There are two separate issues here and each have their own complexities.
1. The group gift swaps are in the Swap Board and are thus public. People may not be aware of that and post more personal information than they otherwise would on a more restricted part of the board.a. I don't personally see this as an issue. I don't post personally identifiable information (PII) anywhere on LHC. My device cameras are not allowed access to location data. People don't need PII to select good gifts for each other. If there is something someone is uncomfortable posting on a public board, they can instead post in their blog and link to on the swap thread.
b. People may not be aware of that and post more personal information than they otherwise would on a more restricted part of the board. I have no problem with moving the group gift swaps to the Meets Forum or looking into creating a sub-forum in the Swap Board that has higher permissions (I think that is technically possible).
2. The Swap Board is public.a. New members may discover LHC via search results that point to the Swap Board. "New members" interested in their own hair is good.
b. Most people use the LHC PM system to exchange information for payment. (I rarely post about what I'm buying on the Swap Board, that is all through PM with the seller.)
c. The Swap Board is use at your own risk. Sellers can decide not to sell to "new members" and buyers may not wish to buy from "new members" judging the risk too high to interact with someone with no reputation on the forums.
d. "New members" can't PM until they reach 25 posts and sometimes do post their email on the Swap Board in order to purchase items.
e. Mods are already overwhelmed by "why can't I access xyz" complaints via email and threads.
f. The Swap Rules need to be public so that vendors who wish to become members can see them (and not get auto banned for spam) and those are located in the Swap Board. Having the same information in multiple locations gets confusing as changes have to then be made in multiple locations and that rarely happens correctly.
g. Sellers can edit their sales posts to their hearts content (like the blogs and unlike the rest of the forum where editing is restricted to spelling/grammar and ETAs). People can and do remove the complete contents of their sales posts after the items are sold.
Some of 2.a-g supports the Swap Board remaining "public", some is against, and some could go either way.
Discuss!
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