people that post gear for sale.

[castman]

I have been seeing a lot of first post on the gear for sale part of the website. I was thinking that we should have some way of knowing who the people are. So people here at DPS don't get stuck with junk. Tell me what you think?

[OsmosisStudios]

What do you mean? Your concept is not clear.

[kirbinster]

I think the suggestion is that people need to have a certain number of posts in order to be able to sell gear. On Nikoncafe.com you don't even get to see the buy/sell section until you have something like 200 or 500 posts. That helps give "some" sense of trust that it is not a fly-by-nighter.

[gturner]

I get your point, but Bernie Madoff used your method to great effect.

I think if you use common sense and safety nets (paypal etc) you can trade not that differently to e-bay or craigslist

[castman]

I think there should be some way we knowing the people we are buying stuff from. Not just Hi I am new here and i want to sell my camera to you.

[Dennismc]

There are Plus and Minuses to that, on one hand, it does make it safer for the buyer mentally, but then also becomes a little closed knit group.

On the other hand if you buy from ebay or craigslist you dont know the person either, (feedback can be forged)

Common sense comes into play to take care of the rest, ask for pics, lots of details etc. A phone number call and talk to the person. If they are unwilling to do that, its usually a red flag..

Only use Paypal and pay with credit card. That should protect you in case of fraud.

[castman]

I have not had a problem buying from people. I always look to see how many post they have and I have been seeing alot of new people selling.

[Sime]

Bottom line is... If you're not meeting the person in question with cash and the goods - there is always chance of being stitched up.

dPS takes no responsibility for the gear sold through here and as such I'm loathed to attempt to set up a system that verifies people (That means I vouch for them, if you know what I mean...)

Common sense and paypal... It's your semi - most safe bet.

[Rehesan]

I understand what you said. I run and administer a Volkswagen cars enthusiast forum in México, and we face all the time guys like you describe: new users that try to sell stuff in their first thread-post.

What we´ve done and we got a good results so far is to restrict the use of classifieds section only to those members that meets this criteria: been registered for more than 3 months, has at least 100 posts and had attend at least two forum meetings (gatherings), and also to be an active member in the forum, that is a subjective requirement that is evaluated by the staff.

Eventhough we have all those rules, all the new threads the users start in the classified section, are subject to inspection by the staff and should be approved. That means an extra work for the staff but the result worth it, because we have successfully avoid the abuse of the classified sections and at the same time we avoid those new and unkwon users that register only to adverstise their stuff.

Maybe the case is different for DPS, because I can see here the people are more interested on using the forum as a forum should be: to share information about an specific topic, in this case the photography; but I would suggest to the administration to restrict the classifieds sections only for those who meet certain criteria.

And above of all this, I think the key is to use the common sense when buy something from a person that you do not know, over internet or over any other classifieds board: craiglist, pennysaver, newspaper, etc.

My two cents.