This has been a most interesting thread and like Andrew states, it helps one take pause and give thought to what is being discussed. The thread title is Ethics and Policies. Two seperate things. There are many things in life that are legal but may not be ethical. Ethics are not necessarily written in stone. It is a personal code. What may be ethical to you and I may not be to someone else. It is all in how you are brought up, your culture and probably a few other things. I don't think you can create new rules and policies to try and manage people's ethics. In my opinion, one has to use common sense to do so. For example, eBay has some rules and policies to govern its "membership". Most is to cover legalities. Some are a bit more political in nature. But the number one rule is to use common sense when you buy from there. Caveat Emptor. I think the same can be applied to a forum such as this. What makes this a great forum in my opinion? Up until this point, it has been pretty much a free and open forum where collectors AND non-collectors can gather together to share knowledge. That seems to be the spirit of the forum. Knowledge is indeed a resource. There is a lot of collective experience within this forum. That experience has been gained over a lot of years and each user should utilize that experience how they see fit. Many members enjoy sharing their knowledge. Other members prefer to guard their knowledge carefully and only share it selectively. Both are fine. It is a personal choice. We must remember that you should never manage to the exception. It gets too complicated if you do that. The majority of posts are legitimate without further incidence. In the few times someone has taken knowledge from here and used it unscrupiously it is indeed unfortunate. I think a thread like this sheds light on the subject and helps remind us all to be careful with our resource, knowledge. Make this thread a sticky. But again, I suggest common sense can prevail here. If you feel suspicious or uncertain about the intentions of a poster, either don't share knowledge on the item or ask them what their intention is. If they are not forthright with their response then it is a good indication they may be up to no good and simply don't respond. We all know who the "regulars" are and those members have gained our confidence that if they have an item they are inquiring about we feel more free to share our knowledge and experience than with a new member. Hey, a small price for membership. We also have to remember we were all first time members at some point. We either jumped in by contributing to posts, or sharing pieces from our collections, or asking questions about certain items. I am personally quite thankful that I was welcomed in, that knowledge was shared and here 8 or 9 years later am still enjoying what I consider one of the best forums out there. Gentleman, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Let's just all use a little common sense and exercise a bit of Caveat Emptor when we have a post we just don't sense is legit.
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