I just want to be careful about telling someone "we won't help unless you do this or this" - for sure you can say that about following rules of the AT thread, but posting elsewhere in the forum could be seen as harsh and I do get why a brand new person would then say 'hey I don't feel comfortable here'.
It's hard to find that middle ground. I think this is where some authenticators then feel like I'm not being supportive to them and instead picking to be supportive of a new member, but that's not the case or goal. I love the authenticators and value what they give and their expertise, I just don't want them making general forum rules, KWIM?
It's cool that you guys notice this. Maybe a year or two ago, someone posted on this other forum I'm on, asking where they can get some Burberry items authenticated. I told the girl she should post in tpf and she said she doesn't want to because:
1. it takes too much work to understand the rules on figuring out when and where she's allowed to post
2. the whole thing is further complicated by the format, etc.
3. people on the purseforum are mean (she said she reads it once in a while but she would never post anything)
I don't actually know who she is and whether she has an account on purseforum (and it actually sounds like she has been on it and got burned) but i didnt grill her and didn't push further and offered to do it for her. I copied and pasted the format and sent it to her over email and asked her if she can follow the format and send me something i can copy and paste back.
At that time, I've have only just read a couple of the threads that did get pretty bad, but reading those threads never stopped me from participating. But then again, I was also surprised that based on the few more controversial threads i did participate in more recently, it was much tamer and people tried to be a lot nicer than what i had braced myself for.
For the most part, I would never pay for an authentication service unless the brand i'm authenticating endorses that service, and most brands don't because they don't get profit from people buying second hand bags. The issue for me then is who gets to certify a person to be a trusted authenticator? If there is no agreed upon trusted Root to certify the authenticators, then all services should be taken with a grain of salt because, at the end of the day, they are still just opinions when there is no actual liability on the authenticators when an authentication goes wrong (and there shouldn't be for free authentication).
The issue is that people don't seem to understand this when they come into tpf for authentication. There is a group of volunteers in each subforum that ranges from being extremely experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate about a brand to people who happen to have a few handbags at home give an opinion based on what they can see in their closet.
At the end of the day, trust can only be fully established if you have endorsements and liability and these endorsements and liability can only be done by the brands itself. And if, by this logic, all authentication are merely opinons that range from super duper credible to not credible at all, I think there needs to be some format for the AT threads to allow for opposing opinions not to be taken personally.
Maybe something like, a poster who wants to get something authenticated must fill out a form that asks for the proper format before submission, the people who chooses to authenticate must provide a rationale behind their judgement, and if another person disagrees, they provide a rationale for the disagreement. This way, instead of giving an answer like "yes it's authentic, because i'm trusted" you have logical appeal as well, which might help make it less personal and ease the emotional opinion battles. This is just an idea. I don't know if this works for all brands and whether or not it would become a problem in the long run for counterfeiting.
