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.

Question Regarding Outpost/Other Partnered Third Party Sites And SteamRep.

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by Fire ̷̨●̷̨°, Mar 25, 2015.

  1. Fire ̷̨●̷̨°

    Fire ̷̨●̷̨° New User

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    I have noticed lately on Outpost that a person will be banned there with scamming as the reason, yet if you view that same person's SteamRep profile they are not marked nor do they have any reports pending under their name.
    Now this wouldn't necessarily be a issue if not for the fact that people are getting SteamRep tags for trading with people who have bans on these sites for scamming reasons but no SteamRep tags/reports. If SteamRep is going to trust places like Outpost enough to issue a ban going off their ban notes, then shouldn't Outpost admins be given the ability to just give SteamRep marks? If not, then before tagging a person based off a third parties ban notes, shouldn't the third party site be handing over the information they have regarding the ban in the form of a SteamRep report?

    This issue is causing more people to get marked for mistakenly trading with someone who has scammed.

    Example case: http://forums.f-o-g.eu/threads/5664-ghs-big-juicy-76561198120898844-a.html

    It's not the best example seeing as the guy doesn't have a very good trading history. However, there are more of these types of bans out there, this one just came to my attention today which is why I'm using it as a example.

    Looking forward to hearing your reply.

    Thanks,

    Fire.
  2. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    The problem is a bit deep.

    - OutPost has a SCA (super community admin, has access on SR). However that SCA is not having much time for a long while now.
    - Outpost admins are supposed to pass those forward to the SCA admins for marking, if the case is proven enough to be marked on SR
    - OP is rapidly going far behind in marking those on SR. Their mods/admins can ban on their own site just fine.

    Also, SR requires that those marked on SR by a Community, are sufficiently proven to be scammers. No evidence = unmark. AND SR is going with the premise that ANY community can ban ANYBODY for ANY reason that they seem fit. If they don't like one's avatar, they can ban for it. SR does NOT tell communities how to run their communities. We only ask that those bans that they have a proven case for and are being marked on SR are actually proven. This inherently means, that OP can ban users for scamming for they "feel" that the guy did scam, but don't have enough proof to forward it to SR.

    We are in the process of appointing a new SCA at their ranks, but the previous one was just about accepted when he left outpost as a admin there. So we have to go thru the process again....

    As a side solution we are in the process of building/implementing something else, which makes SCA's less needed, but that takes time. For us to build and test it, and then OP to build and test some around it internally.

    So these factors make that banned users on OP aren't banned on SR.
  3. Fire ̷̨●̷̨°

    Fire ̷̨●̷̨° New User

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    All that is well and good. Also I wasn't suggesting OP or any community shouldn't have the right to ban anyone for any given reason. It's their website/community they can do as they please.

    My issue is with this statement:
    In my above example a person was banned for spycrabbing a player who is ONLY banned on OP for scamming reasons. The person who was banned on OP for scamming reason has 0 mark on SR and 0 pending reports. The problem is should SR or SR partner communities be issuing tags to people for "trades with marked/obvious scammers", when the person they trade with isn't marked on SR and would not be a obvious scammer based on the fact that they have no reports on SR pending against them?

    Is it now required that all traders check OP and other third party sites for scamming related bans else risk their own rep? Is trading with a person who is only banned on OP for scamming (and with no SR pending reports) as ban as trading with a SR marked scammer?
  4. Mattie!

    Mattie! SteamRep Admin

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    For SR's own bans, we only use bans in partner communities as further factors that contribute to the "obvious scammer" circumstances. If the trader is one who knows to do their research on items, etc, and they directly ignore scam-related bans regardless of where they exist, then it is evidence leaning towards them simply not caring and/or are working with scammers. It's clearly not as strong as ignoring a full ban on SR and they deserve a little more benefit of the doubt, but it is not an excuse to go work with people you know are banned in the community for scam-related offenses. People trying to ride the letter of the written policies but still trying to be deceitful are going to have their reputation affected. If you want a reputation as a legitimate trader, it's wise to do your best and avoid trading with any obvious scammer account. Riding technicalities is not going to fly, especially for repeat offenders and admins of communities that should be setting an example for their users.

    Note that FOG and other partners are not SR-- they can issues bans based on their evidence they feel backs the likelihood that an account is associated with fraud. I'd recommend no partners be aggressive about trades-with-scammer cases unless they have a strong suspicion the person is working with scammers purposefully. Regardless, if the user appeals with that community and has their appeal rejected, they can reach out to us if they feel the admin has abused the shared bans on SR and we'll look over the case as well. If we see a systematic overreaction to evidence like that, then we might institute a policy to reduce the scope under which partners can publish bans, but so far that hasn't been necessary.
  5. Fire ̷̨●̷̨°

    Fire ̷̨●̷̨° New User

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    That's fair. I still feel like leaving a site like OP without a active SCA admin is going to lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion. The guy mentioned in my example, Basix (http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561197967900899), is banned on bp.tf and OP with the same reasons (scamming) for I believe at least 1 month now. Yet he still has no pending SR marks or reports (I know I could make one but I'm trying to make a point). You can see how this disconnect from the partner communities and SteamRep can negatively effect the traders in the community.

    My suggestion to help solve this issue would be one of two things. Either contact your partner communities and tell them to instruct their lowers level mods to submit evidence in the form of a SR report when banning someone for a scam related offense. Or do like rep.tf does and hook partner community ban databases to SR, so if I look at someone profile I can see which communities have issued a punishment and why.

    This will help in two ways. Firstly, it will reduce confusion of newer traders, who don't use sites like OP or bp.tf but know about SR, from helping a scammer profit and possibly getting into trouble themselves. And secondly it will help prevent people from using the excuse that a person wasn't banned on SR or had any pending reports.

    I hope you at least consider it. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
  6. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    SR cant mandate comms have their mods/admins do such reportings, that is up to the comms themselves to handle, SR tries to give comms as much freedom as possible. SR gives trusted comms SCA access, tho their is a semiofficial limit of 2 per comm, in practice, large comms like OP are given more upon request/approval (the limit is outdated now and should be lifted). One thing that such comms want instead of standard SCA access is an API that they can incorporate into their own sites uis to tag users. I believe this is in active development.
  7. Fire ̷̨●̷̨°

    Fire ̷̨●̷̨° New User

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    What about the rep.tf system I suggested? Is that beyond the realm of possibilities?
  8. Inu

    Inu TF2Bazaar Owner Retired Staff Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    It is up to us partner communities to make sure scammers on our site are getting tagged. If we have the evidence required, we will go ahead and forward this tag and I hope this is the attitude of most of us. A rep.tf like system hosted by SteamRep would make things more confusing for the end user, considering as said above "AND SR is going with the premise that ANY community can ban ANYBODY for ANY reason that they seem fit.".
    If I get 10 reports of someone being a giftwrap scammer with 0 evidence I am going to ban that person from bazaar for being a suspected giftwrap scammer and attempt to contact them to validate or invalidate these claims. Your rep.tf like system would openly display this person as a scammer then, even though the ban is internal and based solely on our suspicion, and that does not need to be true.
    Essentially what starts off as a quick ban to protect our userbase from possible damage ends up in ruining the reputation of someone who may be entirely innocent, because suddenly that ban is displayed on SR and to the average user it will have the same meaning as a tag on SR.

    I am not allowed to give you insight how tagging as a partner community works but trust me when I say that every tag is upheld to a strict requirement of evidence. If you can not 100% prove that it happened, don't even try to tag them. There are people in the community banned from OP, Bazaar and Backpack and we all know they scammed. We just have not found a nail in the coffin in terms of complete evidence yet, as the quality of evidence supplied by the victims ranges from great to absolutely not usable. The "quality" of those "rep.tf like" partner bans however would not only be unmonitored, it would be against the point of SteamRep itself as a trustworthy anti-fraud database.
  9. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    Also, when communities start to ban regularly for non-valid reasons, that will only hurt themselves in the long run. Communities connect to us for they believe we improve things. But that means that we need to back up any ban we have listed on our site, even those of communities. Thats why I said: no evidence = unban.