Originally Posted by t0m I'm sorry (and this is no disrespect to the handful of talented individuals on here), but what on earth? This place, in particular the marketplace, would be the last place I'd send someone looking for a reliable, professional freelancer. Its riddled with rubbish. In terms of keeping the marketplace or not, think generally. Stand back and ask if it actually adds any value to this place. It doesn't. If I were a new user and contemplating signing up, one look at the current marketplace would send me packing.

I couldn't disagree more with your statement. There are many reasons to keep a marketplace running on some level. Does it need it to be cleaned, moderated and revamped? Absolutely. However to say that a marketplace won't add any value is a very naive statement. Let's say you do remove the marketplace completely and proceed to work on increasing the quality of posts/users here. This community will then find itself missing out on the opportunity to offer the talented individuals here a convenient way to offer and trade services. More users = more bandwidth = more costs. In order for the quality to remain high after this community has been revamped, revenue will need to be generated to maintain this place. Sitepoint and numerous other forums are clearly very familiar with that reality, and I'm pretty sure they know a thing or two about running a community that revolves around the freelance industry. I don't understand why that's such a difficult concept for a few people here to understand. I'd much rather have a streamlined "pay to post" marketplace to sell and buy services with very few ads throughout the forum, than to sit here and have to shuffle through many annoying ads that no one clicks on anyway. The bottom line, is that if the owner/owners sincerely want this community to grow and offers users value, the costs will grow as well and they will have no choice but to find a way monetize.

Also, you say that you mean no disrespect to the talented users who do frequent this forum, however saying that it's "riddled with rubbish" is not a very accurate statement. Are there poor quality products and services being sold here? Yes--but you'll find that anywhere you go. Are there multiple posts featuring the same domains or designs for sale over and over within a short time period? Yes, there are. Does that make individuals like myself poor quality or "rubbish"? I sell high quality domain names at reasonable prices. I offer 10+ years of experience in the industry. I've been able to post numerous domains and designs for sale over the years, using multiple and sometimes even "split" posts, which on most forums would never be tolerated. So this kind of "rubbish" within the marketplace that you're describing can easily be fixed with proper moderation along with my previous suggestion. I'd be the first person to sign-up, pay and contribute.

Contrary to what you may believe, there's talent to be found lurking within the marketplace as well as other TF discussion posts. I have personally found quality people to work with via TF. Hopefully the owners of this forum have a more positive attitude than what I'm hearing from a few people here (and I'm sure he/she does) otherwise this forum would be doomed before it even gets revamped.