Handgun Classifieds and Post Count

[texagun]

I buy, trade, and sell a lot of handguns. It is a lifelong hobby. Everytime I log onto the Handgun Classifieds in this forum I get the following message:

"To access this forum your post count must be 50 or greater."

That makes no sense to me. I currently have 23 posts. So should I go around posting meaningless comments just to increase my post count to 50 so I can get access to folks who want to sell their guns? This rule must keep several people from being able to buy and trade with those who want to sell something. It penalizes those with over 50 posts who have something for sale from being contacted by those of us with less than 50 posts who might want to buy what they have. I frequent Glocktalk, The Highroad, The Firing Line, The Sig Forum, The S&W Forum, and others, and none of them has this rule. So my trading is confined to the other forums. It would be nice to participate on this one, but it seems senseless to me to have to have 50 posts to participate.

[kev74]

So should I go around posting meaningless comments just to increase my post count to 50 so I can get access to folks who want to sell their guns?

Or you could hang around a while and participate legitimately and give the people here a chance to know you before you make low-ball offers on their stuff.

[tekhead1219]

Or you could hang around a while and participate legitimately and give the people here a chance to know you before you make low-ball offers on their stuff.

+1...

[unpecador]

You're almost halfway there and besides, according to your join date, you've been a member here for almost two years...

[Fredericianer]

A lot of forums have this kind of rule, which in my opinion is quite sensible.
I wouldn't feel comfortable buying or selling from someone new to the forum, as all sales here are purely private sales and you don't have the same comeback as you would, for example on an auction site.

[Todd]

Here's an excerpt from the Forum Guidelines you must have missed:

To insure a trusting environment for forum members, an established post count history of a registered member must be in place before placing an ad. Persons posting empty or useless posts that do not add to the conversation just to gain access to the classifieds section will be warned, their posts deleted, and face being banned from the forums.

And another excerpt:

The forum is an inappropriate venue for publicly discussing any problems you may have with the rules or the administration of the forum. Please contact the moderators or administrators privately by email or PM if you have concerns about rules and administration.

Discussion over.