Jump to content

Special Tag for people who frequently add unboxers and offer heavily one sided trades


eXuberant

Recommended Posts

I really think there must be some form of caution tag ( like a warning red sign on the profile ) , this is NOT a call for a ban, but rather just to point at users who are known to make regular unbalanced trades against unboxers.

We can't just remove premium searches due to
   - Its importance in pricing items ( Which is like the main purpose of backpack.tf right ? )

   - Help collectors actually find items 

There must be a way one could report them and point at trades people have done and point a recurring style in trading like Jheh Pot , Guns , Magicarp and freshly iTrade

The evidence could be Item Histories like 
https://backpack.tf/item/5406046631
https://backpack.tf/item/6030695424
https://backpack.tf/item/5926002763
https://backpack.tf/item/6027927647
https://backpack.tf/item/6077832587
https://backpack.tf/item/6083054195
https://backpack.tf/item/5676545329 ( this is just a few from the last month , Credits to Pampick for finding em )

 

This "caution tag" should be specially made to warn unboxers that the user they are dealing with has repeatedly done unfair trades with unboxers.

 

Problems with this Idea 

1)A lot of these unboxers are unaware of the existence of backpack.tf itself. Welp, if that's the case then no one can help em , and the chances are they don't care about the item value too.

2)Highly Objective , how can one argue that 45 keys for holy grail box trot is low , this could be solved by looking at most of the trades done , if a "significant" proportion of them happen to be with unboxers and are unfair, i think this should be enough evidence when a person keeps adding unboxers and keeps making horrible trades. 

3)How to deal with appeals 

I'm sure there are more problems with this , but i def think that there MUST be a way to warn unboxers from premium users who add them and exploit them , they need to be "marked" in such a way that prevents the abuse of premium search. Let's be real , there is a problem with allowing people to find out which unusuals are being unboxed and something has to be done about it.

Feel free to throw in your thoughts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do agree here. However, the warning tag will sadly enough probably not be helpful at
all for the victims since as you already stated, they aren't probably even aware of the existence of backpack.tf

 

The rules for which types of trades that should count as "sharks" will also be tricky to make, many factors needs to be taken into consideration. 
Also the "significant" proportion needs imo be a firm and small limit so that rule can't be exploited. 

 

This might be able to work as the ban for trading with marked scammers do, you get a warning(a badge on the profile or something similar) that will expire after a certain amount of time.
If no other fishy trades occur that badge should disappear after a while imo. This is just some thoughts though and it will probably be kinda tricky to make good and fair rules.
I also had in mind a while back that people that are doing multiple ugly trades with unboxers would be banned from the search function permanently, not too sure how that'd work in practice though.

 

The only pros I can find with this is that other traders in the community will be more aware of the "sharkers" trading activity and maybe retract their offers, making it harder for the
"sharker" to sell their items. It's sadly very hard to protect these unboxers without completely removing the search function, which has WAY more downsides than upsides.  
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Sprekt said:

I do agree here. However, the warning tag will sadly enough probably not be helpful at
all for the victims since as you already stated, they aren't probably even aware of the existence of backpack.tf

 

The rules for which types of trades that should count as "sharks" will also be tricky to make, many factors needs to be taken into consideration. 
Also the "significant" proportion needs imo be a firm and small limit so that rule can't be exploited. 

 

This might be able to work as the ban for trading with marked scammers do, you get a warning(a badge on the profile or something similar) that will expire after a certain amount of time.
If no other fishy trades occur that badge should dissapear after a while imo. This is just some thoughts though and it will probably be kinda tricky to make good and fair rules.
I also had in mind a while back that people that are doing multiple ugly trades with unboxers would be banned from the search function permanently, not too sure how that'd work in practice though.

 

The only pros I can find with this is that other traders in the community will be more aware of the "sharkers" trading activity and maybe retract their offers, making it harder for the
"sharker" to sell their items. It's sadly very hard to protect these unboxers without completely removing the search function, which has WAY more downsides than upsides.  
 

Tier system , repeating one sided trades with unboxers even after initial "caution tag" and warnings could lead to suspension of premium search ability and if still continued then ban depending on the seriousness ? 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

Tier system , repeating one sided trades with unboxers even after initial "caution tag" and warnings could lead to suspension of premium search ability and if still continued then ban depending on the seriousness ? 
 

Yeah that sounds like the best solution. But then again, the rules for what should be considered as a "shark" will be tricky to make, and also, how many trades that should be enough for a warning.


Can be counted in amount of trades, but also the percentage of all bought hats during a certain period of time. I also mean that it's not deniable that we do have a lot of inflated stuff in circulation, and also which percentage that should count as too low. Below 50%? Below 30%?

Just editing in another thought. Can also be counted in value, let's say paying 3 keys for a 10 key hat shouldn't be as punishable as paying 300 for a 1000 key hat even if the percentage is the same. After thinking about this for a while, some balance between all of the thoughts listed will be needed to make it as fair as possible.

 

Just some things that probably will make it hard to make fair rules that'll be easy to follow and make "bans" from.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

The concept sounds nice and all, but let's elaborate on your problems with this..

 

1. They won't use backpack.tf or know it exists, like you said. Marking these people for, allegedly, sharking is rather pointless and would be a huge allegation to make without any proof of it. Backpack.tf bans sharks for clear manipulation in an attempt to get a better deal. 'Marking' them for getting insanely good deals is essentially, stupid and would make them look bad. This current system works fine if you are determined enough to get the proof for it, which I could argue little to none of you could care less to find, even though you are apparently annoyed about it.

 

2. How you value an unusual and how someone else values an unusual is veryyy subjective, like you said again. A report mod can value a Burning Team Captain at 6,600 keys (backpack.tf price). If you are buying a burning TC from an unboxer, you could say you value it at lower than that and your unboxer could agree with that estimation. This is why these alleged sharks can get away with what they're doing. This gray area exists.

 

3. Appeals would be a mess for this, like you said (once again). If you get legitimate proof of a shark, just report them, they'll end up banned, and they can appeal normally.

 

 

Tl;DR: If you care so much about it, go out and find the proof to get them banned. Special marks won't work here and would be a giant mess. As unpopular of an opinion as mine is, if there was something we could do that's 'in the middle' of getting banned and being let off Scot-free, it would've been done by now.

 

 

Oh, and one last thing. You're throwing baseless accusations at these specific people, but I've seen you adding unboxers to 'help them' all the time. Whether you're actually helping them or not, I don't know. Just know you look shady af too. If you want to say the same to me, that's fine and all, but most of the unboxers I add to help I explicitly tell that I can't afford their hats. Go out and ask them yourselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators
7 minutes ago, Vittoo said:

I would simply ban them from the site. We all know what they are doing lol, even admins.

 

Banning without proof under any circumstance is not ok.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

allegedly, sharking 

There is a problem here , i'm not calling these people sharks by any means (I've not used the word in my entire post ) , i'm calling out people who repeatedly make unfair trades with unboxers , and that there must be a way on bp.tf that would show that the user was getting unfair deals out of unboxers.

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

'Marking' them for getting insanely good deals

This marking them for good deals , isn't about 1 or 2 trades , but rather many trades with similar traits of unfair deals and unboxers 

 

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

You're throwing baseless accusations at these specific people,

I did not call any of them sharks , rather people who have made significant trades with unboxers that are one sided beyond reasonable doubt , and gave a few links as an example of just within a month , so yea thats not "getting insanely good deals" 

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

but I've seen you adding unboxers to 'help them' all the time. Whether you're actually helping them or not, I don't know. Just know you look shady af too. If you want to say the same to me, that's fine and all, but most of the unboxers I add to help I explicitly tell that I can't afford their hats. Go out and ask them yourselves.

Something very interesting , so let's assume you report me for potentially being a person who exploits unboxers to my gains. We must ask a few questions 

1) Reason for suspect - 

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

'help them'

Have i offered on them ? did i trade with them ? ,ive not normally traded since a few months and the only trades i normally do are via my trump bot

The last time i added unboxers was to warn them about guns who got me triggered when he got the dbd headprize for 60ish in cancer unusuals and made a listing for 500 for it 

You need links of me trading with unboxers and im pretty darn sure ive not done any trades with people whom i add to offer assistance , so your only basis to suspect me was me adding people to offer them help , you should have dug deeper , and asked those people if i even offered or did a trade with them .

Nevertheless its nice to be skeptical of anyone who offers help for "free" its just that you need to go dig a bit deeper to check if its really suspicious 

 

This is to actually start a discussion , don't take this personally 

33 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

If you want to say the same to me, that's fine and all, but most of the unboxers I add to help I explicitly tell that I can't afford their hats. Go out and ask them yourselves.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Vittoo said:

I would simply ban them from the site. We all know what they are doing lol, even admins.

Sounds good, doesn't work. I mean, we can't just assume that they are manipulating with zero evidence of manipulation. It just doesn't work like that. And as fair as I'm aware, it isn't against the rules to target unboxers either. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

Even ignoring the fact that this would basically serve little purpose given that those who get sharked generally won't check backpack.tf...

 

We have no intention of moderating the value of trades. It's subjective; items have no inherent value, they're worth what people want to buy and sell them for. People are free to make bad offers and take bad offers if they choose. We're not getting into the process of setting arbitrary limits on what counts as even; there's no reason to draw that line anywhere in particular, it'd be a random number out of a hat. Not to mention that the mods of this site already have an enormous amount of work to handle between suggestions and the 100+ reports per day we already get. We have no desire to set ourselves as the arbiters of fair trading and place overworked moderators as judges. It's just not going to happen.

 

We can and will ban in cases where it can be proved that the experienced trader lied to or manipulated the unboxer for their own gain, but that is the limit to our involvement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Even ignoring the fact that this would basically serve little purpose given that those who get sharked generally won't check backpack.tf...

 

We have no intention of moderating the value of trades. It's subjective; items have no inherent value, they're worth what people want to buy and sell them for. People are free to make bad offers and take bad offers if they choose. We're not getting into the process of setting arbitrary limits on what counts as even; there's no reason to draw that line anywhere in particular, it'd be a random number out of a hat. Not to mention that the mods of this site already have an enormous amount of work to handle between suggestions and the 100+ reports per day we already get. We have no desire to set ourselves as the arbiters of fair trading and place overworked moderators as judges. It's just not going to happen.

 

We can and will ban in cases where it can be proved that the experienced trader lied to or manipulated the unboxer for their own gain, but that is the limit to our involvement.

There is no way to argue against this. In the end it's just better to choose to hunt for potential proof that can lead to a ban or just mind your own business and choose to ignore alternatively block the trader you are annoyed of. 

Just felt good to share and receive thoughts and ideas from different angles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators
15 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

There is a problem here , i'm not calling these people sharks by any means (I've not used the word in my entire post ) , i'm calling out people who repeatedly make unfair trades with unboxers

 

15 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

This marking the for good deals , isn't about 1 or 2 trades , but rather many trades with similar traits of unfair deals and unboxers.

 

18 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

I did not call any of them sharks , rather people who have made significant trades with unboxers that are one sided beyond reasonable doubt

 

Ok..

 

Steamrep marks scammers for being scammers. What are you going to mark these people for if you're not implying sharking? People who find other people who unbox unusuals and buy them for a big discount that benefits them? That'd be a bit ridiculous, don't you think?

 

27 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

and gave a few links as an example of just within a month , so yea thats not "getting insanely good deals" 

 

Oh you're right, it isn't getting any insanely good deals. It's getting insanely good deals within a month's time. The amount of time taken to get them doesn't just not make them what they actually are.

 

19 minutes ago, eXuberant said:

This is to actually start a discussion , don't take this personally 

 

I'm not, I'm just saying it's suspicious lol. If I wanted to dig deeper into it, then it wouldn't be a matter of expressing my opinion, but rather actually trying to find evidence that can get you banned. You wanted a discussion to express opinions, right? I did exactly that. My opinion is that it looks suspicious :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Damn this is a big argument so I wanna have my say even if its worthless. Its despicable they do it but yeah, they do it. What can you really do about it, the price of the item is based off what  people priced it at due to its appearance and appeal and so it changes between the different perspectives of traders cause everyone has different likings... Plus the Mods of this site already have enough on their hands daily, and you wanna unload a lot more of work onto them. They are only human doing whats humanly possible so don't go getting mad at them when you think up an 'amazing' idea and wanna get the Mods to do the work on top of their daily work. Just chill, it's not the worst idea i've heard of but I believe that it's pointless. Why would someone thats new know about a trading site?

 

(Sorry for that, it's a bit of a rant)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean. Lets be real here. People add unboxers and lowball. 

and to be fair some people go out to "warn" unboxers and end up getting the hat for low.

Lots of purple.

JxWUFfD.png

 

Just check "days friends" on this one.

03VGXrU.png

 

There isn't much you can do about it. 

This is the only case I see someone being banned is manipulating.

--> https://backpack.tf/u/76561198107418082

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would suggest that new unboxes are not added to the database until they click something on bp.tf, just don't show the item in the database so people can't track them. Just add some setting to disable it but leave it on by default.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators
7 minutes ago, Axle Change said:

I would suggest that new unboxes are not added to the database until they click something on bp.tf, just don't show the item in the database so people can't track them. Just add some setting to disable it but leave it on by default.

 

Adding a setting to disable that would then just make it useless though :huh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

 

Adding a setting to disable that would then just make it useless though :huh:

No, because the person would have to disable it for their own unboxes. Basically just don't show unusuals in premium search for some person unless that specific person pushes something on the site. If you actually use the site you could turn the feature off for yourself (i.e. you don't have to press something for it to show in the database anymore). This way if you actually know what you're doing, nothing changes but for new users the feature would block people from sharking.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators
8 minutes ago, Axle Change said:

No, because the person would have to disable it for their own unboxes. Basically just don't show unusuals in premium search for some person unless that specific person pushes something on the site. If you actually use the site you could turn the feature off for yourself (i.e. you don't have to press something for it to show in the database anymore). This way if you actually know what you're doing, nothing changes but for new users the feature would block people from sharking.

 

Ohhhhhhhh, that's really smart :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Axle Change said:

No, because the person would have to disable it for their own unboxes. Basically just don't show unusuals in premium search for some person unless that specific person pushes something on the site. If you actually use the site you could turn the feature off for yourself (i.e. you don't have to press something for it to show in the database anymore). This way if you actually know what you're doing, nothing changes but for new users the feature would block people from sharking.

Then Premium = Useless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This definitely is a problem; its sad to see backpack.tf's premium search abused to find inexperienced unboxers to get good trades, even if theres no manipulation involved. However, the solution is seems very simple: remove the untradable quality from premium search - or at least new unboxes. Its not like you can immediatly trade for untradable items anyways, so putting a 1 week hold on when you can see it in premium search doesn't really have much downside. It doesn't hurt suggestors either because its untradable so there not missing any sales. 

 

Is there something I am missing here? The solution seems almost too easy :c

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Xergoyf said:

This definitely is a problem; its sad to see backpack.tf's premium search abused to find inexperienced unboxers to get good trades, even if theres no manipulation involved. However, the solution is seems very simple: remove the untradable quality from premium search - or at least new unboxes. Its not like you can immediatly trade for untradable items anyways, so putting a 1 week hold on when you can see it in premium search doesn't really have much downside. It doesn't hurt suggestors either because its untradable so there not missing any sales. 

 

Is there something I am missing here? The solution seems almost too easy :c

This would make searching for new unboxes much much harder , but it wont assist people who get their hands on new effects/hats that are released by valve during updates . Anyways this should not affect people who make unusual price suggestions at all and new unboxers would be shielded for some time. The untradable quality should be unavailable only for unusuals.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Xergoyf said:

This definitely is a problem; its sad to see backpack.tf's premium search abused to find inexperienced unboxers to get good trades, even if theres no manipulation involved. However, the solution is seems very simple: remove the untradable quality from premium search - or at least new unboxes. Its not like you can immediatly trade for untradable items anyways, so putting a 1 week hold on when you can see it in premium search doesn't really have much downside. It doesn't hurt suggestors either because its untradable so there not missing any sales. 

 

Is there something I am missing here? The solution seems almost too easy :c

Not all unboxes are untradable. Unboxing a keyless crate that is tradable will give you a tradable unboxed item

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Apo said:

Then Premium = Useless.

No, you would still be able to look for items once they join the site or any existing items. It just specifically blocks people from searching for new unboxers that don't know about backpack.tf, not even all unboxes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...