Tilted Trading?
 

This is a forum on my main message board that I post at and it has become quite popular with members trading/selling/seeking items off of one another. Would there be any interest in that?

I dunno, but I've got this time machine I've been wanting to get rid of.

I'll give you $10 for it and thus officially open the trading forum.

I think this is a great idea, many times the idea of trading books and videos has been debated but nothing has been concreted, this could be the way.

I could use an iron man suit. $7.57?

Bah, Iron Man Suit. I'll take the Green Lantern Ring for $12.95

Been suggested several times at least, most recently: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=83386

We're really not interested in acting as an arbitrator in troubled transactions, nor do we wish to serve the function of PayPal. It will happen. For this, and a few other reasons, this idea has been torpedoed, and sunk, a few other times in the past.

Not sure why you're against it, really. It works quite well on another forum and there has only been one case of a douchebag in almost 5 years of the Trading Board's existence. Not to mention that the demographic here is a bit older, so I'd expect less transaction problems than on a predominantly teenage-early 20's board. Money orders, cash and PayPal are all actively used and there have been many successful $200+ transactions.

Most forums are either regionally specific or catagorically specific, or both. TFP is neither. Either or both of those lend themselves better to a trading forum, out of neccessity (you either are in the same area and can trade in person, or you are trading rare community-specific commodities.)

In the first case, it's mostly cash transactions, in the second case, the risk is mitigated by the necessity of a small community spread thin---where else are you going to find the vintage 1964 Wing Wang Widget that you need to complete your collection for sale at a reasonable price? Or a hard-to-find part to replace the one your broke in your transmorgrifier?

However, TFP is only tied together by...well...TFP. What would distinguish a Tilted trading forum from a gimped version of ebay/ubid/amazon/etc? If I have a lot of something, I'm going to list it for sale on a topically specific forum. If I'm looking for something specific, I'll go to that item's specific forums (or ebay/craigslist).

Even leaving moral considerations asside, I predict Tilted Thrift Store would just turn into a forum with many threads with 0 replies except the original posters's Bumps. There are already many ways to buy and sell things on the internet, I don't see any reason to add another one.

The same reason why there is a Tilted Sexuality, Tilted Motors, Titty Board, Tilted Paranoia, Tilted Living, Tilted Politics, etc. Convenience. TFP is all about establishing community, right? I mean, anybody here could go to a topic specific forum for any of the questions they might have, so what keeps people posting here? Community does. I can't speak for myself, but I'd much rather buy something off of a person who has established him or herself as a valued member of TFP and who is respected by others than somebody random on Craigslist or eBay.

If that's the sole reason, why don't people just put their ebay usernames in their profiles here. That way y'all can find each other, and the established site takes care of the transaction and the details.

The thing I still don't quite get is why would TFP hold any responsibility for transactions gone bad. A simple disclaimer stating that they're not responsible for blah and blah would free them from any legal obligations if that's what they're afraid of. As far as I know people in this forum can write and read so I'm assuming they can work out a deal on how to pay and whatnot between themselves. As for knowing if the deal was successful, there are many vB mods that allow you to rate members after a transaction.

It just creates a whole new set of legal boundries that we would have to instill. There are already so many sites out there that handle this sort of thing. Uber has a great suggestion. Post your eBay or yahoo handles here and then you can buy from TFP members with everything already in place. TFP is a discussion community that is dedicated to the evolution of the human interface via an artificial interface and imho, trading doesn't really suit that cause.

M'kay.