Opinion on Steamrep at this current time.

Steamrep... The most useful tool to traders in many eyes, it's hard to disagree. Yet they really need to sort some things out, the first being the excessive time it takes to get a user marked. In my experience it took 6 months to get someone who scammed me marked. I don't care if he is marked now, it was a petty loss ( clean bud swapped for gifted)
Source: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198046385057

This may not be very major, but with more major scams like cash backs or hijacking etc. Stolen goods are sold very soon after the scam, the point of steamrep is too simply search the user in the search bar and check if he's safe. Taking 6 months gives the scammer countless time to sell the goods, while the scammed user is sitting in the forums waiting. A common reply is to check the forums, but there is no link to say to check the forums by steam rep, almost rendering it useless for new traders. Before you say they do the best they can and they do it for free etc. They have gained the reputation and should strive to keep it, with first steps being showing a link to a user on the forums if a claim has happened, to give notifications to also check the forums and finally employ more staff.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic website and had spotted and stopped many scams I'm sure. But with such reputation and people relying on them, they need to supply the demand.

What's your opinion?


P.s I wrote all of originally on backpack.tf forums, but instead of talking behind your back. I'll say it here.

Source: http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/1715-steamrep/

we're painfully aware of our backlog, and reports come in faster then we can process them to a endstage (accepted/archived etc) atm. To get mods/admins isn't too easy for us, due lack of time etc. We are actually discussing solutions to this, but gaining crew that is experienced enough to handle stuff is a slow-going process. We are working to improve it the time difference between report and processed, but that will always be several days between unless the reporter has everything sorted and posted directly.

I appreciate the reply, but instead of discussing these solutions. Could you share them?

It takes a lot to make me upset. However, It seems that almost each day, a post is made about how Steamrep is so slow and they need to get it together and blah blah blah.

The simple fact is that a small group of twenty-something people are providing all of us a service with no cost to us, and in turn, no reward for them. No, SR is not perfect, and yes, sometime things might slip through the cracks and take excessive amounts of time. However, the fact that SR exists at all is a gift to trading, even if they only processed one report a week.

On a few occasions I have had chats with Helen as she trudges through reports for many, many hours at a time. I do not mean to direct this toward this thread specifically, but anyone audacious enough to tell someone like that to work harder, faster, etc, needs a serious reality check.

As I said, these people provide SR as a completely free service, with no personal reward whatsoever. They operate this site merely out of a personal conviction to make the trading community a better place. It is like someone giving free ice cream away at a park, but someone complains because they ran out of chocolate. I understand as much as anyone that it can be frustrating to have to wait such a long time, or to have a report go unnoticed, but the fact that you can make the report at all is already a great service, and to complain that they didn't fix your problem fast enough is really quite selfish.

Everyone needs to take a step back and really think about how much SR really does for you, and thank them for doing everything they can, rather than complaining that they can't do everything.

/rant (and i would like to stress that this is not targeted at this thread or the author, but rather targeted at the general trend i have seen lately)

Improvements are quite divers, some are due our back-end automation that will save time for us, others are getting more mods or admins, optimizing workflow, and regularly checking progress and much more. I can't give specifics, for a number of things are not for the public.

Just about everyone knows I am a very strong advocate for SR, without it TF2 would be war zone and scammers would run rampant.

Certainly the biggest criticism everyone has (me included), is that there are gazillions of reports and a small posse of Staff to deal with them. There is no simple solution to this either because:

1: SR senior staff are conservative, methodical and don't get up in the morning without a vote
2: Finding additional *suitable* Staff is bloody hard (just finding good server Admins is hard, SR quality is much harder).
3: Contrary to what most people think, going from Mod to Admin is a LONG process, and training takes time.

We all wish SR would hire and train more Mods, and promote Mods who have demonstrated competency and such, however most of us do not realise that SR has a pretty damn good reputation BECAUSE it sets standards high, so it is a catch-22 in many respects.

A lot of people who apply to SR, have no clue about just how much commitment it entails, and many do not fit the requirements. A lot of those who do, would not apply anyway because they do understand the time required and perhaps do not want the grief that the job bring in certain respects.

All I can really say I suppose, is my private dealings with everyone at SR gives me confidence that they are on the right track and things will no doubt improve over time, just not as fast as many of us would like

Is there any way we can get some more public info so we can at least judge for ourselves if a person might be a scammer or not while the process is going on for marking.

What like tag someone before they are tagged?

Remember a tag can ruin someone's trading career, it isn't something done lightly. Just as in the real world court system, a person is innocent until proven guilty, so to in TF2 land.

In any case, everyone has the ability to search SR and see if there are any reports pending on an individual. I suppose given your question this info by extension could be listed on SR profile, however such a move would seem unduly harmful since it would tend to punish a user before they have "had their day in court" so to speak

I don't mean tagged. or at least not shown in your face. It could be slapped in the quicklinks.
"Check recent reports"
Which would show a bit more like i the user's known to have a shady history(like being a sharker for example) or if this is their first time under an investigation and a clean rep slate.

This is exactly what a search does, is it so hard?

To make such info more "prominent" seems to my mind to unduly cast suspicion on a player who may be innocent.

Imagine if someone made a few reports of you which turned out to be baseless, yet there is some button on SR which you click and it shows such reports.

I believe I covered this, if not. They have gained the reputation and should keep it. They are a free community, yet people rely on them and should trust them to make the right actions.

They got this far from being successful, but they will not stay successful if they do not continue to complete reports. People have donated to the site fit there work.

one can find pending reports on a account on SR's forum very easily, but please note, if that person made a report vs someone else, it will show up too:

I know I mentioned this before, but wouldn't it be a good idea to make that button more noticeable? I never knew what that button was for until you told me about it.

Just in case. Maybe some people will find it easier to understand.
1. Search Engine Queries - it explains everything and it says what those links are for.
2. Google; SOP; RAWR; SR; Reddit; AF2; ROK; WA; MCT - it determines what resource will be searched.
3. The second part of link determines what information the search engine query will look for (SID64; SID32; Display name; Custom URL).

Yes they have a reputation and should keep it, but I still stand by my statement. I agree that if they fail to keep the site running efficiently, they may lose some popularity, but everyone seems to think that they do not know that they get behind, or that they are low on staff, etc. Just because something is not perfect, and isn't fixed immediately, does not mean that it is being ignored, or that they somehow don't realize it.

The simple fact is, no one should complain unless they are the ones putting in the hours of effort to maintain the site. They are donating their time, as well as they can, to the entire TF2 trading community. They know the problems, they don't need us to complain about it like their time is not valuable enough so they need to fix it for us.

Yeah, they need to maintain performance for their site to stay so popular, but that is for them to work on, not for any of us to complain about.

I think the goal of the topic was to provide useful suggestions or thoughts for SR in a discussion form. While I agree, complaining gets us nowhere, discussion can't hurt. Especially by individuals trying to help SR and its goals.

Thank you, I am not trying to bash Steamrep. Merely stating 'my opinion' at 'this current time' meaning I DO have faith that they'll turn this around, and I am NOT trying to state it as fact. This is my opinion, I wanted to see others.

First, I would like to take full responsibility for this as I am the team lead for Scam Reports. I am sincerely, sincerely sorry for the time it has taken to get reports processed. Ultimately it is my responsibility to ensure that all of our reports are handled and clearly I have not been able to maintain this. I feel terrible that I have failed the community in this regard and I am working as hard as I can to remedy the situation.

Second, I noticed the comment "People have donated to the site fit there work." I think there may be a misconception that we are paid. We are all volunteers, not employees. All of the SR admins, except for me, have real-life jobs. Our hard-working admins and moderators donate their free time to help the community.

Third, I have implemented an action plan that will hopefully solve these concerns.

• Every reports admin has a moderator assigned to him/her that will assign new scam reports to a specific admin. That way high priority reports, such as hijackings, can be handled within minutes and if any report "falls through the cracks", that admin can be contacted immediately.
• We now have "live" SteamRep support. Vintage Cobra (admin) & kr'Cobra (moderator) are providing live SteamRep support via Steam chat to anyone who needs it. Reports that need attention, questions, etc. can all be handled real-time by them.
• All new reports will be handled within 24-48 hours and get first priority. This does not include improperly formatted reports or reports that need more information, because we simply cannot finish processing them without that information. This also ensures that scammers get tagged quickly.
• Every reports admin is responsible for a sub-forum and clearing that backlog. Since there are only three of us, another SR admin has volunteered to step forward and take a forum. The remaining 3 forums fall to me to clear.
• I am able to be emailed 24/7 by anyone if a report is not being handled fast enough. PLEASE PLEASE let me know if a report has been waiting and not been cleared. I absolutely appreciate it and I will personally handle it as well as update you on the status. I have a SteamRep email address and can get my email no matter where I am or what I am doing, except possibly driving because that's dangerous.
• "Lower priority" reports, such as trades with scammers, are no longer being handled by active reports admins. Community admins are handling them based on the community where the offenses occurred.

Also as HorseD said above, you are ALWAYS welcome to report scams at ANY of our SR Associate or Affiliate sites. The admins of the communities there are well-trained, hard-working, and may process your report faster than it would be handled here. ESPECIALLY if the trade or offenses occurred at one of those sites, definitely report it there. You can find these communities through the banners on the main SteamRep page.

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any further concerns or questions.