Reason #30045 Craigslist can suck it

Here's reason #30045 Craigslist can suck it, far as I'm concerned.

I fielded no less than six emails last week from people who had their bikes stolen recently, only to have them pop up on Craigslist a couple of days later. "What do we do now?" they ask, "because I don't want to meet this guy and have to confront him without some help." (Cops don't tend to get involved unless it's very, very, very sure that the bike is theirs and not just a similar bike up for sale.)

This topic has been so beaten to death that BikePortland actually did a writeup on it, aptly titled: "Your Stolen Bike is on Criagslist - Now what?" This is, of course, on top of the person who actually nailed someone here in Portland with their bike - yet we can see the guy is still listing stolen bikes for sale on CL. They're waiting on followthrough from the cops.

A quick scan at the time showed a dozen stolen CL bike listings, so I pop in and post a quick "Hey, if your bike has been stolen please consider registering it with stolenbicycleregistry.com"

And this post, folks - in a town where I'm working with local websites, where the SBR has helped recover dozens of bikes, where I've handed out hundreds of stickers, spoken to hundreds of people about the SBR and how it can help them get their bikes back - gets flagged and removed in no less than six minutes. Hell if I know why, probably because it had a URL in it.

Way to go, Craigslist. Keep up the good work.