Trust and "Sharking"

[Torb]

Seems quite pointless to negative trust when it doesn't really do anything. Also seems like it will just get spammed.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

1 minute ago, iTrade ™ said:

I am saying that in any uneven deal where one party profits someone is taken advantage of. It doesn't matter if you make 1 ref profit or 10 keys profit in a trade. If you profit the other party loses. That's a fact and there is no denying it. Profit doesn't just fall from the sky.

 

If one party quick sells you an unusual and you sell it 10 minutes later for 5 keys profit then the person who quicksold it made a poor judgment call because of their inexperience . The same inexperience can lead to a person giving you a very favourable deal or to agreeing to one. 

If someone buys an overpriced taunt then it's likely because of their inexperience which they were taken advantage of.

If someone buys has a low buy order (for example below scrap.tf price) and someone sells to them then they were taken advantage of. The same user could have gotten a better deal from scrap but they didn't know any better because of their lack of experience. 

If someone buys an overpriced unusual on scrap.tf for almost full pure then scrap.tf took advantage of the buyer's inexperience which led them to making this horrible deal.

 

If you want to apply negative trust for good deals then why not do it consistently for every good deal? TL;DR profit doesn't fall from the sky and is usually the result of one party taking advantage of the other parties inexperience or by being more convincing than the other party. Taking advantage involves no forms of manipulation.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

There's a difference between making for profit deals when both parties are aware of what they're doing and making hugely for profit deals because of the fact that the other trader doesn't know what they're doing. There are plenty of fair, kind traders who don't do that to people. This would only apply to significantly uneven trades, there's plenty of margin for profit while still being fair.

 

 

You're repeating points I have already addressed.

[Torb]

Also like 95%+ of the people who use bptf and have stuff worth sharking know who the notorious sharks are so it's hardly spreading awareness.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

4 minutes ago, djsober said:

Seems quite pointless to negative trust when it doesn't really do anything. Also seems like it will just get spammed.

 

Just now, djsober said:

Also like 95%+ of the people who use bptf and have stuff worth sharking know who the notorious sharks are so it's hardly spreading awareness.

 

Yeah, I don't know how many vulnerable people it would reach. But one is better than none.

[Torb]

Just now, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

 

Yeah, I don't know how many vulnerable people it would reach. But one is better than none.

Only real way to prevent it is to remove bptf premium

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

Just now, djsober said:

Only real way to prevent it is to remove bptf premium

 

That's a different discussion, not for this thread.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

I'm gonna stop responding and let you guys discuss, if you have a specific question you'd like me to answer feel free to tag me.

[ѕιи]

"Should we allow negative trust for sharking where there are repeated uneven trades but not enough evidence to ban?"

How uneven would those trades have to be in order for them to be applicable for a ban, and how would those items be valued? How many occurrences of repeated uneven trades would there need to be in order to hand out negative trust ratings for it? How often would they have to occur? Would it make any difference if the "sharker" had backpack.tf premium or not, and if they received negative trust ratings for uneven trades, would that affect their premium status? Would a valid negative trust need multiple instances of "uneven trades" in order to stay up, or would a bunch of people all need to -rep for the same reason in different trades?

 

There are definitely more questions I can think of than these, but if those aren't an obvious sign of how broken such a system would be, I don't know what is. If implemented, it's just going to facilitate witch hunts, whether the staff team encourages it or not. There is no basis for how to represent item values that I have seen in this thread, no basis for what proof would be necessary to show "uneven" trades, no basis for item values (and I'm not even getting into unpriced items. Backpack.tf price is not law), and this most definitely is not what I want to see the trust system being used for.

 

If there is not enough evidence to ban someone for sharking, there should not be a penalty applied to those who make repeated "uneven" trades and labeling them as sharks, for the reasons I listed above. Sharking should be what the site defines it as - using manipulation in order to get a better deal.

 

Make reasonable benchmarks for some of the things I pointed out in the beginning of this post and maybe it can be considered in the future (if any concrete values can even be made), but for now it is a no from me.

 

Quote anything I said and feel free to ask me to clarify or challenge any of the points I made. I only addressed the question used in the poll, so keep that in mind when replying.

 

TL;DR No, too much room for abuse. Would make this site look terrible.

[Xergoyf]

I think sharks should get negative trust. After all, trust is supposed to show whether someone is trustworthy - if someone has a history of adding inexperienced unboxers and ends up with lopsided trades, they are certainly NOT trustworthy in any regards. Negative trust for sharking can be a warning to traders to double and triple check everything and make sure that they want to make the trade. How it would be regulated is worth mentioning, as you don't want people being bombarded with negative trust for the same thing over and over again. Maybe every new negative trust for sharking would require 3-5 new compare links showing one-sided trades or something of that sort, and everything else would be removed.

I think this is a step in the right direction however I think we need to address the underlining problem that is people abusing premium search to find inexperienced unboxers. I think users with histories of abusing premium should be banned from using premium features, or somehow removing new unboxes from premium search (im not a dev so I don't know how that would work)

[appy]

4 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

"Should we allow negative trust for sharking where there are repeated uneven trades but not enough evidence to ban?"

How uneven would those trades have to be in order for them to be applicable for a ban, and how would those items be valued? How many occurrences of repeated uneven trades would there need to be in order to hand out negative trust ratings for it? How often would they have to occur? Would it make any difference if the "sharker" had backpack.tf premium or not, and if they received negative trust ratings for uneven trades, would that affect their premium status? Would a valid negative trust need multiple instances of "uneven trades" in order to stay up, or would a bunch of people all need to -rep for the same reason in different trades?

 

There are definitely more questions I can think of than these, but if those aren't an obvious sign of how broken such a system would be, I don't know what is. If implemented, it's just going to facilitate witch hunts, whether the staff team encourages it or not. There is no basis for how to represent item values that I have seen in this thread, no basis for what proof would be necessary to show "uneven" trades, no basis for item values (and I'm not even getting into unpriced items. Backpack.tf price is not law), and this most definitely is not what I want to see the trust system being used for.

 

If there is not enough evidence to ban someone for sharking, there should not be a penalty applied to those who make repeated "uneven" trades and labeling them as sharks, for the reasons I listed above. Sharking should be what the site defines it as - using manipulation in order to get a better deal.

 

Make reasonable benchmarks for some of the things I pointed out in the beginning of this post and maybe it can be considered in the future (if any concrete values can even be made), but for now it is a no from me.

 

Quote anything I said and feel free to ask me to clarify or challenge any of the points I made. I only addressed the question used in the poll, so keep that in mind when replying.

 

TL;DR No, too much room for abuse. Would make this site look terrible.

 

I agree i feel that there is a better option, ie. revoke or cooldown access to premium search for people who abuse it.If they use alts to still persist in abusing premium search i am sure it can be tracked and a ban would be in order.It looks like premium search is the root cause of the issue.That is how all these horrible people are getting to new users.

[The Wishmaster]

2 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

"Should we allow negative trust for sharking where there are repeated uneven trades but not enough evidence to ban?"

How uneven would those trades have to be in order for them to be applicable for a ban, and how would those items be valued? How many occurrences of repeated uneven trades would there need to be in order to hand out negative trust ratings for it? How often would they have to occur? Would it make any difference if the "sharker" had backpack.tf premium or not, and if they received negative trust ratings for uneven trades, would that affect their premium status? Would a valid negative trust need multiple instances of "uneven trades" in order to stay up, or would a bunch of people all need to -rep for the same reason in different trades?

 

There are definitely more questions I can think of than these, but if those aren't an obvious sign of how broken such a system would be, I don't know what is. If implemented, it's just going to facilitate witch hunts, whether the staff team encourages it or not. There is no basis for how to represent item values that I have seen in this thread, no basis for what proof would be necessary to show "uneven" trades, no basis for item values (and I'm not even getting into unpriced items. Backpack.tf price is not law), and this most definitely is not what I want to see the trust system being used for.

 

If there is not enough evidence to ban someone for sharking, there should not be a penalty applied to those who make repeated "uneven" trades and labeling them as sharks, for the reasons I listed above. Sharking should be what the site defines it as - using manipulation in order to get a better deal.

 

Make reasonable benchmarks for some of the things I pointed out in the beginning of this post and maybe it can be considered in the future (if any concrete values can even be made), but for now it is a no from me.

 

Quote anything I said and feel free to ask me to clarify or challenge any of the points I made. I only addressed the question used in the poll, so keep that in mind when replying.

 

TL;DR No, too much room for abuse. Would make this site look terrible.

A lot of these points are about implementation, which I would assume would be ratified if this plan was to go ahead. It's clear that at this stage it's just gauging public interest. You can't say a system is broken without actually letting staff detail how the system would work. Item value is pretty straightforward. There are multiple sources such as backpack.tf, marketplace.tf, TF2Outpost, OPSkins, even the SCM that give evidence to what the market value of an item is -- after all that is how value works? Unpriced items is a very good point, but I think common sense can dictate that 5 keys or a couple of weapons or stranges for some new unusual is not going to a fair trade.

 

Basically you are just getting far too ahead of yourself and shooting it down before you even give the policy a chance to be discussed and ratified.

[Torb]

24 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

"Should we allow negative trust for sharking where there are repeated uneven trades but not enough evidence to ban?"

How uneven would those trades have to be in order for them to be applicable for a ban, and how would those items be valued? How many occurrences of repeated uneven trades would there need to be in order to hand out negative trust ratings for it? How often would they have to occur? Would it make any difference if the "sharker" had backpack.tf premium or not, and if they received negative trust ratings for uneven trades, would that affect their premium status? Would a valid negative trust need multiple instances of "uneven trades" in order to stay up, or would a bunch of people all need to -rep for the same reason in different trades?

 

There are definitely more questions I can think of than these, but if those aren't an obvious sign of how broken such a system would be, I don't know what is. If implemented, it's just going to facilitate witch hunts, whether the staff team encourages it or not. There is no basis for how to represent item values that I have seen in this thread, no basis for what proof would be necessary to show "uneven" trades, no basis for item values (and I'm not even getting into unpriced items. Backpack.tf price is not law), and this most definitely is not what I want to see the trust system being used for.

 

If there is not enough evidence to ban someone for sharking, there should not be a penalty applied to those who make repeated "uneven" trades and labeling them as sharks, for the reasons I listed above. Sharking should be what the site defines it as - using manipulation in order to get a better deal.

 

Make reasonable benchmarks for some of the things I pointed out in the beginning of this post and maybe it can be considered in the future (if any concrete values can even be made), but for now it is a no from me.

 

Quote anything I said and feel free to ask me to clarify or challenge any of the points I made. I only addressed the question used in the poll, so keep that in mind when replying.

 

TL;DR No, too much room for abuse. Would make this site look terrible.

There are plenty of times where someone offers like 8 keys for an unusual which is unpriced with quickbuyers way above that and yet it isn't even considered sharking.

 

Like someone bought a haunted ghost shellmet for a 15 key unusual and it's got quickbuyers on steam market for around 18 yet it's not considered sharking because the mods only care about their narrow spectrum of what's considered sharking which would only be punishable by the person who got sharked reporting it which we all know doesn't happen.

[ѕιи]

19 minutes ago, appy said:

 

I agree i feel that there is a better option, ie. revoke or cooldown access to premium search for people who abuse it.If they use alts to still persist in abusing premium search i am sure it can be tracked and a ban would be in order.It looks like premium search is the root cause of the issue.That is how all these horrible people are getting to new users.

 

Revoking premium would literally be like, the exact same thing. All my questions as to implementation on that trust system would apply to revoking premium/premium cooldowns. It'd be just as broken, if not more broken, than allowing negative trust ratings.

 

15 minutes ago, The Wishmaster said:

A lot of these points are about implementation, which I would assume would be ratified if this plan was to go ahead. It's clear that at this stage it's just gauging public interest. You can't say a system is broken without actually letting staff detail how the system would work. Item value is pretty straightforward. There are multiple sources such as backpack.tf, marketplace.tf, TF2Outpost, OPSkins, even the SCM that give evidence to what the market value of an item is -- after all that is how value works? Unpriced items is a very good point, but I think common sense can dictate that 5 keys or a couple of weapons or stranges for some new unusual is not going to a fair trade.

 

Basically you are just getting far too ahead of yourself and shooting it down before you even give the policy a chance to be discussed and ratified.

 

There are sources for item values out there. That's obvious to me, seeing as I am a price suggester. What is also obvious to me is that, like I said before, Backpack.tf price is not the law. You can have as many sources for pricing as you'd like, but you are not always going to be 100% accurate, and if you want to even consider penalizing people for making "uneven" trades, in my opinion, you need a 100% accurate reference point or there is room for abuse.

 

That is one of the reasons I automatically shut down this policy, because I find it illogical. What I also would find illogical is if this plan were to go ahead with no reference points on how to implement such a feature, which there are none. And this is also not getting into the fact of if such a plan was implemented, the definition of sharking on this site would need to be rewritten, seeing as how sharking is defined as "the use of deceitful tactics to coerce another user to commit a trade against their better judgment" ( https://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/29027-guide-for-background-checks/ ) and that with this system, you wouldn't even need to show the use of deceitful tactics used to coerce someone into making a trade against their judgement because if you do that, they would be banned anyways, as Teeny said before here.

 

1 hour ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

Manipulation leads to a ban, not a negative trust.

I disagree that there is no issue of trust here. Taking advantage of peoples' inexperience is still a shady trading practice if no manipulation is involved, it just doesn't rise to the level required for a ban. It's certainly something that users could do with a warning about. If they were really happy with their trades, it would make no difference.

 

 

If the point of this thread was solely for public interest, I consider it a waste of time considering we're basing this on literally nothing. I'd prefer to reply on a thread that actually has some sort of foundation for a such of policy, Unless there isn't any answer addressing all the things I find broken with such a system, I believe I have the full right to shoot this idea down.

9 minutes ago, djsober said:

There are plenty of times where someone offers like 8 keys for an unusual which is unpriced with quickbuyers way above that and yet it isn't even considered sharking.

 

Like someone bought a haunted ghost shellmet for a 15 key unusual and it's got quickbuyers on steam market for around 18 yet it's not considered sharking because the mods only care about their narrow spectrum of what's considered sharking which would only be punishable by the person who got sharked reporting it which we all know doesn't happen.

 

Yeah, because guess what? That isn't sharking on this site. If you're complaining about the mods "narrow spectrum" of what defines sharking, then why don't we start off by changing the definition of sharking on this site instead of making such a rash decision as this.

[RED265]

35 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

I'm gonna stop responding and let you guys discuss, if you have a specific question you'd like me to answer feel free to tag me.

How about a pop up window like steamrep for fraud, saying that the existing user has been reported often for repeated price manipulation/preying on new unboxers, and a recommendation not to trade/temp ban on these for the worst? And I think there should be a stricter clamp down on unpriced sharking. People offering unpriced roboactive burning bandana and calling it 120*cough cough what a joke* for a spellbound hoodie's

[iTrade ™]

9 minutes ago, RED265 said:

How about a pop up window like steamrep for fraud, saying that the existing user has been reported often for repeated price manipulation/preying on new unboxers, and a recommendation not to trade/temp ban on these for the worst? And I think there should be a stricter clamp down on unpriced sharking. People offering unpriced roboactive burning bandana and calling it 120*cough cough what a joke* for a spellbound hoodie's

This thread is not about users who shark according to the definition of sharking from bp.tf. People who commit sharking or who engage in price manipulation already get banned. Nobody is arguing that this should be changed.

This thread is about users who make profitable trades by being more experienced than the person they are dealing with or by being more convincing than them.

 

 

Also I want to say that I agree with the points @ѕιи has raised. 

[ѕιи]

10 minutes ago, RED265 said:

How about a pop up window like steamrep for fraud, saying that the existing user has been reported often for repeated price manipulation/preying on new unboxers,

 

If there is proof of repeated manipulation, they will receive a ban.

 

10 minutes ago, RED265 said:

And I think there should be a stricter clamp down on unpriced sharking. People offering unpriced roboactive burning bandana and calling it 120*cough cough what a joke* for a spellbound hoodie's

 

I think this should sum up the problem with that.

46 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

"Should we allow negative trust for sharking where there are repeated uneven trades but not enough evidence to ban?"

How uneven would those trades have to be in order for them to be applicable for a ban, and how would those items be valued? How many occurrences of repeated uneven trades would there need to be in order to hand out negative trust ratings for it? How often would they have to occur? Would it make any difference if the "sharker" had backpack.tf premium or not, and if they received negative trust ratings for uneven trades, would that affect their premium status? Would a valid negative trust need multiple instances of "uneven trades" in order to stay up, or would a bunch of people all need to -rep for the same reason in different trades?

 

 

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

24 minutes ago, ѕιи said:

 

There are sources for item values out there. That's obvious to me, seeing as I am a price suggester. What is also obvious to me is that, like I said before, Backpack.tf price is not the law. You can have as many sources for pricing as you'd like, but you are not always going to be 100% accurate, and if you want to even consider penalizing people for making "uneven" trades, in my opinion, you need a 100% accurate reference point or there is room for abuse.

 

That is one of the reasons I automatically shut down this policy, because I find it illogical. What I also would find illogical is if this plan were to go ahead with no reference points on how to implement such a feature, which there are none. And this is also not getting into the fact of if such a plan was implemented, the definition of sharking on this site would need to be rewritten, seeing as how sharking is defined as "the use of deceitful tactics to coerce another user to commit a trade against their better judgment" ( https://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/29027-guide-for-background-checks/ ) and that with this system, you wouldn't even need to show the use of deceitful tactics used to coerce someone into making a trade against their judgement because if you do that, they would be banned anyways, as Teeny said before here.

 

If the point of this thread was solely for public interest, I consider it a waste of time considering we're basing this on literally nothing. I'd prefer to reply on a thread that actually has some sort of foundation for a such of policy, Unless there isn't any answer addressing all the things I find broken with such a system, I believe I have the full right to shoot this idea down.

 

Yeah, because guess what? That isn't sharking on this site. If you're complaining about the mods "narrow spectrum" of what defines sharking, then why don't we start off by changing the definition of sharking on this site instead of making such a rash decision as this.

 

You don't need 100% accurate prices to see if a trade is significantly unbalanced. You just don't. You're well aware of this. Your argument is more about where to draw the line than anything else, and given that this would only be applied in cases of repeated instances with large price disparities, I don't see what is wrong with a judgement call. We could also put a flat value on it, a % value of the item, as outpost do. There's plenty of perfectly doable ways to apply this, but I wanted to see if it was something the community actually wanted before putting serious thought into planning logistics.

 

I've used sharking for the thread title because that's the way users refer to it when complaining. The definition of bannable sharking would not change. We're simply talking about additional negative trusts for repeatedly taking advantage of other traders. You can ignore the word "sharking" if that helps you, it's not the relevant factor here. I can amend or write a new post on bannable sharking and the difference between that and negative trust if it is something we choose to do.

[AD⚡HD]

this is a very long time coming please get this instated asap

[Fishtail]

2 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

So, this has always been a debated issue on this site and others, with many users wishing we were tougher on "sharks". Our stance on sharking is clear in this thread, and I stand by it when it comes to banning users - uneven trades alone is not enough to consider sharking elevated to the level of scamming, for me, and proof of manipulation, deceit, etc, will remain the threshold required for us to ban.

 

However, I have been thinking about the possibility of allowing negative trust to be left for users who repeatedly engage in uneven trades in which they're buying items for significantly less than the item's likely worth and then reselling for 10x what they paid. Odd trades like this are not a concern to me - not every new trader cares about item value, and some are likely truly happy with the trade they got and wouldn't trade back even if informed what their item could have got. But when these unbalanced trades are occurring regularly from particular regular traders, that is a pattern which suggests they are taking advantage of people. And I think that users maybe deserve a warning about that pattern. They would still be free to make whatever trade they wanted to, so if they were truly happy regardless of value this wouldn't have any effect on the ability of the individuals to continue trading. However, those who might have made a different choice if they knew would at least have some warning available somewhere to alert them to do some further research. On the other hand, it could be argued that the people vulnerable to being taken advantage of are unlikely to check backpack.tf trust anyway, so it may serve little practical purpose. 

 

This is not decided by any means, but I'm thinking about it and I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to weigh in. I WILL NOT tolerate drama or accusations against any individuals in particular in this thread. Let's keep it to generalities please.

 

I feel like a new term should be introduced for this. There's already sharking, but you guys have a pretty specific definition for it, and this doesn't really encompass it. So based on the definition you've posted on the site, people continue to abuse it. I agree to have it left to a mod's judgement call rather than some set line, since it'd be impossible to draw. We've all seen pretty frequent instances of disgusting "sharks" recently. This has been going on for quite a while - with the community saying it's not right, but not doing anything about it. We've always brushed it off saying there's not enough chat long evidence, and cash could've been involved. But the sheer number of these "taking advantage of new users" acts happening all the time from the handful of people who like to call themselves "traders" is staggering. There is no doubt there isn't any cash involved in most of these horrendously low purchases. A -ve trust rating in this matter would go a long way since people would know who they're dealing with, which'd deter them from dealing with these heinous people. This would be just like the effect banning has on scamming. It discourages people to trade with them, thereby making their taking-advantage acts partly futile. Though people would still continue to buy from these fellas, they wouldn't get nearly as much sales, and also be put to shame. Rather than direct confrontation and drama, this method would affect them greatly in the long-term. 

[TheVirtualEconomist]

As someone who has publicly taken a stand against sharkers, I think this is a great idea. It is absolute madness that certain (unnamed) users can consistently take advantage of brand new unboxers who know absolutely zero about trading, while getting off with absolutely zero punishment. I basically agree with everything said by The Wishmaster. Cudos to him for saying it so accurately and sufficiently. 

 

1 hour ago, The Wishmaster said:

Trust should be a reflection of a person according to community customs and standards. Sharking is inherently untrustworthy - it shows that a person is willing to take advantage (possibly through coercion) of another inexperienced trader for their own massive gain. You can argue this is human nature, and I absolutely agree that in 99% trades someone is getting a better deal than the other. But there is an expectation that both parties are relatively experienced with trading and are aware of sites such as backpack.tf (although I am not saying that is a necessity for it to be a "fair trade"). This does not apply in most cases of sharking because the victim is usually someone completely inexperienced. Trust should, in my opinion, inform others of that person's conduct in the community and I think it is generally accepted that sharking is not acceptable conduct.

 

I do want to respond here, because it is at the crux of this whole discussion. 

 

34 minutes ago, iTrade ™ said:

If one party quick sells you an unusual and you sell it 10 minutes later for 5 keys profit then the person who quicksold it made a poor judgment call because of their inexperience . The same inexperience can lead to a person giving you a very favourable deal or to agreeing to one. 

If someone buys an overpriced taunt then it's likely because of their inexperience which they were taken advantage of.

If someone buys has a low buy order (for example below scrap.tf price) and someone sells to them then they were taken advantage of. The same user could have gotten a better deal from scrap but they didn't know any better because of their lack of experience. 

If someone buys an overpriced unusual on scrap.tf for almost full pure then scrap.tf took advantage of the buyer's inexperience which led them to making this horrible deal.

 

If you want to apply negative trust for good deals then why not do it consistently for every good deal? TL;DR profit doesn't fall from the sky and is usually the result of one party taking advantage of the other parties inexperience or by being more convincing than the other party. Taking advantage involves no forms of manipulation.

 

 

 

I've seen this argument many times. And I get your point of view. In order to make profit, chances are someone is making a better trade than the other party, so why should we punish people for making legitimate trades? However, if I understand Teeny correctly, the point of this rules change is to help prevent high profile sharks from occurring, not to prevent people form making profit. When you make a trade and clearly make a few keys profit off someone, I would call that a mistake (if anything) on the part of the other trader. Nothing big. The other trader will learn from it and will go about trading as they always did. However, there is a fine line between this and a shark. In my mind, a shark is basically a mistake that is so large (value wise) that occurs when someone with trading experience purposely searches for people with  zero knowledge of trading to try and use this lack of any knowledge to their advantage. This, in my opinion, should have some consequence. While it is clear backpack will not ban people for sharking, I think that negative trust is the next best thing. It won't prevent sharks from doing legitimate trades, and it will simply warm potential shark victims to think twice before accepting trades with someone with a known track record of sharking. 

 

For all those people wondering about how to apply negative trust, I think that fundamentally two criteria need to be met.

 

1) The trade needs to be so one sided that any person with even the tiniest knowledge of the market should know not to accept.*

2) The trade needs to be above a certain threshold in value, so as not to incriminate legitimate traders making profit off small mistakes.

 

*Keep in mind I don't think deception other party "happiness" should be a factor. This solely looks at discrepancy between what the victim should have received and what they did receive. Examples include someone not knowing the backpack.tf price of their unusual or knowing that halloween hat effects are very rare and expensive.

 

[HarryG]

I have pointed out time and again that sharks just take what they can get in terms of the percentages that are bannable in terms of sharking (If it's 10%, they'll just do 15, and the only reason they do 15 is to keep doing it without a ban. They go as low as they're allowed). This is an excellent idea. Tons of traders considered reputable in the community (many of whom are forumers) are utter scum and need to be stamped out, and this is a major step in doing so. Consider this proposal to have my full support; I believe the only reason to oppose such restrictions is if one is actually one of the people doing dishonest trading in such a manner. Additionally, I think putting a numerical threshold on this defeats the entire purpose; as I said, this kind of scum takes what it can get to avoid any punishment and so I think it should be a case-by-case basis in terms of how many questionable trades there have been and what values each trade hold. Otherwise it's no different than the bans for the percentages that exist now. That's simple scalper/black-market economics, folks.

 

-HarryG

[Fishtail]

9 minutes ago, TheVirtualEconomist said:

As someone who has publicly taken a stand against sharkers, I think this is a great idea. It is absolute madness that certain (unnamed) users can consistently take advantage of brand new unboxers who know absolutely zero about trading, while getting off with absolutely zero punishment. I basically agree with everything said by The Wishmaster. Cudos to him for saying it so accurately and sufficiently. 

 

 

I do want to respond here, because it is at the crux of this whole discussion. 

 

 

I've seen this argument many times. And I get your point of view. In order to make profit, chances are someone is making a better trade than the other party, so why should we punish people for making legitimate trades? However, if I understand Teeny correctly, the point of this rules change is to help prevent high profile sharks from occurring, not to prevent people form making profit. When you make a trade and clearly make a few keys profit off someone, I would call that a mistake (if anything) on the part of the other trader. Nothing big. The other trader will learn from it and will go about trading as they always did. However, there is a fine line between this and a shark. In my mind, a shark is basically a mistake that is so large (value wise) that occurs when someone with trading experience purposely searches for people with  zero knowledge of trading to try and use this lack of any knowledge to their advantage. This, in my opinion, should have some consequence. While it is clear backpack will not ban people for sharking, I think that negative trust is the next best thing. It won't prevent sharks from doing legitimate trades, and it will simply warm potential shark victims to think twice before accepting trades with someone with a known track record of sharking. 

 

For all those people wondering about how to apply negative trust, I think that fundamentally two criteria need to be met.

 

1) The trade needs to be so one sided that any person with even the tiniest knowledge of the market should know not to accept.*

2) The trade needs to be above a certain threshold in value, so as not to incriminate legitimate traders making profit off small mistakes.

 

*Keep in mind I don't think deception other party "happiness" should be a factor. This solely looks at discrepancy between what the victim should have received and what they did receive. Examples include someone not knowing the backpack.tf price of their unusual or knowing that halloween hat effects are very rare and expensive.

 

 

Here's the thing. People are profiting honestly - overpaying with items for other items they like, quickselling their items to get keys to purchase something else, and so on. We shouldn't be normalizing these heinous acts. Threshold ideas might not be the best as well, since some people tend to overpay more generously than others. There are also instances where people would happily sell their items for far less than the suggested price on backpack.tf. So a minimal # of suspicious trades should probably be the criteria. This way we'd know who the repeated offenders are (as we know now), and slap them in their face with a -ve trust rating to hurt their schemes. I'm not saying the criteria i suggested is correct, it's just an idea. But let's leave it to the mods. Even though -ve trusts won't make too big a difference, it's still something. Best case for this community would be for Valve to collaborate with either backpack.tf or steamrep and raise awareness using a reputation system. But, they don't care for anything other than their wallet size, so there's no hope.

[ѕιи]

3 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

You don't need 100% accurate prices to see if a trade is significantly unbalanced. You just don't. You're well aware of this. Your argument is more about where to draw the line than anything else, and given that this would only be applied in cases of repeated instances with large price disparities, I don't see what is wrong with a judgement call. We could also put a flat value on it, a % value of the item, as outpost do. There's plenty of perfectly doable ways to apply this, but I wanted to see if it was something the community actually wanted before putting serious thought into planning logistics.

 

I've used sharking for the thread title because that's the way users refer to it when complaining. The definition of bannable sharking would not change. We're simply talking about additional negative trusts for repeatedly taking advantage of other traders. You can ignore the word "sharking" if that helps you, it's not the relevant factor here.

 

Drawing the line is one of the most, if not the most, important thing about this policy as a whole. That is why I stress how big a price disparity must have to be and how accurate prices must be Teeny. Outdated prices exist on this site. Mistakes made in finding sales in price suggestions exist (whether we see them all or not or how detrimental they are or not) and keeping all of this in mind, that is why in my opinion it would make this site look awful if such a system was implemented.

 

If you're goal of using sharking as the thread title was for clickbait, it worked. Considering you don't even define sharking as just making trades with uneven values on this site, no matter how uneven they are, that's a huge mistake on your part. If this system were to even possible in my eyes, the definition of sharking needs to be rewritten. You can't judge people for making a shit ton of profit off a trade and penalizing them for it on a basis and definition that doesn't even support what this site stands for.

[iTrade ™]

16 minutes ago, TheVirtualEconomist said:

However, there is a fine line between this and a shark. In my mind, a shark is basically a mistake that is so large (value wise) that occurs when someone with trading experience purposely searches for people with  zero knowledge of trading to try and use this lack of any knowledge to their advantage. This, in my opinion, should have some consequence.

 

So what if the other party proposes you this deal? Take the Poisned Shadows Brain Warming Wear. The chat logs (public in the suggestion) clearly show that the person consulted bp.tf and then decided to sell it for 8 keys. The hat sold for more than it was bought. The buyer is not a fault for the decisions of the seller.

 

16 minutes ago, TheVirtualEconomist said:

While it is clear backpack will not ban people for sharking, I think that negative trust is the next best thing. It won't prevent sharks from doing legitimate trades, and it will simply warm potential shark victims to think twice before accepting trades with someone with a known track record of sharking. 

 

Backpack.tf does ban for sharking. Sharking, as defined by backpack.tf, involves manipulation. If there is no manipulation then it's no sharking and no ban. Please don't confuse that nor spread false info.

 

16 minutes ago, TheVirtualEconomist said:

1) The trade needs to be so one sided that any person with even the tiniest knowledge of the market should know not to accept.*

2) The trade needs to be above a certain threshold in value, so as not to incriminate legitimate traders making profit off small mistakes.

 

 

Again, take a look at the Poisned Shadows Brain Warming Wear which the owner decided to sell for 8 keys after consulting bp.tf. This trade demonstrates that your criteria #1 doesn't not work because in that trade the owner had knowledge of backpack.tf. Despite his consultancy of bp.tf the trade was highy criticized by a few vocal member of this community. Should a negative trust be applied here? I say no because it was the sole decision of the owner to sell it for this low price.

 

[redbackpacktf]

There must be a line in the sand at a specific amount. If I quickbuy an item off opskins for a 10% of it's value, is that going to get me a -trust? Or will it be 11%? Or 25%?  Or does it only apply to item trades? There needs to be finite rules IMO, which would be impossible to set because of some items that vary too much in value (spells, low crafts, collector's cosmetics, etc.) for this sort of thing.

 

I'm not completely opposed to this sort of addition to the site, but it would need to be EXTREMELY specific, and with that specificity, would bring finite rule evasion (if you can't quickbuy below 10% of the value, they'd aim for 11.)

 

I see no problem with the rules as of now. The only major change I'd propose to try to help the issue of sharking (not sure if this is possible from a programming perspective) would be to sort the premium search results by price, rather than when they were unboxed.