PRO ought to have a better way to report completed trades. Encouraging self-reporting in forums is helpful, but the vast majority of trading, and essentially all item trading, occurs in-game. Let's focus on items, because valuing items from a trade history is straightforward and is where the true blindspot in forums information lies.
Intro:
Economies thrive when trading is transparent. People are more confident about trading so they trade more and more often, leading to people getting what they want faster. More benefit to trading encourages more production and innovation, counteracting inflation with increased supply and decreased trade costs. This will lead to a more populated pvp scene, a more newbie-friendly environment given lower start-up costs, and a more stable/happier economy. Unfortunately, since item prices fluctuate rapidly and only the most frequent and diversified traders see what all items are actually being sold for at the moment, the economy is quite opaque. I'm seeing a lot of wishful over/underpricing, experiencing too many trade breakdowns over pricing disagreement, and I suspect a lot of newer users are paranoid about trading because they fear community backlash for getting prices "wrong" (a justified fear, unfortunately).
The Gist:
I just want to know what completed trades are like in the moment, e.g. is MS actually selling for 500k on yellow server today? and I think a lot of us will agree with that sentiment.
Brainstorming:
I don't have a full idea in mind, so I wanted to kick-off some community brain-storming:
1. Enable users to self-report trades in-game with short messages, e.g. 'traded 3 duskstones for 35k'. Add a chat box to the final trade screen for this?
2. Add a third "Accept and Report" button to the final trade screen that converts the trade into some message, e.g. '$0+<pidgey>/duskstone+<pidgey>/duskstone+<pidgey>/duskstone traded for $35000'. Only report if both players click that button (no double-posting, maintains privacy, less spamming)?
3. Log the reports in trade chat in a special color. Or, if that threatens to overcrowd trade chat, make a separate Trades Logs chat that can be made visible via the chat window wrench icon.