Announcement Major SteamRep Announcements - OFPF, Donations, and much more

I don't remember the last time we've made a huge announcement like this, I'm not even sure that we have. The fact that we're doing one now must mean something good is on the way, right? We certainly think so and we'd like to hear your opinions on what we've done. It may not seem like we've been doing much since we haven't talked to the public about what we were working on. We have pushed a few changes recently, but truthfully, we've been hard at work on some very large projects. Today, we're breaking the silence by officially launching our non-profit organization, as well as reintroducing/restructuring donations. We'd also like to formally introduce staff changes. Criticism and compliments are very important to us, so feel free to discuss below.

Online Fraud Prevention Foundation
First I would like to introduce the Online Fraud Prevention Foundation (OFPF), our new non-profit organization that will drive SteamRep. One of our long-term goals was to become a formal non-profit. We've finally achieved that and we're also filing to become a public benefit charitable organization under 501c3 regulations. The new foundation really gets to the core of what SteamRep and our partners have been trying to do-- increase awareness of fraud in online communities so people can protect themselves.

Quoted from the new OFPF website:

Our mission starts with reducing the overwhelming amount of fraud in online gaming communities, as SteamRep has done for years now.

We feel that education and awareness is the core of preventing online fraud. To that end, we're going to be building on the content created by SteamRep and like-minded communities to improve anti-fraud education as a whole. Our aim is:

• To create and socialize more formal education on safe trading / safe browsing / safe commerce.
  
• To offer anti-fraud certification programs to help raise the bar for everyday users, traders, community volunteers, and online businesses. Those who complete these programs will have that success prominently displayed so that everyone can verify their level of knowledge in fraud prevention.
  
• To grow more partnerships with communities, private sector companies, and government agencies. We've been building partnerships over the years, but as a formal nonprofit organization, it makes it easier for us to reach out and interact with these groups more formally.
  
• To utilize public donations to grow fraud prevention in the community. Donations will fund OFPF and SteamRep so we can keep our servers up, sponsor new tools/content, and will allow us to upgrade/expand our fight against fraud.

You might be asking, "Wait, I can finally donate to SteamRep now?!" - Alright then, let's move on to that topic--

SteamRep Donations Are Back!
We're pleased to announce that donating is back and better than ever. Donating to a non-profit is a generous act and we want to thank such generosity by offering supporters modest rewards. Listed on the Donator Upgrades page are 5 Donation Tiers. We'd love to see your support by donating to the foundation. It really does make a difference.

Our initial donation tiers:

• Donation - Tier I
  • As a thank you, for 12 months, Donator - Tier I will be prominently displayed on your SteamRep profile. (12.00 USD for 12 months) During that time you'll have access to a contributor-only discussion forum.
• Donation - Tier II
  • As a thank you, for 24 months, Donator - Tier II will be prominently displayed on your SteamRep profile. (20.00 USD for 24 months) During that time you'll have access to a contributor-only discussion forum.
• Donation - Tier III
  • As a thank you, for 5 years, Donator - Tier III will be prominently displayed on your SteamRep profile. (45.00 USD for 5 years) During that time you'll have access to a contributor-only discussion forum.
• Donation - Tier IV
  • For major contributors, Donator - Tier IV will be prominently displayed on your SteamRep profile -- no expiration. (75.00 USD) You'll have access to a contributor-only discussion forum.
• Donation - Tier V
  • For the most generous contributors, Donator - Tier V will be prominently displayed on your SteamRep profile -- no expiration. You'll have access to a contributor-only discussion forum and you will get Beta/early access to future SteamRep enhancements to provide your feedback. (100 USD or more in donations)

We're testing these now and they're subject to change-- as such, we're definitely looking for suggestions. If there's any way we can improve this, let us know in this thread.

We also hope to offer other ways to contribute and be recognized-- whether it's creating content or helping newbies with their issues. There are so many people willing to help and we'd love to give them the recognition they deserve. Let us know your thoughts here as well.

Server Upgrades
We're excited to announce substantial server upgrades for SteamRep.com! We recently moved to new server instances that are 5-6 times more powerful than what we were using before. This hardware upgrade (coupled with a long overdue separation of the web and database layers) has made it much easier to serve the web and API requests for our 40GB worth of Steam profile history. The new server setup costs more money each month, but the performance so far is looking really good on our end.

Hopefully you've noticed the improvements! If you run into any new bugs on the new system, please let us know.

Profile Badges & Redesign
Badges, and levels, and links, oh my!

In recent months, we gave SR profiles a small makeover. We wanted to make improvements in terms of functionality as well as aesthetically. We added Steam levels, updated our quick tools and tweaked the design. Now I can introduce to you our latest change, the new and improved badges. We previously used all-caps text to spell out SR DONATOR, SR ADMIN or BANNED BY SR. The new badges (hopefully) make profiles much more visually pleasing, giving them a modular feel. Here's some quick examples:



These are a step up from the old days, but we'll be the first to admit that we aren't the best visual designers out there-- so we need help from the community to improve further. We'll be holding a public visual design contest where we ask our supporters to redesign the look of SR profiles (+ other pages) and get rewards and recognition for being selected. We'd love to see you participate-- more details coming in early 2015.

Staff Additions
We also want to formally welcome two new staff additions! Clive, one of our volunteer moderators, is joining our team of administrators to help us with our backlogs. In addition, Bottswana, is joining our development team and helping Mattie with coding tasks.

It's well-known that our existing volunteers are overwhelmed and we're looking to increase our volunteer roles and members soon. As with our upcoming visual design contest, we'd like to reach out to the general community much more often to seek whatever lending hands they can offer on specific tasks.

Tell us what you think
We're excited about the major changes and are interested to hear feedback from the community. We have lots of other areas we need to improve, but we feel these new changes are a step in the right direction. What do you think?

Edit (2014-12-06): We now show donator tiers on our donation list here:
http://steamrep.com/donators

ITS ALIVE!!!!

You're doing a great job in general but there is one thing i think everyone get annoyed because of it , its the lack of staff ( admins ) because 5 or less admins can't handle the flood of reports , everything ieles is really good especially after this update thingy .

Sorry for my bad english and a BIG Thanks to the people who are working on this site .

Wonderful ideas!!
I have always believed that education is the first/best step to solving issues.
Happy to donate to help where I can.
Thank you for all you have done for the community!

Only thing I'd like to see is instead of a link to the community's homepage on the website when you click the Banned by x part, is for it to redirect you to the appeals section for their community.

Awesome, apart from that great job Also, I haven't massively looked into donations but are they limited to those certain tiers? And if so, are you planning on allowing people to donate more or less than specific tiers (I.e. $5 with no benefits or $90 with tier 4 benefits)

I just YOLOd $100 on donator and noticed on the donator page it still just says "SR Donator" would be cool if it sorted by tier. Obviously this is still brand new but just thought I'd suggest it.

Also would be cool if bp.tf could get it to show on my profile page, though I'm not sure if that's on SR or BP.tf

First, I am really liking this update and I am glad that I can finally donate. I just had a question/idea about the tier system, would a user be able to bridge the gap between the tiers or would they have to wait until the current tier expires to donate and upgrade to a higher tier? The title "Donator Upgrade" makes it sound like this would be possible, but it looks like I can only donate one of the five set amounts. You have my apologies if this was already addressed and I've simply missed it.
Thanks and keep up the good work!

Would love to be able to donate by...any other way than paypal Are credit/debit card donations possible? Or better yet, keys?

Once you click Donate, you will see PayPal website and there will be an option to pay with a debit or credit card.

Another cool thing would be hiding the donate ad for tier v members. You're not getting any more from us ;-)

Speak for yourself.

oh, what was it again, Tier VI $ 250, Tier VII $ 500, Tier VIII $ 1000, Tier IX $ 5000, Tier X $ 10.000 right?

We need to be able to buy valve, so we can make the trade bans.


PS:

I plan on buying donator tier 9000+

admin plz disc0unt f0r m3