Concerned about the recent integrity of Steamrep

Long post incomming, no tl;dr.

Recently I've become quite cautious of Steamrep and started doubting the integrity of the website as a whole. A few things have happened in the past couple of months (and longer) that have been causing the trading community to start distrusting Steamrep. About a year ago at the same time, a quick survey among community members and admins would reveal an overwhelming positive feedback regarding the way things are handled. The same small survey today is quite different.

I'm genuinely concerned about the direction SR is taking with all this stupid crap happening, so let me explain:

First of all, few months ago, a couple people got slapped with cautions for "abusing" a pricing error in the scrap.tf system, and a whole shitfest followed:
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/scrap-tf.18260/page-3#post-90707

Now, backpack.tf slaps a scammer tag on a fellow for "abusing" a pricing error in their trading card system:
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/...6561198017965767-teh_rhesus-sr-scammer.38308/

I'm extremely curious as to why this is a punishable offence. First of all, it is the fault of the website in question for not being properly coded, not that of the user. See any other website ever (e.g. amazon), who honor price mistakes instead of publicly shaming people. This "offence" is not punished by Valve either, who honor pricing mistakes on the Steam store.

Now the answer I will most likely get to this is that people who abuse glitches must be tagged, but this SHOULD NOT be the case. I'm amazed to see SR punish for something that no one else does. A person should receive a scammer tag for being a threat to the community, not for stumbling upon the incompetence of a website owner.

Second of all, I would like to address an issue with an affiliate community, GoV.
For a lack of better terms, GoV is a f✿✿✿✿✿✿ shitty community with admins who buy from scammers (proof below), and run by absolute morons (VenGanza, Tony). See community admin section for my complaints on the latter, more specifically on the thread where Tony defends sharking amongst his admins.

As for scumming GoV admins, we have here Oggun and Fair Killer who have a very nice collection of OG duped items. Now either they just really like duped items, or they are buying from him/resellers.
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/9792671
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/9792566
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10035053
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10135069
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10165411
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10311102

I know Penguin from MCT also has a nice bit of information on GoV admins he's managed to demote.
It's mind-boggling to see that this community is still affiliated.


Next we have the problem of these steamrep vigilantes, or "helpers", i.e. random members who comment on every thread asking for proof and passing judgement where it is not their call. I've had a few problems over the past few months were I would get people wrongly redirected to appeal on my forums, where they shouldn't have had to.
http://forums.acefortress.com/threads/marked-as-scammer-on-steamrep-by-incorrect-reason.19930/
This confuses the person appealing, and causes trouble for nothing. These people shouldn't be able to post at all.


I've also recently noticed a hike in fake reports amongst the communities to get people tagged. When I used to work as a mod, I remember shooting down a couple of reports using fake evidence, but now I just see these slip by right in front of admins, without saying a thing. I don't believe anyone even knows how easy it is to pass off a fake report, especially as a community admins. Reports I used to submit to SR admins to proxy tag were done without review, and I have seen some pass without concrete evidence.

These people then have to follow the extremely long appeals process that the seemingly only working SR admin (Butane) will process in many months time. It's sad to see people waiting from 6 months to a year to get their appeal sorted out. Although it's to be expected when there's only one admin working appeals. I know the admins have lives to live, but the community is losing faith very fast in this system. I know how the recruitment process works, and it's extremely dumb and slow. Please improve on that; the number of useless SR admins hired over the past years is incredible.


Thanks for reading.

When it comes to the integrity of our scammer tags, ultimately I am responsible for that. If there are any false reports that have gotten through, PLEASE tell me at once so I can correct it. The scam reports team does the absolute best we can with the limited tools we have. The whole reason we have appeals is because we are human, mistakes do happen, and we strive to correct them as quickly as possible. But of course I can't correct it if I don't know about it!

As I've said many times, if you (or anyone) has any question about anyone's tag and the potential integrity of it, PLEASE contact me directly. I can be sent a message on here, I have multiple Steam groups, I have three emails in my profile. I'm the easiest person in the world to get in touch with and I will look into it ASAP. While I am not an appeals admin, I can correct issues that were a result of myself or my team. In addition, Vintage Cobra & Cobrakr do live SteamRep chat support and they can be contacted as well about it.

We do have more checks in place to try to prevent false reporting. I've caught several reports myself. The system isn't perfect by any means and it literally does keep me up at night trying to think of ways to improve things, to get more reports processed correctly, etc. Please, PLEASE contact me if you have any ideas or tools or anything that can help resolve the issues we have with the scam reports team- I absolutely welcome them. It's easy to spot the problems but it's harder to come up with good solutions to them and I absolutely welcome any and all suggestions.

As for the other issues you've addressed, I can't really speak to those as they are regarding policy but I will make sure that your concerns are known. Thank you very much for letting us know. We definitely can't correct problems if we aren't aware of them.

I'm going to openly say that Ace is referring to me on this thread. Apparently whenever I either mislead someone on an appeal (Ex: This) or responded to an improperly formatted appeal, I got "warning points." Due to an apparent bug that is supposedly fixed now, I never got these notifications until I was banned two days ago (which lead to me having to appeal). Now I never comment on appeals. I'll admit I probably should have looked over that appeal before I commented but now I never comment on appeals. This shouldn't be a reason to hate the Steamrep staff (I'm not part of Steamrep) but more of a reason to just hate me personally (I was temporarily banned for meddling in the appeals).

Honestly idon't know who are u , maybe morons are your parent ? and justr for YOUR INFO Venganza is an admin on unusual trade , i'm the owner of gov community. Maybe you have some problem of insanity , we are a fair community ,maybe u are jelly ?

About Oggun trade's if the SR admin want the history trade NO problem ... we are a clearly community ....

in your thread i don't see ANY evidence , only trade's from outpost ?

I personally never trade with scammer and u accuse ALL member of my community , let me say u are only a f✿✿ lier .....

I think you misunderstood me. I stated: "vigilantes, or "helpers", i.e. random members who comment on every thread asking for proof and passing judgement where it is not their call.", which has nothing to do with SR staff.

You must seriously be forgetting the time diego told you off. And no, I am not "jelly", I would rather be marked as a scammer than be a GoV admin.

i don't any problem with diego .... maybe u are not much informed , and honestly don't have to talk with a ✿✿✿✿✿✿ is time wasted , gl for your RL ( hard to think u have 1 )

I too have a problem with SR vigilantes, I look over the reports section and see a lot of useless posts by backseat moderators which go along the lines of "an admin will make a decision soon!" or the like.

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/...to-cash-out-86bucks-by-tom.38364/#post-113806

Things like this. Encouraging text logs should be avoided completely since they're far easier to manipulate, and if people listen to them then that's all they will provide. This is harmful and is only caused by people trying to rush for an admin position on this site or something.

It's becoming painfully obvious that a public forum board is not the best way to handle scam reports.

Please refrain from insulting each other, otherwise this thread will end up locked.

Hidden Content:

**Hidden Content: Content of this hidden block can only be seen by members of (usergroups: Administrative, Moderating, SteamRep Partner Members, SteamRep Partner SCAs, Valve (Automatic)).**

FYI- We don't use text logs as evidence.

I would LOVE to have a ticket system like Steam Support does. Would someone like to code us up a ticket system really quickly?

For a professional community, you'd think you would be a lot more mature. You are telling a person to get a life, when he's made money off making shitty youtube videos, has had a beautiful GF, and has made loads of money off pixels. You on the other hand, can barely type english correctly, are immature, and nearly every post I've seen from you has been in the same manner. Make a better example for the community before you shittalk others' personal lives! Thanks.

well if he make money from a game not care much , and yes my english isn't good ? so is a problem ? i never insult no one in this forum and i don't know this person insult me for free and talk s✿✿✿ about my community for free and without a single evidence , i repeat u can be gabe , if u do not respect me u can't think i respect u ...


in my opinion make money from a game for profit is very sad .

Done.

I agree with Aces, the appeal system should be improved. People wait up to 3-4 months to get an appeal processed.

Thank you for reopening this. I'm sorry for attacking him directly and getting it closed, a better action would have been to ban me, not punish aces for no apparent reason. This is a matter that needs attention, sorry for the above drama.

Anywho, the appeal system needs great improvement.

Disclaimer: This is not an attack on anyone, just stating my view on things.

When I say this, I say this on behalf of the Steamrep Staff and the TF2 community at large, but no one in particular.

I believe the concept of Steamrep is great, a place where we can find out who are the e-criminals and who aren't. However a (in lack of a better term) community ran police system can easily go off track, or become corrupt. Remember Rob? He was a character. Long story short, he was full fledged SR administrator (correct me if I'm wrong) who was caught laundering hundreds of duped/stolen earbuds into the market using his Russian connections. He was rumored to have deep roots with The Russian himself. He used his SR status for malicious surveillance no doubt.

The internet is a scary place, filled with 100% anonymity if you know a bit about tech. You could be anything you wanted, you could do whatever you wanted. And with that said I'm not entirely sure I can trust a community ran organization such as Steamrep for that alone. No hard feelings, I'd feel this way for any organization like Steamrep. Hell, I have a hard time trusting our Government and our actual commercial police system.

When Diego first created the site, the mission statement was to make people aware of user's validity. And let the users decide if he/she should trade with that user. It was never about "you must not trade with this person or else you're no better than them" like the policy you see today. I feel Steamrep's beliefs have been sidetracked over the years, before it was for the people, now it's to keep people in line, to make sure they don't trade with certain people. The people don't want that, and I'm sure Valve wouldn't want that either. The SR staff have no right to determine who you should and shouldn't trade with.

If I was the lead director of Steamrep, this is how I would run it; A warning system. Each report would be cataloged and documented on the user's profile. There wouldn't be a "sr scammer", just a mere warning. Stating if you trade with this person, you might get scammed or you might receive scammed items in the trade, or you might get trade banned by Valve because they suspect you're helping them launder goods. Leave it to the user if he feels it's morally okay to trade with potential scammers (or reported to being scammers). Leave it to the user if it's morally right to accept stolen hats. If he gets busted by Valve for it, that was his fault and he knew the risks. It isn't our place to judge people and put OUR beliefs onto them. It's Valve's game, and ultimately they are the greater force, and they decide what practices they want in their game. You agreed to their Terms of Service, and if you violate it, they have every right to ban you out of their game.

Steamrep, you picked up the torch to ensure safety within the community, to help people not get scammed as much. If you cannot for-fill the duty you've volunteered for, the duty the community needs, how are you helping us; the people.

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I thoroughly applaud Aces for creating this post, I've been meaning to get this off my chest. SR needs two things right now. A different system as no one seems to be enjoying the current SR, and more staff members. I think Helen and the rest of the guys are amazing that they'd put in so many hours a week to help users out. However you guys are severely understaffed. Lower the bars a bit, it shouldn't be extremely difficult to join the SR team, and it shouldn't take up to six months to finalize one report.

First of all, few months ago, a couple people got slapped with cautions for "abusing" a pricing error in the scrap.tf system, and a whole shitfest followed:
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/scrap-tf.18260/page-3#post-90707

Now, backpack.tf slaps a scammer tag on a fellow for "abusing" a pricing error in their trading card system:
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/...6561198017965767-teh_rhesus-sr-scammer.38308/


While I agree that the web sites in question made a mistake, the people who abused that mistake have no moral high ground to stand on. They committed a gross act of selfishness at the expense of others, exploited a flaw that good people would never do. Would you want this to happen to you, to have your mistake exploited? While you may except the responsibility of your actions you would have no good feelings to those who exploited you for their own profit at the expense of your suffering. In my book they committed a crime, they stole from another person and got off lightly, they more than earned the tag of scammer. They begged for it.

The 'errors' you speak of are few and far between, they are the exception not the norm. These people are human, they will make the same mistakes you and I make but more so they have lives, families and are far busier than you give them credit for. They do a great job here. I am sorry your experience has been bad but most people would no agree with you about your current opinion of SR. Please and I really mean it, Please offer a solution that keeps the integrity of the work done here, protects all individuals from fraud/fake reports/lies and anything thing else that is needed to make this site better than it already is. Take in mind that past scammers have lied and committed every offense possible to 'prove' they didn't commit the act that got them their tag. They made it a nightmare to sort through the real from the fake. Easy enough to say you want improvements but harder is it to find ones that will work.

And no the community is not losing faith, not even 1%, just you and the people who earned those tags they now wear. You do not speak for me much less the whole of TF2. Steamrep is doing great, over worked and under appreciated on level you seem unable to comprehend.

Hats off to those here at SR, thank you for all you have done!

I couldn't agree more. Steamrep marking people for trading with scammers is like backpack.tf trying to force prices. Ultimately Steamrep's purpose is to inform the community about an individual, and make the trading environment safer.

Unfortunately there is a need for steamrep and there always will be. But the role it takes shouldn't be one that aims to control what people do, and who people trade with.

Now if only Steamrep could get affiliated with valve itself, so that whenever you trade with someone whos marked (scammer/caution) a message would pop up saying this person was marked for "x" reason, be careful, he/she may try to do the same to you.

P.s. a lot of times scammers tend to go on scamming runs (i.e. scam a bunch of people in quick succession) managing to scam hundreds of dollars before they actually get a tag. I can understand why it takes several hours (or more) to tag someone, but unfortunately, the tag often comes to late. So i propose a system that would link any pending reports to the users SR. Similar to the notes on a scammers SR that says why there marked. (Also, the report should always be linked in the notes explaining why the user has the mark he/she has).

This is HIGHLY counter productive in keeping the community to the best it can be. By "Lowering the bar", it allows under-qualified people to join the staff, thus causing even greater future problems and chaos, thus leading to another one of these threads....

"It shouldnt be extremely difficuly to join the SR team"

Yes it should. (reference above)

There already is one. It just takes one click to see where they are in the SR forums database.