Why does Craigslist have 2 sections for Long Island? (New York, Portland: for sale, apartments)
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This is really annoying as you have to search in both sections if you want to make sure you see all available postings. Even worse when selling, you have to try to post in both sections to make sure that your ad reaches the entire Long Island audience.
I'm sure most people don't even realize that both sections exist and just go to one section or the other.
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Hey, we're talking about Lawn Guyland where the majority of places are NOT in the community whose name is in their mailing address, and you're surprised that there are two lists?
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I use a site called 'search tempest' (google it) - you can configure it to search more than one geographical location at a time and return the results in multiple windows on the same page. So I have it set to return results from both NY State->Long Island and NY City->Long Island.
This obviously doesn't help when you have to post something, but for searching, I don't even go to the craig's list site directly anymore.
Thanks for that Arron, I will check it out - this Craiglist issue must be a HUGE inconvenience to realtors...
08-08-2009, 10:38 AM
grant516
n/a posts
I've long posted (and you can still see them read) on the LI and NYC/LI Feedback Forum, Helpdesk, and City Suggestions on the abolishment of this practice.
There appears to be little concern of any review to fix this issue- and shockingly enough, plenty of people (many from out of area) seem to think this idea is just fine: and I've even heard plenty of people prefer it that way.
In any event- I've planned on taking this a step further as part of an Op-Ed article for Newsday about Long Island's confusing political geography being Information Age-Unfriendly. Read below, and feel free to throw out complaints on CL- someone will see this as an oversight one day and repair it, but it's been MANY MANY years; and most people will never, ever, know.
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merge longisland.craigslst & newyork.craglst/lgi
*****The issue at hand*****
Long Island has two boards on craiglist.
It's own board longisland.craigslist.org (ISP)
and newyork.craiglist.org>lgi (NYC)
Not all craigslist users are aware of both boards.
Posts are not cross linked. Users miss many posts because of this.
*****The location*****
Long Island, which is the name of a geographical island that encompasses Brooklyn and Queens (part of NYC) as well as Nassau and Sufolk Counties.
The Term Long Island (as a location) however generally is accepted as meaning just Nassau & Suffolk counties. (Suburban Long Island).
Originally, Long Island was only available as a division of New York City.
Sometime between 2003 and 2005, a new city level craiglist was created called "longisland.craigslist.org".
This city board was likely created by user feedback-
It however is VERY POSSIBLE that users requested this not knowing there even was a longisland subdivision of NYC.
It is also possible that whoever in Craigslist support created the new board was unwawre of the old one.
*****Where the overlap exists still*****
If newyork.craigslist.org covers Brooklyn and Queens, then longisland.craigslist.org is left to cover only Nassau and Suffolk counties.
If you were selling a chair, looking for a missed connection, or a job somewhere in Nassau or Suffolk, you would have to check both Newyork.craigslist.org/lgi as well as longisland.craigslist.org.
This overlap is NOT known by all craigslist users, and the board used tends to coincide with the time period the user started using craigslist.
As a poster- you are limiting yourself by posting in one board and not the other- as you will not get the entire viewer share. Essentially both of these boards are competing with another.
This is the equivilance of having manhattan.craigslist.org as well as newyorkcity.craigslist.org/mnh.
Both are the exact same geographical area, and users may end up using multiple boards for the same location.
(Continued in Reply Post)
*****How this is resolved in other regions*****
There is no Jersey City craigslist, however if a user goes to the New Jersey page, there is a reference that New Jersey suburbs of NYC are listed as a sub-division of NYC craiglist, and allows the user to click to go into that category.
The DC region is broken up, and under the individual state pages links to those areas redirects to washingtondc.craigslist.org
When craigslist was much smaller back in 2001-2002, users from Vancouver would post on Portland, OR's board. This trend changed when Vancouver was introduced. It would be very rare to see a Vancouver Location post today in
Portland, OR. This is the benefit of creating more geographical locations, but the old subdivisions must be removed.
*****How to resolve the issue*****
As longisland.craigslist.org is newer- it would make sense to keep it and represent suburban long island.
(This region is home to nearly 3 million people)
As per many users requests the board should have two subregions (Nassau and Suffolk)
Newyorkcity.craigslist.org/lgi should redirect users to longisland.craigslist.org.
It would also be acceptable to have longisland.craigslist.org just refer to Long Island as a suburb of New York City, and
redirect to that board, however I feel with an area as large (both in population and geographical distance) as LI, it makes sense to be seperated.
*****Thank you for your time*****
ive noticed this a long time ago, i mainly use the stand alone LI section. that one def. seems to be more heavily used for long island, rather than the sub section of nyc
I've emailed CL a few times in the last 2-3 years and only get a canned response or nothing at all.
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