Talk:Trade

Proposed Listing Standards

I propose the following standards be required for listing on the [Trade]. The listed site must

1. Be currently functional (downtime of less than 48 hours is acceptable)
2. Be currently accepting bitcoins
3. Have clear instructions for paying with bitcoins from the link given
4. Prices must be sane within an order of magnitude (non-sane prices indicate that the website has not been updated to match bitcoin deflation)

The standards will help keep the list manageable and easy to use.

This is a talk page, so please sign your contributions. I mostly agree, but the "sane prices" criterion seems a bit subjective ; there is a risk that we exclude goodwilling merchants, who would otherwise be willing to update their prices when contacted. ThomasV 10:43, 12 February 2011 (GMT)

Here is an example [1]. When I say "sane", I mean reasonable within an order of magnitude. I moved your other comment to a separate section for clarity Ptd 12:59, 13 February 2011 (GMT)

Sounds reasonable. --Sirius 07:09, 23 February 2011 (GMT) Reasonable. What about defining a practice for ordering the list of sites? I've got one to add, so I'll just tack it at the bottom, but it's going to be an ugly list after awhile. Alphabetical? Chronologically ordered by add date? JulianTosh 00:19, 10 May 2011 (GMT)

I'd say somewhat unreasonable regarding the clear instructions. A lot of my customers are the types who would get confused if I listed my native currency and Bitcoin side by side. I want to offer Bitcoin for Bitcoin users, but not at the risk of confusing other potential customers and potentially losing sales as a result. As such, I make it possible for customers to switch to using Bitcoin during the checkout process. Orbixx 18:39, 02 June 2011 (GMT)

Every link that does not go to a page that CLEARLY states they are accepting bitcoins should be removed. Try to go to the website Orbixx has added again, there is simply no way to check they accept bitcoins, and I believe they don't actually. I couldn't figure it out. So I think the rules should be that if the link does NOT arrive at a page that says the site is accepting bitcoins, it should be removed. Orbixx, companies can just create a separate page for it, and you link to that page, not simply to your homepage if you think it would be too confusing on the home page. Berend 21:21, 2 June 2011 (GMT)

On Exoware.net payment methods are not stated at all until the checkout process; this is incredibly common. It should be evident that we accept Bitcoin because we are listed on this page and there should be no need to plaster it all over some landing page or on the site. As for your belief that "they don't actually [accept bitcoins]", you're welcome to try us - we do. The mere fact that you nonchalantly removed our listing in the first place for apparently not accepting Bitcoin without even getting in contact with us in the first place is ridiculous. Then to come on here after I email you with screenshots showing the page where you can change your currency to BTC and say that somehow you still maintain that we do not accept Bitcoin is preposterous. Do not remove any listings without first solidly verifying your inadequate assumptions. Orbixx 04:01, 03 June 2011 (GMT)

It's not unreasonable to expect a merchant to have a bitcoin logo among the mastercard, visa, paypal, google checkout, etc. buttons that clutter a corner of nearly every website that takes money. If they accept bitcoin, they should add a bitcoin logo there. if they take money, they should have a section that fits the description. it's that simple. no reason not to be able to tell at a glance. aarcane 04:54, 03 June 2011 (UTC)

Should we put addresses on the wiki?

We just had some bitcoin address spam. perhaps it would not have happened if we did not put bitcoin addresses on the wiki ? ThomasV 23:50, 12 February 2011 (GMT)

Page is now semi-protected. MagicalTux 08:28, 16 February 2011 (GMT)

Yea i suggest not to put the bitcoin addresses of donation-accepting orgs on the wiki. this opens it up to vandalism in hopes of getting misdirected bitcoins. just link to the relevant webpage of the donation-accepting organization, and that's all. that way also we don't have to worry about the addresses changing.--Nanotube 04:41, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

Hide Contents of Adult?

Should the contents of Adult be displayed by default, or might it be reasonable to expect that to be a hidden that requires an action for the contents of the category to be rendered? - User:sgornick 06:22, 23 February 2011 (GMT)

Should be hidden or moved to another page. --Sirius 07:05, 23 February 2011 (GMT)

I'm all for censoring it as much as the community will tolerate. --Luke-jr 13:27, 23 February 2011 (GMT)

Why hide adult section? They are just links to sites, and section is clearly labeled "Adult". What's the big idea on the censorship? --Nanotube 04:39, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

I suggest do not censor or hide. Consider for example genjix's calm reference to drugs in his presentation. Should he have been afraid and contemplative of censoring or preventing from communicating such things? Such is a kind of debate generally influenced by religi*** motivations. See Trade_R for adult content Mizerydearia 15:04, 27 April 2011 (GMT)

Against censorship of site links. They should simply be labeled as adult oriented and the vagues possible genre references. JulianTosh 00:21, 10 May 2011 (GMT)

The problem with listing every site together with adults sites is that automatic scanning software might label your business in the same group. You don't want that to happen, else your legitimate businesses will very quickly disappear from this page Berend 21:18, 2 June 2011 (GMT)

Drugs Section Empty

The "psychoactives" section appears to consist entirely of dead links. Ironwolf 03:54, 28 March 2011 (GMT)

I deleted the Drugs section, since Bitcoin is still far too vulnerable to government actions against it -- there are many single points of failure. The most glaring to me is the DNS system -- the bitcoin.org domain could be taken down if the US government wishes to.

This is a terrible decision. My company was removed because of this decision, and it disgusts me. Not all drugs are illegal. My company operates a physical storefront in the US. We ONLY sell drugs that you can buy at the supermarket down the road. Just because it is a "drug" or "psychoactive" doesn't mean that the government is trying to shut it down. Nicotine is a drug, aspirin is a drug, alcohol is a drug. Lotus petals are psychoactive, and so is chamomile and kava - but you can go into Walmart or Walgreens/CVS and buy them. These are the only drugs for sale. Stop freaking out about it. People have swept our business off this list twice because of this ridiculous mindset. We're a hippy art store - not a head shop or drug market. --Metagnosis 17:59, 22 June 2011 (GMT)

I apologize to those merchants who may not get as many customers now, but really, it's probably better this way. Anyone who needs to can get a connection by asking around, I'm sure. My goal is only to reduce the "criminal" perception of Bitcoin. AaronM 01:18, 27 April 2011 (GMT)

What is a Notable Website

I started accepting bitcoin at http://la.indymedia.org and a couple other sites on the slaptech.net site. What's the standard for adding this to the list of sites? Johnk 16:30, 17 April 2011 (GMT)

New section for services that are not considered "Professional services"?

I'm wondering whether it might be advisable to add a section for services that are not really "professional services" as that term is ordinarily used in vernacular English.

For example, I just added a dump-truck haulage service to Professional services/Other; but dump truck haulage is not generally considered a professional service. Ought we to consider adding a new section to the page? 1ECVX6EAk53VER2NH5NKharUUGpfw8iUP6 01:49, 4 May 2011 (GMT)

i'm a massage therapist wanting to trade bitcoin for massage. what section do i put my services in?

zenbunny 20:52, 25 May 2011 (GMT)

donation accepting organizasions

perhaps a separate page should be created for them ? I guess donations do not belong to "trade". ThomasV 23:17, 5 May 2011 (GMT)

Definitely. It's a bit sad that there is no place to list all Bitcoin-accepted organizations, particularly smaller non-profit ones since they don't sell anything and the organizations page has a notability requirement. I'll create one if no one objects and/or does it before me. Blues 20:36, 25 May 2011 (GMT)

Alternative listings for bitcoin-related directory and merchant sites

Because this wiki is censored and not allowing of certain contents or sites, I have set up http://bitcoinsites.witcoin.com/ to allow for all bitcoin-related sites to be posted. Feel free to also use this medium for commenting and reviewing sites as well. Mizerydearia 05:28, 25 May 2011 (GMT)

• Since witcoin.com is subject to US and/or Canada law, I would expect it to be censored as well eventually. But perhaps not a bad idea to make an alternative site for the ratings/reviews idea anyway... I won't use it if it's based on witcoin though, since they require paying to comment/rate... --Luke-jr 18:27, 25 May 2011 (GMT)

Bitcookies - A community resource to list businesses, events, and classifieds that are related to Bitcoin. The server is privately owned and therefore not subject to any controlling interests. The site does not, nor will it ever have censorship in terms of the types of businesses/traders/websites listed. The site is free to all community members and was developed with funds from my mining operations. Miner24934 16:25, 27 May 2011 (GMT)

Bloomberg Esque Data Suite: Compiling Transaction info from merchants to measure demand

I am included on the list of many who are very interested in seeing bitcoin succeed and want to be a part of that success, but there is one serious uncertainity that is keeping me from getting in: are people actually using their coins for more than just buying drugs and slim jims, and is all of the buying concentrated in one website or product and one consumer demographic? Demand for the coins is necessary for their success. This can be determined by consumption rates and habits. I have perused the website listing, but still feel that information is lacking.

It would be nice to see an economic indicator that acquires data from merchants (and compensates them in bitcoin for their effort) on the dollar value (and perhaps sector) of the bitcoin transactions. We could then weigh a derivative of total dollar amount and number of transactions against the number of bitcoins mined to get a better understanding of the economic health of the currency.

Require description of changes

It's impossible to read this pages's history, because most people seem to forget to: - use the "description" line when committing a change - use the "preview" button, and do several changes in a row just because they forgot the label on a link

The first point is the most important, because of changes like that one, that suppresses and adds random links without even explaining why. Such changes should be immediately reverted, by policy. On the technical side, one small improvement could be to require the "description" field to be non-empty. People could still write random characters, but that would still be a different action. --Davux 23:15, 22 June 2011 (GMT)

Huge chunk of deletions reverted

Hi,

I've tracked down a huge set of deletions wich was probably done in error, see link. I've reverted each deletion individually because otherwise, new entries would have been deleted.

It's probably necessary to watch out for that. --Joise 18:55, 29 June 2011 (GMT)

Vetting

I realise this is probably a difficult issue — we don't realistically have the time or work to vet all listed sites — but should ones which are clearly scams be removed from the wiki page, or should each be discussed first before deletion (perhaps, by moderator staff)?

For example:

Time Warp interactive, is a fiction/nonfiction mmorpg that is in alpha and is selling the game only through bitcoins

This, to me, is clearly a scam. Going through their Google Sites website (which is the new GeoCities), it becomes clear very quickly that this is not a product that it pretends to be, and is instead just some fly by night website setup by a couple of teenagers in hopes of some free cash from unsuspecting visitors.

I doubt anybody would actually send any BTC their way anyway, but in my opinion having hoaxes like this damages the credibility and trustworthy of Bitcoin accepting merchants as a whole.

Could we come up with some way of pruning false merchants like this?

I think that links which are very clearly scam should not be promoted. However I see two difficulties:

1. It might be hard to see whether something is simply a low budget project or not serious.
2. What is reputable and what not certainly will vary widely. If you want to promote a bank, I'd likely want another neighborhood than if you just try to sell psychodelically designed pizza containing extremely high concentrations of capsain.
3. The more profound issue is that the not-to-reputable looking enterprises might be exactly the ones which bring the stongest kicks to innovation. I am thinking in the term "garage firm". And obviously grandparents will tell the kids some day that the whole bitcoin economy started with alpaca socks, online poker and fancy glass beads.

My proposal: Create a playground / dockland / bitcoinpunk section which can collect the fringe of the fringe. And let largely visitors decide what they are going to trust. --Joise 19:21, 4 July 2011 (GMT)