After reading “Suggestion for an additional forum” it gave me an idea, what about having one that is “Kits For Sale”. Fellow modelers would have a chance to sale items and also purchase other’s not wanted kits.
I’m also a member of Radio Controlled website that has “For Sale” section. This allowed me to sale and purchase items and it’s always exciting to see what others have.
FSM sells ad space on their forum to modeling sites. They wont put a forsale section up before it would take buisness away from the people that buy the ad space
We do like to avoid discouraging or angering advertisers. (Who wouldn’t?) But that is not the reason we don’t have a buy/sell/swap section.
In fact, we try to avoid the appearance of endorsing or favoring one product over another. So if we get a big fancy sample from a manufacturer and the person building it for review notes a difficulty, you will read about that difficulty. Or, more likely, if the reviewer thinks it great, we will publish that viewpoint as well. In either case, what we say is for modeling reasons – not business. If people thought we were forming our opinions based on the size or frequency of the advertising account, our credibility would be shot.
Along the same lines, we like to stay out of readers’ business transactions. Our Forum has nearly 40,000 readers, yet we have very little trouble out of it. Not having to police business transactions goes a long way toward keeping it that way!
Rather, our business is writing and editing stories that are about modeling, models, and modelers. If it’s clear, provides you with good techniques and new ideas, and makes you want to build another model, we’re doing it right.
I agree with Mark, I am an active member of multiple modeling forums, all of which (except this one) have a buy/sell/trade forum. I even moderated the BST forum on one site for half a decade. I think all of the modeling forums had a spur of bad transactions at one time or another. While on occasion it was an honest misunderstanding between the traders or buyer/seller, the vast majority of the time it was one trying to cheat the other or at the very least, one who was a very lazy trader and thought nothing about waiting 1-2 months before mailing off their part of the bargin.
When deals go bad, the first thing the wronged party does is contact the webmaster, site owner or forum moderator and demands some sort of action be done to the offender. As if one of the staff here could force anyone to make good on a deal. Eventually, a bad trader post is made, the offender posts his rebuttal, forum members chose sides, accusations are made, feelings hurt, flame wars erupt, member leave, etc.
There are plenty of other places to trade kits without bringing those issues here.