Jump to content

Input on item suggestions


Jacobmeister

Recommended Posts

Item suggesting has evolved a fair amount over the past few years, with guidelines, currencies, scripts affecting workflow, and controversial points constantly changing how people work on suggestions.

Having been in both positions (and not in a moderating position anymore), I can tell you right now making suggestions and moderating them are two very different things. It can be hard to see things through the suggester's (or the moderator's) point of view at times; the main thing I always keep in my mind is that we reflect common trading points (something polar used to always reiterate) and these days I feel like that's gone a bit lost in favour of just following the guidelines and making suggestions just to get them out there.

So personally, I feel like there's something wrong with suggestions, both unusual and non-unusual. But I'm only one person, and I've already stated my opinion, which isn't necessarily representative of every suggester ever. So this is a call to anyone who makes suggestions currently or has had made suggestions recently; what do YOU think of item suggesting today? Is it too hard? Too easy? Are there any issues with any sort of logic behind guidelines? Do you think anything needs changed? Why?

This is your chance to speak your mind on item suggestions. Just keep it civil and on topic. Criticism is fine and that's the point of this thread, just use your words carefully, and don't say x is awful without any sort of reason or resolution.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

The change in guidelines to require sales on normal items was intended to actually put the importance of common trading points into suggestions more than they previously were. In the past most normal items were suggested based on seller drops or buyer raises, not the actual trading points of the items.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't too sure of the change in guidelines recently (to include sales rather than sellers/buyers) and I was sceptical to start. However, like Teeny has said it shows you exactly what the 'common trading point' is rather than a priced being based off an unsold. (Talking about non-unus here)

I've not been around for too long and I've not encountered many changes but this was certainly a good one. Sure it brings about some awful ranges sometimes which is a downfall of the current system although slight rounding (22.11 to 22 for example) will stop that problem easily!

As for the difficulty I'd say it's mixed, as I've done quite a few suggestions I understand what needs to go in (sales and whatnot) however for someone beginning to suggest it could be quite daunting. Plenty of suggesters/suggestions have the correct ranges based on Buyers and Sellers but they don't have the proof to back that up.

I think for the regulars suggestions can be quite easy and in some cases 2 Compare links can be considered fine (I feel a little more effort to find more than 1 sale to backup a range)

As for unusuals nothing much has changed at least since I've been around, the site is evolving and making suggestions easier in some ways. However I think many suggesters struggle picking ranges and it often boils down to moderators suggesting a range they feel is appropriate, less is down to the actual suggester. Sometimes (a minority of times) a moderator will pick a range they feels suits and it leaves you to question "Well why exclude that data value?" And I imagine learner suggesters would be confused where the range comes from. Perhaps a forum guide could be made explaining "A higher sale could be countered by unsolds that are ~2 weeks+ unsold and should therefore not feature in the range....."

Another little point I'd like to bring up whilst I'm here is encouraging suggesters to resuggest. I'm not entirely sure how to do that but many-a-time suggesters will try and update their own hat, their suggestion gets a mod comment (ie. for missed sales, range with 1 sale etc) and is then closed (either by a mod or themselves). Perhaps moderators could add a comment asking them to resuggest it with a link to the discord so they can have help.

Like your last line said, this is only my opinion but I'd like to know whether mods/other suggesters (new or old) agree/disagree with me, = )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel the most annoying problem is mods are leaving taunt/unusual weapon / rare hat suggestions open way longer then they need to be.

 

Basically from what I've seen is:

They think taunts fluctuate too much, which right now doesn't seem to be the case with indate ones, and even then, leave it open for 2 weeks max, not 5-6 weeks

Unusual weapon, i dont understand why even with 2 sales they stay open for a bit.. idek

Rare hats, might only be one sale but full pure, or two sales they still wait for another sale even though the user may be keeping it or never list it in the month the suggestion is up.

 

Also I think dropping at b/o's is a weird thing we need to discuss, how long should the b/o be there, what % off the current price should it be etc.

 

I think there should also be a function that with newer suggestors or under black belts needing help, there should be like a "call helper" button or so, and any black belt or above (maybe purple belt idk whatever teeny chooses) can be notified and help/mentor if they need to. Also this function could serve as a filter for price moderators, if they don't need help or they got help and they're suggestion still fits or they resuggested perfectly fine, maybe the black belts can filter it as a "good suggestion" or something or a certain colour so it makes it easier for price mods to find the ones to be accepted first, then deal with the bad suggestions later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

A link to the discord included in close messages isn't a bad idea, might lead more people to join and ask for help. Nice suggestion, lemons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a newer Suggester, I may not know enough about all the rules and current system to say much, but I may as well put my opinion out there, in a ramble. And I'm mostly talking about Unusual suggestions.

 

I notice that, for a perfectionist like me, there is a "rabbit hole" you follow when suggesting. When a hat sells for an outdated hat, you want to make a suggestion for that hat, and so on and so on. The reason for this is because I want to make absolutely certain that an item is selling for the price it is. I've seen multiple cases where a Mini was "valid" with one sale for a hat that had multiple sales, or multiple in existence with multiple sales across the board. Obviously unusable sales are unusable sales, but should one not look at multiple sales across the multiple trading sites to be more accurate? 

I do realize that the above really on applies to unusuals, as doing suggestions for something as common as a craft hat, would become tedious and never ending. I also realize that rarer hats aren't likely gonna have many sales either.

 

While I do agree with mods decision to keep skin / War Paint suggestions above a certain amount (10 keys, I believe), I would like to see that rule, at some point in the future, relaxed a bit so that more items do not suffer from SCM highs and lows. Perhaps a key at a time?

 

I've also seen untraceable sales not being used. Why does no one think to ask the person who bought/sold it for a screenshot for evidence? I have that done that before. And while I understand that time zones may not align, or that person may not be online atm, but is it hard to delay posting a suggestion waiting for the person to respond? Even if it is not a reliable source of info, it could at least be mentioned in the rules as a possible option to be done.

 

I'd also like to see the up/down vote beside the suggestion button removed. While this allows ease of access, it also causes blind votes. I myself am guilty of said action. I personally would like such an option to be only accessible at the bottom of the actually suggestion page, so that people who actually look at the evidence (or lack of), and can make an informed vote. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, sscourge said:

As a newer Suggester, I may not know enough about all the rules and current system to say much, but I may as well put my opinion out there, in a ramble. And I'm mostly talking about Unusual suggestions.

 

I notice that, for a perfectionist like me, there is a "rabbit hole" you follow when suggesting. When a hat sells for an outdated hat, you want to make a suggestion for that hat, and so on and so on. The reason for this is because I want to make absolutely certain that an item is selling for the price it is. I've seen multiple cases where a Mini was "valid" with one sale for a hat that had multiple sales, or multiple in existence with multiple sales across the board. Obviously unusable sales are unusable sales, but should one not look at multiple sales across the multiple trading sites to be more accurate? 

I do realize that the above really on applies to unusuals, as doing suggestions for something as common as a craft hat, would become tedious and never ending. I also realize that rarer hats aren't likely gonna have many sales either.

 

While I do agree with mods decision to keep skin / War Paint suggestions above a certain amount (10 keys, I believe), I would like to see that rule, at some point in the future, relaxed a bit so that more items do not suffer from SCM highs and lows. Perhaps a key at a time?

 

I've also seen untraceable sales not being used. Why does no one think to ask the person who bought/sold it for a screenshot for evidence? I have that done that before. And while I understand that time zones may not align, or that person may not be online atm, but is it hard to delay posting a suggestion waiting for the person to respond? Even if it is not a reliable source of info, it could at least be mentioned in the rules as a possible option to be done.

 

I'd also like to see the up/down vote beside the suggestion button removed. While this allows ease of access, it also causes blind votes. I myself am guilty of said action. I personally would like such an option to be only accessible at the bottom of the actually suggestion page, so that people who actually look at the evidence (or lack of), and can make an informed vote. 

 

 

Some nice ideas there,

However in relation to the "untraceable" sales it would take a while to track down all the buyers/sellers and add them and then ask them to kindly say "How much did you buy/sell X for?" which some people aren't happy about. It's a solution I guess but it's not very effective, half the time they don't respond or decline adds and when you say that you'd like to use their sale on a suggestion people sometimes backdown as they don't want to have their inventory value dropped. I'm not entirely sure how/why there are so many untraceable sales and there's usually a way around them (other sales, sellers for a mini etc).

The vote button is an interesting topic, I'd like to know why you think blindvoting is a bad thing and should be removed. In my eyes if it was removed a large section of price suggestions wouldn't exist. I like to vote on suggestions and I'm sure many others do too. Sure it doesn't really effect the suggestion but I don't think it should be removed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I forgot to add this on my last post;

Some non-unusual suggestions are left open for way too long. Non-unusual markets change quickly, sometimes daily for some items but when a hat suggestion is left for 1 week or even 2 weeks it just seems strange. By that time the market has shifted up or down, the suggestions are most likely valid when they were posted.

It doesn't leave me with much confidence doing non-unusual suggestions. These days there aren't many non-unusual suggesters and there are plenty, outdated items that need one doing, however when a suggestion is left for 1 Week then the market changes and all your sales are too old you're basically forced to close and re-find proof which wastes the time you spent originally. I'd rather utilise that time on unusuals which naturally take longer to go through and the market hardly changes. It's not just the odd occasion this happens also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Eazy Peazy Squeezy Lemons said:

The vote button is an interesting topic, I'd like to know why you think blindvoting is a bad thing and should be removed. In my eyes if it was removed a large section of price suggestions wouldn't exist. I like to vote on suggestions and I'm sure many others do too. Sure it doesn't really effect the suggestion but I don't think it should be removed.

I'm not saying that the vote option should be removed completely, just moved. Instead of showing up beside the suggestion on the front page of bp.tf, it should only show up when you actually click into the suggestion. Blind voting, for me, is an issue because it doesn't actually represent the agreement of the community to pass or not pass a suggestion. 

Having further thought this through, however, I realize that in the big picture it does not matter, as Mods judge a suggestion on the proof in them, not by the votes.

I would like to point out that some people who criticize bp.tf have issue with Mods having final say, and that, in the end, votes don't seem to matter. Why care which way you vote if it has no effect on the passing of the suggestion or not?

 

7 hours ago, Eazy Peazy Squeezy Lemons said:

However in relation to the "untraceable" sales it would take a while to track down all the buyers/sellers and add them and then ask them to kindly say "How much did you buy/sell X for?" which some people aren't happy about. It's a solution I guess but it's not very effective, half the time they don't respond or decline adds and when you say that you'd like to use their sale on a suggestion people sometimes backdown as they don't want to have their inventory value dropped. I'm not entirely sure how/why there are so many untraceable sales and there's usually a way around them (other sales, sellers for a mini etc).

I've done this once before, I went straight to the seller because of the latter reason.  I agree its not a effective solution, but it should at least be mentioned as a possible option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Eazy Peazy Squeezy Lemons said:

However I think many suggesters struggle picking ranges and it often boils down to moderators suggesting a range they feel is appropriate, less is down to the actual suggester. Sometimes (a minority of times) a moderator will pick a range they feels suits and it leaves you to question "Well why exclude that data value?"

 

Definitely, it happens quite a bit, which isn't necessarily bad. Whether it's down to the suggester not understanding why or the moderator not explaining properly why, I'm not sure. There's also the odd case of people only suggesting to specifically lower / raise a hat only for them to have to reluctantly change it in a way they don't want. :P

 

Also agreeing on the point on linking to Discord, it's far more active than here.

 

20 hours ago, ḎℰѦÐ! Boom said:

I feel the most annoying problem is mods are leaving taunt/unusual weapon / rare hat suggestions open way longer then they need to be.

 

Basically from what I've seen is:

They think taunts fluctuate too much, which right now doesn't seem to be the case with indate ones, and even then, leave it open for 2 weeks max, not 5-6 weeks

Unusual weapon, i dont understand why even with 2 sales they stay open for a bit.. idek

Rare hats, might only be one sale but full pure, or two sales they still wait for another sale even though the user may be keeping it or never list it in the month the suggestion is up.

 

From a moderator perspective, those month old suggestions are ones you don't want to have to make decisions on, even the ones with rare hats. Reverting a suggestion is not an outcome you want. It can be tough to make decisions sometimes, and I can truly understand why some suggestions currently in the backlog are still up. I'm not too sure what the deal is these days, but I remember always dealing with a hard limit of one month for a suggestion to be up, and I think that some sort of hard limit needs to continue to be enforced if we have hard limits on how long a sale is in-date for.

Remember that a lot of the moderators are active traders (I'm pretty sure all the price mods are too) and they know the market as well. Your personal experience may not correlate with theirs; that said, I'm not too up-to-date on taunts right now and would love to see some confirmation on that, because like the 3rd gen unusuals, they will stabilize at some point, surely.

 

I agree on the unusual weapon sales though, especially with how hard they are to track. (By the way, still can't view past suggestions on them :()

 

20 hours ago, ḎℰѦÐ! Boom said:

Also I think dropping at b/o's is a weird thing we need to discuss, how long should the b/o be there, what % off the current price should it be etc.

 

Hasn't it always been a 15% drop, time up should be 1 week for every 25 keys up until a month?

 

20 hours ago, ḎℰѦÐ! Boom said:

I think there should also be a function that with newer suggestors or under black belts needing help, there should be like a "call helper" button or so, and any black belt or above (maybe purple belt idk whatever teeny chooses) can be notified and help/mentor if they need to. Also this function could serve as a filter for price moderators, if they don't need help or they got help and they're suggestion still fits or they resuggested perfectly fine, maybe the black belts can filter it as a "good suggestion" or something or a certain colour so it makes it easier for price mods to find the ones to be accepted first, then deal with the bad suggestions later.

 

You could argue it may be unnecessary to add a feature like this, it would take a fair bit of work for something that may not get a whole lot of use (especially when you can just hit up people in Discord) but I'm all for getting suggesters to work together, and with added rewards on-site for helping people possibly (like a help counter or extra points or a badge) to encourage people to either help people or ask for help more before going to moderators, it's definitely an interesting idea. It would certainly make things less intimidating for the new suggester who may feel a bit shy going directly to more experienced people on Steam or Discord.

 

17 hours ago, sscourge said:

I notice that, for a perfectionist like me, there is a "rabbit hole" you follow when suggesting. When a hat sells for an outdated hat, you want to make a suggestion for that hat, and so on and so on. The reason for this is because I want to make absolutely certain that an item is selling for the price it is. I've seen multiple cases where a Mini was "valid" with one sale for a hat that had multiple sales, or multiple in existence with multiple sales across the board. Obviously unusable sales are unusable sales, but should one not look at multiple sales across the multiple trading sites to be more accurate? 

I do realize that the above really on applies to unusuals, as doing suggestions for something as common as a craft hat, would become tedious and never ending. I also realize that rarer hats aren't likely gonna have many sales either.

 

This is a massive problem, and it's really a reflection on just how many unusuals really exist, it's mind-boggling. When you want to make one suggestion, you end up having to make more suggestions due to outdated hats and it's personally what dissuades me from suggesting these days. You can argue that you don't necessarily need to make full suggestions for the extra outdated hats, but these mini-suggestions need to be accurate, otherwise someone else will come along and make a full suggestion on that hat that may not be at the value you're using, which means a totally avoidable re-suggestion.

 

Might want to get someone else to confirm on this, but the bulk of usable unusual sales do happen on backpack.tf or Outpost. Bazaar isn't even worth mentioning, scrap.tf (and other sits along the same vein) will always sell below backpack.tf price, and it's no use endlessly hounding trade servers for possible sales.

 

17 hours ago, sscourge said:

I've also seen untraceable sales not being used. Why does no one think to ask the person who bought/sold it for a screenshot for evidence? I have that done that before. And while I understand that time zones may not align, or that person may not be online atm, but is it hard to delay posting a suggestion waiting for the person to respond? Even if it is not a reliable source of info, it could at least be mentioned in the rules as a possible option to be done.

 

As a suggester, you don't really want to sit on suggestions if you can avoid it. A fair few people simply want to keep trades private, and don't want their sales used on "bible.tf" because they're just gonna drop their old unusual even though it doesn't really matter, and that personally put me off asking people, as well as language barriers I guess. It really is a last resort though, and I think it's something not to be forgotten.

 

17 hours ago, sscourge said:

I'd also like to see the up/down vote beside the suggestion button removed. While this allows ease of access, it also causes blind votes. I myself am guilty of said action. I personally would like such an option to be only accessible at the bottom of the actually suggestion page, so that people who actually look at the evidence (or lack of), and can make an informed vote. 

 

This has definitely been brought up before years ago, I can't find the thread, but it's been a talking point. I don't think it'll change how people vote on suggestions. They'll just automatically go into the suggestion and click upvote without checking links and all that - any more work done to avoid blind voting would just be annoying to the average user.

 

10 hours ago, Eazy Peazy Squeezy Lemons said:

Some non-unusual suggestions are left open for way too long. Non-unusual markets change quickly, sometimes daily for some items but when a hat suggestion is left for 1 week or even 2 weeks it just seems strange. By that time the market has shifted up or down, the suggestions are most likely valid when they were posted.

It doesn't leave me with much confidence doing non-unusual suggestions. These days there aren't many non-unusual suggesters and there are plenty, outdated items that need one doing, however when a suggestion is left for 1 Week then the market changes and all your sales are too old you're basically forced to close and re-find proof which wastes the time you spent originally. I'd rather utilise that time on unusuals which naturally take longer to go through and the market hardly changes. It's not just the odd occasion this happens also.

 

My reply to Boom's point about unusual suggestions being left up too long applies here too, some sort of limit would be nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it used to feel weird at start to include buyers because i thought its gonna make everything drop but its actually not doing that, so i think its good

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

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

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

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