Auction Suggestions.

* I would like to get everyone's opinion, including Admin and Mods, on an idea I have.*

May I just suggest that there be some kind of rule set that Auctions need to be brought to the attention of a Mod or Admin before authorized to be posted on the forum? While I understand there are no "rules" stating that an Auctioneer MUST sell said item to the winning bidder, but shouldn't there be? I have had 3, that's THREE, separate instances where I have been winning an Auction, and the Auctioneer decided he or she changed their mind and wanted to keep the item, OR, they have 'secret' non disclosed winning bidders that have bought the item without notice. By all definitions of the word, is that not causing Grief? To me or anyone else watching the thread, hoping for a chance at the win? Again this is a suggestion, but I believe Auctions should have to be Authorized by Mods or Admin, and whatever rules are set by the Auctioneer, need to be upheld. In the real world one could be sued for doing this, so why not let it be punishable in the Empire? Maybe a 2 hour ban for first offense? Something, anything, that will stop this from happening to me and MANY others in the future. Please give it a thought at least. And let me know what you think.

Thank You Kindly,
Josh

I like the idea, but it isn't that easy. For one, Mods only have so much time, and are only on so often, though players are allways on. (allways auctioning) which would create more 'Grief' than the normal way we do things. I know that some people aren't allways honest with auctions, which is sad, but the challenge may outway to benefit. Any Mod opinions?

Yes but what I'm suggesting will eliminate this whole, anyone can auction whatever they want forum we have now. This way, if you want to make money by auctioning, you can either do it in world, OR wait a couple hours, or even a day for your auction to post, either that or do away with the auctioning on forums by all members. Maybe only supporters will be allowed to Auction. We need to stop this from happening, i know it makes A LOT of people unhappy.

Yeah, that kind of thing isn't cool.

By holding an auction a person is entering an agreement with the bidders... and that agreement needs to be honoured. There may be some situations where it's reasonable for the auctioneer, or the bidder, to back out of the agreement, but legitimate reasons for that seem like they would be extremely rare in this context. It's more likely that what you're experiencing is players who didn't get as high of bids as they would have liked and decided to back out rather than accepting the reality of auctions (that thier item may sell for a low price).

One way to solve this problem would be to get rid of auctions altogether, but I'm not sure that's the best way to go.

A personal solution to this is to refuse to participate in auctions held by those people in the future. At this point, that's probably your best course of action.

Would you be willing to send links to those auction threads to me in a private message?

Your idea for having auctions be approved first is good, but it's unfortunately not practical in this case. The moderators here are volunteers, and, as jackomighty pointed out, having to approve all those auctions would take up far too much time and energy.

I understand that completely. But maybe make it a supporter only type thing, or even just stop the auctions if it keeps up? It almost hurts my feelings that people care so little, people sometimes invest hours into trying to win an auction, even if it's just watching it, these people should have to take that into consideration.

I do agree that it's a shame some people just change their minds on a whim and/or have secret buyers or hidden reserve prices. I agree, it would be pretty nice to have some sort of authorization process; I like the idea of auctions being a supporter-only thing too. As it is right now, it seems the only thing you can do with all this 'auctioning grief' is to simply not do business with those players again.

The only time I would think it fair or reasonable for someone to back out of an auction is if some sort of disclaimer is clearly noted in the auction information, reserving the right to cancel the auction at any time or something. I think I saw something like that mentioned in the Auction Rules Guidelines thread.

But yea, as jackomighty and Dark_Liz said, it would be pretty difficult for a small handful of volunteers to check and approve all the auctions constantly being set up. Maybe some auction plugin could be tested and implemented in the distant future? I haven't looked into any myself; may be much more trouble than it's worth.

So yea, I guess my vote is for possibly making auctions support-only; supporter-only for listing though, right? Not bidding? Or no bidding unless you're a supporter??

At any rate - not a bad idea, nightmare!

The supporter only idea would be for listing only. Anyone would be able to bid, that way it would be easier to keep an eye on the auctions as well.asd

I think auctions on the forum should be open to all (both buying and selling). Any auction started should run its course be it good or bad for the seller. In turn I think auction item currently being auctioned on the forum should only be sold via the forum. Failing to complete an auction should (and probably already is) a reportable offence. I am a bit clueless about why someone would want a secret reserve, just have a visible reserve at the minimum price you will accept.

I think restricting the auctioneers to supporters is going a little bit too far. There are many trustworthy non-supporters, such as d1223m who was amongst the pioneers of the forum auctioning.
I think the best solution so far is to do as dark_liz has suggested, and report the auctioneers who are reneging on their terms, and don't take part in their auction. Maybe in the near future we will have a bit of a discussion, and with repeat offenders may ban them from hosting auctions anymore as they are wasting players time, but for now it will be best to just steer clear of players who have hosted unfair auctions in the past.

My point is it happens too often to good people. How is that fair? It may seem extreme but it' needs to be handled. why should I HAVE to avoid certain people? Why can't i just bid on something with no worries, and not just me, but MANY others. I hope it IS discussed in the future and fixed, it really puts a sour taste in my mouth about wanting to bid on auctions or even be part of the forums. Sorry if this seems "dramatic" but I feel it NEEDS to be addressed, and I know I'm not the only one, I'm just the only one that has made my feelings public.

Well, as the issues come up we have and always will take care of them. Sadly, your idea for supporters only wouldn't work, as we have had unfair, cheating, rule breaking supporters as well. Sometimes, you gotta think of what we do as police. It's impossible for the police to be everywhere and can't stop crimes from happening, but if the force is active and knowledgeable, they can handle and fix the situation as fast as possible.

Just to add to Jeremy's previous post. If you use the 'report' link at the bottom of each forum post, it flashes a big red icon in the corner of the senior staff's EMC website window, and we generally take care of these actions very quickly.

The problem you're having here is not with EMC auctions, it's with humanity. Why can't you just go about your business in peace and harmony? Because humanity as a whole doesn't know how to do that yet.

We're getting there... but it's a tediously slow journey.

We can, however, have our peace and our harmony on a personal level by letting go of the things that hurt us and by having compassion for those who do foolish things that cause pain to others (that's different from forgiving them and it doesn't mean you need to accept or have anything to do with those people; it just means seeing the bigger picture of who they are and realizing that they're in pain too).

This isn't easy of course, because we (humans) don't know how to do that yet. We still have to learn how and get good at it... every single one of us.

If everyone was able to achieve this personal level of peace and harmony about things, we would find that humanity as a whole was able to do that too... and no one would experience this kind of thing anymore.

Seriously! That's how it's going to happen.

I definitely feel your pain... I'm challenged with this too (of course, being human myself, lol).

I would just like to add that allowing only supporters to start auctions would seem like a bad idea. I don't think that would keep instances like this from happening. In fact, the most recent case that I can recall was actually a supporter(name withheld) that did this. It really doesn't matter if you are a supporter or non-supporter, anybody is able to do that.

*Appluads* well said.

I don't think this is really true. Time and energy are not really an issue if this was implemented correctly.

I agree with Nightmare, and I think his suggestion should be taken seriously... why not have a pre-approval system in place? We all understand that mods are volunteers and don't have all day to sit on the forums and... well, mod. Nevertheless, if a SIMPLE system was put into place, it would be a very effective solution to this problem... which is honestly getting out of hand somewhat. I have never had any issues with an auction, but I have seen more than one thread about such problems recently.

I sit at work with the forums open most of the day... sometimes over 10 hours straight. While I am on, I notice that 98% of the time there is at least one mod on. ( shaunwhite for instance ) Even if they are not actively monitoring all of the time, the only person immediate approval of an auction really affects is the seller, who will probably be fine waiting to get approved. If it takes three or four hours for a mod to get to the request, then maybe that is just the price of doing business via the forum instead of on the servers.

If an auction thread was set up so that a mod had to read the posting and then click a button to authorize it before the rest of us could read it, that would solve most problems. The seller would know that they would be held to the rules for selling their items, and the buyers would be comfortable bidding. And lets face it, how many postings are there that mods don't already read? I don't think it's asking too much more work of the mods, and I don't think that most of the mods would mind doing it... especially if it stopped auction problems before they started.

Maybe I am being presumptuous in assuming that mods would be willing to do this for the community - if so, I apologize for any offense. I just think that Nightmare's suggestion is worth some real consideration by the leaders of the community, because it's a good one. It may not be the only solution to this problem, and it might not even be the best solution... but it sounds like a good one to me and I haven't seen any others suggested here yet, so why not put it up for a vote amongst the mods? Just my two cents...

i think the problem is, people think it's ok to do. if there was a written rule and a punishment for repeat offenders, i think it would go down a lot.

Actually, an equally good solution would be hitting the report button when you see a bogus auction so it can be shut down right then and there.

Auctioneers ARE expected to follow through on thier agreement. Is that not in the rules/guidelines about auctions? If not, it's because it's such an obvious stipulation that it was probably overlooked as being too absurdly obvious to need mentioning.

However, if it's not in there and people need it in writing for them to understand that one has to abide by thier agreements we can certainly add it.

The problem I see with an approval process, what would would be the honest guidlines? If we did it with auctions, why not do it with all the threads? Lord knows there are plenty of threads that go through that are a waste of space. And they are locked and cleared out as needed. Asking for this is asking for alot of work. I know my computer stays logged on to EMC constantly. But it does not mean I have the time to look through someones post and decide whether or not that person has good standing enough to post here. Not all mods have job/school opportunities that put them in the position to be in front of a computer all day.