Sunday, August 30, 2009
Craigslist Wired Takes on Craigslist
Posted by Tara Morgan on Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 12:36 PM
Researching my recent feature on bartering in Boise, I’ve had to log a considerable number of hours scrolling through the monotony that is Craigslist’s sea of endless blue text. But, not once did I think, “Man, why hasn’t somebody come out with a better Craigslist?”
Well, Wired journalist Gary Wolf did. And he took the question to the man himself, San Francisco’s Craig Newmark. What resulted is a can’t-peel-your-eyes-off-the-page portrait that asks some tough questions of a man whose business has had marked effects on everything from the collapse of newspaper classified sales to the accessibility of prostitution. Though the self-described “Forrest Gump of the Internet" at times comes off as a jerk, giving vague, monosyllabic retorts to Wolf’s prodding questioning, at others, he seems adorably dorky. Wolf observes:
“When [Newmark] talks, he calls upon a repertoire of conversational gambits he has been collecting forever, and he has a selection of sound effects on his mobile phone, such as a cymbal crash, that he can trigger to make it clear he is joking.”
Or this other gem:
“On our way out of the cafe, I step aside to let Newmark go ahead, and he walks face-first into the plate glass door.”
But Newmark’s awkward nerdiness aside, Wolf’s piece raises some much needed questions about a site that claims to espouse democratic ideals and champion the inherent goodness of people, but at the same time steadfastly resists change and development at every turn.
Comments (2)
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I applaud Gary Wolf and Wired for the well-researched article on the anomalous characters and odd decisions going on behind the scenes at Craigslist. For a business with this much traffic and this much income, the problems its users encounter day after day, post after post, are really beyond comprehension. They make enough money to fix this stuff, folks – and they refuse to do it!
And that’s not all they refuse to fix. Over the last few years, newspapers and television news stories across the country have been reporting stories about victims – from theft to rape to murder – whose only mistake was responding to a Craigslist ad. Note to Craig: telling us that “most people are good,” is not a sufficient answer! For years, law enforcement agencies have been fighting with Craigslist to clean up the obvious illegal activities on the site – and Craigslist has repeatedly balked or stalled.
The word is spreading that Craigslist is a dangerous place to buy, sell, or look for a date. This is sad state of affairs in an era when technologies exist to ferret out much of the illegal activity, and good old fashioned monitoring can clean up much of the rest – and yet Craigslist resorts to a flag system that, as your article points out, benefits troublemakers as readily as legitimate users. Yes, the criminals are in the minority; I’ll give Craig and Buckmaster that. But the problem is this: more than on any other site I’ve ever seen (and I work in this industry), criminals flock to Craigslist.
Buckmaster’s analogy to GM seems an effort to confuse the issue. Autos come with safety ratings, and manufacturers go to great lengths to ensure their cars’ safety ratings – because people’s lives are at stake. And that’s just the point. Craigslist users have every right to expect that their safety come before some abstract concept of “democracy.”
This is probably the most important difference between Craigslist and the community classifieds site I operate. At Geebo.com, we monitor our community classifieds to make every experience as safe and enjoyable as possible.
We pay attention to our users, and we are constantly improving our technologies and systems. Given how hard we work at this, it’s hard to watch the arrogance and nonsense that go on at Craigslist. When users run into problems there, they get a haiku? Give me a break! Why would anyone intentionally create a system where users’ concerns are mocked rather than addressed?
People aren’t fools: as long as Craigslist refuses to evolve, the site will increasingly be defined by bugs, scams and illegal activities – risks and frustrations that fewer and fewer users will be willing to put up with. Please let your readers know that there are alternatives to Craigslist – including ours. I welcome every Craigslist user to surf on over to Geebo where we work hard to make yours a safe, easy, enjoyable and successful community classifieds experience.
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I agree in a new reformed craigslist.com... Better content blockers, spam protection and ridding it of those personals ads. Also a system where you must be a subscriber to post and may it be verified because, holy crap! I live in NYC and its choc full o' weirdos here...
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