Subject:
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Re: Can we define flogging?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.terms
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Date:
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Fri, 17 Mar 2000 03:09:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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3640 times
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> In lugnet.admin.terms, Mike Stanley writes:
> > > The distinction between auctions and regular sales is bigger and clearer
> > > than the distinction between regular sales and other • quasi-market-related
> > > things --
> >
> > Really? Not in my opinion.
> >
> > Auction: Seller is selling something to the highest bidder.
> > Sale: Seller is selling something for a set price to the first (?)
> > person willing to pay the price.
> >
> > Yeah, auctions are different from sales, in execution. But the result
> > is the same - the item is sold by one person to another person.
>
> Rephrased statement: There are many more types and classes of non-auction
> market transactions than there are types and classes of auction • transactions.
>
>
> > I see the distinction between "I have ___ to sell - here's what I'll
> > take for it" and "hey, TRU has this set people are looking for - I'll
> > sell them for cost plus whatever" as being MUCH clearer than the
> > difference between someone selling or auctioning something.
>
> Heh heh! And how do you define that "plus whatever" part? :-) "Hey, TRU
> has this set people are looking for -- I'll sell them for cost plus • whatever
> other goodies and/or offers people would be willing to make in place of • cash.
> Oh, and BTW, I'm desperately seeking old Castle sets #xxx and #yyy, if you
> have that to trade."
From a market perspective, these types of posts probably belong in
buy-sell-trade. I think it is reasonable to ask in shopping "could someone
pick this up for me." Of course Tom Stangl's posts saying he's willing to
buy x-and-so and sell to people at cost in exchange for future return favor
seem like they should be in shopping, but it could be argued that they
should be in buy-sell-trade.
> I'm feeling a lot of agreement with Frank's sentiment (and yours too, I • think).
> As time goes on, it seems that people are having a more and more difficult
> time remembering the difference between auction and non-auction w.r.t. the
> LTUA. I do believe that if the LTUA explicitly disallowed non-auction • flogs
> as well as auction-flogs outside of the market area, the total amount of
> confusion and unhappiness could be lowered.
Part of this is the way the rules are written of course, but there still is
the problem of why auctions get special treatment. Resolving that issue will
go a long ways towards greater harmony.
> Right now, when someone posts a misplaced auction flog, there are two • aspects
> open to debate: (1) Is it or is it not a flog? and (2) Is it or is it not • an
> auction? If the LTUA were changed to disallow all types of market flogs, • then
> this would reduce to only one aspect open to debate -- the first one.
>
> The challenge would be (and let's open this up to suggestions) to define
> flogging.
Well, we can use a simple rule of "any market type post is a flog unless you
can defend it". A well written "here's something of historical note which
just happens to be an auction and I couldn't get permission from the seller
to copy his pictures so I need to reference the auction to discuss this" is
a self defending. Other than Larry's two instances of pointers to auctions
of his which were attempts at an acceptable pointer to an auction outside
lugnet.market.auction, has there been any other borderline cases which have
actually raised discussion?
> We'd first want to limit any type of annoying buy-sell-trade flog (we all • know
> these when we see them! but they're hard to define) to the .market.* • subtree,
> and additionally as a subset, to limit any type of auction flog to
> .market.auction only.
Of course this still keeps the "what is an auction" question open, but I
think there can be more wiggle room in lugnet.market...
> Finally, without diminshing the foregoing restrictions, an exception to • these
> two rules must allowed in the case of private organizations with mailing • lists
> hosted at LUGNET under an .org portion of the ng tree. These organizations
> must be able to set and enforce their own rules w.r.t. flogs -- allowing
> auctions and other market flogs if they so choose.
Well, the T&C suggest that a group charter can override specific rules.
Perhaps this just needs to be formalized a bit more.
Overall, I think we need to take a step back, and rather than trying to fix
the rules in a reactionary way, re-visit Lugnet's mission and vision, and
work out what the market policies should be from there. In that vein, I'm
going to take a stab at Lugnet's mission (I know Todd has it somewhere, but
sometimes it's good to see what a consumer sees the mission as being [and
I'm sure I'm mixing things, I've gone through a mission/vision process once,
but don't remember it all]).
Lugnet's mission is to provide an on-line community for fans of The LEGO
Corporation's building toys. Lugnet will accomplish this in part by
providing forums for focused discussions of various aspects of the hobby.
Some of the most important aspects are:
- enabling fans to get together in real life
- enabling fans to share their latest creations and ask for ideas
- enabling fans to help each other expand their collections
- enabling the distribution of historical information and set data
Somewhat outside the scope of the mission and vision are some of the issues
relating to how forums are used. Lugnet is in part a reaction to the way RTL
grew. One of the problems observed with RTL was that the volume of market
traffic started to drown out the rest of the traffic. To this extent, Lugnet
has provided specific forums for auctioning, buying, selling, and trading.
Additionally, the organization of the market area attempts to provide a
spectrum of groups which allow a fan to chose how much market interaction
they want. To this extent, several main groups seem to be of interest:
shopping - this group is a place where people can announce places you can go
(either in person or on-line) purchase LEGO sets and parts without hassling
with bargaining, or discovering that someone got there first and bought the
three items which were for sale.
buy-sell-trade - this group is a place where people can share offers to buy,
sell, and trade. Negotiation may be part of the deal. Also, in general, the
quantity is very limited.
auction - this group is a place to announce and conduct auctions. Auctions
tend to require more involvement of both parties since the buyer will want
to respond to counter bids.
discussion - this group is a place to discuss topics related to market
transactions. No actual business is conducted (though people will
occasionally get pointed to some resource to buy, sell, or trade, but that
is a side effect of the discussion).
Another way to look at the issue is timeliness of the information, and
ability to find the information and sift through it. This suggests a
slightly different arrangement:
hot-deals - a place to announce that some store has a big sale this week.
This information is very time dependant, and not easy to find
shopping-tips - a place to discuss shopping strategies. This information is
very time independent.
auction.eBay - eBay is singled out as an auction house which dwarfs any
other currently existing venue for individuals to exchange LEGO sets and
parts. It also has some fairly good search engines, and due to it's size,
many people pay regular attention to it. To this extent, what is needed is a
forum for people to share their auctions, or point out interesting ones
which people might have missed due to poor wording of the title or
description.
auction.updates - Many people like to run private auctions. This is the
place for them. It is a place where they may post their periodic updates so
their auction is easily visible to anyone who might be interested. The
information is of a timely nature, but fairly specific. People should be
encouraged to thread their updates so someone who has decided a particular
auction is not of interest to them could easily skip the rest of the posts
(this actually provides an opportunity for some server automation, the
server could fairly easily guarantee threading since the from will be the
same, and the subject will be very close, a simple fuzzy comparison of these
two, requiring say an 80% match would probably never erroneously thread
posts (though it could leave out a post occasionally)).
auction - this is the place for all other auction postings (other than those
which are raised as discussion material elsewhere). eBay announcements are
not acceptable here. Private auctions may cross post their initial
announcement here, but all updates should occur in auction.updates. These
posts are of a timely nature (most auctions have some kind of end date,
though it may be fuzzy, with just a date at which advancements begin).
Auctions also take some involvement from the buyer in that they need to keep
track of the auction (while proxy systems dramatically reduce this
involvement, they do not eliminate it).
auction.discussion - this is the place to talk about auctions
wanted - a place to indicate items one is looking for. People may indicate
some of the items they are willing to trade, but the idea of this group is
to make it easy for a "producer" to find a "consumer". These posts can be
cross posted to buy-sell-trade.
for-sale - a place for individuals to sell stuff. Items are offered to the
first buyer. Little or no bargaining will occur. These posts could be cross
posted to buy-sell-trade.
buy-sell-trade - a place where people can announce things they want to buy,
sell, or trade.
discussion - a place for market related discussion which does not belong
elsewhere
Neither of these systems seems ideal, but I think they are an attempt to
look at the types of traffic and how people want to spend their time (but
maybe it overly represents how I want to spend time - I would prefer to see
almost none of the eBay flogs because I cruise the new items every day, but
there are some items which are mis-labeled, and if there was a group which
primarily had those items listed, that would be interesting to me). I'd
actually like to see the eBay flogs automatically disappear from the groups
when the auction is over. There is almost nothing of use once the auction is
over (unless the post is really a historical interest type post, or a "look
at how much THAT went for!"). What I want to see are store sales (but I'd
like there to be better indication of the regionality of the sales), DYA
offerings, announcements of non-eBay auctions, announcements of parts sales,
and horse trading.
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Can we define flogging?
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| (...) I think auctions get special treatment as an RTL reaction... auctions were the most obvious "hated" traffic, so they were singled out. Now that they're out of the way, some (most?) people are now expressing a similar distaste for any market (...) (25 years ago, 17-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.terms)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Can we define flogging?
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| (...) Rephrased statement: There are many more types and classes of non-auction market transactions than there are types and classes of auction transactions. (...) Heh heh! And how do you define that "plus whatever" part? :-) "Hey, TRU has this set (...) (25 years ago, 17-Mar-00, to lugnet.admin.terms)
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