Enriching The Forum Environment To Better Facilitate Trading

A proposal to the forum on behalf of those who are very active enthusiastic international stamp traders:

Because of all the different catalogs and language barriers, trading with stamp collectors in other countries can be difficult. Fortunately with the advent of the internet, there are now excellent ways to easily communicate what you have to trade and what you need.

Sites which allow collectors to list their duplicates and want lists are flourishing. Some people develop their own sites. Once a fellow collector shares his trading site address, you simply go there and look at the scans of their duplicates. Different sites do this in a myriad of ways, but the universal commonality is a reliance on scans to describe items rather than relying on the Tower of Babel of stamp catalog numbers.

Currently, members are not allowed to post the link to their trading site. As a service to the members of this site who have devoted hundreds of hours scanning and organizing their stamps for trading, a dedicated area for each collector to post the address for their site ONE TIME would be fantastically helpful. A brief description of the stamps that they offer and a short list of countries, topics or eras they seek along with the link would be awesome. Each member could register their link with the forum and could update their offers and wants as they change. If a member wants to trade, they go there and search for a match. Easy peasy!

It was recently suggested to me by a moderator that I upload my trade offers to this site. But - oh my! That is 1,000 scans! I'm sure that is not what anyone wants! Can you imagine? Keeping all that graphic load off the forum is best for all involved.

With the extremely low auction selling prices for common material right now, trading with other collectors is much more advantageous. Creating a place for the members to easily find other members to trade with would be a huge help.

A quick look at the trading section of this forum is a great indicator of the need for something like this. 20,000 members and no active trading section? Something isn't right with those numbers. Let's make this forum the first place collectors look to find a trading friend!

Thank you for considering my suggestion.

Ask the owner of the site you tried to post why he can't be mentioned here and wait for the lies.

Wow I have no idea to what you are refering? I tried to post a link to my personal page - I am the owner of the site and I'm a "she", so no idea who "he" is?

It sounds like there has been a bunch of drama in the past with another forum? If so, that's too bad. This is a hobby and we're here to have fun after all, right? There aren't that many of us stamp collectors - it would be great if we could all get along and work together between groups.

You tried to post a website a few times that facilitates trades and were blocked. They are banned forever from both my forums.

He/She (if that's you) spammed our sites relentlessly for months with links to his site and affiliate links for months. Kept using proxy severs and new IDs. Just kept going and going and freakin' ignorant about it the entire time. He made my life miserable.

Are you refering to the wantlist trade site Col xxx et (won't post the name just in case) I don't use that site, but was using it as an example of places people go to upload their wishlists and trade. I have talked to people to use the site and this is the first time I have ever heard of this type of abuse.

Let me reassure you - that was NOT me and you are welcome to verify that by checking my IP address. I'm just a collector with a LOT of duplicates to trade. I'm terribly sorry that someone came in and tried to ruin a wonderful forum that does nothing but help people enjoy their hobby. Whoever did that stinks and I don't blame you for blocking and banning.

Boy I had NO idea I was getting involved in such a mess! Whew! If you want to delete my post you have my blessing. I really don't want to be associated with the drama. If you wish to keep it for continuity sake, no problem.

I'm very glad it's not you.

Thanks - I feel for ya. I've admin'ed a game forum and the headaches you can encounter are unbelievable. Lots of good people, but then there are the few that ruin it for the rest. There's a special ring in hell for those folks.

But you say your personal site was blocked as well?

No my site wasn't blocked - the link to it was removed from an earlier post in the trading section by a moderator. I didn't try to put my site on this message. I wrote the post and when I hit submit, it disappeared! I couldn't figure out why. When I read it, I figured the ONLY thing in there that could be a link was the mention of Coldnuts (haha) and when I removed it my message posted.

Here is the link to my site:

Yeah sorry, I didn't realize it was another stamp forum. I just can't allow that. As it is already I think about shutting this site down every day. It doesn't sustain itself. For some reason stamp collectors don't utilize the ads here like they do on the coin forum. There's 70% more stamp collectors using blockers than coin collectors and the coin forum is 10 times busier. Figure that one out.

If I do decide to shut the place down one last ditch effort will be to just block all people that run blockers. Very easy to do. I just don't freakin' get it. We don't have any pop ups, pop unders, flyovers, or any of that crap that's intrusive here like other sites do.

If people want to keep the forum, they'll ante up if you let them know it's going to close if they don't. Stamp folks are super generous from what I've seen.

FYI I'm using a forum format because it is the same platform used for the game forum I used to admin so I knew how to use the software. But it's not a "forum". It is only used to facilitate my trades. I also use it for my blog.

If anyone else wants to set up a page for their trading stock, I'd really recommend the proboards platform. Super easy to use and organize. It has a lot of built in features that are useful for trading.

That platform is great until you wanna move to your own domain and they rape you for your database. I've seen it happen.

Well if everything goes well I'll trade all the duplicates and there won't be anything left to move! Ahhh now that would be so cool!

I'll tell ya, you sound like a veteran forum soldier who has battled a hell of a lot of dragons! Dang! Sure hope you have some good memories to balance out the horror stories.

Yeah, I got a million of 'em. I still believe most people are good though.

Very disturbing to read that Dad is thinking about closing this site. Hope he doesn't. If it's a matter of money, I can give more, as can others, I'm sure. BTW, I use the ads and have made several purchases from vendors who advertise on SCF. I think they are more reliable and knowledgeable sellers with more targeted offerings (at least for me) than you typically see in internet sales.