Sharking Tag?

What opinons do you guys have on it?
Is it worse than scamming?
Is it the same as scamming?
Should sharks recieve scammer tags?
Should there be a new tag?
Should we not bother with a Shark Tag?
This is a discussion, make sure all posts are relevant.

I personally find that it is not the same as scamming, and it is not as bad as scamming, but it is still bad and is deserving of a new tag.

A SHARK TAG

I'm going to do some CTRL+V from what I wrote on a recent thread on SOP

I would love to have this picture


In the notes from administrators section.


On the definition of sharking; I think we all know what sharking really is, you can mince words all you like. But it boils down to this; sharks target, and rip off newer players. They use sneaky tactics to pressure, or convince them in to trading VERY valuable items for small change. I think if someone does this everyone has the right to know, this is only to keep themselves safe. If it was up to me I would rather be condemed for marking sharks, than be praised for letting them run around fleecing inexperienced players.

The thing about sharks is they have a lot of experience under their belt. They are so well aquainted with tools like BLACKENED's search that it's easy. They have so much experience bartering with people they learn so many tricks. They know how to target and manipulate. On most traders with experience this is a simple aid. But against new, inexperienced traders this is extremely dangerous.

Sharks like Teerid, Slacker and BLACKENED are more dangerous than your average scammer. They can go after the most expensive, valuable new hats, give the new player basically nothing, and walk away, with absolutely no concequences. Sharks need to be stopped. Fast. Whatever the concequences may be.

Once you have enough experience in trading, sharking is LITERALLY like taking candy from a baby. It's so tempting, becuase it has no concequences, and it's easy as hell.


On marking them; 1. Criteria that should be met to call someone a shark.

Sharks target new players, and use dirty tricks in order to give them small change for a valuable item.

2. How sharks will be reported and investigated.

Shark victims could report/be contacted, along with the shark, points to investigate could be;

-screenshots of trade history
-shark, and victims activity on SOP/TF2TP/Outpost (if any, in the victims case)
-number of victims the individual has sharked
-how the shark says he found the victim
-how the victim was contacted by the shark

Instead of a scammer tag, perhaps a shark tag, or a small icon (of a shark) in the notes from administrators, along with details of the case
Obviously it will be a case by case basis, and will need to have some real consideration ny the admins.

3. How trading with sharks will effect a persons rep.

Same with scammers, if people constantly buy sharked unusuals, to make a profit, even after being warned they deserve a tag

4. What the tag should mean.

It means that the user is marked as a shark, and combined with informing people how to spot, and combat sharks it will stop the individuals being able to make a profit from targeting and fleecing inexperienced players

But I can't fault SteamRep.

I frequent the appeals and reports, and I try to help Helen out. I don't think SteamRep+ could be doing a better job, given the circumstances. There are 2 sides to this coin, and you can guarantee wether they decide to bring in some sort of tag or not they will have a good reason, and I will contnue to respect and suppourt them.

However,
It is abundantly clear that something must be done about these sharks. Be it a forum here on SOP, or on the AF2 forums (I will gladly accomodate, and manage this) or a website dedicated to it. These sharks need evidence catalouged against them, and the word needs to get out about their misdeeds.

Also I just had a quick look

What is a Scammer?

A scammer is anyone that uses deception, thievery, lies, or anything that is underhanded to take advantage of or steal from another trader. See below for more comprehensive list of what qualifies for SCAMMER status. ​

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Sound familiar? *COUGH*BLACKENED*COUGH*​

yes pls so i can b tag

From my perspective, SteamRep is a database to check for scammers who disregard private property rights and law of contracts.

I check SteamRep before each trade to ensure that I am not trading with a thief.

Say there is a Shark Tag, what can the innocent noobs benefit from it? Do they check SteamRep? Do they even know that SteamRep exisists?

If a sharked unusual is being sold on the the market, will each and every potentional buyer change their mind because they saw the Shark Tag? Also, after the unusual has changed hands several times, do people still care about the item history?

Aside: Can anyone cite a criminal law, contract law from any judicial system that prohibits the behavior of sharking?

Personally, I discourage the behaviour of sharking, but should this be done by SteamRep (an aggregated database)? or through trade communities (i.e. Chamber of Commerce equivalent IRL)?

Can each community (Outpost, UTC...) maintain its own shark database without synchronizing the tags to SteamRep?

If you read the FAQ, and look at what the criteria for scammers is it is clear that it includes sharking.

What is a Scammer?

A scammer is anyone that uses deception, thievery, lies, or anything that is underhanded to take advantage of or steal from another trader. See below for more comprehensive list of what qualifies for SCAMMER status. ​

I would definitely support this.
Sharking IMO IS just as bad as Scamming.

This.

This 100%

You have made a nice concise TL;DR of basically the exact reason we have never come to the point of tagging people for "sharking". Obviously I dislike the practice just as much as anybody else, but please.. if you're going to make suggestions here can you guys try and be as measured in your thinking as base64 here?

There is a lot more to this whole thing than lol-sharkmark

I agree it would be hard to maintain and it would be no use to the newbies who get sharked, but hopefully it deters buyers from the sharks themselves cutting off a lot of their market. I mean look at this:
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/1235562



This is just disgusting.

I said this on SOP yesterday in that teeird thread.

For SR to start tagging sharks the community has to present a case to SR that proves that peoples money is at risk.

Update to this: the guy he got it off seemed pleased with what he got so it's not that bad.

As mentioned in that SOP thread yesterday, me, Jailbait and JJJJ could potentially manage those reports if no one else wants to do it.

It has been discussed numerous times between SR admins. The result is that the conditionals are quite hard to make a hard cut-off point.

any value for any item is arbitrary anyways. Prices are settled by the market. So, when we would tag, it must be on objective measurements.
- Lies about values? ehm, its quite bad if you ask the other trader if a item is really (only) worth what they are offering. We expect on Admins better then this, some have been unlisted for simular reasons in the past.
- disparity in value in trading? ehm, any trader wants the most for his items, how can we judge that? we must require that the paid items are worth a x % ? and if so how much? 30% ? 50% ? 90% ? what? and how you go on percieved value of items ? must one rate that also?

The scammer definition is a quite easy line one can draw: not keeping the trade agreement. By either not paying the items, money, or not the correct items. This means there is always a clear cut line one can draw. With sharks that is not so.

Don't get me wrong, I'd ban any shark in a heartbeat, and I fully support it. But on SR we cannot clearly mark people based on a variety of interpretations of a shark. For then any trader can come to us with a bad trade they did, and get somebody marked "shark".

We need to understand what constitutes sharking. I don't want to end up with reports of people selling something for 2 ref when they could have gotten 3 ref, and then they complain they got sharked because they didn't know the true value.

If you ask me, honestly there shouldn't be a separate shark tag. I believe sharks (and I'm talking solely about -extreme- sharking) should be tagged as scammers. That is essentially what they are. For example, I've recently come out with the evidence I've compiled against Anubis/Tangled the past few months. He's literally made thousands of dollars off of rare vintages, max sets, buds, bills, and anything else he could get his hands onto with his own personal search by sharking each and every one of them. We're talking 100+ cases of sharking here, that's all for the most part virtually untraceable because his search leaves no item histories on tf2items. These are the kinds of people we need to be taking down. We don't need a separate shark tag, but we need to crack down on those that are making a large dent in the community as a whole. Just my 2 cents.

Thats not the proper definition of a Scammer, at all.

How I see it atleast is: A scammer is an individual who STEALS an item, be it he uses lies or not, the act of scamming is stealing the item, not conning said person.

Sharking =/= scamming.

However I do believe sharking is despicable and deserves its own rightful tag, taking advantage of someone is no better then blindly stealing from them.

You make a fair point, I was going by the official defenition of scamming that was outlined by SR

However, from asking around in various communities the general consensus is that SR should punish sharks in some way, personally I really don't care if it's a scammer or shark tag. What I would really like to see is some form of punishment implemented in to SR, becuase it will serve as a deterrent. Inexperienced players don't really know about SR, but the sharks do, and that's how I think we can hit them hard. After making an example of clear cases of sharking by awarding tags.

In the meantime if all of the communities worked together, and banned known sharks from their servers it would be a really nice deterrent, and a very good first step towards the solution of the shark problem.

Of course scammers and sharks can overlap, but you can't lump them together, apparently.