Hi Everyone,
The mod team has been wondering how we can best handle the emergence of all the new Markets that have appeared since the demise of SR:Original. It seems like almost everyday a new marketplace appears and more are yet to come. We want to create an environment of trust and accountability at /r/DarkNetMarkets so that our readers don't have to work too hard in finding reliable information and getting timely support.
As it currently stands it is basically a free-for-all. As a new market emerges and gets brought to our attention we add it to the sidebar and let our readers decide for themselves where to transact. There have already been some unscrupulous markets that have come and gone, such as Tormarket and Budster, and we want to avoid giving too much spotlight to the markets which we feel are undeserving. The fact of the matter is that anyone can put together a marketplace and many people are doing so in order to take advantage of the community in this chaotic time.
One way which we feel that we can solve this problem is by implementing a new rule but before we do that we think it would be wise to gather some community opinions. After all, you the readers deserve to have a say in how this place is governed and we don't want our readers to think we are favoring some markets over others. The proposed rule change is as follows:
New markets will only be given prime real estate space on the sidebar if and only if the market admins themselves specifically request to be added to the sidebar and if they promise to be involved in the /r/DarkNetMarkets community.
To clarify what this means: Prime Real Estate Space would be considered the visible portion of the sidebar. If you look at the current sidebar you will notice a link that says "...continuation of sidebar" below the various marketplace links. If a new marketplace is brought to our knowledge and we haven't had any direct communication from that marketplace's admin team, they will be added into the "...continuation of sidebar" section with a note letting readers know that if they choose to transact with one of those marketplaces we will not be able to help them in any way with support.
If an admin of a marketplace does reach out to us we will add them to the visible portion of the sidebar given the condition that they respond to users that have posted problems they are experiencing with that marketplace.
We do not intend to make this subreddit the de facto support line for the various marketplaces and we do not want you to make this the first line of contact for when you are experiencing problems. If you have already tried messaging the support team on their website and have gone days without response or resolution, we think that this subreddit can serve as an escalated line of support. It allows the community to gauge if you are entitled to a timely response which would be dictated by how many upvotes/comments your thread gets. We don't expect the marketplace admins to respond to every complaint that gets posted here because we understand that many of them are unfounded claims but we do believe that posts over a certain upvote count (amount to be decided, something we'd appreciate your input on) should be addressed.
If the marketplace admins fail to address the problems which have been upvoted within a timely fashion (we also need help deciding how much time to give) they will be flagged for removal from the visible portion of the sidebar.
We believe these rule changes will benefit everyone. The readers of our sub will have a clearer idea of where it is best to transact and they can expect a higher level of accountability while the marketplace admins benefit from greater visibility.
We'd love to know what our readers think about these proposed rule changes before we actually implement them though. The last thing we want people to think is that we are favoring some marketplaces over others because that is certainly not the intention. We simply want to provide a better user experience as we navigate these uncharted waters.
Thank you for reading this long winded post. We love our userbase and want to do whatever is possible to improve your experience here. Also, be sure to look out for some upcoming contests, raffles, and gold promotions that we are hoping to start here soon! As always, if you have any other suggestions to improve this subreddit feel free to post in this thread or message the moderators!
Cheers!
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