Lets say someone here actually goes through with some sort of legal action against another member on geekhack; like really take it to the next level this time--we almost had this happen with Profisist recently. Paypal's arbitration rules that you agree to in your terms of service basically prevents you from almost all instances of bringing them into court. Printed out copies of your bank statements and emails and pms do not fly in litigation; sure, you can bring the documents into court but they can be requested thrown out because they do not come directly from paypal, or your bank (the document's "chain of custody" unbroken). Geekhack, by declaring that all transactions are CAVEAT EMPTOR and declaring no responsibility, is preventing itself from being brought into a **** storm.
Some may be demanding that geekhack start intervening in these transactions, but unless we want to have the admin/owner (iMav?) giving depositions and our personal information by court order, i highly suggest geekhack stay as far away as possible from direct intervention in group buys and classifieds. Geekhack should continue to declare no responsibility in these transactions.
Although i am not an attorney, i work in litigation support and early case assessment. i essentially work everyday for lawyers. But I am just giving my opinion and not speaking professionally.
Now i have no idea if having a feedback system or hall of shame cancels out legally geekhack's declaration of no responsibility--i still would suggest against it. This system would undoubtedly have to be moderated and if a moderator makes any changes that means that moderator made a decision against or for a certain party. The same thing goes for a hall of shame; as soon as a moderator takes any action in such topic, that means that moderator made a decision against or for a specific party and in my eyes that is intervention. For example one party shares personal info about the other party for everyone to see, geekhack does damage control and takes that information off which prevents a whole other legal problem but that action could be considered intervention and siding with a party in some little way. Basically im saying that anything geekhack does that would break its own terms of service would hurt that terms of service to still be valid legally.
if Photoelectric is saying that a actual lawyer is essentially saying don't do ___ , then yeah i would say yeah not a good idea.