Alright. I know what you’re thinking. RGT must be crazy! Who could ever think of changing the b/s/t?? I was thinking the exact same way, until about 3 days ago, playing Runescape. I was at the grand exchange, and noted the efficiency and ease of use of their market. Instead of everyone having their own shop (thread in our case) everything was grouped by item. If you wanted to by 2 firewood, you would search it, and purchase it for the lowest price. What if we grouped yoyos into 4 categories- Company, Used/New, name and for sale/trade? We could find exactly what we were looking for, for the best price! This way, we could find yoyos more efficiently, for less money!
Who knows, maybe this idea could be refined and redesign the b/s/t. Help me start this revolution by showing your support!
Works great if people know what they’re looking for, but it’s not always that simple. I’ve seen throws on the BST that i didn’t even think i wanted until i saw them and saw the seller wanted something i had. But yeah something like that should be considered.
I think your idea is good, of course. But, I doubt any effort will be put into redesigning the BST. The main focus of the site is a store, where new yo-yos are sold. There is no advantage for YoyoExpert to make buying “used” throws any more convenient. It is allowed as a courtesy, but I don’t think anyone will put any more work into redesigning it. I think enough effort has been made just to try to keep it as safe as possible. I don’t think we will get any more than that.
As noted above, the BST is not a main focus of this site. It’s a courtesy. Also your example of a store to buy game tokens doesn’t really apply here IMO. That’s a different market altogether. Since everyone sets their own prices in the BST, your argument that they would cost less is baseless.
(Opinions expressed are my own and not associated w/YYE management)
Why would this get stickied? Aren’t stickied threads supposed to provide important/helpful information? I think this idea has value, but as stated above, a lot of people don’t know what they want. Half the time, I go in to the BST just looking for cool stuff, not anything specific.
Also, the BST is just a courtesy of YYE, like others have said. They pay the rent around here, and investing resources to redoing the BST would not benefit them at all. Plus, the BST works fine for now.
I think what you are after could be achieved with a slightly better key word search or tag search, but of course then everyone would have to enter tag words or keywords in every post and some won’t do it even if it meant more likely to get the item(s) sold.
What is needed is like what the other former big Nation forum was, which I think was a more updated version of the forum software, or at least had more features enabled.
Since we’re not talking some game where commodities are just a generated item(and hence quality control is non-existant since it’s all the same digital pieces), yoyo and any tangible USED(or after-market sale) is subjective. If people would follow a somewhat standard method of adding their items, such as brand, model, colorway, condition(estimated of course) and price(or trade only or whatever), it would be of a better benefit to those searching. Unfortunately, some people are “I got stuff for sale, look at these photos and make offers” or “Watch my video and make offers off that”.
BST is fine as it is. The forum search needs to be better enabled and/or integrated so it can function better. This will most likely be the only way to improve the situation.
This might work, but there is a problem. Yes, you will find the cheapest yoyo, but it will probably be in a very bad condition, which is why the price is so low. This works on Runescape, but that is partly because it is a game, and the items can’t be in a bad condition. (It is a game, right?)
Though the B/S/T is a courtesy, and YYE is an online store, I would bet a lot of money that the same people that do a lot of buying/selling/trading on the B/S/T are the same people who buy a lot of new yoyos. It is in YYE’s interest to make this site as full featured as possible to keep it the premier yoyo spot on the internet. Making the B/S/T easier for it’s members is probably not going to cut deeply into the YYE sales (I’d also bet). I know that when I am buying a yoyo, there are some no longer in production, so I have to buy used. Then there are some that I am curious about, so I might buy them used if I find a good price, but wouldn’t buy them new anyway. Then there are those that I just want to have, and I buy them here if available.
There are a few yoyos I have bought through B/S/T that I would have rather bought here, but they weren’t available, and as a result, I have non-mint versions. I’d rather have a mint one of some of these yoyos.