Invalid Reports

It's a lot harder to prove a negative, and if someone is going around making false reports then the burden of proof should not be on the people reported. We have a stringent evidence requirement to ensure people are not wrongly reported, and their reputations (or consequential ability to trade) are not wrongly impacted. If someone makes a report against you saying you scammed them, but then abandons the report, not answering any questions about how you scammed, or providing any proof of their claims, how do you expect to prove they're lying?

If evidence is provided, you as the accused would be able to provide your own evidence to contradict theirs, such as your trade history, receipt of PayPal payment, or whatever. Then we figure out who is lying, and that person gets marked. If there isn't any evidence to refute, you're probably not going to be able to prove your innocence. We do apply caution tags in some circumstances, at admin discretion, but lack of evidence is a lack of evidence; if we can't prove anything we don't go around sticking marks on people's reputation.

Also, if you want to dig that deeply into someone's history before you trade with them, you're more than welcome to. We don't delete reports, so if you click the Search SteamRep Forum link from their profile, you can see any report they were mentioned in. We aren't going to display archived/invalid reports on their profile, but you can read all the unfair trade complaints and evidence-lacking reports you want if you search.

Neither am I. If I understand correctly, you're asking us to show warnings on people's profiles whenever they get reported even after the report is marked invalid/archived (or automatically apply a caution tag). When we mark a report as such, it means the report did not meet the burden of proof, and hence we have no justification to stick it on their profile. The reason we show "unconfirmed reports" is because of our backlog, as a way of warning people to look over the reports we haven't reviewed yet, which might still result in a scammer tag. Once archived, we have determined the reports should not affect the accused's reputation, even a caution.

If there isn't enough evidence for a full banned tag then there shouldn't be enough for a Caution. Even a caution sometimes can have the same adverse effect on someone when they may be innocent and not have done anything wrong. You just can't go around tossing tags out like candy in an xmas parade just because you THINK someone may be guilty. You really need to rethink your questions and put the idea towards how you would react if you were tagged by an "invalid report".

I didn't say anything about what a community does or bans for? When I say "Banned" I'm referring to "Banned by" tags... just wanted him to make sure he understood that his question was rather empty and he didn't put enough thought into it like so many others.