^ well that particular "censor" thing was a tongue-in-cheek response to outpost not whitelisting bazaar - i thought it was pretty funny, in a pithy kind of way. it also lasted just a short time (meanwhile bazaar is still not whitelisted and treated just like any other "unknown" site)

anyway, thanks for all the clarifications.

^ this

instead of all the runaround

Originally posted by norby89:

Because it's an open market? The moment you tell people what to do or not to do it's not open any more. I think everyone can agree that backpack.tf is a price checking site, as long as you don't advertize your classified listings on OP you're not really doing any advertizing. This is starting to go in circles.

it's going in circles because it started with trades being closed because of links to a bot (not a competitive feature of outpost) that happens to be a feature of a "competing" site. i think One King is simply pointing out the inconsistency. links to backpack.tf prices (a feature of backpack.tf) are ok, even tho bp.tf has classifieds (and thus a competitor).

perhaps the outpost rules should be ammended to reflect what "advertising" really refers to. i always thought it was so that traders wouldn't make placeholder trades that are actually links to non-tf2 related sites - like an amazon affiliate link, for example.

perhaps they should read: "no links to sites that pose even a slight danger to our monopoly on trading market share"

cool, thanks for the response

of course it's not a federal law regulated site, Currier, i was replying to Blue Screen's analogy which is also ludicrous.

my questions never did get answered - instead we keep going over the obvious (outpost defending itself against the heavy onslaught of competition (seriously??))

so i will repeat them: is dispenser.tf also off limits as a link? if i made my own bot (with a website hook) would that also be off limits? i'd like to know this before i make the effort to work on such a system and then have my trades closed anyway.

edit: if i link to backpack.tf is that also going to get my trade closed?

by the way - i'm wondering. will outpost start closing trades that link to backpack.tf? for example i've seen trades for rare items like a low craft or odd number trade that link to their bp page on backpack.tf and ask potential buyers to check the price.

would that also be considered advertising?

samhudson333 - that is a great idea - thanks for the tip.

Blue Screen: that's totally bogus. name one example where a company would prevent that and not get slapped with an anti-competitive suit by the DOJ or it's non-US counterparts...

it's not advertising and you know it... i don't make money off it (except the occasional minuscule referral bonus toward a VIP membership which is meaningless because i paid for mine (just like i donated to outpost)) and i am ok with both sites thriving.

i have no affiliation with those other sites. i'm just a user, Regen. my interest is to be able to have trades happen while i'm not able to trade myself. and you didn't answer my actual questions.

i should point out that even at the height of the browser wars neither microsoft nor netscape blocked each others site. facebook doesn't block twitter. google doesn't block facebook or vice versa.

this sucks, because i see outpost and that other site as different tools in my trading. if you note, i don't post outpost type trades at all on that other site. just automated trades and auctions.

it was also suggested that a problem would be that outpost rules require you have the item in you backpack, but i often have doubles so that i can deal with both traders who add me, or traders who go direct to the bot.