Sharking Tag?

^^ I agree. As much as I hate sharking the problem comes to where you draw the line. Do you really want 500 reports a day about how someone sold you an uncraft and you didnt spot it?

Also another problem is this:

I am on a trade server, someone offers an unusual for 2 ref, I trade and take it and they leave the server

What was their reasoning, I dont know. Did I shark them? NO

Was it a fair trade? ABSOLUTELY NOT

Should I get tagged as a shark for this? NO.

Although I should have taken the action to inform them of the true value of the item, I am not the one that neglected tot aket he time to research that unusual is worth more then the regular hat. I am not the one that volunteered the price. This becomes a very murky and dirty line.


If you guys want to have a database, it will only work is the person "actively" pursued someone and intended to find someone to shark PRIOR to coming into contact with that person. That is a true shark. A person who simply knows how to haggle a good deal out of someone is not a shark.

Today I had a perfect example: Someone asked me how much for a vintage huntsman. Someone already offered a rec on it so I told them they can match it or I will pass. In return they offered me a strange liberty. Said they had 5 and they werent moving so they want to do a 1:1. I agreed to the low price and good deal. Not 2 mins later I sold that liberty to someone for 0.88 ref. Essentially I got 0.88 ref on the huntsman. Way over price. Am I to be branded a shark?

Perhaps a log book. First 5 offences are general warning. Next 5 are 1 month tag. Next 5 are PERMA TAG? Something like that? A repeat shark deserves to be tagged. Someone who seizes a good opportunity does not.

My 2 cents.

Again,

if you dont research something before selling it off you cant hold the other party liable. But if the other party is actively seeking you as a noob to shark you its a different story.

So who is in charge of setting the value of each item in digital barter?

I ask so because that's what you're trying to do, set an official price for each item in the game and force everyone to use said unofficially set prices for every trade, personal use be damned.
Scamming someone out of their items is a despicable act for the scammed recieves literally nothing in exchange while EXPECTING something in return. But if you do recieve something in return it is no more scamming, it falls into your own problem, your own responsabilities of a person to give a value to each of your possessions. Who is to say that the moonman complete pack for a salvaged #40 is sharking? Who is to say that every sniper hat in unique quality isn't worth an unusual bonk boy? Why would you take it in your hands to say these trades are "sharking" if both parties are happy with it?

Lack of interest for your own item's community-proposed value shouldn't prey on another player's status in such community, It is your fault and your fault only the second you put your items in the window and press accept twice over.
Most importantly still is, who will stop people from baiting sharks and uninformed players alike?

Just asking.

this is similar to the chat i had with fedorov. he kept saying how valve sets item prices no one else example. burning tc is 1 refined. the items are set on supply and demand similar to how blizzard is crashing cause alot are coming out and its becoming less wanted. there has to be values or else there wouldnt be a economy just like the price of a pop in a store for example its $1 if someone could give a penny for it there wouldnt be value and we wouldnt have an economy and without an economy tf2trading would crash and no one would trade anymore after since no one would sell those items that were expensive

You are still thinking in terms of Fixed-value trading, where prices are set on Offer/Demand. But an economy of this kind would still require valve to set prices, not third parties. Something that Valve shouldn't do (as they would really just set the ceil for prices and just stop caring afterwards) and probably won't, save for telling people how much they would have to spend to buy this from the store.

If someone gives away a pop for a penny then it's his loss, to be honest. Again, the value of your items is set by your personal needs. Community driven pricelists only induce sharking for one's profit, as they are not official or enforceable in any way outside of trade bans, and people that don't check for the spreadsheet sure as hell won't check for steamrep.
Again, adding a sharking tag is just going to give people a field trip baiting hundreds of people in getting a tag.

Thing is, sharks go after items they know CAN and DO fetch much higher prices then what they paid. Smooth talk it all you want, if you know very well that you can sell what you're getting from the sharked for massive profit, then there is no justification for ripping them off.
Valve does not need to set prices: the market does that on it's own.

This is the effect unofficial third party prices guidelines have on the economy, not everyone will follow them and the flexibility between people that do and don't allows for egregious profits IF YOU FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES

Guidelines make sharks, they give you an overall sight on what people that follow the guidelines are ready to pay for an item. Enforcing them with a tag only means people can play dumb even when baited, and say "i don't know" when asked how much an item is worth and still "get away with it", whatever "it" is.
That and, obviously, a lot of influential people in the economy would recieve a pretty big sharking tag for their past adventures, i am sure.

We on SR do not mark for sharking for a bunch of reasons:
- When would a tag be justified? by 10% disparity ? 20 %? 30? 50? and by what price guide? and if we set a disparity of whatever %, then have to check prices etc, it becomes difficult to ascertain a certain payment was actually at that % if the prices aren't fixed, but fluctuate a lot.
- provability of knowledge of prices of items.
- any trader trades for profit, may be 5 % or 10 %, but he does it for profit. Cant condemn or limit the profit or set such as a third party.
- any trader is responsible themselves to verify that items are of the worth what they are selling it for.
- Also a factor is that such are noob traders, and they don't keep a record of the chat in screenies etc, which further hamper a proper research. They often only find out days or weeks later that they have been conned.

It simply is not possible to get a good measurable threshold with such a wide angle of factors to mark anybody "Shark" or w/e.

I think that Steamrep puts itself at the fore-front of monitoring and educating the community about scammers / immoral trading practices. As the current primary source of education against these things, Steamrep must be responsible to the community that has put so much trust into it. Just look how many communities have signed up and asked to be part of the "scamming database" which auto informs them of new scammers and some even auto-add to the block list off this list. Let each forum / community determine for themselves if they want to tag / ban for sharking. Steamrep, having been given power to auto-tag users should be responsible in only assigning tags to which the entire community agrees needs to be assigned, and at this time sharking is still a debatable subject in many communities so I understand and support that Steamrep does not get involved in this.

I think the true root of the problem here has always been that the only action taken is against the person who is sharking, yet no action is being taken against those who CREATE and DISTRIBUTE the sharking tools.

Can and will there be sharks?
YES

Will we be able to stop them?
NO

Can we work to reduce the number of sharks and help deter them from sharking by blocking and eliminating any and all who are knowingly using and distributing / educating others on sharking and sharking tools?
YES

Should we encourage individual communities to decide for themselves if they want to tag / block known sharks and administer their own method of determining who is and who is not a shark?
This part is a little debatable but ultimately YES (after all these are private communities where the admins decide what type of users / atmosphere they want for their members)

Although I am a strong advocate against aggressive sharking i completely understand the problem Steamrep has with this whole sharking tag that people constantly ask to be created. I do however believe that the admins of the different communities should work together to make sure that people who create and endorse / educate the use of sharking tools be banned from the smaller local communities. This will help deter the use of such tools. I know that there will come right after this an argument that these tools can be used for people to search for the items they simply are looking to buy, but in reality, these tools can be modified to remove certain details to prevent others from being able to aggressively shark "noobs".
But then again, this is a whole different debate that has gone around in circles for far too long.

We have no problems with communities banning for these offenses, we simply cannot say its truly a shark, hawk, or w/e with a good measuring tool to hold the bar for it.

Well, like many times before, it would be difficult to establish the guidelines. In regards to education, it seems the best policy. To make sure as many people as possible know their prices. But that being said, the buyer has no real obligation, and what if the seller needs quick money and sells for half the value, or they are quitting the game. It would be difficult to prove and difficult to monitor/regulate.

As to the sharking tools, it's not the tools, it's the people who use them. For instance, since I saw the unusual search mentioned, the tool no longer has hours played and uncrated/traded options, and I consistantly use it to see how many of a hat there are or see if my Dream hat exists. You can't condemn the makers of a gun, if someone chooses to use it to commit a crime. I admit, there are tools like "Gibe Hats Pls" which provide a scam-ability score or something, which I think have a blatant purpose. But again, could you use it for something else? Yes.

I don't approve of sharking but we have to admit, it's just human nature and common place. Pawn shops, garage sales and plenty of real life stores do similar things. If I go to a garage sale and buy a watch for $10 bucks, knowing it's a collector's item and sell it for $2000, there isn't a court or legal body that would take action against me. I may not approve of getting something off somebody for less the value, but we canhardly stop them here when it's normal/legal/acceptable in real life.

It may help if we could get Valve to make it so whenever you put a bud, bill or unusual up for trade, it gives a little warning saying "Warning: One or more of your items are of high-value. We recommend you evaluate and research the prices of these items." Basically, like the "Warning: This person was recently trade banned." but on your trade box.

ehm, to valve, any item's worth is a percieved value to it. So for them a buds isn't worth more then any other item. The message would be moot for them with these views.

i admit to paying unupdated spreadsheet price to profit of rising item prices (ie. strange festives and regular festives) I bought the items knowing that they were going up. is that sharking?

My point exactly that these searches have to be modified when an exploit is found. there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for you to know certain details.

I was more refering to "gibe hats pls" developer who has built it with only one intention. to scam. If I harvest uranium for nuclear power I am not a threat, but if I harvest it for intentions of using as dirty bomb or nuclear weapon I deserve to be shot for being a dumbass that the planet can live without. Simple.

This is where the waters get murky. But if someone put something out and said "$10" prior to you getting involved in the deal then its not aggressive sharking and can be forgiven, but to use a tool that says "look this idiot is 90% likely clueless on the price of the unusual they just got, here's their profile link..." well that to me is aggressive sharking and deserves to be banned along with scammers.

If you lose a hat over being dumb then lesson learnt. Don't be dumb again.

Public defamation of character is completely unjustified given the fact that isn't worth the pixels its taking up.
This whole system is a sham controlled by an elitist circle with a fixed mindset which everyone follows blindly.

Sheeps will be sheeps, I suppose.

After reading this debate, I thought I would add my 2 scrap to the discussion:

Is it worse than scamming? I personally believe sharking is worse than scamming. Against scammers common sense, a good knowledge of the trade community and a small amount of paranoia can protect against most scams, simple things like double checking a middleman's URL against Steamrep's database. Obviously hijacked accounts of traders with huge reputations can not be effectively protected against, without additional difficulty. Sharking on the other hand takes advantage of ignorance. For example, if someone very new to TF2 arrives from say COD, and uncrates an unusual Team Captain, a shark could offer them a small pile of Grordbort weapons for it, and in their lack of trading knowledge, the player will think, "I'm losing a hat which does nothing, and gaining 10 deadly lazor weapons, what a good deal!"
As a result, I feel sharking is worse than scamming, because half of the time, the person doesn't realize they were ripped off for quite a significant amount of time.

Should sharks recieve scammer tags? Although I hate the idea of sharks going unpunished, they are not scammers, they do not impersonate or dispute payments, unlike scammers, sharks are nullified by the simple use of "Nope." Although you don't know you are being scammed until it's too late, with sharking, if you know the price of an item, no matter what they say, you can just politely say "No thanks" and be on your way. Sharks deserve to be punished, but they are different to scammers.

Should there be a new tag? I feel there should be a tag for sharks. After all Steamrep is a database of people who have proven themselves untrustworthy. I believe sharks should receive an amber tag, like the caution, as they are not full on scammers. The problem with tagging sharks is that items in TF2 don't have definitive prices. For example, (I'm going to try REALLY hard not to rant here) for me, the TF2 spreadsheet is poisoning trading. It provides a fairly accurate idea of an items price, it tells you that an S.F.R.L. is worth more than an S.F.K. But what annoys me is how many people use it as a bible, only selling at the higher prices and buying at the lower ones and insulting anyone who doesn't follow them. One person I met was so delusional they thought the Spreadsheet was an official mandatory price list from valve!
Back on topic, I feel it would be difficult to accurately mark sharks, after all, a small discrepancy in prices can not be punished, and would not only irrevocably damage trading, but along with it peoples respect for, and use of Steamrep as a database. Marking sharks would be based, in my opinion on two factors.

1. The experience of the accused shark - To explain this, I was once on Outpost, looking around, and I saw a trade with a person looking for offers on a low tier unusual, one person had offered a Bill's hat, and was rejected, and was arguing with the seller over prices, I then looked at the offer'ers profile, and found they had multiple trades open for high tier unusuals, and were exhibiting large signs of trading competence. As a result, it was blatantly obvious that this person was trying to shark the unusual. In this case, he would deserve to be punished because he understood the actual value, but offered a price around 7-8 keys.

2. The difference in prices - Simply put, buying a Burning Merryweather for 8-9 buds would be pushing it a bit, but I would not call it sharking. Buying the same hat for 1 bud would be considered sharking, at least in my opinion. A barrier would have to be drawn between, getting a good deal/very good deal/hale's own deal and sharking. Deciding on that barrier would be the challenge, would it be 25% of general consensus? 50%? I believe buying something for less than 40% of the average price would be considered sharking.

Finally there is the problem that some of SR's admins (correct me if I'm wrong) may not trade, and would not know the difference between a Fetti coup and a Burning TC.



If we were to add shark tags, they would have to be strictly moderated. For a person to be considered a shark they must have:

• Demonstrated they have a good knowledge of pricing.
• Tried to convince someone an item was worth less than they know it is worth.
• Tried to buy the item for a largely discounted price.

This is obviously a very large grey area, but, we shall see how this particular crate unlocks.
That's just my 2 scrap.

I think this thread speaks for itself:

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561198043700789-young-sinatra.6476/

A person sharked another person out of a purple energy soldier unusual for less than a bud worth of keys, scrap, and vintage pyrovision goggles. SteamRep tells me this is okay behavior.

It's not okay behavior, and far from it. It is however something SteamRep doesn't handle as it doesn't fall under the definition of scamming.

According to your FAQ, it does:

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.