Unofficial Flags FAQ

If you paid for your ad then there is contact information in the craigslist help sections for paid ad posters.

If you posted a free ad then the options are more limited. You are not going to get lots of support for a totally free service. You can try emailing Help@craigslist.org or abuse@craigslist.org. but you get a form letter FAQ (worth reading)---and often no other reply. There are a huge number of flagged off ads every day and craigslist does not have the staff to answer an email from everyone. Remember they have to look up the ad and then pretty much make the same guesses as anyone else. They don't have the manpower to answer everybody. Still there are a number of resources:

You already found this document. If you read everything you may get some ideas about what went wrong.

Craigslist has two help forums staffed by volunteers ("Peanuts" as in Peanut Gallery). One is the Help Desk Forum and the other is the Flag Help forum. Craigslist staff seldom participate in these forums. When they do their "handles" (forum name after the headline of the post) appears in gold with a little halo next to it. They tend to use real names. Jimº is Jim Buckmaster, Craigº is Craig Newmark, and so on. The Flag Help forum is the place to ask about flagged off ads.

It may be wise to consider actually posting in the forum to be the last resort. Read on...

• You need to be logged in to your account and using a forum handle to get anything out of the forum---including just reading through it. So get this out of the way. Go to the Feed Back Forum and look for a link at upper right to log in or register. If you do not have an account, use 'register'. If you have an account but no handles, use 'log in' then make some handles. This is a staff monitored forum and is usually halfway civil. See this for a fast introduction to handles and a few forum terms.
  
  
• L.L.L.: This is the first commandment of any online forum, anywhere, anytime. Lurk, Listen, Learn.
  • Lurk. Read through the forum without posting anything. Read back several pages. See who is who, how people are posting, what the general tone is. If it seems like a real zoo or there are people being abusive, you might want to try another time.
    
    
  • Listen.. Do a search for threads on subjects like yours and see what might have been said already. If a poster seems to be interesting or knowledgeable and they are posting in Green, click on their handle and read through their posting history.
    
  • Learn. If you are new to CL forums make sure you have the mechanics of posting figured out. Know what to click to make a new post and how to make sure your replies to posts stay all together in one thread. If you need help, just make one post and ask. If you need to try it out go to the XYZ testing forum and make some nonsense posts (or reply to some) to see how it all works. Then see how much you can learn from what has already been covered.
    

• All the craigslist forums are universal, that is, the same set of forums serve all the sites. People posting may be anywhere in the world. The chances of anyone in the Flag Help forum ever having seen your ad, much less flagged it, are about zero.
  
  
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• HOT TIP: at the top of the left pane in all the forums there is a special link. It looks like [sfo|all] if you are on the San Francisco site (SFO). The first three letters will be the code for the site you are logged in on. If you do not know the code for your site, go to the XYZ testing forum (see above) and make a new post. The code will show up to the left of your post. Do be sure you are logged into your home site! Anyway if you are in a forum the default is "all". This means you see posts from everyone all over the world in the forum. But if you click on your sites code instead of "all" then you will only see threads started by people on your site. Look these over to see if a bunch of people are weighing in from your site with problems just like yours (usually in the same category). If there are a lot of recent ones, figure something is going on in that category. Like maybe the bottom has dropped out of the flag thresholds? (usually due to a lot of abuse).
  
  
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• The forum moves very quickly. You will get at least one answer, often several, within a minute or two. This is true at almost any time, day or night. Stick around, if you go away planning to come back later your post will be buried and you won't find it.
  
  
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• The people answering questions are self appointed volunteers. They are not affiliated with craigslist and receive no training from craigslist. They are just other users like you or the authors of this document. Some of them are quite knowledgeable. Others are clueless. Telling one from the other can be tricky; anyone can learn to sound authoritative with a little practice. Everyone is anonymous. Reading through the forum and noting who is saying what can be quite valuable.
  
       As of Dec. 1 2011 the forum is R+. this meansd everyone must post with a green handle. Click on the handles to see what that person has been saying. Check the age of the handle. People that are using a handle several years old are often more knowledgable than people using newer handles. Trolls often change handles to obscure their posting history so their handles are generally newer. But there are exceptions to everything, trust your own judgement as to who is likely a knowledgeable adult and who simply isn't. Keep your wits about you at all times and expect to have to sort the wheat from the chaff (or the straw from the manure). Common sense is absolutely critical to judging the answers you recieve----and never, ever argue with anyone. The BSers in there are experts at it and will cheerfully bury you (and bully you) if you dare to call them on any of it.
  
  On the bright side there is usually someone around 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Odder hours sometimes have stronger (or at least nicer) people.
  
  
  
• The red and green rating points are a system to let users rate each others posts. Hovever it's widely abused by trolls to harrass people. It's a system that doesn't work. You can usually ignore ratings, whether directed at you or at somone else.
  
  
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• If you don't want help, don't ask for it. Posting in the forum with an attitude is the perfect way to shoot yourself in the foot. The most common attitude people post with is: "THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY AD AND I WAS FLAGGED UNFAIRLY AND BTW MY SHIT DON'T STINK!!!!". The trolls will instantly spot you as a Live one and go to town. The Peanuts may well join them.
  
  1. If there was nothing wrong with your ad then you don't need help.
  2. If your ad was legitimate then you don't need help.
  3. If your ad was completely within the craigslist TOU then you don't need help.
  
  If you want to keep your ad from being flagged off again, then you DO need help. So judge your ad on that one point alone---it got flagged off. Flagged off ads have some sort of problem. Always. Take responsibility for the problem, find out what it is, fix it, wait awhile, repost.

  Note: hundreds and hundreds of ads get flagged off every day that are legit, completely within the TOU, etc. Other sections of this FAQ may explain why.
  
  
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• Like any unmoderated online forum the Flag Help forum has plenty of trolls. Trolls crave attention and attempt to get it by being annoying or abusive. No doubt you know some of these in day to day life. Sometimes a troll will post misleading information in an attempt to bait you into an argument. They will also try to bait other helpers in the forum into flame wars. Ignoring trolls is always the way to play it.
  
      You are posting in the forum to try to solve a problem, YOUR problem. Your job is to provide as much information about your situation as possible and to collect ideas on what the problem might be. Do not argue with anyone. You are trying to solve a problem, not win an argument or salve your ego. If you read through the forum and observe what happens to people that get into arguments you will notice that they get nowhere. They don't get more ideas or better ideas and the trolls, bullies and bullshitters just pile on for the fun of it. So don't argue.
  
  
  
  
• If you repost your flagged off ad before fixing it you already have a new problem. Delete it, fix it, wait a couple days then repost it. See: The 48 Hour Rule.
  
  
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• GIGO. Garbage in, Garbage out. If you don't say enough about your situation for someone to try an intelligent answer then you will just get blown off with some bullshit. Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody can see what your ad looked like. There is a list of questions in the right pane of the forum when you enter, nobody knows the answers but you. Helpers get tired of asking again and again and again and again for the basic information needed to try a diagnosis. Some will just take a wild stab based on whatever little you've said and move on. And you won't know it. It might sound good but you won't realize it is the longest of long shots. You never gave enough info for the more likely possibilities to be explored. If you don't provide ALL the information, you won't get a good answer. For an expanded list of the information you need to present, go here.
  All this said, you can give the greatest presentation in the world and still not get a good answer, especially if you have a more rare or unusual situation. People that can answer the tougher ones are not so common. Searching the forum for situations like yours may be more valuable. Also switch your forum view to only show top posts from your own site (link at the top or ask how to do it) and see if others on your local site are haveing a particular problem. There may be something going on unique to your site.
  
  
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• Myths and superstitions abound. Nobody has to pass a test that certifies they know what they're talking about. Lots of the helpers are just copying what they heard someone else say and that person is saying what they in turn heard somewhere. You can get some good clues but if it sounds funny it probably is. It's worth listening to everything, saying "thank you" and then going off and sifting it out for yourself with some large grains of salt and your favorite beverage. This is an unmoderated forum on the internet full of anonymous people. It is no different than any other and a good pair of hip waders (or at least tall rubber boots) is appropriate attire.
  
  
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• If you post an ad that violates the craigslist Terms of Use there will no shortage of people to tell you all about it. It can be useful to know but the Terms of Use can't push flag buttons. It is rarely the reason your ad was flagged off. But you won't find any sympathy and it don't pay to argue. Some of those people waving the TOU in the air are fundamentalists about it; it really don't pay to argue with 'em. If aomeone says that the reason your ad was flagged off is because you did something "prohibited" you will know you are dealing with one of these. "Prohibited" can't push flag buttons and not infrequently the "prohibited" item or behavior is something that is made up to suit the "helpers" personal agenda. Be extremely wary. In these situations it is best to either say nothing and leave or say "Thank You" and leave---or talk with people that are giving more reasonable answers and ignore the people waving rulebooks at you.
  
  
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• Some people offering "help" have strong personal agendas that can...influence the help they offer. This happens most frequently these days regarding animals, weapons and posting volume. You can get some mighty creative interpretations of the craigslist rules (written and unwritten) from these folks. They are not interested in telling you the way it is as much as they way they would like it to be. Be wary and, as with the other fundamentalists, it don't pay to argue. If if you get an email from someone counseling you on the problem with your ad, be EXTREMELY wary. This is a favored tactic of people with agendas to push, especially about animals. You may be given deceptive information.
  
  
  
• Say "Thank You". There are people in the Flag Help forum that are genuinely trying to help you. They are very real people just like you are. Some may not be very nice at times but there is no need to lower yourself to their level. That only hurts you. Manners matter. Say "thank you".

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