Talk:Trade

Proposed Listing Standards

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

Be currently functional (downtime of less than 48 hours is acceptable)
Be currently accepting bitcoins
Have clear instructions for paying with bitcoins from the link given
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)

I suggest we vote on this. Vendors who have hidden the fact they accept bitcoin extremely well (try finding it on Orbixx's site) do not deserve to be listed here. We could create a separate page for them (i.e. unverifiable entries). Berend 22:24, 11 August 2011 (GMT)

I agree that a site that accepts bitcoin must Clearly Say So on any page that mentions payment options, and their front/landing page. Any site that does not say so Up Front, should not be listed as Accepting Bitcoin. How do you verify that they accept bitcoin until you've already selected a product/service, and gone to the checkout page, and Finally see an option for using Bitcoin? This is a ridiculous thing to do. If I only have a Mastercard, and I'm on a site that only accepts Visa, I'd be pretty upset to not find that out until I'm already at the checkout page!! Every site I have EVER used to purchase Anything online says, Up Front, what kinds of payment methods they accept. No confusion. Krepta3000 17:47, 25 August 2011 (MST)

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)

The header for the page claims 'Products or services illegal in US or Japan are not fit to be listed here - such links will be removed immediately. Any attempt to get those links up again will result in the account being blocked. This includes pornography and many mind-altering drugs'. As pornography is not actually illegal in Japan or in the US, it should be clarified whether the restriction is the result of an editor attempting to enforce their ideology, a requirement that all porn comply with Japanese censorship regulations (i.e. mosaic over certain body parts - which I suspect fairly few bitcoin-accepting sites actually comply with), or an administrative decision whose force stems from private property rights rather than from .us/.jp law. Deekoo 05:54, 15 August 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)

We want a payment medium that resists the authority of the state. That is going to be "criminal". The real fix is providing adequate fallbacks and replacements for single points of failure STH 01:04, 20 November 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)

Just go for it. Even MezeGrill has no verifiable info on their business accepting BTC. We need some level of organisation to sort things out and it is good practice to give all necessary information that makes it easy for others to verify your information but for now if you have an actual business that's better than the worst of those listed here already.

--Giszmo 13:24, 28 September 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 organizations

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)

I've added RYT (Roll Your Tasks) under 'Productivity' again (has been deleted by user Luke-jr, probably because there is no force to pay for this service). Donations are accepted, but I'm not an organization of any kind. Moreover RYT is an app for enhancing productivity without political or similar intent, beside that I want to give others the opportunity to use it. I think it's good to also give non- or part-commercial efforts a chance to be listed here. If someone wants to have some specific (RYT) improvements, feel free to suggest a deal...

Listing criteria above are fullfilled:

   Be currently functional (downtime of less than 48 hours is acceptable) -> fullfilled.
   Be currently accepting bitcoins -> Yes.
   Have clear instructions for paying with bitcoins from the link given -> Yes (bitcoin address).
   Prices must be sane within an order of magnitude (non-sane prices indicate that the website has not been updated to match bitcoin deflation) -> Very sane (free, if you don't want to donate).

Hartrock 03:57, 25 September 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)

Witcoin still down STH 00:58, 20 November 2011 (GMT)

payco.in : bitcoin currency directory - I've started a links list of my own (I admit I wanted to get my own site, Lorna Morgan, listed somewhere I wouldn't be removed!) I didn't like the design of witcoin ... and Bitcookies seems to be down at the moment. --Lorna Morgan 05:36, 28 July 2011 (GMT)

payco.in still up STH 00:58, 20 November 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)

Bitcookies still down STH 00:56, 20 November 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:

It might be hard to see whether something is simply a low budget project or not serious.
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.
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)

proposal

Separated pages for trading, bitcoin accepting online stores, games, free coins etc.

Major clean-up

Mediawiki has a perfect way to deal with collections. That's categories. It also has great tools to get a consistent look. That's templates. This cluttered list of non-verifiable (every child here knows meze grill accepts bitcoins but there is no word indicating this is true if you follow the link), outdated (o-crep is on this list but the link leads you to a one time offer) or even scam. Often there is not even a link to brick and mortar businesses but only a street address.

I suggest everybody who wants to promote his business here makes a small myBitcoinBusiness site for it and makes strong use of categories and templates. --Giszmo 13:24, 28 September 2011 (GMT)

I'd like to bump this suggestion. Are there any objections to creating a separate page for every Business and put it into all relevant categories? --Giszmo (talk) 05:21, 26 August 2012 (GMT)

Please add us www.fnib.co

First National Innovation Brokers has been accepting btc to fund forex and gold trading accounts since June, 2011. www.fnib.co Please add us on the Trade list and help get the word out.

It's a wiki. Add yourself. Wikipedia rules of no articles about yourself don't apply here. If you take yourself for relevant and others disagree, after an edit-war you might give up or become relevant ;) --Giszmo (talk) 05:22, 26 August 2012 (GMT)

Is bittit.info appropriate?

bittit.info is a place for users to sell their photos. It's free to use (no fees) and it also has a NSFW section. I wonder if that last thing makes it inappropriate for this wiki. It's not a porn site, almost all the pictures are in the SFW section but I hesitate to add it here. If someone could advice me on that matter I would be grateful. --Tritonio 20:25, 6 November 2011 (GMT)

Geographical

Perhaps as a start there should be something to deal with location. We could have a separate non-geographical section for things like online services and places that post globally.

A plumber accepting BTC in USA probably isn't much interest to someone in Japan.

Duplication

Pages Buying bitcoins and Selling bitcoins list exchanges as well. Perhaps separating this information is a good idea (into a page named like "List of Exchanges") to avoid duplication and "overcluttering" of Trade page?

Referral Links

I am constantly finding referral links on this page and others. Whenever I see them, I change them back to regular links without the referral code.

Is there some action we should be taking to block those users who keep adding their referral codes to links?

Admins can/should block their accounts. We could create a bot to detect these easy to detect links and revert them automatically. I never made a bot but saw many in action. Also I believe the pages should make clear that referral spam will not be tolerated and patrol the referrers and black list certain origins like this wiki for example and exclude those spammers for future referrals. --Giszmo (talk) 14:17, 22 July 2012 (GMT)

There appears to be no wiki policy regarding referral links. There should be so that the current contention on the Trade page can end. --Ohm

DailyBtc.com

Daily bitcoin lottery paid out every day

Wikileaks

Why isn't WikiLeaks listed? Under Political Activism?

I suppose because they aren't selling something. They are accepting donations, aren't they? --Tritonio (talk)

Coinster Search Engine (no censorship)

Coinster.info has very open listing guidelines.

Pharmacy

The listed sites are the same sites that probably send you your daily spam. The India one is listed twice (with different domains) and the Swiss one has no pharmacy license according to their homepage. Listing such sites here is kind of an endorsement and I would prefer not to list those sites here. I don't like censorship, but I don't see any reason to promote them either. --Http (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2013 (GMT)

one page per "thing" with categories

Mediawiki is exceptionally good at organizing categories. You can use categories for many things. German pirate party even uses categories for an experts listing resulting in users being in dozens of categories because the feel like sharing they know french sort of. I think we should use the same power here to get things sorted a bit. One business, one wiki page, many categories. The category pages can be unedited (they just group the businesses), be categorized themselves or contain general information about what belongs there and what not. We should use the power of mediawiki! (I know, just do it :( Would be cool if others could do it ;) ) --Giszmo (talk) 20:03, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

I agree, Just Do It! Honestly - a lot of categories could be listed in table/sortable formats. I'll personally be doing this for a few categories of interest over the next few months. While doing that, I'll move them ontospecific relevant pages - thanks for the kick on that idea :-) Erth64net (talk) 15:53, 17 July 2013 (GMT)

Hosting services cleanup

The "Virtual Private Server" column is redundant when the support status of each major VPS technology is immediately listed in the same row, so I've removed the redundant column.

I've also added the "IPv6" column. Internet connectivity is a critical core aspect of hosting services, and support for the next generation internet protocol (IPv6) now in use by many major sites should be a highly relevant topic when selecting a hosting provider. As a result, I've surveyed each of the listed companies, and indicated if they support IPv6, by using the IPv6 listing criteria detailed at Talk:Virtual_private_server.

Erth64net (talk) 15:50, 17 July 2013 (GMT)

Removal policy

When should we remove the entry for a business which doesn't exist any more? Should a note with a timestamp be made first on the page's talk section, and after 48 hours the whole entry could be removed? Akaihola (talk) 11:52, 21 August 2013 (GMT)