Talk:Online trading community

Link farm?
At what point are there too many links in this article? Pendragon39 (talk) 21:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree about the concern. I propose only to include sites which have established wiki articles in the 'examples' section. Many sites in article are of dubious notability. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't believe the examples need to be notable or have a wiki article. The examples (with external links) are to give the reader a better sense of actual commerce being done in this area. A short list of current, thriving online trading communities seems appropriate Pendragon39 (talk) 16:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * There needs to be some criteria, or the lists will expand into a link farm again. I don't believe any sites should be listed in the Formal trading community section. Rather that should contain general information about what formal trading communities do and support. In the Notable online communities section a representative sample of sites should be included. I lean towards those of established notability, and prefer those to be internal links. If editors see a long list of external links, they will be more inclined to continue adding them, until we have an unmanageable list as before. Thoughts? AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 16:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have expanded the list to 5 examples. I believe it should be limited to providing one example per major category and one per method. Perhaps there should be a hard limit on the number that can be included. I agree the formal trading community section should only describe generalities. Please note that this article was the dumping ground for deleted articles like Peerflix Pendragon39 (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it needs one more example of non-electronic commodity, I think there was a clothing site, that would be good. I've removed the links I originally commented out, now that consensus has been reached on the Formal Trading Community section. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 16:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I added the clothing site link. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 16:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent. If we have consensus it will be easier to keep this list under control Pendragon39 (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with how it is now. I will note, inline article links should take precedence, so if you can replace a type of link to an internal one, you should do so. Thanks for your help! AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 17:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Added comments to Examples section to serve as guidelines as per consensus. The commented out links were still there, so I removed them. Cheers :) Pendragon39 (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Inline article links do not always take precedence. Especially, when they are self generated which is the case in this page. Consensus is not met by the conversation of the few that are self gratifying themselves. This page was fine and stable for months. serving its purpose of education up until a few weeks ago when it has become all about the trend of the last 3 months. This of course is short sighted and not appropiate to the likes of Wiki.

Method
In order to describe online trading in general, it might be useful to describe the methods. From my personal experience there is the point system, the inventory system and regular cash transactions Pendragon39 (talk) 17:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By inventory system do you mean Item X is listed by me, Item Y is listed by you and the I trade you item X for Item Y? Where would a "pay for transaction" system fall under, as many of them feature a fully implemented database for inventory tracking. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Flickflop is an example of an inventory based system. Among other things, it is not 'peer to peer' (ie. trades between individuals). Peerflix was/is an example of a cash pricing system. They used to use the point system, then switched over to where dvds are bought and sold using cash balances. Each of these systems has its pros and cons Pendragon39 (talk) 19:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Another example: TitleTrader is peer to peer, and uses a point system. (note: TT points are controlled to avoid inflation, but some members try to circumvent this by posting a single item multiple times)Pendragon39 (talk) 20:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Article name and scope
Note that the phrase "online trading community" has top ghits pointing to ebay and stock brokers. This article seems to discuss, in particular, what in plain english would be called barter, the direct exchange of goods. Following that, I propose a name change to online barter. It is a specific phrase with relevant ghits, and is therefore less ambiguous as a title. It also expands the scope of the article, discussing the subject of online barter as a whole rather than merely the websites where it can be done. Or perhaps I could be wrong, and the article actually wants to include ebay and the like, though I think they are sufficiently covered by online auction. Ham Pastrami (talk) 06:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Seems like an arbitrary semantic change to me. I'm not sure in what sense eBay would be considered "trading" anyway, but the title seems to adequately cover what is being discussed, and it's not like it gets in the way of online auction. Dstumme (talk) 11:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Barter means direct swapping of items and while some of these communities may do this, some of them use a medium of exchange. In that sense it becomes more like trading and in some cases is little different from traditional buying and selling. Redirects for 'online swapping' and 'online barter' might be in order. I'm undecided if this proposed name is any better than the current one Pendragon39 (talk) 21:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)