Interesting reading on the rules etc.
Q: I saw a guy selling Bitcointalk accounts. Why is that allowed?
A: Since we can't effectively prevent these sales (proxies, TOR, sales in other forums), we don't because otherwise we would be giving the users a false sense of security.
why would this be giving the user a false sense of security. If a person sells an account then that other person might of already been banned or suspended in the past or done something illegal or traded or scammed and just got a new account with no limits on it. This only promotes for making it simpler for people to get away with doing or brake TOS and rules and repeating getting banned on an account coming back and scamming again.
Rules should have it 1 account 1 account only if you get banned you can not make another account up. Proxy access should be also suspended and not used as it will keep the risk and also prevention of scammers coming back joining and be a lot more cleaner of scammers. Giving the ability to buy an account just evades ban rules and defies any of your rules or regulations in place for that person to oversee them rules by making a new account bypassing or buying an account and bypassing rules in place. Sort of contradicting your own rules in place than being a false sense of security.
It's been discussed before, how difficult it is to catch multiple users if they are doing it right, at the moment I say allow it and let them get lazy and mess up. Otherwise, if it was a solid rule they could step up their game and be harder to find out.
There are a multitude of reasons for not banning multiple accounts. One reason is indeed that it would be too difficult to reliably do so, why make a rule that you can't enforce? Also, people have the right to pseudonymity/free speech. Allowing people to have multiple accounts is pretty useful for certain situations. For example, if I had a strong unpopular political opinion, and I spoke about it on this account, I'd have people pming me to annoy me about it, distracting me from more important things. Same thing is true with business owners. If you own a Bitcoin business, having another account to represent your personal opinions and having another account to represent your business is often a good move. You look a lot less professional if you are getting into arguments with people as a respected business person.
As far as buying/selling accounts, again it can't be enforced. They could arranged account sales through encrypted methods through PM, off site, etc. Just allowing it makes it publicly known that its something that happens. If we banned account sales, and then someone got scammed by an account that was purchased/sold, people would be upset at the forum for not protecting them as promised.
Something a lot of people don't seem to think of, is that this forum is about conversation. The fact that it has a section for people to trade is secondary. Bitcointalk isn't a Bitcoin classified site, we aren't going to create rules that negatively effect the site's purpose just for a single section that is a secondary priority. There are Bitcoin market sites out there that deal exclusively in trading items for Bitcoins. They probably have more strict rules for helping people buy/sell things, but I doubt their forum policy is as developed as this forum's.