I just noticed that our avatars are displaying a rating for our "Trader Score". I consider myself a fairly frequent and benevolent trader of my generous supply of RX-7 parts, recovered from my earlier GSLs and shared with RX-7Club members for the purpose of keeping these cars on the road and keeping the RX-7 karma healthy. However, my Trader Score is a big fat [0], not very flattering.

In fact, it looks like just about everybody is rated as a big fat "0" Trader, not very informative and potentially very misleading.

Whose idea was this? What's the purpose of this unrequested and prominently displayed Trader Score?

And who needs to be paid off to get a higher Trader Score?

This seems to be overtly commercial and an inappropriate use of our personal information. What is this forum coming to??

 

Click on someone's traderscore. It looks like a system very similar to eBay's rating system, where you can instantly see who's a good person to buy or sell with and who's a shifty little no-good

doesn't look like anything too personal to me, I actually think it'll help

 

Taken from the RX-8 Club .. or possibly other threads.

We all start with 0 yes but in due time it will build. Takes about 20 seconds to leave someone iTrader feedback.

 

1. Alot of members have requested the iTrader system to be added to the forum.
2. Like eBay feedabck
3. I do
4. We were old school, now we are new school

Edit: Dont count my iTrader score right now, the feedback I have was used for testing purposes and will be removed soon.

 

Its a system similar to eBay's user feedback. If you sell or buy something from another member then you can leave feedback on how the transaction went. Everyone starts at zero and then it can go from there.

 

I think it will be a good thing once we all start using it, right now its kinda useless. I do agree with Ray though that this forum is kinda going downhill, I realize its incredibly expensive to keep running since we burn up so much bandwidth, and to offset that cost we need the advertisments everywhere, doesn't make it less annoying though lol. Oh well.

 

Just means RCC will grow

 

Use Firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript. I see zero ads. There is another way to disable the intellitext ads too if you search.

 

Whooah, you guys just lost me.

 

You don't have a big fat 0 anymore Ray.

 

i'm out of the loop on this one...i'm with the trader score thing and understand that but i'm hoping we can stay on topic rather than discuss the up or downhill of rx7club...

 

So, exactly HOW do you leave feedback for someone?

 

click on their trader score and from there it similar to ebay...

 

"You don't have a big fat 0 anymore Ray. "

Oh god, I'm out of here. I hate status.

Oh Oh, I just noticed the bots have taken over my pm's. Now what do I do?

 

My bad Dave.... Just seemed like the forum is becoming more "corporate" lately... On the upside the server doesn't crash every other day like it used to lol.

 

true on the server. i really try to stay out of the club's business...money can tear relationships apart, business or otherwise. its best if i know little of its business. i try and stay focused on the technical aspect and enjoy making friends here. at any rate, no apologies needed. all opinions are welcome.

 

This is a reasonable philosophy Dave, I don't mess with the forum's business either and I do wish them well, including opportunities to conduct business. After all, in addition to being a very friendly place, the forum provides lot's of helpful information and it's a great source for reasonably priced parts, with already established and effective methods for keeping track of "good guys and bad guys".

So what is this "Trader Score" thing that has been attached to our personal avatars? I thought that was our personal space. Now it has been cluttered with information that we neither requested nor supplied, as if this is something we endorse.

And what is its purpose? What does this apparently very important Trader Score mean?

I now have a Trader Score of "3", why I haven't a clue, I haven't traded anything on the forum recently. And lots of other far more worthy forum members than me have a big fat "0".

Sounds fishy to me, kind of Big Brother.

 

You do business with someone, you leave them feedback, either positive or negative or neutral. They should leave you the same. Therefore if someone has positive feedback, you know they have conducted themselves properly in a sale and you will feel somewhat safer from buying from them.

If you have a negative score, it means that you did business with someone and they were not happy. Clicking on the number will bring up a page with a short description. That way, if someone is ripping people off you will be able to see past complaints. The system is entirely user voluntary, and as such could be misleading.

Your three score means that three people decided to leave you positive feedback, on what I can only assume was past dealings. Hopefully this system will not be abused by people leaving fake feedback.

 

We can hope. Sounds like a good idea. I hope it doesn't add more work for the moderators. Does look very important when it is in underlined bold type directly below the member name and avatar.

 

I see this quickly being taken down.

Why? People abuse things. I can find a random person in a thread, decide I like them, and give them a "trader score".

I see the point, and it is a good one. It might just turn out to be more of a hassle than anything.

Members who have been here for a while know who the "good guys / bad guys", and MODs/Admins do, too. They do a good job of cleaning out the trash, if you know what I mean.

Lets see how it goes.

 

Well OK, maybe we should give this thing a fair shake. After all, the RX-7Club forum just might be a perfect universe, unlike the real world on which I am basing my concerns (I'm thinking especially about employment, where in my experience kissing administrative *** is directly connected to status and promotion).

And now I feel like a bit of a jerk, my belly aching seems to have led to my Trader Score skyrocketing to 4. I do have vague recollections of trades over the last ten years with the guys who are showing up in my pm's (actually, I don't think it is the real people who sent the pm's, rather some RX-7Club bot that has taken over that job) so a humble thanks to Stu, Dave, Sam and Kerebrus for your votes of approval.

Now to make this fair, the rest of the community needs to scratch its head and remember every good trade (probably 99.5% of them) they have had with forum members over the last ten years and issue proper Trader Score credit.

 

Yea thats kinda the problem, I've been on here long enough to have had dozens of good transactions, hell if I can remember even half of them haha. Oh well, guess since we all start at 0 we're on a level playing field....

 

i seen this on a old fourm its kind of good. i think its better for selling and buying stuff only.

 

Thats the idea, for use in the classified sections.

 

Harmless enough, I guess, but it can be misleading. My 6 votes make me look like a god damned capitalist. Just so everybody knows, I'm a non-profit organization!

And thanks to Michael and Chris for their votes too. And Sgt. Fox for helping me make my signature street legal.