Butterzone, I think where we agree is that not all critical posts in the marketplace or other areas where people are engaged in professional activities here are accurate or warranted. People who engage in such activity should not be free to do so without repercussion. Being critical of a user for engaging in actual fraudulent or dishonest activity is one thing, and users are free to bring light to anyone engaged in these acts pretty much on the entire forum. For the rest of the dedicated users operating here professionally and obeying posting guidelines, allowing this kind of activity or furthermore punishing users for acting against it is a slap in the face. Letting some one control their own marketplace thread does not some how silence critics because they have the ENTIRE FORUM to be critical of users. Not letting some one take a crap all over your storefront is not equivalent to silencing free speech.
Unless you own the property that someone is making speaking on, then you do not have any right to "punish" them for what they say. You do not own the thread in which you are selling your goods, and therefore you do not have any right to punish anyone who says anything in your thread (provided they are not attempting to scam).
It is a valid question to ask why you are charging a certain price when others are charging a lower price. If you feel your price is appropriate then you should respond to then why they are appropriate and any potential customer can see both of your arguments in a transparent way.
Yeah that works great in fantasy land. In reality trolls don't give a crap about logical arguments, and regardless it doesn't stop the damage done. Also I love the misquoting of the actual words I used about the mods "punishing" me for the trust I left, and attributing it to me as if I claimed I want to "punish" others. Quite disingenuous.
You want a fair trading environment but also want to let people operate on this forum as if it were 4chan. I am not claiming the thread itself is my property, I am claiming it SHOULD be, at least within the confines of the marketplace section. Even if every single marketplace posting was self moderated it would not stop others from calling out fraud or abuse elsewhere in the forum. Additionally it costs you nothing to allow people to harass me, therefore you have no interest in protecting me to begin with, and neither do the mods.
However there is plenty of incentive for people to drift from thread to thread and pretend like they are righting wrongs so they can look like social justice warriors and also entertain themselves with trolling in the process. People can cause harm with their words and by invading and hijacking otherwise productive threads. These people thrive off of destroying the work of others and due so under a guise of pointing out a wrong to put their victims on the defensive from the beginning of their perpetration of this harassment. This will continue to be exploited by disingenuous people until the moderators and staff correct their failed attempts at moderating trust in any way. As long as you comply to it, they will keep harassing then demanding the staff correct it for them. Neutral trust isn't going to fix anything, because the problem isn't the trust system, it is your attempts at moderating it. Staff/moderators your strategy is a failing one. Unfortunately you decided to punish me and others instead of accepting that fact.