Can Outpost mods do this?

[AmazingRussian]

Its not that hard to check through things like this.  Your first and only ban was from trading with a MARKED scammer. You could have easily just clicked the steamrep button on his bp.tf or his tf2op. Or the "harder" way by copying his steam link and posting it in to steamrep yourself. You and most others are complaining about many diffrent things and only one of you seems to actually own up and acknowledge you have made a mistake which is gren. The rest of you just want to make up excuses and point fingers at others. 

 

 

I don't recall ever trying to talk down my ban, which I take full responsibility for. The user sent me a trade offer of his 10 key item for my 9 keys, and I failed to check his account before accepting. That's completely on me.

 

Also dont recall where I pointed a finger at others either, but you seem pretty good at only seeing what you want to see even if it's not there.

 

Lastly, I'm not arguing whether or not I made a mistake. I dont think of any of us who traded with this user are going around knowingly trading with scammers, obviously it's a mistake.

 

What I'm arguing is that tf2outposts punishments for making mistakes is extremely harsh. It has no room for grey area or using critical thinking and evaluating it on a case by case basis, just a flat 2 strikes and you're out policy. I'll say it again, Under the current tf2outpost rules, if you accidentally trade with a scammer twice in 2 out of 10,000 trades and have 99.98% scammer avoidance, you get permanently banned.

[Cookie Monster]

What are you trying to prove? Everything you mentioned has been completely useless, none of us are making excuses so please think before you say something ignorant.

I can not dumb down my posts any more for you guys.  You are all just blaming outpost for not having the rules you want them to have.

[oozymrbunbun]

I don't recall ever trying to talk down my ban, which I take full responsibility for. The user sent me a trade offer of his 10 key item for my 9 keys, and I failed to check his account before accepting. That's completely on me.

^^^

All of us who've traded with marked scammers/obv. alts take full responsibility, we're not denying it, but apparently to cookie monster we fail to find "obvious" scammer alts and the rules aren't flawed at all.

[oozymrbunbun]

I can not dumb down my posts any more for you guys.  You are all just blaming outpost for not having the rules you want them to have.

Re-read what I first stated in the thread.

[sirploko]

snip

You do realize, that the time we volunteer is not for personal gain? If you can't be asked to check a background of someone you trade with, you might be in for a surprise in the near future. (spoiler: it will be red and it says "scammer" on your SR profile).

 

And it took me not even 5 minutes to see all the stuff I presented in this post. The Steam join date is right on his bp.tf page and so is his BP graph and all the historical data. Calling me clinically insane is also not very nice, I think you need to learn some manners.

[Cookie Monster]

Re-read what I first stated in the thread.

Have you read your title? 

Can Outpost mods do this?

Using that title implies you are blaming it on outpost/outposts mods.

 

I don't recall ever trying to talk down my ban, which I take full responsibility for. The user sent me a trade offer of his 10 key item for my 9 keys, and I failed to check his account before accepting. That's completely on me.

 

Also dont recall where I pointed a finger at others either, but you seem pretty good at only seeing what you want to see even if it's not there.

 

Also, I'm not arguing whether or not I made a mistake. I'm arguing that tf2outposts punishments for making mistakes is extremely harsh. I'll say it again, Under the current tf2outpost rules, if you accidentally trade with a scammer twice in 2 out of 10,000 trades and have 99.98% scammer avoidance, you get permanently banned.

I see dead people

[oozymrbunbun]

Have you read your title? 

Can Outpost mods do this?

Using that title implies you are blaming it on outpost/outposts mods.

 

I see dead people

Can't change the title, that's why I put edit because my thoughts changed over the past few hours. I put down "Can Outpost mods do this?" because at first I thought lt.scout had it easier because he was a mod.

[Cookie Monster]

I will just be reading this thread from now on as its became less interesting with out Debra and Nick commenting.   Ill just leave you with this statement that Putin once told me.

[AmazingRussian]

You do realize, that the time we volunteer is not for personal gain? If you can't be asked to check a background of someone you trade with, you might be in for a surprise in the near future. (spoiler: it will be red and it says "scammer" on your SR profile).

 

And it took me not even 5 minutes to see all the stuff I presented in this post. The Steam join date is right on his bp.tf page and so is his BP graph and all the historical data. Calling me clinically insane is also not very nice, I think you need to learn some manners

 

I realize the time you spend is volunteer work, I and I am forever grateful to websites like steamrep and outpost that allow the trading community to flourish and help provide a clean place to trade. However when unjust situations like this arise, I have to speak my mind.

 

I never said I dont check the people I trade with, I only said I dont do a check as extensive as what you are showing, because I physically dont have enough hours in a day to do so. The whole argument seems to be what we classify as an "obvious" scammer alt. I dont believe an account that you have to sort through its csgo items, tf2items, backpack.tf page, full steam profile, steamrep, dota 2 items, tf2outpost, individual item history, and more falls under obvious.

 

Obvious to me is an account that you can tell is shady just by looking at it or by doing a couple of the most common checks. If you're doing everything short of running his social security number it is not an obvious alt. The fact that you chose your definition of obvious and decided it's the law is also slightly concerning.

 

In the end as I have said before though, neither outpost nor the users who got banned gain anything out of this. The tf2outpost cash trading scene isnt safer now that it took out 10+ reputable traders who have collectively helped people cash out millions of dollars worth of stuff without scamming them. The only person who came out on top is the scammer as he just sets up a new account for a couple bucks and now has a wider pool of targets to scam since its harder to find a legitimate trader.

[oozymrbunbun]

I will just be reading this thread from now on as its became less interesting with out Debra and Nick commenting.   Ill just leave you with this statement that Putin once told me.

You just state my point that everything you've posted on this thread is useless.

[Дебра]

• Low hours of TF2/DotA with a deep knowledge of item values

 

How is 200 hours low? Most games only get played for 10, maybe 20 at most hours. Almost 9 days spent ingame is barely low.

Also if a 7 page debate over whether it is a obvious alt or not pretty much proves it isn't a obvious alt. Being 'new' doesn't quite justify being labeled as a scammer as newbies are capable of buying skins from opskins.com, keys from tf2shop or marketplace.tf or even the mann co store. They are 100% capable of obtaining items and I have seen worse that haven't ended up being scammers (to my knowledge). Do we just shut out the newbies?

 

Also the rules are all down to interpretation.

 

• Low hours of TF2/DotA with a deep knowledge of item values

How many years of playtime do you have to have? If over a week isn't enough time spent ingame to be classified as someone who has played the game idk what is. Not everyone has the time or the dedication to play 10k hours. Oh and is http://backpack.tf/unusualsand a quick outpost search to see it's price really deep knowledge.

• New Steam start date, but eager to trade high value items

New being? He wasn't a fresh 2 week old account so he wasn't made with the sole purpose to fence scammed goods. In a couple months someone could easily decide to buy some skins.

• Private backpack, and with no rep threads

Not private. Had a rep thread.

• Quickselling fresh items that are less than a day old in their backpack

He wasn't quickselling. He just wanted to swap gun skins for hats and later hats for money once he was done with the game.

• Nearly empty game backpack except for a few high value items with very recent history

It wasn't empty. He had skins for all his useful weapons. He had tons of stranges. He had plenty of craft hats. He had all the guns he needed. Does he need the full 1500+ items that most hardcore traders have? I sure as hell don't.

[Kuuko-San]

Just.

 

ugh

[oozymrbunbun]

snip

 

A month ago he had a lot less hours I think, I can't remember exactly how many hours he had on TF2/CSGO, so that's where sirploko believes he was an obvious scammer alt, also that ret0rd was 9 weeks old at the time of the trade.

Everything else you've said was completely true though.

[oozymrbunbun]

You do realize, that the time we volunteer is not for personal gain? If you can't be asked to check a background of someone you trade with, you might be in for a surprise in the near future. (spoiler: it will be red and it says "scammer" on your SR profile).

 

And it took me not even 5 minutes to see all the stuff I presented in this post. The Steam join date is right on his bp.tf page and so is his BP graph and all the historical data. Calling me clinically insane is also not very nice, I think you need to learn some manners.

Most obvious accounts, I mean REALLY obvious scammer alts doesn't even take a minute to find out if they're a scammer alt because most of them will have few games, few comments, low steam level, etc.

 

Calling you insane isn't nice, but when someone paid for their premium membership and now they can't even use it, can make that person upset.

[Дебра]

A month ago he had a lot less hours I think, I can't remember exactly how many hours he had on TF2/CSGO, so that's where sirploko believes he was an obvious scammer alt, also that ret0rd was 9 weeks old at the time of the trade.

Everything else you've said was completely true though.

 

He had 9 days playtime. 100ish TF2 and 100ish CS:GO. 8,33 days. I'm sure he had slightly more and it was rounded down.

[Gren]

 

 

If the community thinks that these rules need to be revised, then please go ahead and start with their origin. But just as I can't ask you to ban these people here as well, since they did trade with a scammer alt whose account was brand new, I can not accept pleas for leniency from you or other community admins. If there is a divide about how we apply Steamreps rules, they are weakened and may be in need of change. But until that change happens, we will follow them by the letter.

 

I do believe the rules are in need of serious revision, and I don't think I'm alone.  So much has changed since those rules were first conceived (e.g. a bill's is now less than 3 keys, hardly making it a good threshold for a ban-able offense; SCM updates have opened up new avenues for item laundering; etc.).   But how do we even begin to penetrate the ivory tower that is SR?  SR admins have shown on multiple occasions that they are unwilling to be more transparent, let alone open the discussion for rule revisions.   If we want a change, it needs to come from a greater entity, which leaves pretty much just the big community partners, like OP and BP.  And I have a feeling that you guys aren't exactly keen on leading the charge of trying to get SR to implement changes.  

 

It's a separate discussion, but is it even valuable to still adhere to SR rules, simply because once upon a time it was the major watch dog?  The "in the absence of anything better" argument doesn't hold, fact is that both OP and BP are 100x faster and more efficient at carrying out SR rules than SR is at this point.  

 

Couldn't the major stakeholders (OP, Bazaar, BP, Scrap, etc.) get on a couple of skype calls and hammer out a new set of rules?  I know it sounds too simple (or maybe too complex), but really, is it?  

[Дебра]

a bill's is now less than 3 keys, hardly making it a good threshold for a ban-able offense

 

A bill's isn't the current threshold, it's 10 keys. Just they don't tell you the rules.

[AmazingRussian]

I do believe the rules are in need of serious revision, and I don't think I'm alone.  So much has changed since those rules were first conceived (e.g. a bill's is now less than 3 keys, hardly making it a good threshold for a ban-able offense; SCM updates have opened up new avenues for item laundering; etc.).   But how do we even begin to penetrate the ivory tower that is SR?  SR admins have shown on multiple occasions that they are unwilling to be more transparent, let alone open the discussion for rule revisions.   If we want a change, it needs to come from a greater entity, which leaves pretty much just the big community partners, like OP and BP.  And I have a feeling that you guys aren't exactly keen on leading the charge of trying to get SR to implement changes.  

 

It's a separate discussion, but is it even valuable to still adhere to SR rules, simply because once upon a time it was the major watch dog?  The "in the absence of anything better" argument doesn't hold, fact is that both OP and BP are 100x faster and more efficient at carrying out SR rules than SR is at this point.  

 

Couldn't the major stakeholders (OP, Bazaar, BP, Scrap, etc.) get on a couple of skype calls and hammer out a new set of rules?  I know it sounds too simple (or maybe too complex), but really, is it?  

 

This is what happens when the law is followed to the letter and the spirit of the law is thrown out the door, including any logic or critical thinking.

 

I find it really hard to believe that it was steamrep's intention when creating those rules to permanently remove any and all traders with the community who accidentally trade with a scammer/scammer alt once every couple thousands trades because they failed to run a full background check. Hell in this case some of the rules ARE indeed up for interpretation, and sirploko just chose the most strict definition possible.

 

Why is he doing this? Idk. To teach everyone a lesson and set an example out of these traders? To show everyone he's a new hotshot mod with great detective skills? To remove every large reputable trader from the community to make it easier for scammers to find targets? Beats me what he's hoping to accomplish here.

[oozymrbunbun]

This is what happens when the law is followed to the letter and the spirit of the law is thrown out the door, including any logic or critical thinking.

 

I find it really hard to believe that it was steamrep's intention when creating those rules to permanently remove any and all traders with the community who accidentally trade with a scammer/scammer alt once every couple thousands trades because they failed to run a full background check. Hell in this case some of the rules ARE indeed up for interpretation, and sirploko just chose the most strict definition possible.

 

Why is he doing this? Idk. To teach everyone a lesson and set an example out of these traders? To show everyone he's a new hotshot mod with great detective skills? To remove every large reputable trader from the community to make it easier for scammers to find targets? Beats me what he's hoping to accomplish here.

Steamrep was actually a lot more lenient when it came with trading with scammer, or if they knew it was an accident/misunderstanding I was away around 2013, and I think that's when Outpost decided to really hammer down the "no-trading-w/-scammers rule." 

 

Sirploko is probably just trying to show that even when honest, reputable big-time traders like us make mistakes (which in my opinion really isn't one), will still get banned no matter what.

[Debras Neighbor #1]

You guys are all very silly. Its just a video game. If you dont want to have to deal with all this admin macho bullshit just move to CSGO. Its a much better environment and there is no fingerpointing just trading. People say its cancer but its not really that bad If you know how to avoid it.

 

Anyways I dont understand why this outpost mod is trying so hard to depress others ability to trade. Mabye he has been powerless his whole life and now wants power? They certaintly arent helping the community by doing this, they are disabling it and turning people off.  I believe we need a new announcement. [PSA] If your new fuck off? I dont want the TF2 community to be seen like that and im sure while you have good intentions (mabye) i believe you must agree with me.

 

Anyways as i said earlier no one cares in csgo.

 

CSGOJACKPOT - Allows anyone to bet, doesnt check the SR API, why? Well because its unnecessary.  People bet all the time and the owners Chris and Cinema make tens of thousands off "Scammers" (parenthesis since real scammers are tradebanned and dont have a cute red mark next to their name) such as CARE and many others. In fact Chris even follows CAre on Twitter.

 

CSGOSHUFFLE - They also allow anyone to bet, cAre bets there all the time along with many other "percieved scammers" No issues, no one hurt, no drama.

 

OPSKINS - they have their own system of banning people 100% different than steamrep. They let ANYONE buy/sell on their website. I know many marked scammers that use the site with no issues, Care, Samalex. and others included., In Fact OPSKINS sells 15,000 items per day on average and has over 600,000 users. Which is leaps and bounds over the number of active users SR has, and they did it in 1/10th of the time. Why? Because they provide something the community wants. And believe it or not it works, they middleman for a fee (private listing) and they are STOPPING PEOPLE GETTING SCAMMED, they are doing something and not just pointing fingers, good for them

 

Lastly SR is Scared of CSGO because they know they are not wanted

 

3/5 players of the old ENVYUS were lent lores by "cAre" for the finals. Of course FOG archived it saying it was too highprofile and said they sent it to SR but we will never hear from them.

 

Phantomlord, a huge streamer trades with care all the time , there has been over $20,000 exchanged between him and cAre, care even has an alt dedicated to phantomlords giveaways as care is an admin on his twitch channel and they are friends. He was reported, report was archived as admins are "scared" (please correct me if im wrong)

 

M0e- traded over $20,000 with marked scammers, no action just an archived report.

 

m0e's 13 year old brother recieved a ST KARA FADE FN from a marked scammer (cAre) and the report is archived as  the reason is the "13 year old is too high profile and it will be forwareded to sr" but of course no action will be taken as they are "famous".

 

Moral of the story? They are doing this to you because they have power in this community and they can get away with it. They arent doing it in csgo ...why? because they cant get away with it.

 

PS: unmark m0tar2k

[fmca]

I'm so done. Reading sirploko's argumentation is like following some of the strictest implementation of laws I've ever seen, regardless of context. Sorry mate, I get you're a volunteer and I'm sure you've convinced yourself that you're doing the right thing (or following the rules, which appears to be synonymous to you) but you have to remember that to a certain extent you police the community with the consent of the community. Steamrep is beginning to be seen as a website that does not police the community with consent, and this case provides a highlight of why outpost might be seen to be that as well. It's not like your sites have a god-given right to the traffic that they do have, and enough gaffes like this and you might even start to see a drop. I wonder how rigidly you would hold to the rules you quote, without accepting that they might be applied or interpreted erroneously, at that point?

 

Your rules are all well and good, and for the most part I'd say they operate fairly well. However, once they ossify to the point where you can't see beyond them and the fact that they might need to be changed, your services stand a decent chance of being abandoned. Even the U.S. Constitution, held up as a rigid foundation of American law, has been amended and indeed interpreted by judges in varying ways over time. 

[λngelღмander]

I was hesitant to reply to this topic before, because I felt there was nothing that hadn't already been said that I could add, and I didn't want to reiterate. However, it is apparent to me that Outpost was overzealous in this case. As many users have said before, in order to deem this account an alt, a considerable amount of research was necessary. At some point, I think you cross the line between protecting the community from scammers and punishing those who make mistakes. I don't think Frost had any intention of trading with a scammer alt. I don't think any of the users involved did. I don't think punishing people who are just trying to turn an honest profit is in any way helpful to the community. Was steamrep not started with the intention of helping people discern between a scammer and a non-scammer? I think we've gotten away from the actual purpose of the rules. The rules are here to 

 

A. Help prevent people from being scammed. This they accomplish for the most part, seeing that people who engage in trade scams are often swiftly banned by partner websites. Steamrep's glacial pace is irrelevant, someone banned on backpack.tf and outpost you will know to have caution when trading with.

 

B. To prevent scammers from offloading their scammed goods. This is the part that gets so many traders in trouble. The rules are here to basically slap the people who aid scammers on the back of their hands. This is fine, it is not okay to be turning a profit by buying stolen goods. Anyone doing this willingly or knowingly deserves to be banned and marked. Trading with them for profit is also not okay, as it is very possible that after being marked, the user will continue to trade with scammers for scammed items.

 

However, I think banning people for unknowingly trading with a scammer defeats the purpose of the rules. They are there to discourage people from trading with scammers, and they did their job seeing that frost and gren and oozy were doing their best to avoid trading with scammers. There is only so much these rules can do to protect the community. Those traders who left rep on this scammer's profile were obviously not trying to turn a profit by buying scammed goods. 

 

Banning those traders is unnecessary, as they obviously already knew the rules and it was an honest mistake. If it occurs with great frequency and is plausible that it is not a mere accident, then by all means ban them. But by banning these users who really did make an attempt to avoid the scammer, you don't stop scammers from offloading their goods. If anything, being banned on outpost could turn a user sour, and make them begin scamming themselves. Being banned on outpost was the end of my trading career, and thankfully I never decided to start scamming, but it's feasible that someone would take a ban like this as impetus to begin a less illustrious career. One can only be so good at interpreting and using the rules. 

 

As mentioned before, if a large sampling of people would have traded with this user, and it takes that much investigation just to allege that they are a scammer alt, that many people willing to trade with them without a second thought, then I hardly see how that alt can be considered obvious. 

 

Frost may have been on his last leg, and perhaps he is done. But other traders involved certainly had no negative intentions, and banning people who understand and have every intention of following the rules is silly. 

 

 

I don't think banning all of these high tier traders will affect site traffic or revenue generated from premium. I don't think you are obligated to bend to the will of members of the community. I don't think the current rules are bad. I think that the fact that the rules are here to protect the community has been forgotten. It should not about punishing the good traders who screw up, it should be about kicking out the bad traders who care not for the rules.

[oozymrbunbun]

snip

Actually most of us who traded of us who traded with ret0rd were already on our last leg But everything you said was true. What you said reminded me a lot of what this ex-admin said: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/resigning-from-steamrep-staff.46425/

[fluffyy]

At this point you'd be expected to achieve the same level of perfection DNA replication has, 1 mistake out of a billion.

 

Some standards, in my opinion

[skaskanker]

I rarely if ever post in the backpack.tf forums because i'm not the most liked person here, but I was also affected by this ridiculous ban. Even though mine is for a week it is still a blemish on my perfect trading record. Why? Because outpost staff cuts corners and picks and chooses when to enforce their vague rules. The fact is I've been doing this longer than most of the outpost admins and I still don't think it's an obvious alt account. Upon further investigation we found 3 other accounts this guy is "Aging" to make them look legit. The only way we found this was with IP information. Of which my permissions were removed several months ago off outpost. So clearly this guy is putting in a lot of effort to make the accounts not OBVIOUS. Including buying AAA title games like GTA5 for them. 

 

Now, I don't expect anything to come out of appealing publicly or privately to them because the outpost staff would rather sweep it under the rug and defend a new moderator/admins decision than actually acknowledge that he might have been a bit overzealous by calling this an obvious scammer alt. It's this kind of bullshit, and me speaking out about it, that got my privileges removes from the site.

 

It just goes to show you how all the TF2 sites such as outpost are becoming more and more irrelevant as time goes on, because they refuse to change their closed mindsets that were developed for TF2 only. CSGO and Dota have expanded trading way past the TF2 community and threw a lot of which we used to use to find/fight scammers out the window.

I believe someone mentioned account buying/selling. I could go to bitcointalk forums and buy 10-20 6-10 year old accounts for less than 30$. That sort of access makes an account's age rather irrelevant don't you think? Which is why I don't even look at that anymore.

 

Well, I said my piece.