free legal advice from someone who isn't a lawyer isn't worth the paper it's written on. When we registered we agreed to abide by certain rules just like we do on Facebook or other social media.
While we may not like what the mods/admin do, if they should get sued for others' negative comments, etc., are the people that make these comments going to pay to defend a lawsuit, even if it's a crappy lawsuit? Even crap lawsuits take $$$ to get rid of.
First of all, no one that is actually guilty would be stupid enough to 'sue' a forum because a member posted they they stole something from them. If anything, you sue the member for slander, but you then have to prove you didn't actually steal the items in question. The forum can't be held responsible for what others post any more than eBay can be held responsible for what people sell. If there's a _real_ problem with a post, they will get a letter from a lawyer (or someone in a legal capacity) asking them to remove the post. _THAT'S_ when the post should be removed. They aren't going to just be thrown in court because someone wrote something on the forum. There's not another forum, blog or website that I belong to that does this... They all openly identify thieves (be it actual thieves, people that sell fakes, people that take money and never ship items, etc.) That's how they protect the members of their community and stop the people that are committing the crimes. It's an open forum anyone can join... If the person in question _isn't_ a thief, let them come forward and explain the situation in a clear, rational manner... Nothing is stopping them.
No one is going to take someone to court over a stupid claim about a $20 pin... Regardless of the perceived after-market value. (That's in general, I know in this case it was several pins)
There is at least one member here that _IS_ a lawyer, and has offered their services for free should the forum ever come under that situation, iirc.
I wonder if anyone has considered that the forum could be held liable if someone _else_ gets robbed by a member that they could have been warned about, but the forum deliberately protected the thief by hiding his identity... It could easily be argued that maybe the forum is in league with these people, thus the reason they want to hide their identity... (I know that's not true, but you get the right kind of lawyer involved and you'd be surprised what they might be able to 'prove'...) If the forum wants to protect itself, they should, literally, not get involved unless requested/ordered to do so by someone representing law enforcement. (Meaning don't comment on the thread or situation, and don't edit the posts, unless the forum was directly involved. Monitor it to make sure people aren't just being nasty, but a general statement of the situation and those involved should just be left as-is unless ordered to do something else.)
From what I've seen, protecting the criminals is unique to this particular hobby, at least based on the ones I participate in... And this hobby seems to have more criminals than most of them (based mostly on scrappers sellers on eBay anyway...).
But back to the "bad traders/sellers" list: even if it can't be kept publicly in the forum, it should be kept in PM and others should share it with others privately. If the mods/admin can, I'd suggest banning the person (and maybe making a sticky note) at the top of the selling and trading / wanting threads. I suppose those members could stick around for "chat" and hobbies/collectibles talk but should be kept out of merchandise auctions/trading threads?
But how is a new member (that would be easy prey to a thief) going to know to PM someone for a list of people to avoid? And how do they know _who_ to even ask?
It shouldn't be that hard to find out...
