I thought that initially Theymos had written something in the OP of the merit announcement thread about merit sources being prohibited from selling merit, but he seems to have reworded it and removed such language, but i am sure that he said it.
Therefore, I conclude that selling of merit is not illegal right? Since it is just a form of trading which theymos already have stated that it should not be an issue? Trading merit is pretty obvious tho. Unlike selling it in which it stays between the two persons involved. Good point there that if a certain user sells its merit then it isn't illegal? Correct me if im wrong then that certain user should not be tagged?
When I wrote that statement, I was attempting to respond to Lauda's assertion that selling/trading merit was not clear from the forum rules. Further, in the past month, I had been a little bit concerned that some members were being tagged with Red trust in terms of accusations of selling/trading/soliciting merit even though the rules were not clear regarding that conduct.
So, yeah, I attempted to point out a couple of statements by Theymos regarding trading/ selling or soliciting merit.
I think that regarding merit sources, the rule is fairly clear that merit sources are prohibited to engage in any kind of behavior to sell or trade merit or to solicit such.
However, regarding regular members, it seems that technically it is not against the forum rules to sell/trade merit; however, it still would not prohibit other members from giving negative trust to regular members who are engaging in such selling/trading or even soliciting of merit (maybe if soliciting rises to the level of "excessive begging?").
So personally, I believe that for regular members it still probably would not be a good idea to sell or trade merit or to attempt to do so through soliciting, even though technically it does not appear to be against any specific merit rule - but it could still attract negative trust because it seems like a dubious kind of behavior....
I think that Theymos's is specific comment about NOT focusing on merit trading/selling of regular members being a "rounding error" is valid too, because the initially distributed merit is going to run out, and therefore the initial distribution of merit does not add up to a lot of merit that would end up being abused through selling/trading.
Therefore, it seems that it would be a kind of judgement call regarding how much selling/trading of merit behavior would justify giving negative trust.
