Disclaimer: This is purely technical explanation and should not be used in anyway to violate TOS of craigslist or any other site.

“I completed posting my ad, I get email and I publish successfully. I even get message informing me that the post should be up online in about 15 minutes. But the post does not appear on the site even after an hour and it never comes online. Whats going on ?”

This is one of the several questions we get asked and we also see similar questions posed on craigslist help forum. We decided to decode this for you and give full explanation.

Craigslist.com is one of the very few sites that actively and successfully fights content that is either objectionable, not suited for the category, excessively posted or otherwise violates terms of service, from their perspective. Craigslist deployed concept of users (viewers) policing the posts and let users ‘flag’ a content that they think are unreasonable.

Per the craigslist site, it takes multiple people flagging a post before the system takes the post in question out of pages (and out of system).

To large extent, flagging works as expected. But to reduce amount of work on flagers (users who flag) and to fend off repeated offenders, craigslist also employeed concept of ‘Staff Deleted’.

Staff Deletion is combination ‘real staff’ deletion, and automated system deletion. Seems like (99.99999% sure) Craigslist has automated hardware and software systems in place to identify repeated offenders and flag them as ’staff deleted’. There used to be time (about 6 months back) when the poster used to

a) Get a message at the end of posting process that the post is ‘Blocked’ and give a blocking code to follow up.

b) Be able to visit the posted ad and see a ‘Staff Deleted’ message on the post indicating that after posting was done, CL system identified the post to be in violation and deleted it automatically.

c) The post thats ‘Staff Deleted’ used to disappear from the main category page sometime after the actual staff delete.

People still get the ‘Blocked’ message at the end of posting process, but lot less frequently than what it used to be. And folks dont see that ‘Staff Deleted’ message on the post link page anymore.

Why ?

Analysis:

How do we know the pot is hot ? Because when we try to touch is, sensors in our body send message of ‘heat’ to brain. What follows ? We decide to take a napkin or something to hold pot and protect ourselves from the heat.

What the hot pot has to do with Craigslist :-), You May Ask. Its the FEEDBACK.

When there is feedback, we learn from the feedback and take corrective actions. When craigslist displayed the messages a) and b) I mentioned earlier, people got immediate feedback and adapted to the situation. They were taking corrective actions with the immediate feedback available from CL.

CL folks then realized that by eliminating (or reducing) the feedback, they can send the offender into confusion of not knowing exactly what happened. Craigslist did the following

a) They took out the ‘Staff Deleted’ message out of the post link. So when you visited the supposedly staff deleted post, it looks like any other good post with the content that you posted. So you dont know if its really alive or staff deleted.

b) They also took out (or reduced) the message people used to get at the end of posting - about ‘Blocked code’. Again, this is not to let the offender know that its staff deleted automatically.

In all of this, Craigslist strategy is to waste offenders time by not providing immediate feedback (or no feedback at all).

So, if you thought you successfully posted an ad, and its link looks good but it does not appear on main page after 15 or so minutes, you should know that its staff deleted. Exception to this is, if CL system encountered issues and posts didnt somehow appear on main pages. In that exception case, the help forums on Craigslist should be reporting the CL System Down issues.

Hope this helps. If you have questions or comments, feel free to register and comment on this post.