Market Place/Classifieds section for car accessories

How about a section for Trade/Buy/sell section for car related things (like audio players, gps etc) - just one common section would work.

I'm okay with it. Let others voice their opinions. If no issues arises, let's kick it off!

A very good idea.  It will add to popularity etc. of CarWale. 

It should, however, NOT be a part of the forums.  Reason being (no offense meant)... 'trading' (buying/selling) would turn forum a 'market place'.

Therefore, in my opinion, let's have it as a separate category altogether, like we have Buy Cars, Insurance, Auction etc.

Pankaj.

I think we should start with forum. Make a new category called "Market Place" / "Classifieds". Single forum category having a single Sub-Category of the same name or "For Sale/Want To Buy" or something similar.

Why I propose this is because, CarWale forum is already a closed group (entry restricted only after registration) and the trading is permitted only in a sub-forum and not entire forum. It will eventually help the community in terms of exposure.

Not really (closed group). That doesn't stop people to register & indulge in promotional activities (some are too smart to be recognised instantly/initially). 

My apprehensions are based on various such activities I/we have seen & followed in the forums.  The forum isn't clean; it's kept clean.

I, therefore, reiterate... the proposed section is a very good idea - but as a separate category (outside forum).  The community will still benefit therefrom, like it does from other such separate categories we presently have.

In the forum we can have a thread for any thing (mostly car related) which a member can offer to other members for free. For eg: Auto magazines

I am not in favor of creating a forum category for this, even when there is this added advantage of discussing the neeed/background of the sale/purchase/barter, as well  as the persons indulgingin these activities.

Already there is almost no penalty for littering the fora, (A post-facto ban does not count for much) and garbage collection/weeding is one of the major indulgences of the MODS. Now, with the commercial aspect in picture, the pain will worsen.

We are also going against the consistent and ongoing, enforced policy of banning extreneous commercial interests, references and links on the forum. This 'improvement' suggested will pour a barrel of cold water on that policy.

What can be done is a secction in the commercial section of CW for such entries. No links or discussion permitted except for noting member ID for eventual PMs to discuss the deal. Any spam to be banned at the pain of a total and permanent ban on the member.

Only 100 existing surviving posts would allow one to PM the seller / buyer.

Even after thinking of ways to protect public at large and the forum, this arrangement is vulnerable to spams and garbage attacks. Even when we implement it, it could turn out to be a pain for the members and mods, as well as non-forum CW, along with a very low or nil revenue generation possibility, making this a goofy idea.

A local craiglist is able to handle this better, IMHO.

The 'trade section' idea is quite nice. As others have hinted on the caveats on the same, i would only air my personal opinion here.

The section(if at all planned) should be part of the forum, as there is already a section on CW that sells accessories and other car related items.If we have the section outside of the forums then there would be very little credibility on the same.

The way around the problems/caveats mentioned above could be limited by restricting the members who can post wares(like members with 50 posts or more).The section sub section can be pre-moderated before posting, if such a thing can be done.

To clarify...

The accessories are sold outside forum - it's a separate category/section (whatever).

We currently have categories/sections (to name all - in the order it appears on the top of the main page):  Home, Buy Car, Auctions, Sell Car, Research, Finance, Insurance, Accessories, Forums, My CarWale, Blog & AutoExpo. 

Trading (Buying/Selling Car) can be added to the above list of sections/categories.  It will add to the popularity etc. of CarWale & the community/members too will benefit.  It's indeed a good idea.

BUT what I mean by saying that it should NOT be a part of the Forum, is that it should not be inside the forum in the form of a section/sub-section like the ones we have on (to name a few): Discuss Cars, Buying Cars, Insurance/Finance, Audio/Video, Accessories/Spares, Maintain Car etc. etc.  This is not advisable (inside the forum) for the reasons explained earlier by me & Krishna.

Let me try to put forward my views on the matter:

Why we need a Market Place?

I have been thinking about this sort of stuff for a while but couldn't manage to bring it up. Why I personally want this section to exist:

We are here on this forum for almost everything related to our cars. In fact the forum also has a category which has absolutely offtopic discussions. The idea is to give people space and freedom to feel more attached to the place. They should not feel that I cannot do this here and I need another community for this kind of interest of mine.

Consider the classifieds section a necessity because, we all buy lots of accessories/parts/stuff for our cars and we all feel like upgrading every now and then. What puts us off is the fact that we cannot sell our existing stuff and unfortunately we don't want to throw away our existing and excellent condition stuff. If you go to a dealer for upgrade, he will give you nothing (or peanuts at most) for the stuff. This platform can give us a platform to be more creative with our passion, our cars.

In my opinion, there would be at least 60-70% people who don't even know that their used accessories can be sold out. They keep them until they are dead or the car is sold purely because they don't know about resale of these. This platform gives an opportunity to them as well.

On the buyers' side: Sometimes we have money crunch and can't afford a particular thing. For example, even the most basic audio system will cost us around 15k but a used one can be we within 10k. We also buy used stuff for experimenting.

Why it should be in the forum?

1. As a standard practice all over the world, forums carry Market Place/Classifieds section. It's not becuase they can't have a separate section for this but they intentionally don't do that. Keeping it in forums gives buyers more confidence as they know who the seller is, they can access the older discussion by the seller when he was buying this accessory and they can figure out how good or bad the product is performing.

2. Money is not an issues here. The Market Place would be 100% free, unless forum wants to charge the sellers. However, I am against it for a while. CarWale management doesn't have any interest in this section and don't even plan to introduce a classifieds section for accessories in far future.

3. As far as handling the garbage is concerned, as Binoy suggested, we can introduce it on the basis of forum posts i.e. members with at least 50/100 posts only can post in this section. This way there won't be additional burden in terms of cleaning up etc.

4. We are eliminating the need of a member to go to another forum/site for selling/buying his car-related stuff.

5. It won't interfere with the forum's policies etc. Introducing General Discussions never motivated people to discuss off-topic things in mainline forum categories. In fact it helped us, now we could tell people to discuss something non-important there. I'm sure introducing a market place category won't turn the entire forum into a market place. I'm a believer of the fact that supressing a problem only makes it bigger.

6. Anyways, We can beta test it. In the worst case, if it creates nuisense or something, we will discontinue it.

Disclaimer [;-)]

I'm in the favour of this category as a member. I support this feature as a moderator too. It's a healthy and constructive debate as always. Unless we reach to a conclusion, it's still a pre-matured idea.