This ultimately boils down to: we don’t want to deal with the bullshit that exists from the shade of sales. Remember that situation with a previous member who switched out a psa card? This was a constant 2 week process. We had to call psa numerous times. We had to basically act as the poke police, for something that didn’t involve any of the staff. While this one was not from the sales era, this was a public example of the private experiences we regularly dealt with during the sales era.
Here are some scenario’s I can remember off the top of my head when selling existed: People outright scamming, switching psa cards, committing fraud with psa, selling cards they didn’t own, knowingly lying about condition, lying about sales prices on a partner deal, receiving money and never shipping, using multiple accounts to scam, shill bidding, libel, threatening pm’s. No person should have to deal with any of this bullshit, and this is why sales don’t exist here.
Probably the exception. PokeBeach isn’t primarily a forum. They’re a news site. And they’ve invested in what they do best and grown tremendously in that regard. They’re the go-to site for new Pokemon news. Maybe the forum died but that wasn’t their focus. Evaluating success by terms that aren’t relevant to the website’s primarily goals seems like a waste of time.
Likewise, I’m comfortable saying we lost some members and didn’t succeed as a sales site. But that isn’t our goal and would be silly criteria. In terms of what we want for the site, we’re wildly successful and will continue to be.
Why does Amazom do well? Because you can go there and get everything.
Why is Wal-mart busy? One stop to buy lawn mowers and food.
This decision will always be yours to control. I realize you see the negatives of selling and your desire to curtail them. What I want is for you realize there is no simple decision. Every decision comes with good and bad, no matter what you decide. I am trying to inform on some of the positives of selling. You may not change your mind, but at least I tried.
I understand that “joy”. I had a member who argued because a shipment was sent with Confirmation of Delivery and not with a Signature Required. How could we prove he got the shipment, when he says he didn’t.
Jon has expended an ungodly amount of time to grow the forums. There are members of staff who worked tirelessly to grow the forums. If you are not trying to grow the forums, than why suffer the expense of keeping them?
I like that this place is only about discussion on pokemon and pokemon product. It’s why I stuck around ever since I came here. I come here to read about news and research (and the collection showoffs too lol). I would not want to get spammed with sales threads/aggressive sellers pm’ing people with deals and what not.
Nothing crazy, just minor annoyances. I generally just view the forum using the New Topics option and I hate having 5-7 threads I have to skip past. I especially hate the ones that have been bumped to hell because the person is looking for items that people don’t have/aren’t selling, or when people have 5 pages in their thread and their goals have changed throughout so I have no clue where to look for their current goals (just make a new thread already), and most buy threads are people asking for below market value or has a second post of “put how much you’re willing to pay”.
For the record I hate the TGAT as well, it’s gotten a lot better now that people tend not to post auctions on them, but it’s a thread that I’ve found only benefits non members by giving them a sales boost. It’s cool when we see discussion of rare items, but most of it is bs that I can find on my own that doesn’t contribute to any discussion (I think it would be better if we were only allowed to post closed listings, but I doubt that happens).
Overall, I use this forum for discussion and I find those threads don’t contribute to it. Pretty much the oposite opinion of @omahanime where I’d rather see a specialty store vs a walmart.
I should have thought of this earlier, The easiest way to summarize the problem with sales: ebay garbage. Those ebay garbage type of listings and behavior would be here overnight with sales.
Instead of spending time thoughtfully responding to your objection to how the site is being run, how would you like for the administration to handle it?
Here’s the thing about being an administrator here:
We run a community based around discussion. As such, everyone comes to feel that their strong opinions are welcome and they’re right: we absolutely welcome everyone’s strong opinions. But as soon as those opinions become about the site itself, the administration gets stuck between a rock and a hard place.
-If we agree, it’s favoritism toward those we agree with.
-If we disagree, we’re ganging up on people.
-If we ignore it, we are callous and don’t care.
-If we say “We will consider it,” but it never happens, people become discouraged from making recommendations in the future.
Aside from people learning to be inherently grateful that we respond at all, there is literally nothing we can do to please the community. If you are so fragile that you feel personally victimized by people disagreeing with your opinion about a site feature (one with expressed and demonstrated negative consequences, no less), E4 probably isn’t for you. Because we allow everyone to voice their opinions. Not just one person. And not to the blanket exclusion of the administration.
Ultimately, we’ve had to pick a path when it comes to recommendations and responses. We’ve opted to become the bad guys and openly and publicly entertain recommendations so that people know that we are or have thoughfully considered them. But for some people, that’s damning. So be it.
