Setting accounts to private should be disabled.

As I stated before, you people need to remember your little trading microcosm has little to do with the majority of people who play this game, and you cannot impose your views of privacy on others, especially in broad general terms.

On some sites I admin on, we do not allow private profile/BP, on others we do.

It should also be patently obvious that SR can not, nor should it, try to impose anything on users who for whatever reason wish to protect their privacy.

Having said that, certainly within the narrow confines of the trading community, operating with private BP or profile is not to be encouraged, for a plethora of reasons, but it is not tantamount to committing even the least of all crimes, and thus in and of itself it is not something SR could do a damn thing about.

I suspect everyone who gives a damn about reputable trading, knows full well that SR, being the Flagship entity we must depend upon must conduct its work while adhering to strict protocols with the need to recuse in certain situations, the right to appeal and all that, while maintaining a requirement for a high degree of proof before taking actions which can severely destroy a reputation, and in that light any musings on private BP/Profile highlights an ignorance in terms of the power SR has and should have, not to mention the practical ramifications and the value judgements implied.

SR must concern itself with issues that fall within its bailiwick, individual choices in terms of privacy options are not a crime in and of themselves.

Except it's not.

Being trade banned is a valve affair, and SR ≠ Valve. I was quoting you because you said it would be absurd to give a mod a tag or caution, I was simply pointing out that being a mod of any community is not an exemption from SR policy.

As an FYI, if you are under 18 then your default profile setting is private. When I set up my son's account on Steam (he's 11), I had to manually change it from private to friends only. As a parent, I simply don't feel comfortable with having my minor child's backpack public. Clearly we have nothing to hide (and anyone on his friends list can see his backpack) but I don't want hoards of people adding him trying to shark his craft hats or the like because public backpacks are searchable in all the sharking/scamming programs.

I also have two very good friends who have their profiles private because they are worried about being targets for hijacking. I can't blame them given the amount of hijackings. They have nothing to hide and neither of them are even traders!

While private profiles for traders do look suspicious, there are legitimate reasons for having them set as private.

TL;DR: I completely agree with Venganza!

While many players have private profiles and/or private backpacks, its not something that SR ever will concern with in terms of tagging negatively. There is no automatic system possible where we see: this is a trader and he should have public/public settings. That would be so against SR policy and proof requirements of tags, I would not know where to start.

Now, a interesting point has been made: If a GREEN tagged admin/MM/TS or w/e has a private profile/backpack, the Green tag must be gone. I'd agree with that, for such a trusted person must be open about his backpack/trades etc.

SR has tags that are as checked as far as possible with the goal to be correct in tagging.

With random tagging, the trust bestowed into us by a lot of communities who use our SR API plugin. The ones on our frontpage are only a small number of that. I think we would do them a disservice if we went from justified marking people positive or negative, to a randomized system. We have some time ago dropped the Caution tags for random bans which where not related to scamming. I saw those as "random" as one can get. A admin may hate somebody and ban him/her. That is no reason for a "caution tag". We're NOT to implement another such "random" tagging system, I would be heavily opposed to it.

There is NO point in trying to argue such random tagging to start on SR.

Now on private backpacks and profiles. I know a number of traders keep private profiles with their stuff on it. Not because they do bad things, but because they don't want people to start adding them for those items, they just want to play and enjoy their items without people bothering them.

Do I think a trader should have a public profile/backpack? yes, but that's something you as trader with them can require. Its not the place for SR to require that from just "anybody". The public profile/bp is already required in some ways on TP/OP to make offers etc. This will render most of them with a public profile and BP. The remaining, use it as a point to the "alt" suspicions of a account when those are trying to trade with you.

Also, putting aside all of the points against it, it would be a logistical nightmare. Negative tags override positive tags (as is understandable). MANY Valve employees have private profiles, with good reason. It we automated it, then suddenly Valve employees would be marked with that and this is a HUGE no-no. "Okay then don't automate it." Um, no. I spend upwards of 10 hours a day doing scam reports. I simply do not have the time or inclination to do this even if I wanted to.

right, let's play this dance
http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198064459438
http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198064459438?t=1339955697

wow, that was fun!? i guess i'm just a huge liar

Yeah I know that. I said it wasn't trade banned, not on probation.

lol completely ignoring the fact that probation means that you were trade banned

being forthright is pretty damn hard

I'm quite blown away by the reception this thread is getting. Albeit this suggestion is beyond comprehension of the sane universe, but still I've never seen SR submit a real departure from process I was thrown into (SR marked u scammer f✿✿, while im at it heres a af2 tag aswell <3<3 o u want 2 appeal? go git af2 appel ferst ufag ).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, good work SR, at not perpetuating your track record of general silliness.

Alrighty then.

Damn, I asked my family to warn me when I got silly, so I could apply for a rest home for elderly.