Obvious abuse of steamrep by /r/tf2trade

The /r/tf2trade subreddit is now telling people that they can be steamrep marked if they ask friends to upvote their trades. This can't be inline with what steamrep was originally intended for, threatening users with a mark for nothing more than, in essence, having a friend bump your trade?

The official quote from /r/tf2trade admins:

This seems like a blatant mis-use of steamrep, I know a lot of users think the idea is totally ridiculous, but I wanted to get feedback from actual steamrep officials on their policy of letting communities mark people as scammers for literally nothing. Is this to be allowed? This MUST be an abuse of the system, steamrep is meant to protect people from scammers not to punish people for behavior a single community doesn't want..

The moderators of /r/tf2trade have even been asking for upvotes IN THEIR OWN TRADES in the past. Now we're being threatened with being marked a scammer for the exact same behavior. This is ridiculous.

IMHO, this is both extremely egregious abuse of Steamrep, and extremely hypocritical, given how often their own moderators do EXACTLY THIS. The Reddit admins are on a huge power trip lately, and it is offensive that they have tried to use Steamrep as a weapon against their users. They have absolutely no business dragging Steamrep into attempts to police their own forums.

This is simultaneously laughably absurd and an extreme abuse of power.

From http://forums.steamrep.com/pages/faq/ :

• CAUTION - Shady or deceptive trading behavior, but not a major offense
• SCAMMER - You were found to be guilty of one or many of the following:
  1. Trading with known scammers (see below)
  2. Charge-back or Reversal
  3. Quick-switching items
  4. Receiving the item and not paying
  5. Providing or soliciting fake reputation claims ("fake rep")
  6. Using fake middleman
  7. Impersonating and acting as an imposter
  8. Spycrabbing and then not paying
  9. Accomplice to a scammer (ignorance is not an excuse)
  10. Brokering (selling on behalf of) scammers and scammed items
  11. Hijacking or hacking other traders
  12. Alternate account of a tagged scammer
  13. Falsifying evidence to SteamRep
  14. Using game or Steam exploits to profit on trades
  15. Anything that is deemed as deceptive or fraudulent activity by SteamRep admins
      
      Scammers always come up with new ways to scam. Simple rule: DON'T STEAL. DON'T AID IN STEALING

According to this, I'd assume they'd be able to mark someone with Caution but not as a scammer. Being on their community, seems you'd have to play by their rules or risk a mark. Actually getting marked just for getting your trade bumped seems a bit heavy handed but my thoughts would be not to take your chances. Any appeal you'd have would go through them. I guess we'd really find out once someone got marked and appealed here on steamrep

The issue is this has nothing to do with stealing, or aiding stealing. This is bumping threads, in a sense.

Sorry to drag you into more drama, Mattie, but it's actually Scalia's comments that are concerning.

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/co...up_votes_in_your_trade_will_result_in/c681jyu
"If there is an egregious case of gaming the reddit system, or cheating the system for self gain, you may find yourself with a mark on SteamRep as well." - Egregious is fairly ambiguous, and this is literally a threat to not have friends bumping your trades.

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/co...up_votes_in_your_trade_will_result_in/c682dhn
"I can't control what people do off of reddit. But, if what they do effects the community in a way that artificially alters what is on the front page of our subreddit, that we can control and regulate." - He can't prevent people telling others to upvote on steam, but can resort to marking them here?

And of course the post itself. http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/zvcn2/asking_for_up_votes_in_your_trade_will_result_in/
"After reading some of the comments, it appears that people are already thinking of ways of getting around asking for up votes on reddit. It makes me sad that I have to go this far to ensure the credibility of our voting system: in egregious cases where you are gaming (or cheating) the system, you may find yourself with a SteamRep mark for being deceptive to the community." - This is literally a threat of marking on steamrep.

...what the hell am I reading? This sort of thing constitutes a scam now? Or is he just pulling out empty threats on the uninformed?

Exactly, Fiskie. It's mind blowingly stupid.

My assumption is that it's a completely empty threat - but frankly, it should not be considered acceptable for community admins to use the threat of steamrep to police their communities. Steamrep has a very specific intended purpose, and IMHO that purpose is not to be the belt that you crack at your kids and say "if you do that again, it's a whoopin' "

Scalia should retract that statement immediately, and it should be clarified that steamrep admins are NOT permitted to use the threat of a mark to try to coerce behavior out of people, when that behavior is in no way connected to anything that could be construed as a scam.

In other news, the thread has been deleted, meaning the entire text of the post, aka the evidence of this attempted abuse of power, is now missing.

There is more than enough evidence of the post both here and quoted in the thread. Clearly it being removed is agreeing that this was a very bad decision.

This is totally absurd. /r/tf2trade should be kicked out of SR.

Sorry for double post, also worth pointing out that Scalia set his profile to private:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/scalia/
http://i.imgur.com/yPr1E.png

As it says right on the homepage:

If we're supposed to trust SteamRep, that means we have to trust every single SteamRep admin. SteamRep is supposed to help keep traders honest, not be a tool for admins to use to try and whip their communities in line because they don't like some sort of behavior. I don't really care if it smells vindictive to you. In my eyes, Scalia has failed his responsibility as an SR and /t/tf2trade admin.

Yes, people who are the victims of repeated, gross abuses of power get vindictive about it. Funny how that happens, huh?

Regarding "choosing our battles wisely" - perhaps it's because the only things that actually get us riled up enough to make it an issue... are worth getting riled up about.

It's always the same bunch of people who are riling things up. We will deal with it. No further discussion needs to be made.

Your phrasing can easily be interpreted in two different ways - that we, the users who brought this up in a public forum for discussion with the broader steamrep community, are the ones riling things up - OR that your same group of moderators are the ones continually overstepping their bounds and GETTING us riled up.

I strongly disagree with your statement that no further discussion needs to be made - this is an issue that ABSOLUTELY needs to be discussed, beyond cloak-and-dagger statements like "we will deal with it".

Tell me, Bacon - do YOU think that threatening steamrep marking for "manipulation of votes" on Reddit is appropriate behavior?