Marc I spent some time in the Marketplace this morning trying to relate to the new format and seeing what sort of things might make it easier to navigate.

A few suggestions:

1. There is no way to mark ads as read. When I go into the marketplace I want to know which ads I haven't seen before, or which ones have new postings on them. This is exactly like looking at a forum. I should be able to quickly see the new ads in bold and then I need to be able to mark that category as read so when I come back later I can see the new ads again. Also if I mark an ad as read in one category and that ad is posted in multiple categories, then it should be marked read in all categories at the same time. I don't want to see it bold in another category when I have already seen that ad.

2. The radio buttons to select 'Show All', 'Kits' and 'ARFs' etc is a good thing. But it doesn't remember them specific to each category. I would like to be able to set this selection specific for each market category I look at. i.e. I want to see 'All' ads in the jets marketplace, but for the 'Warbirds' marketplace I want to only see 'ARFs'. The way it is now I see the same setting for each category and I have to constantly change it each time I go to a new category.

3. When viewing auctions the default sort order doesn't seem to make sense. I know I can click on the column header and change the sort order, but I would think the default should be sorted by the 'close' date with the auctions closer to ending at the top.

4. We absolutely need a 'My Marketplace' the same as the 'My Forums' works. There are a lot of marketplace categories that I have no interest in and they just clutter up the screen and make it harder to get to the ones I do want. If we can subscribe to specific marketplace categories and only see those ones, then this would be much better. I know you are working on this one, but I had to add my vote for it too!

5. Ads listed in multiple categories should be marked somehow. If I go from the Aerobatic category to the Giant category and there is the same ad. I want to know this quickly so I don't have to drill down into the ad to see if it the same item.

6. The watchlist needs some work. I did post my suggestions for the watchlist into the suggestions forum yesterday. Basically we need to separate the classifieds from the auctions in the watchlist and have a better sort order for the items in the watchlist. i.e. auctions in a watchlist should always be sorted in 'close' order so that we can see anything we are interested in that is about to close by simply going to our watchlist. The biggest thing here is to separate the classifieds from the auctions in the watchlist.

7. Get rid of the commercial auctions where the vendor has put something up for auction at retail price. They are basically paying a very small fee for advertising this way and it needs to be stopped. IMHO it is an abuse of the system.

Bottom line is if we can have a 'My Marketplace' that allows us to subscribe to categories and we can then have the ads trackable then we are a long way towards making this solution much more workable and the people that want it just the way it was, will have a much closer solution to what they had. Oh yeah and the trackability of the ads must be by username not by PC.

How's that for a few ideas?

One last point. I have been on here for the last few days and every day it keeps getting better. More of the old features are coming back and I am getting more familiar with the new features. People just have to be patient and give it some time.