The distance I would go to pick something up is relative to me, not relative to the server I’m connecting to. Shipping I may want to limit by country of origin/destination due to taxes or available shipping services.
It also means the issue of the user above - no one from North America even has a server option, which limits use. From a physical goods perspective, there is not a single option I’m aware of that limits region by server location.
No? The instance covers a certain geographic location, for example a city. So what you want is already included in that. Federation adds nearby city instances to the mix.
AFAIK all the major classified platforms (except ebay) are location limited very similar to the above.
You chose an instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, for example your city. I don’t get what is do hard to understand about that. Afaik Craigslist or what ever you call that US platform started out the same way.
It seems like on CL the city labels are mostly for human readable convenience and behind the scenes it’s by distance. You can set a distance from any point:
I have no clue where Facebook marketplace servers are. That has never been relevant to me. Kijiji is a popular online marketplace in Canada, and it let’s you pick location or have it choose automatically based on your location.
This may be a simple matter of European marketplaces and North American ones having fundamentally different approaches.
Craigslist has server specific locations. I am not familiar with how Facebook market works, but even ebay has country specific servers, which in Europe often means very location specific due to small countries.
Obviously the actual physical location of the server doesn’t matter. When you set up a Flohmarkt instance you can freely chose a location, the city you plan to advertise your market in for example, and then also specify a circular distance of how far to federate with other Flohmarkt instances, for example to also federate adverts from neighboring cities.
This is ridiculous. Obviously we are not talking about dialup connections where you need to call a server with the region code and a physical location 🙄
Craigslist might host it all on the same physical server since it does not support an open federation, but it is exactly the same concept as instance (=server) specific locations.
I’ll ask again - can I join any server and set my location and get local content for me, here in the United States where there is currently no server listed as being online or available?
Edit: to be clear, if I can - great! The descriptions kind of suck then and should be changed.
If not, then yeah - I would not consider that a good design/model for classifieds.
But like with ebay for example, you sign up on a locaction specific instance (ebay Germany, not ebay Spain) and chose your location that way.
To my (very limited) understanding Craigslist works the same way. You sign up and as part of the sign up you are asked for the location you are interested in, which is like an instance choser which then redirects you to a server (instance, section, whatever) that only lists adverts for that specific location that you signed up for.
You can change the region you are looking at any time you’d like. You are in no way locked in by a region or the signup process.
You are asked for a location to direct you to your local community/topic/subdirectory. You can then change that location at any time by browsing the location section of the site. You can see this now if you’d like, go to Craigslist and click the location dropdown in the upper left, and you can change where you want to browse at any time.
I am not very familiar with how the seller part of ebay works, but as a buyer I have a country specific account that only allows to bid on country specific posts. At least it was like that when I used it last some years ago.
It"s one thing to limit searches bases on geographic location of items, but I should be able to change that to look up items at a destination to which I’m travelling, or just to compare to my area.
Plus, I might be more willing to travel farther to get a used car than a loveseat.
Agreed. I’ve made a day trip to the neighboring state to buy a used car from a CL listing, but I probably wouldn’t travel to the other side of the country for it.
Similarly, for many things I wouldn’t travel more than an hour to get them.
The distance radius really needs to be adjustable per search to be useful outside of densely populated areas.
This is why it federates, you can find offers from other instances that are further away just fine. However to make curation easier and lower the server load the admin can limit the geographic distance of federation so that for example it doesn’t have to federate thousands of posts from Japan that few of the users of their location specific instance are likely interested in.
I really don’t understand why that is so hard to grasp conceptually and this is definitly good design.
So location is by instance and not by user?
That seems an odd (and kind of problematic) design…
Why? To me that makes a lot of sense and this is also how similar popular platforms work (minus federation of course).
Because we are talking about physical items.
The distance I would go to pick something up is relative to me, not relative to the server I’m connecting to. Shipping I may want to limit by country of origin/destination due to taxes or available shipping services.
It also means the issue of the user above - no one from North America even has a server option, which limits use. From a physical goods perspective, there is not a single option I’m aware of that limits region by server location.
Its always by user location.
No? The instance covers a certain geographic location, for example a city. So what you want is already included in that. Federation adds nearby city instances to the mix.
AFAIK all the major classified platforms (except ebay) are location limited very similar to the above.
I’m in the United States.
Can I join and see the city closest to me? Or search by distance from me?
Me, not the server. Because the descriptions sound like thats not the case.
You chose an instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, for example your city. I don’t get what is do hard to understand about that. Afaik Craigslist or what ever you call that US platform started out the same way.
So by server.
There are no online classifieds I know of that work like that.
https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting/features/location
So what do you call this?
It seems like on CL the city labels are mostly for human readable convenience and behind the scenes it’s by distance. You can set a distance from any point:
There aren’t servers in each of those locations.
Its a designated region for users to make use of. User based, not server based.
All the ones I know work like that here in Europe, except ebay (and even they have country specific pages).
Craigslist, freecycle, Facebook market, offerup - they all go by user region, not server region.
I have no clue where Facebook marketplace servers are. That has never been relevant to me. Kijiji is a popular online marketplace in Canada, and it let’s you pick location or have it choose automatically based on your location.
This may be a simple matter of European marketplaces and North American ones having fundamentally different approaches.
Craigslist has server specific locations. I am not familiar with how Facebook market works, but even ebay has country specific servers, which in Europe often means very location specific due to small countries.
Obviously the actual physical location of the server doesn’t matter. When you set up a Flohmarkt instance you can freely chose a location, the city you plan to advertise your market in for example, and then also specify a circular distance of how far to federate with other Flohmarkt instances, for example to also federate adverts from neighboring cities.
No, Craigslist has region specific sections.
The location of the server is not relevant. The servers are all hosting the same information, the user is picking the region they wish to browse.
There are not physical servers (or even virtual) to host each of those locations. They are subdirectories on a web host.
This is ridiculous. Obviously we are not talking about dialup connections where you need to call a server with the region code and a physical location 🙄
Craigslist might host it all on the same physical server since it does not support an open federation, but it is exactly the same concept as instance (=server) specific locations.
I’ll ask again - can I join any server and set my location and get local content for me, here in the United States where there is currently no server listed as being online or available?
Edit: to be clear, if I can - great! The descriptions kind of suck then and should be changed.
If not, then yeah - I would not consider that a good design/model for classifieds.
No you can’t. This isn’t a centralized platform.
But like with ebay for example, you sign up on a locaction specific instance (ebay Germany, not ebay Spain) and chose your location that way.
To my (very limited) understanding Craigslist works the same way. You sign up and as part of the sign up you are asked for the location you are interested in, which is like an instance choser which then redirects you to a server (instance, section, whatever) that only lists adverts for that specific location that you signed up for.
Craigslist does not work that way, no.
You can change the region you are looking at any time you’d like. You are in no way locked in by a region or the signup process.
You are asked for a location to direct you to your local community/topic/subdirectory. You can then change that location at any time by browsing the location section of the site. You can see this now if you’d like, go to Craigslist and click the location dropdown in the upper left, and you can change where you want to browse at any time.
Its federated, thats not really a problem.
Thats the problem.
No it has country specific URLs. And the seller can list stuff on what instances they want. Even though lots of. Cin ship internationally.
I am not very familiar with how the seller part of ebay works, but as a buyer I have a country specific account that only allows to bid on country specific posts. At least it was like that when I used it last some years ago.
You must be joking. Ebay does not now, nor has ever worked that way.
It certainly did here in Europe.
No it doesn’t. I’ve sold items to European buyers from my location in Canada.
We are now at the point where you are completely fabricating your responses, and therefore no productive outcome can be achieved here.
Have a better day.
It should support both. On the instance side to limit a region/country matching the instance, then client side to set your actual reachable area.
No it isn’t I get to set the location and distance u want when searching. I’ve never had something search where the servers are.
It"s one thing to limit searches bases on geographic location of items, but I should be able to change that to look up items at a destination to which I’m travelling, or just to compare to my area.
Plus, I might be more willing to travel farther to get a used car than a loveseat.
This is def bad design.
Agreed. I’ve made a day trip to the neighboring state to buy a used car from a CL listing, but I probably wouldn’t travel to the other side of the country for it.
Similarly, for many things I wouldn’t travel more than an hour to get them.
The distance radius really needs to be adjustable per search to be useful outside of densely populated areas.
This is why it federates, you can find offers from other instances that are further away just fine. However to make curation easier and lower the server load the admin can limit the geographic distance of federation so that for example it doesn’t have to federate thousands of posts from Japan that few of the users of their location specific instance are likely interested in.
I really don’t understand why that is so hard to grasp conceptually and this is definitly good design.
That is quite clear from your insistence that you know what users want.
They want local listings and not commercial sellers spamming them with ads yes.