Role of SRP BST discussion thread cont.

[Tony Miller]

As a vendor, if I'm not allowed to post in BST, or Traveller isn't allowed... Where would we be allowed to post or sell?

I can and do list razors on my site, but if I want to sell a razor from my personal collection, and would like to get it to a newbie, or someone who would appreciate the razor, BST is better than a random buyer on my site. When I list here, I always list at a lower price... and I try to give something extra here.

My thougt on this is when I m selling from my business, strops, sets, etc.... I make mention in the Vendors section. A few times a year when I thin out personal razors I use B/S/T as these are not related to my business and would be the same as any member here offering goods. If you are elling your own stuff, I think B/S/T is fine. If buying a dozen Wapis to rescale them maybe the Vendor section.

Post in the regular forums are more of an issue. If asked a question about my products I will freely answer about what we make, how to use it, details, etc..... I will not quote prices, provide links or solicit a sale there though. I would have no issue with any vendor doing the same....providing info to an asked question and without soliciting a sale.
I will draw the line though on the ones where someone say "where can I buy a starter set, strops, razors, etc..... If someone says "hey, go visit Tony" that great. I will not jump in and say "I sell those check out my website" but some vendors will. At that point, full time of part time one becomes a vendor, not a helpful hobbyist. This is not my full time business either, I have a day job and my business is simply a sideline but I choose to operate the same as Classic or Vintage, etc.....

Mike, you seem to always follow the rules and set a good example, no worries.

Tony

[Utopian]

I was the one who initially mentioned Gary (Traveler) in this thread. I just want to reiterate that, though I used him as an example of someone who sells more than the "occasional" razor, I in no way meant to imply that I found anything wrong with him doing so.
To the contrary, I was trying to use him as an example of someone who sells more but has earned the right to do so. He sells amazing and unique razors and he contributes to this forum both by those sales AND by his participation in other discussions. I value his posts and I always closely study his BST sales even though they are out of my price range. He raises the bar for the rest of us.

[Don]

Guys like I said somewhere in hear We have beat to death what the BST needs to be. I also Said we are looking at different alternatives for the frequent sellers that do not have a web page but really are selling like a vendor. We are also looking at making the Vendor section more usable for our Vendors
Will everyone be happy no but were shooting to try.
So if we could let this one go till we get are work done then we can go from their.

[The Topher]

Guys like I said somewhere in hear We have beat to death what the BST needs to be. I also Said we are looking at different alternatives for the frequent sellers that do not have a web page but really are selling like a vendor. We are also looking at making the Vendor section more usable for our Vendors
Will everyone be happy no but were shooting to try.
So if we could let this one go till we get are work done then we can go from their.

Well then I guess I won't way in since I have made my feelings known in the past except to say that I have seen the quality of resto's go up immeasurably since I came here 6 months ago right before the cut off date for the crash. Part of the reason I think for that is that some people like myself have been able to build their skill and pass on their work to upgrade their equipment and buy new razors to work on using this forum. Now I am so swamped that nothing has even made it to BST in ages. Yet there are those who are just making money and not helping or advancing technique or knowledge. Often they are not even providing reasonable sharp newby razors. This is a detriment. I have no good ideas as to how to keep the first part with out having the second part that has not already been mentioned. All I would say is that if you do something that damages our ability to to advance our skills and the quality of restos then you would lose things like my polishing techniques or gssxgun's tumbler, the adjustable pins, the epoxy resin and carbon fiber scales, and the new rash of people trying to make their own razors that I think is comming. The razors from this development must go somewhere and it takes alot of practice to get that right. Just be careful how you limit things cause you might stunt the development of some very skilled people here.

Wait... Actually i did think of something. I had a forum where the off topic forum didn't add to the post count. Make BST not count and we will see who helps the community or not.

[syslight]

.... lots of really good things snipped out here...

Wait... Actually i did think of something. I had a forum where the off topic forum didn't add to the post count. Make BST not count and we will see who helps the community or not.

i like that idea and do the same for the off topic areas!

[Mike_ratliff]

Wait... Actually i did think of something. I had a forum where the off topic forum didn't add to the post count. Make BST not count and we will see who helps the community or not.

i like that idea and do the same for the off topic areas!

Wow... +1
even if another solution is chosen, this is IMHO beneficial to the community as a whole. and I must say the casino encourages people to post garbage in order to get more poker chips...

[Jimbo]

Well, it's an idea. But if post count means that much to people, you'll just see a shift into the forums that "count" so that anything interesting gets obscured by noise.

Contributing to the community can take on many forms, not all of which involve restoration. I've made a lot of good friends in the off topic area, and learned a lot about my fellow forum members there too. I worry about this type of thinking - it is reflective of an elitist attitude and can lead to the creation of "classes" of members, specifically to elitist groups.

James.

[The Topher]

I wasn't suggesting going after the off topic areas for post count as that used to annoy me too but the problem as I see it is this... people are getting annoyed that other people are flooding BST with razors that do not have any or do not have sufficient value added to them after they were purchased to justify the pricing making the bst into an over valued ebay(if that is even possible). Another issue is that some people only post here in bst with a few exceptions. I can think of a few people who have anywhere from 25 posts to 150 posts and all of them are in bst. Then again I can think of a few buyers who only buy things in bst and never post elsewhere. If posts did not count in bst then these people would have 0 or only a handful of posts making them instantly obvious to everyone and weeding them out. If they start posting in other areas then maybe we could get some other participation from them and this enriches the community. You can only post so much "noise."

The problem here is that we are gentleman for the most part. This means that we don't like to be the one to call out that something is junk or someone is abusing things. Even now I could name names of people who I think abuse stuff but I don't out of respect and a desire to avoid unpleasantness. So either we need to appoint someone to do that which makes things unpleasant (not my first choice) or we need to find ways to let the market work things out. I am a capitalist and think that with the right incentives and a little accountability things will work out.

I enjoy things as they are since i know what is nice and what is not which is why when I am not to busy I try to post when something is good so the members who don't know can get an idea. And yet I have 5-10 rare, large, or beautiful sheffield razors in full polish (at my obsessive level of polish) that I am trying to custom scale that I will sell in a month or so and I am doing this because I want to show off, get my scale technique worked out, pay for some new stuff like a belt grinder, and provide the best razor I can to the community that I think would like to get what I do. I am no vendor. I don't even make very many of those kits. I am a financial consultant by trade and will remain so. So I will do my best to respect the bst as I have always done. I would hate to think that I would need to take the work I do somewhere else because some people ruined things here. Let the market work things out.

[Justme-]

Well, it's an idea. But if post count means that much to people, you'll just see a shift into the forums that "count" so that anything interesting gets obscured by noise.

Contributing to the community can take on many forms, not all of which involve restoration. I've made a lot of good friends in the off topic area, and learned a lot about my fellow forum members there too. I worry about this type of thinking - it is reflective of an elitist attitude and can lead to the creation of "classes" of members, specifically to elitist groups.

James.

Ok, my turn.... I missed the initial thread and just did a LOT of reading...
If there is a shift into forums that "count" you'll see the community policing Spam comments there (the noise postings). It will not be an issue because the post count posters will either learn and become more of the community by habbit or be flushed out of the community because they are not here for the community in the first place. I was a member of another large board where we had issues relating to post counts- they solved the issue by not counting off topic posting- the only people who complained were the ones who rarely posted in the on topic forums and were not adding anything to the community but were rather detracting from it because they increased bandwidth and site expenses. The eventual solution was 2 separate post counts for each user- an off topic and an on topic- an easy to add plugin for Vbulletin.

There's nothing wrong with an off topic area (I used to oppose them absolutely by definition), but that is not why you are here, or why any of us are here- it's iceing on the cake, so to speak.

I have no issue with what razors cost- increasing costs are a fact of life in everything. My complaint is that a user flaunts a purchase and then immediately wants to sell it in the bst at a markup AND is in such a hurry as to continue to comment the item has a time limit and will be going to another venue, which we, as gentleman should not do. It is rude to me, and insensitive to the spirit of what we want to do here. I have no issue with a user aquiring a few razors from a local shop and passing some of them on through the BST in AS IS condition (that stipulation being stated in a listing- which is only good manners and an understanding of honest 'business practices')


Syslight commented on an interpretation of gentlemanly conduct as basically the old adage 'if you have nothing good to say say nothing'. Unfortunately while this may apply in some situations, it can't in all and is not a closed definition of gentlemanly conduct, especially when we are all looking out for the new shavers who are the most vulnerable through ignorance. It also cannot prohibit an experienced or educated user from correcting another user who is incorrect....

You have to look at other forums with large user bases and see how they are governed for guidelines. Granted we do things our way on this forum, but while B&B has been ridiculed for it, their BST rules work just fine for them, they have been discussed there many times and explained to all members. I think their reasoning is very sound. All gatherings at some point become too big for no rules- we will eventually as well, be it now, or next year. Something will have to be done because respect and courtesy only go so far, once they have given way you have anarchy in all societies- on line or in the real world. The issue of the mods imposing rules has now surfaced at least 3 times in as many months on subjects.....

Utopian expressed he thought a post count alone would not solve the issue- which is true. It will not. That is why other forums have post count minimums AND registered time minimums (1 month, 2 months, etc). This allows some to learn before selling and contribute to the forum before selling to avoid spammers and those who exploit the BST forums.

(a side note- the thank you system to ME is a way to eliminate unnecessary posts in a thread. When another user has said exactly what you would have said, instead of a +1 post, a thank you suffices. Post count is more of a popularity thing to many, especially those who live only in the off topic sections of a forum, which is why they tend to get so upset when their post's don't count.)

I'm also deeply disturbed to see several users, newbs, in the original thread complaining that the comments in that thread convinced them not to sell things or not likely to post. That disturbs me because it shows they are not learning about our community and our community standards, or... Maybe they're too new, maybe they are easily offended as so many are in our padded worlds, or maybe they want to oppose the "standard" and just chose that (our collective fear of that was expressed in the thread) as their argument.....or maybe they simply have no concept or respect for the thoughts and rights of the community that they wish to join.

There is no way all users can know that a given user is only posting in off topic threads and the BST, and that poses a a problem for newer users by decreasing the safety of our BST, as well as bending the definition of vendor and user. The forums that have rules always have some members that are grandfathered.... there is no reason members mentioned (like Old_school, Traveller, etc) can't be grandfathered if such rules are implemented.

To me it boils down to basically this- if you are an active member of the community you are not just reading, but posting. I read only for a month or two before I started posting because there was so much to learn, but I find it really hard to swallow one feels the sense of belonging to any community if they are strictly an outsider and never post or speak.
I think the mods should discount the off topic posts- for example, you are not a member of a snowplowing community if all you do is post in the computer help off topic section (that I know some of you will question what place a computer help section has on a snowplowing forum gives me hope), no matter how polite, how generous, how knowledgeable, or how enthusiastic you may be- if you're not on a forum because of the forum topic..... It makes it very difficult to correct wrong information someone has learned in the inappropriate place because they trust those they know, no matter how wrong that person may have been.

I don't think so much this is an issue of a vendor versus a user which has been covered very well IMHO, but a case of perception.... perception that a user is taking advantage of our community.

[Don]

Folks there as been plenty of great feedback here and we thank you we are starting to work on the best solution for all know. With that said I am closing this thread for us to use as a reference.
Thanks again for all your feedback