TOPIC: Guiding Principles for Auction Queue List?

During my ongoing auction, there have been a number of folks who have approached me about running the next auction (in order, Azzy, Ralykam, KermitKing, Dergidan). There are probably more folks out there who want to run one who are just lurking right now, too. After some discussion in the discord about this, we may be at the point where there's enough desire to run auctions we should be organizing ourselves a little more intentionally than "first to post after the auction ends."

I would suggest we follow following general principles:

1. An auction thread where you post to get into the queue to run next, starting forming the queue with the 5 people I mentioned above who've reached out to me already.
2. Next public auction shouldn't start until the existing auction is at 95% funded or more. Setting up the thread in advance is fine as long as no bids are accepted.
3. No two "uncondensed" auctions in a row, as there's much less demand for these.
4. If you have already run an auction, you don't get to run a second one until the folks who have not run yet have their go. This resets every "token year."
5. You must be at least 5th level on the forum.
6. None of this applies to selling parts of orders already placed for a fixed price, or other orders that do not need to "fund" with advance commitments in order to be placed.

The only purpose of this is to make sure we don't all step all over eachother's toes and cause auctions to fail because there are too many at once.

This is all social-contracty stuff that we can't really enforce other than just not bidding on someone's auction if they don't do it.

Discuss.

I think the first person to go against this is going to find buyers in the realm of anonymous bidders looking for a good deal. I also think the means of demand that u get in auctions to hit the funding price will be seriously diminished if the queue of auctions is set and “who’s up” provides a “more than adequate” assurance there will be a chance to get an item at X Price in the next auction. Given there is no real way to govern this from being usurped, not sure it will work as hoped.

The free market and auctioneer greed is a poor way to handle things fairly. I see no negative to having a que of auctions for those that wish to host them equitably with the rest of the community. And if someone chooses to go against the community created queue that's on them.

They can absolutely choose to do so and screw with the established order. But they can do that already today, so I'm not sure why that matters

Since not all auctions run with the same structure:

Onyx or not
Bidding rules/fixed price offerings
Stop once threshold is reached or once a date is reached
Extensions for outbids toward the end
Shipping fees
Incentives to share bids post auction
All items vs. some items withheld, or extras added in
Level of condensation
Etc.

I think it’s probably misguided to restrict the number of auctions running at any one time.

I’m not sure what problem is trying to be solved - the one mentioned in the base thread is failed auctions. Is there a high degree of failed auctions where the known cause of the failure is other concurrent auctions?

I’d like someone to explain how a _buyer_ benefits from there being one auction at a time as opposed to more. If there are compelling reasons then perhaps something like this is a good ideas.


Otherwise - if you don’t like an auction, based on timing, terms, or any other reason - don’t bid.

Trying to control other forumites behavior and/or imputing negative traits to people who don’t do what you tell them will not end well.

The other issue besides failed auctions is organizing who runs next. Having 4 people waiting in the wings at once all racing to post a new thread seems like a bad system.

I do agree that there shouldn't be too many restrictions on how auctions are run.

If it were a vote, I'd vote against a queue.

It all feels very gatekeeper-ey.

Daniel White wrote: The other issue besides failed auctions is organizing who runs next. Having 4 people waiting in the wings at once all racing to post a new thread seems like a bad system.

I do agree that there shouldn't be too many restrictions on how auctions are run.

I guess I’m just confused why those people think they can’t / shouldn’t run concurrent auctions in the first place.

There have been concurrent auctions in the past. I don’t recall lots of complaints about that or hard feelings of any kind as a result.

Daniel White wrote: During my ongoing auction, there have been a number of folks who have approached me about running the next auction (in order, Azzy, Ralykam, KermitKing, Dergidan). There are probably more folks out there who want to run one who are just lurking right now, too. After some discussion in the discord about this, we may be at the point where there's enough desire to run auctions we should be organizing ourselves a little more intentionally than "first to post after the auction ends."

I would suggest we follow following general principles:

1. An auction thread where you post to get into the queue to run next, starting forming the queue with the 5 people I mentioned above who've reached out to me already.
2. Next public auction shouldn't start until the existing auction is at 95% funded or more. Setting up the thread in advance is fine as long as no bids are accepted.
3. No two "uncondensed" auctions in a row, as there's much less demand for these.
4. If you have already run an auction, you don't get to run a second one until the folks who have not run yet have their go. This resets every "token year."
5. You must be at least 5th level on the forum.
6. None of this applies to selling parts of orders already placed for a fixed price, or other orders that do not need to "fund" with advance commitments in order to be placed.

The only purpose of this is to make sure we don't all step all over eachother's toes and cause auctions to fail because there are too many at once.

This is all social-contracty stuff that we can't really enforce other than just not bidding on someone's auction if they don't do it.

Discuss.

I love the idea and have every intention of following along with any sort of informal queue established. I have a couple comments on some though:

#2 - We kind of discussed this in the discord, but I liked the idea of having both a time component and a funding goal component, something along the lines of "either X percentage completion or Y time has passed"

#3 - I'm not sure I agree with the idea of telling people the specific kind of auction they can run for this, though I understand the problem if there were an uncondensed, people weren't biting and it ended up holding things up- though that would be addressed with my above suggestion for #2. Though it hasn't been mentioned yet (but crops up some on discord), I would also go a little further to discourage any potential arguments in favor of telling people how to conduct their auctions- be it things involving reserve prices, setting aside parts of the auction for yourself, insurance, etc. If someone were to set up an impossible-seeming goal for their auction, time will show it one way or another, but the queue moves on without concern. The purpose of the queue should only be to see who is hosting the next auction and nothing to do with saying how those auctions need to be held.

#4 - Not a problem so much as a suggestion of more specific clarification. I would suggest it read something along the lines of 'someone can't be added back onto the queue until they are currently off the queue' (though maybe that was just implied).

#5 - I'm kinda leery of trying to put/enforce a level minimum on this (I think I was lvl4 when I ran my first auction), though I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

Arnold wrote: If it were a vote, I'd vote against a queue.

It all feels very gatekeeper-ey.

+1

Matthew Hayward wrote: I’d like someone to explain how a _buyer_ benefits from there being one auction at a time as opposed to more. If there are compelling reasons then perhaps something like this is a good ideas.

To be fair, multiple auctions going at the same time divides the bidder pool (as a bidder, I'd prefer to win from one auction for shipping costs and to not have multiple bids in multiple auctions for fear of winning 2 Rods of the Meek).

Matthew Hayward wrote: Trying to control other forumites behavior and/or imputing negative traits to people who don’t do what you tell them will not end well.

+1!!!!!!

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The free market and auctioneer greed is a poor way to handle things fairly. I see no negative to having a que of auctions for those that wish to host them equitably with the rest of the community. And if someone chooses to go against the community created queue that's on them.

They can absolutely choose to do so and screw with the established order. But they can do that already today, so I'm not sure why that matters

I disagree strongly. (edit: probably a reaction to the word "greed" and implications on auctioneer's character, so grain of salt.) edit #2 - <snip - a bit too grumpy> "Fair" is a slippery slope.

Daniel White wrote: 1. An auction thread where you post to get into the queue to run next, starting forming the queue with the 5 people I mentioned above who've reached out to me already.

Contacting the current auctioneer puts people to the front of the line? Most of these people have run an auction in the last 2 months.

Daniel White wrote: 5. You must be at least 5th level on the forum.

Why? Who is running the auction (and their relative reputation) is a component of the bidder's decision already.

Daniel White wrote: 6. None of this applies to selling parts of orders already placed for a fixed price, or other orders that do not need to "fund" with advance commitments in order to be placed.

Why not?

And then think about the situation where I put an order on my CC then run a normal auction (but "already placed") just so I can circumvent the auction queue.

Daniel White wrote: This is all social-contracty stuff that we can't really enforce other than just not bidding on someone's auction if they don't do it.

I appreciate bringing forward the thought to curtail the perception of chaos, but I thought the existing social-contracted process was working fine.

Step 1: post a "anyone interested" post to stake out "next-ees"
Step 2: copy the rules format from a previous post and change to match auction type
Step 3: update post repeatedly

How many years has this current approach been working?

Matthew Hayward wrote: I’m not sure what problem is trying to be solved - the one mentioned in the base thread is failed auctions.

Agreed. This feels like a solution looking for a problem.

Leq has had too much caffeine late at night.

This feels like a solution in search of a problem. True Dungeon has run more than a decade without needing any auction queues and I can see someone deciding to step outside the system and endless drama stemming from it.

Maybe just continue with things as they are-if a few people want to setup an informal queue system outside of the forums, then they're more than welcome to, but starting a thread for it with various rules and guidelines makes it seem like something formal endorsed by TPTB.

I know I have as much formal power to stop this as you have to implement it, but if you're asking for votes, I think it's a horrible idea that, at best, will do nothing good for the buyers and, at worst, cause drama and end up with TPTB having to get involved.

I don’t think anyone should be discouraged from running another one simultaneously. Worried about funding? Set a lower target. Or change the parameters in some other way. Let the free market (bidders) decide which they want to support.

P.S. I think there’s room for more fixed price ones. Some people don’t want to deal with bids and would rather “buy it now”.

I believe concurrent auctions would not really improve anything, but it would hurt the buyers in a few ways. I say this as someone who has been the buyer several times, but never had an interest in being the seller.

The whole "free market" idea hinges around the idea of getting better prices. It works in normal economy, only because there are significant margins of mark-up for profit. That is simply not the case for these token auctions. They are perfectly opaque. That Onyx bundle costs 8K. The Auction is fully funded at 7.5K. The person hosting the Auction is going to make up the difference for the last $500, and is going to keep something of their choosing that they did not include in the Auction in exchange for that price. But it's not being run really as a for-profit. They close the auction as soon as it is fully funded; it's being sold essentially at-cost.

If you're selling something at-cost, you cannot further reduce prices. Reducing the prices further simply means that the auctions are not funded. There is no "get it cheaper". Nobody running an Auction is ever going to sell the Auction at a loss. They are simply not going to spend $1000 of their own money for the privilege of mailing out a bunch of tokens to other people for less than what they paid for it. Unfunded Auctions never go cheaper; they just don't happen.

There is no benefit. The trade-offs though are numerous.

- First and foremost, if an Auction goes unfunded, it does not happen. You get nothing. This means that while concurrent auctions might result in your token being priced lower at the close of the auction, you don't actually get it at that lower price. Instead, you get nothing, because the auction did not get funded.

- Second, concurrent auctions means that there are multiple options for whatever token you are trying to buy. You can bid on one, and then have yours end up priced higher than a separate auction. What's the problem with this? You cannot actually benefit from the competitive pricing unless you are able to bid on both. If you bid on both, you place yourself in a situation where you could potentially WIN both. Unless it is a token that you actually need multiples of, winning multiples is generally bad, spending money on something that you didn't want or need.

-Third, when you have people who are winning multiples of the same thing when they only wanted one, some of those people are going to back out from their sales. With every person who backs out, the prices fall. When those prices fall, you can actually find Auctions that appeared to be fully funded in reality failed to reach funding and so you do not win your Token after all. That can happen because of what unrelated players do regarding Tokens that you weren't even personally interested in. The whole bundle succeeds or fails as a bundle. Having 2-3 Tokens fail at the $120 range can be the break point where the entire Auction ends up failing. And with concurrent Auctions, there isn't even necessarily the option to shuffle backwards to the next highest bidder at a loss of only a few dollars, since that unsuccessful bidder has likely already started bidding in the second auction.

- Fourth, if Auctions fail, then the people who are running those Auctions will eventually not bother running them. There is no reason for these people to continue organizing and updating these things if they don't actually succeed in the end. I have always got my tokens far cheaper by buying from these Auctions than what I have been able to through Secondary Market Websites or eBay auctions. Destroying the Auctions here means that collectively we, the customers, end up having to pay more, not less.

At the end of the day, these things are being sold basically at-cost. This is the cheapest that the prices are going to go. You can look across several auctions and see very similar pricing for each one. There will be a bit of deviance, with one particular token going for a little higher one auction, while a different one moves cheaper. But the overall total price remains the same.

If the goal of competition is to drive prices down, just know that when these are being sold at-cost, driving the price down means that the auction is unsuccessful. And that's bad for all of us involved.