Rules for classifieds... do you want them?

OK, so the PM I got went roughly like this:

I was wondering what you thought about introducing a few rules regarding the sale of stuff. I don't really want to propose it, honestly I prefer the free nature of this place but recently there has been a pretty big increase in the amount of for-sale threads, many of them forum newbies, and I think it's necessary. I was thinking maybe a minimum of 100 posts / 1 month waiting time before they're allowed to sell things, something like that.

It's also not really fair on forum regulars, when the times comes to us wanting to sell a pair of wheels for example, we're only gonna find it harder because there are more wheels on the forum marketplace. It just saturates the market.

Also, it's far too easy to fence stolen stuff on here, this rule will make it harder.

But that's basically one proposal for a problem, and there could be others (if you have a better idea, put it in this thread).

Now me... I'm for and against. All over the place as usual.

I never liked the idea of preventing people posting classifieds, as if something was being sold that someone on here would want... I'd want them to have the earliest opportunity to get a good deal.

So I kinda don't want to prevent for sale adverts, or limit them... even though this is directly what is being proposed because then it might hurt those forumengers selling stuff.

I guess the first question is what is more important... the community as consumers, or the community as sellers? Or are they equally important?

And from that, arise questions about whether with that in mind we feel that we need to do anything. Should we stem the tide of adverts? Should there be strict rules about contractual obligations, etc? Should prices be declared and fixed?

I guess it's a free for all on how we as a community would like the classifieds to be.

And a really big thing for me... IF we collectively decide that there is a need for human moderation of the classifieds section, then the site has fundamentally been re-defined from a communication provider/enabler to a publisher. As soon as an editorial hand is involved we're a publisher. And if you all nudge me down that road I will have to get moderators and police the whole forum. It's not a half-way thing... either we're a publisher or a service provider.

So bear that in mind when you comment, as classifieds could easily be a thin wedge to policing the whole site, whereas the site as a whole is pretty much just a wild west at the moment with only the most extreme things dealt with.