Rich, Ed, et. al.,
I don't know if this is possible through the search menus or exactly how it would be done but, is it possible to establish a protcol for titles of listings on the B/S board. For those of us who look regularly for very specific items, it would be nice to see more specifics in a title for a listing, not just "trains for sale" or "locos wanted".
First, can we seperate buy/wanted from for sale as two distinct categories or maybe with color coding for buy, sell, trade or wanted.
Secondly, perhaps members can start using some abbreviations, like in print classifieds, to give a snapshot of an item prior to opening the listing. For instance an lightly used MTH Premier NYC GP9 with Proto2 could be titled , "F/S MTH Prmr. NYC GP9 w/Ps2,C8" or a 1980's Lionel o27 Illinios boxcar with plastic wheels could be
LNL., Illinois Boxcar, 027, MPC,C-4"
The idea here is that we get a snapshot of a listing to see if the manufactuer, scale,detail, roadname and condition are within our search criteria.
Maybe this will help all of us, buyers and sellers alike..
Just my $.02, Bruce

Regarding the first part of your question, you can add a personally tailored Search result to your favorites or bookmarks.

I used to do this for eBay a while back. Worked pretty well, of course you miss out of the seller does not use your keywords or item # you tailor the search for.

-Dave

The "rules" of advertising and selling have been in place for many, many years - or for even the last few centuries. No need to re-create them here. If someone does not understand the basic concept of advertising what they have to sell then they lose out on the sell - period. If a seller does not let me know what they have, or they have no pictures, or they use poor English or all upper case letters, etc., etc. then I move on and look elsewhere. To get my money one must have a bit more than just the product I am looking for and it is not mine nor the forum's place to tutor them on how it should be done. If rules or guidelines were created, as you suggested, on the forum what would be the consequence to those that do not follow those rules or guidelines. Hmmm, product does not sell, which is how it works presently without more rules and guidelines to follow.

And those that follow the guideline in place for using FS or WTB then it is very easy for me to see exactly what is there. If it is not clear then I do not look. I do not want to have to go to completely different areas for FS vs WTB.