> I even agree with that decision--Craigslist has brought it upon itself by creating what is (IMO) a mediocre and clearly substandard UI. But your choice is what it is. Embrace it.
So are you saying that if CL had a more elegant UI you would be against the OP continuing agasinst CL's wishes? Seems like very arbitrary ethics.
If CL had a more elegant UI, I would also be against the OP continuing against CL's wishes. What makes CL the bad guy in this case is that they're locking up a critical system-economic element, not doing anything with it, and trying to prevent others from using it; exerting minimal effort to progress human economics while also exerting legal force to prevent others from progressing human economics. Consequentialism! Consequentialism! If CL had their own Google Maps API then the loss of renter-hours would not be nearly as severe and the negative consequences of Padmapper not adding the service back in would not be as bad, nor the gain to other people from adding it as great. Of course the right thing to do might change, if the consequences change!
You consequentialist morals then seem to be operating under multiple unfounded assumptions:
1) that the only thing that a company such as this could be doing with their value/income is building "an elegant UI" (it seems an insulting stretch to believe that their 30 employees are just sipping martinis at their office; one would imagine that there are complex social management problems that Craigslist has become experienced with and spends most of their time managing)
2) that "an elegant UI" provides positive value to this type of interaction (there have been reasonable arguments in previous PadMapper v. Craigslist posts that, in fact, the UI provided by CL is semantically more optimal than competitors providing fields; part of this argument hinged on the benefit of not requiring certain kinds of information, which makes some sense if you look at the low-key way people prefer to interact with it)
3) that there would be a long-term benefit to handing these keys to PadMapper <- this one is exceptionally bothersome due to your multiply-emphasized cry of "consequentialism"; please remember that the long-term goal of companies with this business model (I have consulted for multiple, and have multiple friends personally involved with them) is to become the portal and then marginalize the data sources as they become the new de-facto standard: in this case, PadMapper's service called PadLister.
4) that the result of this set of policies would not actually increase the number of "renter-hours" wasted, due to the (I will happily argue, but will not bother here as to me the mechanism is trivial and obvious) likely outcome that there would no longer be a centralized source for this kind of data, and renters would instead end up scouring numerous sites in the attempt to piece together who was renting what where, despite "elegant UIs". (I will point out, in case it isn't clear: I am not arguing that this is necessarily a net negative, but your position did make this assumption, so I am pointing it out)
There is absolutely no reason to believe that PadMapper would be a better long-term holder of that vision than Craigslist, and in fact numerous reasons to believe that they would actually suck at it (including, but certainly not limited to, the "this is a shady way to make this argument" comments in the parents of this part of the thread): you really have to ask yourself "who would I be happier with as ruler... Eric, Craig, or no one"?
Regardless, as I have others, I encourage you to read articles on the history of Craigslist. In this case, the article published by Wired a few years back "Why Craigslist is Such a Mess" comes to my mind as a rather key one to start with.
I don't think it's arbitrary, just selfish(1). As a user, I want the best experience possible, and don't really care wether I get it from Bob's House of Widgets, or Alice's Sprocket Emporium. I don't even especially care if Bob sort of copies some of what Alice is doing. I just want the best widget for my dollar/time spent.
(1) In the Objectivist/Randian sort of way, not in a negative way.
> So are you saying that if CL had a more elegant UI you would be against the OP continuing agasinst CL's wishes?
I believe it's more that if CL stopped stomping on other businesses for virtually no reason, without any discussion or even possibility of an agreement, then [I] would be against the OP continuing against CL's wishes.
Wait. Cragslist accepts and publishes classified ads, under their own policies based on how they want to [do] business. Their objecting to other people using their publication system without following their policies is "stomping on other businesses for virtually no reason"?
So are you saying that if CL had a more elegant UI you would be against the OP continuing agasinst CL's wishes? Seems like very arbitrary ethics.