Does any work actually ever get done here?

We encourage people to contact Steam Support but we are not going to make conditions like that one.

Not something we can easily enforce/would want to.

Is the ? rep status still being worked on, because I noticed some things not implemented yet.

http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198071542855 < when hovering is show no status
http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198071542855 < if they are on your friends list, their's rep is normal.

It was implemented less than 24 hours ago. You can safely assume it's in beta right now.

there is a difference... the ? rep is not to be shown via the API that the "hover" function uses. For the ? rep is a "live" feature, that on the Steamrep page is polled from the forum. Its currently not stored in the database of steamrep, hence the API call cannot give that to the "hover" function.

Hello people,

I really appreciate what the admins and mods are trying to do here with SteamRep. I just don't understand the execution. As I'm looking through claims that somebody is a scammer I'm seeing response times that vary from a couple weeks to six or seven months. This limits the usefulness of any report filed here. The whole point is to prevent people from getting scammed by somebody that is known to be a scammer. The problem is that by the time anybody follows up on any of the reports the scammer will have had time to make his money and move on. Is it really slowing down the scamming if the scammers just have to make a new alt six months after they were initially reported? Furthermore, it is confusing to legitimate traders to try to figure out if somebody is a known scammer using your reports. If I'm trading with somebody and a warning pops up that there has been a complaint about this person and I hop on SteamRep and see that he has a complaint, but that it's over a week old and still hasn't been verified I'm going to assume that this is likely just an isolated incident where somebody got mad at him and posted a false report. This is what actually happened to me. I saw one complaint that was filed 5 days before my trade with a scammer and there wasn't any action being taken on it. Now, I've filed another complaint and since then another 5 or 6 people have come out and said that they too have been scammed. The perpetrator is trading game gifts that were purchased with a stolen credit card, which are then revoked after the trade. It's not something that takes a ton of work to verify.

I understand that this is a volunteer based service. However, when you become tied into the official trading system for Steam you take on a certain responsibility to ensure that your reports are accurate and up-to-date. I feel terrible for the legitimate traders that have a false accusation leveled at them and have to wait months to clear their name.

We have recently implemented a new feature that displays pending reports (assuming that the reporter formatted the report properly) on SteamRep profiles. The main goal of SteamRep is to warn the community and the pending reports feature is a kind of a warning.

That was your assumption and it seems it was wrong.

I do not really know what you mean by being "tied into the official trading system for Steam" but just to make it clear, there is no unofficial trading system for Steam. SteamRep is a volunteer site and is not affiliated with Valve in any way.

SteamRep is affiliated with Valve. Valve uses your tagging system to warn people of scammers during the trading process. This is an affiliation. Saying that you're not affiliated does not make it so. If you wish to remain unaffiliated the proper course of action would be to claim ownership of all posts on your site and go after Valve legally for violation of your copyrights.

Back to the point, upon further review I'm finding appeals that are approaching a year old with no action at all. At this point I'm wondering what the issue is. Are you guys just that overrun with work that you can't keep your backlog to under a year? If so, why aren't you advertising with huge banners that you're looking for more people to help out? Again, what is the point of all of this if the reports you've implemented are out of date and inaccurate? My assumption was based on the fact that there is no response of any kind from SteamRep validating the claim that the person is a scammer. If your response is that I have to discern this information on my own, I'll refer back to my original question of what's the point of this site?

I have no idea where your claims come from but you are wrong. Valve does not use our tagging system. SteamRep is a volunteer site and is not affiliated with Valve in any way.

wrong assumption. Valve does NOT use any of SteamRep's tools or information or w/e in their system. Lol, our server would not be able to cope with that amount of traffic anyways. We have 1 meager server, they have a full blown CDN for their what? 150 million users?

Valve uses automation on their site to warn, for example the "report" feature on a profile, if more then a x amount of reports are done vs a person, valve will show warnings against that account towards other users of steam trading.

That we also get the same accounts reported is due that Valve's punishments can be temporary, while our bans are near permanent.

As for the old appeals, we're understaffed, but we also have high standards for getting admins. We're busy with trying solving that, but there is not a easy solution. We cannot take random ppl, for we have had a bunch of scammer alts that tried to sneak in for w/e reasons.

also I'd suggest reading this topic: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/does-any-work-actually-ever-get-done-here.51687/

Every tagged person should have a listing of their offense and a link to where it was reported. If you don't see one, let us know so we can fix it. I spent a LOT of time doing tag audits to make sure that our tags were correct but I may have missed a few because our search queries only go up so high. Our tags are NOT inaccurate. Our tags are NOT "outdated" and if you are able to click and follow links then you can see the person's offense.

I am sorry that I am not able to volunteer full-time for SteamRep anymore. I was spending well over 40 hours a week handling scam reports. I have a full-time job now doing community management that I love but which leaves me exhausted. I try to help as much as I can. We need more staff, we need a ticketing system, we need lots of things but there isn't one person that can just flip a switch and make it so.

When it comes to appeals, please be aware that scammers LOVE to rally social networking sites/Reddit with lies and pass out torches and pitchforks so they can try to strongarm their way into getting their appeal accepted. Since taking over appeals for Outpost, you cannot IMAGINE how many scammers use it as a confessional booth to tell me all about all the myriad of scams they've done but "omg please unban me or I'll get all my friends to say what a sh-- site this is, I'll never steal from 5, 10, 15, 20 people again." Should we really be eager to let these people roam free in our community?

Helen, I never understood this threat at all. Do people still really try to use this in hopes of accomplishing anything?

Congrats, you might have successfully officially got 1 or 2 people who don't care about trading or anything even remotely similar to trading to never visit steamrep, a site which they were already unfamiliar with... What exactly did you accomplish? Not only that but you're putting your "friends" at risk by implanting the idea that this site is wrong, for when they do plan to trade. Well done, scammer... Well done. 0/10 logic.

I just thought of something useful.
Either order Friends list by date added, or place all new (Like within 24 hours) friends added to your friends list.

If you want to check the rep faster for your most recent add, you can just check on your own profile and then click on the friend's ID.

oh, great wizard, where do you propose we get that information from? Cannot be gotten from the steam api afaik, its a hidden feature (at least, used to be a feature, b4 the big change of profiles) I've not seen any way to sort FL for a long time in that fashion.

The api gives in this order:
Top:
- Online + ingame alphabetical
- online alphabetical
- offline alphabetical
- blocked by user alphabetical
Bottom.

Steamrep has a historical feature.
Can't it skim through the friends list of the last date recorded, and see which steam IDs are new?

the historical feature is pretty "expensive" in calls to the database system to use for a minor feature. Not going to happen.

Why not lower the quality standards of admin only slightly lower? I wouldn't see anybody making so much trouble to try and be admin just to abuse it. Also anybody over 18 is probably mature and smart enough to think otherwise.