Thank you for your feedback. Personally, I’m inclined to stick with how we are, a mix of both. What I think is key to this community is the humour - photos of properties for sale, that are so bad they’re funny.
A “bad photos of buildings” community isn’t going to be particularly interesting to my mind. Who wants to look at just crappy photos? This isn’t really a crappy photo itself, but it’s a terrible photo for an estate agent to use to try and sell a house. The fact that a realtor took a photo of a tree, and presumably thought it was good for it to be published online in order to sell a house is funny to me. Wtf were they thinking?! That said, I don’t need to see 20 posts like this.
As for a “photos of bad houses” community… I don’t really want to be the judge of what’s bad. Everyone has different tastes, and we’ll end up seeing an awful lot of low cost housing, almost like poverty porn. I’d rather the focus again be on the humorous aspect of the photo - a sunken bath in a carpeted living room, a hot tub in the kitchen, a sofa in front of a bidet, a toilet up 5 steps… all of those are weird and amusing to me. That doesn’t mean the house is bad, it’s just a funny aspect of a house for sale.
But, as I said in my stickied mod post, I am open to all feedback and suggestions and I’d like this community to be steered by common consensus. Why don’t you make your suggestion in the comments of that post where others can weigh in with their thoughts? It’s easier for me to moderate if meta discussions are all in one place, and people who agree with you are probably more likely to see your comment there - if they don’t like this kind of photo they probably haven’t read the comments so the discussion could be skewed. If enough people what a change in posting guidelines, I’m more than happy to put it to a vote and make changes based on the outcome.
My partner went all “Burt Macklin, FBI” and paid £60 to activate the Seat app. You can honk the horn remotely from the app so Burt Macklin kept doing it at night to piss the thieves off. It just so happened that they hadn’t turned the GPS off when the car turned on we could track it. It was taken to a super dodgy estate of car garages about 10 mins away from us. We called the police and told them exactly where our car was - we weren’t overly impressed by the police response at this point so my partner caught an Uber down to meet the police (who were just wondering around aimlessly). My partner showed them the app, showed them the map and then honked the horn for them, where it beeped from the other side of the shutter. Then the police got a warrant, the garage owner came down, opened up and cooperated. He “had no idea” it was stolen, despite the clearly visible tape stuck on the number plate to alter the registration. He wasn’t arrested but I assume he’ll be charged with handling stolen goods if he doesn’t give up the name of the person who brought it to him. He handed over the keys and the police took it in for forensics to be done on the tape. They finished with it yesterday. Tomorrow the insurance are collecting it and changing the locks and replacing the keys. Then we’ll get it back!
The funniest part of the whole thing is what it was doing in the garage… literally 3 months after I got it I stupidly scraped the rear passenger side. It’s a motability car (I swap my disability benefits for a car on this scheme, a bit like a lease) and that damage would have meant I didn’t get the “good condition bonus” of £350 when I get my next car in 18 months. The thieves had bought it in to get the scratches fixed and the garage owner had started the job. The insurance will fix the damage when they replace the locks, all covered by the £100 excess I paid for the cover car! It was still a massive ball ache, and they stole other stuff from the car, but it could have been a lot worse!