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.

A "State of SteamRep" discussion.

Discussion in 'Discussion Archive' started by 404UserNotFound, May 14, 2015.

  1. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    I've got a few things that I want to get off my chest. I know it's probably going to look bad on me, seeing as how I've got a community application for my Steam Group up, but I honestly don't care at this point. I just want to point some things out, and get people to discuss them.

    "You have banned users on your friends list"
    Recently, I've seen some people going around community applications/mod applications pointing out that people have banned users on their friends list, as if it's a bad thing. Here's a prime example in a community application created by AwesomeX (I host his server): http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/mass-crabbing-co.99922/

    Since when does having banned users on your friends list mean a damn thing? Let's say I was to submit a mod application. And let's say hypothetically that I had 20 people on my friends list who were banned/labelled here on SteamRep and someone told me "hey you've got 20 banned users on your friends list", you know what my response would be? So f✿✿✿✿✿✿ what? They're my friends and I wouldn't remove them from my friends list to please the person.

    The lesson to take home here is just because someone is labelled a scammer here on SR, doesn't mean that person is a scammer. Wanna argue this point with me and claim I'm wrong? I'd read this first before going "ur wrong fuk u fagit".

    I was labelled a scammer for over a year because former TF2 Outpost admin and Facepunch user "Suttles" banned me from TF2 Outpost (a site I rarely ever used because I'm not a trader) for "impersonating another user". I had changed my name to "Ernest Cockworthington IV" as a way to poke fun at the Facepunch TF2 community (I was on the outs with Facepunch back then, long story). I was unable to appeal the label for a year as I was community banned on Steam for my name saying "f✿✿✿ MaxOfS2D" (I was community banned by one of Max's "valve buddies"). I scammed no-one, I rarely ever traded, and yet I was labelled falsely for a year. HelenAngel quickly removed the label when I was finally able to appeal.

    Speaking of, Helen, your response led me to wonder why you didn't just remove the scammer label when the ban was issued. You stated "I was the one who handled this report initially and since it's clearly trolling with no scamming". If you handled it initially when it was filed and you knew it was f✿✿✿✿✿✿ horseshit, why did you not decline it right off the bat?


    Public Opinion of SteamRep (and some issues with SteamRep in general)
    There are many issues with this site that I have pointed out to SilentReaper on Steam. One of them is the old UHC bans. UHC is no longer operational, and the site that has taken over their bans and appeals has decided they are no longer accepting appeals for old UHC bans. Their stance is "you obviously did something wrong and had X amount of years to appeal, but times up now so you're f✿✿✿ed because we don't care"

    A user joined my server a few months back and became a regular. Unfortunately he had a UHC ban on record on SteamRep and the plugin labelled him a scammer. This posed a problem as he was not a scammer and the reason for his UHC ban was piss-poor at best. I ended up disabling UHC bans from triggering a [SCAMMER] label as a result.

    SteamRep, in general, is looked at poorly by the TF2 community. Most people on Facepunch would say that "SteamRep is shite". Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge proponent of SteamRep but I see a lot of issues with this site. I've spoken to many people who are labelled scammers here on SteamRep for the most minor thing and when they appealed to get the label removed, were flat-out denied. That worries me.

    What also worries me is people from Partner Communities going around applications and pointing out that people have banned users on their friends list. I once again shall say "What does that have to do with anything?". Sorry, I had to point that out again because every time I see someone pointing out that someone else has X banned users on their friends list, it f✿✿✿✿✿✿ infuriates me because it has no bearing on anything, or at least, it shouldn't have any bearing on anything. If having banned users on your friends list means people look down at you, that's pretty sad.


    Partner Communities and Partner Community bans are BAD.
    Seriously. I direct your attention to the UHC fiasco I mentioned above. UHC evaporates, people who were banned from UHC for less-than-legitimate reasons are left labelled with UHC bans and are kicked/banned/labelled on servers that use the SteamRep plugin. The new group takes over the bans for UHC but decides not to accept appeals. In all honesty, I'd say REMOVE ALL THE UHC LABELS.

    Matter of fact, remove Partner Community bans altogether. They're pointless. I guarantee that out of all the partner community bans on SteamRep, half of them are illegitimate or were a result of an admin who had a grudge against a certain user or who wrongfully banned a certain user but passed it off as a legitimate ban.

    Remove the partner community bans and you remove 80% of the appeals, thus decreasing the appeals workload. I'd go as far as suggesting the removal of partner community statuses on SteamRep profiles as well. It's just not necessary. You could even merge SteamRep Partners and Friends of SteamRep into one big thing once you remove the Partner Communities labels.

    It's a good thing that certain partner communities don't have ban labels, like TF2 Raffle House, which is a good example. TF2R had a history of banning people for the silliest reasons. Most bans were for using multiple accounts to increase win chances, but there were a large handful of just plain stupid bans with stupid reasons (like mine, but their ban "Hall of Fame" was removed to hide the evidence).

    Another good example of a partner community that should NEVER be given their own ban labels would be Skial. The server itself is infamous for being as bad, if not worse than Saigns/NighTeam when it comes to their "donator benefits" and the things people have been banned for. Not to mention the owner, Bottiger, has it in his head that the only reason I started my Steam Group was because he banned me from his server and I made my group to "spite him" or something (when in fact I had been running my group way before I joined his server).


    The End
    Well, I've made my points, albeit in a somewhat ranty fashion. Feel free to discuss the various points.

    I should note that as I sit here with a Heineken in my hand, relaxing after a day of hard work, I've probably forgotten a thing or two that I wanted to say. I've been pondering this stuff at work all day, trying to remember details and information that pertains to what I've said.

    I am in no way, shape or form anti-SteamRep. I am, as I stated above, a huge proponent of SteamRep. However, there are things I feel strongly about when it comes to this site, and as mentioned above, I have been "screwed over" by SteamRep once in the past.
  2. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Oh jeez, I didn't realize the forums censored the f word. Sorry for the heavy swearing :oops:

    I'm a passionate person and also Canadian :p. I tend to break out the swears from time to time when I'm trying to get a point across.
  3. Flying Anonymoose

    Flying Anonymoose New User

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    I just wanna comment on this section here.

  4. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Ok so as I said above, that's sad, and that needs to be changed/removed. Not everyone who is labelled as a scammer is a scammer. I'm a prime example (see my appeal, that I linked to in the first post).

    Also, I just learned that you can be marked on SteamRep if you trade with marked scammers. That's also silly, and probably why many people have negative opinions of SteamRep. Why? See above. Things need to change around here, and that's one of them.

    I mean, yes, I can see if the person labelled here was labelled for something like phishing attempts then that would look bad. But what if I were to trade with the fellow from my server who has a UHC ban here, or someone who was labelled as a scammer when their account was temporarily compromised by the SteamStealer Extreme bots and then they regained control of their account but was still (stupidly) labelled as a scammer? If I did so, and got marked on SteamRep as a result, that'd be incredibly stupid and you can bet your ass I'd fight that label.

    I believe the point I made about having marked friends on your friends list having nothing to do with anything to be true. And I 100% feel that that rule needs to be removed or at least reworked to take into account that SteamRep as a whole is not perfect and many labellings are minor.
  5. Enstage

    Enstage SteamRep Admin Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    However, it says "more than 4", the quote from Hitman Sparky contains no one with more than 4. Anyway, that was a community application, not a moderator application.
  6. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    True, but it's still a valid example as part of the point I'm trying to get across here about the rules needing to be changed. If it's only for Moderator applications, then I wouldn't want to be a Moderator here if I had a lot of friends who were wrongfully marked here (or who had UHC bans for example).
  7. Enstage

    Enstage SteamRep Admin Partner Community Donator - Tier V

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    I think it's fine to have a couple of banned friends, there is a point where it does get too much however, which I see as 10++. Having more than 10 friends that are banned just looks awfully suspicious.
    404UserNotFound likes this.
  8. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    Hmm. Maybe time for a change of rules. But it would always be discouraged by SteamRep to have/keep marked accounts on the friends list.

    Also, if users would be wrongfully marked, the (friend/partner) community admins can inquire us about them, either for completing the info, or a audit.
  9. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    Last time I checked (im not going to check again just for this), if you have a tag from people who are no longer accepting appeals, and you have the burden of prof that you are innocent of your tag, you can appeal here.

    Seems to me like the "people" who claim to be falsely marked either weren't falsely marked, or they have no burden of prof to say otherwise.

    That, or such guideline has been removed and they simply can't appeal; in either case I'd be inclined to disagree with your "remove all the bans" anyway, as it shouldn't take years to appeal a ban, especially if they claim complete and utter innocence.
    Hitman Sparky likes this.
  10. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    I've spoken to SilentReaper about the UHC bans, showed him the forum thread from the group that has taken over. We spoke about it at length. Apparently SteamRep doesn't handle UHC appeals because the new group is supposed to be doing so, but the new group is not doing so at all.
  11. Roudydogg1

    Roudydogg1 SteamRep Admin Friend Community

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    Do you mean they have decided to stop taking appeals for them, or do you mean they claim to be accepting such and people are making appleals for such yet they aren't dealing with those specifically?

    If it's the latter, then yes the situation is very different indeed.
  12. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Sorry, I'm a bit of a doofus. I googled the new group and found that the thread they posted says "UTC". I coulda swore it was UHC but their site says UTC.

    http://manncotrading.com/index.php/topic,5460.0.html

    Basically, they no longer accept appeals. But during the brief time that they did, their stance was "you're gonna need a commendation from the president of the united states saying that you're a cool bro otherwise you're f✿✿✿ed".
  13. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Also, can we maybe get the Edit Post function enabled here? That would be wonderful. What I forgot to include was this:

    I understand that they want to get all these old appeals processed, though I don't know how many they received that were UTC-specific, but to no longer accept appeals for them is just silly. And to my knowledge, SteamRep does not handle UTC appeals anymore either, directing users to the Manncotrading.com forums.

    That's what I discovered after speaking to the fellow who had a UTC mark on his SteamRep profile on my server and asked if there was any way I could help him appeal the tag (as he saw my posts here on the forums). I didn't believe him when he explained that he was unable to appeal the ban, until I investigated for myself and saw that nobody handles UTC appeals anymore.

    Basically, this ties into the "Partner Community bans/labels are BAD" point. Sure, most of the old UTC labels are probably legit and should most likely stay. But then you run into a situation like I did where the guy was banned for the silliest thing and got marked as a result and now has to live with it, and you have to change your perception of things.

    Again I point to myself being marked a scammer wrongfully. TF2Outpost didn't have their own labels and as such anyone who was banned was outright labelled a scammer. The ban from Suttles was just his way of showing off for the guys in Facepunch's TF2 section (the post in which he stated "now I have something I can ban you for" when I changed my name to Ernest Cockworthington IV received many positive post ratings from the community) and I suffered as a result.

    Partner Community bans should not label someone as a scammer automatically, nor should they receive special labels. If someone is banned from a Partner Community, that should be it. No SteamRep marking, no labelling, nothing. If the offense was something that the person could be marked for, the specific Partner Community should have one of their staff members file a report like all of us have to do when we report someone.

    And ample proof of the offense should be provided, otherwise the report is invalid. No special treatment due to Partner Community status because that could lead to another situation similar to mine.
  14. Penguin The Fluffy

    Penguin The Fluffy Articus Birdicus Defenderus Retired Staff

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    Ok 404, I am going to throw some info your way.

    1) UHC and UTC bans got audited a long time ago. Any accounts that had no evidence against them or were tagged for reasons that were not related to scamming (more in the case of UHC than UTC) were already removed.

    2) Just because UTC/UHC isn't around anymore doesn't mean that the tags are invalid. So your idea of removing all tags from those sources ,when taken into account with my first point, would put a lot of users that have legitimately committed a form of fraud back into the trading stream.

    3) Not all information is lost on the tags. I am the former head admin of MCT and a former admin of UTC. I personally have a complete backup of the entire UTC site including it's sourcebans. Granted I havent unpacked it and it is sitting on one of my hard drives, none the less the information can still be retrieved in most instances.

    4) Having "scammers" (we prefer the term banned users now) on your friends list can be an indicator.

    You say that if you have 20 of them on your friends list it doesn't mean anything.

    I beg to differ on that. The average user would not have more that maybe 6 by accident. To have such a gross number on your list can be a sign there is more than meets the eye. It may not always be the case. However if you are a user that is and administrator running a trade based group and claim to actively denounce fraud/scamming and strive to keep the users of your servers safe. Having 20 "scammer"(banned) users on your friends list is not showing what you are preaching.
  15. USAFMike

    USAFMike New User

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    Holy credibility, Batman!
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  16. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    And reddit.

    As for scammer banned friends, your right, it means very little, its their to show/warn the user. Not being a direct end all be all on a users trust, some legacy policy SR had way back when that at least when I was last with SR, has been removed as a primary or secondary consideration. In addition, the user who posted in your thread, does not appear to be on SR staff.

    As for UHC tags, they were audited at least once after their demise, and I do not agree personally how they were dumped, I had a policy that I suggested for years and its still not implemented, I posted it a few weeks ago and the conversation was cut from the public section to the SR community section (I did not agree with the specific post being cut as nothing in it was against SR rules/confidential) In the future as the best of my knowledge when I was with SR, communities will no longer be allowed to inherent taggings to avoid such SNAFUs.

    As for misgivings of specific community bans (your example, TF2R and Skial) SR does not care at all about who communities ban from their own private site/server/service. A partner community tag displayed on SR is ONLY applied to/for users banned for fraud reasons, not general server/site bans. (unfortunately your specific case I can understand why you were initially tagged, but apparently was worked out once they looked into it) If you have proof of a community giving banned/cautions tags for non fraud reasons, you should report it to SR.

    As for removing partner SR access, wont happen... SR is massively short staffed, it spreads the workload out. most users already hate SR and thinks it "has too much power" SCA access allows SR to give that "power" back to the communities, believe me, I was very skeptical of SCA access, but its a true godsend and ever since, wanted it expanded. Obvious downside tho; quality is less then if dealt with by SR directly.

    You are not marked a scammer banned because the system worked.
    If you didn't know this before, you should take some time reviewing SR policy/past threads/posts before commenting further.
    You dont know what you are talking about, please review SR policy.

    As for edits in the general section, wont happen for a variety of administrative reasons. (thank god I still have mod access)
    Last edited: May 15, 2015
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  17. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    In most contexts, it doesn't. If you had 300 friends and 6 of them were marked or trade banned, that fact on its own wouldn't stop me from trading you. As an admin, I'm responsible for making absolute certain I don't inadvertently accept scammed items or trade with an unmarked alt, plus I'm personally very picky about who I trade with or what I accept beyond the level of SR policy. Having scammer friends probably wouldn't stop even me from trading with you, and definitely won't get you marked, but having a lot might lead me to question the types of people you choose to hang out or trade with; I found one a couple months ago with about 70-ish banned friends, out of a list of 90 total, which led me and another admin to start investigating and discover it was an alt of a high profile scammer. If I saw you with 30+ banned friends, it would lead me to question if you're involved in their activities, and probably scrutinize you more than someone else, but I otherwise wouldn't hold it against you; who you play games with or befriend is ultimately your business. As staff, having a lot of banned friends would be a little concerning because of the extreme trust involved, and we have a policy to deny applications for having that many marked friends. Note, I am only explaining the rationale behind that policy, and clarifying what it means to have banned friends, not taking a stance for/against revising the policy.
    Hidden Content:
    **Hidden Content: Content of this hidden block can only be seen by members of (usergroups: Administrative, Moderating, SteamRep Partner Members, SteamRep Partner SCAs).**
    Your appeal was handled within 1 day of being filed. Sometimes admins make mistakes when reviewing evidence, and on seeing your appeal Helen promptly reversed her decision. Nobody here will argue against the atrocity that is our appeal backlog, but that you were community banned the whole time, preventing you from appealing sooner, is out of SteamRep's or TF2OP's control, and is not related. I don't know the details behind your case, but often with partner communities their respective admins are trained to review reports and then pass accepted reports to a single admin who applies tags. The tagging partner admin (referred to as a Super Community Admin or SCA) is supposed to re-review the report for proper evidence and documentation, but it's possible a tagging admin who trusted the report admin's judgement may not have fully read the report (speculation). Your case is an example of why we have appeals. Also, while not well-known, an appeals admin will give a quick pre-review to each appeal before filing it. If it's a partner tag and not a clear case of abuse, it gets set to invalid, if it's a bogus SR tag, the appeal is handled quicker so a clearly innocent trader isn't marked for 2-ish years. Had you not been community banned, you'd probably have been unmarked even sooner.

    You are welcome to repost the OP from that split thread in public if you're still interested in discussing the matter. I wasn't able to split that same post into 2 duplicate posts, and kept that particular post in the new OP for context, so your discussion could otherwise continue uninterrupted. The hidden posts made no sense without your first post sitting in the top of their thread. I'm sorry I wasn't clear about that and/or forgot to inform you that was my intention, my mistake.
    Mattie! and Roudydogg1 like this.
  18. 404UserNotFound

    404UserNotFound Donator - Tier V

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    Just woke up, read the above posts. Have a cat sitting in front of my computer screen trying to swat the words as I type them. This should be fun.

    Nothing against Reddit as a site....but Reddit is awful.

    Friends community application*

    I know confidential things (somewhat). I know about the tools you guys have for figuring out alternate accounts of scammers, among other things ;)

    I didn't say remove partner SR access. I said remove the Partner Community labels. I had originally believed most partner community labels here to be a result of server bans though.

    And yes, SteamRep does have too much power and people have come to rely on it way too much as a "who's who" of scammers. Yes, the site does a service of sorts but there have been so many incidences of pure stupidity (hate to keep waving my dickcase around at you guys, but HEY LOOK AT MY DICK CASE. 100% bullshit from the get-go)

    I WAS a marked scammer because this system DIDN'T work at the time. And I had to use an alternate Steam account to create my appeal (my TF2 idling account). Also I am not "marked a banned". What.

    I know SR policy, there's just some things I skimmed over. Thanks for your concern (or lack thereof).

    Special snowflake :rolleyes:


    Also, nobody has replied to my little what-if scenario. Sure, You Are The One called me out on not knowing the rule (real nice), but ignored the scenario;

    You can quote policy at me all you want and give me canned answers regarding how having multiple marked users as friends = you're also a scammer and provide an example of a lucky "big find", but sometimes the mark is minor as I provided an example of (the "regained control of the account after a phishing bot nabbed it, but is still marked as a phisher on SR" thing).

    All I'm trying to say is that things need to change. I may have been a tiny bit drunk last night and not thinking clearly about the Partner Communities thing (though I was not inferring that we should remove Partner Community admins as a whole, I was only wrongfully thinking about how Partner Community labels work), but as a whole, things need to change.

    Quoting how many banned users you have (or like Roudydogg, leaving a post to let me know that my newly hired Moderator's Steam Profile is private, NO FRICKIN' DUH, GENIUS.) is not necessary in the slightest. We know this, maaaaan.
  19. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    Maybe 4-5 years ago some of that happened, most of it was cleaned up via audits, but no, community tags on SR are ONLY for fraud related bans, NOT a communities regular everyday bans.
    It helps to know SR policy before trying to bash SR, just saying....
    No, sorry, as I already said, system worked in your particular case, you were impersonating and reported, joke or not irrelevant. Main improvement that came out of similar cases tho, users have to show intent that the impersonator is trying to commit fraud, name-change probably wont get a tag now-in-days.
    Just the important details....
    Pro tip: SR policies change, SR no longer marks phishing accounts, you could have done a simple forum search and answered your own question regarding phishing, users marked for it just have to appeal and its more likely then not the tag will be lifted pending no additional issues, I can only think of one case where a user was hijacked 4+ times that for the safety of the community, was left tagged. (also note, a lot of fraudsters pretend to be hijacked so it takes time to see if it was legit) Also I'M NOT SR, I am only replying as a courtesy to specifics I know, so please dont give me s✿✿✿ about "ignoring" your points.
    I'm pointing out policy because it helps to know what you are arguing for or against since you "skimmed" a bunch of it.
    TLDR: "main complaint was wrong, but you still suck"
    Meh, happens...
    If I saw 5+ (or some HVT) banned users on your list, I would look them up and maybe ask you about them when interviewed. (but definitely not on the forums and in such a manor as what happened with you)

    A lot of pseudomodding/admining causing issues, SR staff seems to have let slip. At least I'm actually a pseudoadmin.
    Last edited: May 15, 2015
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  20. USAFMike

    USAFMike New User

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    No one believes that. What happened was you weren't informed and got briefed by YATO*


    ....

    Come back with good evidence and proof of how/why things need to change. With a thread title like this, I'd expect a well-constructed post to actually address the state of things.
    Roudydogg1 and Hitman Sparky like this.