The Crazy World of Craigslist Trivia Game | World

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Craig Newmark founded Craigslist, the main site of which can be found at craigslist.org, in 1995, as an egalitarian project to connect local people with events they might find interesting. Appropriately enough for such an endeavor, where did Craigslist start?

Answer: San Francisco, CA

Craigslist, or CL for short, started as a listing of local SF events. People soon started posting other things, such as items for sale and apartments. Craig then started adding onto the site to allow for categories for such items.

2. From the beginning, Craigslist has been about "community moderation." Which of the following is NOT one of CL's community moderation strategies?

Answer: If a user sees a bad ad, he can post in the classifieds warning others about the ad

Any Craigslist user who spots a poor ad- miscategorized, spam, a scam, or something that violates Craigslist Terms of Use (TOU) can "flag" that ad. If an ad gets enough flags, it's removed immediately. Serial spammers and the like can also be reported to abuse@craigslist.org, and staff will often remove the offending ads.
CL has a very active Forums section, and anyone can "homestead" an empty or disused forum for discussion of whatever topic they would like. There are also many "official" CL forums on topics from CL help to veganism.
The classified ads are only for ads- not discussions. Discussions are invariably flagged off quickly.

3. In 2000, Craigslist began to grow by adding its first site for a city other than its "home base." What city was that?

Answer: Boston

Boston got its own site in June of 2000, followed by Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington DC in August of 2000. Sacramento was added in October, 2000. There are now over 450 different CL sites worldwide.

4. All ads on Craigslist are free to post.

Answer: False

While the vast majority are free, job and apartment broker ads cost money to post in some of the major markets (such as New York) and fund the running of the rest of Craigslist.

5. Between 2001 and 2012, Craigslist managed the nonprofit Craigslist Foundation. What types of projects did this foundation support?

Answer: Nonprofit and community groups

According to the Craigslist Foundation's website it "provides and highlights events and online resources that provide nonprofit leaders with the knowledge, resources and visibility they need to make their organizations successful." It folded in 2012.

6. What other major website owns 25% of the equity in Craigslist?

Answer: eBay

Phillip Knowlton, a former executive at CL, sold his shares of company stock to eBay in 2004. eBay pledged not to interfere with CL's egalitarian policies and to stay out of the company's business- a policy that it has, so far, upheld.

7. Perhaps the most controversial issue on Craigslist involves ads for the sale of something that is specifically prohibited in the TOU of the site. Disputes over this issue have led to flagging groups that exist specifically to flag ads for these items- and to antiflagger groups whose main action is to disrupt the flagging forums by flooding them and to pester Craig to ban the accounts of the flaggers. This dispute even has its own name among the Craigslist forum regulars. What are all of these people arguing about?

Answer: The sale of pets

The "puppy wars," as they are called, are an ongoing and always engrossing saga. The Craigslist TOU specifically prohibits animal sales, but "rehomings with a small adoption fee" are allowed. Despite these rules, hundreds of blatant animal sale ads are posted on CL every day, many of them attempting to disguise their sales as 'adoptions." The flagging group, which in 2006 could be found in forum 4915, posts links to TOU-violating ads to be flagged off.

The antiflaggers, primarily composed of disgruntled, previously-flagged-off breeders, lurk in various hidden forums and send many, many emails to Craig complaining of "flagger abuse." Sometimes, the antiflaggers get banned, sometimes the flaggers do- and the puppy wars go on.

8. Craig Newmark has been on both sides of the legal arena, suing and being sued. Whom did he sue in 2002, and why?

Answer: Turner Broadcasting, for opposing the use of commercial-skipping VCRs

TBC had sued SONICblue, the creators of the ReplayTV, a digital video recorder that allowed consumers to skip commercials. SONICblue went bankrupt in 2003 after paying huge legal fees, before the case was decided. Craig and others sued TBC. As Craig posted on his blog, www.cnewmark.com, "As many readers know, EFF [the Electronic Frontier Foundation] sued 28 Hollywood movie studios last year on behalf of five owners of ReplayTV 4000 units demanding that the studios drop their legal threats against consumers who automatically skip commercials.

The lawsuit asked the Court to rule that commercial skipping is fair use and NOT copyright infringement. After months of litigation wrangling, EFF has finally forced the studios to give up their threats and concede that our five clients can skip all the commercials they want with their ReplayTVs without fear of legal action."

9. On the other side of the arena, who sued Craigslist in 2006, and why?

Answer: The Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, for violation of the Fair Housing Act

The Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued CL after finding ads on the Chicago website that it claimed violated the Federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits racial and other discrimination in housing ads. The suit was dismissed in November, 2006.

10. Not everyone loves Craigslist. The San Francisco Bay Guardian published an editorial in 2006 that likened Craigslist to what often-maligned company?

Answer: Wal-Mart

The Guardian claimed that just as Wal-Mart moved into town and drove small businesses into bankruptcy, Craigslist moved into town and took away advertising revenue from small and alternative newspapers by giving away for free what these papers depended on for revenue.

Source: Author crisw

This quiz was reviewed by our editing team before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

The Crazy World of Craigslist Trivia Quiz

Craigslist is the world's largest site for classified ads. But it's also a whole lot more. Here's a look into the wacky world of one of the busiest websites on the planet.

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>