You can change the region you are looking at any time you’d like. You are in no way locked in by a region or the signup process.
You are asked for a location to direct you to your local community/topic/subdirectory. You can then change that location at any time by browsing the location section of the site. You can see this now if you’d like, go to Craigslist and click the location dropdown in the upper left, and you can change where you want to browse at any time.
You can find the closest craigslist site for your geographic location by zooming in on the map or browsing the list underneath the map.
Please note that the site location for a posting cannot be changed.
You will need to start your posting over again from the beginning if you have chosen the wrong site.
It is not possible to post to more than one site at a time.
This sounds exactly how Flohmarkt works, exept that they have a convinient map for you to find the location specific site. This would probably be a nice feature for Flohmarkt as well as part of an instance chooser.
I guess what you are stuck up on is browsing listings, not posting them. But that is more like an intra-instance search tool similar to how there is the Lemmyverse search engine for Lemmy. But I find that of very limited use for a location specific market place like Flohmarkt, where you already know which location you are interested in and don’t need a search engine or drop down box to confuse you with listing options from entirely different locations.
I think there is some talk about adding more fine grained location specific groups to Flohmarkt (a bit like Lemmy communities), that would probably also allow posting from another federated account into them, but that would likely be counter productive as it would dillute the explicit location specific focus.
Sites are not physical. Sites are not locked at signup. You are misunderstanding how Craigslist (and others) work.
What this page is saying is “If you post in the Berlin section, and want to offer it in Los Angeles, you need to make a new post”.
You don’t need a different account, a different server, or to otherwise associate with a different region.
I’d be happy to explain if there is a part here that is confusing, I’m really not sure what you are not understanding on this.
I’m also not putting down the idea of a federated marketplace, I would love it.
I just think its a bad design to rely on a server setting that users have no control over. What happens if that host moves to an entirely different region? They have to keep serving that region? They can change it and all those listings are invalid?
So you are only complaining that accounts are not centralized? The entire Fediverse works like that and I don’t really see an issue with that.
And why would a host change the location for their “Classified site for Berlin” instance? That doesn’t make any sense, since it is location specific by design.
No, I’m complaining that the server determines a user and items location.
You don’t need centralization for that. If I’m making a post, I should be able to set the location for the item at that point - this information is federated, so then the user’s server is irrelevant, only the location the user sets is relevant.
That is what makes this a bad design. It has nothing to do with centralization.
Because the ability to post is locked to a server’s region.
As you said, I can’t go in and browse the United States listings. Why? What technical reason is there to prevent me, as a user, from wanting to join?
NOT as an admin. As a user.
Lets think of this like mastodon and hashtags for a second. If the hashtag were a location, why would I need to join aus.social to see the hashtag location for Australia? Why would I need to join mstdn.ca to see the hashtags for Canada?
I think the flohmarkt design inherently works the opposite of other federated designs. It is limiting by design, limiting server use by region, rather than what a user is choosing to follow.
I’m concerned I’m not explaining something properly, so if there is a part that isn’t making sense to you, let me know.
Why would a classified site for Berlin allow you to post ads for Chicago? Just use a classifed site for Chicago 🤷
And no, the Federation model of Flohmarkt is like Mastodon, Lemmy is the odd one out, but also Lemmy does not allow starting communities on other servers. You need a local account for that.
Why would a classified site for Berlin allow you to post ads for Chicago? Just use a classifed site for Chicago 🤷
Because the same user regularly travels to both. A separate post would be absolutely fine, but I shouldn’t need an entirely different site for that. Its a listing.
And no, the Federation model of Flohmarkt is like Mastodon, Lemmy is the odd one out, but also Lemmy does not allow starting communities on other servers. You need a local account for that.
I do not need to create an account on a different server to post on that server.
I only need the one account. I am not blocked from posting in lemmy.ca because I live in the US, I’m not blocked from posting in midwest.social because I don’t live in the midwest.
Craigslist does not work that way, no.
You can change the region you are looking at any time you’d like. You are in no way locked in by a region or the signup process.
You are asked for a location to direct you to your local community/topic/subdirectory. You can then change that location at any time by browsing the location section of the site. You can see this now if you’d like, go to Craigslist and click the location dropdown in the upper left, and you can change where you want to browse at any time.
Its federated, thats not really a problem.
Thats the problem.
From the Craiglist site:
This sounds exactly how Flohmarkt works, exept that they have a convinient map for you to find the location specific site. This would probably be a nice feature for Flohmarkt as well as part of an instance chooser.
I guess what you are stuck up on is browsing listings, not posting them. But that is more like an intra-instance search tool similar to how there is the Lemmyverse search engine for Lemmy. But I find that of very limited use for a location specific market place like Flohmarkt, where you already know which location you are interested in and don’t need a search engine or drop down box to confuse you with listing options from entirely different locations.
I think there is some talk about adding more fine grained location specific groups to Flohmarkt (a bit like Lemmy communities), that would probably also allow posting from another federated account into them, but that would likely be counter productive as it would dillute the explicit location specific focus.
Sites are not physical. Sites are not locked at signup. You are misunderstanding how Craigslist (and others) work.
What this page is saying is “If you post in the Berlin section, and want to offer it in Los Angeles, you need to make a new post”.
You don’t need a different account, a different server, or to otherwise associate with a different region.
I’d be happy to explain if there is a part here that is confusing, I’m really not sure what you are not understanding on this.
I’m also not putting down the idea of a federated marketplace, I would love it.
I just think its a bad design to rely on a server setting that users have no control over. What happens if that host moves to an entirely different region? They have to keep serving that region? They can change it and all those listings are invalid?
It isnt a good design.
So you are only complaining that accounts are not centralized? The entire Fediverse works like that and I don’t really see an issue with that.
And why would a host change the location for their “Classified site for Berlin” instance? That doesn’t make any sense, since it is location specific by design.
No, I’m complaining that the server determines a user and items location.
You don’t need centralization for that. If I’m making a post, I should be able to set the location for the item at that point - this information is federated, so then the user’s server is irrelevant, only the location the user sets is relevant.
That is what makes this a bad design. It has nothing to do with centralization.
Why is it bad design that you have a location specific page where you post location specific classified ads? Thats how all of them work.
Because the ability to post is locked to a server’s region.
As you said, I can’t go in and browse the United States listings. Why? What technical reason is there to prevent me, as a user, from wanting to join?
NOT as an admin. As a user.
Lets think of this like mastodon and hashtags for a second. If the hashtag were a location, why would I need to join aus.social to see the hashtag location for Australia? Why would I need to join mstdn.ca to see the hashtags for Canada?
I think the flohmarkt design inherently works the opposite of other federated designs. It is limiting by design, limiting server use by region, rather than what a user is choosing to follow.
I’m concerned I’m not explaining something properly, so if there is a part that isn’t making sense to you, let me know.
Why would a classified site for Berlin allow you to post ads for Chicago? Just use a classifed site for Chicago 🤷
And no, the Federation model of Flohmarkt is like Mastodon, Lemmy is the odd one out, but also Lemmy does not allow starting communities on other servers. You need a local account for that.
Because the same user regularly travels to both. A separate post would be absolutely fine, but I shouldn’t need an entirely different site for that. Its a listing.
I do not need to create an account on a different server to post on that server.
I only need the one account. I am not blocked from posting in lemmy.ca because I live in the US, I’m not blocked from posting in midwest.social because I don’t live in the midwest.