The forum staff has a position, and it's stated in the new rules. It is what it is.



No, if you read the rules carefully, there's never an okay for rudeness and bad-mouthing, nor is there room for it in the current ToS. If you look at it from all directions, the bit about Profit is just a statement of the fact: we can't control prices as moderators, we can't verify prices for every item, and we can only moderate based on behavior and specifically breaking rules. Yes, there are social consequences from overpricing--that's what it's like to be a human in a society of other humans--we're not just making it up to encourage some pitchfork mobs. It's going to happen anyway, and we can only deal with results. Imagine if we said "no profit"--how are we going to police that? Imagine the amount of pitchfork mobs happening then, trying to argue every other ad with something like "you said 'at cost', but charging $3 more for it".

Quote from: Krogenar on Fri, 07 March 2014, 07:35:48 The line: '[the classifieds] is not to be deliberately exploited for profit; you are encouraged to buy, sell and trade more or less at cost.'



To me, and others, this sets a bad tone. The rest of the preceding document sets up rules, a policy. This entire paragraph amounts to more of a manifesto than a policy. The use of the word 'exploited' casts users who seek a profit in a negative light, which doesn't help the document outline a policy. This line is then followed up by: 'That said, reasonable profit on sales and trades cannot in practice be stopped and is not disallowed.' Again, the subtext is negative: "The owners of the forum would really like to police sellers to make sure they don't make a profit , but we don't have the technology to get deep enough inside everyone's intestines to do so. But we really wish we could."

People _have_ exploited the classifieds though, e.g., winning a Clack in an EK auction and flipping it for a huge markup before it even arrives. I think 'resource to be exploited' is a fair description of that kind of behavior, and it's also fair to state that we, the forum staff, do not want the classifieds to be used in this way. The rules don't explicitly prohibit that behavior, but we wish you wouldn't do it, and are warning you that others do not like it and will hold it against you. I think you're reading too much into what's written about our feelings about what we _wish_ we could do.



The point of this thread was to discuss the new rules, right? Or was the thread title changed?You're right Photo -- so why make a philosophical statement ofto eradicate profit in the first place? All that achieves is a chilling effect on economic activity. State the rules, not "positions". State what will happen, not what we'd like to happen.This language achieves nothing except a chilling effect on economic activity. How is someone supposed to know how much profit is too much? Maybe they should sell it at a loss, just to be safe? No, they won't do that -- they'll go someplace else, get the price that they want, and that's a little less activity for GH. Keyboards and keycaps go outside the GH community, or, even worse, they remain unsold, get dropped into closets and forgotten. People searching for unique, or rare items will find them in some other manner. Likely, these transactions that so twist the panties of some community members will just happen under the table. So nothing is achieved except less traffic for GH, less openness, less expression.It's "fair" for the GH staff to word this any way they want. I don't think this wording is wise. The rest of the document is generally excellent. The new policy on open discussion of market pricing is the single best thing to come out of it. But this last bit sets a very negative tone. Under the new policy, the aggrieved third partiers could warn people: "Those are won in a lottery for $40! Don't pay $150!" all they like, and if the buyer still goes ahead -- where's the harm? There is no harm, except to the delicate constitutions of the third partiers.Or just ban Classifieds entirely -- then you really could eliminate all economic "exploitation". So the statement of theirto root out all exploitative profit is a lie. The staff could eliminate all exploitative profits at GH, but they don't have the courage to ban Classifieds.