Suggestions to help prevent carbon scams
Let me start by saying that I know this isn't a regularly occurring scam but I am sure it does happen now and then, and since the amount of work required by the mods to prevent it is minimal, it seems like it's worth it even if it saves just one person from being scammed.
Every once in awhile (couple a week) I will see someone in the market looking to sell carbon. Since there is no way to sell carbon 98% of these trades must be attempted scams. Sure some people may offer the trades not knowing that they can't transfer it but this percentage is very small I am sure. So my suggestion is that checking the market and deleting any trades involving carbon funds should be added to the mods regular duties. I understand that the mods already have a lot of duties that the general membership is not aware of but how much work would it really take to delete these trades? Zab could just simply tell his mods "Whenever you are online I want you to check the market and delete any carbon trades." I was thinking that it could be suggested to the mods that they check the market at least once when they get online and once before they get offline, but I am sure that most mods end up looking at the market more than that anywayz.
I anticipate that the response from zab and the mods to this suggestion is going to be something along the lines of "If users follow the trade guidelines (not releasing until you receive) than the users will never get scammed." While that is true, lets face it, there are stupid/naive/just plain new members out there that don't always follow the guidelines. It doesn't take much extra work to protect those members from this scam. I also think it is worth it to zab because if a newer member gets scammed for points it is likely they will not stay active as long as they would have if they weren't able to make this trade in the first place. I did a trade today for BCP and the receiver released to me right away and I never even asked him to, and the kind of people that are willing to scam you for points are generally the kind of people that are also pretty good at getting people to do what they want (releasing early). Just because the stupid/naive/ new members didn't follow the guidelines doesn't mean they deserve to or should get ripped off, especially when preventing the trade from ever getting to escrow is just so easy.
If this is something that the mods are already supposed to be doing then it just needs to be better implemented because the thing that prompted me to make this thread was the fact that daaab671 has had (And still does) a trade up in the market all day for $5 carbon to the highest bidder. There is just simply no reason for that trade to be up. The only thing that can come out of it is a user getting scammed. I just simply don't see a downside to this suggestion other than the mods occasionally having to delete a trade and warn the trader(scammer).
lol wow this was not supposed a long thread sorry for the wall of text, in short there is no reason for carbon trades to be up, and mods should simply delete them to avoid even the possibility of a user getting scammed.
