This is the start of an action to lower key prices.
If enough people on outpost start buying keys for 5 ref, it will be "proof" to the people on backpack.tf that key prices are 5 ref.
If you want to help, just make your own trade buying keys and write something along the lines of this.
___________________________________________________________________________________

This trade got your attention, didn't it? Share it with your friends, especially if you've been having trouble buying keys at the price you want. In fact, maybe it would be a good idea to start now. Put up a trade saying you're buying keys for 5 ref, and once you buy a key at that price, never take it down. Just update the notes accordingly ie. how many keys you bought at that price. Eventually, your trade link can be used as proof that people are selling at 5 ref.
If you think i'm doing this to get profit, do it yourself to, it doesn't cost you anything to put the trade up and if everyone tries to do that the price might even go lower. Why everyone are trying to make profit by selling higher than the market price? just buy them lower than than market price and sell them for it and the prices won't go up.

It's quite self explainatory.

Users buy less and sell more because that's how trading works and bartering is done.

Your trade single purpose was and is actually said word by word is to lower the price of keys. Aka price manipulation.

If your goal was to be buy low and sell high then you were lieing to users of your real intentions and bought on a false pretense, which is actual a type of scamming. Just to point that out.

So basically, I can make a trade that buys and sells keys at 5 ref and leave the trade at that, then there's no problem? The only thing that was mentioned was the fact that I stated I didn't agree with the current price. If I take that text away, it's still the same trade, still the same idea, and can have the same affect (evidence that the price is possible and therefore "price manipulation"). But it then complies with a rule that I've still yet to see.

As for buying low and selling high, no, that wasn't my intention. As I last commented on that trade, I may not be a well known person, and I may not have a huge reputation throughout the community, but the record I have is clean and I hope to be developer for a portion of a raffling once I get more coding skills under my belt. I have a self-reputation that I take seriously, whether anyone here, besides close friends, actually understands that or not I can't help. But it does stand that record has been clean for the whole of my time here and my intentions have never deviated from that path.

Feel free to reopen the trade, just leave out the whole activism part (Help make the price lower, share with your friends) and you'll not have a single problem.

Will do eventually, but do you see what I'm talking about with the end result being the same? My thing is that it's stupid to hate on activist trades when independent trades do the exact same thing.

Originally posted by BIGHEAD:

-snip -
But it then complies with a rule that I've still yet to see.
-snip-

Straight copy & paste from the rules page.

Note: Most rules are common sense and it would therefore be impossible to list all the things you could do to get yourself banned. This page is not acting as a complete list of bannable offenses — it instead aims to clear up some confusion about those rules that may not be obvious. All moderators and admins have the power to close trades as they see fit (with reason, of course). No ranks exempt you from the site rules.

Anyways I believe as long as your (and the trades) intent is to not lower the price of keys (manipulate) then you are free to make any trade about keys.

It's understandable to say my trade directly stated it's purpose and therefore its/my intent was clear, but is that the only thing a moderator would look for in determining if a trade is deemable as a price manipulation attempt? A clear statement of why I'm doing the trade?

Originally posted by BIGHEAD:

Will do eventually, but do you see what I'm talking about with the end result being the same?

Not true. While the 2 trades would be technically identical, your intent with each would be different. Without those notes you're just someone who buys and sells Keys for 5 Ref, nothing wrong with that. Your intent in the original trade was to encourage others to do the same as you and artificially change the current market price of Keys. That's price manipulation.

Why do you feel the need to slip in the same type of stuff into your other trades when your first was closed?

http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14791916

Nobody here is trying to police prices. You're free to ask for whatever you want. It's when you attempt to rally others to try and induce an artificial shift to the common price range that a problem occurs.

Originally posted by BIGHEAD:

It's understandable to say my trade directly stated it's purpose and therefore its/my intent was clear, but is that the only thing a moderator would look for in determining if a trade is deemable as a price manipulation attempt? A clear statement of why I'm doing the trade?

We look for many things before making a decision. You just made it much easier and clearer to know what your intents were.

well the trade got closed for that, after all remember those good times when keys were 2.55? - I do. The most important bad thing is that every item that is priced in keys will go up everytime keys go up.