Making suggestions private.

[JasonFunderberker]

Let's say there is a suggestion to drop an unusual by quite a significant amount of it original value. When it's created, people do two things:

A) Buyers refuse to offer higher than that suggested price. This makes the whole 'waiting a month for sales' pointless, as the seller wont be able to sell the item higher due to the suggestion. If the suggestion was private, and people couldn't see it being dropped, it would give the item a better chance to sell at a different value, whilst also making waiting a month a valid option. 

Sellers see the suggestion, then drop the price of the hat. If there's multiple versions on the market, this then creates competition, hence most likely everyone reducing the price. This again gives the hat an advantage to sell higher. 

The best example of this i can find is the Scorching Air Dog. I owned this hat and was forced to sell it lower because of the suggestion. I had several offers, but none of them were above ~110 which the suggestion was at. At the time of selling, I thought i could get more, since all the sellers on the market were still selling at ~130-140. Now a week later, they have ALL dropped to 110-ish, which wouldnt have happened if noone could see it was private. 

 

This also gets rid of the whole 'revenge price dropping idea', and suggestion stealing. 

 

I propose when a suggestion is made, it's only seeable by the creater and mods, and anyone who is linked to the suggestion. This way, only people who want to see the change in price will. 

 

The previous scenario was for dropping a hat, the same goes for raising the price aswell. If a hat is suggested to raise, people immediately ask more. For example, the Arcana bonk boy, which was raised ~100 keys based on one sale. Making the suggestion private could have lead to one or more sales ~300, hence ruling 400 out as an outlier.  

 

I know if they're private that noone will be able to comment, on them. That's why i say for it to be linkable. But a few other ideas would be that only suggesters above a certain star colour can see them, or people who own the hat being able to see them. 

 

TLDR: Suggestions force people to reprice their hats and this is unfair. 

 

[Happysedits]

That's the point of the suggestions, to show the current indate value. to show to the sellers what the actual value is. That wouldn't work.

Also making it available just for the people involved, what if there was some error in the suggestion? Other suggestion can mention that.

There's no suggestion stealing? If there is, that shouldn't be happening. People credit if they use someone else's proof.

[Lib3l]

This doesn't give other suggesters to leave counter-evidence though, which is pretty important for mods to see

[Woifi The Viking]

It also goes against our policy of transparency. And it would make voting really hard wouldnt it?

[JasonFunderberker]

It also goes against our policy of transparency. And it would make voting really hard wouldnt it?

 

Voting is pointless anyway. I dont see how it affects the suggestion in anyway shape or form, since most people upvote them anyway. And stupid troll ones will always get downvoted. 

[Apo]

Voting is pointless anyway. I dont see how it affects the suggestion in anyway shape or form, since most people upvote them anyway. And stupid troll ones will always get downvoted. 

On suggestions, mods take votes into consideration, especially if some of the mods have mixed feelings on it.

[Happysedits]

Voting is pointless anyway. I dont see how it affects the suggestion in anyway shape or form, since most people upvote them anyway. And stupid troll ones will always get downvoted. 

There are situations where it matters

[Juju]

This wouldn't just work. Many suggestions have been closed, because someone provided extra info/countering proof which would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The ability to give feedback shouldn't be narrowed to a select number of people. Price suggestions are and should always be available to everyone, they shouldn't be private just because some people might lose profit over them. Yes, suggestions force people to reprice their hats, but it is anything but unfair. It's what everyone does, including you.

[Axle Change]

On suggestions, mods take votes into consideration, especially if some of the mods have mixed feelings on it.

Yes but the vast majority of people that vote just blind upvote most things or things by well-known suggesters which really makes it not what it's meant to be.

[=TNW= Maximus™]

Yes but the vast majority of people that vote just blind upvote most things or things by well-known suggesters which really makes it not what it's meant to be.

Uh, who says that? 

[Foamy the Fearsome]

The whole idea of suggestions is to provide transparency. Making them private completely beats the purpose it was designed for. It also deprives parties involved in the trade or current owners to provide counter-evidence for suggestions. It's not so much the voting, but the community feedback that I see as a loss not covered by the benefits here. In fact, I can imagine it to be vastly annoying for traders to see their items change in value even if they keep an eye out on suggestions normally, just because the suggestion had been private before.

The main concern brought up here is that a lower suggestion would force everyone to drop their price. Now I know that backpack.tf's pricing system influences selling points and people offering and stuff, but lets be real here: if a hat can only sell high because of its high bp value, then it realisticly is not worth that much. In most cases where people are worried they cannot sell their hat after the price has dropped, it means that they basicly admit their asking price and/or the outdated backpack.tf price was too high.

Whereas values dropping may provide sellers with a drawback, it also typically provides them with a more realistic selling value for them. Many people complain that "once the price dropped to X, people will only offer me around X afterwards", whereas usually, the alternative is no offers or only overinflated offers. I'm aware that this is not always the case, and I've experienced it myself too, but you have to be aware that most of the time that means that the offers you'd receive were only because people blindly followed outdated prices. Again, most people that actively complain about this are people that use overinflated hats to offer around on relatively inexperienced traders. Having a more appropriate displayed value usually makes for a healthier trading environment where the market can thin out on its own.

Always know that you are by no means forced to follow backpack.tf prices, and that if a suggested value is truly "far too low", "ridiculously low" or "quicksell values" etc (terms people often throw around to disprove of active suggestions), then it should have no problem selling for more even when the suggestion is up. Most of the time, they're the complaining owner's purchases that cause the drop, so it cannot come as that much of a surprise to most.