Do we need a "Buy/Sell" forum?
 

I've been asked several times in email about this... I can see where it might be a good idea, but there is potential for it to turn into a nightmare...

This poll will run for three days...

Any thoughts?

Methinks that it'd just cause all sorts of problems in the few transactions that didn't go through smoothly. My first reaction is that it'd be a good idea, but upon further reflection, I'd feel more comfortable dealing over ebay anyway. When that one shipment doesn't come, is it because it got lost in the mail, or was it never shipped... I'd like to see as little conflict within the project as possible.

I had the same thoughts on the matter as Deamiter, so I voted no. Of course, anyone could already start such a thread in another forum (such as "Hardware") so there's really no way to prevent it.

If you do end up starting a forum for it, I suggest you title it "Caveat Emptor". :?

It could very well work to encourage it in the hardware forum, I'd like to see what people want to get rid of... But if you are obviously sponsoring it in a forum, then you'll get no end of complaints...

It's our biggest problem at my Camaro/Firebird club website that I'm a moderator on. We spend oodles of time trying to straighten out bad sales, even though we explicitly say "at your own risk, buyer beware, etc".

3 days is rather short for a poll.

I would have voted "no" primarily 'cause we don't really have enough folks that hang out in these forums to make a buy/sell forum viable - IMO.

(Edit) Ah, the poll came up this time, so I could vote "no".

8-)

After talking with several people via email, and after taking this poll into consideration, I think we should, for now, avoid "For Sale!" posts...

The issue that made this decision easy for me was reading this...

http://arstechnica.com/forum/agoraguide.html

I never even thought about most of those issues...

In the future, maybe we'll have a motivated person who wants to implement this, but I am not up to it personally...

Linking to good deals (That are relevant to GIMPS!) in the hardware forum is okay... You might even be able to link to your own deals if you ask for permission first... If even that is a bad idea, please let me know...

Thanks for voting!