Sort Classifed ads by thread creation date, not "Last Message"

[Rocket Queen]

This is a modest request to have the thread creation timestamp, rather than the "Last Message" timestamp, as the default sort order criterion for Classified ads. Far too many ad replies are trivial ("GLWTS!!"), inconsequential, or flat-out off-topic ("Hey bro, how ya doin?"). Random replies like this in no way contribute to making an ad deserving to be elevated to the top of page 1. Also, for members primarily interested in seeing just the most recent ads, they pollute the benefit of page 1 for this purpose. Finally, they totally eradicate the value of bumping ads. I bumped an ad of mine last Thursday evening, and today (Saturday, two days later) found my ad already pushed down to page 10.

EDIT: Never mind; I finally came across the "Thread Display Options" tab. However, I'm still not sure how bumping works, unless it can overwrite or supercede the thread creation date. Perhaps a bit of elaboration on exactly how bumping does work in the "How to BUMP" Classified FAQ might be nice.

EDIT #2: HOWEVER, the selected Thread Display Option does not persist, but instead reverts to "Last Message" as soon as the user leaves a Classified ad page. So my new modest request would be to have the Thread Display Option elevated to the status of a persistent member preference, while still allowing the member to change it temporarily on the fly while visiting the Classifieds forums.

 

[Michael Eisenman]

For the reasons that you mentioned, I, too, would prefer that Classified threads were sorted by creation date as a default (or as an option). Persistence would be great, so I wouldn’t have to do it every time I enter the forum.

You can do it yourself when you enter the forum: just click the Start Date column heading one time to see a down arrow in the heading, and the most recently created threads will be on top. (Each subsequent click reverses the sort.) Unfortunately you must do this every time that you enter a forum; however, it becomes a habit after a while.