I'm not sure about this, and correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there legal issues with declaring people as scammers?

Posting there forum usernames? I really do not know and have no say as to the legality.

But I don't see how posting usernames of ppl who belonged here in a thread Labeled "WHO NOT TO BUY FROM" or something along those lines could be illegal.

Just a list of ppl who have been through LPF and are undesirable sellers/ scam artists/ do not stand behind there work (bhwollen) etc etc.

Really? I never heard of this. Many websites have such lists and never heard of a single lawsuit of such matter (who it would it be against anyway?). And we don't use real names..

This brings up a good point though: maybe we should differentiate "Proven Scammers" from "Potential Scammers" on our lists.

I would vote for this if you can avoid the above pitfalls.

What pitfalls are you talking about?

I dont know if slander can be applied to a forum name. Maybe if it was their real name, but even then I doubt anyone would spend the money to bring a forum to court because someone said they were a scammer. I dont think the term scammer can really be classified as libelists. I could be wrong though.

This whole post limit situation relies on a mechanism. Reporting members under 50 posts selling items doesnt really do anything, other than make more work for the Mods. We need a setting in the forum software that will not allow anyone with under 50 posts to open a sales thread. Then the community can check out the previous posts, and make a judgement to report it to the Mods if they see the member just spammed the 50 posts or not. Or if the member has some negatives that need to be considered.

If there is no mechanism anyone can make a quick phishing post, and the Mods would have to delete any threads made by members under 50 posts. Which could be a lot. I think we should only use this as a last resort.

If we do go the way of above, then it brings up another issue. We have to make sure people know this before making a thread. With the clutter of Stickies in the BST section I dont see this as possible.

Not to open an even bigger can of worms, but I think the BST need to be restructured. The Stickies are out of control. The only Stickies that should be there are the information ones. The Pro Shop was created to have the main sellers an area to post their wares, and to separate them from the already cluttered BST section. They are completely redundant, and goes against why we opened the Pro Shop to start with. I also know there are outside ads in the BST too, but I dont expect them to go anywhere.

Soooo, to recap.

1. We need to find out if it is possible to block people with under 50 posts making a thread in the BST section.

2. If not........then we are screwed, because I dont see anything I detailed above happening.

Can you chime in please Avery???

We can report the thread and spam it up with you "don't have enough posts" posts and so you can't sell here. If there is no software to support it that is

Wouldn't be that hard.. I'll volunteer to do all of the reporting since I'm browsing the forums consistently through the day usually.

it should be positive rep if they have posted 50 times and not gotten a single rep than they are essentially spamming or posting worthless shit ....but yeah good idea tj

id be happy to go through the bst section every day at some point and report it only would take a few minutes

Thats great guys, thank you.

Now if Avery would chime in we could move forward.

Love the idea. +1 Mark

This and other things are being discussed by the mods

Peace,
dave

Also for me it's a good idea but I suggest 50 posts, non-negative rep and at least 3 months of membership (to avoid spam to reach the 50 posts)!!

I say you make it a requirement to have photos and a username included in the photo and to include a general location. Personally if I was new and was here to get out of the hobby I would not want to stick around for 50-100 posts and or contribute. That's just my opinion though. However I think there should be a requirement to open a shop or offer services without a certain amount of Rep or posts.