Concerned about the recent integrity of Steamrep

Just wanna post these two threads here

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198044949472-rawr-caution.36541/ and http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198054186815-db3astfr0md3ast-rawr-scammer.11920/

I'm astonished how RAWR can have power to tag users after 2 blatantly obvious screw ups.

Rawr doesnt exist anymore.

I'm almost 100% certain you're referring to me here. I refer you to my sig. I don't apologise for hating your group. I did ban anyone with the GHS tag at an old community I ran but I NEVER applied for tags on ANY of those bans and made it VERY clear they were server bans. I stand by them because GHS deserves to be ridiculed for the awful decisions it made.


FYI- Helen audited the UHC tags. Once she'd finished, I did it. Once I'd finished, I DID IT AGAIN. All that was to make sure we didn't miss any of the bad ones. I stand by the UHC tags 100% and hope SR does too. Teeird, your information is out of date.

I completely agree with Aces here, if they have concerns about an Appeal, send it via PM to an admin. And as for the helpers, I often find them incorrect and useless. Now, I've seen Community Admins help out before and sometimes give advice which I understand. They know what they're talking about and they give advice or actual instruction. But there's plenty of users out there that post "Oh yeah this looks like a scam" or "Looks good, a SR admin will mark this person soon". Time and time again, it's been made clear that you don't speak for SR, stop trying to do it.

And honestly, those of you with the "I'm not SR staff so please don't message me" signatures. There shouldn't be any confusion if you are/aren't SR staff. Sure I understand occasionally you get an add about a report, many of us deal with that and we try our best to help. But if you're in those topics speaking LIKE a mod or admin then of course you'll be mistaken for one.

Try this one on for size, "Hey there, to help the SR staff with your report can you please provide _______. It will make it easier for them." and when you speak make it clear you're a third party. Too many of you want to be SR mods and you get off on being mistaken or thought to be one. There's plenty of ways to help the community, pretending to be a SR staff member and spewing out useless s✿✿✿, is not one of them.

I'm a little confused why multiple servers under the name RAWR are showing up on my server list, then.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/PyroProtectMeTradeServer/discussions/0/846959998126825218/

I think their forums are just down ATM.

What Thomas said

I am not tying to reference the map situation, or if the old admins were or were not scammers. I am referencing a couple threads that I have seen where steamrep was questioned, and (since you would like to make things specific) you responded by threatening bans, tags, etc. Not because someone had scammed, but only because someone said you, or SR as a whole was dirty. You then proved that post correct when you ranted, threatening to get people marked because of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't care about the past, and I have no issues with you. This was before my time, and like I said, we think SR is handling things better these days.

There were multiple people I was referring to with that post. I'm not asking you to apologize, and I'm not upset that you still hate GHS. It is well within your right to ban whoever/whenever you want, assuming you have been given that ability and it is well within your right to hold a grudge. I'm fine with the fact that you hate us, and you can make all the threats you want toward us. The real issue that you are related to is how certain admins, affiliates, etc conduct themselves. People who represent SR so highly should be more proffesional. Being in an associate server, threatening to ban everyone with a certain tag, and saying "I don't talk to horse F***ers" (I suppose because we have a brony group and host a brony themed server) not only looks bad on you, but also looks bad on steamrep.

I guess it is true that some can not let the past die. Even in a post where no direct reference was made, some still bring up the specific events. We used someone elses map, got threatened and marked, made an anti-SR group, later took steps to appeal those marks, removed the group, and tried to mend our relationship with SR. You guys act like we were responsible for the holocaust or something. It's not that big a deal. I've said to Helen and she has said to me that some people are never going to move on. So I guess we are never going to get a chance to move forward with steamrep.

Either way I'm still grateful for the work you do. My original post was only meant to say that things have been shady at times, but as long as things are run well, then I am in full support.

Well then. Thanks for clearing that up.

You want the world to fall at your feet because you said a few positive things? The world doesn't work like that. You and your community went out of your way to bash SR by creating that group and didn't remove it until you applied for a banner. Once a bridge is burned, it's not fixed overnight. Things take time. Until you prove that you've changed and that you're on the right track, you'll still be looked at and talked about in a negative way. Once you fix it and prove yourself, you'll move forward in a positive way.

Things take time to get better. Respect takes forever to be earned but can be lost in a second.

No, didn't say that. I said that I would set your custom status to "✿✿✿✿✿✿ed" and a displayed notition on SR profile (admin notes) if you set me to waste my time. I did NOT say that I'd ban or tag you scammer/caution.

No, I never said "hey we changed our mind, love us now." Yes, They did go out of their way to bash GHS, just like you went out of your way to make one of our co-owners agree to leave GHS by using they fake or forecesay command. But I digress, we are not some ignorant child who thinks things get better instantly. We all know the process takes time. I honestly had no idea that group existed, until it was pointed out on the application. Even Ggodd had forgotten about it, and removed it promptly. I agree with you 100% that just because we deleted the group, does not mean it's all better. I am working now to prove GHS has a new way of dealing with things. I knew our application would likely be denied, I knew people would see it and think, heck no, not those guys.

What I never imagined, is that when we try to show our support of SR, that we would be subject to these types of ridicule. It is fine to say you hate us, that ghs had scammers, that you want to ban us, etc. But calling names, making fun of us because we have a brony map, and using commands on our members in that way is childish. If you have problems with us, express it with facts. Use actual situations from the past to express your disdain, and compare them to the current state of things. But calling us horse f✿✿✿ers because we have a brony map? What does that have to do with anything. This relates to your comment about respect. Indeed it takes a long time to earn, but you lost a lot of people's respect very quickly with that comment.

We would love to prove ourselves, earn our respect, and put all this behind us. But It is impossible when we are met with irrational hatred. I realize you and data are no longer SR admins, but you still hold quite a bit of influence. This is where most of my frustrations with you are. Not because of the history you have, but because when we want to prove ourselves, we are not met with objectivity, but with meaningless insults.

You mention that we will be talked about negatively,which is fine, but I hardly think that it justifies some of the behaviors you have exhibited. I'm not asking "oh please chaos give us a chance", I am asking you to leave petty insults out of it. We are not in middle school (well I suppose some tf2 players might be but that's not the point), We should be able to dislike a community and keep it factual and civil, especially considering the events took place so long ago and many of the involved parties are no longer around. This is the internet, so facts and civil behavior is hard to come by, but I would hope a place that governs the community could break the mold.

It is entirely up to you how you receive my words, and if you choose to listen to them. I'm all for putting s✿✿✿ behind us, I have made friends out of a lot of enemies in my day, but i'm not so ignorant that I don't realize that both parties have to be willing to take a small step back. But that is up to you, and anyone else who dislikes us.

I'm not going to be posting anymore on this thread, since it veered straight back into the good old "you guys are scammers and map stealers" argument that it usually does. I apologize for my walls of text and letting this drama pollute a thread that it shouldn't have. And to data and chaos, hopefully someday we can put this all behind us. Till then, I'll be working my ass off to do so

Ok one last small post. "Told you we'd ban for it, and the first reply is as I told yah." This is a direct quote from a thread discussing the map issue, and you then posted links to multiple SR profiles where you cautioned them. But I do not wish to carry this conversation on any longer because it does not belong here. If you wanna talk feel free to add me.

This thread did not turn out to be very productive. Perhaps arguing over issues that happened in years past should not continue.

First of all I would like to say, Hi. Many of you know me as Skaskanker. A few of you know me as Bogon the Head Administrator of TF2Wh.com.

I think it goes without saying that SR is in dire need of more staff and more help. However, the affiliate/associate community is a very tight knit group and it takes an extremely long time to build trust. I have been waiting 6 months for TF2Wh.com to get an answer on its associate status application; it will likely take another 6 months before we get an answer. That is a GOOD thing! If we allowed new communities and individuals to easily rise within this network we would most certainly lose the faith of the community as a whole. SR’s reputation cannot be sustained if its members are not held to higher standards, and ensuring these standards are met can only be done through careful evaluation over the course of a long period of time.


In my opinion the problem stems from two issues: SR's difficulties trusting new Groups/people and the inability to adapt to the ever changing community. Now, before you jump down my throat, read on.


People keep stating the problem, but ignoring the road block that causes the issue; TIME. Finding and recruiting good applicants is an enormous challenge. SR isn’t a business, the staff does not receive any type of tangible incentive for accepting this position, and they get berated constantly from within and from outside of this network of communities, the staff has to deal with the absolute worst and most ignorant individuals on steam and don’t get paid a dime to do this. Who would want that job? I think I can speak for a lot of the community owners that I certainly can’t manage that responsibility while maintaining my own community. We should be lucky for the staff members we have now instead of constantly criticizing and treating the staff like ****. We should be supporting the community and offering constructive alternatives to growing issues.



Unlike everyone else, I offer an alternative to helping solve the growing issues with backlogs and under staffing. Allow the Affiliate and Associate sites to handle some of the backlog for SR. It is abundantly clear that we are not going to find enough individuals within the community to step up as SR admins, and not doing anything isn’t going to eventually fix the situation. Steam is growing at a faster rate than SR is capable of growing with.

My solution: SR continues accepting new reports, but starts directing more of these down towards affiliate/associate parties.


It isn’t like We as associates/affiliates don’t already do most of the leg work for new reports, each day I am given dozens of individuals to investigate for suspicious activity as well as constantly monitoring the tens of thousands of trades that occur within my own site. This isn’t any new workload for us; however it would eliminate a lot of the reports SR is inundated with each day. That way they can work more efficiently, checking our work and working at a faster rate to clear cases instead of grinding away finding scammer alt accounts.


For this to occur resources have to become more available to the community. About two months ago I proposed to several members of SR staff a way to securely disseminate information to the people who need it. This would allow Community admins from affiliate/ associate sites to receive IP information gathered from SR and its affiliate networks and incorporate it into one Tool.



Privacy is a huge issue with a resource such as this, but in my opinion scammers have no right to privacy. Scammers are online criminals, and like any criminal they lose the right to their privacy after committing a crime. Just as any court document or arrest record is publicly available so should the information regarding cyber-crimes such as these. In order to protect the community we must adapt, and I feel this is the way we need to go about doing it. We trust these individuals with hundreds of dollars in middle-man transactions, but we can’t trust them with numbers. That logic is asinine.



Execution of this matter is something that many of the community members need to contact me to work on, but this is happening with or without every affiliate network or even SR’s support. At the WH we have extremely capable programmers who can work on bringing this tool to fruition. We would also be willing to provide financial support in order to develop and distribute this tool to the community.

Oversight


SR would still maintain its overseeing roll within this system of distributing tags. Affiliate/Associate communities would be able to file reports and issue tags under their OWN LIABILITY. Associate communities already audit their tags regularly, but some are bound to slip through the cracks eventually, and that is why they are triple checked. This means that if a tag is bad, SR would simply remove it during oversight. If it becomes a frequent problem those individuals making bad reports would be stripped of their abilities. This accountability should also be directed towards the community they represent. Because no matter what you say, as a community owner you and your community are responsible for EVERYTHING your admins and staff SAY and DO. If they slip up, you discipline them, if they continue to screw up, you get rid of them. If it becomes an issue, SR removes them; if your community becomes an issue they remove it. It is just that simple. No affiliate/associate community in SR should be sitting on their hands criticizing and not doing anything about the actual issues.

That was regarding the Ban on ASBO, we (ASBO) Perm banned GHS admins on our servers, for continuing to keep running the map of ASBO. Hell, the owner wanted to ban everybody in the GHS group, but sourcebans didn't work with it (while having a option for that).

With all due respect, I completely disagree. For a lot of the applications, it was that they would put at a lower priority than reports. Which while understandable led to long wait times. I understand the need for investigation or suspicion but there's a fine line. There's certainly a number of communities out there that have proven themselves, that they pursue scammers and wrong doers, and it's communities like these that we need to be a part of SR. To take a larger role not just in the Associate's/Affiliates Board of SR but in the communities themselves. Communities should be out there educating players, traders and anyone they can reach. And when we find communities that have invested time, money and hard work into building something that does good for the community, it shouldn't have to be subjugated to a lower level.

SR is what the community makes it. The servers that use the plugin, the traders that use the site, the people who take time to report scammers, give SR the power it needs to operate. And with that SteamRep does a great job. I'm all for finding ways to improve SR, but at the end of the day, what they do is amazing. I have the utmost respect for the admins and staff and know they're all dedicated.

But that being said, sometimes flaws need to be said, there needs to be discourse and discussion, SR always strives to improve and they show it. They've acted on concerns and issues brought to them by the community. Everything has its flaws and its ups and downs, but this is one the things that helps support faith in SR.

SR's reach is every community that runs the plugin and everyone that uses the site, there needs to be an embracing of new communities. Because if these communities take the initative to "fight the good fight" we should be encouraging it. And I understand you believe 12 months is reasonable for an answer on your application, but I believe it's not. I believe that communities should be given feedback or time lines.

A year that a community spends waiting can be a year they could have helped reduced reports load, helped with community outreach, and built upon what they already had done as Affiliates or just as Communities.

I said before that:

• Lastly, applications dealt with promptly can bring better communities to fruition. If SR promptly denies a community for “x reason” instead of denying them after 9 months of “x reason”, that community can work on that aspect, instead of spending 9 months doing something that can endanger itself and the trading community in general.

I won't continue any more about that specific issue, I had more reasoning: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/community-applications-and-their-potential.35602/


I remember when Mattie came on to our server and just to say Hello and stick around for a bit and got a lot of the newer/younger traders excited about seeing someone they looked up to, discussions with Helen about policies and ideas and Chaos who volunteered to train or help anyone learn about how to handle reports and appeals. All the Community Admins need to do their best to help with education and prevention as well as finding and investigating scammers.

I think that there's changes that need to be made within SR to improve its standing and reach. And having more staff and more communities to help it is one of those changes. I'm not saying open the flood gates, but there's definitely Admins and Communities that can help, and while SteamRep's mission is focused on fighting scammers, it also has to make sure the processing itself is sustainable.

We don't need to lower standards, there's plenty that would surely help.


Also, on a little side note: Regarding the whole professionalism of SR, to be honest here, I don't care if they act like a✿✿✿✿✿✿s, dicks, if they poke fun, they get their jobs done. This isn't some sort of service I'm paying them for, it's something they volunteer to do. SR like any community is full of characters, they are who they are.

Just going to put my thoughts in here even though they probably won't be useful in any way whatsoever.

I do agree with Joe that in some respect Aces is right. While I find that a tough pill to swallow, he does make SOME very valid points. However, I think the direction of this thread has been overcast by all the bashing that has been going on. While I do have my own disputes (mainly with certain members / communities who have posted on here). I will not bring them up in a topic disguised as a suggestion or observation of how SteamRep plays a part in this community. Personally, by reading this, I do see some good conversation that I think deserves to be had. The fact that Aces started bashing other communities doesn't warrant the others to come on and defend themselves. If someone bashes you, you either talk with that person in private, or handle it in some other way, IN PRIVATE.

That being said, I'd like to get this discussion back on track as much as possible. I think that SteamRep has always tried to be a force for good. But in some ways it has kind of fallen off in recent months. I think that some of these ideas need to be implemented (not all, just some). I don't think the bar for hiring staff needs to come lower, I think that we as a community and as individuals need to rise up to meet it. There is a reason that some people are SR staff and others are not. On the other hand though, I do think that there needs to be a group effort to try and clear the issues (reports, appeals, etc.) that have been lying around for months. I do understand it takes a long time sometimes, and I've been involved in a situation like that with Noobinator, but there has to be a limit. I would very much like to see SR become a better place for communities and individuals to join in the "fight" to get rid of scammers and the trash they bring with them, but we can't do that if an observation thread becomes a bashing fest.

All I want to say is that we need to get this DISCUSSION back on track and DISCUSS how we as individuals and communities can help or improve SR.

Let's clean up the community then. Could SR draft a regulation with the standards to respect before to make anybody admin ?
Like this we will have much less problems and we will prevent to offend the communities each others-