I agree with you that it is counterproductive to explicitly allow account sales, but your proposed method of identifying them won't work:
For those that continue trading forum accounts despite a rule prohibiting such trading, to confirm that a person is in fact selling accounts, they could look at IP addresses/browser fingerprints of the person, and when they see the account being used by a distinct second person (with other accounts) with a different IP address/browser fingerprint, the administration will know the person is selling accounts.
One person may access the forum from several different IPs (home, mobile, work, public, etc.), use different VPN servers, or use Tor. One person may also user several browsers across different devices (or even on the same device) and across different operating systems, or even use a switcher or spoofer to constantly display a different browser fingerprint. Even if they didn't, account buyers could simply use the defense "I switched to a new browser/OS/computer/laptop/phone/mobile provider/WiFi provider/VPN provider/Tor".
I think you are giving these people too much credit. I don't think most of these types of people are capable of implementing something like what you describe. If there is a farmer who is creating many accounts, as he sells his accounts, they will change to a new and distinct browser fingerprint, stay on that fingerprint and not go back. Also, if someone has sold 10 accounts to 10 people, if an admin were to ask each of them if they purchased their account, if only one responded that he did, it could be reasonably concluded that all 10 were sold.
Even if your proposed method would work, it would put an impossible workload on the admins since they are the only ones with access to IP logs, and I can't imagine theymos would be very keen to give this privilege to anyone else short of perhaps one or two of the mods.
The process can be automated and data can be masked so that a moderator can make a reasonably conclusion one way or another without seeing specific sensitive information.
Also, theymos does not need to be sending the Gestapo looking for these people, and find
every sold account. If someone believes they are going to pay $100 for something they may be unable to use in any way in two weeks, a rational person would not engage in that type of transaction. Similarly, if a seller has many accounts, he can potentially earn advertising money from these accounts, but if he is selling the accounts, he is putting the rest of what he has at risk of getting banned.
The majority of people involved in this kind of business know the rules that a red trust is the logical consequence for account sales.
That is nonsense.
This person made an offer to buy an account 3 weeks after creating his account, and continued using that same account for almost two years when he received negative trust. If he knew he would get negative trust, he would have abandoned his account 3 weeks, 1 day in.
They will continue it whatever we will write in the rules. The only question would be if they are all reading the rules and if there are some users who we want to be protected from red tags
I don't know the basis for you thinking this. I have seen countless threads of people complaining about receiving negative trust for this reason, making the argument that the rules allow for account trading.
Also, others have pointed out that many people are writing in their marketplace threads that they "only have negative trust for account selling" which negates the value of a negative rating. It is only a matter of time before scammers start to open up account sales threads with the intention of racking up a bunch of negative trust, then start running around scamming people -- they will continue to say they "only have negative trust for account selling" even after people start complaining they were scammed.
I believe most people who engage in this kind of business do so because it is explicitly allowed.
Where did you read that it's explicitly allowed?
When I read the word "allowed". The administration "discouraging" the practice does not negate the rule saying it is allowed.
The suggestion to say the engaging in account sales may result in a negative rating in the rule is not a good idea IMO -- it would be the administration admitting this is a problem but doing nothing about it.
@Quickseller: If you have a suggestion to legalize account sales while it's ensured to exclude the types of shady activities I've listed in my post I'm sure the community is open to discuss it. But I don't see how this can be ensured.
I don't know if you know this about me, but circa 2014/15/16, I traded forum accounts, and in my experience, the overwhelming majority of them do not (try to) scam (as in steal from others). Most would participate in signature campaigns for a couple of months and abandon their account, presumably because they lost interest in the forum. Most do not post crap throughout the forum.
My argument as to why buying accounts is helpful to the forum has always been along the lines that if someone pays $100 to buy an account, they are effectively paying a $100 bond in which they promise to not try to scam and to not post so much garbage they end up getting banned -- if they do either of these things, the value of their account goes to nearly zero, and they lose the $100 they paid for their account. If they try to scam someone, they must scam for at least the value of their account, and if their attempt is called out before it is successful, they will lose the $100 they paid.
On the other side, I have previously argued a person should be able to sell their account because it allows them to obtain money for their account if in need. This gives someone an incentive against scamming someone if they are desperate for money -- they can sell their account instead.
The tagging of sold accounts did not start until somewhere around 9-15 months or so after I exited the business.
The goal of this thread is not to defend forum account sales, nor for them to necessarily be something people don't get tagged for anymore. The goal of this thread is to stop what I believe to be the unfairness of people having their reputations ruined for something that is explicitly allowed. The two possible solutions I believe are best would be to either prohibit forum account sales, or prohibit the tagging of accounts solely because of forum account trading.
It is my prediction that if this problem is addressed, that there are enough loud voices so that forum account sales will be banned. I acknowledge that this would infringe on some people's freedoms, and may otherwise be harmful, however I believe this would be less evil than the current status quo. (I feel the same way about banning tagging people solely for account trading -- it would infringe on freedoms, and may otherwise be harmful, but would also be less evil than the status quo).