Yes, wikipedia has issues.  Yet, it is freely available and much of the information is both accurate and useful.  An educated user or scholar will simply use it as one would a published book, carefully.  Most books are not peer reviewed and are no more scholarly, and in many cases less so than the wikipedia entry.

The entry on internet trolls can be found here.  It is thorough and includes footnotes.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

I provided a quote from the leading authority on the subject.  Judith Donath is currently an Assistant Professor at MIT.  http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/

You can confirm the accuracy of the quote on Wikipedia that I used by go to her profile at MIT's website and downloading the following pdf.

Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community (or .pdf)
Judith Donath. 1998. In Communities in Cyberspace. (M. Smith and P. Kollock, eds.) London: Routledge.

You may note that that note on the quote I provided is present in wikipedia and correctly identifies it source.  The overall entry is consistent with academic thought on the matter.  It is not one of the silly fan driven entries that proliferate...  as the footnotes can be examined to demonstrate.


So, what we have here, is yet again, posters to this forum jumping to conclusions and stating assertions without doing even basic fact checking. Wikipedia is a useful resource that requires fact checking, as do all non primary sources.  

Oddly, the half handed personal attack suggesting that only uneducated people would use wikipedia was misdirected.  No matter the level of one's education, the quality of the writing, the thought process and the quality of the research are core values to academic communities.  Degrees do not remedy bad writing, poorly defended conclusions and inattention to detail and fact checking.

"Shouting" on the internet, making base accusations, failing to check the sources of an argument you wish to discredit, challenging the education level of someone you don't know and referencing trolls... and burning marshmellows..." makes the intent of your post clear.  And, although you may not be primarily a troll, you certainly have engaged in a trolling post.  

As for your quote from wikipedia....  please note the reference to "unchecked information".  The problem is not that all entries are bad, it is that uneducated or lazy users do not independently check sources and facts.  Too bad for them.  You did not bother to read the disclaimer carefully, or to check your facts.  I did both.

Kosh Vorlontay wrote:
Does this guy not know when to shut up?!

Oh that's right, he IS a troll.... and is a troll trying to call others trolls.

Ok, I know I was going to let it lie, but its nice to know I'm not alone in thinking that.

However, at the risk of a further length of prose with numerous snide comments and being condescending to all and sundry and expecting everyone to agree with his comments due to the sheer size of his ego, I think it really is time for pip to drop it and contribute rather than arguing every other goddamn post...  


Apologies for OT... Back to Troll and Toad postage costs.

Sounds like they do re-imburse generally then, but have the goods been any good?

I've always been put off by their disclaimer about 'the box may or may not be complete, broken, soiled, on fire...'

For the more rare items, the prices do seem to start very high, or is that me?

ashmire13 wrote:Sounds like they do re-imburse generally then, but have the goods been any good?

I've always been put off by their disclaimer about 'the box may or may not be complete, broken, soiled, on fire...'

If you are talking about anything that is in used shape from Troll and Toad then assume it is 2 or 3 ratings lower than anyone else would grade it.

It has been mentioned already once that even with their rare items such as a Wee Warriors item that they don't bother to check things like completeness.  Blackmoor's example is the second I have heard about a Wee Warriors item being no where near the condition it is advertised in.  The other case was one where all the maps were missing.

In cases like this they accept the return but then it just goes back up for sale without ever changing the listing so they wait and hope the next buyer doesn't know any better.

As for prices.  Yes, their prices are high - generally double or triple would you might expect to get one for on Ebay.

And, I don't like seeing anyone else (or any business) treated miserably on the site.  It is unseemly and it harms the growth of our hobby.

The problem is that there are some shitbag sellers that pose as "businesses". Plenty of these "businesses" have a sort of "fuck you" attitude towards our hobby and this has been more detrimental than anything I can think of really. Have you ever read some of the crap that Tanya King or whoever she is wrote? There needs to be some accountability when a seller has her kind of "Tude". We care about the hobby but a lot of sellers could give a fuck less about the hobby (as long as they get paid). You cannot make the mistake (I think) of thinking that a seller has some motivation beyond making money to interact with you or me. So, the "business" has some obligations and when they fuck you over it's in everyones best interest to "out them". Then it gets hairy of course because maybe the accusations are malicious and whatnot. More often than not, where there's smoke there's fire (from my own experience) reading these threads.
  What I quoted above is problematic (in a vacuum) because it gives the indication that you're on the wrong side of the fence, (what if some idiot comes along and rips everyone off and Pip doesn't want anyone to be "attacked" is how you make it sound?) It just doesn't read correctly. I think you mean something else though. The trouble is that you're rules lawyering and then when you do that you're setting up your own standards. added: and you have to abide by your own standards as well as the community standards to some degree. You have to be "ELEGANT" which is extremely difficult and nobody here is capable imo.

I was reading through this thread and couldn't help but post my thoughts on the T&T auction.  Hope i don't piss anyone off, i couldn't make it out there and i don't know if anything shady happened.  Just some queries/thoughts based on what i've read.  Maybe i've misunderstood, and someone can correct me.

From what i've read T&T was running the auction and bidding on the items being sold.  They also receive 10-20%, roughly, of the sale price.

Now, my thoughts on auction houses bidding on their own auctioned items aside, does anyone else feel that this system is wide open to corruption?  What's keeps an unscrupulous person from trying to shill bid up the auctions?  If they do accidently win they still get the item at 10-20% less than another winner would, and they're reselling anyway.  in theory they could sit back there and try to jack up prices to increase profit.  they win, the sellers win, only the buyers lose.

now i'm not saying that happened, i'm just curious about the system setup itself.  am i way off base?  is my unserstanding of the setup wrong?  should i go away and be quiet for awhile?

dsaunders wrote:I was reading through this thread and couldn't help but post my thoughts on the T&T auction.  Hope i don't piss anyone off, i couldn't make it out there and i don't know if anything shady happened.  Just some queries/thoughts based on what i've read.  Maybe i've misunderstood, and someone can correct me.

From what i've read T&T was running the auction and bidding on the items being sold.  They also receive 10-20%, roughly, of the sale price.

Now, my thoughts on auction houses bidding on their own auctioned items aside, does anyone else feel that this system is wide open to corruption?  What's keeps an unscrupulous person from trying to shill bid up the auctions?  If they do accidently win they still get the item at 10-20% less than another winner would, and they're reselling anyway.  in theory they could sit back there and try to jack up prices to increase profit.  they win, the sellers win, only the buyers lose.

now i'm not saying that happened, i'm just curious about the system setup itself.  am i way off base?  is my unserstanding of the setup wrong?  should i go away and be quiet for awhile?

It is not like that at all, they are bidding on stuff that they feel they can mark up and re-sell, not shilling for extra profit.

Blackmoor wrote:
It is not like that at all, they are bidding on stuff that they feel they can mark up and re-sell, not shilling for extra profit.

ok, that makes more sense.  i was under the impression that they were bidding on every single item, no matter what it was.  thanks for clearing that up for me.

also, i wasn't saying that shilling was occuring, i was just pondering whether the system was open to it.

Either way, if someone make a profit charity without telling anyone is dishonest and reprehensible.

Pipswich said it best about the auction stuff I think. Assuming that they're legit he's completely correct as far as I understand about charity in the U.S.A.!
   I have a question about something and here's as good a place as any to ask (considering all the people who understand the laws and regulations and everything )
 Suppose I was to win an auction on Ebay. Yoohoo! So I win this auction, say it was for some original art or something I guess... I'm all happy and shit... but... Lo and behold!! I come to find out that another buyer worked out a deal with that seller after I had won the auction!!! The seller ships the original art to that piece of shit buyer instead of me Is that pretty shady or what? Anyways, what would you do if that happened to you? What if that same said buyer turns out to be some person who's giving all this moral advice on a forum I'm always visiting?