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Comment by kylelibra | Hacker News Reader

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kylelibra

For those wishing to take action:

jim@craigslist.org – Jim Buckmaster, CEO

craig@craigslist.org – Craig Newmark, Founder

@jimbuckmaster on twitter - http://twitter.com/jimbuckmaster

@craignewmark on twitter - http://twitter.com/craignewmark

Simple email to copy and paste:

Jim and Craig,

I'm a longtime user of Craigslist, but I'm really disappointed in your decision regarding PadMapper. It would be great if you could weigh in on the debate happening on Hacker News or elsewhere.

Thanks,

View on HN

I for one, commend Craigslist for their commitment to maintaining a strict, consistent, well-defined UI and moreover, for choosing to maintain a relatively modest operation to the benefit of their core users instead of succumbing to the promises of riches that so often end up ruining great services created by the Tech Community. Many of you are saying this is detrimental to consumers, and it may be in the short term, because services like PadMapper really do provide a better experience. But in the long-term, things seem to be much different. Too many recent startups launch with promises of "changing the world" only to be bought and dismantled a few short years later, setting their community adrift. Craigslist's chief benefit to their users, and to the web community as a whole, is that they have a proven track record of stability. Thus, who can blame them for trying to protect their marketplace from getting eroded by outside interests? If they bowed to the current pressure and allowed outside access to their data, the web would risk losing a long-term standard, and, these days, consistent, trust-worthy standards are in short supply.

Great thoughts. Is > $100 million annual revenue really "relatively modest" though?

Well considering they are the 9th most visited site in the US and the companies ahead of it are all making revenues in the Billions (except Wikipedia and Twitter), then, ridiculously enough, $100 million sounds pretty modest.

Good luck, but I doubt it will work.

My first experience with craigslist was trying to figure out why they had the capability to block my wife's ad for a free dog that contained a mispelled word while the site's creator was busy trying to tell the government that there was nothing he could do about the many child prostitution ads that appeared on craigslist.

One depends on a spellchecker?

If you can parse text for spelling, surely you can parse text for the sexual exploitation of minors.

I would think that these ads aren't exactly to-the-point considering what is offered is extremely illegal. I sincerely doubt you could reliably identify them based on keywords alone.

If it were so easy to spot child exploitation ads, why doesn't the police or the FBI monitor sites like Craigslist? I'd much rather see the people involved in that filthy business prosecuted than simply having their ads blocked (which doesn't do anything for the victims).

It sounds like you ran afoul of the fickle community moderation. The last time I checked, CL doesn't block ads, they just get flagged off by regular users.

Craigslist does not allow you to sell or give away animals -- it likely had nothing to do with a misspelling.

The email that was sent to me said that it was because of a misspelled word.

> a mispelled word

Oh, irony.

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