t0m, trust me I certainly agree that the current marketplace is definitely in need of major repair. At this point, it's nearly one long sales thread that never ends. I agree that it's pretty ridiculous. Hell, in the last 3 weeks I've probably reported 2 or 3 different spams on my sales threads alone, so I'm aware of how crappy it is. You might have a few users who initially come to TF for the sake of posting something for sale and end up staying and contributing to other threads, but yeah until the marketplace is improved, those cases will probably be few and far between.

However, I spend most of my time in the TF marketplace and I know there's a few others who do the same. That's the only reason why I'll have to disagree with you that the current marketplace is completely worthless. It certainly hasn't been worthless to me, or anyone else who's sold services, domains, or designs here. Also, after looking at your itrader, it seems that you yourself have even found a couple of items this month that you purchased in the marketplace that must have interested you on some level, right? So there must be some value in terms of member retention even if on a small level, and even if the current marketplace is only a tiny fraction of it's potential--which I'm guessing is why it hasn't been removed just yet. I'm not wanting to get technical and argue until the sun goes down, but I am a stickler when something is being claimed to have zero to little value when that's not really the case.