Cloudy Nights Classified Section Rules
(31 January 2025)
- We are not a classifieds site. We offer our Classifieds only as an ancillary service to our regular and active forum participants.
- Forum members are invited to buy, sell, or trade personal items only. People who have a commercial interest in buying and selling equipment should go to a commercial classifieds site instead of Cloudy Nights.
- Vendors are not permitted to use the Classifieds, but can post in the Vendor and Group Announcements forum.
- Cloudy Nights reserves the right to restrict access to Classifieds to members who abuse the privilege, or whose accounts demonstrate suspicious behavior.
- Cloudy Nights will not intervene in cases of potential fraud or other disputes. Buyer beware.
- If you have an account which has been inactive for some time, you may have a block on your Classified access. If this is the case, contact an administrator
- You must be a member for at least 180 days before you will be allowed to submit an advertisement. If you have an urgent need to sell something, please go to a commercial classifieds site. Moreover, until you have made 30 posts in our forums, you will be restricted from sending more than five private messages in any one day.
- Do not attempt to post an offer to buy or sell in a regular forum. Your account will be suspended if you do this and could be banned.
- Every ad is reviewed by a volunteer member of the Cloudy Nights team. Do not post repetitive ads or try to bump ads. Do not update ads often – in such cases, ad postings will be delayed.
- If you need to update an ad, indicate why the ad is being updated by placing “[reduced price”], “[updated description]”, “[photos added]” or whatever in the title or body of the ad. Otherwise, our reviewers might think this an attempt to bump the ad.
- Items advertised need an obvious connection to astronomy.
- If you act on behalf of a non-member by advertising a third-party item then you assume all responsibilities for the transaction. You must contact a site administrator before you post a third-party advertisement.
- If your account demonstrates unusual behavior, or if we cannot verify that the original owner of the account is the one posting the ad, the ad will be rejected and the account will lose access to the Classifieds until the situation is clarified.
- Before posting an ad, carefully review the section below on how to complete the ad form.
- We strongly recommend using only those online payment mechanisms that offer buyer protection. See below for details.
- Buyers assume risks for fraudulent transactions. Cloudy Nights will not intervene or attempt to resolve any issues that might arise between buyer and seller.
- If paying with a fund-transfer service, use one with buyer protection. Currently, only PayPal Goods & Services, and Venmo with transactions “tagged” as purchases, offer buyer protection. There is a 3% fee involved. The buyer and seller can decide who pays the fee.
- PayPal Family & Friends, Venmo (unless tagged as a purchase), Zelle, Cash App and other services do NOT offer buyer protection and are heavily favored by scammers. You would be wise to avoid paying a seller in this way.
- It is up to buyers to vet sellers and determine the legitimacy of ad. Is the seller is a CN member in good standing. Do they participate actively and meaningfully in forums? Have they been a member for a long time? Do their posts and signatures indicate they actually own the items being offered? Have sellers have completed transactions previously and received good ratings? Is the price is out of line with other transactions involving the same product? Has an image been lifted from other websites?
- Sellers and buyers must communicate using the CN Private Message system. If sellers ask buyers to communicate via text or email, that could mean an attempt to defraud.
- Note that a common type of scam is to be approached with a reply to your want-ad. If you post a want-ad, be prepared.
- Category: Select the category for the item you want to sell or buy. We may not always have an exact category for every item but do the best that you can. If an ad is posted with the wrong category, just send us a note and we will fix it.
- Type: Indicate if the advertisement is a want/sale/trade. Flagging the advertisement as to type is important if you want the advertisement to be noticed.
- Name: Type a descriptive, but short, name for the ad.
- Description: This is your opportunity to sell your specific item. Provide provenance and details. Limit your description to 400 words. Do not steal text or language from somebody else or use AI generated text. Keep it simple: obnoxious text sizes, CaPiToLiZaTiOn, colors or formatting do not make your advertisement “eye catching,” they make it annoying. A CN classified advertisement should be able to stand alone. Do not post links to your sale items located on other classified sites or eBay.
- Do not post personal information such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses, or physical/mailing addresses in classified ads. Use the site's private message system for initial communication.
- Photos: The purpose of an image is to show your item. Use the image upload function. Do not embed links in order to display off-site images within your description. If your pictures are stolen from other sites, then you have lost your credibility. Buyers routinely check for this. Hold the camera or phone portrait style when you take the picture. CN will not flip your sideways photos like your mobile phone does. Photos must be in JPG or PNG format. Images must be the cumulative two megabyte limit. Photos are not used for "wanted" ads.
- Condition: This is relative but please be realistic. Avoid cheesy adjectives like “minty.”
- Location: List a useful location, one our members, including those outside the United States, can easily understand. A zip code by itself is not acceptable. General locations such as “Asia” or “United States” are insufficiently precise.
- Price: Cloudy Nights is not an auction site. Every ad for a single item must have a realistic price in the correct field, which may be negotiable. Posting a price in the "price" field is mandatory for every single-item advertisement. If you have several items for sale in the same advertisement, then enter "n/a" in the price field (the default) and explain the prices in the description. Do not lie by claiming that the price is $1, enter something silly like "$123456.78" or list the price of only a single item. For "wanted" ads, please post either a realistic price or "n/a".
- Payments: Buyers and sellers will need to agree on payment mechanisms. We do not restrict any such mechanism. However, if using an online funds-transfer system, we strongly recommend using one with buyer protection.
- We will approve an ad and any updates only once per day. If you update your ad, it will be reviewed for approval the following day and may be delayed.
- Please mark sold items as "sold." Obviously, a multiple item advertisement will require resubmissions for updates, which will take time.
- When leaving feedback for another member, please choose your words carefully, and be objective. Ratings are only for completed transactions. Misuse of the ratings system may lead to your account being banned.
- Any advertisement that is rejected will result in a notification sent by PM and to the email which we have on file. In unusual cases, we may put a hold on your advertisement and contact you only by email. If you need to update your email address, tell a site administrator
- Notify an administrator if you suspect an ad is miscategorized or fraudulent.
- Transactions can and do go wrong. If you decide to pursue a sale on Cloudy Nights instead of buying a new item from an established retailer, you are choosing to take a risk. While we are certainly interested to hear about problems in the Classified Section, there is little or nothing that we can do in case of a problem.
