| | Author | Message |
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benstylus
  
 
 
| | #1 posted April 8, 2008 at 10:25am (EDT) |
Bill, I wanted to bring this guy up as the most recent example - http://gametz.com/user/hingeco.html
5 BTRs, 4 of them from new users and 1 from an idiot.
Obviously new users just aren't getting the picture that they're not supposed to trade with other new users. (This stuff just keeps on happening).
I know your current position is that there are big red warning signs and if people choose to ignore them, it's their own stupid faults.
I don't know if you have some way of checking this kind of information, but it would seem logical to me that people who get ripped off early on are a lot more likely to stop using the site instead of making more trades and becoming flourishing, active traders.
I really think you should reconsider your position on allowing new (or non-starred, or whatever) users to trade with each other. You had mentioned when it was brought up previously that new users will probably just try to do the trade outside of gametz in that case. I don't know if I agree with that completely, but even if it were true, I think the percentage of folks that would do it outside of gametz is significantly less - people are a lot less trusting without the structure and background of a website to guide them.
I know you may not change things, but do give it some thought.
You're arguing for a universe with fewer waffles in it.
I'm prepared to call that cowardice. | bill
    
| | #2 posted April 9, 2008 at 7:59am (EDT) |
I have given this issue a lot of thought. There are various aspects of it that come to mind.
There was actually a recent case where someone had made a deal with one of these recent scammers (either hingeco or wayne187) and they hadn't used the offer/trade system at all. It was a current-gen console-for-console trade too (high value). When the guy emailed mods about it, I went to look for the offer/trade and found nothing. I asked him about it and they had just done it in chat and/or IMs. The noob said he didn't really know about the offer/trade system and was just going along with what the other guy (scammer) said. Though, this case turned out to be no real problem because it was also one of those "game of chicken" things where both sides say they are going to send or even that they sent, but neither actually did.
Another thing is that there are many trades being made between new traders that go off without any trouble. Here are some stats. In the last 30 days, 1880 completed trades where made. 280 involved a new users (new means created account within last 2 months). So, that's about 15% of trades involving a new user. 18 of those 280 trades were trades between 2 new users. If we did what you're proposing, that's 18 legit/good trades we would have blocked.
It has been a bad month for BTRs. hingeco is certainly very bad (5 BTRs). But, the bigncrazy situation (6 BTRs) is also bad. Though, bigncrazy has 99 completed trades with 72 different traders. JMorgan14 has 3 BTRs now, he has 19 completed trades with as many traders. It's really not just newbies who turn get BTRs. I think it used to be more common, but with the warning, the numbers are not so biased toward noobs being the scammers anymore.
I really think you just can't force people to be cautious about this sort of thing. Scammers are an Internet phenomenon that is not going away anytime soon. The main way they hook people is by making direct contact, usually chat or IM. They talk the victim into it. I think it's very significant that so many of these new users ignore the BIG RED WARNING . I think that shows we don't really have the power to stop them. They get convinced to make the trade and they will make it, no matter what. We shouldn't feel responsible for their unwise decisions and actions.
It is unfortunate that BTRs between noobs happen despite the warnings, but I think taking an action that will also block good trades from happening is a bad idea. I think I heard once that TGN limits the number of pending trades someone can have. That seems like another bad idea, because it will hurt legit traders. Traders who are cautious should not suffer because of the idiots who aren't. In most of these cases, there are warning signs (beyond just being new users) that people ignore. | mmm40x
(frozen)
| | #3 posted April 9, 2008 at 8:15am (EDT) |
People love the stockade on the front page. They read it without prompting. It's juicy, controversial. People love the drama. It only requires one click to get all the details. Lets add an easy access, wall of shame. Expose scammers as openly. with the information as easily accessible, as we do trolls and their dumb posts.
Just a thought. Thanks for putting things in proper perspective bill. It sure has seemed like there has been an enormous rise in scammers lately. It helps to have stats. We  stats! | invisibleink
 
| | #4 posted April 9, 2008 at 8:22am (EDT) |
everyone who has posted in here is awesome and has good ideas | bill
| | #5 posted April 9, 2008 at 8:49am (EDT) |
I think the drama thing is pretty true. Making it into more of a circus may actually be fun (and educational).
BTRs are ugly, though... I suppose it may scare people away too. | mmm40x
(frozen)
| | #6 posted April 9, 2008 at 8:52am (EDT) |
Let's chop some heads! Nothing like a public execution to liven things up. | MightySlacker
 
| | #7 posted April 9, 2008 at 12:41pm (EDT) |
http://gametz.com/forum/Site_Feedback/topic/287866... Post #37
http://gametz.com/forum/General/topic/292099.html#... Post #7,22,63
I know you can't spoonfeed everyone and theres warnings and everything, but jesus christ. When something can be done it should be done
Dave
2004-07-22 17:30:17 Morph Mr. Funny man, get ready to have ur life get funnier
HAS HE LEARNED ANYTHING IN A YEAR?
7-Sep-2005 11:04pm Morph keep it up mighty i will have you nailed for harassment
HELL NO! | MightySlacker
| | #8 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:04pm (EDT) |
You dont allow people that have banned from other trading sites for scamming to trade here?
This is a trading site the depends on trust, its not rehab. Sure, there will always be the people you alienate that may or may not deserve a second chance and may or may not reform and shape up, but that's just something you have to deal with when the alternative is someone turning into a Hingeco.
Dave
2004-07-22 17:30:17 Morph Mr. Funny man, get ready to have ur life get funnier
HAS HE LEARNED ANYTHING IN A YEAR?
7-Sep-2005 11:04pm Morph keep it up mighty i will have you nailed for harassment
HELL NO! | bill
| | #9 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:14pm (EDT) |
Yeah, hingeco had come up before. At the time, he and Intruder had BTRs on each other. At the time, I figured that took care of it. So, I didn't see a need to ban either account. As I've probably said in the past, banning isn't 100% effective. It really only stops people who aren't very clever or persistent. I think most people think banning works really well, but it's just not true.
So, anyway, the bottom line is that people have to protect themselves. We can't protect everyone. We do what we can. People like MightySlacker (and many others) help us to find scammers back with new accounts. Often, the evidence is kind of weak though. Banning people on vague suspicions isn't something I'm ready to do.
With hingeco, I guess the BTRs got resolved and deleted later, though the deleted BTRs were still linked for people to see and neither would have gotten a star (though both remain noobs).
Hindsight is great, but I could probably come up with plenty of counter-examples of people we were suspicious of who turned out fine. | MightySlacker
| | #10 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:19pm (EDT) |
Yeah, but what's better for the site? I mean, you can come up with plenty of examples of shady people that now walk the straight and narrow, and I can come up with just as many examples of people that dont use the site anymore because they got scammed early on in their trading career. You take all the risk - allowing people to try and rehab themselves, and hopefully everything turns out alright. However, Hingeco shows us that BTRs come in bunches - its not 1 person, its 6 or 7. Erring on the side of caution eliminates that risk - theres a much better chance that if those people that quit didn't get ripped off in the first place, they'd still be members of the community.
Dave
2004-07-22 17:30:17 Morph Mr. Funny man, get ready to have ur life get funnier
HAS HE LEARNED ANYTHING IN A YEAR?
7-Sep-2005 11:04pm Morph keep it up mighty i will have you nailed for harassment
HELL NO! | bill
| | #11 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:21pm (EDT) |
Sorry, I deleted my first post after I read more of what you referenced. I agree that him being banned at TGN is meaningful and I should have taken that more seriously. At the time, the mutual BTRs seemed to resolve the situation.
Also, I can be hesitant to act on statements like Y2K made, but I should have taken it more seriously since it was Y2K who is an admin at TGN. We sometimes get people saying someone is a scammer and pointing to some random forum post at some site for trading beany-babies and I don't know what to do with it. I don't really know TGN. I don't know how to look up bad traders there. When I've tried in the past, I've only found vague info that didn't help convince me they actually did something worse than swearing or annoying a moderator. vDub has been banned at TGN, also TMNT.
But, I'm mostly just getting defensive. It does seem like I should have banned them both back when both BTRs were up. The BTRs were not enough, I can see that now.
So, should I ban Intruder now? Well, I guess Y2K said, "She's not a scammer", so I guess not. | bill
| | #12 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:25pm (EDT) |
We're crossing posting a little, but whatever... I'm not really disagreeing with you, I'm just whining saying it's hard and there's only so much I can do. It's fairly easy to point at problems, problems are going to happen, I'm sure. I think we do a lot with the limited resources with have. I don't blow this issue off at all, I spend time on this stuff every day. But, I'm bound to miss stuff.
I still really think the best solution is for traders to learn to be more cautious. There were lots of warnings about hingeco. I got saw today that one of the guys he traded with, who sent first to hingeco was a  . I can't fathom why he sent first to hingeco. That's just stupid. | MightySlacker
| | #13 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:28pm (EDT) |
I agree with there's only so much that you can do. While I am in favor of the less-mod version of GTZ, perhaps there are people you can appoint specifically to tasks like this (and say, monitoring chat, which is something else I was going to post about) since the fulltime mods and yourself have plenty of other crap to deal with. I'm not sure if the mentor thing you have going is working, but perhaps people can assist you in the same type of fashion
Dave
2004-07-22 17:30:17 Morph Mr. Funny man, get ready to have ur life get funnier
HAS HE LEARNED ANYTHING IN A YEAR?
7-Sep-2005 11:04pm Morph keep it up mighty i will have you nailed for harassment
HELL NO! | bill
| | #14 posted April 9, 2008 at 1:39pm (EDT) |
The trouble is that this stuff always ends up my problem because it has to be my decision to fudge with a customer in any serious way. I'm the business owner, everyone else is a volunteer.
But, I appreciate snitching and detective work that people do. We do get a fair amount of that.
Y2K told us and I should have acted on it. In the future, I wont see a BTR as enough for someone who is a scammer at TGN.
Maybe DrunkPollock is a good example of a current issue. A number of people have pointed us at a CAG forum topic about him scamming there. Again, I don't know CAG that well and it's just a forum so it's hard to know what to believe. Honestly, I've just scanned the topic, so far. Reading through all the materials in a case is one of the biggest time-syncs (and it's usually asinine chat logs between 12 year olds).
But, should we just ban DrunkPollock ? He'd got 10 good trades here and a pending issue with John. Otherwise, no pendings. Is he evil incarnate? If I don't ban him now, will you post here in 2 months saying, "I told you so?"
We used to have the DRC to try to deal with BTRs better... I ended up doing all the work because of the seriousness (business-relevant outcomes). Since, the DRC, I do more work on BTRs. And, our stats are better. But, the DRC failed, the group approach didn't work. | Y2k
(frozen)
| | #15 posted April 9, 2008 at 2:53pm (EDT) |
Ok, I would like to clarify a couple things.
vdub isn't banned at TGN. He never has been. His account was placed on lockdown a few years ago after that secret santa debacle. That was fixed thanks to the pressure you put on him here to make things right and he came back for awhile. He later decided to focus his energies here, I guess for a few reasons.
TMNT also isn't banned at TGN. He posts semi-regularly. He had his issues but was cool with resolving them. They were not trade related. He's always been a good trader.
Bill, I can gladly pass along whatever information you need on users booted from TGN for bad trading. I know the 'very bad things' isn't terribly useful and is exactly as you've said........vague. That said, our Privacy Policy there protects user's private information from being made public except in the event of them ripping people off. I can pass along specific details if they are useful.
I think I posted a vague splot on intruder and hingeco here awhile back when they were playing chicken with their trade. Intruder has not demonstrated that she's a scammer. I suspect she's very young. She had exchanged feedback with local friends over there a few times.
Their BTRs here were interesting. He was claiming to have filed mail fraud charges on her but never produced any proof that he had ever mailed anything. He responds with 'apparently this is resolved'. egad. Nobody lost anything here since nothing ever happened, but I think it gives some insight into the kind of person he is.
Hingeco, on the other hand was a scammer. He made several accounts using several different 'real names'. He also seems to have a few residences that he uses. He's not young, claiming to be 31 years old. A couple of the users there filed mail fraud charges on him this past winter but have not passed along whether that was useful or not. Perhaps that has something to do with him moving out of state? Normally, 31 year olds don't wake up one day and decide to move. Most people have to plan these things a bit, and, thus, wouldn't pursue new trades a few days before driving away. I get the impression he goes back and forth between these residences.
Y2k's Graf-X Shoppe
 | bill
| | #16 posted April 9, 2008 at 3:45pm (EDT) |
I should have followed-up with you about him back when you mentioned his problems at TGN months ago (in the topic MightySlacker linked). I don't really know why I didn't. I'm pretty sure it was because it seemed the BTRs covered the problem. Sorry, if I misrepresented TGN. I know I'm having a defensive reaction to this stuff because it looks like I screwed up.
We're onto hingeco now and I've put what I can in to track and block him. So, I don't think there's more to do.
Our blocking is currently working against him. We see his attempts to use the site and being re-blocked. So, he doesn't seem especially clever, so far. But, I get the impression he'll be back, eventually.
From what I've heard, filing mail fraud is pretty much a joke. People who were ripped off should call the police on him. Even that might not work, but I think it has a higher chance of working, especially if more than one person files a complaint. | gameplayer9
| | #17 posted April 9, 2008 at 4:53pm (EDT) |
does BTR mean Best trade report  | invisibleink
| | #18 posted April 9, 2008 at 5:17pm (EDT) |
koko-ray you are the living end! | Noltillian
| | #19 posted April 9, 2008 at 5:34pm (EDT) |
gameplayer9 wrote:
> does BTR mean Best trade report
Please don't post in the Site_Feedback forum unless you have an issue that needs resolving or you can help in some way. Let's leave the joking around for the General forum from now on, OK?
 | Pyramid_Party
 
| | #20 posted April 9, 2008 at 5:38pm (EDT) |
I think one of the best things we can do is report this stuff as we see it. If you see a suspicious person, bring it to the attention of a mod. Let it be discussed in site feedback or something. Maybe the Mentor's program is helping a bit, as Bill stated, it shows new traders stats an a rise sorta. So that made be due to the Mentor's program.
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Visit My PSP Modding Discussion Forum! | Pyramid_Party
| | #21 posted April 9, 2008 at 5:51pm (EDT) |
Also a good thing we can do is send warnings to users if we see a risky/bad trade. On a few occasions I have posted or PM'd people to warn them to be careful. I PM'd GamePlayer9 when he pended with Hingeco. Also in a thread where wayne187 was trying to get trades with new users, I warned a new user about him, and she ignored it. I found out she has a BTR now and was trying to scam. Its really a coin flip with new users, some are 100% intent on scamming while other are just naive. Also there some that actually are smarter and listen to site warnings. So I say, Just keep a look out for these things and try helping when you can. Bill and the mods only have 1 set of eyes, so if we see stuff its giving the mods more eyes in places they might not see. Just report this stuff and warn users whenever possible.
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Visit My PSP Modding Discussion Forum! | DeputySchrute
| #22 posted April 10, 2008 at 12:33pm (EDT)
edited April 10, 2008 at 12:34pm (EDT) |
Idiots:
Check out the trade between Finny (zero stars) and Zachasaurus (New User)
Anyone taking bets on how this will end?
 | bill
| | #23 posted April 10, 2008 at 1:25pm (EDT) |
tears? | Uuaww
| | #24 posted April 10, 2008 at 1:35pm (EDT) |
maybe you should just not allow two users without stars to trade at all, that would fix it. |
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