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.

Suggesting SteamRep ban grades

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by Charmed!, Sep 10, 2019.

  1. Charmed!

    Charmed! Banned on SteamRep

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    The title sounds weird and this would only come from someone who got banned on SteamRep. But after reading https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/any-administrator-please.190328/ , you may understand the reason.

    In my case, I scammed someone in 2014, repaid, appealed the ban and it got denied on 31th August 2019. 5 years passed, it happened only 1 time and it was a minor $8 (TF2 item) scam.

    Meanwhile there are scammers who keep doing it infinitely with new ways and so on.

    > If the scammer gets successfully SteamRep banned, values and repetitions stay far in the background. Lowest and highest scammers are in the same jar of SteamRep's ban.

    > IRL, punishments to scammers can vary depending on the case.

    Here are the reasons why ban grades make sense:

    1. Finding the middle of punishment. A low scammer who did it once usually gets the ban tag, not the caution tag. But it doesn't give out much more information within one word or two words, a grade, stating how high the treat is.

    Here is what the ban grades can look like within the reputation status:

    Banned - One offense
    Banned - Few offenses
    Banned - Many offenses

    It's lacking detail of course, but usually there is Additional Information.

    2. Partially avoiding unnecessary punishment. Case: Someone who got falsely SteamRep banned is now banned on his favorite TF2 community server which auto detects scammers. It takes him weeks to get their ban appeal accecpted after providing screenshots of the Steam support ticket because their Steam account has been hijacked.

    Now that wouldn't happen if the server still allowed people with the lowest ban grade "Banned - One offense". Then the falsely banned person could've still been on the TF2 community server with their active ban appeal. And there would be no time to spend solving the ban from that server as well.

    3. Downgrades at good behavior at the long run.

    The ban grades could also look like this instead:

    Banned - I
    Banned - II
    Banned - III

    It only gives an assumption of how high the treat is but those grades have an advantage instead of providing one, few or many offenses as info within the banned tag.

    Banned - I means this ban tag, and the treat is low to moderate. It can only get worse (Banned - II, Banned - III) and not better from there, except with successful ban appeals. But then it should be an even rarer case to get the ban downgraded to caution. People should understand it as a ban tag where it's simply not very likely that the banned person will offend again. In my case, I'm completely banned from SteamRep but all I did was 1 offense. So that's how I justify the not so high possibility of repeated scam, while a few people here would probably give me the Banned - II grade just because I must admit that my ban appeal was not the best even if I spent plenty of hours on it.

    Banned - II means this ban tag, the treat is high and game community servers etc. work with this tag to give out community bans . But there should be a way to get downgraded to Banned - I after some time, good behavior or an "extra repayment" to the victim (if there was one). This would mean a sub category for ban appeals: Banned - II to Banned - I. The SteamRep admins need to understand that a few scammers here want to pay extra money to be any less banned. I'm no talent at typing very well, but money is always a good word if you know what I mean.

    Banned - III means this ban tag, the treat is critical and game community servers etc. work with this tag to give out permanent community bans (I know SteamRep doesn't handle partners and so on, but grades can be described at least). Not only game community servers would ban permanently, but also appealing at this grade should only be the case if the account has been hijacked or else it gets immediately denied, so almost no escape from this ban grade. A high scam or multiple offenses belong in this category.

    ---

    This is of course no straight suggestion where every detail must fit. It's there in hope to differentiate the banned people and make you think. It's there to make it fairer like punishment IRL. And they don't put a murderer next to a driver without driver's license in the same prison cell IRL.

    I am aware that I'm SteamRep banned and what do I do except writing all of this at last? Nothing. I learned to use the Steam market mainly and I don't think to scam. An evil person would try to keep scamming after the ban because there is nothing more to lose. But my heart says I'm not a scammer. I can't write perfect English here; just a bunch of hopefully understandable text. But in fact a person who sit on this having something to state and suggest, so thank you for reading that.
  2. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    SteamRep Admin:
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    scamming is not "minor", it is very serious and dangerous and I have no idea why people say "oh it was only _____ not very important so ______". Not a very good talking point, imo. Scamming anything, at all ever, is serious and I've never seen an instance where scamming has not been serious

    Bans are not punishment, they are a warning to other traders that users banned here should not be trusted. If a server wants to ban any scammer from using their service (because again, scamming is serious period), that should be their right. If someone is hacked and gets banned, it's not the hardest thing in the world to prove you're innocent, the steps are listed and they're not too hard to follow. But also, I fail to see how it's "unnecessary", if you shouldn't be trusted then the warning is not unnecessary, and if you're innocent, you can prove your case but until then who's to know if you are telling the truth or not? To be considered anything less than "unsafe" until people know for sure would be a disservice.

    Many things wishy washy with this (in my personal opinion), if you are a scammer, at all, the threat is high. I'd like to believe that seeing as scamming is bad, nomatter for what reason or how much was taken, the warning should remain the same. The whole point is for traders to look at the evidence here, and come to their own conclusions on weather to trust. Just cus someone may have stolen a small dollar amount or did only 1 scam doesn't mean they're any more trustworthy than someone who did 2 scams. Also, there are many criminals IRL who act like they've turned a new leaf just so that they will be released and can go on to continue being criminals again. If I was running a service like this here, I would not take that chance except on the exceedingly rare case.

    Who decides what the criteria is? Everyone is different, and also see my point above

    It shouldn't be like punishment IRL. Since it's not punishment, and is in fact a warning to other traders (see above)

    Thank you for the thread, i enjoyed discussing this and writing out my opinions :)
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  3. Charmed!

    Charmed! Banned on SteamRep

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    It is kind of a punishment to be marked as a scammer by wearing the SR ban tag and being banned from several trading websites and by partnered communities. The "unnecessary" punishment would be the hacked offender who is marked as a scammer and so on, and every ban appeal can't be processed immediately because there are always dozens pending. And while the appeal is pending, the restrictions from trading websites/partnered communities continue. The rest is of course right, telling me the purpose of the caution tag and ban tag.

    You're right that scamming isn't minor. But when someone scams a $8 item without an actual plan before doing so (I literally got the item in my hands and had the opportunity to pay or not because the other trader just did a mistake) and it was the only offense, it's a different dimension than scamming multiple times and $300 in items. And when 5 years pass without any more offense, it's almost logical that the offender either grew up or went inactive because usually many casual traders may be not 20+ years old. And I'm about to reach 7000 hours in TF2, so I was always somewhat active to worry about my SR ban all the time.

    You're also right that after 1 scam, the trust should be at the same level as after multiple scams, at level zero. I didn't criticize SR's caution tag which should be the minimum in case of every proven scam that happened no matter how many years ago. But at 1 scam or 1 offense at not high value, being more gentle to reduce the sentence from ban tag to caution tag after years, without the need for SR admins to do a deep investigation, this would reduce the work and increase the satisfaction. And another reason to reduce extra harsh punishments (Sorry, I have to keep saying that SR ban tags are punishments.) is to reduce the complaints. Last time I was on Reddit and read about someone who complained about SteamRep. I thought their topic would receive many minus points but it had many plus points and comments agreeing that the OP on Reddit is a nice person and the judgement was too harsh. I know that scamming is brutally serious and nobody should feel like they're on Bahamas here, but giving people a second chance is solidarity. Sometimes, something can go wrong or someone can just be not old enough in the head. Those people deserve a second chance some time soon.

    ---

    Thank you for your response. It's indeed nice to have a discussion about that.
  4. a Gentleman

    a Gentleman SteamRep Moderator Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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  5. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    It is not a punishment, it is a warning that they shouldn't be trusted. Communities ban people who are marked because they dont want people who should not be trusted on their service. They look at these banned tags, and say "Steamrep is warning me that these people shouldn't be trusted. I look at the evidence and agree, they shouldn't be trusted. I don't want these people to join things that I own and operate."
    If someone is hijacked, then prove it, but as far as I'm concerned, until they prove it I consider them, in my opinion, just as unsafe as someone who actually is guilty of fraud. Because for all I know, they could be.

    The whole point is to hold these bans to a high standard with extensive evidence using tough deep investigations. That's the only way to ensure this site is held to the highest standard possible. If the mods/admins here didn't do such a good job at investigating, record keeping, policy-making and upholding such a high level of trust, then I wouldn't involve my community in it. The whole point is to do a a perfect job and to make as little mistakes as possible, the point is not to make people- especially scammers- happy/satisfactory. Dare I say that if people are unsatisfied with their tag here, or how long they have had one, that they shouldn't have scammed/committed fraud to begin with?

    This is a common misconception I see often about reddit and the threads made there from people who are banned here. Because there's so many marked scammers on trading related subreddits (especially /r/tf2), anything that is critical of SteamRep gets upvoted whether or not it has any actual merit or truth to it. With people adding useless comments like "everyone knows SteamRep is corrupt". Not everything negative people say about this site on Reddit is wrong, but anything negative will be upvoted whether or not it's true or can be proven. All they do do is throw in a few links that have nothing to do with their arguments, which nobody who matters on r/tf2 is going to read, and call it "proof". People are going to upvote it, and downvote anyone defending SteamRep because they disagree, or because they want to be edgy. But in most cases, the only reason those threads get so much attentions is because people on reddit are sheeple and believe anything they read nomatter what. It's also usually the same exact people making those threads and upvoting them. Trust me, I'm not exaggerating. I know many reddit accounts who basically spend their entire day shitposting about Steamrep as much as they can.

    Also, again in my opinion, it doesn't matter how nice you are. If you scammed/committed fraud, you're not nice and people deserve to be able to see that, and avoid you at all costs if they agree.
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2019
  6. Charmed!

    Charmed! Banned on SteamRep

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    It's being handled like becoming a zombie; there is no return to become a human again and everyone deserves to be able to see who the zombie is.

    But people could also gain trust and not only lose it (2 directions). I think an ex-scammer could gain trust back if they had another chance with several PayPal transactions or being middleman. Now that sounds completely terrible to give an ex-scammer an opportunity like this and I wouldn't support it just like that but please hear me out. To me an ex-scammer is a human who could make their way back to the majority of fair traders. They could either scam again or become a very well trusted trader. And a very well trusted trader can also become a scammer (Those cases even exist here).

    You see this at 1 direction which is one way to do it. I'd never think treating scammers like this is simply bad. And you would always defend this 1 direction system because what a trader did in the past is most reliable in order to show if they're trustworthy or not. But to come to a conclusion with 3 questions, what if there would be measures to become a trustworthy trader again (not only my examples but something smarter)? Wouldn't you trust a trader who scammed once but honored the next 500 trades? Or would you rather trust a trader who never scammed and has no history of their trades?

    ---

    I'm not sure if I'm allowed to discuss about that particularly and would stop if it's not okay.
  7. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    No, no I wouldn't.
    schmed likes this.
  8. Salmon

    Salmon Caution on SteamRep

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    And here I thought I made too many threads.

    Grades of ban doesn't matter. Notes allow admins to clarify when necessary - my profile is a classic example of this, and you tend to see it on warning profiles for this very reason.

    Would I like to have my profile be no status but with the notes left? Sure. But I'm also glad that I didn't get a full red tag. There's your grades of ban right there.
    Teh_king211 and schmed like this.