Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been taking a look over some of the reports for poor trades/bad things happening.

A repetitive factor in many cases seems to be the young age of several 'offenders'. Further, that persons under a certain age cannot be subject to mail fraud. Some young traders seem to try and 'get away' with:

Swapping something they have already botched up in modelling.
Swapping less than the full amount or an older version of a mini without warning.
Just taking the money or swap item and not sending anything out.

Perhaps Dakka should place an age limit on people trading? If a dakkite is under age, they get an older person to: A) register to the forum B) become the named trader for the exchange.

This would give some small legal protection and reassurance in these cases?

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I've been taking a look over some of the reports for poor trades/bad things happening.

A repetitive factor in many cases seems to be the young age of several 'offenders'. Further, that persons under a certain age cannot be subject to mail fraud. Some young traders seem to try and 'get away' with:

Swapping something they have already botched up in modelling.
Swapping less than the full amount or an older version of a mini without warning.
Just taking the money or swap item and not sending anything out.

Perhaps Dakka should place an age limit on people trading? If a dakkite is under age, they get an older person to: A) register to the forum B) become the named trader for the exchange.

This would give some small legal protection and reassurance in these cases?

To be enforced...how? There is no mechanism for verifying age available, and if someone is willing to cheat you over the internet, then they're probably willing to lie about their age in order to do so.

(Personally, I avoid dealing with anyone who doesn't type in complete sentences. So far, that's worked for me.)

Putting it simply?

Require a "verified" profile to trade in the Swap Shop.

Have the requirement being a photocopy of an official ID and a matching photograph/documentation sent.

Kanluwen wrote:Putting it simply?

Require a "verified" profile to trade in the Swap Shop.

Have the requirement being a photocopy of an official ID and a matching photograph/documentation sent.

Sorry dude - I would not trust any forum out there to keep my personal details such as driver license number safe.

How about a Paypal (or similar) account in the users name (not mom/sister/wife). Paypal requires a bank account, or at least a credit card.

I like the idea of an age limit. As to how to verify that, I don't have any clue but I'm also not to keen on giving another online site my personal info.

If you really want to have safe trades, it's definitely buyer beware. Get a name, get a phone number, get an address and do your homework (phone book, facebook, myspace check).

athelu wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Putting it simply?

Require a "verified" profile to trade in the Swap Shop.

Have the requirement being a photocopy of an official ID and a matching photograph/documentation sent.

Sorry dude - I would not trust any forum out there to keep my personal details such as driver license number safe.

How about a Paypal (or similar) account in the users name (not mom/sister/wife). Paypal requires a bank account, or at least a credit card.

Yeah, the driver's license thing is a non-starter for me, too.

As to the PayPal thing - that's a protection that you can utilize on your own, by choosing not to trade with someone w/o their own account. Why would we need the Administrators/Mods to get involved for that? (Moreover, it's not realistic to expect them to do so - no one is going to take the uncompensated time to verify Paypal accounts for every Dakka user. Similar arguments apply to the driver's license idea, for that matter.)

While it'd be great to put additional restrictions, as Janthkin said, it's unenforceable.

Even with paypal verification (which would require code-wrangling that I highly suspect would not cause enough site-wide benefits to be considered seriously for Legoburner), it's not 100% guaranteed and will only help you if you're dealing with payments through paypal. Paypal can't help you if your trade was a swap that has no interaction with the Paypal system.

As Janthkin says, it mostly comes to user discretion to be safest and avoid issues. Avoid people who clearly post as if they were younger (lack of grammar and incomplete sentences are usually big tip-offs). Getting secondary contact info is crucial: Get phone numbers, outside emails, mailing addresses when possible. Save PMs/emails. All these will help in the unfortunate case of a deal gone sour. Personally, I don't consider trading with anyone who has less than 100 posts or whose posting history is sporadic at best.

How do they police things on other boards like Bartertown?

They police things on Bartertown by being a site exclusively directed at trading and having all the moderators/enforcers moderating trades.

Dakka is decidedly not like Bartertown. While we'll try to help as much as we can (which I'd like to stress we don't really have much enforcement power), we don't have nearly the same amount of safeguards in place as Bartertown or RogueMarket in the Swap Shop.