And that made me wonder why they are unable to send me a message. I have never seen that before...
So what's the reason? =3
Tess wrote:We introduced a new trade message feature today, but there was a bug which meant that no-one was able to send trade messages. The bug is fixed now, so you should not have the same problem with new trades.
HOWEVER: There are some users on the site who are unable to send trade messages, and you will now get the 'such and such is unable to send a trade message' if they send you a trade.
This new feature is designed to help some members to explain to their trade partner why they are sending a trade without a message. Some members have no choice but to send a blank trade message.
Users who are unable to send a trade message may be one of the following:
A member who has signed up sometime after January 2010 and who has no approved forum posts. This is because new users are now required to have their first post approved before they are able to send messages or post freely. It will not affect members who signed up last year before we introduced the post approval on new members. Once their first post has been approved, they will be able to send messages as usual.
OR
A COPPA member. COPPA = Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Basically, under US Law, children under 13 cannot post on a site like this without submitting a signed parent's permission form. So if someone is a COPPA protected member, it means that we know they are under 13 (either by them indicating at sign up, or posting their age somewhere else that we've seen) and as a result we are required to put them in a user group where they are unable to post or send any messages unless they fax or mail us a signed permission slip.
Members who signed up before March 2010 will not have been automatically sorted into the COPPA usergroup, because we didn't know your age at signup. Also technically the law does not apply to non-US citizens, but other countries probably have similar child protection laws.
