I've been meaning to post this for some time but I'm just now getting around to it. I've been successfully trading various things, mostly digital items, here for a little over 3 years and in that time I've found that one of the easiest to spot red flags for goods/digital goods, as well as probably most of the market place, is a self moderated thread. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of the self moderated topics in digital goods are scams. I used to call them out but the post gets deleted by the OP most of the time and sure enough OP ends up burning people. I've never liked when people post negs without proof so I stop at posting in their thread which normally gets deleted.
You make some good points, but I have noticed a few reasons for creating self-moderating threads.
- Changing the terms of the offer - it is handy to place this in the first post if there are a number of replies
- Closing the thread if the offer is no longer availble.
- Removing spam and thread hijacking posts.