[eoc_Jason]

hasan2k - I'm not going to do CC verification, there are even ways around that, but also it would remove a large portion of younger people who don't have a CC, and also a lot of people who wouldn't feel comfortable submitting that info to a smaller site. I trust Amazon and do have my CC on file there for purchases, but I wouldn't trust Joe Bob's Fishing Forum to hold my CC info because I don't know how secure their software is, nor do I trust what they might do with it.

I was considering doing some sort of PayPal verification thing, however all my attempts in talking to PayPal about any sort of API to query if a person is PayPal verified have been returned with extremely unhelpful canned responses.

User / Transaction verification has been discussed before several times in this thread (try sifting through the pages or searching, I don't remember what post #'s they were). There was even discussion about linking users to a thread (by creating a buy/sell button) and then only letting them rate each other. But a lot of "what if" issues were brought up that would make the hack so complicated that it was determined that it would just make more sense to write a hack from the ground up that did what people wanted... an auction/classifieds add-on.

So that's what I'm doing. Well, actually two things. I'm working on a cross-forum capable version of Trader Ratings, and also the auction/classified system (that of course ties into trader ratings). This will bring about a "verifiable deal" in the sense that you have an actual page to view who the buyer & seller and item and price and whatnot were, but also allow "unverifiable" transactions based on good faith (like the current TR operates now). But all this will take some time as I've only got two hands and very little spare time at the moment.

This hack was intended to be simple and solve a common dilemma. I'm not big into hacking up 20 vBulletin files, only to have to re-do it all every time there is a new release. I prefer to keep things separate and minimal.

This hack solved the common issue I've seen a lot of forums do where they just had a thread that a person had to maintain where they listed who dealt with who... It was archiac and not really that informative. My hack (in its current state) is by no means perfect, but it is a step in the right direction by having an automated system that is user friendly.