Monday, July 4, 2011

A friend experiences problems with Craigslist

   It seems everyone I know has at least some problems with ads not appearing (called ghosted ads) since they receive a link indicating their ad successfully posted but it doesn't appear. My friend was stood up on a date in Las Vegas and posted in the category "strictly platonic" thinking a simple date wouldn't be considered a "casual encounter" since he wasn't posting an ad for sex like the rest of them under this category and his ad was ghosted. He will spend July 4th alone. He showed my a link to his posts on the forum for Las Vegas. I applaud the Las Vegas moderators, they responded promptly and at least had some ideas why his ad was ghosted. At least they responded faster than the moderators I dealt with.

   here's the lowdown of why his ad was flagged: 1) wrong category, he mentioned he had wine and a hotel room on the strip making it a "casual encounters" ad. 2) his IP address originated from a Phoenix, AZ which isn't a local area. I can sort of understand the first reason even though I question what the hell is the difference between "strictly platonic" and a casual encounter ad? There was even another ad that wasn't ghosted where a guy wanted to meet at his hotel room but my friend only mentioned he was at a hotel on the strip and this guy wanted a sexual encounter. Of course, God forbid, my friend mentioned he had wine! Perhaps the moderators figured he was the type who would get a woman intoxicated and take advantage of her even though they have never met my friend and if they did, they would realize he doesn't have it in him to do such a horrible thing to a woman.

   The second reason cited sounds ridiculous. My friend has no control over the origin of his IP address and he determined his cell phone used to post the ad had an IP address from Phoenix, AZ. It is highly unlikely an ISP or cell phone provider has servers in all cities. As my friend emphasized, he lives in Ogden, UT and his IP address originates from Salt Lake City or Denver, CO. I think the moderator was full of crap on this one. This means ANYONE in Northern Utah who doesn't live in Salt Lake City will have troubles posting ads and sometimes Salt Lake City residents will have troubles. Remember that ISP's don't have servers in every city. A server in Salt Lake City can easily handle internet traffic throughout Northern Utah. This includes cities such as Logan, Brigham City, Ogden, Layton, Salt Lake City, Orem, Provo and any communities nearby all these cities. Setting up servers in all cities would be a big waste of money when only one server can handle all traffic along the Wasatch Front. The Salt Lake City server is the main server serving Northern Utah with Denver, CO used in the event that the Salt Lake City server is down. So anyone along the Wasatch front who doesn't live in Salt Lake City will be flagged and sometimes residents of Salt Lake City if their server happens to be down and they are issued an IP address from Denver! Even if my friend used a computer at his hotel, what guarantee is there that the IP address will originate from Las Vegas, NV?

   Even though the Las Vegas moderator was quick to help and seemed to know more than the Craigslist moderator I encountered, like all Craigslist moderators, he was rude. He did tell my friend that he doesn't have to use Craigslist (my friend mentioned in a post he should have used backpage) if he dislikes how Craigslist works. How the hell does Craigslist have such a competitive lead over their closest rival Backpage? My friend responded to the moderator by saying that this is like Microsoft claiming you're not being forced to buy Microsoft Products. My friend went on to say in his post that technically you don't have to use Craigslist but if you want to reach the widest audience, you need to use Craigslist because most people don't even know what Backpage is. Like Microsoft, you have a choice to do business with someone else but with almost everyone using Microsoft products and the Windows Operating System, you are forced to use Microsoft whether you like Microsoft Products or not. Linux does do everything windows does much better but some sites will tell you that their site hasn't been tested for Linux and may not work because they were designed and tested for Microsoft and Apple only. Microsoft Office is the standard when it comes to office software. Of course there is OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and others but Microsoft can change the format of their word files and these products will not work with newer Microsoft office documents and you may end up having to buy Microsoft Office.

   So here's a list of common excuses that the moderators from Craigslist will say is the reason why your ad was ghosted:


  1. Your add is posted in the wrong category. Just because you see ads similar to yours doesn't mean you can also post an ad in this category. Some of the categories are nearly the same such as "strictly platonic" and "casual encounters". I've seen ads in both of these categories that mimic ads from the other category.

  2. Your ad has too much HTML. So Craigslist supports HTML but if you use too much of it, your ad gets ghosted?

  3. The origin of your IP address doesn't match the city you are posting in. How can someone post when they have no control over the IP address location they are issued? In addition, most cities don't have servers so how can people in these cities post when their IP will show a neighboring city? In some cases you can be issued an IP address several miles away from where you live!

  4. There were some keywords that caused your ad to be caught by the filters. So, someone can put that they want to have sex and not be flagged while someone who doesn't mention anything about sex can be ghosted? This doesn't make any sense! Remember, you can use the word sex in your ad but the word Wine, Hotel Room, etc isn't Okay. Does that make any sense?

  5. You post too often. What is their definition of too often? I see plenty of ads that are reposted or crossposted. This is one of the reason they gave me when I hadn't been on Craigslist for months!

  6. You edited your ad too many times causing their spam filters to flag your ad. What kind of primitive filter do they use? If legitimate posters are getting flagged then there is a problem!


   After my experience where I didn't post for months then when I logged in after a few months my ads were ghosted. The only thing I can think of is that Craigslist has banned me even though they claim they never ban people. The only thing Craigslist has for it is name recognition. I would be more than happy to pay a couple of dollars to post an ad in Backpage when I have never had an ad ghosted by them. Of course like Craigslist, Backpage is hard to navigate and I'm surprised nobody has built an online classified ad site that blows away both Backpage and Craigslist. It wouldn't take much to create a more effective search engine and make it easier to navigate. Of course most people only know the brand name Craigslist even though Craigslist sucks. This is kind of like eBay where I'm quite sure there is competitors to eBay but people know about eBay. Of course unlike Craigslist, eBay respects the people who post ads on their site.

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