stuartdaly88 makes a good point, when people do not follow the rules as they are, then further refining the rules is futile, and when moderators do not chastise them for incorrect posting, they have less incentive for doing right. Indeed, when there is no penalty for breaking rules, then people will generally tend to disregard them.
I also like the idea that buy/sell/trade for all edibles (Citrus, tropical, temperate, veg and herb) be lumped together, then subdivided by domestic & international, but that would change the structure of the entire site, so would likely not be worth the trouble.
Well I'm dismayed that this thread has lost traction and appears to be dead in the water, but I have one last idea to interject:
I notice that the buy/sell page has two columns of icons in front of the column of posts. These seem quite superfluous to me. I'm not finding any documentation on these, but the first column seems to show an icon which indicates the type of file in the link, and they seem to be all the same - the links all point to document or text type of file. Granted, there is a different icon for a one-page, two-page or three-page document, but that information can be surmised easily just by the number of replies.
The second column, I'm not even sure what those icons signify, and I'm not sure which of the two columns is more un-necessary. Chances are that one of them could be eliminated and nobody would miss it, and it could then be repurposed. Even if that were not the case, it looks like there would be space enough to simply add a third column. In any case, the new column would contain a simple iso-2 country code, and most folks are already familiar with these codes, such as US, CA, MX, FR, BE, LU, DE, PL etcetera.
The official codes are listed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2So this change would be simple to implement, would not change the structure of the site, and would be beneficial to everyone. Instead of just domestic vs international differentiation, everybody everywhere could instantly see the location of the plant part at offer or at request, without ever having to click the link and load the corresponding page, which may or may not indicate that location.
There would have to be a hard rule coded: a listing for buy/sell/trade would not and will not post without this required field being filled.
Recently there was a mandate applied that all sales must include the price, and that is a good thing, but this rule requires constant moderation to assure compliance.
With a hard rule for country code, virtually no moderation would be needed. The form will not submit without it.
This idea to me seems beyond reproach, but I'm certainly interested in opinions, pro and con.
Thanks for your time, over and out.