regarding SP's new sales system, any situation in which a vendor such as SP receives payment from individuals, manufactures product, and then delivers said product to individuals is not a group buy but a vendor selling wares.
I could buy that argument if we were talking about a product that was designed by the manufacturer, and the agreement is only that they will provide a quantity discount if enough orders are aggregated. By this reasoning, mkawa, you're saying that the Macross and Granite ... "events?" were not actually groupbuys, they were merely sales of wares by SP. This is surprising to me because they sure as hell looked like groupbuys to me. It feels like you're saying, "Yes, it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, but since it flew in from the north (and we know all ducks fly in exclusively from the south) it is therefore
not a duck."
a group buy is an independently organized (mess, unfortunately but most often) in which a cohort bands behind a small finite number of buying parties, who exclusively interact with a vendor/manufacturer and then do fulfillment themselves. it doesn't matter at all who does the design.
So if I follow your logic correctly, if SP executives were to sit down and design a keycap set, and then give it to Matteo or some other GH community member and say, "Here's the design, get the orders, collect the money and we'll ship them to you in bulk, and you can sort and ship them." then that would in fact be a 'groupbuy' and listed in the Groupbuy forum? Since, as you say, it doesn't matter who does the design, so this situation would qualify as a groupbuy? I think the designer's role is crucial to what defines a community groupbuy.
it seems to me that they are having the community design their products and then collecting all payment and margin on that product and giving the designer only a single set of keycaps. this seems eyebrow raising to me if i were either a designer or customer.
Wait, now who designs it matters again? What's eyebrow raising about the designer receiving nothing more than a complimentary set, free of charge? Isn't that the traditional standard for groupbuys anyway? To hear others tell it, groupbuy organizers should reap no profit besides their own keycap set, and in fact are
better organizers (or more saintly, at least) when they lose money, or sanity (sorting, packing, invoicing, etc.) -- but if SP handles the logistics for a groupbuy that arrangement of no profit becomes 'eyebrow raising'? Again, no, that's not the issue -- the issue is that someone (SP) has a margin at all, and aren't willing to sanctify their efforts by taking a financial beating. Yes, the crux of this separation is profit. Someone is making a profit -- and thus the groupbuy will be put out of sight, kept apart from the other groupbuys.
But SP (and other vendors) always makes a profit, even with traditional groupbuys -- so what's the point of setting these groupbuys apart?
about the vendor forums being a ghetto, that is only the case if the vendor does not put forth the effort required to do the marketing, outreach and generally participate on the forum. some great examples of subforums that are NOT ghettos are edgar matias' subforum, CM storm's, and mechanicalkeyboard.com's forums. corsair opted against having a vendor forum because they preferred to use the hours they had available to interact with the community organically, and i think they have done an excellent job at that. again, vendors who can formulate clear goals within our rubrick do well and have plenty of interaction between their representatives and the community. those that do not don't, regardless of whether they have a vendor forum or not.
There have been reports of people who missed out on these two groupbuys because they made the (absolutely reasonable) assumption that all
groupbuys would be found under the
groupbuys forum. The main rule here at GH is to keep discussions in their proper threads, and it makes sense. So let's say someone else from GH uses SP's system; they cannot create their thread in the groupbuys forum, so they have to place it in the SP vendor forum. Could the organizer go into the groupbuys forum, create a topic that says, "Hey, check out my groupbuy!" and link to the vendor forum? Would that be acceptable? My guess is that it would not be allowed. This seems silly ("Hey! Bread aisle shoppers, there's a new brand of bread over in the seafood aisle, come check it out!") and more importantly, it requires groupbuy organizers to work harder than other organizers. For Granite, people put the link in their signatures so that the groupbuy wouldn't be overlooked. Why do that? Why punish these groupbuys? For some legalistic reason? Also, by listing all groupbuys together our community can make better decisions -- they can more easily compare all the groupbuys going on, and decide where best to spend their finite money. How aggravating to buy into a groupbuy and then discover there is a groupbuy that you would have preferred, but it was not listed alongside all the others.
I know the policy is now set and I accept it. It's bad policy; policy that makes us (as a community) seem petty and even a little stupid. With respect, I urge you to reconsider this policy. Groupbuys shouldn't be exercises in self-sacrifice for organizers, they should be about (as you said once, mkawa, very, very rightly!)
making some cool ****. If a manufacturer happens to make a profit in the process that's okay with me. Groupbuys should go in the groupbuy thread.