Issues with newbies only here for Market

So, What I've understood after reading all these posts is that:
1. This forum is primarily for discussions/help threads, and buying or selling is a secondary thing here.
2. You'd have to be trustworthy to post a reply to buy or sell sub forum.

But I'm unable to understand what's the way to become trustworthy specially for new people like me. I'm genuinely concerned to know about this, because I'm new to forum and it's highly confusing.
 
Few things:
1. I think this forum uses market as a sort of fuel to run the discussions engine. I'm not sure about which is primary & secondary; but I'm sure you need both to sustainably run a forum, as both help with ad revenue - you need discussions for forum activity & market to incentivise new users (evident from the very existence of this thread) to join, which'd also be at least a nice-to-have for existing members.
So, the key is participation, which means which is primary & secondary is largely irrelevant. So, this is the best answer to the original post:
rsaeon said:
Stick around and participate.
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2. I'll admit that as a new user, I only participated to get access to the market section. But, ended up spending a lot more time here, simply because there are multiple discussions on a wide range of topics; a few:
How to get rid of mosquitoes? | Hair oil vs cream | Best coffee roasters in India? | How to clean the inside of a washing machine and keep it that way | DIY Wi-Fi Battery Monitor for Inverters/UPS (IoT Lead Acid Battery?)
So, I feel confident in saying that any new user will find it worth it to spend their time in participating in disussions.
3. Restrictions in market section are only mitigation & it's not really that you'd have to be trustworthy; for buyer/seller it makes sense that, more the time people spend (reflected in title/posts/feedbacks...) less likely it is for them to not hold up their end, give it all up and get banned. So, just to convey the point with an extreme example, it's not likely that people would just magically trust someone, who's just gotten access to market section and wants to sell something for, say a lakh. But, it'd be much more likely that a 'Skilled' gains that trust, because realistically the trust is on the system of restrictions, which favours the most invested.
Just saying that restrictions are not simply gatekeeping; it's sort of a continuous process, which again, demands participation.
 
Important for new members :-
Don't spam the forum just to access market. You will get banned. Market is a closed subforum.
At least 1-2 people are banned everyday for spamming. No surprise, all from r/olxgaming :P

The restrictions are to keep numbers in market low.
So if you are an existing market member, avoid referring marketplace to new members, since increased restrictions could push you out of market as well.
 
I am still not sure what 'market restricted' means?

Example - https://techenclave.com/threads/poco-f5-12-256.218328/

How is this user able to post a sale thread? And is it allowed to deal with such users with this tag?

Follow up questions - What is earning them this tag? I've seen some older members also getting it. So what rule are they breaking, i.e. what should we do to avoid getting it?
 
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buzz88 said:
I am still not sure what 'market restricted' means?
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It hasn't been disclosed what triggers it and what removes it — such information can be misused by scammers or opportunistic members who only want marketplace access.

It's probably enough to say they're not trusted, or they haven't proven to be trusted in the case of older members.

Or you could be sophisticated and say TE's AI SLM model deems them unworthy of the marketplace.


It's probably also pertinent to say that TE's focus is no longer the marketplace as it was in the years prior, there's too much moderating overhead involved with a large number of transactions by untrusted buyers and sellers that require hand-holding and interventions, often escalating to insults and threats.

Sucks for people looking for a good deal, but if you're here for the wealth of knowledge contained within, then it makes no difference.
 
rsaeon said:
It's probably enough to say they're not trusted, or they haven't proven to be trusted in the case of older members.

Or you could be sophisticated and say TE's AI SLM model deems them unworthy of the marketplace.
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I find it kind of funny though, since it marked me as one.
The contacts with whom I have dealt with and communicated know me well and in fact know where I live, the only number I use, etc.
Anyway, as long as it serves a greater purpose to block genuine unwanted folks; its fine. I have lots of other stuff on my plate for now though ;)

Happy weekend all.
 
Karthik G said:
The contacts with whom I have dealt with and communicated know me well and in fact know where I live, the only number I use, etc.
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Well I guess we could say it's not a bug, it's just TE AI's SLM model doesn't take into account interpersonal relationships haha.

But yeah, so 'Market Restricted' is a user title, and those are assigned based on Trophy Points, which is derived from posts and reactions on those posts.

Basically, they raised the requirements for everyone, so some members are now Market Restricted while others have been demoted from Disciple to Recruit.

The mods/admins are far too busy with real life stuff, so it's not that any single member is being targeted. These changes were hinted a few messages above.
 
Crazy_Eddy said:
Important for new members :-
Don't spam the forum just to access market. You will get banned. Market is a closed subforum.
At least 1-2 people are banned everyday for spamming. No surprise, all from r/olxgaming :p

The restrictions are to keep numbers in market low.
So if you are an existing market member, avoid referring marketplace to new members, since increased restrictions could push you out of market as well.
Click to expand...
Can't argue with the logic to a degree about keeping numbers low and quality "high?", hopefully? But still is a huge bummer to discover the forum via reccos on reddit and then lurk/browse the marketplace for days on end and find that sweet-sweet deal you've been looking for, only to be deemed "unworthy" of marketplace access upon registering. xD

Nonetheless, I saw that there was an option to upgrade account status via a payment and my hopes peaked for all but a few minutes since all ICICI card payments are failing for some reason. I guess I'll just take this bitter pill of disappointment to bed after all.
 
rsaeon said:
Well I guess we could say it's not a bug, it's just TE AI's SLM model doesn't take into account interpersonal relationships haha.

But yeah, so 'Market Restricted' is a user title, and those are assigned based on Trophy Points, which is derived from posts and reactions on those posts.

Basically, they raised the requirements for everyone, so some members are now Market Restricted while others have been demoted from Disciple to Recruit.

The mods/admins are far too busy with real life stuff, so it's not that any single member is being targeted. These changes were hinted a few messages above.
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Agreed.

In short, be an active member by participating in discussions across different forums and helping people. The marketplace is just a bonus.
 
GolgappeBot said:
Nonetheless, I saw that there was an option to upgrade account status via a payment and my hopes peaked for all but a few minutes since all ICICI card payments are failing for some reason. I guess I'll just take this bitter pill of disappointment to bed after all.
Click to expand...

I've observed that any fault/error that happens with 'smaller' banks like ICICI over the weekend is never fixed until the end of the next business day. It's prudent to have accounts with multiple banks.
 
I have got another story, I try best to avoid Buy-Sell Forum topics in my feeds..
Raised a concern once/twice because of same..
 
Becoming a patron also exposes your name, payment information and geo location — it would take a monumentally stupid scammer to defaud someone after those are exposed.
 
rsaeon said:
Becoming a patron also exposes your name, payment information and geo location — it would take a monumentally stupid scammer to defaud someone after those are exposed.
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If becoming a scammer was that easy, everyone would be one. I know there are stupid ones but "professional" scammers can easily invest a few hundred or thousands to scam in lakhs.
Hiding your identity is quite easy and I'm not even talking about VPN.
 
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