FarFarNorth Thu, 01/05/2012 - 14:02

I know a knife discussion forum where they get new factory models from dealers and then pass it from one member to the next so ppl can post their reviews of the product and stuff, mailing it to the next person on the list. Obviously a high risk for a costly product, so the security rule they use is that you have to be a member of that forum for X amount of time before being allowed to participate in the reviewing mailing chain.

The idea of course is that if someone is already a forum member and is invested into the discussions, activities, etc, then if this person proves a thief they will have much to lose with the bad reputation once exposed on the forum. Someone who wants to steal stuff and only joins because of this ulterior motive is not likely to become a contributing member anyway... unless they're really that deceptive and Machiavellian, but even if so, the more they invest into the community the harder blow they will suffer for treachery anyway.

That knife forum has a long minimum membership period requirement, understandably because those are not cheap-ass products they're mailing around.
So maybe there's a way to have a reasonable minimum membership period on here, before someone can start trading?

Of course without coming off like some elite circle asking folks to wait a year or something, but just a modest common sense time amount. Folks will either be willing to wait, and maybe scammers who join and stay inactive will end up forgetting their place here altogether and move on to easier prey on other sites with no minimim periods. And even someone who joins and stays inactive, without ever uploading anything, without participating in any way at all, then suddenly starts getting active with trading offers once he reaches the X time minimum can raise a red flag.

 Terroristic-Ham... Thu, 01/05/2012 - 14:59

Here is an idea... new traders should have to send their package first. Once it is received by the experienced traders then they can safely ship out the other package and confirm their reliability.

this would not work all the time like two new traders.... but I think it would be a good start.

 ShieldbitersValhalla Thu, 01/05/2012 - 19:55

As someone who has messed with basic HTML/CSS, I slightly understand how much Doctordeath doesn't want to spend the rest of his life writing an eBay-style feedback system.

 Phosphorous_Redeemer Fri, 01/06/2012 - 09:29

Honestly, I dont think there is much to be done. As long as there are long distance trades, people will get ripped off. Tshirtslayer cant stop it. Just exercise caution. I do like the trader forum topic though.