Ask a SteamRep admin

October 17, 2015

but a mark doesn't function as a warning if the people who need warning don't know or use steamrep, and if the mark itself is so slow to be applied as they are in 99% of cases right now. you yourself admit: they start to care after they get scammed, not before... that puts steamrep permanently behind the curve, reactive instead of preventative. you would 'encourage people to look at' the actual warning signs which appear BEFORE a scam, but how and where does this actually happen in official steamrep implementation?

what would be genuinely useful and preventative in my view is the large trading sites (lounge, outpost, backpack) having official updated guides and information on how to avoid being scammed. it needs to be there, because that's where people are BEFORE they get scammed; having it on a dedicated but relatively completely unknown site with as little official affiliation as anywhere else doesn't make much sense, and it's not even the primary purpose of steamrep, which is to target individual accounts months after the event.

also, it's obviously not just a warning. if it was, there would be no rules in place about trading marked scammers. it's designed to be punitive as much as it is to warn, and at this point frankly only serves one of those purposes at all well.

People who quickly report the scammer to us generally knew about us beforehand, but didn't check. I realize that makes us reactive instead of proactive, which is part of why I made this thread. Maybe, hopefully by spreading better awareness, we can cut down on successful scams.

There are a number of guides on trading sites. The different subreddits have some nice guides, though some growing outdated. We have a few of our own, but we hope to have more completed. Comprehensive guides like these are actually pretty difficult and time consuming to write up. Here are some of the useful guides, in no particular order:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/wiki/commonscams

https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensiveTrade/wiki/commonscams

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/hownottogetscammed

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/risksofgametrading

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/what-constitutes-reputation.12391/

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/how-to-verify-an-admin-or-middleman.96267/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/paypalguide

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dota2Trade/comments/2bh1pz/psa_updated_realworld_currency_trading_guide/

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/how-to-recover-from-a-hijack.86363/(work in progress)

Brokers, mules, and fences are a type of scammer, or at the very least perpetrator of fraud, on their own, and the community has a right to know about their shady business practices. Personally, I'd rather not receive stolen goods when trading or deal with someone like that, but I hardly trade anymore. I agreed to uphold SteamRep policy when I signed onto staff, and unfortunately the trade-with-scammer policy often gets used in ways it wasn't intended. It's cold comfort, I can only say things like trade-with-person-who-traded-with-scammer and otherwise overzealous enforcement of the rule are being looked at.

October 17, 2015

Well I dont do reports, but I can only guess to counter bad PR from users who post loaded questions. :^)

Sort out your site and you'll be recieving praise instead of loaded questions. :^)

SteamRep was never a "community" per se, and we were never really that "friendly" or liked, although we did at one point have a few people who were good at public outreach - a void I'm trying to fill in this thread.

We are not committed to answering every single report; it's simply not possible, and growing faster than any number of staff (or Valve) could possibly hope to tackle. When you submit a report, you check a box acknowledging you understand we will not get to every report. We are committed to addressing 100% of our appeals, and it's a daunting task but we recently brought You Are The One, former head of appeals and very knowledgeable and experienced expert on appeal research and handling procedures, back onto staff. You can look at the concluded appeals for yourself to see we've made substantial strides on that front, mostly to his credit alone.

Back to the reports, what we hope to achieve is for an overall better educated trading community. The vast majority of those reports, if not bogus "price policing" reports, are against obvious scammer alts who have plenty of reports against them already. Many of them are the same people we banned an alt for just a few days ago, who keep taking advantage of traders who trust links sent in chat or rely on flawed "reputation" like Steam level or profile comments. Most of them are preventable. One thing I hope to accomplish with this thread is to raise general awareness so people don't fall for this stuff over and again.

Iirc back in the day SR was fairly well liked and apart from a couple of UHC incidents, most reports were correct and looked at in a reasonable amount of time, whereas now incidents are more common . Butane might be able to handle appeals, but he has a reputation for being unprofessional (so does Silent Reaper from what I've seen). Then again, I guess it might be for the best as I recall seeing reports that were obviously fake being scrutinised by mods (please post x screen or y details) which only adds to the substantial backlog. Also, how exactly are you going to educate the trading community - the majority of scam PSA's are posted on reddit/trading websites.

If you want to improve SR, then DrMcKay (http://www.traderep.org/) and Fiskie (http://bazaar.tf/thread/3440) seemed to have been interested at one point in time, at least.

October 17, 2015

I'm sorry I'm a bit late to the party. Have you ever handed an incorrect ban? I'm not talking about a ban that got appealed because of good behaviour or anything but one where you were plain out wrong because you misinterpreted the facts presented to you. Or where the reported 'evidence' was skewed with i.e. photoshopped or something like that?

As the head appeal admin (again) Yes, I have had appeals that were bad taggings to begin with due to Admin error, tho not common. I also have seen mishandled appeals where a tag was removed from a user because the admin was being fucking retarded/lazy, but due to SR policy, had to let it stand.

Sort out your site and you'll be recieving praise instead of loaded questions. :^)

You obviously didn't read my previous posts, I would link it to you but prefer you read the thread from the first post :^)

October 17, 2015

Shouldn't you respect his privacy? It's not exactly unreasonable for someone to refuse to disclose financial information to randoms on the internet. Why is his financial information even required when it can easily be faked and he could have easily sent the payment through other means, especially as most scammers would rather use BTC than for Paypal?

To build on this a little, because I feel that most of the questions I had have already been asked.

What is SR's and your partner communities's policies regarding privacy of someone you are investigating? Do you have the right to compel someone to hand over that kind of evidence, and could a sanction that you placed on a user result in, say, a lawsuit being brought against SR or one of its partner sites? I'd be interested to hear about that kind of situation, because it opens up a lot of questions between the RL legal space and this quasi-legal space SR operates in.

Secondly, we all know that screenshots and chat logs are required for any report and perhaps for appeals. How proficient are SR staff at detecting faked evidence?

I still think your biggest problem is your backlog. SR is to my mind a monolithic databse that is creaking under the weight of what its attempting to do. I do find your attempts to expand into csgo and dota somewhat disingenuous therefore, given you're nowhere near on top of the reports coming to you at the moment. I'm aware recruitment is a problem, but as others have stated, there have to be ways to streamline that process. If the website and the reports process doesn't function, then you'll always be behind the curve and the perception is one of incompetence, given we have all known about the backlog problem for a long, long time now. And yes, I'm aware you're all just volunteers, but I don't find that reasoning particularly convincing, given you're the ones who, y'know, volunteered. No one is compelling you to do it, but if you are going to do it, yes there will be flak thrown at you when the system fails.

There are other problems, but to my mind until this first one gets sorted out, they have no chance of being remedied, so I won't list them myself. They've probably already been covered anyway.

October 17, 2015

Shouldn't you respect his privacy? It's not exactly unreasonable for someone to refuse to disclose financial information to randoms on the internet. Why is his financial information even required when it can easily be faked and he could have easily sent the payment through other means, especially as most scammers would rather use BTC than for Paypal?

I'm speaking generically, as someone who wasn't directly involved in communicating with Muselk. I wasn't going to reply to you in here, but why are you so concerned about this case? Weren't you the one who made the report? And now you think it's unreasonable that FoG started investigating it?

http://forums.f-o-g.eu/threads/7902-76561198050006597-muselk.html

And now that I pulled that case up, it seems the case was closed and Muselk was not marked at all.

Iirc back in the day SR was fairly well liked and apart from a couple of UHC incidents, most reports were correct and looked at in a reasonable amount of time, whereas now incidents are more common . Butane might be able to handle appeals, but he has a reputation for being unprofessional (so does Silent Reaper from what I've seen). Then again, I guess it might be for the best as I recall seeing reports that were obviously fake being scrutinised by mods (please post x screen or y details) which only adds to the substantial backlog. Also, how exactly are you going to educate the trading community - the majority of scam PSA's are posted on reddit/trading websites.

If you want to improve SR, then DrMcKay (http://www.traderep.org/) and Fiskie (http://bazaar.tf/thread/3440) seemed to have been interested at one point in time, at least.

Back in the day, the Steam trading community was a much smaller demographic, with only TF2 and fewer people to keep track of. Over the years we've barely hired new staff faster than old staff retired, but the trading community has grown exponentially, with now 3 or 4 different games instead of 1. But I wouldn't necessarily call it better in that time; some of the set-in-stone policies and procedures we have now were still being hashed out back then, and as an appeals admin I've granted a fair share of appeals for tags that never should have been issued. Cases from like 3 or more years ago, where the admin rushed through the report, but overlooked a detail, like a newbie trader who tried to trade a renamed "unusual" haunted item someone ripped them off for, and ran into an overzealous report-everyone-I-can trader before they realized they themself had been scammed. Today, that kind of report would never be accepted, as both mods and admins scrutinize reports with more than a quick glance.

PSA's are helpful, but also a nuisance to the people who've seen it time and again posted by people who just learned about a type of scam most people knew about (and was possibly in the FAQ). It does raise awareness, but I'm not sure if the community would appreciate if we just randomly posted those every few days/weeks. It's a thought, but it might not be the best approach.

Butane is an asshole, but he's an honest asshole and a fair asshole. Despite his... antics, he's very much SteamRep admin material and I personally have no issue with him working on appeals.

To build on this a little, because I feel that most of the questions I had have already been asked.

What is SR's and your partner communities's policies regarding privacy of someone you are investigating? Do you have the right to compel someone to hand over that kind of evidence, and could a sanction that you placed on a user result in, say, a lawsuit being brought against SR or one of its partner sites? I'd be interested to hear about that kind of situation, because it opens up a lot of questions between the RL legal space and this quasi-legal space SR operates in.

Secondly, we all know that screenshots and chat logs are required for any report and perhaps for appeals. How proficient are SR staff at detecting faked evidence?

I still think your biggest problem is your backlog. SR is to my mind a monolithic databse that is creaking under the weight of what its attempting to do. I do find your attempts to expand into csgo and dota somewhat disingenuous therefore, given you're nowhere near on top of the reports coming to you at the moment. I'm aware recruitment is a problem, but as others have stated, there have to be ways to streamline that process. If the website and the reports process doesn't function, then you'll always be behind the curve and the perception is one of incompetence, given we have all known about the backlog problem for a long, long time now. And yes, I'm aware you're all just volunteers, but I don't find that reasoning particularly convincing, given you're the ones who, y'know, volunteered. No one is compelling you to do it, but if you are going to do it, yes there will be flak thrown at you when the system fails.

There are other problems, but to my mind until this first one gets sorted out, they have no chance of being remedied, so I won't list them myself. They've probably already been covered anyway.

Speaking only for SteamRep, evidence of that sort is kept private only to SR staff by policy. If posts containing that kind of material are reported, requests to remove them are honored. Billing information like address and phone number are generally not requested, with maybe rare exceptions, and reporters posting that information (e.g. after a paypal chargeback) are warned or banned from forums. The only thing SteamRep is concerned with is evidence of a single paypal transaction, or lack thereof. Unfortunately, weighing legitimacy of evidence in cropped screenshots is not really practical, and when people crop out only what they think we're looking for (or heavily edit/annotate it) then abandon the report, we often have to close it out without a tag. We strive to strike a balance, but ultimately we're not looking for credit card info, passwords, or anything like that, so I don't think it poses an issue by and large. Those concerned can usually provide it privately. If you have evidence you want to submit evidence privately, such as in a report against you, you can hide it from public view by inserting a "thumbnail" of your attachment(s) into the following BBCode:

[sHOWTOGROUPS=3,4][/sHOWTOGROUPS]

In response to the fake evidence question, it's not possible to definitively establish if a screenshot was tampered by looking at it in 100% of cases, but you'd be surprised at how effective we are at it. We have documented methods and red flags to look for, which are not open for public discussion for obvious reasons, and in cases of better-formatted fakes we have prescribed methods of rooting out the liar between the two. In this case I actually had everything set up to 100% establish who was lying (was pretty sure but I needed to be 100% sure for a tag), and was about to coach a mod through the process as a training exercise when the faker realized he was about to get busted and owned up to it.

We make no promise that we will get to every report. Nobody in the community likes it, and neither do we, but we need to be realistic. If every single one of us worked 24/7 doing nothing but reports, they would still come in faster than we could process them. There aren't enough people volunteering, even if we accepted the sketchy applicants (which by the way would take time to train) they'd still come in faster than we process them. And before you say to spend less time on single reports, as addressed above that's how fake reports get accepted and innocent people get marked. The report backlog is why we display "unconfirmed reports" on profiles; it doesn't receive the same level of scrutiny as the reports a trained community admin reviews, but it's there as a cross-platform warning, which you should take a look at before committing to a trust trade with someone, until if/when the report is reviewed by trained eyes and either discarded or upgraded to a full BANNED tag. Still not ideal, and any of us can freely admit it, but it's a resource.

October 18, 2015

The trading with scammers rule is not intended to entrap people, and in order to actually receive a (sustainable) tag, you have to have made the trade knowingly. With the CSGO community, many of the traders are either unaware of or uninterested in acknowledging us. It may change in time, but the policy is mostly unenforceable there right now. Some high profile traders and website owners are still banned, and we don't carve out special exceptions for celebrities - cAre and Samalex are examples of this - but for trades with scammers, relying on csgo.exchange as evidence, and expecting every trader in a community that generally doesn't care about trading fraud until that first time they trade a $900 knife to an account created 2 months ago because it had a bigger number than them in CSGO Lounge and a higher Steam level (less money invested than the knife itself) isn't really going to help.

On the bold note:

If FoG had incorrectly marked someone as a scammer for knowingly trading with a scammer but not on evidence but by assumptions and then denied an appeal can that user then appeal the incorrect mark at SteamRep?

October 18, 2015

I am not a hugely active trader and don't have the experience many people on here have, but I do believe I'm an honest person. What would I do to go about bettering myself to be a steamrep mod? I know that at this point I'm nowhere near close to being one, but how should I go about learning how to do these things? I know I should put forth useful information in reports and make reports when I am able, anything else I should do?

October 18, 2015

Another question: how does trading with a scammer, make you a scammer? If you traded with a scammer, at no point did you scam someone out of their items. Why cant there be a seperate tag for trading with scammers, instead of ruining peoples entire careers and labeling them something they're not? You talk a lot about misinformation, but it would seem youre misinforming the community by calling them scammers

October 18, 2015

Another question: how does trading with a scammer, make you a scammer? If you traded with a scammer, at no point did you scam someone out of their items. Why cant there be a seperate tag for trading with scammers, instead of ruining peoples entire careers and labeling them something they're not? You talk a lot about misinformation, but it would seem youre misinforming the community by calling them scammers

Scammer Joe scams Jim of his mystical flaming fedora. Jeff buys the fedora from Scammer Joe for a fraction of it's value and makes a nice profit. Scammer Joe is happy because he easily managed to offload his stolen goods.

Jeff directly helped the scammer profit from stolen goods. Scammer Joe is happy with his easy sale and is going to go off scamming again knowing he can easily sell to Jeff.

October 18, 2015

People who quickly report the scammer to us generally knew about us beforehand, but didn't check. I realize that makes us reactive instead of proactive, which is part of why I made this thread. Maybe, hopefully by spreading better awareness, we can cut down on successful scams.

There are a number of guides on trading sites. The different subreddits have some nice guides, though some growing outdated. We have a few of our own, but we hope to have more completed. Comprehensive guides like these are actually pretty difficult and time consuming to write up. Here are some of the useful guides, in no particular order:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/wiki/commonscams

https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensiveTrade/wiki/commonscams

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/hownottogetscammed

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/risksofgametrading

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/what-constitutes-reputation.12391/

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/how-to-verify-an-admin-or-middleman.96267/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamGameSwap/wiki/paypalguide

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dota2Trade/comments/2bh1pz/psa_updated_realworld_currency_trading_guide/

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/how-to-recover-from-a-hijack.86363/(work in progress)

Brokers, mules, and fences are a type of scammer, or at the very least perpetrator of fraud, on their own, and the community has a right to know about their shady business practices. Personally, I'd rather not receive stolen goods when trading or deal with someone like that, but I hardly trade anymore. I agreed to uphold SteamRep policy when I signed onto staff, and unfortunately the trade-with-scammer policy often gets used in ways it wasn't intended. It's cold comfort, I can only say things like trade-with-person-who-traded-with-scammer and otherwise overzealous enforcement of the rule are being looked at.

i appreciate your time taken to reply, but i still feel this doesn't respond to the issue that people who need the kind of blatant warning a mark provides are not the people who are checking steamrep, and thus these steamrep forums based guides are not in the right place to target their information appropriately. people who need the information aren't the kind of person who will actually go out actively and search for it. that's why i think it needs to be placed directly in their way.

in the same vein, sure, subreddit guides are great, but what percentage of trading happens via subreddits? what proportion of the vulnerable playerbase do you think is exposed to this? i would say a tiny fraction. it has to be the big sites. i liked seeing backpack.tf have a PSA about the uncraftable untradable v. luger scams that were going on, but that was in response to a specific instance.

October 19, 2015

Scammer Joe scams Jim of his mystical flaming fedora. Jeff buys the fedora from Scammer Joe for a fraction of it's value and makes a nice profit. Scammer Joe is happy because he easily managed to offload his stolen goods.

Jeff directly helped the scammer profit from stolen goods. Scammer Joe is happy with his easy sale and is going to go off scamming again knowing he can easily sell to Jeff.

So when in that sentence did Jeff scam anyone? He didn't, he just bought from a scammer.

October 19, 2015

So when in that sentence did Jeff scam anyone? He didn't, he just bought from a scammer.

You're making the implication that you must directly engage in fraud to be banned. You can be banned for merely acting as a fence for banned users. I don't know see the sense in potentially providing profit for someone who has either committed fraud or has engaged in fraudulent behavious (ex. being trading with Banned users). The items may also be stolen or hijacked which is another reason why such a policy exists.

There's a reason why SR ridded of the SCAMMER tag, it often labeled people who were not scammers as such. Those who engage in fencing, fake rep, illegal exploitations, impersonations, and more may not have scammed or attempted to scam, but are still BANNED if reported.

The "Banned by X" tag is generalized and vague, sure, but rarely will the ban reason be absent.

October 19, 2015

trading has changed a lot since i did my first trade, are you planning to introduce some bot api to make bots using it able to distinguish people with low hours/new accounts to make most of the bot users not being afraid of selling items above 10 keys? plus usage of other communities bans (through api) to automatically decline offers from people banned on outpost/backpack that are not marked, of course the bans from those communities should be distinguishable (ban because of behavior should not reject the trade, ban because of scam should though). and there's automatic with threshold that kinda works but kills the whole point of bot that automatically handles trades.

October 19, 2015

Does SR intend to update the severely outdated rules notably in regards to the use of automated bots and if so will it be a reasonable guideline. In SR's absence many SR affiliated communities have made their own rules in regards to this and some more "questionable" than others eg: http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/32755-psa-trading-with-bptf-automatic-will-count-towards-your-trades-with-scammers-on-tf2outpost/ does SR have the intention of providing a standard?

You're making the implication that you must directly engage in fraud to be banned. You can be banned for merely acting as a fence for banned users. I don't know see the sense in potentially providing profit for someone who has either committed fraud or has engaged in fraudulent behavious (ex. being trading with Banned users). The items may also be stolen or hijacked which is another reason why such a policy exists.

The main issue with the rule is yes, it prevents scammers from profiting off stolen goods but at the same time it is also actively destroying the community. Many traders have traded for years going through multiple trades every hour if they miss once they can get a caution/warning and another time they can get banned. There have been a large amount of notable users who have helped the community alot but are banned and kicked from the community after years of honest trading and only making a honest mistake which is something which shouldnt be happening.

October 19, 2015

Even if it comes acorss that way, I don't mean this question to be hostile. I feel bad for you guys almost being abused over this thread :< Anyway, Outpost is one of your partner communities. For sharking, you let them handle ALL reports and punishments related to sharking (and also most reports for trading with marked scammers multiple times). Since outpost is a partner community that handles many of the consequences and reports related to scamming that you guys don't handle (mainly the 2 I listed above), how come you don't also trust their perma bans and let them automatically equate to a mark on Steam Rep? (besides ones like ban evasion which are completely site specific) I've heard toughsox (one of your admins too) say that he wished that you weren't allowed to trade with outpost banned users (basically meaning a mark). I basically just want to here your thoughts on this, most people who are perma-ed from OP are also marked (due to being marked from the exact same evidence over a SR report that was just a copy paste of the OP one)

October 19, 2015

Even if it comes acorss that way, I don't mean this question to be hostile. I feel bad for you guys almost being abused over this thread :< Anyway, Outpost is one of your partner communities. For sharking, you let them handle ALL reports and punishments related to sharking (and also most reports for trading with marked scammers multiple times). Since outpost is a partner community that handles many of the consequences and reports related to scamming that you guys don't handle (mainly the 2 I listed above), how come you don't also trust their perma bans and let them automatically equate to a mark on Steam Rep? (besides ones like ban evasion which are completely site specific) I've heard toughsox (one of your admins too) say that he wished that you weren't allowed to trade with outpost banned users (basically meaning a mark). I basically just want to here your thoughts on this, most people who are perma-ed from OP are also marked (due to being marked from the exact same evidence over a SR report that was just a copy paste of the OP one)

I'm perm banned but not SR banned as I'm sure many others are. Being perm banned from outpost doesn't mean your a scammer.

October 19, 2015

I've noticed a lot of potential traders are now scared to get into the trading scene due to SteamRep and the possibility that they could be potentially labelled as a scammer for a reason other than scamming. One examples is logging into Steam at their friends house where at some point their friend scams.

Is there a way for these people to get involved without the fear of being incorrecly marked or do you consider these people at collateral damage in the grand scheme of things?

Is there a way for these people to avoid such bans? Like some notification form where user xxx could fill out and say I'll be playing at my friends house today?

Is there anything looking to be placed to help avoid such people being marked?

October 19, 2015

On the bold note:

If FoG had incorrectly marked someone as a scammer for knowingly trading with a scammer but not on evidence but by assumptions and then denied an appeal can that user then appeal the incorrect mark at SteamRep?

Not formally, but if there were a case of abuse or clearly unfair treatment it could be reviewed, and typically in a review like that the partner's ability to issue tags is also reevaluated. I realize this is hard for you to grasp, seeing you threw such a fit over having to appeal at FoG like everyone else instead of having a SteamRep admin overturn FoG's decision without any say from them, and you're still insisting on harassing staff and smearing SteamRep on Reddit until we intervene, but we only review partner tags like that in extenuating circumstances.

To date, I have seen no such extenuating circumstances for your case. Sometimes cases aren't black and white, even at SteamRep, and like SR admins, FoG has a certain level of discretion with their tags. Whether or not you agree with their decision, they have sound rationale, gave you a fair opportunity to appeal, and downgraded you after several months. As for the case, I'm probably butchering the details but I'm just summarizing; this is not a formal review. You traded with a long-time marked scammer for something worth 300 buds, as a very experienced trader. There is no evidence that steamrep.com was unavailable in that 10 minute window, but even if it were in fact unavailable, checking any other source of reputation, including TF2OP, backpack.tf, or even one of the "alternatives" to SteamRep, would have quickly revealed he was a marked scammer. Simply saying "can't access it for a couple minutes, not responsible for it" does not excuse you from trading with a scammer.

I can't say I agree 100% with their decision, and to be honest I respected you for "self reporting" and taking responsibility for it - I lost almost all that respect after you started your smear campaign, and other things you did when SteamRep didn't make special accommodations for you - but it really doesn't matter whether I agree or not. Even among SteamRep's own admins and tags - which yours was not - many of us disagree with one another, but we have a policy of not overturning eachother's actions outside of extreme, extenuating circumstances (victim marked instead of scammer by mistake kind of extreme). The same is true for our dealings with partner communities; unless it falls grossly outside our practices, such as a case years ago with an admin tagging traders for speaking out against his sharking tool, we leave partner tags up to their own admins, and they are the ones who retain the evidence. Unless we had an extreme case, it would go against SteamRep's policies for me to intervene in your case, and frankly acting like a toddler about it doesn't constitute an "extreme" case.

I am not a hugely active trader and don't have the experience many people on here have, but I do believe I'm an honest person. What would I do to go about bettering myself to be a steamrep mod? I know that at this point I'm nowhere near close to being one, but how should I go about learning how to do these things? I know I should put forth useful information in reports and make reports when I am able, anything else I should do?

This won't happen overnight, and it won't be easy but I would start with familiarizing yourself with the ins and outs of how SteamRep works. Look over the report guidelines (almost verbatim copy of mod training guide), investigative policy, SteamRep FAQ, extended FAQ, and some other stickies. After that, watch what a bunch of moderators do for a while, and learn from it. Then, you can either make a name for yourself among the friend/partner communities, or failing that just start helping out in reports. I can't emphasize this enough, but you really need to understand the evidence requirements before you start posting in reports; if you actively post in the forums, then the quality of your contributions will be scrutinized, and staff tend to get annoyed rather fast if you give wrong information or inappropriately (at all) pass judgement. We used to require a vouch from a green tagged partner community admin, but that requirement has since been lifted and if you make a strong case for yourself you may still be considered.

The alternative would be to start with a friend/partner community, if you can apply and be accepted, and learn from them. Work with another community who deals with scam reports is very favorably looked upon by SteamRep when reviewing an application. Reputation threads and the like are sometimes a part of getting your foot in the door with a friend/partner, but not always required. Once you're staffing, your character and integrity (or lack thereof) will speak for themself, and you'll be promoted on merit. It's a different sort of reputation from cash trading, and more valuable in applying for a position like SteamRep staff. I personally don't have an active reputation thread, and the one I had years ago is closed down and less than 1 page.

Speaking from personal experience, I started with Mann Co Trading (aka Pink Taco's Unusual Trade Server) when I saw a window open up for staffing there. I joined as a "junior moderator" after completing a 4-week training course, and gradually progressed to the point of moderator, then admin, then I was reputable enough to be considered for SteamRep as a moderator. It was kind of an admittedly rare opportunity, because of the training course which went with it, but if you can teach yourself from the SR guides, then make yourself visible with a friend/partner community you could have a pretty solid chance. We hope to establish something similar to the MCT course at some point in the future at SR, but we hoped to pull that off last year too, so Valve Time I guess.

i appreciate your time taken to reply, but i still feel this doesn't respond to the issue that people who need the kind of blatant warning a mark provides are not the people who are checking steamrep, and thus these steamrep forums based guides are not in the right place to target their information appropriately. people who need the information aren't the kind of person who will actually go out actively and search for it. that's why i think it needs to be placed directly in their way.

in the same vein, sure, subreddit guides are great, but what percentage of trading happens via subreddits? what proportion of the vulnerable playerbase do you think is exposed to this? i would say a tiny fraction. it has to be the big sites. i liked seeing backpack.tf have a PSA about the uncraftable untradable v. luger scams that were going on, but that was in response to a specific instance.

Delivering a message to people who ignore you is the million dollar question. If you figure that out, let me know and we'll make a fortune together in advertising. We don't micromanage partner trading websites, and we can't force them to write or mirror guides for us. As for raising awareness, I feel like word of mouth is most effective. As a trader, I didn't learn about TF2 Outpost until someone pointed me to it on a trade server. I didn't learn about SteamRep until someone tried to scam me, and the paranoid side of me led to asking around until someone pointed out the scam and told me to report it. If you think you can get a bunch of trading sites to write up these guides, go for it.

trading has changed a lot since i did my first trade, are you planning to introduce some bot api to make bots using it able to distinguish people with low hours/new accounts to make most of the bot users not being afraid of selling items above 10 keys? plus usage of other communities bans (through api) to automatically decline offers from people banned on outpost/backpack that are not marked, of course the bans from those communities should be distinguishable (ban because of behavior should not reject the trade, ban because of scam should though). and there's automatic with threshold that kinda works but kills the whole point of bot that automatically handles trades.

Probably not, because it already exists. We obtain all of that information using the Steam API, and so can you. As for other communities, you'd have to ask them. Partner communities will probably not differentiate fraud and behavioral bans because that's what SteamRep is for; if they ban for fraud they insert it into our database.

Does SR intend to update the severely outdated rules notably in regards to the use of automated bots and if so will it be a reasonable guideline. In SR's absence many SR affiliated communities have made their own rules in regards to this and some more "questionable" than others eg: http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/32755-psa-trading-with-bptf-automatic-will-count-towards-your-trades-with-scammers-on-tf2outpost/ does SR have the intention of providing a standard?

The main issue with the rule is yes, it prevents scammers from profiting off stolen goods but at the same time it is also actively destroying the community. Many traders have traded for years going through multiple trades every hour if they miss once they can get a caution/warning and another time they can get banned. There have been a large amount of notable users who have helped the community alot but are banned and kicked from the community after years of honest trading and only making a honest mistake which is something which shouldnt be happening.

SteamRep does not, at least intentionally, dictate rules of partner communities. If you take issue with Outpost's enforcement of that rule, your issue is between you and Outpost. I'm not passing judgement on partner communities' rules; it's their servers/websites, and they can ban for any reason they see fit, or no reason at all if they so wish, as BigMac can probably attest to. I cannot speak on their behalf.

I have not run the various automatic trading bots, but I know at least some of them use the SteamRep API when making trades, or at least have the option to. If you run a bot, you should also be running the API to ensure you don't inadvertently trade with a scammer. I realize for a handful of you, this will sound unreasonable, but guess what? The same goes for the majority of trading websites who run bots. TF2 Warehouse and Scrap.tf alike have had multiple bots trade banned by Valve because of scammers using their automated trading system to launder stolen goods. Even with the explanation they were bots, Valve was not happy, and in order to unban their bots required they "take preventive measures to ensure stolen or scammed items are not accepted". Part of running a trade bot, which does admittedly make your profit margin easier to maintain, means taking responsibility for its trades and regulating them accordingly.

Even if it comes acorss that way, I don't mean this question to be hostile. I feel bad for you guys almost being abused over this thread :< Anyway, Outpost is one of your partner communities. For sharking, you let them handle ALL reports and punishments related to sharking (and also most reports for trading with marked scammers multiple times). Since outpost is a partner community that handles many of the consequences and reports related to scamming that you guys don't handle (mainly the 2 I listed above), how come you don't also trust their perma bans and let them automatically equate to a mark on Steam Rep? (besides ones like ban evasion which are completely site specific) I've heard toughsox (one of your admins too) say that he wished that you weren't allowed to trade with outpost banned users (basically meaning a mark). I basically just want to here your thoughts on this, most people who are perma-ed from OP are also marked (due to being marked from the exact same evidence over a SR report that was just a copy paste of the OP one)

SteamRep does not deal with sharking. At all. While in no way respectable, it's not a taggable offense (baring extremely rare cases). Outpost has their own rules, which you must follow if you wish to use their site. It's not our place to decide what an item is worth, or what a fair price would be. Your items are your own, and (per our rules) you are allowed to sell them to anyone you want at whatever price you want. If someone wants a price you don't agree with, you are under no obligation to accept that trade. That's how a free market works. SteamRep will never be in the business of enforcing prices. In extreme predatory cases, or in cases of blatant item misrepresentation, communities such as Outpost may band together and ban someone so blatant sharks can get their heads on a pole, but it's generally managed outside of SteamRep.

Toughsox is a recent Steamrep moderator, not admin. He was also recently promoted to Outpost admin.

I don't get your question about Outpost bans, but Outpost bans for ban evasion and trading with people they banned. While similar to our policy, we do not intervene with Outpost's bans, and if you wind up banned for trading with someone who sharked, it won't earn you a tag on SteamRep. Outpost has methods and criteria for catching people who ban evade, and sometimes they share their findings with us if the ban evader is a marked scammer.

I've noticed a lot of potential traders are now scared to get into the trading scene due to SteamRep and the possibility that they could be potentially labelled as a scammer for a reason other than scamming. One examples is logging into Steam at their friends house where at some point their friend scams.

Is there a way for these people to get involved without the fear of being incorrecly marked or do you consider these people at collateral damage in the grand scheme of things?

Is there a way for these people to avoid such bans? Like some notification form where user xxx could fill out and say I'll be playing at my friends house today?

Is there anything looking to be placed to help avoid such people being marked?

No need for a "notification form" of visiting known scammer friends' houses. I realize the prospect of being linked to someone you don't know (or aren't involved with) and answering for things you never did while waiting on an appeal is scary. I'm not going to explain how we research alt accounts, but this is really underestimating the research we put into alt accounts; it's not an automatic flag-and-tag, but a relatively exhaustive research process comparing a variety of factors. Any given case when adding/auditing a tag, we may find like 3-5 cases of unmarked "friends" indicated by a number of factors, with maybe 1 new alt used for ban evasion, and yes we make that distinction; sometimes one of the harder parts of researching cases is making a judgement call, but it's usually fairly evident whether someone's a visiting friend or used by the same person.

Where we run into problems is if the two share computers/accounts. They may be different people, but if a scammer friend has access to your account (hijacking cases excluded), then it poses a threat to the community because he can use your account to ban evade and scam. The solution if that's a concern for you is don't share your account.

This fear among "potential traders" you talk about... could it by some chance, have anything to do with those distorted propaganda posts you keep spamming on the non-trading TF2 Subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3pa6l0/10_reasons_why_steamrep_is_disliked/

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3p659j/if_mattie_doesnt_receive_a_caution_then_it_pretty/

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3p2wbc/signing_up_to_steam_does_not_mean_you_signed_up/

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3n1915/be_a_detective_have_a_crystal_ball_or_get_banned/

Those are just a few from your most recent account, I'm not even counting your account(s) that got shadow-banned for stalking and harassing Mattie. If people who don't read and have little interest in the subject matter keep seeing a sensational title slandering something or someone, eventually they start to believe it. It's like Fox News and US elections. Some of us really and truly want to help educate people about safe trading, before they get scammed, and it saddens me to see this crowd neglect to check SteamRep before getting scammed because they kept seeing "corrupt steamrep" every day in Reddit titles while looking for TF2 gifs and weapon-of-the-day discussions.

On that note, am I the only one who thinks it's an odd coincidence you started spamming those again right after I made this AMA to help address the spread of misinformation with some much-needed transparency and interaction with the community?

So when in that sentence did Jeff scam anyone? He didn't, he just bought from a scammer.

I'm going to yield to Xenophobia's and (to my surprise) Debra's reply, they pretty much nailed it. Only thing I have to add to their replies is often (though not always) the one who traded with a scammer got a really sweet deal, and willfully overlooked the tag for profit. The types of cases SteamRep tags for trading with scammers are blatant, such as fencing/brokering, where they know they're doing it.

October 19, 2015

This fear among "potential traders" you talk about... could it by some chance, have anything to do with those distorted propaganda posts you keep spamming on the non-trading TF2 Subreddit?

This may not really contribute much value to discussions but I feel that I should comment on this.

Months ago, as bad as this may seem, I was actually quite fearful of steamrep and their powers to remove someone from the trading scene. I was legitimately paranoid, to an extent, that I would accidentally trade with a scammer and I'd get banned on outpost and eventually on steamrep. I wasn't sure on what the minimum value of the trade with a scammer was required to be punished since apparently it was a Bill's Hat but was changed and never publicly posted. I would check the rep,tf of every trader for a trade above the value of 2 keys. Even at this moment, I still don't know the minimum value of a trade required to be punished. This fear didn't occur when I started trading, since I didn't know steamrep existed, but it occurred when my bp grew to a few thousand. The fear had nothing to do with the 'distorted propaganda'. I wouldn't be surprised if new traders were also fearful.

This fear is mostly gone but I can't deny that I'm still worried that I will trade with a scammer once in 10000 trades (0.01%) and still be punished which I find ridiculous. I appreciate SteamRep's intentions and I respect all the mods/admins but I feel that the trading with a scammer rule needs to be revised and standards need to be properly communicated between partner communities. Especially in the case of scammer alts and the 'obvious' scammer alt ret0rd which many high tier traders did cash trades with.

Yeah, it's probably weird that I was that paranoid but SteamRep (and partner communities) do seem like they're policing trades. I wish I could feel the freedom of CS:GO traders

October 19, 2015

snip

Thanks for the response, I appreciate the AMA and I was happy to see it. And no the posts on Reddit has nothing to do with your post and to be honest it was triggered from another users post on reddit in which they highlighted concerns and it triggered my ill feelings into the way things are setup. Your free to assume that i did it due to your post and I can have assumptions why you posted the AMA but neither assumptions matter. What you should be more concerned about is that it is something the community is concerned with, otherwise it wouldn't have reached the first page of the sub.

It's very naive to think that the community is is a panic due to my reddit posts, if I had posted bullshit I would have been called out on it. Read through this AMA and read through the AMA SteamRep setup on reddit, there are different concerns. You can't blame it on "propaganda threads" Your response consists of suttle assumptions, I think it's best not to assume things.

In which point have I lied, they are all valid and are all scenarios that have and can happen to any individual. You have highlighted that other communities can use their discretion, by this note and the nature of term they aren't always going to be right and when they aren't innocent people are going to be affected. This is my main concern, I don't like the idea of having processes that are going to have innocent casualties.

It's a public forum and if you feel that their fears are misguided and as you say by propaganda your more than welcome to post there and let them know why they shouldn't be fear the system. The fact that there isn't a response from SteamRep in the thread also says a lot in my eyes. How about discuss the points posted and highlight how innocent people won't be affected.

Maybe think why am I so vocal, I have nothing to gain and more to lose for being vocal. I've been a part of this community for a very long time and am entitled to air my concerns. My concerns are very well documented and I don't agree with a group that has no ties with valve forcing the community to abide by their rules. Before backpack.tf and tf2outpost even existed I was butting heads with the Trusted Sellers group on SourceOP during the time certain members were trying to inflate the price of buds from $30 - $50. Me being vocal didn't start with my issue I've always been vocal and called out injustices when I see them.

You said: "Only thing I have to add to their replies is often (though not always) the one who traded with a scammer got a really sweet deal, and willfully overlooked the tag for profit. The types of cases SteamRep tags for trading with scammers are blatant, such as fencing/brokering, where they know they're doing it."

I'm not sure of the point your trying to make with this and why you added it in the reply to me but if you looked into my case you will see that I had highly overpaid for the item (That I still own) and that for the duration of my marking I did not complete a single trade. I had some great offer during my marking but I made sure to let everyone know that was sending me a trade offer that I was marked. I did not want to get anyone banned on my expense, and I made it clear with a note on my profile during my marking.

I've seen this reply by various SR members as a justification for my ban but it's very wrong. In the report against myself I had highlighted the value on the items I had exchanged for the Pullover and it was nearing me paying double the value of the item.

As is highlighted by Matties recent trade even the most legit traders in this economy can slip up but don't expect them to stay quiet when they have their reputation deleted by SteamRep staff not for the nature of a trade but for being vocal should also be a concern for you. I am stating facts, plain and simple.

On a more serious note what about the real life laws SteamRep looks to be breaking in regards to defamation and privacy laws?

With the current system you can't argue that that there hasn't been an incorrect marking and as such and by the real world laws SR has defamed many people.

In my case SteamRep has breached privacy laws by publishing the account on my newphew, I attempted to have this resolved by asking SteamRep to remove his account in which it was ignored.

October 19, 2015

This may not really contribute much value to discussions but I feel that I should comment on this.

Months ago, as bad as this may seem, I was actually quite fearful of steamrep and their powers to remove someone from the trading scene. I was legitimately paranoid, to an extent, that I would accidentally trade with a scammer and I'd get banned on outpost and eventually on steamrep. I wasn't sure on what the minimum value of the trade with a scammer was required to be punished since apparently it was a Bill's Hat but was changed and never publicly posted. I would check the rep,tf of every trader for a trade above the value of 2 keys. Even at this moment, I still don't know the minimum value of a trade required to be punished. This fear didn't occur when I started trading, since I didn't know steamrep existed, but it occurred when my bp grew to a few thousand. I wouldn't be surprised if new traders were also fearful.

This fear is mostly gone but I can't deny that I'm still worried that I will trade with a scammer once in 10000 trades (0.01%) and still be punished which I find ridiculous. I appreciate SteamRep's intentions and I respect all the mods/admins but I feel that the trading with a scammer rule needs to be revised and standards need to be properly communicated between partner communities. Especially in the case of scammer alts and the 'obvious' scammer alt ret0rd which many high tier traders did cash trades with.

Yeah, it's probably weird that I was that paranoid but SteamRep (and partner communities) do seem like they're policing trades. I wish I could feel the freedom of CS:GO traders

You don't have much to worry about, considering with your cautiousness whoever you could end up trading with would be a not-so-obvious scammer alt, and thus be much more easily appealed. The minimum value is 5 keys iirc. The fact that steam rep can be intimdating is good, means that their authority is meaningful. You should be fine, don't let your paranoiac cause you to fall for Milz' BS. His reddit threads are doing nothing but harm, and his theory on someone else using your account is insanely stupid and has nothing to do with your fears.

October 19, 2015

Not formally, but if there were a case of abuse or clearly unfair treatment it could be reviewed, and typically in a review like that the partner's ability to issue tags is also reevaluated. I realize this is hard for you to grasp, seeing you threw such a fit over having to appeal at FoG like everyone else instead of having a SteamRep admin overturn FoG's decision without any say from them, and you're still insisting on harassing staff and smearing SteamRep on Reddit until we intervene, but we only review partner tags like that in extenuating circumstances.

To date, I have seen no such extenuating circumstances for your case. Sometimes cases aren't black and white, even at SteamRep, and like SR admins, FoG has a certain level of discretion with their tags. Whether or not you agree with their decision, they have sound rationale, gave you a fair opportunity to appeal, and downgraded you after several months. As for the case, I'm probably butchering the details but I'm just summarizing; this is not a formal review. You traded with a long-time marked scammer for something worth 300 buds, as a very experienced trader. There is no evidence that steamrep.com was unavailable in that 10 minute window, but even if it were in fact unavailable, checking any other source of reputation, including TF2OP, backpack.tf, or even one of the "alternatives" to SteamRep, would have quickly revealed he was a marked scammer. Simply saying "can't access it for a couple minutes, not responsible for it" does not excuse you from trading with a scammer.

I can't say I agree 100% with their decision, and to be honest I respected you for "self reporting" and taking responsibility for it - I lost almost all that respect after you started your smear campaign, and other things you did when SteamRep didn't make special accommodations for you - but it really doesn't matter whether I agree or not. Even among SteamRep's own admins and tags - which yours was not - many of us disagree with one another, but we have a policy of not overturning eachother's actions outside of extreme, extenuating circumstances (victim marked instead of scammer by mistake kind of extreme). The same is true for our dealings with partner communities; unless it falls grossly outside our practices, such as a case years ago with an admin tagging traders for speaking out against his sharking tool, we leave partner tags up to their own admins, and they are the ones who retain the evidence. Unless we had an extreme case, it would go against SteamRep's policies for me to intervene in your case, and frankly acting like a toddler about it doesn't constitute an "extreme" case.

Isn't it true that for a marking to be actioned for a first issue that:

A. It needs to be proven that It was done knowingly?

B. It needs to be proven that is was done for profit?

My concern is that

A. It was not done knowingly and thus could not be proven

B. It was not done for profit as I had overpaid.

Is there another case when a marking had been given when neither of those 2 criteria were met? If there is can you please link it.

I will love to be corrected and not feel like my ban was due to my vocal nature.

October 19, 2015

Delivering a message to people who ignore you is the million dollar question. If you figure that out, let me know and we'll make a fortune together in advertising. We don't micromanage partner trading websites, and we can't force them to write or mirror guides for us. As for raising awareness, I feel like word of mouth is most effective. As a trader, I didn't learn about TF2 Outpost until someone pointed me to it on a trade server. I didn't learn about SteamRep until someone tried to scam me, and the paranoid side of me led to asking around until someone pointed out the scam and told me to report it. If you think you can get a bunch of trading sites to write up these guides, go for it.

i'm not asking you to instruct anyone, i'm suggesting that SR and especially its expansion into CS:GO might well be very futile. The people who need you don't pay attention to you and could be better served by being instructed in good habits rather than just looking for clean SR. Just going by 'marked or not marked' will eventually get them banned by you or a partner anyway when they trade 'obvious alts' because they don't have those good habits. as you've pointed out, the guides themselves exist. there will always be more to add, but the raw information is very much there. i'm not saying it's SR responsibility whatsoever, i'm just saying that seems to me to be a much more preventative measure against the success of scamming.

to be blunt, my point isn't really 'SR should be doing this', my points are

1) SR fails its basic function as defined in this thread as 'warning', due to long processing times, the ease of alt creation and apparent evasion of detection in extreme cases (see penek et al), and the increasing frequency with which people who have not actually scammed something get banned or marked, removing the actual warning effect and creating a feeling instead that there are two tiers of ban: one person is actually dangerous and has attempted to steal; whereas i would have much more sympathy for someone with 10,000 trades who has forgotten to check in 2 of them and been deemed a knowing fence. i have no need of warning of them; in the ordinary course of events i would have no reason to suspect them and they would pose no threat to me.

2) therefore SR's primary function is to PUNISH scammers by making them less able to trade, and secondarily punishes people like my hypothetical 10,000 trades trader who isn't a perfect trading machine designed to root out any potential enemy of SR. as well as them, it affects ordinary traders who don't do research because they never understood the entire meta-rule structure that SR set up, enforces and dominates.

3) when SR marks are punitive not preventative and are often entirely ignored or circumvented in terms of trading with marked users, genuine prevention of fraud needs to take a different form. i've already outlined it a few times, and it seems that we agree on the positive effect that spreading basic information and habits would have. the fact that you then say 'not SteamRep's job to enforce things on partner websites' is a bit strange to me as I'm sure SR has pretty stringent standards for partnering in the first place; and also not to mention the whole charade where Mattie basically told Bob 'get rid of d0 and you can get tagging for PPM'. it wouldn't be a massive hardship for any partner to put up a guide section with something to lure the new user into it, or to prompt them to check out the guides when they're making their first trade on outpost/lounge/wherever.

October 19, 2015

I've heard SR will ban a person who logs into their steam account from the same internet connection as a marked scammer. How do you manage this with public WiFi, libraries, lan centers/internet cafes? How can you tell which are residential connections?

October 20, 2015

This may not really contribute much value to discussions but I feel that I should comment on this.

Months ago, as bad as this may seem, I was actually quite fearful of steamrep and their powers to remove someone from the trading scene. I was legitimately paranoid, to an extent, that I would accidentally trade with a scammer and I'd get banned on outpost and eventually on steamrep. I wasn't sure on what the minimum value of the trade with a scammer was required to be punished since apparently it was a Bill's Hat but was changed and never publicly posted. I would check the rep,tf of every trader for a trade above the value of 2 keys. Even at this moment, I still don't know the minimum value of a trade required to be punished. This fear didn't occur when I started trading, since I didn't know steamrep existed, but it occurred when my bp grew to a few thousand. The fear had nothing to do with the 'distorted propaganda'. I wouldn't be surprised if new traders were also fearful.

This fear is mostly gone but I can't deny that I'm still worried that I will trade with a scammer once in 10000 trades (0.01%) and still be punished which I find ridiculous. I appreciate SteamRep's intentions and I respect all the mods/admins but I feel that the trading with a scammer rule needs to be revised and standards need to be properly communicated between partner communities. Especially in the case of scammer alts and the 'obvious' scammer alt ret0rd which many high tier traders did cash trades with.

Yeah, it's probably weird that I was that paranoid but SteamRep (and partner communities) do seem like they're policing trades. I wish I could feel the freedom of CS:GO traders

You don't have much to worry about, considering with your cautiousness whoever you could end up trading with would be a not-so-obvious scammer alt, and thus be much more easily appealed. The minimum value is 5 keys iirc. The fact that steam rep can be intimdating is good, means that their authority is meaningful. You should be fine, don't let your paranoiac cause you to fall for Milz' BS. His reddit threads are doing nothing but harm, and his theory on someone else using your account is insanely stupid and has nothing to do with your fears.

I don't know why this isn't publicly posted, currently only in a partner (green-tagged non-SR admin) board, but in light of the Bill's Hat drop in price the minimum value was reevaluated and increased to $30 USD, with room for discretion in the event of multiple trades or deliberate treading along the line. For example, trading two $10 items, then a $5 item, multiple times, with the same scammer, would warrant investigation into possible systematic investigation, but a single $20 trade wouldn't even be considered.

I'll look into get it posted in the FAQ sometime Soonâ„¢, but until then you have it here officially from a SteamRep admin: $30 is the cutoff.

@Asce Newer traders would not be punished for accidental trades with scammers when they didn't know. With your commendable practices, I highly doubt you will run into that situation though. Lots of experienced traders and community admins (who know their reputation is on the line and they're held to a higher standard) do their basic checks and never make that mistake. Cases where you end up dealing with a non-obvious alt aren't held against you by us.

Thanks for the response, I appreciate the AMA and I was happy to see it. And no the posts on Reddit has nothing to do with your post and to be honest it was triggered from another users post on reddit in which they highlighted concerns and it triggered my ill feelings into the way things are setup. Your free to assume that i did it due to your post and I can have assumptions why you posted the AMA but neither assumptions matter. What you should be more concerned about is that it is something the community is concerned with, otherwise it wouldn't have reached the first page of the sub.

It's very naive to think that the community is is a panic due to my reddit posts, if I had posted bullshit I would have been called out on it. Read through this AMA and read through the AMA SteamRep setup on reddit, there are different concerns. You can't blame it on "propaganda threads" Your response consists of suttle assumptions, I think it's best not to assume things.

In which point have I lied, they are all valid and are all scenarios that have and can happen to any individual. You have highlighted that other communities can use their discretion, by this note and the nature of term they aren't always going to be right and when they aren't innocent people are going to be affected. This is my main concern, I don't like the idea of having processes that are going to have innocent casualties.

It's a public forum and if you feel that their fears are misguided and as you say by propaganda your more than welcome to post there and let them know why they shouldn't be fear the system. The fact that there isn't a response from SteamRep in the thread also says a lot in my eyes. How about discuss the points posted and highlight how innocent people won't be affected.

Maybe think why am I so vocal, I have nothing to gain and more to lose for being vocal. I've been a part of this community for a very long time and am entitled to air my concerns. My concerns are very well documented and I don't agree with a group that has no ties with valve forcing the community to abide by their rules. Before backpack.tf and tf2outpost even existed I was butting heads with the Trusted Sellers group on SourceOP during the time certain members were trying to inflate the price of buds from $30 - $50. Me being vocal didn't start with my issue I've always been vocal and called out injustices when I see them.

You said: "Only thing I have to add to their replies is often (though not always) the one who traded with a scammer got a really sweet deal, and willfully overlooked the tag for profit. The types of cases SteamRep tags for trading with scammers are blatant, such as fencing/brokering, where they know they're doing it."

I'm not sure of the point your trying to make with this and why you added it in the reply to me but if you looked into my case you will see that I had highly overpaid for the item (That I still own) and that for the duration of my marking I did not complete a single trade. I had some great offer during my marking but I made sure to let everyone know that was sending me a trade offer that I was marked. I did not want to get anyone banned on my expense, and I made it clear with a note on my profile during my marking.

I've seen this reply by various SR members as a justification for my ban but it's very wrong. In the report against myself I had highlighted the value on the items I had exchanged for the Pullover and it was nearing me paying double the value of the item.

As is highlighted by Matties recent trade even the most legit traders in this economy can slip up but don't expect them to stay quiet when they have their reputation deleted by SteamRep staff not for the nature of a trade but for being vocal should also be a concern for you. I am stating facts, plain and simple.

On a more serious note what about the real life laws SteamRep looks to be breaking in regards to defamation and privacy laws?

With the current system you can't argue that that there hasn't been an incorrect marking and as such and by the real world laws SR has defamed many people.

In my case SteamRep has breached privacy laws by publishing the account on my newphew, I attempted to have this resolved by asking SteamRep to remove his account in which it was ignored.

Going to address your Reddit list point by point here, and highlight all the bullshit in it.

Their rule to punish people as a scammer not for scamming but for trading with someone who once traded with someone that once traded with someone that once scammed. (Many innocent people marked due to this)
SteamRep is a lot more lenient about that than people give credit for, and will in the vast majority of cases give a warning before tagging someone. Sometimes in extreme circumstances a partner community may skip the warning/caution, but SteamRep itself is very lenient about it, and people very rarely get SteamRep tags for it. Anyone new or with any plausible deniability that they knew about SteamRep is let off with a warning at most. Most of the people who have been tagged by SteamRep for trades with scammers are former community admins.
Their rule to mark everyone as a scammer that had used the same internet connection at one point as a scammer. In summery if you logged into your friends internet connection 1 year ago and last week your friend had traded with someone who was listed as a scammer (As point 1. they could even be marked not for scamming but for trading with a scammer) This had lead to many innocent traders being marked.
This is at best speculation and at worst blatant lying/distortion and fear mongering. No such rule exists. See my earlier posts about finding alt accounts. We aren't concerned about "spreading" tags, but identifying if the account is used by the same person. There is no automatic system of connecting people's accounts for sharing a hotel wifi at some point in their life, and every single tag for alts is manually researched by a community admin. If a Steam account was accessed from the same IP address as a scammer's and we have evidence of it, the timestamps, frequency, source, and other factors are taken into account, as well as other factors (not discussed here) which might indicate an alt, are taken into account. I will not get into specifics on how alts are researched, but your point here is nothing more than fear mongering.
Them giving FoG the power to mark outside of the SteamRep guidelines, Mattie and many admins have noted that for someone to be banned their needs to be clear evidence that the user had knowingly traded with the scammer, the FoG community has been given the ability to mark outside of the knowingly grounds and ban users based on assumption of them knowingly trading. This has lead to many innocent traders being marked.
Looks like this is your own personal issue. FoG is an interesting case, in a way they're indirectly responsible because of a double standard in community expectations, but for the most part the community is not pounding to drop partnership. People have a gripe with SteamRep for slow processing of reports and having a backlog, so they in turn praise FoG for handling reports quickly. People then complain about lower quality "SteamRep" taggings any time FoG makes a mistake, which SteamRep staff were not involved with. We get burned either way. The sad truth is, faster processing of reports mean you are more prone to making mistakes, and more likely to tag someone innocent. Though some mistakes have been made, FoG does a lot of good work, and I am not here to condemn them, but some people seem to have this double standard where anything FoG does wrong is SteamRep's fault, while anything FoG does to help quickly get their report accepted is something SteamRep should have done in the first place. If people have gripes with FoG, they need to be taken up with FoG directly, and realize mistakes are a natural consequence of expedited handling of reports.

I already addressed your case above, but there weren't "assumptions" in your tag.
Their premise of everyone being guilty by default, if something is cloudy they will mark you as a scammer and then to have it cleared will require you to provide evidence in a report, issue here is that in some cases there are appeals in the years old. This has lead to many innocent traders being marked.
Tags require evidence, even if not publicly shown. There is no "I'll mark you as a scammer now with no evidence then let you prove you're innocent in an appeal" procedure. Old tags you bring up are from the "good old days" of SteamRep, when reports were handled more quickly (see above point about faster handling of reports and greater margin of error), but new appeals for mishandled tags past that timeframe will be few and far between. Most new appeals coming in (not counting dead partner tags) are given a quick overview to see if they can be quickly granted/rejected, instead of needlessly throwing additional cases directly into backlog, and since report requirements are more strict than before, it's usually a lot easier to confirm whether proper evidence was collected and verify the legitimacy of the claims in an appeal.
Their staff members questionable practices. There are cases where evidence is removed, cases being handles differently due to the person with the pending tag and the continuation of work with YOTO, YOTO has deleted pages of rep not due to scamming related issues but due personal feelings.
All SteamRep staff are expected to recuse themselves from any case where they have a conflict of interest, on SteamRep. If you are griping about YATO (people may take you more seriously if you spell his name right) and that SourceOP thing you keep obsessing about, that is not managed by SteamRep. Any privately owned community website or server can ban anyone for any reason they see fit, or no reason. This has nothing to do with SteamRep, your gripe is with SourceOP, and because SteamRep won't micromanage what partner/friend communities do with their own servers you're using it as a reason to call SteamRep staff sketchy. So you hate YATO because he's an asshole with SourceOP. Good for you, join the club. He's still doing his share of work at SteamRep, more than most other staff in fact. Also, last I heard your thread wasn't deleted; you just got banned and couldn't access it. Doesn't matter if it was deleted though.

Fact of the matter is, YATO is both a SOP admin and SR admin, with distinct roles and rules to follow in each community. In places where they conflict, YATO abstains as an SR admin, per SR policies.
The movement from them being a resource website to an enforcement website. (IMO what created the entire mess) When they first started out SteamRep was a resource for the community to visit to see if the person they are trading with has been reported for any scam attempt, the final decision of the trade was up to the end user. It could have been a case that someone ran away from a spycrab, but since they were just trading item for item as such this possess no risk and they could then use their moral judgement if they wanted to continue to trade. (Back then people would only really check it if PayPal or a gamble was involved as item for item trade possessed no risk) Moving forward they had moved away from this and demanded that you must now follow their rules and not trade with users that are banned or be banned (remember they could be banned not for scamming but for trading with someone that once traded with a scammer or even could be someone incorrectly marked by FoG) It went from an optional visit of their website to a pretty forced visit to their website.
Maybe I'm mistaken here, I wasn't around in the beginning, but I believe SteamRep has always had the policy of not trading with scammers. Mostly to curb fencing and brokering. I've seen some pretty old records of warnings for trading with scammers.
No Privacy Policy: SteamRep handles a lot of information and in some cases request PayPal screenshots, there is no clear documentation on what they do with this information.
The answer to that is very clear, and frankly obvious. Screenshots of evidence are retained in the context of the report, visible only to SteamRep's own staff, for the purpose of investigation should the tag be audited. What else would that kind of information be used for? Don't like it? Don't submit a report to SteamRep. Honestly though, I think this is just an excuse you and/or a couple other people came up with to try and project SteamRep as some kind of monster. You send more information about yourself to whomever you make a PayPal transaction with. Did you ask the scammer for a privacy policy?

I believe Debras was the first to start spamming that to try and find information on how his alts keep getting marked, so he can keep scamming without getting his alts marked, and it appears you may have latched onto it as a talking point.
Their inability to listen to the community, there is a lot of concern about SteamRep and they instead of seeing them for what they are the head admin instead labels it as a "brigades and witchhhunts on Reddit"
SteamRep is slow, all around. That's a legitimate gripe. I'm not going to fault you for this point, but I will address it here.

I wouldn't say SteamRep is "unable to listen to the community" so much as disconnected. And that's a sad, but inevitable natural consequence of the work we do. The time we spend in reports, appeals, training staff, and other things is time we aren't trading or engaging with the community. We took a lot of heat for not quickly tagging this guy, but the honest truth is nobody came and told us. The reports are so numerous and cumbersome that we make no promise we'll get to everything, and high profile cases like that are usually brought to our attention by other community admins. I'm trying to bridge that disconnect a little here.

Reddit is very much brigaded though; the same people, yourself included, are spamming a non-trading subreddit, who by and large doesn't care about trading, to try and amass an "army" of SteamRep haters because of your own personal gripes. Half the posts are from brand new Reddit accounts. Sometimes SteamRep staff tries to address concerns there, spending maybe several hours addressing a post point by point, just like I'm doing here, but are promptly downvoted out of visibility. If our replies aren't hidden, the same thing is reposted the next day, then reposted, and reposted, and reposted some more.
They delete posts and topics off their forum. They are known for deleting and locking topics of concern on their forum, there is no wonder why Reddit is full of SteamRep topics, if they were to give people with concerns a fair go there will be less of them.
This is a lie. Our policy is NOT to delete posts critical of SteamRep. Unless you have proof of censorship in our forums, I'm going to call bullshit on this one.

What we do delete is spam, fakerep (yes, some people are still stupid enough to try posting "+rep traded $130 paypal for knife" from their alts in discussion board), and occassionally off-topic, flame-bait, or troll posts mostly in reports. Sometimes spam/harassing comments are deleted from forum profiles, or spam is deleted from reports when causing the report to split into multiple pages. You need proof of that? Link to a thread where you think posts are deleted and I'll show you what they were.
Their inability to look to improve, they have a large backlog and while it was getting out of control they were activity telling people that we are implementing processes to improve them. From there it got more and more out of control when they have now said "we won't be catching up anytime soon if ever" I have been vocal in saying that they should look to the community for assistance.
You mean like FoG? Or you mean your feedback about other partner communities?

Not going to bother posting that on Reddit because I'll just get downvoted, or if not it'll get reposted in a day or two without my reply. Reddit is an ideal place to start mobs or witch hunts where the targeted person or entity doesn't really get a chance to defend themselves; a bunch of people hot headed, or in our case a bunch of marked scammers, can easily downvote someone's legitimate responses out of visibility, and then anyone reading takes "popular opinion" at face value. When people like you and d0 spam the same bullshit repeatedly, we can't really reply unless we ourselves sit on Reddit all day instead of doing our job, just so we ourselves can paste the same responses each time the thread gets reposted, if they don't get downvoted. Not to mention we have lives.

I think you are vocal because, with your reputation damaged, you stand to gain from the downfall of SteamRep. You very much have something to gain from SteamRep going away. I respect you don't agree with certain aspects of SteamRep. I don't respect your spread of misinformation to further an agenda.

In the point I added about trades with scammers, I was not addressing any specific case. Only adding general information to an already well-constructed reply I affirmed.

Why are you assuming his fears stemmed from my post?

And no being incorrectly marked as an alt is not a theory it is evident. My nephews account was marked while I was marked this is not a theory this is fact.

I don't see any alts on your profile, but tell your nephew to make an appeal.

Isn't it true that for a marking to be actioned for a first issue that:

A. It needs to be proven that It was done knowingly?

B. It needs to be proven that is was done for profit?

My concern is that

A. It was not done knowingly and thus could not be proven

B. It was not done for profit as I had overpaid.

Is there another case when a marking had been given when neither of those 2 criteria were met? If there is can you please link it.

I will love to be corrected and not feel like my ban was due to my vocal nature.

Not necessarily for profit, but that's weighed into decision. You traded with a scammer that there's no reason you shouldn't have caught, then cried out without evidence "SR was offline so I'm not responsible for it". Also your overpay, while not profit for you, was additional profit for the scammer.

I'm not going to discuss your case here any further, and will ignore any further questions pertaining to your case. I was not involved with it, and this is not your appeal thread. People are here to ask questions from SteamRep, not to see you try and re-appeal a tag.

i'm not asking you to instruct anyone, i'm suggesting that SR and especially its expansion into CS:GO might well be very futile. The people who need you don't pay attention to you and could be better served by being instructed in good habits rather than just looking for clean SR. Just going by 'marked or not marked' will eventually get them banned by you or a partner anyway when they trade 'obvious alts' because they don't have those good habits. as you've pointed out, the guides themselves exist. there will always be more to add, but the raw information is very much there. i'm not saying it's SR responsibility whatsoever, i'm just saying that seems to me to be a much more preventative measure against the success of scamming.

to be blunt, my point isn't really 'SR should be doing this', my points are

1) SR fails its basic function as defined in this thread as 'warning', due to long processing times, the ease of alt creation and apparent evasion of detection in extreme cases (see penek et al), and the increasing frequency with which people who have not actually scammed something get banned or marked, removing the actual warning effect and creating a feeling instead that there are two tiers of ban: one person is actually dangerous and has attempted to steal; whereas i would have much more sympathy for someone with 10,000 trades who has forgotten to check in 2 of them and been deemed a knowing fence. i have no need of warning of them; in the ordinary course of events i would have no reason to suspect them and they would pose no threat to me.

2) therefore SR's primary function is to PUNISH scammers by making them less able to trade, and secondarily punishes people like my hypothetical 10,000 trades trader who isn't a perfect trading machine designed to root out any potential enemy of SR. as well as them, it affects ordinary traders who don't do research because they never understood the entire meta-rule structure that SR set up, enforces and dominates.

3) when SR marks are punitive not preventative and are often entirely ignored or circumvented in terms of trading with marked users, genuine prevention of fraud needs to take a different form. i've already outlined it a few times, and it seems that we agree on the positive effect that spreading basic information and habits would have. the fact that you then say 'not SteamRep's job to enforce things on partner websites' is a bit strange to me as I'm sure SR has pretty stringent standards for partnering in the first place; and also not to mention the whole charade where Mattie basically told Bob 'get rid of d0 and you can get tagging for PPM'. it wouldn't be a massive hardship for any partner to put up a guide section with something to lure the new user into it, or to prompt them to check out the guides when they're making their first trade on outpost/lounge/wherever.

I hate to get philosophical, but there's a story about a starfish and making a difference that seems kind of relevant here. I'll never be able to protect everyone, but I do what I can, and so do the rest of us. If I prevent a handful of people from getting scammed, then I've accomplished something. Just because there are people who will never look at SteamRep until they get scammed (and probably blame me for not somehow issuing a trade ban or something) doesn't mean I'm not accomplishing anything. We also try to mitigate the backlog a little with the unconfirmed reports displaying on profiles.

I've heard SR will ban a person who logs into their steam account from the same internet connection as a marked scammer. How do you manage this with public WiFi, libraries, lan centers/internet cafes? How can you tell which are residential connections?

Not getting into details on how we find alts (sorry), but a little basic understanding of computer networks comes into play here. Searching whois and reverse domain records sometimes reveals relevant information about an IP address for the type of investigation we do. If you went to a wifi hotspot one day, a month after a scammer you've never met or heard of used it, that's not going to get you marked. If you and a scammer "brother" share computers or accounts in the same household, that will.

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