking, maybe sellers could post info like this on the second post, which should not be edited ever.
(the point of this is to prevent unpredictable, early ends / stretching out auctions if the seller doesn't like the HB ) - the exception to this would be stating an AB price.
B ) While an AB would be nice, I wouldn't say it is mandatory unless the seller wants one listed.
But what I do think should be mandatory is a SB or reserve price (like on eBay). This would save a lot of time and unwanted bids, and to protect sellers from selling something for a price they don't want to (which might also affect my suggestion A), about early or stretched out auctions). If the seller wants a fun auction, that's cool; just state "no reserve", or SB: $0.
C) Bidders must make their bids public on the thread, or the seller must identify all bids (esp. HB ) with the bidder's name, say if done by PM.
This too, is to deter false bids and fraud among sellers/bidders (eg. sellers protecting their items from being sold to low bids, or bidders without intent on buying)
D) Of course, sometimes bidders make mistakes, so they should be able to retract their bid, but on a new post with their previous bid stated (can't edit their older, bid posts, then decide later they want to re-bid, re-edit, and slam the next bidder out).
Sellers can choose to refuse bids from repeat retractors (# either at the seller's discretion, or through a common rule)
E) Sellers should state their accepted forms of payment in the beginning, as well as any restrictions they may have (such as being PP-restricted for new members/lack of feedback). This would be nice if it were a standard among everything in the trade forum, and isn't absolutely critical. I just figured it'd be nice to save time over PMing.
2. Unrelated to auction-style threads; I understand that vB is limited to minimum 4 character searches, so the next best thing would be to Google site search cK with whatever 3-letter (or 2) term you're looking for, but it's not entirely comprehensive.
This isn't an important suggestion by any means, but I thought I'd just throw it out there to make a public notice/addendum for commonly traded items with 3-letter or less abbreviations for sellers/buyers to state the full name, or something like that (such as tagging) to make forum searches easier.
Eg. GoW, LEV, SAP, AP.
I see some topics only use their abbreviations and not the full name, which makes them unsearchable.
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