One thing I've thought about, and the moderators have discussed, that might improve things.

• Create a top level category for Listings
  
• In the category, have forums for Interesting, Wonders, Active, and Ended
  
• Each listing (eBay item, Abebooks listing, etc.) starts a new thread in one of those four forums.
  
• the bot can automatically move threads from (Interesting | Wonders | Active ) to Ended when it detects the change
  
• moderators can move threads between Interesting / Wonders / Active as appropriate
  
• people can then reply in thread about the item they are talking about - no longer have one monster thread where it isn't clear what the reply is referring to.
  
• notifications and mutes are then easy to apply to the category, forum and thread level as desired for each user
  

Thoughts?

It would be nice to break up that huge thread into more defined buckets.

I am just trying to think thru your possible approach…

So we could see threads move often? If I am responding to a few, I might have to switch forums to continue replying? And if someone imbeds another listing in a reply? Nesting.

So we would not be able to combine multiple listings in one post, right? As each listing could be in different states over time. For example two eBay listings in a single post with one still current and the other ended. It would not be moved?

We would need rules on postings perhaps…

Laurin wrote:

Mr. Underhill Could we please agree that only unsold offers are shown here^{MOD: in the interesting listings thread[1]} ? For me these sold auctions are not „interesting“ at all.

All auction listings posted to this site end up as sold or ended listings over time.

My rationale for posting to the interesting and the eBay thread, is three fold. To help collectors see what and how the market for Tolkien changes over time, alert members to items they may not have known about, and the much more short term, notify members of newly listed items for sale. The first two reasons are far more important than the third IMO.

I have changed some of the ways I approach these posts recently, for a variety of research based reasons.

I appreciate your feedback and willingness to share your opinion publicly, and while I don’t share your opinion about only active auction listings being interesting, I do concede that there’s a certain expectation for posts in the interesting thread. We want this site to be as good as it possibly can be and we are always tinkering with it to see what works and doesn’t.

The auction listings posted system and search function that Urulókë has set up is really good and should be used by all of frequent here.