Can Outpost mods do this?

[Gren]

- snip -

 

I understand your position and I respect it.  I will not file an appeal.  

 

However, can we maybe try and turn this into a positive?  As I mentioned before, is it possible for websites like OP to put in place some sort of a filter for suspicious accounts?  As I mentioned, one of the things I did look at were his OP trades.  They'd been open for weeks which signaled to me that if he hadn't been banned by now, he was probably deemed legitimate.   So for example, if an account does not meet min. requirements (e.g. 300 hrs or more in-game, minimum of 6 months on Steam, etc.), they are placed on hold until a staff member can review them.  I'm aware that you're probably already stretched on resources, but it seems to me that something like this would be a huge value add for the community.  

[BankingBot]

http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198134523989I think i fall under a scammer alt description then in my earlier days of trading

[Litwick]

Perhaps an afterthought, but it would probably be a good idea to update OP's rules so that it more clearly defines what a user should be looking into when doing high value trades. Either a link to SR's guidelines or an outline of what is expected will help reduce these kinds of situations. While I understand the need to keep the rule open to prevent abuse, I believe it leads to more confusion and misunderstandings than it helps. 

[sirploko]

I understand your position and I respect it.  I will not file an appeal.  

 

However, can we maybe try and turn this into a positive?  As I mentioned before, is it possible for websites like OP to put in place some sort of a filter for suspicious accounts?  As I mentioned, one of the things I did look at were his OP trades.  They'd been open for weeks which signaled to me that if he hadn't been banned by now, he was probably deemed legitimate.   So for example, if an account does not meet min. requirements (e.g. 300 hrs or more in-game, minimum of 6 months on Steam, etc.), they are placed on hold until a staff member can review them.  I'm aware that you're probably already stretched on resources, but it seems to me that something like this would be a huge value add for the community.  

 

While I would agree that something like this could be very useful, it simply is not feasible to do with the amount of new users we get every day, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of existing ones.

 

We can not vet the entirety of the trading community, just to absolve our users from the responsibility of doing background checks themselves. Sure, we would certainly like to immediately ban every scammer alt from our site and to a certain degree, we are successfull, but as I said above, we don't always can make the connection right away.

 

I will try to get Litwicks proposal below implemented though, I don't think it can hurt to add a link to the SR FAQ to the scammer rules, just so there are no misunderstandings about what you need to look out for.

[Frostbane]

I mentioned it briefly above already, but I will explain our reasoning on this judgement a bit more comprehensively:

 

When the matter was brought to my attention by a former staff member, the first thing I did was seeking out advice from 2 of our most experienced ex-admins. They looked at the account and agreed, that for anybody that is somewhat experienced in trading and knows about scammer alts, they should have seen the red flags.

 

The SR FAQ, by which we go when we judge if a user should be able to identify an alt, lists these points:

 

• Low hours of TF2/DotA with a deep knowledge of item values
• New Steam start date, but eager to trade high value items
• Private backpack, and with no rep threads
• Quickselling fresh items that are less than a day old in their backpack
• Nearly empty game backpack except for a few high value items with very recent history

- He had just around 100 hours in TF2 at the time of the first trust rating (342h now)

- His Steam join date is April 9th 2015

- His BP was not private

- He immediately started selling items that came out of nowhere, he started with CSGO skins though, but moved to high value TF2 items soon after.

- His BP never had any items worth mentioning until May 30th, when it first spiked with the addition of 2 Sunbeams unusuals:

 

 

 

 

Regarding the 4th and 5th point:

 

4.) Clearly says quickselling fresh items that are more than a day old in his backpack. He did NOT add us to sell his CSGO items, it was for TF2 items. The TF2 items he was interested in selling was not just a day old, the unusual is more than 2 weeks old. The CSGO items he has could have been unboxed/won on jackpot sites. It's not unbelievable to think someone who can afford that many games / badges can unbox or get lucky in gambling. Either way the trades were for TF2 items not CSGO. He did not offer to quicksell CSGO items nor was it obvious in his trades that he was quickselling them.

 

5.) The guideline clearly says nearly empty game back except for a few high valued items. It did not say anything about having anything worth mentioning. He did not have a nearly empty game backpack he had 280 different items when I traded him. 

 

Based on those points, he checks out on only 2 out 5, instead of the 4 out of 5 that the ex-admin claim.

 

Now that you have given us a comprehensive breakdown, there's a lot to be learned. Before this, a comprehensive breakdown like this was not made readily available to us, yet we are expected to conduct checks as thorough as these. Like I said we may be experienced traders but we are not experienced investigators. If we are expected to make checks as thorough as this involving cross trades between 2 different games, there should be a guide or something of that sort somewhere to educate us on how to. The information isn't readily available, yet we are expected to know it and punished when we don't.

[sirploko]

 

 

Based on those points it checks out in 2 out of 5 instead of 4 out of 5.

 

 

 

We talked about this at length already. Not every single item the user is selling has to be 'fresh' and neither has it to be TF2 items only. In this case it were CSGO skins, which are not mentioned in the (outdated) FAQ, but did you check his Dota items?

 

And I would consider a BP that jumped from $85 ot $850 (and to $1350 not even a week later) within a day certainly suspicious enough to match the 5th point. In your case, arguing about this is moot however, as there are the other issues pending as well, that would most certainly have resulted in a perma too.

 

But even if we were to agree on the latter 2 points, this will always be the elephant in the room:

[oozymrbunbun]

Yes a mistake once or twice not what has turned out to be 5.

Looking at your outpost, you like never cash trade? Don't compare yourself to Frost who's done THOUSANDS of cash transactions.

[oozymrbunbun]

This wouldn't be the first time. Things like this have been happening since OP started up in 2011, and they're not the only site that partakes in such hypocrisy.

 

 

Right, warned instead of given a 2 week ban for trading with an oh so obvious scammer alt. This reeks of the same shit as the Wayne and GoV incidents.

I've been using outpost since 2012 and i remember the good old days where jailbait was the main problem :3 

 

I agree, although I have NOTHING against the mod, I don't know him, if we get punished, so should he.

[77777777777777777777777777]

The concept of getting marked/banned from OP when one trades with a scammer alt is insanely fallacious.

In this context, multiple high-tier traders, including Frost and Gren unknowingly traded with what could be called a legit-looking scammer alt. They had absolutely 0 knowledge of ret0rd being a scammer alt-- hell, I've done my fair share of trading, and once I saw the report on Frost and after reviewing all provided evidence, I could not bring myself to believe ret0rd was a scammer alt. They had a cash rep thread dating from early this year (look up their 64 ID with SteamRep). While their source of item would've been suspicious out of context, I thought of many explanations as to what ret0rd could be:

 

- A collector who did not have much time, if at all to play TF2, and wishes to get the best items available

- A trader who cares very little for the game, but sees financial potential and monetizes it

- An investor who grabs good deals with a huge stock of pure, then sells for more, and resells the keys for Paypal. Lather, rinse, wash, repeat.

 

What I'm trying to get to here is that the Outpost bans of everyone who has traded with ret0rd are unrightful and illogical. Say I traded a Spellbound Hound Dog (and I could, for I main Heavy) and bought it from a scammer alt I knew of. In this case, I've condoned scamming and hijacking other people, and I fully deserve any consequences that come within.

And here arise the intricacies that make this case:

 

• As Debra and many others mentioned, Frost trades for potentially thousands of dollars worth of hats everyday. Despite this, he did check ret0rd's legitimacy as a trader and made an educated guess as to whether he was a scammer alt or not, using SteamRep's "red flags". So not only are you banning a bulk trader, one that performs arguably hundreds of trades everyday, but also one that doesn't use this as an excuse to not research who they trade with? I ensure you that Frost could have said "I do not have the time nor the energy to research the people I deal with, and they seemed legitimate" and that reasoning would have been 100% valid.

 

• The Outpost bans take this case completely out of context. Usually when one gets marked/banned/cautioned for buying from scammer alts, they do it knowing what consequences will arise and thus willingly condone scamming.

In this context, neither Frost nor Gren condone scamming, hijacking, fraud, or any unethical activity. Ret0rd's funds themselves are from an unknown source, it is thus impossible to say whether they were scammed funds or not; in other words, neither Frost nor Gren could have possibly unwillingly condoned scamming, hijacking, fraud or any unethical activity. The context of the trades was as following: two traders exchanging items and funds, both with utmost legitimacy. That's it.

 

• Last and not least-- why? This is why the Outpost bans of especially Frost are delirious and illogical. So because he unknowingly traded with a scammer alt that was looking so legitimate an Outpost moderator fell for it, you're going to ban him and deprive him of what could be his main source of income? Regardless of how one can feel about the matter, this reasoning is purely biased and blind. Outpost need to evaluate whether one deserves a ban or not, depending on context.

 

I am 100% against Frost's Outpost ban. Traders are human, and these punishments are just insane.

[sirploko]

 

Now that you have given us a comprehensive breakdown, there's a lot to be learned. Before this, a comprehensive breakdown like this was not made readily available to us, yet we are expected to conduct checks as thorough as these. Like I said we may be experienced traders but we are not experienced investigators. If we are expected to make checks as thorough as this involving cross trades between 2 different games, there should be a guide or something of that sort somewhere to educate us on how to. The information isn't readily available, yet we are expected to know it and punished when we don't.

 

 

Come on Frost, don't give me that. Here is a conversation we had on March 8th:

 

 

 

That guy had an account which was a few weeks old, his BP spiked and he was trying to make cash trades. Sounding familiar?

 

http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198212085236

 

You judged him on these factors and agreed he looked shady.

 

We have talked about dozens of users and I always told you what we look out for and what you need to look out for. I don't think it is appropriate to make it seem like you had no idea about these things.

[oozymrbunbun]

snip

Pretty sure he had more than 100 hours (in csgo at least) when I traded with him.

 

Now that you mention it, sure let's look at SR's tips how to avoid "obvious" scammer alts.

 

• Low hours of TF2/DotA with a deep knowledge of item values - He had a good amount of hours in CSGO, he only sold me keys, you don't need to be a cs go wizard to find out how much they sell for.
• New Steam start date, but eager to trade high value items 9 weeks is young, but if I looked at his profile, I would just think he invested a lot of money on his steam account. 99.9% of scammer alts NEVER invest that much money to look legit.
• Private backpack, and with no rep threads - Everything about him was public, he also had some backpack.tf rep and a cs go rep thread (can't find it tho)
• Quickselling fresh items that are less than a day old in their backpack - He never quicksold "fresh" items.
• Nearly empty game backpack except for a few high value items with very recent history - He was a csgo jackpot gambler I think and he constantly gained/lost items.

so let's take a look at the things that makes him "obvious":

-9 weeks old. I'd have to go to his Steamrep, and then look when he joined steam.

 

But let's look at what makes him look not obvious:

-Level 40

-30+ games

-Good amount of hours

-Had reputation threads

[sirploko]

I've been using outpost since 2012 and i remember the good old days where jailbait was the main problem :3 

 

I agree, although I have NOTHING against the mod, I don't know him, if we get punished, so should he.

 Please read what was written about this issue by LtScout and myself. He receives the same exact punishment everyone else does. A caution and a 2 week trading ban. He will NOT participate in trading on Outpost during this time and the reason he is not banned, is because he will continue his work with us. If it was his second trade with scammers instead, he would be permanently banned like the other people in that situation and certainly be removed as a staff member. 

 

I can not stop you from spreading lies, or deliberately ignoring what was written, but it has been made absolutely clear by now, that LtScout is not above the rules.

[Frostbane]

snip

 

Firstly please take a look at the account in the quoted case: 

 

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198212085236

http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/76561198212085236

http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198212085236

 

I judged him on these 2 factors initially, and continued to look for other indicators, I couldn't find any to indicate he wasn't an alt. Ret0rd's one the other hand was not so obvious. These 2 cases are not at all similar and should not be compared. Ret0rd had a lot more activity. Simply put those 2 factors seemed more than enough in that case but not ret0rds. Ret0rd looked more like a new trader who's putting time into it. To me that's what it looked like, to you it looked different. Was it obvious? Most probably not.

[sirploko]

-9 weeks old. I'd have to go to his Steamrep, and then look when he joined steam.

 

But let's look at what makes him look not obvious:

-Level 40

-30+ games

-Good amount of hours

-Had reputation threads

 

And where does it say that you should judge users on these points?

[oozymrbunbun]

snip

How can you compare ret0rd to that other guy? The other guy had 2 games and was steam level 1, I'd definitely not trade with him. There were many factors that made that guy look shady, ret0rd only had like 1 shady factor.

[oozymrbunbun]

 Please read what was written about this issue by LtScout and myself. He receives the same exact punishment everyone else does. A caution and a 2 week trading ban. He will NOT participate in trading on Outpost during this time and the reason he is not banned, is because he will continue his work with us. If it was his second trade with scammers instead, he would be permanently banned like the other people in that situation and certainly be removed as a staff member. 

 

I can not stop you from spreading lies, or deliberately ignoring what was written, but it has been made absolutely clear by now, that LtScout is not above the rules.

Sorry, I skimmed through most of what you read, but it's good to hear I guess ltscout got punished as well.

[sirploko]

Firstly please take a look at the account in the quoted case: 

 

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198212085236

 

I judged him on these 2 factors solely because he did not have the account with the appearance of ret0rd or much more of a story to it. Ret0rd had 2 the same 2 indications of an alt but had plenty more to indicate otherwise. There 2 cases are not at all similar. Simply put those 2 factors seemed more than enough in that case but not ret0rds.  

 

"His account is not even a month old, yet he is trading unusuals already. This guy is not safe to trade with."

.

.

.

"Which he is probably too new to be doing anyway."

 

Notice how we don't talk about his Steam level, or the amount of games or anything of that sort that does not matter when determining if someone is an alt?

[Frostbane]

We talked about this at length already. Not every single item the user is selling has to be 'fresh' and neither has it to be TF2 items only. In this case it were CSGO skins, which are not mentioned in the (outdated) FAQ, but did you check his Dota items?

 

And I would consider a BP that jumped from $85 ot $850 (and to $1350 not even a week later) within a day certainly suspicious enough to match the 5th point. In your case, arguing about this is moot however, as there are the other issues pending as well, that would most certainly have resulted in a perma too.

 

But even if we were to agree on the latter 2 points, this will always be the elephant in the room:

 

My point basically is there is a huge disconnect between what is expected of us, and what is available for us to work with. You just said yourself the FAQ is outdated yet that is the main guide that we have to work with. The economy/market/community has changed in so many ways. With all the loto/jackpot/raffle sites, it's much easier for new accounts to attain high valued items. This only makes identifying an alt much harder. Yet we have the same resources to work with and cope with the bigger expectations. At a time like this when things are not as clear cut, the case should be judged on if there's reasonable doubt to think this person is not an "obvious" scammer. The word "obvious" on it's own indicates not much room for argument is there. This many people would not be wrong if it were "obvious".

[77777777777777777777777777]

"His account is not even a month old, yet he is trading unusuals already. This guy is not safe to trade with."

.

.

.

"Which he is probably too new to be doing anyway."

 

Notice how we don't talk about his Steam level, or the amount of games or anything of that sort that does not matter when determining if someone is an alt?

 

 

4 months is plenty of time to learn the basics of trading and to see TF2 can generate huge income if invested in properly. Hell, make it 2 months, back when Frost left him a +rep-- someone else on this thread were allegedly "already hardcore trading 2 months after I joined Steam".

Furthermore, while you didn't speak of their steam level and/or games, it doesn't mean these two factors don't increase credibility.

 

[Gren]

- snip -

 

Thanks, another reasonable take on the issues.  

 

As I said, I will not appeal, there clearly is no point.  However, I do want to point out again, that these trades were carried out without malicious intent.  They were mistakes.  But were they crimes?  Where is the victim here?  I can't find him/her.  This case is different than the normal "bought quicksells off a scammer".   We (well, at least not me, I can't fully speak for the others), didn't buy quicksells which were obtained illegally.  I bought keys at a reasonable rate, they were not heavily discounted.  Where did the keys come from?  I don't know.  But it certainly didn't look like they were obtained via illegal means, e.g. phishing.   These trades (again, at least in my case) were not for profit.  I bought keys to unbox, plain and simple, they weren't even for re-sale later (although I may have sold some to close a friend who was also unboxing, I can't exactly recall now).  

 

I think the bigger issue though is this:  Look at who you are removing from this economy.  Because make no mistake, I'm pretty much done now, that's a fact, not some sort of threat.  So here's the individual you removed: 

 

- Mature, intelligent player who gave advice freely to new players

- Active unusual trader; a fair trader, not a scammer or manipulator.  I am that guy that sees a hat he likes, and I will overpay handsomely or even just pay full price in pure. 

- A player who actually has real world funds which I've used on many occasions to buy keys, backpacks, hats, etc.  I am one of the guys who can help you turn your inventory into real cash when you need it, and I don't expect a 50% quicksell rate (feel free to check my TF2-T Rep to verify this)

- a Donator to all the major websites, plus community servers like Railbait and Skial

 

Am I really someone you so easily cast aside?  Am I not more valuable in this community than outside of it?   You keep removing players like me or Frost, soon enough, you will be left with just a fraction of the community that once made up TF2 trading which will lead to its demise - of that I am certain.   

[sirploko]

My point basically is there is a huge disconnect between what is expected of us, and what is available for us to work with. You just said yourself the FAQ is outdated yet that is the main guide that we have to work with. The economy/market/community has changed in so many ways. With all the loto/jackpot/raffle sites, it's much easier for new accounts to attain high valued items. This only makes identifying an alt much harder. Yet we have the same resources to work with and cope with the bigger expectations. At a time like this when things are not as clear cut, the case should be judged on if there's reasonable doubt to think this person is not an "obvious" scammer. The word "obvious" on it's own indicates not much room for argument is there. This many people would not be wrong if it were "obvious".

 

The FAQ being outdated in terms of not having CSGO in there. The other factors are still valid.

 

What is available to you to work with is exactly the things we judge you on, publicly available information as outlined in the FAQ. And if a user won a raffle or unboxed a valuable item, you can see that in the history.

 

There is no excuse to not get suspicious of new accounts trading for high values, ever. We had a case not long ago where some guys BP spiked like 90 degrees and Toughsox and me were talking about it. Then we noticed that he had unboxed a 1000 key misc or something and all made sense. If you check the high value items a user held in his BP when it spiked and he has the original ID or a raffle bot in the history, you can go ahead and assume.

 

If that is not the case, you need to ask yourself how the guy acquired it legitimately. The term obvious does not mean he is banned or tagged, or his profile looks like the one of the other guy from our chat. It means that there are pointers that are obviously suspicious.

 

obvious

 

 

adjective: obvious

easily perceived or understood; clear, self-evident, or apparent.

 

Since you are judging an account on the SR pointers, the red flags are as obvious as they get. I'm not linking the first sentence of the FAQ again, but account age plays a pivotal role.

 

But I said all of these things already and I am tired of repeating myself. The account was shady as hell, you knew what to look out for and did not do that. Instead you glanced at his profile and bp.tf trust and called it a day.

 

These bans have been discussed at length and will not be overturned. Everyone involved may appeal and it is not out of the question that you will be granted access again in a few months time, if there are no further trades with alts or scammers in the meantime.

 

If there are any questions left that I have not been answering already, I'll be happy to over the next few days, but in terms of discussing the obviousness of that account, the conversation with me is over.

[Frostbane]

 

 

 

But I said all of these things already and I am tired of repeating myself. The account was shady as hell, you knew what to look out for and did not do that. Instead you glanced at his profile and bp.tf trust and called it a day.

 

 

 

 

That's not true. I looked at a lot more before coming to a decision. At the time I traded him he had 9 pages of rep on his steam profile indicating active trading. I wouldn't say he is trusted based on those rep but at least we can see activity from that. His backpack.tf graph matched the trading activity. It had 1 or 2 spikes but they were relatively gradual and nothing to shocking coming from a cross trader. He had a ton of trades up on outpost even before we traded indicating he was interested in cross trading from CSGO into TF2 which was where I assumed the unusuals came from. Looking at the history of the unusual that was in his backpack it was 2 weeks old and had no scammers in it. Where is the red flag? Apart from the account age and low hours? With that logic there should only be 2 factors in determining if we should trade someone or not and not 5. To say "I knew what to look out for and did not do that, instead I glanced at his profile and called it a day" could not be further from the truth.

[sirploko]

Am I really someone you so easily cast aside?  Am I not more valuable in this community than outside of it?   You keep removing players like me or Frost, soon enough, you will be left with just a fraction of the community that once made up TF2 trading which will lead to its demise - of that I am certain.   

 

Gren, don't get me wrong. This is not a personal issue and I am sure you are an upstanding member of this community. However, you have been banned for trading with a scammer/alt a second time now and we do not make exceptions when it comes to our rules. That's why I like volunteering for Outpost. We have banned many high profile traders and community admins in the past and every time the bans were discussed for hours at a time, this one being no exception.

 

We do not cast aside anyone lightly, but we owe it to our other users and ourselves, that we keep our integrity. With your record with us, it is very likely that you and some of the other users banned this week will get another chance, so don't think an appeal will be useless. This recent ban may not be overturned, but we did and will continue to accept back users that were permabanned after some months have passed.

 

Of course, if you feel slighted by us and don't want to come back ever again, that is not something to hold against you. But we are reasonable when it comes to having a second look at a user that had a few missteps. Garry accepted countless second and third appeals, when he thought enough time had passed and the user learned his lesson.

 

All of the things you listed about yourself you can continue to do, just not on Outpost for the time being. Don't make your future in this game dependent on a single trading site. People can continue to trade with you, as you are neither tagged nor banned for scamming and you will find that there are alternatives that may not give you the frequency OP does, but with which you can work as well.

 

Again, and this is meant for all the people banned. Permabans are not necessarily final. They can be, but if you do not reoffend in the meantime and are not abusive in your appeals, there is every chance in the world that you might be trading on Outpost in 2015 again.

[Kevin the Chicken God]

The issue I'm having with this isn't the obviousness of the account, since not trading with these accounts that qualify as 'obvious scammer alts' would seriously would alienate a large part of trading traffic, it's that these bans accomplished nothing. Frost bought 20 keys off the guy, the mod bought 30 keys, but that's all done now. By banning these big time traders permanently because they've made 2 or 3 mistakes you're hurting the economy more than helping it by banning users who are assisting scammers in cashing out. These bans have accomplished nothing except take out big time traders who keep the market moving and have a significant portion of unusuals funneled through them. The intent of the rule was to punish users who helped scammers profit off their stolen goods, however banning people who were fooled, including a moderator (who should be the best of the best at judging whether or not a user is a scammer alt or not), long after the scammer has already been long gone does nothing except screw over those involved.

[polar]

Eh. I can understand and respect the guidelines and all, but if 20+ seasoned traders couldn't identify that as an "obvious alt" then maybe it's not really obvious and maybe the guidelines should be tweaked.

 

A lot of the trusts have been removed. Don't let the 8 +trusts on the page belie how many people actually traded with him.