Did many innocent people become SteamRep banned due to Mattie trying to protect his own interests?

You say you're back like I was waiting for you or something.

I'm on topic, I am feeling like there is an attempt to discredit me so I felt it'll be best to give an insight into what lead me to posting the question. The question stems from my experience and me seeking out an answer into why the mess of the rule (being able to be banned for an individual trade) came about. If you don't have anything to add regarding the case please stay out of it and let SR answer the question you obviously can't.

SilentReaper talking about Mattie's CSGO case which has nothing at all to do with what I was talking about, it was off topic, what ever happened in that case has nothing to do with what had happened regarding the Duped Burning TC hence me saying it was off topic. What I typed has everything to do with the topic as it is highlighting why I am asking the question. But what ever.

Back to the question, before the (cursed) Burning TC, was a trader banned on SteamRep for a single trade (not brokering / not scamming)?

I feel like this is an important question and it should be answered due to the fact that as a result of the change of rule set that allowed people to marked for a single trade many innocent people were defamed, and from what I can gather it all started as a result of the cursed Burning TC.

If it was about censorship, his topics would have been deleted and him been banned the first time around. Instead various admins have tried extensively to explain thing to him (you can find all those topics on his post history). But the user keeps pressing with misinforming people with statements that aren't true, refers to everything else twisting its purpose/rule or w/e without making a clear point or w/e. Various admins have tried correcting, linking to guides, explaining rules, and w/e over time. All issues he brings up where already checked and handled and whatnot.

It is right now so far, that we see there is no point discussing anything with the user, he won't understand it, or he's understanding but is just trying to troll/disrupt or w/e. There isn't a single argument with reasons that are clear and concise in any of his replies. He accuses everybody and their dog of anything he can think of, makes straw arguments (if even related to his accusations, most times not even related), Hence I've set a specific rule that he's no longer allowed to make false accusations. Others may try to "troll" 'm back or w/e, but we've decided to no longer try to answer his ramblings or answer/educate him directly or w/e.

Tbh, I think you only "enjoyed" the read of this user from this topic, and not from the 20ish or w/e other topics he's trying to spam.

I stand with my above decision for this user, and had discussed my above reply with Mattie shortly after I posted it.

I've not read all his new replies yet, and tbh, I lack the energy for that kind of effort to read it atm, too tired from today's IRL roller coaster crap.

I've been in most of his threads as a reader and poster and not wanting to deal with them is one thing. Replying with such a tone however was the worst possible thing you could have done and whether you acknowledge this or not, you are an admin of this site and each and every post you make wears the "SteamRep Admin" badge, hence you should think more carefully if you want this badge associated with passive-aggressive threats to ban this user.

Warnings are to be issued to the user personally and in a tone you also would like to be spoken to instead of trying to publicly ridicule them, which may have not been the intend of your action but that's exactly what you did. You are free to do whatever you please as an admin and conduct yourself in any way you see fit but that does not mean that this is the smart thing to do. Had you been smart, you would have sent him a PM with your warning and a calm and collective manner. It has the same effect, warning the user, but without you raising a bad public image.

A wise thing to remember is that after some time has passed and no one remembers who made the post, but people do remember the post, they will say "A SteamRep admin wrote this aggressive post", not "Silent Reaper wrote this aggressive post". What you did was not only presenting yourself badly, it also affects anyone wearing the same badge as you do. Sure, this post certainly won't conjure up a shitstorm since you did not go out of your way to insult BigMac, it was an inappropriate thing to post officially though.

You are in a position of authority and thus everything you speak officially should be informative, calm and to the point and certainly not a threat to a user as to what happens if he does X or Y again. "Please refrain from disrupting our service by making false accusations and attempting to create provoking topics. Should this behavior continue, we see ourselves forced to restrict your access to our service. Feel free to reply to this message with any questions you may have regarding this warning."

See what the major difference is? You don't need to run around the tree and issue a hundred warnings, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that your warning could have been issued in a much better way for the user, yourself and the position you represent at SteamRep.

You say change is a good thing, but in reality it could either be good, bad or neutral.. was the previous change of rule which allowed innocent people to be labelled as a scammer a good thing? What dead horse am i beating.. when and where has it been answered? SR had answered how the banning a fence rule came about (which wasn't my question) but not when it was decided a user was able to be banned when they haven't scammed or fenced.

For a very long time you could only be banned if you were direct scamming or fencing, then was then a point of change which was a bad changed (evident by the change back and many affected users) which allowed innocent users to be labelled as scammers, my questions are in relation to that change... how and why did that come about? when was it decided that it's ok to ban users when they did not scam or fence an item. I am seeking clarifications to find out when the switch took place. From my understanding it was due to the (cursed) TC, if this change was a result of keeping the (cursed) TC off the market then it paints a picture of a change made (bad one) to suit a certain agenda.

Generally with organizations if there has been a change that has had such a large impact then there will be an investigation to see how that change came about, there was an obvious large & impacting change and I am pointing to where and how it started and asking to be proven wrong as where I see that it all started.

Once again, was a user ever marked for not scamming / fencing before the (cursed) Burning TC came to light.

This is where I will like more information, when did this happen? what was the 1st case? This decision caused a lot of issues for many innocent people.

I thought Silent answered that on the first page. He stated that long ago, well before mattie came to SR, him and a few comm owners got together and discussed the trading with scammers rule, they then spoke to diego after this and he decided to outright ban them.

Main bit is here:

Also, I feel like it'd be quite hard to track down the first person ever banned for this. But that quote there is the answer to pretty much your entire thread.

Ninja, what I am saying is that a decision was made at one point where it went from you can only be banned for scamming / fencing to you can be banned for a single trade, I will imagine this was a key moment and a discussion was made around that. There would have had to be a landmark case and I am very certain it was the cursed burning TC, i say this as i remember the case clearly and being shocked by it as now SR are banning people for not scamming or fencing but for simply trading.

No one is being banned for simply trading a scammer anymore.

Silent still answered your main question:
It started with a guy on SOP buying/selling Max Heads from russian scammers. Also, if I haven't misread the post by @SilentReaper(SR) the discussion they had about this guy also included what would happen to the people buying these max heads off the broker.

He didn't answer my question, I am asking how did the single trade rule come about, where you can be banned for trading with someone who didn't even scam the item. The one which caused the flow on effect (being banned for trading for a item that was scammed possibly 10 trades ago)

Regarding the max heads you're discussing, this is different as the person was buying directly of the scammer / brokering. There's a big difference between being banned for buying multiple max heads knowingly off a scammer and being banned for buying a single item of a person (who didn't even scam the item)

Can someone please explain why people used to get banned for trading with scammers? I don't really see the point. If someone didnt even know about steamrep or didn't bother to check steamrep and were banned, that would seem kind of unfair. Just my opinion though, but can anyone explain?

Did you even read SilentReaper's reply?Part of why nobody wants to talk with you is because of this willful selective attention you have. You always skip over anything that doesn't fit your agenda.

Where did he answer my question of "before the the Cursed Burning TC was on the market has anyone been banned for by a single trade[ where did not scam or fence the item?" that is honestly how I saw all the mess start, it gave people a precedent to use in a report where I honestly can't find a single ban of a similar nature before the Cursed TC.

"Given the value of the item you traded, your level of experience, and other individual circumstances (making up a story about SR being offline when records show it wasn't, having had the scammer added for 24+ hours, other easy ways to find he was a marked scammer) FoG felt that's exactly what you were up to, you were lying, and you traded with the scammer knowingly and willingly, so they skipped caution/warning and gave you a banned tag for it."

I don't even know what my case has to do with this besides you going off topic, this is unrelated but since this is so f✿✿✿✿✿✿ wrong i'm going to reply.

This highlights the worst of the SR, You allow the use of assumptions to justify a ban when there was nothing else, Issue with assumptions is you can change them to suit your needs or bias and they can be wildly incorrect, you could be assuming I'm a carrot it doesn't not make it true. Assumptions are never used in a legit ruling system and for good reason.

Any logical person will see that overpaying for an item isn't something someone will do if they are trying to abuse the system to by benefiting of scammers. (pretty certain previous rule said evidence of by trading for profit) This could have been used towards an assumption i didn't know they were marked because it obviously didn't make sense, but it wasn't.. how about looking at the fact I've been so legit for so long and that history shows it not my go.. this is evidence but no assumption was used. I even offered a live viewing of my inventory history, i was offering evidence to look at it but they didn't even look at that, they went with assumption.

How can anyone know if SR loaded for me.. You mentioned by value[ but you forgot to mention I overpaid for the item, you didn't mention i reported myself, you didn't mention there was no EVIDENCE of me knowingly trading with a scammer, (Where there needed to be EVIDENCE as per the rules that I had done so knowingly) simply protocol wasn't followed in my case (no evidence) You just worded the whole thing to point me in a negative light and forgot to mention many important things... yet you started your entire post by saying "because of this willful selective attention you have. You always skip over anything that doesn't fit your agenda."

As far as I know, there was never any "binding precedent" that caused a bunch of by by other traders to get marked for trading with scammers left and right. Very few people were tagged by SteamRep for trading with scammers, even by brokers. Frankly, nobody here including Mattie wanted to enforce the rule, especially if it meant wasting time that could be spent on actual serial scammers, but in a position like this you don't mark/pardon based on what you want to do, you follow the rules as they're laid out. In the case of SteamRep, where we made no promise to handle every report and prioritized on severity, we had the discretion to deprioritize reports for trading with scammers (notice how your report on SteamRep wasn't reviewed?) over PayPal and impersonation reports, so long as it wasn't a community admin who got reported.

They may not have been tagged by SteamRep but in the end there were tagged on SR, I don't see how it matters how the tag on SR came about but as long as the tag sits on SR then SR has ownership of it. When I mention SteamRep i mention it as a system and not a group of users.

As for people tagged by Mattie, I'm not aware of any but I can't promise one or two don't exist somewhere in history. Overall, there were very few people tagged by SteamRep for this rule; I personally granted all the trade-with-scammer appeals when the rule was repealled, and there were less than 10. A lot of the people marked by SteamRep for it were community admins, including those from SteamRep. If someone else I missed hasn't appealed yet, they need to appeal before I can act or even know the case exists. The "curse" of the Team Captain is not because Mattie owns it - and as a collector who paid cash with no intention of ever reselling, he has nothing to gain here - but because of its significance in TF2 culture. With nearly every by trader aspiring to own this particular hat/effect combination as a status symbol, all eyes of the community are on this hat, and its price is through the roof. Any time the "cursed" team captain changed hands, it meant another one of those by traders with questionable motives rushed off to be the first to write up a trade-with-scammers report. There weren't any community admins proactively watching this or any specific high by by value items for scams waiting to entrap and ban unsuspecting traders, that was just the community policing itself in a way.

You said he doesn't have anything to gain but in reality he will want it to stay prestigious, he paid so much for it since it was so prestigious and that shine wears off with dupes floating around.

I didn't say Mattie tagged people, what I am saying is that the Cursed TC was the 1st item to have a ruling where someone had been marked for by a single trade (not scam or fence) as you mentioned this is something many people would look at and as such the ruling then created the precedent which allowed many users to be tagged via FoG & the revenge hunters, if there was never a first then there was never a last.

For me to be by proven wrong you just need to show me 1 case (doesn't have to be the first ) that is before the Cursed TC case where someone was banned for a single (not scam or fence) trade.

Did you even read SilentReaper's reply?Part of why nobody wants to talk with you is because of this willful selective attention you have. You always skip over anything that doesn't fit your agenda.

Where did he answer my question of "before the the Cursed Burning TC was on the market has anyone been banned for by a single trade[ where did not scam or fence the item?" that is honestly how I saw all the mess start, it gave people a precedent to use in a report where I honestly can't find a single ban of a similar nature before the Cursed TC.

"Given the value of the item you traded, your level of experience, and other individual circumstances (making up a story about SR being offline when records show it wasn't, having had the scammer added for 24+ hours, other easy ways to find he was a marked scammer) FoG felt that's exactly what you were up to, you were lying, and you traded with the scammer knowingly and willingly, so they skipped caution/warning and gave you a banned tag for it."

I don't even know what my case has to do with this besides you going off topic, this is unrelated but since this is so f✿✿✿✿✿✿ wrong i'm going to reply.

This highlights the worst of the SR, You allow the use of assumptions to justify a ban when there was nothing else, Issue with assumptions is you can change them to suit your needs or bias and they can be wildly incorrect, you could be assuming I'm a carrot it doesn't not make it true. Assumptions are never used in a legit ruling system and for good reason.

Any logical person will see that overpaying for an item isn't something someone will do if they are trying to abuse the system to by benefiting of scammers. (pretty certain previous rule said evidence of by trading for profit) This could have been used towards an assumption i didn't know they were marked because it obviously didn't make sense, but it wasn't.. how about looking at the fact I've been so legit for so long and that history shows it not my go.. this is evidence but no assumption was used. I even offered a live viewing of my inventory history, i was offering evidence to look at it but they didn't even look at that, they went with assumption.

How can anyone know if SR loaded for me.. You mentioned by value[ but you forgot to mention I overpaid for the item, you didn't mention i reported myself, you didn't mention there was no EVIDENCE of me knowingly trading with a scammer, (Where there needed to be EVIDENCE as per the rules that I had done so knowingly) simply protocol wasn't followed in my case (no evidence) You just worded the whole thing to point me in a negative light and forgot to mention many important things... yet you started your entire post by saying "because of this willful selective attention you have. You always skip over anything that doesn't fit your agenda."

As far as I know, there was never any "binding precedent" that caused a bunch of by by other traders to get marked for trading with scammers left and right. Very few people were tagged by SteamRep for trading with scammers, even by brokers. Frankly, nobody here including Mattie wanted to enforce the rule, especially if it meant wasting time that could be spent on actual serial scammers, but in a position like this you don't mark/pardon based on what you want to do, you follow the rules as they're laid out. In the case of SteamRep, where we made no promise to handle every report and prioritized on severity, we had the discretion to deprioritize reports for trading with scammers (notice how your report on SteamRep wasn't reviewed?) over PayPal and impersonation reports, so long as it wasn't a community admin who got reported.

They may not have been tagged by SteamRep but in the end there were tagged on SR, I don't see how it matters how the tag on SR came about but as long as the tag sits on SR then SR has ownership of it. When I mention SteamRep i mention it as a system and not a group of users.

As for people tagged by Mattie, I'm not aware of any but I can't promise one or two don't exist somewhere in history. Overall, there were very few people tagged by SteamRep for this rule; I personally granted all the trade-with-scammer appeals when the rule was repealled, and there were less than 10. A lot of the people marked by SteamRep for it were community admins, including those from SteamRep. If someone else I missed hasn't appealed yet, they need to appeal before I can act or even know the case exists. The "curse" of the Team Captain is not because Mattie owns it - and as a collector who paid cash with no intention of ever reselling, he has nothing to gain here - but because of its significance in TF2 culture. With nearly every by trader aspiring to own this particular hat/effect combination as a status symbol, all eyes of the community are on this hat, and its price is through the roof. Any time the "cursed" team captain changed hands, it meant another one of those by traders with questionable motives rushed off to be the first to write up a trade-with-scammers report. There weren't any community admins proactively watching this or any specific high by by value items for scams waiting to entrap and ban unsuspecting traders, that was just the community policing itself in a way.

You said he doesn't have anything to gain but in reality he will want it to stay prestigious, he paid so much for it since it was so prestigious and that shine wears off with dupes floating around.

I didn't say Mattie tagged people, what I am saying is that the Cursed TC was the 1st item to have a ruling where someone had been marked for by a single trade (not scam or fence) as you mentioned this is something many people would look at and as such the ruling then created the precedent which allowed many users to be tagged via FoG & the revenge hunters, if there was never a first then there was never a last.

For me to be by proven wrong you just need to show me 1 case (doesn't have to be the first ) that is before the Cursed TC case where someone was banned for a single (not scam or fence) trade.