1. There is no such thing as a "pending" ban or Steam admin. Anyone threatening your account is a scammer trying to scare you. Read more.

How long does it take for admin to decide on scam report

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by Ursus, Sep 3, 2014.

  1. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    I have to say that initially I was encouraged by steamrep and the fact that community is maintains such a great site to keep us away from scammers, but after filling couple reports I see that... most of them are staying forever in Ready For Review state.

    I mean... I don't see incentive in gathering screenshots and putting effort into reporting scammer if 80% of time no one even looks at it :(

    What is other people's experience with that?
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  2. Ninja Otter With A Taco

    Ninja Otter With A Taco Retired Staff

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    Best way to get a scammer banned is to report them to a partner community (all of their banners are shown on www.SteamRep.com )
    Clarn and Tio José das Vacas like this.
  3. Chaos

    Chaos Retired Staff

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    Just because it's not dealt with by an admin doesn;t mean there's no point. The pending reports feature on profiles now, in a way, negates the backlog. It allows you to check the pending reports, look at the evidence and decide for yourself if you want to trade with the person.
  4. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    This is certainly good point, but it's risky statement. Reporter doesn't know whether what he reported makes sense. No feedback from staff leads to lower motivation to fill more reports in future.

    On the other hand - from potential trader perspective, you go into steamrep and see warning that someone might be scammer when in fact this person was falsely accused.

    Some of my reports are hanging there from February...
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  5. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    As you see I'm new member here and I want to learn and I'm trying to be positive, so please believe that positive motives are behind my question:
    • What is the point to have scam reporting on steamrep if this is not reviewed and partner communities are the way to go?
    • What is the point on having this field to check whether someone has clear steamrep?
    • Wouldn't be better if this check on main steamrep page to partner communities?
    • If steamrep scam reporting is relic of past and we should report scam attempts elsewhere, maybe someone should reconsider to change the way the site works?
    • Or maybe we (what the hell... I am part of community after all :]) should reinvigorate this community and get more mods/admins?
    Once again - all positive and caring about community. Cheers :)
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  6. Mattie!

    Mattie! SteamRep Admin

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    It's important that everyone understand that SteamRep is a small volunteer organization helping a 75-million member community. Not every report will receive a response (and definitely not always right away). Not even Valve can handle all of the community's reports and they have incredible income. We're definitely not going to be able to do the same level of investigation on every individual report and you shouldn't expect that. Even if we tripled our staff, there's simply no volunteer group that can handle such volume and the growth in this scene. (Gone are the days of a mere dozen trade servers to monitor and an in-game TF2 trade window.)

    We prioritize reports for investigation based on a number of factors-- we will publish those after our staff finishes rounding out some of the priorities and we run them by our partner admins. We'll also be updating the scam report form to set expectations accordingly for new submitters.

    One key thing we prioritize for investigation, though, is the quantity of scam reports submitted against an account. By submitting a report against a repeat offender, you help ensure they do get banned as quickly as possible through the community and provide guidance to other traders on your experience with them. SteamRep provides a public capture of these reports so traders can educate themselves and do better research even if each report can't be analyzed right away. We feel it's better to have these situations logged rather than lost entirely (e.g. if you report a violation on Steam, it helps Valve know quantities, but may not help traders understand what actually happened so they can make their own decisions to protect themselves).

    As mentioned by responders above, you are very welcome to submit reports to partner communities to get them reviewed faster by a community admin. None of those communities are positioned to handle a massive volume either, but feel more than free to reach out to them as needed and their bandwidth permits.
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2014
  7. Chaos

    Chaos Retired Staff

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    I did say that users should think for themselves. I'm not saying everyone is able to decipher the evidence and tell the difference between real and fake screenshots, but most people have brains enough to figure out if they should go ahead and trade or walk away. Either way, getting a response from an admin is the wrong kind of gratification you should be seeking. Putting up the report gives everyone the option to view it and judge it for themselves, regardless of if an SR admin has come to a decision on it. I don't see how it's a risky thing to say, it's a pretty neat way around the backlog, even if it's unintended.
  8. u.v.bunny

    u.v.bunny New User

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    Out of curiosity: Is there any objection to someone submitting a report both here on steamrep (to provide an immediate warning in the form of a pending report) AND on a partnered community (to try and get a faster review of the report)? Obviously this has the potential to result in a duplication of effort where two sites are spending time on the same incident.
  9. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    yeah, we don't want ppl to report double. For then problems might arise when both would tag for the same thing, while that is policy to actually NOT do so since the beginning. It does happen occasionally, and the first is to administer the tag after for that offense. On SR, if a partner has that report tagged on, we'd archive the report here. We hope that they'd remark on the report topic its been done on another comm to save time. but as a admin will read the entire topic before landing there.....
  10. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

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    I try to do a little searching on the person reporting and the reported scammer.....that would include posts on other locations and such. Google is my friend :)
  11. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    There is one more thing to all this.
    I'm from csgo world and I'm not sure which partner site to use to fill out report.
    I believe only steamrep is widely known and big reason behind it is that steamrep ban leads to immediate ban on csgolounge.com which is probably over 80% of trading for csgo items.

    Maybe this is not right question as you guys don't see necessity for it, but... shouldn't you consider growing team of admins?
    I'm sure there are some volunteers that are willing to step up.
  12. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    This however leads to major problem in csgo world: biggest trading site for csgo items: csgolounge.com is integrated with steamrep db. All SR bans lead to instant csgolounge ban, pretty much shutting him/her down from 80% of trading opportunities.
    If you archive SR report, scammer won't get banned on csgolounge.
  13. Ninja Otter With A Taco

    Ninja Otter With A Taco Retired Staff

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    I think you misunderstood what SilentReaper was trying to say, partner communities ban on SR as well, tif a report gets sent to SR and a partner community, the report will be archived on SR but the scammer would still be banned on SR in the long run.
    Ursus likes this.
  14. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    I had no idea!
    That's great.

    One last question - what site would you recommend for submitting reports in regards to csgo items? I see that most of partner sites are organized around TF2/DOTA2. in CSGO trading is only one year old.
  15. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    yeah, CS:GO was around all of the sudden, and it gets a while before communities have build out. Even Dota2 is a hard atm with D2T being in suspense.
  16. lewd

    lewd New User

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    I filed a report on someone almost a week ago, which is now marked "Ready for Review", and they have no marks on their SteamRep page at all ( http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197978411314 ).
  17. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    Go to the profile on SR.... if you still don't see it, then go to your eye doctor. You then need those extra thick glasses, they make them of the bottoms of jars....
  18. sNAKOR ®™

    sNAKOR ®™ New User

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    in my opinion this system now how it runs is a kick in the butt for all honest traders.

    because the system can be abused and anyone can report "YOU" with false arguments if he dont like your avatar, nose or something else.

    most people dont read the reports, but they see there is something pending and decide to trade with some other so it damages the business for nothing.
    Roudydogg1, King Shady and Ursus like this.
  19. Xenophobia

    Xenophobia Retired Staff

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    Similarly, people can report you on Steam for any reason and occasionally get your trade banned or tagged with a warning.

    The difference between us and Valve is that we actually look at the reports. People who make completely invalid reports in order to smear another's reputation will be discouraged or barred from creating future reports.

    And if someone declines business with you for a report directed at your bad avatar, then they probably don't deserve your business anyway. But they don't look at the reports, just see that there's a pending report against me! Again, "they probably don't deserve your business".
  20. Ursus

    Ursus New User

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    A while? It's over a year that we have trading in CSGO.

    Have you steamrep guys considered to just allow some more community members to scan through reports a.k.a. be admins? I know that you have to be very cautious in picking admins, but come on...
    It is kind of default and possible solution.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.