Let’s be realistic here.
You’re never going to eliminate scammers. Some people are just dishonest and you’re going to find them wherever you go, including this hobby. Now, taking the ostrich approach (head in the sand, no BST options at all) pretty much eliminates this at face value. Of course, you’re just as likely to get scammed via e-mail or PM as you are in an open forum. The real difference being open forums tend to attract scammers due to the open air nature of it all. A public forum gives them the best possible amount of potential marks with no effort at all.
People often cite the Nation’s BST forum as a sterling reason to avoid such activities. To this I say you’re being overly paranoid and pessimistic. I would go as far to say that less than 0.5% of the Nation’s BST transactions end up being scams, and a part of that percentile is often chalked up to miscommunication and/or shipping issues, not illegal activity. I think some people mentally collude other underlying issues the Nation may possess when considering a BST forum here, as adding one is certainly not going to transform YoYoExpert into anything else. The friendly atmosphere, and enforced rules regarding profanity, trolling, and poor attitudes will remain in place, I’m sure.
I cringe as I type the above, as I realize what most people will infer from my words. I’m not bashing the Nation. Please don’t get this twisted. But I also lurk there on a daily basis. I’m well aware of what goes on there, and so are most of you. Introducing a BST system here isn’t going to change the rules, and thus will not change the quality we’ve come to enjoy here.
On the other hand, having a BST-like forum also tends to attract new people to a site. There’s tons of selling and trading in this hobby, especially considering it’s a hobby predominately indulged in by younger people with fixed incomes. When you give them the ability to BST, they tend to stick around and integrate themselves into the community that’s facilitating it. This leads to new and fun members to the community, new opportunities for all of us to BST product, and (in theory) should increase the hosting site’s retail component revenue. This is a boon for us, no doubt.
But should you go this route, the question of implementation remains. Just understand that whatever you implement isn’t going to completely remove scammers. It’s also not just a simple matter of “outing” a scammer and applying the banhammer. There are quite a few more things that have to be considered when dealing with a confirmed scam. It’s a situation that often requires careful action. Sometimes people forget that helping the victim any way you can should be your first priority, and removing a scammer second.
Thankfully, all of this is much more rare than certain folks would make it out to be, and can be reduced even further by exercising good judgment. There is basically an unwritten set of rules one ought to follow when doing BST activities, and most problems you see come from breaking these.
I may write up a guide on this subject should the need arise.
Finally, let’s try to move away from the “don’t turn this into the Nation” rally cry. BST forums aren’t going to change us. We are who we are because that’s what we choose to be, and we thankfully have leadership that helps us enforce this. If the rules imposed by Andre were unacceptable to us, we’d be somewhere else, right? So we like the rules here, are are lucky enough to be in a place where the rules are enforced. If this doesn’t change, then we don’t change. BST forums or not.
This is the detail that I think people are somehow forgetting in the shuffle.
