From a personal stand point, i will have completed a trade/service and didnt edit that its been completed. Later that day or several days later, people pm/post in thread about that trade or service - because the topic has been kept open.

Allowing the creator of the trade/service to close the thread once its complete, would allow more free time for whoever has to go through and close them, reduce confusion about items or services that are no longer available, reduce “live threads” for people to scroll through, reduce amount of “wasted posts”/spam the forums receive in general, reduce the amount of pms that get sent and replied to, increase the cleanliness of the site overall, keeps goods/services clean and up-to-date. Potentially frees up mods/trusted members time to address events of greater importance.

I think everyone can benefit from this simple option and it would make navigating through the site easier/less time consuming.

What are your thoughts?

voted yes

votes yes.
still getting pm’s today for items that sold weeks ago.
even with my t/c edits.

yes

Hi PaWn,

This has been suggested many times over the past 16+ years

Being able to close threads is a right that is reserved for the staff and not for us.

I don't see this being added anytime soon, I do however see something similar to tagging a topic being "Completed" Or "Sold" being implemented before this being done.

voted yes

This post was edited by Krawk on Dec 22 2021 06:34pm

Most things are not implemented because people abuse them.
This is one of those.

I'm wondering, how can you ABUSE the closing of your OWN topic feature? I dont get the idea of abusing that. The workaround is just to edit 1st post with and SOLD but...

Hey, PawN,

Overall, a good idea. However, I do believe this feature is intended for staff members as there are potentials for its abuse. I can envision a few instances how the OP of a particular topic can abuse trade disputes and make proving scams a little harder with the ability to close their topic at any point.

Voting no on this one.

Support your opinion

Thank you for the insight and the vote

I can agree with your take on at least having an option to mark the trade/service as completed - so that whoever closes them - is notified and can then proceed to close at their own pace/discretion.

Its sad that this topic has been raised many times for over a decade and yet no one has come up with a simple, useful and adequate solution. Our ability to adapt where we are weak, is a driving force into how far we will go into our future. Im not saying the idea of a close button should be just for the person who created, im not that narrow minded, instead im suggesting we work together to find a way to improve things that would benefit from a change.

If there is a problem with ppl closing threads and making disputes or scams harder to rectify, then find an alternate solution to that as well. Mqybe all closed threads go into a specific folder(archive) and can be retrieved and reviewed upon necessary mediation of an accusation etc.
Maybe create a penalty system for those who choose to abuse the trade close button(if it were to be implemented that the creator of the thread could close it) so that people get the point that they cant abuse that “power”. They already have temp bans for spam etc. adding that to the list wouldnt take much and would be as effective, while still creating a better experience for everyone to participate in, on the forums.

Wherever there is a reason not to implement, what a large number of ppl would consider to be a improvement, there is a solution to that reason. Just keep adapting, keep progressing until that suitable balance is achieved.

Everywhere there is a problem, there is an opportunity to fix that problem and improve. If ppl abuse it, penalize them. If they spam too many topics and close too fast, create a close topic delay timer. If closed topics make it harder for scam accusations to be investigated, create an organized folder of archived topics with a simple search option to retrieve particular topics of interest pertaining to the investigation - ppl are required to provide links and screenshots of every detail they can find anyway.

Right now, for the last decade+, there has been a need to clear up excess spam/topics. This type of suggestion has been offered before, yet no action has been taken to implement any sort of improved variation of it. A deliberate act of “no action” is choosing not to improve aomething that can be improved

At the bare minimum, there should be an added option to request “close my thread” button - so that it gets sent to the right people who are appointed to such tasks and then closed in a more timely fashion, at their discretion. There wouldnt be need for editing “t4t/trade/service closed” and no guessing on the meds part for which topics to close or keep open. It would be easy to find and easy to close.

That would keep the power where it is meant to be, while still yielding the desired result of a cleaner, easier to navigate, less spam filled site. Everyone wins