http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?7-Marketplace

This issue comes up from time to time but the site owner does not want members to trade on his forum.
VOGONS is no marketplace!
I for one can fully understand his reasoning.

Free giveaways are still possible and if you have a cool project going on, selling your own designs seems to be tolerated but vintage hardware has to be traded elsewhere.

I hope this helps you understand why there is no trading section. 👍

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-26, 14:59:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?7-Marketplace

Good luck ever getting any posts to show up on vcfed unless you are already established there. The mods apparently don't really monitor stuff there very well as when I signed up there and tried to post a few different times my posts never showed up.

If you don't mind trying to post there for a while and not have posts show up until a mod gets around to approving your posts a bunch of times then yeah, it should be ok once you get enough posts to not have to have your posts approved by a mod before they show up.

that forum is incredibly hard to look at and information in most sales threads seems very sparse too, doesn't even have location most of the time... amibay is a lot better in that regard.

so far I've been sticking to ebay and local classifieds, amibay is a nice site but prices are often just too high.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-04-26, 15:17:

Good luck ever getting any posts to show up on vcfed unless you are already established there.

That's the whole point. Easiest way for a forum with a marketplace to protect them and others from fraud is by not allowing newbies to just post there.

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-26, 15:58:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-04-26, 15:17:

Good luck ever getting any posts to show up on vcfed unless you are already established there.

That's the whole point. Easiest way for a forum with a marketplace to protect them and others from fraud is by not allowing newbies to just post there.

Right, but when you have to wait 4-5 days or longer for a post to show up IF it ever shows up then it is pretty pointless to even bother posting there in the first place.

Well, if you can't wait a few days for a wanted/sell thread to appear, I guess ebay buy-it-now is better for you anyway. But to each his own.

I knew that there was no marketplace at Vogons, but is it true that you can give away items (for the cost of shipping)? I was under the impression that this was forbidden too.

boxpressed wrote on 2020-04-26, 16:22:

I knew that there was no marketplace at Vogons, but is it true that you can give away items (for the cost of shipping)? I was under the impression that this was forbidden too.

Old hardware giveaway thread.

I think forums are great for keeping scammers away. You need to sign up and follow the forum rules. It is too much of a hassle for a dumb scammer to go through all that many steps. Also ebay is good as it gives a very wide exposure, the commissions are a little high though.
In my opinion, if you put an ad on forums, ebay and local sites, and nobody buys or even tries to negotiate with you then the price you're asking is too high.

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-04-26, 17:53:

I think forums are great for keeping scammers away. You need to sign up and follow the forum rules. It is too much of a hassle for a dumb scammer to go through all that many steps. Also ebay is good as it gives a very wide exposure, the commissions are a little high though.
In my opinion, if you put an ad on forums, ebay and local sites, and nobody buys or even tries to negotiate with you then the price you're asking is too high.

Except you'd be wrong. There was a thread a while ago featuring retro ebay finds. I don't know the full story, but at least one member used it to monetize referrals. At that point, the mods rightly brought the experiment to a close, but the guy kept trolling from strawman accounts for a while before he was gone for good.
Re: Ebay thread goodbye thread

If you choose to have trading in the forum, you either have to go in the direction of VCF with a high moderation bar for sales posts or accept distrust in the transactions with an associated corrosive effect on the community. Snover and the rest of the mods decided they didn't want the hassle and I can definitely see why.

Um...what? I don't understand how I'm being wrong. He was banned from the forum being he was dishonest. Thus confirming what I said: "I think forums are great for keeping scammers away". 😀

Although, even if he was monetizing from the referral links or trolling from different accounts (I red his post) it wouldn't make him a scammer-scammer. Sure, not someone to be trusted, but still, he wouldn't just get your money and run away kind-of-scam. I think the forum staff made a wise decision here. Vogons is only for information, not trading, and for a reason.

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-04-26, 21:42:

Um...what? I don't understand how I'm being wrong. He was banned from the forum being he was dishonest. Thus confirming what I said: "I think forums are great for keeping scammers away". 😀

Forgive me if I misunderstood what you meant, but my point in a nutshell is that the forum didn't keep him out nor did it keep him from behaving dishonestly. I understand VCF has a fairly high barrier to selling which makes scamming very time consuming to pull off, but it might also create division in the forum and would definitely require mods to police the market.

I suspect moderating is already a fairly thankless task. Having to arbitrate rules of an online market as a hobby would be really nasty.

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-26, 16:07:

Well, if you can't wait a few days for a wanted/sell thread to appear, I guess ebay buy-it-now is better for you anyway. But to each his own.

Nothing about wanted/sell thread. I was trying to ask questions about different stuff. For new users it doesn't matter what the post is about. It has to go through a moderator first whenever they feel like getting around to it.

So:
1. Post question
2. Wait forever for post to show up IF it ever shows up in the first place.
3. Reply.
4. Repeat 2 & 3 until post count is high enough in order to be able to actually participate in any meaningful way.

See how that is very annoying? And if I did that, then I might as well have just asked the question elsewhere.