How to handle classifieds section?

[ozadars]

Hello,

I have a problem with the classifieds section of my forum. It is the one of the most active part of the forum and also a very important part because it is a hobby discussion forum and second hand is really important for hobbyists. It is a local forum so many people know each other and there is the advantage of that in the classifieds section that people can trust each other easily. 

However, of course there are scammers and also people who are not hobbyists but trying to sell equipments just to make money which I have to prevent.

How I prevent is by putting 25 message and 1 month old membership quota to post in the classifieds section. It works well to prevent these people, however sometimes new members post obvious random messages in the forum to pass the quota which can be really annoying. I also don't want the new members or members who doesn't have enough posts to go to competitor forums to post their ads. 

Does anyone have any solution for this? How do you prevent scammers and shop owners to post in your classified section but at the same time allow new members or passive members to still post their ads?

[Joel R]

1.  To directly address your question, there is no way around spammers and new members who post trivial messages except by manual approval of messages.  This can be accomplished in IP.Board by promoting all registered members into a new usergroup "new members" where the first X posts must be approved by a moderator.  This will ensure that those members post quality posts that are to your website's standards.

2.  On another note, I encourage you to check out the excellent "Collections" app by @Mike John in the Marketplace.  It functions as a full-featured Classifieds / Garage application that might be better suited to that section of your website rather than forums.

 

[tenaki]

Classifieds mod is good but not ready for 4 and support always lags abit IMHO

I have collections, formally garage, I might give it a try for classifieds

[Paul.F]

Another option is the below. You could make a group where you can put your respected members, they can then in turn report the spammers etc.

Once they have been reported their posts can be hidden. etc etc. Per above.

[ozadars]

Is it possible to turn on the manual approval of messages of a specific group of members in a specific forum?