trevobegeman_0 And poniesandpetals *Updated*

[NightGliderSA]

Glad you got your pony in the end - what a nightmare!

I have seen poniesandpetals, but I did not know that they were a seller to be wary of, thank you for the information! I was VERY tempted by that blue glow n show - interesting that the buyer was not happy.

[Taffeta]

The talk about a good traders list I think I have the same reservations about as LBS...the risk is you omit people who you might not personally know - and also it's not unknown for someone with a good reputation to go bad. Then the Arena might end up endorsing someone and a buyer might do fewer checks  because the Arena says that this person is good.

We have a system of feedback on the Arena which really doesn't care how long you have been in the community, although I have to admit I know of at least one user (not on here now hence why I'm not naming them, still on ebay but no recent negative feedback) who have positive Arena feedback and who have done unspeakable trading things to people they've dealt with in the past. Those experiences have not been documented because people were generally too frightened to leave honest feedback because of the cliques surrounding them. You'd only know about them if you remembered it happening, or were a victim, as opposed to just being able to trust feedback. It is very possible if you have a popular reputation platform to intimidate people into not owning up about their experiences, and a good trader list on the Arena could help to reinforce that popular reputation.

 On the flipside of that, some people first come online and make mistakes but later actually do become good traders. I have memory of people like that, too - people who do occasionally still sell here now, with 100% good feedback, who have been hounded out of the community in the past for certain actions. Again, that's the result of a long memory (and an active involvement back then in policing scammers on mailing lists, as we mostly did at that time), but people aren't always just 'good' or 'bad'. Some are consistently both, but it's a very grey area and as we've seen with some situations, some people have a better experience with the same seller than others. That makes 'good' and 'bad' subjective. It's easier to describe the facts of a bad transaction that leads to loss of money/damaged pony/etc than it is to just offer opinions.

In the old days, if a person was new, there was the active request for references that would go out, usually by asking for three or four email addresses of people who could endorse that person, but again obviously that system was also open to abuse from people supporting their friends and such like.

I think it's better to have the bad trader list only, and encourage instead buyers to do research on their seller before buying (whether here or on ebay or etsy or wherever). It's never a foolproof system, but at least if you do your homework, you've a better chance of finding out.

I don't object either to having somewhere on the site an option to list my ebay id. Ebay no longer shows IDs in bidding competitions and so it's not like the old days, when someone could use your id and stalk the auctions you were bidding on just to outbid you. So that might be an option - but I don't think it's generally for the Arena to have a list of good traders  now that the community is so big.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

We used to have the Pony Pledge list.... that was a list of trustworthy sellers   I can try to see what is left of it using Wayback Machine or some such...

[LadyMoondancer]

I have reservations about a Good Traders List too.  Primarily that a lot of bad traders have, like, 90% good trades, 10% scams / bad trades.  That makes it difficult to actually know who to put on a good trader list. Because maybe I had a great transaction with a seller and would wholeheartedly put them on a good trader list . . . while being unaware that they'd been a horrible seller to someone else.

[Carrehz]

-nod- I'd be wary about a "good seller" list, too. It's all too possible for a good seller to go bad, unfortunately, and if that happened then there'd be every chance of someone getting scammed by them and then holding the list responsible because "it said they were a good seller!!".

[Taffeta]

Well, it just reminded me as well of the Baby Bouncy fiasco, whose actual MO was to do three or four good trades with well-known people who could give her reputable references, and then on the fifth try she'd scam and not send her half of the trade. If she didn't keep the scammed pony, she'd later sell the pony on ebay or trade it to someone else to build references again so that she could continue using this method to get rare ponies.

I lost a Baby Candy to her once. I have only ever been scammed twice in 20 years and the other time was a personal spite attack rather than a proper scammer out to get everyone. I consider people like that Baby Bouncy probably still exist, and we'd be opening ourselves up to them if we assumed good trader is always good.

You're only as good as your last transaction, and anyone who values their trade or sale reputation should feel that way, because you have to go the extra mile with every transaction, not just the ones you need to get on a good trader list.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Yeah I really don't believe that our oldest MLP scammers have actually gone away.  People like Sayuri and Lexi, I am certain they are still out there, just it's so much harder to track info with the advent of social media vs privacy.

So yeah... one always has to look at feedback and make that decision personally for what THEY are comfortable with!