Re: one of the pitfalls....

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Posted by Serpwidgets on August 03, 2002 at 17:46:02:

In Reply to: one of the pitfalls.... posted by HerpUtopia.com on August 03, 2002 at 15:47:46:

Just because the defenitions of Amber or Ghost (for example) tell us what they are doesn't prevent anyone from selling a light caramel as an amber, or a light anery as a ghost...

That depends on the meaning of the word "as." ;-)

There will always be unscrupulous people who will do dishonest things. Nothing will ever prevent that. I don't believe that ALL of the problems come from people who are unscrupulous. I think a lot of problems stem from the fact that there's not even an opportunity for people to agree or disagree on anything.

What happens if you buy some normals from someone and breed them together and "discover" some new mutant that you've never heard of, and nobody you know has ever heard of it either. Or if you breed a new combination of genes? You'd make a new name for it and start selling them under that name. And why shouldn't you? What alternative is there at this point?

I dunno if you've read Rich Z's whole rundown on the Lavender/Mocha mess, but it's a good example of how things can get very messy.

The other problem is that right now you could sell a light anery as a ghost, and then when the person comes back 2 years later (after having bred it to a ghost) and complains that the 'ghost' corn he bought from you is not hypomelanistic, that's their problem because they just assumed that their definition was the only definition, and that for some reason your definition is invalid. Maybe you learned about the morph by seeing a bunch of them, and nobody ever told you there were specific genes involved in it. Look at all the confusion over candycanes. People sell corns that are "het for candycane" all the time, and I'd bet that at least some of them are doing so in good faith.

What's to stop me from buying large lots of corns in mid-summer and labeling them whatever I think they look like? maybe also call them all females and mark them up?

Nothing, except the fact that people will quickly hear that you are a scumbag and stop doing business with you. ;-) The difference between mislabeling morphs and mislabeling gender is very clear: if you sell someone a female and then they go and find out it's a male and you say, "that's your opinion of what 'female' means," you will have all kinds of people breathing down your neck on the BOI, and word of mouth would ruin your reputation and your business. Why? Because we all know what male and female mean. EVERYBODY goes by exactly the same definition of those two words. It's not like these are regional definitions.

And try inventing a new gender and selling corns labeled as that gender... see how many people will buy them. ;)

That's what I'm talking about bringing to morph terminology and descriptions: a point of reference that we all have in common. Nothing will stop scumbags from doing what they do, but at least it will allow us all to speak the same language and understand each other better, and even make it easier to cooperate with each other.

IMO it will help clean up a lot of the mess out there.

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