Will discussion of buying/selling equipment be allowed?

Question

Proposal: Amateur Radio

I can't think of an reason why discussion of brands/models would be a problem, but in my opinion we should not allow buying/selling on the forum. That's a whole other can of worms that I think it best to just steer clear of, and if you guys agree, we should make it well-known very early that discussion of actual buying/selling via the forum should not occur.

Though a grey area might be someone coming here and asking something like "I'm looking at this radio, is it good, what should I know about it, etc." I would consider this sort of question at least reasonable, since if here is not the place where we can tell them all about it, then where?

Answer 1

These issues are largely already settled across the SE network; we don't need to invent a policy from scratch.

• Buying/selling as a question post is excluded by principle: a question should be potentially useful to people in the future, and a completed transaction is not. (I don't know about views on conducting such business in Stack Exchange chat.)

• “Is this thing which I am considering buying good?” is a shopping question. These are almost always either subjective, or extremely specific to the buyer's particular circumstances. On the other hand, a question like “How should I evaluate a [kind of device] I'm buying to use for [purpose]?” is more likely to be useful to a person other than the original asker.

Answer 2

Buying/Selling directly should not be allowed on the main site, but could be discussed in chat.

As to questions about specific items, there's a few things that need to be considered.

1. There shouldn't be anything that might insight a "Holy War". "Is Icom better than Yaesu?"
2. Discussion about features of equipment are certainly on topic.
3. Bottom line is, specific is good, broad is bad. The more details on a question, or the more specific requirement, the better.

Good questions:

• What is the CI-V port on many ICOM Radios?
• How can I connect my ICOM 735 for use in digital radio?
• I am looking at _ radio. Is there anything I should be aware of prior to purchasing?

Bad questions:

• Which __ radio should I buy?
• Is it better to use LOTW or eQSL?
• Is __ radio the best?

Questionable (These might work, but it's hard to tell at this point in time):

• Where can I find a reasonable priced SSB VHF/UHF radio (This is a difficult real world problem)
• What types of things should be considered when buying a radio?