There's one thing I don't see anybody talking about here. I don't think it's very practical to ban selling accounts. How could you practically apply a ban like that? I mean, you can see if the quality of posts completely changes at one point of time and the person starts spamming. If they already have the status they want, they may not really post very much at all any more. I think it's also a good point, that if it would be banned, it could drive prices up more, like illegal drugs. You have to keep in mind, the original account owners put in a lot of work and effort to get their rank up. If they decide they want to move on in their life, maybe their efforts should be worth something. Then if the new account owner does stupid things, they'll just lose their whole investment. They'll get what they deserve.
Well you, an account farmer, would say this. How many accounts are you farming? How many of your accounts have you had banned now? Which ones of these are yours that I've noticed posting in the exact same threads as you:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2247852 Zayn_Nazy June 30, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280178 Willie_Linder July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2279012 katherin_panini July 13, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2271482 Michael_Cox July 10, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280138 James_Cline July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2272791 Sherwood_Archer July 11, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2271537 Aidan_Davis July 10, 2018Besides, you stop it the same way we don't allow users to sell weapons or post ref links here. If they list an account for sale it gets removed or they get banned. As ThePharmacist said, it's not rocket science.
Banning account trades in the forum might finish the deals happening in public, like in Auctions or Digital Goods sections, but they will start doing it in private
I hate that argument with a passion. It's an excuse to do nothing in the face of wrongdoing, and such poor reasoning would never fly anywhere in our world of laws.
Imposing a rule without a viable way to enforce it wouldn't do much good.
If account sales are banned we're gonna catch a few idiots who attempt to do it in the open and that's about it. I don't see what we could possibly do about sales happening outside of the forum. There are plenty of examples like that IRL too, e.g. Chicago gun restrictions rendered largely useless by Indiana. We can impose such restrictions to make ourselves feel better but I doubt it would make a dent in the actual problem.
We might as well get rid of all rules then. We can't do anything about ban evasion or rule breaking. Therefore, don't ban people and let them do what they want?
If we went with my suggestion of allowing people to purchase the equivalent rank in things like Silver and Gold Memberships account sales would mostly cease to happen. People only buy them for signature campaigns and half of the time the people selling them are either scammers who don't have any accounts to sell in the first place or hackers/shitposting farmers. If account sales are going to happen then let them safely buy them from the forum. It's win win. There are no negatives to this at all.