Get yourself some popcorn, have a seat. Put your feet up. Uncle Nerd will explain the whole background history of this, so you can follow along at home.
A long, long time ago there was no Collectibles forum, but there was the law. No selling at BB. This one is necessary. I wish I could post you a link to an example of an old abandoned message board so you could see what happens when there are no spam rules. We're talking porn, and links to virus-laden sites. Nobody wants that, so there's a rule.
Also there's the twitchiness of Copyright holders. Technically resale of purchased items is legal. If it wasn't you wouldn't have used car lots, used bookstores, gargage sales, the used DVDs rack at Blockbuster. Nevertheless a lot of copyright holders don't like resale. They're lobbying for new laws which will say you don't actually own anything. It's more like you lease it. I'm not sure, but I think in places like Australia, some art is considered this way. I know companies like phone companies, and Microsoft want this.
In the background of all this site owners have to keep in mind the infamous
DMCA site takedown request. All that's needed there is somebody to claim copyright ownership, and claim a violation has taken place. He doesn't even have to be right, and in some cases not even be the actual copyright holder. We're talking the site disappears for say 2 weeks while the legality is worked out. Nobody wants that.
Nevertheless back in the golden days, before the Collectibles forum a circumstance would come up such as an old time member would post something like wanting to sell a tiny section of his comic collection. Now me as mod, I'd look at that, and say what's the harm. He's been around forever, so it's not like he registered just to sell a couple comic books. Also the climate was such there wasn't a lot of interest in such things, so the thread would quickly sink to the bottom of the list then disappear. There wasn't going to be a sudden barrage of people wanting to resell fan items, or guests seeing resell was allowed, then signing up to sell their stuff.
Then came Bbay. This was a forum put here at BB where people could make trades, but not resell. This offered a little slack for people who wanted to move their memoribillia, or so it was thought. It never caught on though, so it was removed.
However there was still an interest in memoribillia. Fans still wanted to talk about what they had, and where to get more, so the Collectibles forum went up. This one did get traffic.
And here's where the problem presently lies. The old practice of allowing the odd, old-time member to post the odd post flogging some item he lost use for never adapted to the Collectibles new popularity. So now when such a post goes up it's seen as an endorsement in a popular forum of the practice of resale. People sign up just to sell stuff. If it continues a big chunk of that forum will be about the resale of fan items. And yes there are such forums elsewhere on the internet where such practice is allowed, and they get by. But are the problems of such places, and I suggest they exist (potential and actual), something BB wants to deal with.
And now the mods and administrator sit there scratching their collective heads, talking amongst each other, wondering what to do. Not to worry though, this is how puzzles are unpuzzled. What I mean is, as Faith said we're on it.
