Commerce

juanicoheal · Post by **juanicoheal** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:06 pm

A posting for an item for sale has shown up today in the 'Second-hand domes' thread. And again in a direct sales post:

Boston Johann wrote:Hello everyone. I am selling a 22-foot-diameter, 9' tall geodesic dome I builit a few years back. It went up in 2001 and I lived in it at Burning man then. It includes the nuts and bolts/directions, but not a covering. I used tarps and they worked well. It is for sale and I can deliver it for free within about 300 miles of Boston MA. Otherwise you must pay for shipping too, and it weighs about 300 pounds (my guess..)

It takes about 8 hours to assemble it with one other person. It is made of 1 inch steel conduit. It's a really fun place to live and seek shade and can easily sleep 7-10 people.

E-mail if you are interested - [email protected]

- Johann

Are we just going to report here in the Policies section for all these infractions? Or maybe we should look into another way to deal with this? I'm sure this is going to become more frequent as we go on here.

I know this a direct infraction of the

ePlaya Community Guidelines wrote: Expected Behavior
The ePlaya is a no-commerce zone. Recommending a good deal you found is acceptable, gifting is always encouraged. Advertising items or services for sale or trade will not be tolerated.

Is there somewhere that we can direct this type of burningman specific commerce? I know that there's nowhere else I can think of to look for a used geodesic dome..... but I agree that this is NOT the place for it.

I can see someone's in for a headache. If we come down on everyone will be starting to post these types of things, it'll be a tough slog, and a load of work for Admin.

---OK, so maybe I havent thought this out fully, or proof read the post, but I have to go. I think we should discuss this further ---

Dork · Post by **Dork** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:53 pm

Is the no-commerce thing a philosophical objection or merely a desire to keep from cluttering the boards with people trying to sell crap? I would have no objection to a seperate section set aside for goods and services related to preparing for the event.

Chai Guy · Post by **Chai Guy** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 6:31 pm

I would have no objection to a seperate section set aside for goods and services related to preparing for the event.

While I agree with you in theory, the reality is that such a section would be difficult to manage effectively. How would someone judge the "playa-worthiness" of each and every post? I mean, we might all agree that selling a dome would be acceptable, not so sure that I could get behind a $4,000 mail truck as being a possible "art car" base. It's a slippery slope that is probably best left to craig's list and tribe.

When you create exceptions to the rule, the exception becomes the rule.

III · Post by **III** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 6:47 pm

isn't http://www.obtainium.net officially under brc llc control now?

Dork · Post by **Dork** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:54 pm

How would someone judge the "playa-worthiness" of each and every post?

Why would you have to do that? Just let people post what they want. Let other people hurl insults at the origional poster if it's obviously off-topic. Moderate if things get out of hand, just like everywhere else on the board. If it becomes a big mess, change things around or get rid of it.

If people are worried about it being a distraction, it could be a seperate board entirely or somehow excluded from the "View posts since last visit" and search links. I'd be willing to help code and/or moderate as needed.

Craigslist doesn't have a "Burning Man" category so unless you're actively looking for a dome at least once a week you'll probably miss whatever is available.

Ivy · Post by **Ivy** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 11:07 pm

Craigslist doesn't have a "Burning Man" category so unless you're actively looking for a dome at least once a week you'll probably miss whatever is available.

No, but it does have a seach faeture. Searching on "burning man" has never steered me wrong.

juanicoheal · Post by **juanicoheal** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 11:49 pm

My main question with the 'no commerce' policy is the grey area between - it's OK to give links to commercial sites for things - and - it's not OK to sell yer own crap.

I'm no IT'er, so I cannot do it, but maybe someone in the know (I see many offers from coders on other topics - hint hint) could set up the 'unofficial BM trading post'. This way folks say - "hey dude - link here for cool BM crap I wanna offload" and not be in violation of the Rules.

I don't wanna be reading adds on here any more than anyone else. - And so far I've read EVERYTHING that has come up on my 'View posts since last visit' since I joined.

Disclaimer - My job includes ensuring I stay within the rules and still find ways around them.

III · Post by **III** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:09 am

>>unofficial BM trading post

encore: http://www.obtainium.net

technopatra · Post by **technopatra** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:54 am

III wrote:isn't http://www.obtainium.net officially under brc llc control now?

Nope. It is run privately by a Burner.

technopatra · Post by **technopatra** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:13 pm

Dork wrote:
How would someone judge the "playa-worthiness" of each and every post?
Why would you have to do that? Just let people post what they want. Let other people hurl insults at the origional poster if it's obviously off-topic. Moderate if things get out of hand, just like everywhere else on the board. If it becomes a big mess, change things around or get rid of it.

The 3 big reasons we decided to go with a "no commerce" policy:

1 - there seemed to be a significant number of eplayans who were against having commerce at all. There would always be argument and to some level, harassment of folks who would post for commercial purposes, whether or not we officially supported it. Allowing commerce would not improve the mood or quality of the boards.

2 - we absolutely do not have the manpower to moderate ads to deem them the "right" kind of comerce or not.

3 - we could not do it as well as craigslist and obtainum.net, and we do not want to take any of their traffic away - they are great sites and we support our community's use of them.

Responding to your example, directly - there is no "if" here - it is only a matter of time - and a pretty short interval it will be - before folks start spamming the boards with all kinds of other junk. We have a case study for this:

One of the earliest "community" features on burningman.com was an page where community groups and burner-friendly businesses could upload links to their sites. It was left alone for quite a while and when we came back to it, it was fully spammed with porn and sex shop sites.

The intent of the links feature was to let folks post links to businesses that are burner-owned or -friendly, and would provide goods and services that enhance your playa experience.

Now while some could very effectively argue that sex toys and porn are necessary elements on the playa, there was really no way to discover whether the business was burner-owned, or offered deals to burners, or somehow giving to the community in some other way or was just a cheesy sex shop, without contacting each and every one of them. Either way, there is a judgement about what is "community-worthy" that is, and regardless of how codified it becomes, will remain, a subjective issue that can never be resolve to everyone's liking.

Simply put, it is way easier for us to moderate the relatively few folks intending to sell, than to open the floodgates and try to stem the tide with our Community Guidelines.[/b]