Soaring Cafe's Response to Recent Classified Ads Discussion

Dear RAS friends,

I have read with amazement and disappointment the responses to the recent thread "Soaring Community Consumer Warning". I've decided to start a new thread to provide my response to this issue, albeit with some trepidation. Please understand that I want to diffuse the issue, not fan the flames.

First, I am in complete agreement that Tim Mara provides an excellent service in both his Wings and Wheels Soaring Supplies business and his classified listings. I have personally purchased a number of items from Tim through the years and have always found him to responsive, knowledgeable and a pleasure to talk with. I will continue to do business with Tim in the future.

Next, I want to publicly apologize to Tim for "scraping" ads from his site when we started Soaring Cafe in 2011 and then again early last year. At that time, it was my opinion that copying classified ads from a free site and placing the ads on my free site would be helpful to the seller and the soaring community at large. I always followed up with an email to let the seller know that I had added their classified ad to Soaring Cafe and asked them to let me know if that was okay. Most appreciated it and some asked me to take the ad down.

It took me a while, perhaps a long while, to realize that "scraping" is considered inappropriate net etiquette, but we have stopped this practice altogether. Again, I want to apologize to Tim and to anyone whom we may have offended.

The other debate that is underway concerns the issue of a single vs. several classified ad listing sites. I understand Tim's position that one classified ad listing site would be best for the soaring community. It is my belief that multiple sites are helpful. As when selling a car or a house, many people find it useful to maximize exposure by using multiple sites. I have several rental properties and I use four different sites to advertise our properties for rent—and each site produces results.

I know there are two camps concerning the single vs. several sites issue. I have read the arguments and considered the merits of both sides. Clearly, we at the Cafe and Bill Palmer of GliderSource.com believe that multiple sites make the most sense. Evidently, many other people feel the same way since they are placing ads on both our sites.

I want to be clear that I fully support the efforts Bill Palmer has made with GliderSource.com and believe that he has an excellent site. Quite frankly, I believe he has the best, easiest to use, self-service site on the web for advertising your sailplane or instruments. We will continue to work on and improve the capability at the Cafe to meet the high bar he has set. Bill and I have talked from time to time about how we might work together to support both our sites and better serve the worldwide soaring community.

Finally, Sean pointed out that I have posted my JS1 on Wings and Wheels. This is true. My glider has been posted on SoaringCafe.com and GliderSource..com for a few months and I have received several inquiries from both ads. I decided to see if I could do better on Wings and Wheels. So, I sent Tim a note stating that I would like to list my glider on his site and that I understood his requirement to be exclusive with his site. He politely agreed to post my listing and I took my listing down from the other two sites, and that was fine with me. To date, the results are inconclusive regarding the comparative effectiveness of the three sites. I have received another inquiry but as of this writing, my glider has not sold. I am happy with my ad on Wings and Wheels, but I may choose to move the ad again.

Sincerely,
Bill Elliott
Publishing Editor
SoaringCafe.com