status-resolved Excessive Namepros Auction End-Times

Dan Beck said:

Plus you've just got a bunch of free promo for your listing hahahah

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I was just thinking the same haha. No such thing as bad publicity.

tiawood said:

It would be nice to have threads auto close after X amount of time that the OP can set via a dropdown. Problem solved.

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Presumably you are talking about when posting an auction? The question here is what the largest value of X should be?

Someone may have already mentioned this, but just in case:

Newcomers might not be aware that it's unusual for the duration after the last bid to be longer than 7 days or so. While it would be nice if we could let people do whatever they want (per @Kenny's argument), in reality, I think it's unlikely that anyone would be adamant about running auctions with such long end times. Implementing a rule would give newbies a chance to correct their mistake and attract more bids. That's not to say everyone who opts for a longer end time is new, but the majority of affected people probably would be.

There are excellent points on both sides of this (even our team is split on it), but we've ultimately decided to not create a rule for it at this time. We want to keep auctions as flexible as possible and let the market decide whether it's a good idea by whether buyers decide to participate, and it would hinder that open market if we set rules for each unusual or undesirable type of auction that could be created. We offer suggestions of how to create auctions through templates, but we want sellers to have freedom to try different things.

Instead of a rule, if members see a New Member doing this (Or anything else that is uncommon or undesirable), we recommend politely and professionally reaching out to them in a DM to let them know that it is not standard and may result in less people bidding in their auction, which could cause the seller to change their auction before a bid is placed (Which is allowed).

Another solution is that if a bidder really wants a domain name that has this issue, they can negotiate a BIN with the seller or place a very large bid on the auction that ensures they won't be outbid again (And thus, the auction won't be extended).

As always, buyers should not bid in an auction unless they agree with all of the terms set by the seller. If the seller has set terms that don't make sense or are impractical, we hope that veteran members will help guide them or offer advice to them in a DM so that the seller can decide whether that's what they really want.

Thanks for your feedback that helped us take all angles into consideration while making this decision.


Edit: If anything seems too unreasonable (e.g., auction ends 500 days after last bid), please report it to us, and a moderator will decide if this rule applies:

• Rule 6.2.12. Auction formats, details, terms, and rules created by sellers must be reasonable, transparent, specific, predictable, and sensible.