+1

It didn't take 15 minutes for a CL Nazi to post a rant on "collector-owners" whom he deemed were profiting from bike sales.
Likely your post will be flagged too, if the bike is deemed to be collectable by the CL flagging ninnies.

Well, a quick check of nearby C/L show very few dealer listings.

Charlotte: zero dealer listings.

Asheville, NC: zero dealer listings.

Greenville, SC: zero dealer listings.

Atlanta, GA: one dealer listing (for a pull trailer, not a bike)...

Perhaps I'm an optomist, but I see this as a legitimate improvement. There are about 6 local flippers that account for a solid half of our area's ads and also generate most of the CL Nader kvetching. Those 6 will get pushed to the dealer section and I think some of the constant whining will end.

As far as there being few dealer ads, it's been ONE day...sheesh.

Perhaps you're an optimist.

- It is hard to appreciate how priggish and zealous the CL flaggers are.

Now all we need is a mandatory tutorial so The clueless motorcycle owners can tell the difference between "bikes", and "Motorbikes". I saw the "BIKES" thing as a problem from the word go. Why couldn't they use the proper term Bicycles,,,,,BD

Sheesh...I hate typos. Perhaps I'm an optometrist.

I know the pain of the species flaggerist nosexes too well...they harassed the heck out of me because I had the nerve to sell a Raleigh international for over $100. One told me a Grandis with SR and DA was just an old POS. They won't completely give up, but I retain hope that this will help to shut them up at least some of the time.

Obviously you've BTDT!

I hope so too Aaron. There's always HOPE!

+1.......I'd been running an ad soliciting donations for and plugging
the non profit bike coop here and recently went down to some flagger.

If you get a chance, go to the "flagging help forum" some time.
It's a laugh a minute, apparently populated by self styled CL experts
and their hapless victims....people who go on there thinking they might
receive some help or insight.

CL flagging is the new outlet for vigilantism in America. Where is Charles
Bronson when you really need him?

At your service.

I keep hoping that they move on to bee keeping, knitting, raising chickens, or some other fad that strikes their fancy...

+1 With some appropriate flagging, some of the obvious serial listers may be pushed to the dealer section. I noticed one guy in Atlanta, six listings in a row, all DKOs of various sizes and styles. If such volume/clutter can be moved over to dealers, it would help the rest of us.

When I go to the car section I am a FSBO guy, always looking for the deal from someone giving their car away. But I know some people, especially women, that would never look at a car unless it was at a dealer. I wonder if this will happen with the Bicycle section. Some people may just assume just because it is listed by a dealer that it has received a full tune up and is in better shape.

Good point.

Well stated Thrifty. For a variety of reasons I'm currently sitting with 5 listings which is an unusual max for me but it is entering prime season. If I get flagged for that I'll be fuming because I let them ride to nearly expiration before update and don't over post every few days. That is the real problem with CL and unfortunately hasn't been able to be addressed yet. I'm not really happy with this owner/dealer change since it will only bring out the nannys even more.

+10 on the new picture format however.

Flagging is most annoying to the legitimate hobbyist, collector, and occasional private seller. It can be good, when you re-post your back on the front first page, unfortunately that works for spammers, too!

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Raleigh's most prolific flipper is posting as a dealer, which makes me happy as I can more effectively avoid his ads. He is pretty good at writing copy and I was pretty good at not looking but this is better. I can move through the page faster.

+1 I've had a bike on CL for 3 weeks, with nothing but another owner of a similar bike asking me if I can help him sell his. It would be nice not to wade through a dozen or so ads from each flipper, though.

+1 for sure. Although he is a super nice guy and we have exchanged parts before, his bikes are waaaay overpriced and he relists them at least once a day. Now we need a few more folks to move to the dealer listings.

In the past I averaged three bikes a month, slightly more at community yard sale time. In the last six months it's more like a bike a month. What advantage would being a dealer bring? In the worst case I still clean, lube, and adjust a bike. An example is a Peugeot Tourmalet I flipped - I cleaned it and fixed a flat. On the other end I spent 30+ hours and a $100 on another Peugeot I sold.

I don't get it. The dealer and owner's are on the same list on our CL. So what. I really like the change to the pics format though. Now I don't have to link to photobucket. That's a major improvement. One thing I've noticed in the Raleigh listings, quite a few more parts for sale. The parts business is really catching on.

So what's the determination on how many bikes make one a "dealer"? States have laws on cars. Something like if you sell 5 or more cars a year you have to get a dealers licence? For bikes should it be 15 or so? I know several locally who fill the list with their police auction fodder. I say let them apply for a business licence etc. Then they can post to their hearts content and not clutter my list.

I just figure all the flagging is the same 3 "dealer" DKO types blasting each other as they spend all day on CL anyhow.

We are talking about "Front Porch Guy" in Raleigh in case anybody was wondering. He does good work and buying one of his bikes would actually be cheaper than buying a unrestored bike then having a bike shop do the work. That said I believe that level of commercialism is not in the spirit of Craigslist. It may have also spoiled it for many of us who, like me, restore and sell a few bikes a year as a hobby. I do not see that as being a dealer. The default listings are now for "by owner". As he usually had two thirds of the listings it sure makes it a lot easier to see what's for sale. It will be interesting to see how this all works out.

I've been noticing an oddity in the South Florida bike listings lately, and I wonder if it's a side effect of the revamped format: There are far more miscategorized listings now, and it's not just the typical motorcycles. Today alone I've seen several cars, a catamaran, boat engines, an offer for website design, and two wtb ads from a book dealer.

I know we've got a higher than average allotment of numbskulls, but the trend seems to coincide with the change they made, I wonder if people are seeing similar things in other cities? I've seen mashup sites that hijack craigslist to display listings, maybe they can also be used to place ads using an API that's now partly broken?

On a related note, one of the most prolific and annoying dealers is using the "by dealer" category and I'm grateful for that, but several others and the pawn shops haven't got the memo yet.

The difference between Dealer and Owner means something in the Motorcycle and Cars & Trucks categories, in bicycles not so much! I do like the new clickable pictures better than the old small ones that were allowed. I still have to run a lot of them through a photo editor to find out what the bike looks like or what kind of components are hung on it.