5 years ago
Hello everyone who may have the issue with offering in the Souk:
The restriction to the Souk sales area has now been applied to all members, regardless of the registration date on Parfumo.
Please keep in mind that the changes and innovations affecting the Souk area are still ongoing and nothing is in the final stages. Because of this, I will be answering your question as far as I can.
- Why is the Souk sales area not freely accessible?
As stated in the announcement thread, Parfumo wishes to offer its members who use the Souk area a safer and therefore more enjoyable experience.
In the course of investigating fraudsters, we have also discovered new and old member profiles that have shown no signs of activity over the years, except for selling. The free membership of Parfumo was used for solely commercial purposes on this platform.
However, it must be emphasised that Parfumo was never meant as a platform for people who mainly want to sell items for free. If someone wants to join Parfumo for monetary reasons only, we would like to point out some other existing platforms that are certainly more suitable for this purpose.
Parfumo is primarily intended as a community of perfume lovers who would like to learn about perfumes, exchange opinions on this fascinating hobby and share their passion with like-minded people (and 'sharing' does not allude to the seller-buyer-relationship).
The Souk area is only intended as a bonus feature for these community members and not as Parfumo's main attraction for people who seek to secure another lucrative market stall free of charge and tax.
- What is community participation/how can I contribute to the community?
As a community-driven platform, Parfumo encourages interaction between members through the high functionality and transparency of the community area - both on the perfume pages and on the member profile pages.
If you pay attention to other members' comments and statements, or even their perfume photos, you will find many ways to get in touch with them. You can begin to express your own sentiment about perfumes with which you are familiar: in words or creative imagery - pictures, statements for your opinion in a nutshell, or comments for those who like to write longer texts.
If there is a specific perfume-related topic you would like to tell us, please do so in a blog article.
Or give us your opinion on e.g. for which season(s) a perfume is suitable, on which occasions, how you rate its longevity, its projection, etc. on the respective perfume pages.
Finally, there is Parfumo's huge database, which provides members with a reliable source of information as a unique perfume encyclopedia. Maintenance is done by volunteers to ensure its accuracy and up-to-dateness.
Members wishing to contribute to this special (and perhaps the most advanced/complex) area called research are welcome to see for themselves. For more information on this subject please contact me by private message.
I hope that my explanation can provide answers to the question of what Parfumo considers an activity of a real member that actually contributes to the Parfumo community.
Summing up: it can be said that Parfumo members are primarily invited to get used to this community, express themselves, engage with other members (at a different level than trading), and simply enjoy the time spent on this platform. If this happens, they will one day find access to the Souk sales area if they so wish. Until then, it is not something that you should work towards or take for granted, but something that will come as a natural 'side effect' of being a valued member of this community.
Best wishes and welcome - again - to Parfumo,
Anessa
