4 ms·

There is a strong difference between UI and UX, for example, when looking through postings for stuff for sale, or places for rent - filtering by HAS IMAGE is re

by phlux 16y ago

There is a strong difference between UI and UX, for example, when looking through postings for stuff for sale, or places for rent - filtering by HAS IMAGE is really the only way Ill look at an ad - yet there has NEVER been a way to expand and see images. The FLAG FOR REMOVAL is and has been abused for YEARS. The fact that an apartment or for sale posting gets flagged then immediately nobody else can see it has been used to effectively block competition in the buyers market. They should simply have a ticker to how many flags a post has been given. Posting has been built upon, but made very cumbersome. And shows that they employ mediocre critical thinking when developing the UX. Sure, the site is amazing, its a gem of the valley and I use it daily when looking for work, stuff, places to live, and weekly/monthly otherwise. But to defend this is the same as Quora trying to convince the world they have incredible design, which they dont. The fact that sites like padmapper can even exist proves that CL is broken in certain areas. Everybody likes the site, but everyone is also constantly defending poor design as if its some sort of hipster notion that we just wouldn't understand.

lukeschlather 16y ago
Craigslist is designed to make communication easier. If different people have differing ability to communicate, this makes it more difficult to communicate. Mediocre UX makes for a better meeting ground, because when you start making things easier beyond a certain point, you start to do so at the expense of outliers. For a site like Craigslist, making 90% of people feel twice as comfortable and 10% feel less comfortable is a bad thing.
- phlux 16y ago
  Your comment says nothing about the UX functions I mentioned. I agree with your statement, but it does not rebut the fact that image display is non-existent and actually works against you comment as it hinders people's ability to smoothly transact private sales... List-jacking vi the FLAG is just retarded and makes me want to punch the screen.
rhizome 16y ago
The fact that an apartment or for sale posting gets flagged then immediately nobody else can see it has been used to effectively block competition in the buyers market You misunderstand the flagging mechanism, and it's never "the competition." The competition isn't united against you and there aren't enough of them anyway. You probably just used a hit counter or external images or some other commonly-abused or community-hated posting trope.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  > "You probably just used a hit counter or external images or some other commonly-abused or community-hated posting trope." Your insistence on the purity of flaggers is puzzling, but is in line with what all of flag-help believes. There is never the assumption that the post was flagged wrongly, and instead the assumption that that poster must have done something against the TOU. Except this assumption seems to be wrong more than it is right (based on the couple of hours I spent digging through flag-help postings anyhow). In my case it seems that there are a contingent of users who are allergic to any unpaid gigs, and will flag just about any ad in the unpaid category. This is despite the fact that CL specifically has an unpaid category, and the posts I saw pass through were not TOU-violating in any way. Flag-help's best response for me was that, hey, that's the way it is, just live with it. This seems to put the kibosh on any assumptions that all flags are legitimate (or even most flags are legitimate). The funny thing is, during the short time that my posts stayed up, I got an incredible number of contacts expressing interest... so clearly I'm not advertising something unwanted to a brick wall.
  - rhizome 16y ago
    Unpaid = volunteers. Yes, gigs has a "No Pay" option, but readers hate it (as I'm sure you gleaned from your forum scan). The readers make the final decision, it's pretty much as simple as that. Unpaid jobs are basically illegal, taxwise, and deferred compensation ("equity," usually) is prohibited by Craiglist elsewhere. I agree that there's a learning curve in posting ads to gigs, but the number of flags required to bring an ad down puts the math on the poster violating community standards. It's axiomatic that people who complain about flags never flag ads themselves, yet are convinced that there is a cabal focussed on them. This results in aggression proceeding from ignorance, where people who pretend Craigslist is a typical classified ad venue complain that posting whatever they feel like isn't having the intended effect. I never mentioned "purity," did I?

by phlux 16y ago

lukeschlather 16y ago

Craigslist is designed to make communication easier. If different people have differing ability to communicate, this makes it more difficult to communicate. Mediocre UX makes for a better meeting ground, because when you start making things easier beyond a certain point, you start to do so at the expense of outliers. For a site like Craigslist, making 90% of people feel twice as comfortable and 10% feel less comfortable is a bad thing.

phlux 16y ago
Your comment says nothing about the UX functions I mentioned. I agree with your statement, but it does not rebut the fact that image display is non-existent and actually works against you comment as it hinders people's ability to smoothly transact private sales... List-jacking vi the FLAG is just retarded and makes me want to punch the screen.

rhizome 16y ago

The fact that an apartment or for sale posting gets flagged then immediately nobody else can see it has been used to effectively block competition in the buyers market You misunderstand the flagging mechanism, and it's never "the competition." The competition isn't united against you and there aren't enough of them anyway. You probably just used a hit counter or external images or some other commonly-abused or community-hated posting trope.

potatolicious 16y ago
> "You probably just used a hit counter or external images or some other commonly-abused or community-hated posting trope." Your insistence on the purity of flaggers is puzzling, but is in line with what all of flag-help believes. There is never the assumption that the post was flagged wrongly, and instead the assumption that that poster must have done something against the TOU. Except this assumption seems to be wrong more than it is right (based on the couple of hours I spent digging through flag-help postings anyhow). In my case it seems that there are a contingent of users who are allergic to any unpaid gigs, and will flag just about any ad in the unpaid category. This is despite the fact that CL specifically has an unpaid category, and the posts I saw pass through were not TOU-violating in any way. Flag-help's best response for me was that, hey, that's the way it is, just live with it. This seems to put the kibosh on any assumptions that all flags are legitimate (or even most flags are legitimate). The funny thing is, during the short time that my posts stayed up, I got an incredible number of contacts expressing interest... so clearly I'm not advertising something unwanted to a brick wall.
- rhizome 16y ago
  Unpaid = volunteers. Yes, gigs has a "No Pay" option, but readers hate it (as I'm sure you gleaned from your forum scan). The readers make the final decision, it's pretty much as simple as that. Unpaid jobs are basically illegal, taxwise, and deferred compensation ("equity," usually) is prohibited by Craiglist elsewhere. I agree that there's a learning curve in posting ads to gigs, but the number of flags required to bring an ad down puts the math on the poster violating community standards. It's axiomatic that people who complain about flags never flag ads themselves, yet are convinced that there is a cabal focussed on them. This results in aggression proceeding from ignorance, where people who pretend Craigslist is a typical classified ad venue complain that posting whatever they feel like isn't having the intended effect. I never mentioned "purity," did I?