Does any work actually ever get done here?

Off topic but when i try to @Eoj it has given me an error in the past in which it says something like my privileges are not sufficient to do that.

Just tried it again, same message http://puu.sh/6dNtN/dfcbd874d3.png.

Alright, maybe not then.

I apologize, my terminology was wrong, thank you for the clarification. No, I don't think requiring manpower from affiliated communities would be required or even necessarily desired. Although once a community has become an associated community, I do not see the benefit of not requiring them to allocate a certain amount of manpower on a consistent basis. If this has been tried before without success, perhaps it's due to there not being enough motivation.

I suggest that if an associated community cannot live up to a commitment to handle a certain percentage of the reports on SteamRep, they do not have any reason to be an associated with the database. It seems to me that they would be taking the functional benefit of a centralized database, and the reputation benefit of being associated with that database , withoout actually having to do any of the work to keep that database functional. If this is the case currently this is a very one sided relationship and it is no surprise why SteamRep is in the situation it current finds itself.

I'm probably saying more than I need to. If they don't help maintain the database, they should no longer be associated. If they do not care enough for the people in their community to help protect them, they ought not to be running a community. SteamRep is an Integral part of caring about their community, to let it fall into this state and stand by the side is disgraceful and selfish.
Tl:dr

Associated communities have an ethical responsibility to upkeep the database they use to protect their users. SteamRep's administration has an ethical responsibility to promote the continued function of the database. These responsibilities form a symbiotic relationship, all that is required is this relationship is fostered in a more productive way than it currently is.

I strongly and I mean *STRONGLY* disagree... The way I see it, it's steamreps job to get the job done themselves. They allow affiliates and associates as an alternative place to report users, yet cannot force these associates to take on SteamREP jobs. SteamREP has their own crap to handle. If I'm an associate admin, I don't wanna be forced to match a quota of tagged scammers or be forced to become a SteamREP dog who has to do reports for SteamREP. SteamREP decided to become the Steam Police and thought it right to determine who we can or cannot trade with. SteamREP decided to make it so users have essentially permanent scammer tags. SteamREP decided create their policies. SteamREP decided to let their reports pile up. Not the associates. Why should an associated community be punished and forced to clean up SteamREPs mess. SteamREP needs to fix this mess themselves, not push it to it onto someone else.

This is a SteamREP issue not an associate/affiliate issue. SteamREP got themselves into this mess and they need to get themselves out. Not force others to do their work for them. I cannot ever see SR forcing communities to take their reports or anything. Without these associates, SR would have even more reports coming in (probably 100-200 more a month, at least).
Once we get into the realm of "requirements" such as these. I cannot see anything good coming from it.

I like driving my car on paved roads. I don't like paying my taxes. One is necessary for the other. It's not a matter of liking it, it's a matter of weather or not people are willing to do what is required to get what they want. I don't understand how you can claim to not see any good from actually assigning reasonable expectations. I imagine your conceptual framework for how all of this actually works is different than mine.

What good comes from forcing associates to do steamrep reports?
Let me think

1) Makes SteamREP look lazy
2) Makes it look like SteamREP doesn't even care enough to do their own work

I can't see this going anywhere in the right direction unless SteamREP fixes their own problem. Associates can HELP but by no means should they be mandated to do anything. Especially when SteamREP gives off the appearance of doing nothing at all, hence the reason for the creation of this topic.
TL;DR
Why should Associates be stuck with work that should be SteamREPs work, when SteamREP isn't doing much themselves?

The argument could be made that without SR, each of those communities would have tens-hundreds more reports and there would be more scamming, impersonation and widespread issues.

And SR was created with the opinions of many Associate communities, and many of those communities utilize SR to protect and ensure their own community's safety and security. While I'm not saying that Associate communities should just be piled up with reports and to do them all. It's a hard sell to say that without the associate communities, SR would be worse off and not to say that without SR, the communities would have more work/issue.

It was suggested we allow them to assist, not force them. Also, while there may be problems, I ask that you consider I don't spend hours on this forum for fun. It's a s✿✿✿ job, I don't get paid for it, I don't get praise for it, I don't get any benefits or privileges and I do hours of work and review because I believe that SR does something for the community. And while I do agree that SR needs improvement, please don't cheapen the efforts individuals put in.

You say we're not doing much, but I know personally, that there are mods who do reports, that speak to admins, that we have private discussions on working on SR and helping the community as a whole. In that past few weeks, there's been hundreds of reports reviewed, it may be nice to point out all the negatives, but I would like to show that there are a number of us trying to do best with what we have.

Trust me, I do care about my work and I am not lazy. I understand you state that this is the belief that happens if we force associates, which has never been said we would do. But at the end of the day, having a safety community is in the best interest of the trading community. Although, I'm still convinced the problem doesn't lie with the number of staff, at least wholly.

I know that you aren't lazy, I know that most people aren't lazy, I can see that there are multiple mods working to get reports ready, Sjru is great, so are you and Clive and the rest of the Mods that are hard working. Even people such as Sari try their best to do things right. I by no means am calling anyone lazy.

Just that if we force associates, it will be seen as just a lazy way out.

Very true. But I just feel it's not a smart choice to force an affiliate to do work. They should be required to take reports that are given to them by reporters and deal with them in a timely fashion, but once we move into the area of "Hey affiliate community, we're don't wanna do these so can you do them for us" that's no good. If I it were clearly apparent to me that SteamREP was doing more work, my opinion on the issue would be vastly different. It's one thing for Associates to help an active community reduce their reports, but for me, in this moment, the only thing active I see going on right now on SteamREP is this thread and the increasing number of appeals and reports. I

Look at this analogy:
Suppose America goes to war, we don't go to our allies and say "can you fight the war for us" we go to them and say "we need your help, we can't win without you: This is why you should help and this is what good can come." Right now forcing associates to do SRs work would be like the first example i gave.
TL;DR
It's not right for me to be doing your work, when you aren't doing your work yourself. If I saw more SR admins reviewing reports, then as an associate or 3rd party I'd be gladly willing to help SR in their movement to stop scamming. I just don't want to feel like i'm being forced to do someone else's work because they don't have the means to do the work themselves.

One issue to consider is that at the end of the day SR does rely on the efforts/time of volunteers which for me always causes issues. I have classes, I work full time, I have my own community and I have family/rl commitments plus I'm a SR Mod. It's tough, and sometimes there's days that I lack on reports, I admit it, but I do my best to make up for it the next day or behind the scenes.

One thing that I do notice is that many reports could technically be handled by an affiliate/associate. I see reports of scams that happened on Community A,B,C,D and E because the admins there said to report to us. Where if they reported the respective community, it would reduce the load here. That's one of the largest issues I see, many times the victims get forwarded here, where if they worked with a community's staff and the 'source' of the evidence, it would be both easier to investigate and therefore easier to process.

As currently there are reports that I'll have to talk to a CA to confirm a log or a story, whereas if it was handled by that community, the evidence is already there.

Previous relevant threads that bring SteamREPs effectiveness into question

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/resigning-from-steamrep-staff.46425/ (OP: Schwegs)
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/concerned-about-the-recent-integrity-of-steamrep.38419/ (OP: AcesGamer)
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/exactly-why-should-steamrep-restrict-you.22447/ (OP: HnG)
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/procedures-leading-to-false-taggings.18752/ (OP: T-Virus)

This analogy is contextually inappropriate. My proposed idea is not to have the associated communities "Do Steamrep's work for them". It is to act as an extension of SteamRep (which they already do in part) with the obligation to provide a certain amount of resources. SteamRep is conglomerating all of the scam reports from each one of these communities as well as their own (non-community specific reports). If you think it is reasonable to be entitled to reap the benefits a functional SteamRep without any expectation of contribution then I can't imagine we can continue this conversation, as we have fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes reason. It flies in the face of logic in my opinon to feel entitled to take the benefit of such a database without taking active participation in it's upkeep and growth. If it's truly your opinion that the community as a whole would think this is out of order, then I think it underscores a level of greed and self interest in the community at large.

Then what exactly are you proposing? If you want requirements that aren't forcing associates to take SteamREP reports or meet a quota of reports for SteamREP.

As much as it pains me, I agree with Forte (f✿✿✿ that's painful). It's SRs job to do the reports and appeals posted on SR. It's not up to (for example) MCT to do SR reports, they have their own stuff to deal with and it shouldn't fall on a CA to do the work of an SR admin.

There could be deals struck where reps from communities could volunteer to do some reports here or there but that's unlikely to happen for reasons I wont go into.

The MUCH bigger problem is not reports. Yes there's a lot but if you really want to get into the meat of the situation you need to dive into the appeals process. The backlog on appeals is much bigger than reports and needs much more attention to catch up. Reports take around an eighth of the time to complete. It's SO important that tags are given a fair appeal promptly. I'm not saying that the appeals admins aren't fair (I was one of the few admins trained in appeals), but they're far from prompt. For innocent victims of the system, this can be extremely discouraging. I've conducted appeals where as far as I could find, the user was completely innocent and the whole incident was a misunderstanding. It took that innocent user 8 months to get his tag removed. THAT'S NOT FAIR! Mistakes do happen as admins, they're are only human after all. Correcting the mistakes that don't get caught right away is extremely important. As you all know, a tag can destroy a users trading career across all steam games from now until the foreseeable future (or infinity). That not only puts off the victim but word spreads to his friends about what happened and doubt spreads like crazy leaving more and more of the community (and potential community) discouraged from trading. Considering items can only become more common (unless they're discontinued by Valve) it just means that more and more items come into existance with less and less people to buy them. Of course, SR is not the only cause of that problem but the issues here do add to the tally.

Solutions are both rare and difficult for the appeals process. It's hard to teach good judgement over the internet so training is very difficult. Made even more difficult by the amount of time it can take be to trained as an appeals admin, it takes around 4 weeks to be deemed competent enough to do it without a babysitter. I was trained on the job by an appeals admin. He took me through all his appeals and asked me to sit in on every conversation he had so I could see the entire process and wouldn't tell me his conclusions until he'd asked me for mine. That's not teaching me judgement skills - all that really did was give him a measure of my judgement skills. That admin took a chance on "training" me. He didn't have to do it and I was very grateful for his time as I enjoyed a lot of the appeals I did (especially the ones I could grant!). The point is that it takes so much time and thought out of an admins work, it almost puts him on hold for a month to train someone. That's not very efficient.

I can also tell you that NO community under the SR banner is as thorough as SR in appeals apart from maybe SOP because it's basically the same thing as SR #KnowYourHistory. That makes it almost impossible to bring in new talent from other communities to do the job. The dya I left, there was ONE admin doing appeals. ONE ADMIN. Think about that, then look in the appeals subforum, and then think about it some more.

Got any ideas for that issue?

Closing up SteamREP for good? Easiest solution. It had a good run, but the way the Steam Community is evolving SR just can't compete with it. You can raddle off a hundred band-aid fixes to help SR, but in the long run it's pointless. Like Chaos said that there are many innocent people trying to appeal their tag for months now and the appeal ticket is not getting any attention. It's just not f✿✿✿✿✿✿ fair. What pains me the most is the douchebag head admin of SR denies the help of Fiskie/Zemn/other talented peeps building a better SR to make trading ultimately safer. How can one person speak for the good of an entire community? Purposefully denying potential growth for a dying system merits dethroning.

Just close up SR, for the sake of the admins, but most importantly the people. SR serves no benefit to the community as of now, and the more you brainstorm band-aid fixes, the more you delay the inevitable.

You're a short sighted moron. Do you honestly think that's a solution? Don't misquote me.

I can't believe I fought for you.

Not only is that a naive and incorrect statement to assert, it alone kills your argument. Even at the very least, it protects hundreds of servers and sites from being flooded by scammers, in effect protecting thousands of users.

While I am not opposed to criticism, your insults and behavior are not welcome. You've made plenty of incorrect and insulting assertions in this thread, each time when they're countered you just wait until someone new posts to jump on SR for another reason.

Your behavior is not necessary, appropriate or welcome. If you can't accept discussing matters in an appropriate manner, then please restrain yourself from posting.

Eoj Nawoh that functionality is not for normal users afaik.

I know... the feature was intended for admins (and maybe mods, dont remember if they can) to tag ppl in reports/appeals to trigger a email to them so they get notified of activity. It was not intended as a "bell" to get admins to pay attention to someone's report or whatever whim to get attention.

SilentReaper(SR) Good to know, and makes sense.