Ahh! There’s a basis for a targeted user fee!
Not only that – you missed where I started the bidding on Trisk. That was in play for a while, but the parties couldn’t come to an agreement and broke off negotiations.
And I never even got a chance to throw in the Ronco slicer. :mad:
And proudly, thank you. 
How do you propose to prevent that behavior?
What minimal respect I had remaining for both posters in question has vanished completely.
Well damn, that is one thing I have to admit is 100% true. Perfect logic.
Squink, good point, but this they can forgive Lib, he has been very generous with buying memberships for others.
CarnalK, better word unseeml, thanks. I strongly doubt **PRR ** will try the sock path and I do not know how I would feel about the Mods ratting on him. He made his agreement and he should stand by it. I guess I would be okay with the mods reporting him. Of course **PRR ** has the ability to break the deal anytime in the next two years and just not get the $500. After he actually gets the $500 it would be the scummiest of things to break the deal.
Jim
You know, it’d probably also be quite illuminating to find out how much various people would pay to get annoying posters to leave. We already know Liberal’s opening bid ($250/yr), but surely there are other subscribers who are doing better financially. Such people should probably also post a list of topics that particularly annoy them, which would provide potentially informative data for this purely theoretical exercise.
Alternately, of course, this information could be inferred from posts in which subscribers mention their jobs or expensive purchases; a search could then indicate which topics engage each subscriber most heatedly.
We view this as a type of bet, which we have never made any attempt to control or (ahem) moderate. If I bet one of our conservative posters that if the Republicans win the presidency in 2008 I would leave the board, it’s pretty much the same thing.
Or possibly it’s a dick-waving contest, which we also have never made any attempt to control or moderate.
We will take no involvement in it. We will not ban prr. We will not notify Liberal if prr creates a sock. As far as we are concerned, it is solely between the two of them, and there will be no moderator action in any way, shape, or form to enable or enforce the bet.
We are mindful, What Exit?, of your view that this is harmful to the culture of the SDMB. We are not convinced. Should this in fact turn out to be harmful, we’ll deal with it when that is shown to be the case.
Ha! Unseemly indeed. 
Yeah you’re kinda right, Una - I might have let the mods off the hook a little too much. How many posters could Liberal buyoff before the mods DO think it’s worth interfering with the “adults” involved?
ETA: So Frank, could this “wagering” (?) have any limits?
I think Liberal is scummy for making the offer, especially in such a public manner. It must be nice to have so much cash that you can toss it away so meaninglessly. The “ignore” function is free. So is coming up with a rational argument. But Liberal took the easy way out and bought off his opponent. No respect there.
PRR is an annoying sell-out. He could have made Liberal look even more like an ass by sticking up for himself and keeping up the fight–however ridiculous and stupid it was. But no. He tossed out all of his care about “fighting ignorance” for hush money. But I think he’s clearly the winner in all of this. He can find another message board, make new enemies, and still be $500 richer.
I don’t think the mods did anything wrong. I don’t see the exchange as being that fundamentally different from when one Doper pays for another Doper’s subscription fee or when posters make bets with each other. To ban one and not the others doesn’t make sense.
It looks like **Una ** might have answered your first question and I understand your second point completely.
Frank, I thank you for your answer. I disagree with your view, but I will respect it. I have a lot tied up with honor and doing the right thing. This is the reason why despite being a Republican, I am one of the louder bashers of Bush and Cheney. To me a betrayal of principle occured. I am saddened by it. I am the little kid who would say, “say it ain’t so Joe”.
Jim {Damn, I also see I am being overly dramatic.}
I believe that is the thing of it. And I honestly don’t get all this faff about ‘respect’. Why is it possible to ‘respect’ a poster who posts diatribes with little or no logic or support for a position but to ‘lose respect’ for someone who makes a cash offer? Why is money more important than integrity?
Heck, now that precedent’s been established, if I win a major lottery, I’ll be buying off dopers left and right.
Just kidding, you bunch of basement-dwelling freeloader schmucks. All money for Bryan!
The fallacy in this reason, IMO, is that you are theorizing “the idea that different rules exist for liberal” when in fact I’ve seen no indication anywhere that this is so. And since this is the first time this clusterfuck has occured, there’s no basis to believe they let Lib get away with something they would have stopped if it were someone else. Although you say you’ve “never accepted and still do not” the idea that “the mods have taken it easier on lberal,” that is in fact the basis for the argument you make in this post and others. IOW, you are strongly implying favoritism was the reason the mods stayed their hands. I see no evidece of that at all.
Now, Una IMO does a better job of making the argument that I already said seemed to me to be the viable one – that it shouldn’t have been allowed because personal business just generally isn’t allowed. In fairness, however, a one-time bargain made between two posters doesn’t actually fit into the categories Una listed. And I am completely unpersuaded by the argument that it was “unseemly”. If we can put up with all of the cat-fighting, insulting, and complete TMI-ing that goes on here routinely, we can put up with a bit of unseemliness.
Shitty bargain? Yeah. But one made it and the other accepted it. It was and is nobody’s fault but their own.
Lib
You either missed my point entirely or you are a complete idiot. Or, possibly, both.
Well… that was interesting, but squalid. I expected better of the Dopers involved in that disgusting transaction.
And that’s as it should be. I’ve already gotten what I paid for. If he should return as a sock, your ordinary duties toward him would be no different than toward any other sock. And for me, it would be even more bang for my buck.
Oooooh, bullshit. Anyone who wouldn’t take $500 to stop posting here is a fucking moron. That’s 2 car payments for me, or a really nice cake for my wedding, or any number of other cool things. PRR did what any sane and rational person would do-- found a way to get $500 for doing something he should have done for free anyway. If you say you wouldn’t leave here for $500, then guess what? You’re a fucking moron. It’s pretty simple.
I think it’s hilarious and awesome that Liberal got called on his dumbass offer and had to cough up his allowance for 5 weeks. Bwahaha. Good for PRR, he definitely got the better end of things. I wish him well and hope he can put this place behind him.
I think it shouldn’t have happened. But I don’t think it was a matter for the mods to interfere in. Had there been pressure put on one or the other of them to make the deal, then they should have stepped in.
Um… the same way all the other rules are enforced?
Just as an aside to Jodi, you have no idea how hard it was for me to wait and see if you fixed your coding error yourself. Damn that user editing! 