Broder
Mudshark
Come on East londoners, list your frags here so that we can start trading. http://southafrica.frags.org/login.php
South Africa Frags. Org is up and running.
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Why not just use the Frags section in the classified area.
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Quinton
Smarty-pants Newbie
Yeah, up the Capies, and the rest of the country too! Thanks Mudshark for getting this going.
This seems like a really good thing for us to support. To overcome the chicken-and-egg "no shoppers, no frags; no frags no shoppers" problem it would be great if anyone with frags to swap or sell would list them in the database at http://southarfica.frags.org
And to add a bit of spice, here are how the different regions currently stack up against each other wrt the list week's listings. I'm hoping that with a little effort we can push these numbers way higher, to a point where the database becomes interesting to people looking to buy or swap frags.
Johannesburg: 9
Pretoria: 7
East London : 6
Cape Town: 6
I'll have to fix that tonight ;-)
PS: I have no offiliation whatsoever with frags.org. I'm just a hobbyist who's interested in buying and swapping frags, and this seems like a really good thing for all of us.
Q
This seems like a really good thing for us to support. To overcome the chicken-and-egg "no shoppers, no frags; no frags no shoppers" problem it would be great if anyone with frags to swap or sell would list them in the database at http://southarfica.frags.org
And to add a bit of spice, here are how the different regions currently stack up against each other wrt the list week's listings. I'm hoping that with a little effort we can push these numbers way higher, to a point where the database becomes interesting to people looking to buy or swap frags.
Johannesburg: 9
Pretoria: 7
East London : 6
Cape Town: 6
I'll have to fix that tonight ;-)
PS: I have no offiliation whatsoever with frags.org. I'm just a hobbyist who's interested in buying and swapping frags, and this seems like a really good thing for all of us.
Q
Broder
Mudshark
The classifieds is great but safrags.org is more of a one stop shop for corals, which is easier to navigate and has a way larger selection. Browsers are serious buyers or traders and not time wasters. It also allows people from other sites to trade on the same platform.
Mudshark you wont find many E.L people trading frags, u should know there is basically only 1 250L tank in E.L that sells corals, and that when people buy them, they hold onto them since stock comes in slow...
Quinton
Smarty-pants Newbie
Alan, I was unaware of the frags section of the classifieds on MASA, and would be happy to support both this and southafrica.frags.org if there's a need for more than one such database. Right now there are zero frags listed in the MASA classifieds, but we could work on improving that. Ultimately I think that a single database for South Africa would be preferable for all, and given frags.org's independence, and international affiliations, perhaps it's a better candidate to put our initial energy into.
But by all means, lets capture the frag data into both databases, rather than neither. Perhaps you could help to encourage the MASA sponsors and members to advertise their frags in whichever database you prefer (or preferably both).
Q
But by all means, lets capture the frag data into both databases, rather than neither. Perhaps you could help to encourage the MASA sponsors and members to advertise their frags in whichever database you prefer (or preferably both).
Q
Broder
Mudshark
SA frags. org is not a forum as such where people with no intention of buying make you post 101 pictures and then you never hear from them again. If they want to buy or swop, they can contact you directly. I fully agree with Quinton that we should use the MASA classifieds, and once more people are trading frags, I'm sure that will happen.
leslie hempel
Professional Aquarist
hey mudshark where you at? got anything you wanna part with im in the market.. also and east londoner?
Broder
Mudshark
Well i have nothing to trade atm, only have a few frags since moneys been tight... but ild be willing to adopt a few if you need to give some a good home.
Broder
Mudshark
Hey Les. It's Broder. I've got various zoos, colts, finger leathers, GSP and BSP, green and red branching montis, scrolling monti's with pink edges.
Shout if have anything to trade.
You don't have to listen to they guys wanting you to post pics. It is one of our requirement though that at least 1 pic of the livestock is posted because a lot of people have been ripped off because they couldn't see the item they were buying first.
There's no benefit to frags.org being international for us because you can't import the international frags yourself anyway. The classifieds section here contains a number of sections, not just frags.
The main problem with frags.org is not the chicken and egg problem but the fact that it's another site to check. Someone has to specifically think "hmmm I really wanna buy some frags" to go there. With the classifieds section here any new advert appears as a forum thread (comes up in "new posts" which is where most people look). Maybe they are just browsing and see you have a nice frag for sale and buy it (which I'm assuming is what you want, not to only sell to people who are hardcore enough to go check frags.org everyday).
This situation is akin to having an LFS out in the sticks or having an LFS in a busy shopping mall, which one do you think does more business?
There's no benefit to frags.org being international for us because you can't import the international frags yourself anyway. The classifieds section here contains a number of sections, not just frags.
The main problem with frags.org is not the chicken and egg problem but the fact that it's another site to check. Someone has to specifically think "hmmm I really wanna buy some frags" to go there. With the classifieds section here any new advert appears as a forum thread (comes up in "new posts" which is where most people look). Maybe they are just browsing and see you have a nice frag for sale and buy it (which I'm assuming is what you want, not to only sell to people who are hardcore enough to go check frags.org everyday).
This situation is akin to having an LFS out in the sticks or having an LFS in a busy shopping mall, which one do you think does more business?
Rory i see what you mean and i agree to some extent. However you have a better chance to sell your frags when they are listed on several sites. Also some cross pollination could occur when someone cotacts you on http://southarfica.frags.org you could inform them of the existance of the masa website (maybe gain a few new members in the process). Also when safrags gets hundreds of frags listed it would be a mecca to trade and sell frags, possibly get that rare colour strain you have been looking for a long time.
I disagree. Why would a third party website end up with more frags on it than a website where everyone in the hobby already frequents? That means people then have to go register etc at some other website instead of just having everything in one place. I can see your vision of how it would be great to have hundreds listed on there but what makes it any better than the current classifieds system?
When Cerven initially set it up I told him my concern that it's not going to work because visibility on the forum is too low and no-one is going to bother to check on it all the time. A couple of guys like Ivan listed frags on there but had no interest generated at all and then the site became dormant for the better part of the last 2 years.
PS: I somehow don't think masa is going to be the website people are going to be informed about, but don't really care. It would be better if the site wasn't "branded" because with the current branding it's not as independent as claimed.
When Cerven initially set it up I told him my concern that it's not going to work because visibility on the forum is too low and no-one is going to bother to check on it all the time. A couple of guys like Ivan listed frags on there but had no interest generated at all and then the site became dormant for the better part of the last 2 years.
PS: I somehow don't think masa is going to be the website people are going to be informed about, but don't really care. It would be better if the site wasn't "branded" because with the current branding it's not as independent as claimed.
Quinton
Smarty-pants Newbie
With all due respect Rory, we all know that's not true. There are many reefers in South Africa who frequent SARK, and not MASA. Similarly, some frequent MASA and not SARK, and others (like me) frequent both. Quite frankly, if the operators of the two sites could set aside their petty differences, we wouldn't have to be having this silly discussion at all, and we could all focus on our reefs.
As for visiting multiple sites (e.g. MASA and frags.org), my personal preference is to be able to register interest in a particular species, location, size etc, and receive email whenever a matching frag becomes available. The idea of visiting a site every day to see whether something I'm looking for has popped up is highly inefficient, and in addition leads to impulse purchases rather than considered, controlled stocking plans.
Registration took me all of 12 seconds. I don't see that as a valid concern.
This is a very valid point, although in my opinion somewhat orthogonal. Gathering a database of all frags available for sale or swap in this fine country of ours seems like a good idea, plain and simple. How and where that data gets disseminated to interested parties is another issue altogether. I can imagine quite a few possibilities:
1. Import the data into the MASA classifieds database.
2. As above, but for SARK.
3. Send out a monthly email newsletter, listing frags available, for those who prefer that method.
4. Send out an email every time a frag type that I'm interested in becomes available.
This is a valid concern which I'm sure can be addressed if it's really a big issue. Personally I'm more interested in swapping frags than what branding is displayed, or any other public relations that may go on around that.
My 2c
Q
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Sorry I wasn't aware of that functionality. I suppose it only really comes into play when you have at least 100 frags or so listed.
Edit: I searched high and low now, how do you access that functionality?
If frags.org could provide an RSS feed or something it would be quite easy to integrate this into the forum and each new frag added would come up as a thread (or maybe a daily summary or something if more have been added that day). Unfortunately I don't see anything like this on the site. It hasn't had any active development on it since the I registered "Member #7869 - Registered October 18, 2006" so it's unlikely to happen any time soon. I'm not really in the mood to go develop something to check the site, parse it, post a thread etc... If it really takes off it would be something I would consider. It might be easier though just to develop the whole thing from scratch.
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