Advanced scammers advertise Steamrep on their profile!

Its apparent you are unhappy with the results of your report from earlier today.
I get that - but in many cases you can't just ASSUME someone is guilty and doing something wrong or will do something wrong.
Same can be said about you - someone can report you for them assuming you are a scammer - You wouldn't be very happy if we tagged you based off that assumption without valid evidence to support the claim.
Test all you like but unless the reports fall within policy and are found to be linked to the other based on what measures we use - we won't tag them.
There are many instances we tag for something, and they may not have scammed anyone at all....

Please read report submission fundamentals before getting miffed about a rejected report.

SteamRep sets a standard for the kinds of evidence that we accept because we don't want to tag users who may actually be innocent.
We're very specific about the types of reports we can accept as well, based on the kinds of evidence that we can actually verify.

In the future, please link ID64's instead of nicknames when referring to Steam profiles.
For both of the users you linked, there is no concrete evidence of a scam taking place.
If you can gather enough evidence, make another report.

One profile has an FN Howl, the other has an FN Bayonet Doppler Ruby.
A common scam with both of these items would be to display a Trade URL on their profile that goes to another user, potentially with a FT Howl or a FN Bayonet Doppler Phase X.
At the moment, nothing like that is happening on either profile, and their inventories are set to private.

Without concrete evidence, complete with a chat agreement or something similar, it is very hard to definitively prove any evidence of foul intent.

No one said anything about marking you...?

If revising our policies means marking innocent users as scammers by being lax with our evidence standards, we might as well not revise them at all.

There were two replies removed from the report as they violated this policy.
https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/do-not-post-unless-directly-related-to-a-report.142225/

Neither user that posted was YOU or the Accused - therefore not directly involved with the report.

Warnings were issued as needed to show this policy to those users.

You call this user a blatant scammer over and over yet you've shown nothing to back up the claim in the report aside from name history - this user can have I AM A HUGE SCAMMER as the last 20 different name changes ...does not matter without clear intent to scam. The screenshot you showed proved nothing of any intent by this user to scam anyone.
At the end of the day you are upset over the results of a report... we just can't continue to field responses like this from everyone that is unhappy with the outcome of what they post here.
Your very welcome to report the user to Valve at any time - I'm sure they will respond to you faster than we have at least.

Awesome!

... what?


And as always, we appreciate the feedback. All staff on SR are volunteers. We definitely care about making trading on Steam safer. Please understand that.

The replies you got were based on how you ignored what purpose SR is here for. We have rules/policies for a reason - if we ignored them then what good would any of this be.

I think you misread what the moderator said. Let me quote it for reference:

Point is, if we relaxed our evidence requirements, just to make you feel better, we would be hurting innocent people. Our strict requirements are specifically to prevent that from happening, and now you're telling us to rethink our approach, based on flaws with the hypothetical less strict standards you're insisting we follow?

I agree having "hiring CSGO scammers" in the name history is sketchy. You should make your own decision about whether to trust someone like that (I wouldn't). As it turns out though, there is a difference between knowing or believing someone is a scammer, and proving they're a scammer. We only mark in the later case. Sometimes scammers get off free because their cases don't meet our evidence requirements. The same thing happens in real-life court cases. You may not like it, but I personally would rather let a few scammers go free than hurt innocent people.

Now since you're telling us to think "beyond policy", I'm going to ask that you think about that very carefully. If we started making exceptions, how would that look for the community? Sure, your case would get answered, but then we'd be accused of playing favorites, and giving you special treatment we didn't give someone else. What makes you so special? What if someone else demanded special treatment when they made a report against you? Do you think it would be fair to accommodate only you, and not someone else? If we acted "beyond policy" with someone else, but stayed "by the books" with you, how would you react?

Lava can tell you more about this, but we're able to identify altered and edited screenshots, even when it's done with things like inspect element.

I can see that you have a very strong opinion about certain policies, and I really hope you stick around to make your voice heard more instead of simply giving up. Thanks!

You clearly have no idea what I said....

That there is what I said... I didn't elaborate as I figured you could figure it out on your own. I get a ton of reports for fake gambling sites for example.. most don't even scam anyone but the ATTEMPT to scam is there clear as crystal. I never once said anything about tagging anyone that did nothing wrong - you are coming up with non-sense and fueling a fire you started.
You wonder why my responses are how they are yet here you go with complete nonsense.
There will always be those that dislike the cause - but the bottom line is if we follow policy (that of which you hate so much) then there isn't favoritism or any thing of the sort including bias activities. Feel free to review my 30K post history for the amount of work I've put into this site and you will see how methodical I am with my responses and reports regardless of who it is that made it or is its against.

I get that you feel they should be marked, I really do. You're not the first person to spend multiple hours days digging at someone's profile or their past to try and uncover some grand conspiracy so you can get them marked, then get upset when it's still not accepted. Used to happen more often with "he traded with a scammer 2.5 years ago" reports. Reports like that, which often end up being walls of text, take a lot of our time, but almost always end up amounting to nothing but someone irritated their efforts went to waste. We expect everything to have really airtight evidence, or at least something concrete which would hold up in an appeal, so if they come and dispute the decision, we will have all the evidence in order to hold up the case. So generally speaking, with reports, we need evidence of a specific scam or attempted scam, not a speech on why you think this person should be marked.

For your own specific case, I am not aware of any relevant standing precedent for tagging someone over "hiring scammers" in their name history off the top of my head, but generally speaking if someone puts "scammer" in their name, it's not enough for a tag because we need to know specifics about what was scammed, or what was attempted. For example, sometimes people consider sharking, or even straight up unbalanced/unfair trades, to be scams, and proudly call themselves scammers (edgy kids these days...), but those are not things which we tag for by policy (not going to explain why right now, long story). That defense may not hold up in an appeal in this case, but perhaps your accused was simply "angry" over losing items to a scammer himself, but got over it? We have to give them fair consideration in their appeal, and we try to avoid tagging someone over a misunderstanding like that in the first place. As black and white as we try to be, a caution tag for something like that ends up as a judgement call, and ultimately at the report admin's discretion.

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People accuse us of favoritism as it is, as you pointed out. We respond to those claims by sticking firmly to written policies and not making exceptions. Do you not see how this single-minded adherence to policy is needed? You can't say we're playing favorites and that we're too stuck on policies at the same time.

As it stands, we get a fair share of scammers doctoring evidence to get their victims marked, whether in extortion, retaliation, or just a "get out of jail free" card to clear their own name. And we usually catch them in the act. A BANNED tag on our site will destroy someone's reputation and credibility, especially in cash trading, and it hurts our own credibility when we wrongly identify someone as a scammer. You might like the idea of "everyone and his sister is a scammer because they didn't document as well as I did" and having to make 3 appeals for fake evidence in the name of safety, but most traders won't, and practically speaking, the trading community that has come to depend on our thorough investigations cannot operate like that.

I think it would help if you adjusted the tone and dialog of your post(s). Looking at the OP,

Very first sentence, you begin with a paraphrased implication that we're useless. Now flaming aside, that immediately looks like another of many "f✿✿✿ all you guys" soapboxes we get from people unhappy with their report or appeal outcome, and promptly sets a hostile but familiar tone many of us have answered again, and again, and again. If some of our responses seem defensive, that should be your first clue as to why. Moving on...

Now, you begin to call out a report decision you're unhappy with, again something we'd expect based on the hostile tone of your first sentence. I'll try and address the non-bold part separately, as it's a valid point of discussion, even if I don't think it's quite the cause for alarm you're making it out to be.

Again, more hostile "you guys are useless" soapboxing. You're welcome to make a reputation website of your own if you like, we won't interfere, and contrary to popular belief we aren't anti-competitive. Good luck getting it off the ground though, you wouldn't be the first to try. But seriously, re-read your OP then ask yourself: How would you respond to something like that if you were an admin? Especially if it's something you see every week or so, always right after archiving or invalidating a report the OP made. You might not agree with the assumption, but can you relate?

Now, onto those valid points you asked about.

The "advanced" scammers, so to speak, tend to not care about their reputation on our site. They usually impersonate us from hundreds or thousands of alts, hijack/sell accounts, or distribute malware. There are a lot of things we consider outright fraud, but that we simply can't properly investigate. Maybe you wish we could, but if you feel so strongly about them, I'd implore you to read over our investigative policy, understand why we stand down from particular types of fraud, and then offer some insight into how you think we could properly investigate it. I get the feeling that part of your concern, with a perceived taunting from the scammer, is that we're "legitimizing" these methods of scams, or declaring them "ok" to do in our refusal to investigate them. I'd implore you to re-read our investigative policy to understand why, and then ask (in a less hostile tone) about any specific types of scams if you still don't understand. Moving on...

Scammers linking to SteamRep is nothing new, and it's not because of "how ridiculous we are". Part of being a successful scammer means learning how to make people trust you, when you're not trustworthy. Scammers typically accomplish this by piggybacking off someone (or something) else's reputation. They impersonate SteamRep staff, they claim to be Valve employees, they dress their alts up like "bots" from well-known trading websites, they link to other people's SteamRep profiles, the list goes on and on. Some of them make (and upvote from alts) their own Steam guides with maliciously wrong information on avoiding scams. It seems to me that part of your concern is scammers leeching off our own established reputation, and you feel that lends credibility to our "uselessness". It makes sense to me that a scammer would point to their own neutral SteamRep profile claiming it makes them legit, and in fact as much as counter-productive as I feel it is, a number of legit traders do the same thing. There really isn't anything we can do about scammers linking back to us, other than screening incoming donations to reduce the number abusing that as a form of "reputation", which isn't applicable here. We provide information about who is conclusively a scammer, for public consumption. We take pride in the accuracy of that information, while emphasizing "no special reputation" does not mean "safe". However, while we also strive to make that information easy to understand, it's up to the individual traders utilizing our service to understand what it means. While much of the CS:GO community sadly has a lot to learn about that, linking to a profile with "no special reputation" as a sign you're legit would get you laughed at then blocked by most veteran TF2-PayPal traders.

The 2 replies posted on your report, screenshot attached for reference, are not from the accused. Possibly alts (friends, not posted from same country), but considered off-topic from people not involved in the report. They were removed by written policy.