Question: Regarding Yard Sales

Opinion, Commentary, and Questions:

I love going to yard sales. They are a wholesome, fun, and entertaining activity, something which is in short supply in SL. They give me an opportunity to shop around and maybe pick up some bargains without too big a hurt in the pocketbook, and meet new people.

According to the guidelines on the events posting page, an event is an event if it has beginning and end times, and a host is present. (A definition I always thought made sense myself.)

I had my own yard sale not long ago. There is an event category called Commercial, and I listed my yard sale in that. I don't have that many things that I bought or which were given to me, but I put them out and made $300. In return, other people got items at a good price. A good time was had by all. It was way more fun than I'd expected!

I was part of the study group about the Events calendar some time ago, when these categories were instituted, and that is how I understood the Commercial category. At no time then was it suggested that a certain activity - yard sales - would become "banned."

Now we have residents saying, "Yard sales are banned." Yet there is nothing written in the guidelines saying that yard sales are banned. If you have a beginning and end time, and a host present, you are going by the stated rules.

And as far as I can tell, now we have residents AR'ing every yard sale on the calendar, and then expecting them to all disappear. And as far as I can tell, we have some of them disappearing before they ever even get off the ground! How can you tell if a yard sale is conforming to the rules or not, if it doesn't even get a chance to happen?

This vigilante atmosphere is, in my opinion, very bad for SL. It is also, in my opinion, bad for SL to make posting yard sales - a very innocuous pasttime - on events a quasi-criminal act, expecially considering the types of far less wholesome events that dominate the events calender and are considered just fine.

I say quasi-criminal because there is no rule against it. If you are going to ban yard sales outright, why not say so? Why not put that in writing on the page for posting events?

If not, it seems to me you should always go to see whether there is a host present during the hours, if you want to close these down, or even send out warnings, and apparently even 3-day bans, to people who are following the rules, engaging in commerce, and just having fun. That would be better in PR terms.

Alternatively, if you don't like yard sales existing under the Commercial category, where they are placed (or sometimes under the Miscellaneous category, where in my opinion, they are misplaced), why not create another category called Yard Sales?

And let us yard salers go to them and sift the wheat from the chaff ourselves, which is half the joy of being a yard saler, after all.

In any case, I wish you would clear this up one way or another. Because the fact is, as it stands, according to your own guidelines, having yard sales is in no way illegal or banned, and encouraging people to turn in fellow residents who are having them is not a good thing.

coco

Edit: Thank you, Torley. Works for me!

Hi coco... simple answer:

I love yard sales too.

I wish more people would ask instead of assuming! =]

"Yard sales" as an empirical category are not banned from the Events. There is absolutely no mention of this in the Events Posting Rules.

However, there've been many "yard sales" which are NON-events: meaning, they are often unhosted--because an event must have a host, like how an offline yard sale would have the original owner around to answer questions--or they are simply ads to stores, or in some cases, casinos.

Those ads belong in Classifieds.

Quite frequently, "yard sales" are also are spammed several times in a row with no clear start or end time. It's alright to have an all-day yard sale but not alright to spam Events with such notices. These do not need a visit; they are quite blatant.

There've been some days in which sadly, every single yard sale on the calendar was fake, and so, they were all deleted. Jesse alluded to this once, IIRC.

Regrettably, the few actual yard sales are blotted out by these abuses.

But hopefully, with the community's help on emphasizing actual yard sale Events and with Torse Jr. in tow, the Events calendar will be bountiful and useful to the community at large--always mindful of future improvements.

And in response to suggestions, we've made something clearer on the Event Posting Rules, namely:
This is what is done today.