Declined: Moderator Salmon (cribbit)'s Moderator Application

1) SteamRep ID block pasted from your SR profile.


| steamname: Salmon
| steam3ID: [U:1:42006755]
| steamID32: STEAM_0:1:21003377
| steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198002272483
| customURL: http://steamcommunity.com/id/williemy
| steamrep: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198002272483


2) Are you at least 18 years of age? Timezone and nation of residence?


I am 20. I live in California.


3) Please tell us about yourself (job, school, hobbies, etc)?


I study computer science at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I am currently interning at Amazon, where I have worked for a year and a half (since January of my freshman year - I am now a rising junior. Part time school year, fulltime summers). I bike, swim, play water polo, build computers & play counterstrike.


4) Why do you want to become a SteamRep moderator?


I enjoy making communities around me better. I feel that SteamRep is an excellent tool for helping the community prevent scams. For the last month I have been putting in several hours a day to help users get their reports processed. Until now I’ve been doing it to make sure that I am interested in pursuing helping with SteamRep. Now that I know I am interested, I want to have my effort create a direct impact on the community by having the authority to handle reports that I currently can only ask for evidence on.


5) How much time can you devote to SteamRep per week?


Average of two hours per day. Tends to be in larger blocks, eg four hours one day zero the next.


6) Do you have any prior administrative experience, or similar (please elaborate)?


I used to play a small webgame called Realm of the Mad God about two years ago. While official moderator positions were largely for super-senior players & game staff, I was a major shaper of the cash trading community in that game.


In that community I was the first major middleman for trust-based trades & maintained one of the first large rep threads. I helped the community implement the ideals of UHC, such as free middlemanning, maintaining a positive trading community and using well laid out threads using verified forum accounts to keep track of rep. Essentially everyone who was involved in cash trading RotMG items back then knew who I was. I still get recognized in random subreddits when commenting on other topics.


I was also the semi-official curator of the Ideas section of the forum. When RotMG was sold the old forums were obliterated by the (crappy) new owning company, Kabam. Their new forums still had an "Ideas" section, and in that section the new mods put up http://community.kabam.com/forums/showthread.php?232824-READ-FIRST-When-Posting-a-New-Idea - which is nearly identical (minus idea descriptions) as the thread I put up three years ago to help the Ideas forum stay organized. I maintained that thread and helped the users in that forum because I wanted to ensure that we the community could provide quality ideas for the (overworked) devs to potentially implement. I encouraged users to flesh out & clearly explain concepts, and provide constructive feedback for each other.


7) What challenges do you foresee if you become a moderator?


I will get frustrated with how little Valve does to help and bore everyone to death with my ideas of how much scamming could be stopped if Valve put in just a little more help. Or how much scamming could be stopped if people just weren’t so damn dumb & greedy.


8) Can you accept the fact that you must enforce SteamRep rules and guidelines?


Yes.


9) Do you feel you will have any issues denying / accepting reports and appeals?


No.


10) Do you handle instruction and direction well?


Yes.


I have had two warnings against my forum account.


One was for being out of line in an appeal - I told the appealing user to use his name history and implied it showed he was innocent, but that was not my place. From then on I made sure my posts in appeals were purely to inform appealers when their appeal needed to be handled by a different community, so that they could appeal without feeling neglected or ignored.


The other was for inappropriate reports against posts made by YATO in a thread that SilentReaper was handling. While the content of the post was something SilentReaper wanted removed, my message on the report was horrible & I should have just messaged Silent instead of reporting the post. From then on (and before then) I made sure that my post reports had very specific, clear messages on why I felt the post needed reporting.


11) What do you feel are your personal shortcomings or attributes you can improve on?


I used to have a very polarizing affect on people - people either loved me or hated me. After my sourceop days I heavily cut down on my rude behaviors and was able to be a productive member of several communities after that. I work every day to make sure that I don't stray back into that territory.


12) What contributions do you believe you will be able to make to SteamRep?


I feel that I am very good at quickly determining whether a report is worth looking into further or not. I have successfully been able to read every report made in the last month, asking the reporting user to provide more information where necessary. As a moderator I would be able to quickly get simple reports processed & get clarifying information from users with more complicated situations.


13) Do you have any interest in eventually becoming an SR Admin? If so, what kinds of things would you like to do? (Example- community relations, appeals, scam reports, etc.)


Yes. Community relations is a big point of interest for me. I feel that with faster response time on “basic” reports (impersonators of admins or friends, paypal invoices, successful scams) the community would see SteamRep as a more useful tool again.


14) Please list all alternate Steam accounts using SteamRep ID blocks.


| steamname: Pollo Slinger
| steam3ID: [U:1:81982687]
| steamID32: STEAM_0:1:40991343
| steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198042248415
| customURL: http://steamcommunity.com/id/moustacheofsound
| steamrep: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198042248415



15) Do you agree to the Code of Conduct and agree to abide by it?


Yes.


16) Have you read the Duties of SR Moderators post and understand it?


Yes.


17) (If applicable) List Steam trading communities you are / have been active on and in what capacity (user, mod, admin), also give a link to the account(s) there.


Minor user on /r/globaloffensivetrade - http://www.reddit.com/user/Cribbit/

Not steam but Realm of the Mad God, as detailed previously.

Not Steam but computer parts - major user on /r/hardwareswap - /u/cribbit I am one of the most well known buyers there, and was the 4th user there to ever pass 100 confirmed trades. I am famous for helping people ship large items cheaper, using my shipping discount through Amazon. I am also well known for really liking ram - I used to have nearly a terabyte of ram stockpiled. Occasionally users there want to buy cs:go items with computer parts and I have been able to help them by middlemanning. I successfully stopped what was very nearly a sneaky scam, and have helped several other trades go smoothly.


Sourceop - banned for shitposting in early 2011. I took a hard line on pricing & was a dick in other people’s threads. I then tried to go around the ban with other accounts, and backed Blackened in making TF2-trader which got me IP banned. This was over four years ago. I learned almost immediately from my actions and I am much more mature now, as anyone in the hardwareswap or RotMG communities can tell you.


18) Do you have any questions?


I believe that with a small amount of work SteamRep could preempt many scams, vastly reducing the number of reports which need to be processed.


In my time reading reports, it appears that most scams happen due to user ignorance. While guides on how to not get scammed are nice, too few users read them. I think that SteamRep could create a “tip of the day” system & encourage other sites to do the same. Messages such as “Invoices aren’t a payment!”, “Profile +reps don’t mean anything!” and “The only way to check an impersonator is with steamid64 & SteamRep!” (with links to more detailed information) would get to a wider set of users. Educating users before they get scammed is the easiest way to dampen scammer’s attempts.


I have found that it is quite easy to “bait” scammers in CS:GO and probably also TF2 - stick a knife on lounge for money, accept anyone who adds you that isn’t a bot. Let them add an impersonator of an admin or friend to chat or send a paypal invoice, and report them. Very few scams (that get reported) seem to take place from people adding the scammers from the scammer’s lounge trades - most seem to happen from the scammer adding the victim. As such, putting up fake victim accounts means the scammers are likely to add the bait account & get reported before even being able to talk to someone who might fall for their trick.


With just a couple hours a week of baiting I’ve been able to make around eighty reports in the last month, several of which garnered comments such as “thanks for the heads up almost fell for his scam.”

Hidden Content:

**Hidden Content: Content of this hidden block can only be seen by members of (usergroups: Administrative, Moderating).**

As a moderator of reddit's /r/hardwareswap, Cribbit is an excellent member of our community, and I'm sure of yours as well. In my personal dealings with him, I have traded hardware with him a couple times, and he has helped me with a large shipment using his aforementioned shipping discount. He is a productive, polite, and respected member of /r/hardwareswap and I fully endorse him for moderator status on this site.

GL

That's fresh coming from someone whose idea of a fun night is posting an admin's private information. Repeatedly. While the admin in question tells you to stop posting it.

However, this application isn't about you, it's about how I'm qualified. To answer the question of my SOP ban: I've been a productive member of /r/hardwareswap for two years. I used to be a more than productive member of the RotMG community for two years. I've been a productive helper in reports section of this forum for the last month and a half. I certainly made a lot of mistake in my time on SOP but I also learned from it, and have shown that learning in how I've acted the four years since then. I'm not going to bother trying to justify anything that happened back then - it happened, people have their opinions on it, it's in the past.

If you want to ask questions about my application go ahead. If it's not about my application you can PM me.

Please don't refer to fatal diseases in your childish posts. It's not only utterly disgusting, but also offensive and hurtful to some people.

Calling me "cancer" is nice and all, these threads are about opinions held against the applicant, but if you have an issue with me, please link actual threads & examples of times where I was disruptive to sourceop's forum.

Here's a thread to start with, where my largest hater attacks me for trading for profit and summarizing a sale to currency items rather than saying the exact items I traded for.

Here's the thread I got banned for, the ban coming after a warning for posting in other people's threads without being constructive.

Here's a list of my posts.

I also had a bit of time where I was deleting and re-commenting to create bumps faster than the rules allowed, but that was never brought up again (my only punishment being that I had to create a new thread as my old one was locked) and no one talked about it with my ban.

After being banned I went on to create several accounts, using their signatures to advertise my own hats and to advertise Blackened's new tf2-trader forum. This caused my IP ban.

I don't try to hide my past. I would absolutely love it if I could get some definitive examples of my bad behavior from back then, since people like you keep trying to bring it up any time I go out of my way to be helpful in this community. You act like my few obnoxious posts from four years ago precludes me from being active in the community ever again.

After you find those examples, go find anything in the last four years since then where I did anything remotely close to what I did on SOP.

You, as an ex-staff member, should know better than to lie on these forums.

I was banned in mid May 2011. For the next two months I had several alts. Every alt that was found was due to IP history or the fact that I was still using the same two steam accounts. None of them had any disruptive behavior other than being owned by me. After less than two months, in early July 2011, I sold almost my entire stock (7 grand worth) and stopped attempting to use sourceop. Four days later I signed up for Eve Online and have made zero posts on sourceop since then.

My most recent "avoided this month" was you banning my current steam account five minutes ago, which I logged in with purely to see my old posts. It had exactly zero posts made with it.

Less than two months is not "years of whackamole."

When you have actual things to talk about instead of being petty, please post again.

The fact that you would go back, realize forums require a login to view, think of what accounts I could have and then specifically ban my zero posts (viewing only my old posts) steam account (which means that you specifically searched for my steamid) is completely uncalled for and honestly, quite unprofessional.

I added you on steam because I thought you were at least somewhat chill. I did not have many direct interactions with you, if any. I too forgot you existed, until I saw you here. I did not seek out your main, I just did it on a whim seeing you in the old threads. I do not attempt to hide my past with sourceop, and was honestly hoping that you had actual things to bring up for me to talk about.

And a note on me selling within two months - I sold very little on sourceop in those two months. My sale was a bulk sale, to a 3rd party outside of sourceop. (gearguy, RIP)

Please show me any posts that I made after July, 2011. When you lie about my activity in avoiding the ban I cannot help but think you may be exaggerating your other memories of how bad I was. It was four years ago after all, and you can't seem to actually point to any posts or accounts to back up anything you're saying.

I never said that my ban avoiding (during those two months) was ok. I'm simply saying that it was only those two months, and that those accounts did not have any additional bad behavior other than being owned by me. Or do you mean my recent ban avoidance? When your forums require signing in to view, I will create an account to view them. Is that technically ban avoidance? Sure. But you would have never known about my signing in with my steam account unless I told you I had one. As I said, literally zero posts since July 2011.

I've been reading my old posts since I knew it would come up in a moderator application. This application was not on a whim, my time on this forum so far was making sure that I found the work interesting, could handle the workload, and that I could show those two things to anyone reviewing my application. Of course I'm going to go read exactly what I used to do on sourceop, my behavior then is the major weakness to my application. I need to show that I have overcome my actions I made then, and I can only do that if I fully remember what actions I made then. I've had those links for three weeks, waiting to make this application.

Again - when you have actual things to talk about instead of being petty, please post again.

You clearly have something to say, just say it. If you had things worth noting in that style, you could have done so before lying about my activity on sop. Please stop being petty and actually say something of substance.