Main Classifieds Page
This section is where you can browse ads posted by community members and post your own.
There are many different categories for classifieds.
They are first divided by geographic region.
When you click on one of the regional logos, you are taken to a listing of the main categories for that region, along with the sub-categories.
Once you are in a category that contains classifieds, you'll see a listing of them.
If you are logged in, you will see links to "Manage Your Classifieds" and "Search this Category".
Search just takes you to a page with search options. Be careful with this link though! It will only search starting from the category you are looking at, and down from there! So if you are on in the Orange County region and click Search, you will only get results back for classifieds in the Orange County category and its subcategories. You won't get Los Angeles classifieds back, for example.
Managing Your Classifieds
First, you need to understand that classifieds are static!
This means that once you create one, it NEVER goes away! Although if you deactivate it, it will not be visible to other users.
You can deactivate it, or edit it, but the way you use the system is NOT to post something new over and over again. The classifieds system is not a blog or message board. Once you are finished with your classified, you turn it off until you need it again, at which point you change it to suit your current needs.
The page is pretty self-explanatory. You can attach links and pictures to a classified ad, and apply FX (effects).
Quarantined Classifieds?
Quarantined classifieds are only visible to those with voting rights (also called "influence"), and to the author of the classified.
Classifieds are put into quarantine when the author is quarantined at the time it is activated.
Community members with voting rights can vote to release the classifieds (which is a seperate action from voting to release the member themselves).
Once a classified is released, it stays released until it is updated or deactivate and then reactivated. At that point, it needs to be released by the community again.
The point of all of this is to protect the community from bad people. Who are bad people and who are good people? That's for the community to decide.
The Classified Page
On the page of the actual classified page, down the left side of your screen you will see information about the author of the classified.
Above the title of the classified, there is a small link that say "discuss". Click that to go to the blog topic specifically for this classified. This is where people discuss the classified ad and the author of it. You might want to make a habit of checking it out before contacting the author to make sure the community thinks the person is ok.
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