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.

Why are D2L/CS:GO Lounge still listed as "Friends of Steamrep"

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by xxBonsai99xx, Oct 30, 2016.

  1. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    They consistently take no action against scammers on their website (hell, the scammers even donate to look more legitimate), don't respond to reports or appeals on their Steam group (where they tell you to report people), their steamrep integration isn't even working, and you can't even report scammers on their own website if they have higher "rep" than you which they just farm/falsify. Even if you could, who knows if they even tend to that.

    Here is a great example of the huge amount of exterior scammers that run rampant on their site, from just a quick look only ~3 trades are legitimate out of that whole batch:
    https://csgolounge.com/result?ldef_index[]=427&lquality[]=0&id[]=7610641988&

    Their reports/appeals forum which they don't tend to:
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/1/
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/4/

    Can't report people with higher "rep":
    http://i.imgur.com/hssOxZS.png

    Example of Steamrep integration not working (Banned 42 Days ago):
    https://csgolounge.com/profile?id=76561198039594201
    http://steamrep.com/?id=76561198039594201

    Just want to add one of their admins did help me get a few of them banned around a year ago but he stopped responding to my reports. Some of the people that I reported a year ago are still not banned on their site and are still actively scamming people.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  2. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    Hes ban avoiding on csgol as well, I cant report either, need 2 "reps". Went ahead and linked some of his additional alts tho. As for the underlying issue(s) some of it can be explained, I dont have authority tho to say more on it. Anyother comment(s) best to wait for a reply from SR, PR team or direct to csgo/d2 lounge.
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  3. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    Failure to keep up with volume of reports does not mean unwillingness. We have a large report backlog here at SteamRep as well, but that doesn't mean we condone scamming. When you have over a half million users on a major website like one of the Lounges, and less than 12 volunteer staff to deal with complaints, some things slip through the cracks. Lounge or their reputation/reporting system may not be perfect, but they still work with us quite well as a friend community.

    I have it on good authority that accounts are, in fact automatically banned on CSGOL as well as D2L, but will double check nothing is wrong and nothing has changed. I have seen some people's bans delayed due to infrastructure issues, which is most likely what happened here. Over a month is a bit excessive though, so I will relay the note to one of their staff to take a look though.
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  4. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    None of their admins/moderators are even actively posting on their forums, let alone dealing with reports/appeals.

    I can't say anything for certain about their website's system since that obviously isn't public facing but I very much have my doubts that the reports there are taken care of either when people I reported directly to one of their admins ~1 year ago are still not suspended, there is very little chance that those people hadn't been repeatedly reported directly through their website in that kind of time period.

    Just to give some kind of statistics out of 25 exterior scammers I reported 1 year ago:
    2/25 Banned
    4/25 Still Active and Scamming
    19/25 Inactive (Not Banned)

    Anyway here are all of their moderator's/admin's post histories for CSGL as well as D2L:

    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=78597138
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=72743004
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=23335184
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=32607622
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=97579213
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=76886359
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=19069913
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=88539257
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=179713223
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=100866482
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=102716833
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=119065151
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgolounge/discussions/search/?author=105750507

    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=78597138
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=72743004
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=23335184
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=32607622
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=97579213
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=76886359
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=19069913
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=88539257
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=179713223
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=100866482
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=102716833
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=119065151
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dota2lounge/discussions/search/?author=105750507
    Roudydogg1 likes this.
  5. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    I am not staff for either of the Lounge websites, so I have little if any more visibility in their community than you; arguably less so since I don't trade. As such, nothing I say here should be taken to be any kind of official statement on behalf of Lounge. It is not my place to try and defend them, but neither is it my place to openly condemn them here, being an affiliate community. In all of my interactions with Lounge, and as far as I know the rest of our staff's as well, they have been fully cooperative. I will flag them down to see this thread, but I make no promise that anyone from Lounge will read, acknowledge, or respond; they aren't required to.

    Within the past few months, the Lounge staff have had just about all of their Steam accounts completely suspended in retaliation for running a (comparatively innocent) gambling website, possibly to appease the community's outrage over other less transparently managed/sponsored and often rigged gambling websites. Amidst that catastrophe, I know that Lounge has rebuilt a significant part of their website from the ground up, changing in a way more often than not introduces a slew of infrastructure problems for any other website or community. Other communities we've worked with over the years would've completely shut down if they experienced something similar, but through all that, Lounge kept their websites running and operational the entire time, even as nobody knew whether they would continue to exist. There may yet be other things their staff are working on still, keeping them away from a daunting backlog of user reports, but we don't know. I know firsthand that the people ban evading on Lounge are just as aggressive as the career scammers ban evading from their SteamRep tags, in fact roughly 90% of the people our own admins are tied up chasing alts for are spamming those new accounts on Lounge each day. Imagine the same flood of throwaway scammer alts which neither we, nor Steam Support, can keep up with, against a team of 9-13-ish unpaid volunteers who handle reports in their free time.

    Sometimes, when you have a very limited number of volunteers, and a userbase that has grown too large and too quickly for its own good, you reach a point where you can't afford to cut loose what little helpers you have. Sometimes at this point existing staff get burned out as well - having my account suspended for several weeks over my volunteer work could certainly do that for me - and the couple reports per week someone might be doing may what's keeping the site afloat. I'm sure you're thinking "Hire more staff, idiots!" but I'd implore you to look at it from their perspective; it's really not that easy to find people on the internet who are trustworthy and level-headed enough to do that kind of work for free. Like the position of SteamRep staff, a Lounge moderator carries a lot of power over someone's reputation and ability to trade, which means it would attract a ton of the people they aim to keep out. Including alts of all those people they're to short-handed to ban in a timely manner.

    To answer your original question, the requirements for a friend/affiliate community (gets you listed on the front page of steamrep.com) are looser than those of a partner/associate community (community has its own tags). We expect they run our API, vet their staff to keep out scammers, hold their staff to standards of honesty, take a community-wide stance of ethical trading, and report any instances of staff going rogue or getting hijacked to us ASAP to protect the community. Different friend communities over the years have had different levels of interaction with us; some aren't even exactly trading communities. Actively working with us while visibly stretched to the limit of what you can manage isn't cause for terminating such a relationship. From our perspective, Lounge has been one of the more open communities to work with us, and I have not yet seen any reason to reconsider their standing as a friend community. This is not to say they are perfect; if that were so, they'd have been considered for a partner community - with ability to issue their own scammer tags - a long time ago. But the criteria you seem to be holding them to is what we'd expect of a partner community, not a friend community.
    Edward. and SilentReaper(SR) like this.
  6. Salmon

    Salmon Caution on SteamRep

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    I think this is the most important part that OP is missing. The main factor of being a 'friend' is API integration (banning tagged scammers), which is critical for an SR tag to mean anything. If you look at the appeals section, an alarming number of them are idiotic children who only bother appealing since their SR tag also banned them from gambling and still can't wrap their head around the actual consequences of their action.

    Lounge has done very little in terms of stopping scammers for their entire existence. There have been dozens of very easy to implement, minor changes that could have helped the community.

    To be fair, it's not an issue of not caring about scammers, it's an issue of not caring about the site in general. The entire trading side of the site is an afterthought, they are first and foremost a gambling platform. They created a cash cow and haven't done anything to improve the site in almost any regard. Even their gambling side gets very little developer love, except for scalability.
    Roudydogg1 and xxBonsai99xx like this.
  7. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    Hi again,

    It's been two weeks and nothing has happened on CSGL's part. I understand it's not your problem exactly but you guys have a relationship and communication channels with them. I don't particularly want to go around, randomly adding their admins/commenting on their profiles for permission to add them and then personally grilling them for CSGL's problems as a whole.

    I have found through further research that their Steamrep integration has had problems spanning back almost half a year and is far worse than the ~month that we assumed.
    I have found some accounts that were correctly banned for their Steamrep tags during that time period but many are not banned, it is fairly sporadic.

    Here are a few examples:

    https://csgolounge.com/profile?id=76561198260107314
    http://steamrep.com/?id=76561198260107314

    https://csgolounge.com/profile?id=76561197979933698
    http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197979933698

    https://csgolounge.com/profile?id=76561198102092740
    http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198102092740

    In addition to that they don't seem to have any anti-spam measures in place whatsoever for people posting scam links and the spammers who are allegedly "Banned" on their profile aren't actually banned at all. They are still able to send out their scam links. All of these accounts have donated to the site to look more legitimate.

    This is typically what you get from a single bump of your trade.
    http://i.imgur.com/XlvCCUk.png

    "Banned" people still spamming their scam links after being suspended (rising message count)
    http://archive.is/nrExp
    http://archive.is/U8XTc
  8. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    Just wanted to correct this, All of those accounts that I had shown in the spam on my trade are in fact not donator accounts. I mistook the icons in front and sometimes behind their names for the feature on CSGL where you can have a custom icon if you donate enough money. These icons are in the account's Steam names.
  9. You Are The One

    You Are The One SteamRep Admin

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    Hound them, not us.
  10. Edward.

    Edward. SteamRep Admin Donator - Tier V

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    CSGOLounge...

    [​IMG]
    xxBonsai99xx and The Slow Scout like this.
  11. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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  12. Lava

    Lava Public Relations SteamRep Admin

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    So what you're saying is you want us to hold them to the same standards as a partner community, even though they aren't? You don't want to talk to them, but you're going to their affiliates to try and manipulate them instead?

    If you have a problem with Lounge, please put your money where your mouth is and address it with the Lounge staff yourself. We are not staff on Lounge, we don't have visibility of their infrastructure, and we don't have a sufficiently intimate relationship to see how things work in their community, so there's nothing we can do. It would not be fair to hold them to a higher standard than they agreed to as a friend community. This would be an issue if they were a partner community, with their own tags, but some of our friend communities don't even directly deal with trading. That's why they aren't a partner community, and frankly they haven't even asked.

    I understand you're upset about the "biggest" trading website not living up to your standards, people have felt the same way about TF2 Outpost, but policing websites to the community's or individuals' expectations is not our job.
  13. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    As a friend community are they not responsible to be committed to stopping and preventing scammers and running the web api on their site?

    Like I said before you guys have a relationship and communication channels with them already. But if I have to go and talk to them myself I'll sure do it.

    Never had a problem with Outpost myself, no real bones to pick with them. Their staff have always been receptive, respective, and gracious, their API integration works, and they keep spammers and scammers out.
  14. Sniper Pro

    Sniper Pro FirePowered Head Admin Partner Community

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    In the 14 days you've taken to continually complain about Lounge here, you could have talked with their staff and got the answers you were looking for. At this point it seems clear that the SteamRep staff are not able to help you any further, so continuing to ask the same questions is a waste of both their time and yours.
  15. xxBonsai99xx

    xxBonsai99xx New User

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    Continually? I mentioned it, 14 days ago, and am following up on it since CSGL did nothing about it. I got fairly nice and reasonable responses and was told they would be notified about the problem with their web api integration.

    Now I'm getting hostile responses (maybe I'm interpreting it wrong?) for following up on it, after lounge hasn't fixed it.

    Didn't particularly want to go through that again since I had trouble getting in contact with a CSGL admin last time to begin with then I got ignored after awhile like I said in my original post. Steamrep staff have consistently replied almost straight away and obviously already have communication channels with them. But if I have to then I have to. If CSGL had more open communication channels I would have gone to them in the first place.

    [quote="Sniper Pro, post: 396951, member: 35700"At this point it seems clear that the SteamRep staff are not able to help you any further, so continuing to ask the same questions is a waste of both their time and yours.[/quote]

    I thought there were at least some standards that friend communities were held to specifically the two I mentioned above (correct me if I'm wrong)

    I'm just trying to better the community by getting lounge to clean up their act. It Isn't exactly inspiring to do so when I get dumped on when I try, if I'm going through the wrong channels (which is clear as day now) then you can say so nicely.
  16. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

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    By all means communicate with them.. nothing here we can do. Don't confuse our responses with hostility - we just stated we can't help and lets leave it at that shall we?