Our current system allows the member to post one thread in the appropriate forum pointing with a link to the classified ad. Bumping and discussion is allowed.
This strategy worked great for me(I sold what I was selling) and I would highly recommend it. I agree that the classifieds are less visible but having witnessed folks getting blasted for what they were selling, how much the were asking, etc, under the old system, I wouldn't change a thing.
Post your ad, post a message to your ad and shamelessly bump it.
On another note, regarding the auto censors, has anyone else seen the bit that Jimmy Kimmel does on his show. I think it's called "Unnecessary Censoring" or something like that. Anyway, he bleeps out carefully chosen words from perfectly normal clips. It's hillarious. So the sentence before this paragraph might look something like this:
**** your a**, a message on your a** and shamelessly **** it.