seems threads in appraisals forum only get decent responses if a) domain is great or b) domain is laughably bad.
Seems that way, usually.
Issue is likely as with most help and support forums, people get tired of repeating themselves.
The "middle ground" is frequent, monotonous, and difficult and time consuming to answer, so no-one bothers.
Whereas answering A and B is easy: "fab domain great luck" and "You'll get 10 bob and a dirty nipper end"
A potential solution, as with all sorts of repetitive forum stuffs, is to make a sticky.
However, this only works if users reply to these threads to point users to the sticky, and if the sticky is decent.
Sticky needs good time spent on it initially, and tweaking now and then to improve, and add more info when additional patterns emerge from new user posts.
It's impossible to cover all bases, but I'm sure it's possible to cater for 70% or more of the "how much is this worth" posts, only needing a single member to reply to a post pointing the OP who ignored the sticky to read the sticky.
The sticky, named something apt like "How much your domain might be worth", will have info in which will give a general idea of what constitutes a poor name, decent name, and great name.
It should mention various clauses, like "this is a guide only" and "sometimes even a domain which is classed as poor and worth £10 might get a lot more from the right buyer, but the right buying finding your domain is needle/haystack, and is why domains labelled as poor often sell for nothing/very little".
etc etc...
Have a list of most valuable TLD in most sought after order (.com, then .co.uk, etc)
Then explaining what domains are poor and likely not sell/get very little, eg "Two unrelated dictionary words that clash", etc.
Which are worth a lot, eg "single dictionary word .com" etc.
It'll be a bit of work to come up with a guide, but if done with love will probs be better than the crappy/pointless auto evaluate sites out there (sorry julian..)
It should also state (near top to hopefully make people read on) that even asking in the forum isn't going to bring you a 100% accurate appraisal, as domains are valued based on many factors - the words used, tld, other similar domains, marketability, potential buyer base, site rank, inbound links, SERP rank, visitors, etc etc.
And have a few examples of domain sales. Such as some sold for >100K, >50k, etc, then some which sold for £50.
Domain examples chosen carefully to give people a good overall impression of what domains get them the mega bucks they think they're going to get for the domain they have which will actually get them £5.
And vice versa, and stuffs in between.
This isn't to replace domain evaluations, but to sort the wheat from the chaff and avoid constantly telling noobs (*raises hand*) their domain is worth bugger all.
Perhaps a combination of the sticky, and voting would work well:
a) Giving users feedback/replies without much work needed from those with knowledge
b) Build up useful stats for future users to get an idea of domain values
c) Sticky could give even non-noobs some reminders
c) Voting will be fun..
The only issue I have with voting is it's not as accurate as someone explaining why the domain is worth a tenner, or ten grand.
Anyone can vote whatever they wish, e.g.
"How much is better-than-facebook.com worth?"
And people vote "between £25,000 and £50,000" for a laugh...
So perhaps voting should require criteria. The usual requirements:
X total posts
member for Y months
etc
I know blanket policy is never ideal, and seasoned forum users can still vote nonsense, but it helps weed some of the bollocks.