Originally Posted by
spencerwilli
But we put a lot of trust into each other on here.
I want to be clear that I'm never happy about people having problems in sales and getting ripped off, that is a given. My earlier comments about being cautious mainly have to do with "back-channel" deals or responding to some random PM that is looking for a pen or offering a sale. If someone posts a public sale item, at least the community has a look at what is going down.
But I do want to highlight one point, relating to your comment above.
It may be easy to look at the FPG forum as one group of people, but I believe - and I think others will back me up - that there are two very distinct groups at play. The first are the members who come here for discussion and sharing photos and gab about pens and all the other stuff. Traditional forum usage, long threads, pissing contests, the whole gamut. And then there is the second group, the one that consists of people who come here either only, or mainly, to make sales posts and sell (and occasionally buy) pen-related items.
There is a small group that crosses over to both of those, but there is a very large number of people who ONLY come to FPG to sell. They never join in discussions, they never post photos, they never hang, and - bottom line - I don't know them from Adam. So to say that we "put a lot of trust in each other" only goes so far as to how well I 'know' a person (in the manner of knowing a person through an internet forum) and, for me, doesn't include the many people who ONLY show up to sell. I say that because I can only get a handle on someone's trustworthiness by getting to know them through their writing, their thoughts, their interactions with others.
There are a ton of people I trust here, some I trust as much as close friends or family (a small number), but there are just as many who I don't know and would operate, in a commerce way, only with all protections in place. The total population of FPG is not a monolithic group and especially when it comes to sales, there are many who really aren't part of the community, but use FPG strictly for their own commercial (sales) needs.
I felt that needed to be said.
Now I have to go fix a busted weed trimmer. Gah!
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