IDEA - Collector interest database

From: Patrick Rigney <patrick_at_vintagecomputermarketplace.com>
Date: Thu May 13 12:54:38 2004

> On the subject of databases. I think they're too "Robot
> friendly" and that may be more an opportunity for the
> unfriendly than the friendly. Look how neat eMail and
> NewsGroups were for years, and then people got the spark of
> an idea for spam. Right now I get 300 spams a day, and that
> costs a lot of time. I think if you list out your whole
> collection to a database that
> creates an opportunity for some kind of unfriendly
> approaches, I don't think I'll know what exactly they'll be
> until they're a problem.

John, this is exactly why we held back on the collections directory in VCM,
why email addresses are not exposed anywhere on the interface, and why many
"bulk" transactions like looking at the entire list of items or the wanted
list requires you to log in as a registered user first. I would have to say,
we are "robot wary." :-)

Ashley said:
> Is there a way to see a list of all the registered
> members and their interests? What I'd like to do
> is produce a list of all registered users who are
> interested in PDP-11's, for example.

It would be easy to provide this since the data is all there, the real
question is, what will you do with that info? The use you have in mind may
be strictly honorable, but not everyone plays by the same rule book and
moral standards. Sadly, the honor system doesn't work these days. Even
right now on VCM, we have member-to-member "spam" in the form of low-ball
offers on listed items and shall we say "un-sportsman-like" commentary in
reply to refusals. I imagine that would increase dramatically if one could
see everything someone had, not just what they had for sale. We don't want
to be in the role of "spam cop", handling complaints, reviewing emails and
passing judgement, and handing out sentences to members. That's a big
concern for us. It also wouldn't take a lot of that activity to irritate
people, and then they'd mark their collections private, and after enough of
that, the feature loses its value anyway.

I don't want to say we're not open to the idea. We're are going to try it.
To paraphrase John's comment, we wont' really know if this is a problem, or
what the real problem is if any at all, until we get there.

And thanks to all of you who are supporting this project. Traffic is way up
and some really interesting things are posted, and it's a great reward for
us to see people buying and selling every day.

Patrick
Received on Thu May 13 2004 - 12:54:38 BST