4 ms·

I will have to agree with point #1. I don't care about the UI, period, the end. I'm so used to typing sfbay.craigslist.org, and just search that I don't even t

by yumraj 14y ago

I will have to agree with point #1. I don't care about the UI, period, the end. I'm so used to typing sfbay.craigslist.org, and just search that I don't even think about it. Textual list works great for me for most part. If I'm interested, I send an email, get a response. Done!! Why do people think that putting a lipstick on a pig will make it more appealing when all I want is some pork. Regarding scammers: there will be scammers in every alternate, at least thats what I think. It is my job to do the due diligence and take care.

hyperbovine 14y ago
Totally agree. It's fast. It treats you like a human being and not a product. No ads. No Web 2-3-4.0 cruft. Stop trying to fix what ain't broke.
- genwin 14y ago
  But... if no cruft then how am I going to share that cool post I saw for an oven mitt for sale, with my 297 friends?
  - nmridul 14y ago
    Just copy the link from address bar and paste it wherever you want to share it..
natural219 14y ago
I can't tell if you're being willfully ignorant or if you legitimately find Craigslist easy to use. I legitimately cannot think of a single example of where you would prefer to scroll through pages of links, reading each classified that might contain the item you're looking for, instead of using an a UI mechanism to filter and sort the searches. Have you ever used Craiglist to rent an apartment or to buy a used car?
- rhizome 14y ago
  You can use minus-signs in the search box, FYI.
- glesica 14y ago
  I just used Craigslist to find an apartment about 1.5 months ago. Based on my experience, I disagree with you. Sure, a slick interface would be cool, but it could very well change the nature of the site in a bad way. I agree that it would be awesome to be able to filter listings on Craiglist through a neat-o UI mechanism ("Hipmunk for apartments maybe"). In fact, I basically spent the entire time I was using the site thinking "if only more landlords indicated whether the apartment is pet-friendly...". I ended up calling a ton of landlords just to find out whether they allowed pets, on the off chance that some of those who had listed no pet policy actually allowed them. But is that really a UI problem? For me, Craigslist has already provided the UI tools I needed (you can search by pet-friendliness). The problem was that the landlords didn't include that information in their listings in the first place. Craigslist is a site for "classified ads". Traditional classifieds (in newspapers) were usually very short, just a few words. Of course far more is possible with Craigslist, but a larger ad also requires more effort on the part of the seller. As it is now, incomplete information has a cost for sellers (people skip their ads), but they can choose to bear that cost if they wish, presumably after comparing it against the cost of providing more complete information. Part of the reason people use Craigslist is that it is more or less a willy-nilly market that is friendly to small sellers. So what would Craigslist have to do to make a new UI worthwhile (for me)? Enforce data completeness on the sellers. But that would turn people off. Requiring additional bookkeeping or punishing sellers for "incomplete" listings just to make a snappy UI practical would harm the community and the site.
  - crazygringo 14y ago
    Craiglist for apartment-hunting in NYC is basically useless. 95% of ads are spammy ads from brokers who, as soon as you call them, tell you that the apartment is already gone, but ask you to tell them what you're looking for, so they can start helping you... There's no deduplication, and you wind up looking at the same ad fifty times in two weeks. Brokers stuff their ads with keywords for every neighborhood, so narrowing results by neighborhood is broken. Price search doesn't work either, because searching for "$2000" gives you apartments that are $2000 per week, $2000 per month, or $2000 for completely arbitrary periods of time, like 11 days. 95% of the listings under "no-fee" actually have fees, 50% of the listings under "sublet" are actually being shown by brokers, and another 25% are actually just looking for roommates (posting in the completely wrong section). There's clearly zero quality control. The user experience for apartment-hunting is HORRIBLE.

by yumraj 14y ago

hyperbovine 14y ago

Totally agree. It's fast. It treats you like a human being and not a product. No ads. No Web 2-3-4.0 cruft. Stop trying to fix what ain't broke.

genwin 14y ago
But... if no cruft then how am I going to share that cool post I saw for an oven mitt for sale, with my 297 friends?
- nmridul 14y ago
  Just copy the link from address bar and paste it wherever you want to share it..

natural219 14y ago

I can't tell if you're being willfully ignorant or if you legitimately find Craigslist easy to use. I legitimately cannot think of a single example of where you would prefer to scroll through pages of links, reading each classified that might contain the item you're looking for, instead of using an a UI mechanism to filter and sort the searches. Have you ever used Craiglist to rent an apartment or to buy a used car?

rhizome 14y ago
You can use minus-signs in the search box, FYI.
glesica 14y ago
I just used Craigslist to find an apartment about 1.5 months ago. Based on my experience, I disagree with you. Sure, a slick interface would be cool, but it could very well change the nature of the site in a bad way. I agree that it would be awesome to be able to filter listings on Craiglist through a neat-o UI mechanism ("Hipmunk for apartments maybe"). In fact, I basically spent the entire time I was using the site thinking "if only more landlords indicated whether the apartment is pet-friendly...". I ended up calling a ton of landlords just to find out whether they allowed pets, on the off chance that some of those who had listed no pet policy actually allowed them. But is that really a UI problem? For me, Craigslist has already provided the UI tools I needed (you can search by pet-friendliness). The problem was that the landlords didn't include that information in their listings in the first place. Craigslist is a site for "classified ads". Traditional classifieds (in newspapers) were usually very short, just a few words. Of course far more is possible with Craigslist, but a larger ad also requires more effort on the part of the seller. As it is now, incomplete information has a cost for sellers (people skip their ads), but they can choose to bear that cost if they wish, presumably after comparing it against the cost of providing more complete information. Part of the reason people use Craigslist is that it is more or less a willy-nilly market that is friendly to small sellers. So what would Craigslist have to do to make a new UI worthwhile (for me)? Enforce data completeness on the sellers. But that would turn people off. Requiring additional bookkeeping or punishing sellers for "incomplete" listings just to make a snappy UI practical would harm the community and the site.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  Craiglist for apartment-hunting in NYC is basically useless. 95% of ads are spammy ads from brokers who, as soon as you call them, tell you that the apartment is already gone, but ask you to tell them what you're looking for, so they can start helping you... There's no deduplication, and you wind up looking at the same ad fifty times in two weeks. Brokers stuff their ads with keywords for every neighborhood, so narrowing results by neighborhood is broken. Price search doesn't work either, because searching for "$2000" gives you apartments that are $2000 per week, $2000 per month, or $2000 for completely arbitrary periods of time, like 11 days. 95% of the listings under "no-fee" actually have fees, 50% of the listings under "sublet" are actually being shown by brokers, and another 25% are actually just looking for roommates (posting in the completely wrong section). There's clearly zero quality control. The user experience for apartment-hunting is HORRIBLE.