Obvious abuse of steamrep by /r/tf2trade

Okay, maybe it's just me then. That was far from clear to me, but I might not have seen the final revision of that post before it was deleted.

Well it doesn't seem to just be you, a lot of people seemed pretty angry about this whole scenario, please don't take my word as gospel. I'm not trying to say you do not have a reasonable issue of contention.

In general, communities SR affiliates with have to adhere to:
- Anti-scammer attitude, by SR plugin, have a report/appeal sections on their forums etc.
- No scammers or dodgy ppl as admins/mods etc
- The admins keep some moral conduct.
- We do check out the general "appearance" of a community. To put it bluntly, if SR would discourage ppl to go there, its not some community we would affiliate to.

And usually it takes a bunch of time before our experience and such with other communities are conveyed to the new ones. That there will be misunderstandings in the first few months, that needs addressing with their admins to get everybody to look at it the same way, is only normal.

Anything outside the above, how they handle their community, is their own. The cooperation vs scammers is only on that, nothing else, that is theirs to run, and SR will NOT invade that. Sure there are occasions that ppl differ on that vision, but when we get aware, this will be discussed and ended. For example: if that community bans randomly, that is their problem. As long as its not regarding scammers, which fall within SR's rules. There is some leeway, for communities differ on how they operate and different forms of scam may occur there, which they entail their rules to.

This all is not to say that things wont go wrong. They did on several cases, and the above is/was some to be addressed, I guess, for I'm not involving into it. Reports of such are welcome and will be looked into by appropriate admins, and solved either way.

This is where the dissonance is occurring for many people - when the threat is there to ban for a non-scamming related issue, nobody is going to contest that. When there is a threat to apply a scammer tag for said ban, people do take issue. You seem to be arguing that steamrep should not be involved in anything not related to scamming - something I wholly agree with... and that is why people took issue with this. The threat of a scammer tag was used as a bludgeon to enforce non-scamming-related rules.

Well, lets first await a reply from the responsible admin, and work from that.

given that he deleted the thread with not so much as a single acknowledgment of the community uproar, and has been completely silent since, I will refrain from holding my breath.

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. In regards to your last line, is there a more appropriate way to report such cases, or are forum posts like this the preferred method?

forum posts in general discussions are fine.

Did Bacon and Mattie not count? Or Crate just passively liking everything in this thread?

My guess is that there will be no more admin response.

I was meaning scalia. Its his issue to address and clarify in the end.

The policy at /r/tf2trade up vote gaming/cheating is analogous to leaving fake rep on trading forums. With fake rep, people will comment on trades to "bump" them and to deceive the community into believing a trade is legitimate or prices are good. Currently, SteamRep and associated communities will give tags for deceiving the community.

Ingrained in reddit, and moderators without power to change it, there is an algorithm that promotes posts that receive a high number of up votes in a short period of time to the top of the listings. These posts stay at the top for longer periods of time and will stay on the "front page" of the subreddit for longer periods of times. What this does is it slows newer posts from reaching the front page and additionally gives that post an appearance that it is more legitimate than others. It is both common ettiquette and understanding that if you receive a good deal, or the deal is good that the post should be up voted in order for more to see. When people are gaming or cheating the voting system, the appearance of legitimacy is there.

On reddit, the site (not subreddit) has rules that any means to manipulate the voting system - manual, automatic, or otherwise is considered cheating the system. As someone that has to apply the rules to facts at hand, a decision was made that if people engage in egregious (which is a well defined word, meaning "shockingly", "flagrantly", or "glaring") acts of cheating the reddit voting system that they may (a term used to express possibility, not definiteness) find themselves with a SteamRep mark for the reddit community.

Bottom line is reddit fundamentally operates different than any other trading site as it is limited by what the site developers have put into place.

To make this as clear as possible, we are concerned with those who have not sold something to someone and says "Just posted a trade, please up vote this so it gets to the top" as opposed to the post transaction, "If you think you got a good deal, please don't forget to up vote!"

Just as in other communities that are concerned with, "leave me some rep so my post bumps and people think my trades are good," and are not concerned with "if you think you got a good deal, please remember to leave rep."

In addition, the removal of the post in no way constitutes a change on our policies. Instead, it was to go back and come up with a very clear and concise rule statement. We did not want the other post to create any confusion when we officially update our rules. Also, the post is still visible, it is just not in the queue or searchable. But, the direct link posted earlier within this thread will direct you there. We are hiding nothing.

Give me a break - it's nowhere near the same as leaving fake rep. Upvotes are anonymous and can mean ANYTHING - they can mean "I think this trade is a good deal" or "this guy is a nice trader" or "I don't like the other guy who is selling the same thing so I will promote this guy's trade instead. It is obnoxiously disingenuous to claim that upvote manipulation is in any way even remotely close to the same level as leaving fake rep, attached to a name, on trading forums. Even attempting to draw that parallel and expect people to buy it is completely insulting to your users - but then again that's not exactly uncommon for Reddit admins in recent memory either.

Not only is your tone inflammatory but I feel you're missing the point of Scalia's post. Not only is this type of manipulation against the rules for reddit.com in general, but it comes into play to a greater extent on a trade platform, whereas the perpetrators of this type of action are actually gaining a large trade advantage over other users. This artificial advantage is easily grounds for a perm-ban, and under these conditions could be seen as grounds for a caution tag as artificial means are being used to to gain traction on the subreddit for trades. The spamming of requests to upvote a trade where the third party has no real purpose is a false flag, it creates a poor idea of the value of a trade or post.

And just to re-iterate - several people associated with Steamrep have already implied that gaming upvotes does NOT constitute a scam, so if you actually have the hubris to go through with marking someone, instead of making empty threats, I am quite sure that I, and the TMBT group that you already drove away from your community, will not be alone in loudly calling for your immediate removal from the Steamrep community. To so egregiously abuse your power by using an outside organization to enforce your own rules would destroy what little credibility you have.

My tone is inflammatory because the announcement Scalia made was inflammatory, and an attempt to use Steamrep as a weapon because his moderators have already destroyed what respect the community had for them, and the only way they can get compliance out of people at this point seems to be with threats.


I get the point of his post - I just disagree with it, STRONGLY

I also think it's pointless to keep repeating the same arguments back and forth at this point - I've made my point clear and it's time to move on to more important discussions. If Scalia ever makes good on his empty threat and attempts to carry out this gross abuse of power, I'll be back, but at this point everything that needs to be said has been said, and we're circle jerking over semantics.

One last thing, since I had this pointed out to me - you are mistaken.

The post is visible to you (and possibly other moderators). It is NOT viewable to anybody else, as confirmed by going back to my post history and checking it.

It makes me wonder just how much you know about how Reddit really works, and how qualified you are to judge what does and does not count as manipulation, when you seem to fail to understand things like what happens to visibility when a post is deleted.

Reddit doesn't have a rep system at all. Almost all cash posts piggyback on a sourceop rep thread, it's not like someone is going to be deemed more reputable if they have more upvoted posts. Saying a user getting more upvotes means they have more rep on reddit is downright ridiculous.

I don't really understand how you have to twist your logic around to believe that unearned upvotes could be considered the same as fake rep, but I'm curious about your thought process there. What makes unearned upvotes similar to fake rep? If you could please explain your reasoning maybe that would help.

Reddit needs to control it's users in it's own way, you have a special system and special rules go along with that system, the way to enforce those rules is NOT with a steamrep mark. If TF2OP came up with a rule that all users must have pony avatars, someone not having a pony avatar would clearly break the rules. That doesn't mean they need to enforce their own special rules with the threat of steamrep though, that means they should ban a user for not going in line with their spelled out rules. Someone breaking reddit's special rules goes in the same vein, your rules don't apply to any other site, nor would breaking one of them necessarily mean that someone is a dishonest trader who deserves to have a mark on their steamrep profile calling them a scammer or potentially dishonest. Your rules should be enforced in your own way, if the rules someone is breaking are also something everyone else would be concerned with, then by all means apply a steamrep mark. If not, deal with it yourself.

This is laughable. /r/tf2trade has no rep system. Upvotes don't equate to rep, they just change what is visible on the "Hot" view of the subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/). Most people who frequent /r/tf2trade use the "New" view anyway, which totally ignore the number of votes a post had (http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/new/?sort=new).

Again, laughable. You deleted the post, which removes all the text from it, and removes it from the queue or being searchable. Following the direct link leads to a post which has no text, only the comments. Regardless of intent, the post is for all intents and purposes hidden. Maybe as a moderator, you can still see the post, but we can't.

Scalia, you're not understanding people's point. We get that the community can have whatever rules they want, and we like that. We like out little community and like most of the rules that are enforced. HOWEVER, trying to say that these rules are going to be enforced by marking somebody on steamrep is not ok for any community.

Upvotes and Downvotes have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with rep, they are about popularity alone. Asking for upvotes is not akin to faking rep, it's akin to asking somebody to vote for you in an election. Sure you shouldn't do it because it's unfair to others, but that doesn't make you a scammer. Steamrep is supposed to only be trading and marking scammers. If you try to tell people that steamrep can be used to enforce arbitrary community rules. Asking somebody for an upvote is not the same as stealing someone's money. If you really don't see that then you don't deserve to be an administrator here or have any say of what goes on in trading.


Also you say you didn't try to cover up evidence and that anyone can see it, but it's completely deleted for everybody, we cannot read the post any longer. Quit trying to cover your ass and admit you're wrong on this one, marking someone on steamrep for asking for upvotes is not what steamrep is about.