Marketplace suggestion

[Overlord]

I don't really want to write a story on this all over again, so you can take the time to read the below posts.

To sum it up, better marketplace, reduces a lot of retarded suggestions into valid suggestions and implements them efficient, controls the environment, prevents 'scams'.

Start with post: http://www.mc-market.org/threads/59456/page-2#post-734509
Specific post on marketplace: http://www.mc-market.org/threads/59456/page-2#post-734560

Additional posts:

• http://www.mc-market.org/threads/59456/page-2#post-734689
  
• http://www.mc-market.org/threads/59456/page-2#post-734830

A primary quotation:

This is a marketplace with no ties to anything official... You can post warnings on a user, that'd be a great system for a marketplace. Trade interactions. Perhaps actually improving MCM to deal with more trades on site would be a good idea too.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/reckons-team-marketplace.4783/

This site needs that. It has a feedback system for sellers. You can categorise items. It's perfect... Users can list items, it removes the need for forums, payments for builds, add-ons, etc. can be done through PayPal and the item automatically given to the user. That removes half of the scamming aspect. Chargebacks are still a problem, but it's the user's problem to make sure they provide proof the item was received, which MCM can easily provide if need be (not to mention there's a seller's panel on the add-on above) and it's their job to win the dispute. Disputes are not scams, well, they are but it's nothing a seller can't deal with. If they lose, then that's a flaw on their part in co-ordination with PayPal's TOS. They should consider making their product bitcoin only.

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/

Here's one of the biggest marketplaces for webmasters.

https://www.webhostingtalk.com/

Here's WHT, one of the biggest marketplaces for webmasters.

These two sites alone deal more in 1 week than MCM will deal in its lifetime. Find me the scam reports section. Find me the 1000 scams reported that happen daily. The place is so active, scam free and has no "compliance officer" bullshit (I bet the correctional officers, sorry I mean compliance officers, just wanted a fancy name to look important and educated). The forum is not involved in any transaction. Sellers and buyers both love the system.

If you're interested in a solution, feel free to take the time to read it. It's a mouthful, but it also took me time to write, otherwise feel free to ignore.

 

[nara~kavi]

I think this would be a good addition to the website.

 

[Overlord]

I don't think many people read it, partly, perhaps, because I linked to long posts that explained the suggestion and nobody wants to bother to read it.

Right now, I'm pretty much free on work. I have nothing to deal with today, so I'm all to myself, which is usually the time I go drifting to other sites and places in real life that I normally don't go to. Like meeting friends actually (rather than talking to them) is almost non-existent in my life after gaining traction with work and just a busy life in general. This time of the year is just about the only time I get some peace, our family meets up and on NYs I go to a party with friends. So yeah, pretty cool. Sadly, all faded away, to come back in ~355 days.

I am not going to spend my time rewriting this into something easy to understand. A summary exists already, and you can read the posts for further information. This isn't going to help me at all, actually. I don't trade in Minecraft. For me, it's a market where a person simply can't make enough money. What I do now, you'd all call overpriced by far. The customers I with for advise me to raise prices even more. So, in the end, this helps you. So the least you can do is read something I put in the time to write. It takes longer to write than it does to read.

========================================================================================================================================================================== (I split things up because I know how little of an attention span some people have) ======================================================================================================

Another expansion I'd like to do to the marketplace is regarding your hack forums' inspired reputation system demand, and an evolution into realistic marketplaces: trader feedback.

Reputation systems would be abused almost instantly, used only for giving ratings to and from friends. In combination with MCM's own actual marketplace, I suggest trader feedback implementation. After 72 hours of conducting a trade (i.e. a purchase), you have the ability to leave feedback for the buyer and "let the world know what you think". This system is actually hard to abuse. Customers would paying money to purchase an item and gain the ability to leave feedback for the item. All 'reputation' would have comments and the resource it has comments for. The only way to abuse it would be a $0.01 marketplace item and asking people to buy for trader reputation, which, honestly, would fail hardly since staff would find it very easily. This solves your demand for a reputation system, woopie! If you disagree with this, it's obvious this system won't work for you therefore you don't like it, probably because you need large amounts of reputation to satisfy your ego and this won't help you get that. Otherwise, I think buyers and sellers will both love it.

Additionally, to this, it would be more than reasonable for the marketplace to have a transaction fee to use it. This would *probably* help the site more, actually. If MCM was a real business someone made their income and life on, I would say this would be more than necessary and if it wasn't done it'd be stupid. Since Mick isn't exactly of age to need to move out, I assume his parents are loaded already and this site is more of a personal project, I don't believe the transaction fee is necessary, however, I don't believe it is unreasonable either.

Any reputed marketplace has fees in with them. 5% is nothing to have the ability to trade safely on the site, be prevented from scamming and be allowed to advertise here. Otherwise, you can trade off site, use conversations, not be able to post marketplace listings in return for possibly being scammed and also having trouble finding buyers, since you need to message people about it directly (don't make a rule stopping people from messaging about marketplace interaction).

Additionally, buyers would want to use the marketplace system to feel protected, especially on a site with so many scammers, so sellers would be pressured to use it.

5% is nothing. PayPal is 2.9% + fixed fee, people don't complain. It's worth it for being able to process payments securely. Steam Community Marketplace is 20%, people use it. VAT is even 20-25%, and some sales taxes are up to 40%. 5% contribution fee is nothing. People will pay it.

That is a previous comment I made on this system.

$20 (- 5% = $19) OR $0. Their choice. This system I suggested is highly sophisticated, too.

Depending on whether or not Mick prefers to spend all profits on luxuries or actually reinvest in the site, if the latter then I believe this fee is entirely justified. If it's the first, then definitely not. Either way, I know buyers and sellers would rather have the $1 alike, but -$1 with this system or +$1 without it. With all the troubles this site had, I'd say -$1 with the marketplace system suggested entirely.

================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Further comment on scam reports:
You don't see fiverr getting involved with scammers. With reports sent to their email privately and less dramatically, however, they look into if there is a large quantity of reports and investigate on their end and then ban the seller. Here, you cause tons of drama in the way and try and act like detectives... except... the only proof you can see is all easily forged. You simply cannot make informed decisions.

Ban high risk users, not moderate every OFF-SITE trade. These are all technically off site, none are done through your systems exactly. Right now, the advertisement is here, everything else happens privately outside of MCM's domain, even if it's in conversations. My system gives a safe system to trade with, a marketplace system.[DOUBLEPOST=1451724321,1451724287][/DOUBLEPOST]For the record, I really feel like I put more effort into thinking for everyone than I should.

 

[Overlord]

Chained payments will soon be added to MC-M.
By Bosny's standards, it'll be "almost impossible to scam".

Though I don't believe him, I respect his opinion.
This sort of thing is going to be added, though.

Regardless, your posts never fail to allow users to think outside the box a bit.

Chained payments and scamming have no correlation whatsoever, lol. The 'no scamming' part is my marketplace suggestion as a whole. Chained payments just allow the site to gain much more funding, and I mean MUCH more even at the example 5% fee, allowing hopefully most of that to be spent on the site again and more... professionals. If it isn't, then I don't think payment fees (via chained payments) is worth it, because Mick doesn't need the income from the site since (afaik) he's not independent and his family probably have more than enough to cover their expenditures. I doubt staff will get paid either way, as well. So it really depends on what Mick intends to do. If MCM was his full time job, I'd say definitely add them in and what goes to the site is his problem, but at the same time if it was his FT job I'd expect full levels of professionalism and the top people within a reasonable budget working on various aspects here.

With the recent announcement, I have doubts in that, completely.

That isn't the case. The site is hosted on an OVH dedi/VPS... so... yeah... Least that could be done is use an InterNAP dedicated server with respect to reliability, change the stupid CloudFlare setup and implement better back-ends to the system, as well as fix all of the countless security holes. MCM makes enough to cover all that. I mean, I charge £35-40/hr to work, fixed packages are much cheaper. I'd assume a good dedicated server would be approx. $200-250/mo, $250-500 initial, secure setup by a reasonably experienced sysadmin and a better CloudFlare configuration, combined with real DDoS protection and preventative measures. This site makes thousands a month already, is my best bet based on page views, increases in post count and ad revenue statistics. What I request is not unreasonable to be done, and should already have been done.

So really, chained payments (percentages/fixed amounts going to another account) is really dependent on where the money will go.

 

[Overlord]

Anyways, Bosny had shown a preview of what's soon to come: https://jk.la/i/UgpX.png

Looks cool.

After discussing in Shoutbox, and unfortunately I can't pull direct messages, there's a system coming to place that will "nearly prevent scamming as a whole".

My conception is that you'll attach a PayPal e-mail to your MC-M account, and users will be able to directly send money to you, with a 5% fee, and immediately deliver whatever you're selling to the buyer directly. Just what was explained to me + some of my own thought.

That's what this system suggests, well, in a more sophisticated and advanced manner.

When was this anyway?

Really? They must not get paid much. Most of them are useless, with no offence intended. I'd say, at best, 3 are even worth keeping their posts (excluding Mick, he doesn't really count if he owns the place, can't exactly say if he's good/bad). 1 of the 3 is good at one of their jobs, but some others they have they shouldn't. Another 1 of the 3 can really be replaced by someone else, just by not considering them I'd sound like an ass since they've been nice enough to me and are actually around. Not sure what the rest do. One of them is the biggest joke of them all though, comes across as clueless but cocky and a know it all to me, for some reason. No names though, that'd just be rude.

I don't think they get paid much, if they get paid at all though. A few hundred at best is what they're paid a month, and isn't worth a full time responsibility, and I think BeBosny is probably the most active of them all.

MCM is not his full time job, but the idea that's currently being added will definitely bring this site much more attention.

What will bring this site more positive attention is cleaning the messes that allow immature trolls to exploit the system as a general discussion forum. A focus on a marketplace will improve the place. Around that time I think I'll probably not be needed to press issues to get them resolved, since it's pretty obvious I have no intention of trading here.

I think it'll be hard for it to turn into a full time job at this point, due to the bad reputation there is unfortunately. If things sail smoothly though, the community will hopefully grow much larger.

I think it's more than appropriate to make this a FT job, however, Mick is in FT education if I'm correct about his age. He also doesn't need a job if his parents have more than enough money. If my knowledge of his age is correct, his parents acquired this forum (I assume Verringer wouldn't hand it over for free or anything less than a large cash sum). My guess would be around $15-18k to acquire this place. If his parents can pay that for him to own a forum, I don't think they're lacking financially. So this isn't needed to be his FT job.

Improving this site is easy. If this was my site, it wouldn't be like this in the first place, however this mess could be fixed with a week of hard work, at an absolute max. I'd say most of that is recovery time. Implementing things would be a few days, TOPS. Most trolls would improve, the absolute trolls would probably leave. Sellers and buyers would be left, with off-topic sections for discussions outside of that. I mean, it's not difficult, the worst part is people accepting change and not being able to troll as much anymore because they're lacking tools to do so.

 

[Jack]

Anyways, Bosny had shown a preview of what's soon to come: https://jk.la/i/UgpX.png

I've been suggesting a system such as this for months, glad to see it may finally be implemented.
However the date says November, so maybe it's no longer being worked on?

Anyways I think less discussion and more trading would benefit MCM.
I've been seeing since the beginning that people will post an "auction" with a starting bid and BIN, but the BIN price is never reached so the item is never sold.
On my auctions I would often include an end date, and it would go to the highest bidder. Several times I would PM the highest bidder and I'd get a response like "Oh sorry I forgot I don't have the money please retract my bid".
People like that should be banned for scamming since they've essentially wasted 2 weeks of my / other people's time.

But if that Auction thing gets implemented, it should fix all of those problems.

Now concerning Overlord - You say WHT and DigitalPoint don't have scam reports section, but they are not MCM. They don't have a bunch of skids running around thinking it's okay to scam people. I don't need to go on since I know you get the point. Otherwise, very good suggestions.

 

[Overlord]

People like that should be banned for scamming since they've essentially wasted 2 weeks of my / other people's time.

Time wasting != scamming

Why do people need the site to deal with their problems... Deal with them yourself.

Now concerning Overlord - You say WHT and DigitalPoint don't have scam reports section, but they are not MCM. They don't have a bunch of skids running around thinking it's okay to scam people. I don't need to go on since I know you get the point. Otherwise, very good suggestions.

Course they don't, I already said that. MCM is composed of pre-pubescent teens which are also hack forums members, it's a toxic mix. Doesn't mean this suggestion can't fix it.

 

[Ajdin]

I'd just like to say thank you for your suggestion and I'll be closely watching this thread as it's very interesting and it would address most if the issues related to scamming and ratings/reputation. I'm currently on vacation and I'll be back fully operational this Monday. Me and tjrgg are first looking to stabilise all the drama that's happening now. This is going faster than expected.

We really do need a marketplace change. What we have now is awful, not practical and literally just copied from HF.

Once again, thank you and I will be subscribed to this thread to stay up to date.

 

[Overlord]

What we have now is awful, not practical and literally just copied from HF.

Hack forums is actually not very original, they just flipped ideas to amuse the kids and trolls there. The idea of forum based marketplaces has originated from very far back. WHT has been doing it for ages, and it's very successful. Unfortunately, it does boil down the community using it. Since this is a majority hack forums based community, apparently, or from similar sites, they're also subject to the same logic resulting in drama and obvious 'scams', either due to immaturity, desperateness or being completely illiterate and common senseless.

But yeah, you're right. And I appreciate the acknowledgement.

Don't expect many to actually read what I wrote. I'm pretty sure most my posts get ignored. Consider the request's legitimacy yourself and try it out. At worst, you lost $150 and wasted the time of a professional to deal with the system, along with your time. At best, you solve scams, half of the suggestions here, purge the stupid scam reports system, and increase forum profit HUGELY. Worth the risk? Definitely. And I don't think any buyer or seller would dislike this system, unless they're scammers.

Services would still need to stay out of it. Auctions don't, however. Auctions work within the system.

 

[Overlord]

I still like to voice my opinions here.

I don't quite understand why you have a RM marketplace add-on that isn't used. The confusing part is that it isn't used. Buyers should be pushing sellers to use that system. A lot of things sold here could be done via that. It's almost like an escrow.