The ongoing issue of the misuse of Premium Search

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

I'd like to open up this discussion again to see how opinions have changed towards this topic and also to see reactions to this rather serious problem for newcomers to the community.

 

This is not a post for you to sh*ttalk other people who you deem as "sharkers" and no we will not argue over the meaning of what "sharking" means, that would be totally uncalled for and would eventually turn into a massive clusterf*ck.

 

Having got that over with, I would like to ignite this discussion by first appreciating the steps that have been taken to prevent as many as these "sharks" as possible.

 

In response to much public outburst, the backpack.tf team have chosen to:

• Limit searching for only specific unusuals only but still all the effects
• Implementation of the minus trust reps for repeated unbalanced trades as seen evident on a few profiles

 

There are of course many other changes but these I feel are a bit more significant than others.

Of course, with changes comes adaption and it really does not take much more effort to search for these new unusuals as you can still search for specific unusuals and all their effects such as all the effects for the unusual Jungle Wreath or other recently added high-value items.

 

We could argue what would most people use Premium Seach for?

I believe it's main purpose was to aid people that had their eyes set on dream unusuals but were not on market, in this case it would be helpful to have a tool that would instantly guide you to the unusuals history and its owner. In this way, it would be used responsibly as well as for good purposes only

 

What change would I propose?

Having been told what change could be made to Premium Search for the legitimate reasons I stated above to using Premium search, a small change would be to only be able to :

 

1. Search specific hats with specific effect, i.e. only being able to search a Darkblaze Hong Kong Cone by itself instead of all the unusual Hong Kong Cones, this would mean "sharkers" would have to search individual hats and effects together, increasing combinations they had to check through and thus slowing them down massively
2. Implement a time to be able to search between items, such as a buffer of 5 seconds or even a minute if necessary, this is based off the fact that people searching for rare one of one unusuals would not need to search more than once within a few minutes as they are only looking for that specific unusual and not multiple different ones

 

It has come to the point that I've had to comment repeatedly on unboxer steam profiles or add them up to warn them about users adding them due to the high valued items they have unboxed.

It is such a relief and sense of success when you do prevent a scam or "shark", though it is possible to do this repeatedly, it is extremely easy to lose interest in as I became a babysitter for these unboxers and surprisingly enough, I have a life outside of trading.

I realise that no-one asked me to do it, but out of a purely moral obligation I chose to comment, add and invite these people to the backpack.tf discord for them to get help and correct pricechecks as I doubt my own knowledge could pricecheck said items - and yes I had the ability in my hands to tell them their item was not worth that much and profit off them like that but I chose not too as that is truly scummy and having participated in this community, can truly see the friends that I have made and good that it does for people.

 

At the same time, these changes I propose would very easily buffer and delay the time of these "sharkers" , I can very easily set up a folder that literally searches for every new unusual and all their effect and run auto refresher on all of them and easily see when a new one pops up - with no time lost on my half.

Though the previous implementations meant the "sharkers" had to click one extra button and type in an actual hats name, it really does not slow them down too much and having talked to a few people, they believed it really made it much slower for them which just is not true. For those with premium, it is still incredibly simple to search for new unboxers.

 

I thank you for reading my small post and encourage you to comment ideas that you may have in countering the misuse of Premium search.

I put the words "shark" and "sharkers" in quotation marks so no-one decided to nitpick me for using wrong definitions.

Again, this is not a place to publicly expose anybody, it is simply a forums post to ignite this discussion on how to "fix" Premium search and I am not saying that removing it would do anything as well as Premium search being the problem specifically. I cannot remember where I remember this quote from but "the knife itself is not evil if you use it to cut a cake but rather the person itself who uses it to commit physical greivances as well as damage to others that is evil"

 

Thank you and I encourage you to comment your opinion and ideas on this matter!

AJ

[Grimes]

It's already limited in that you can't just filter for unusual on its own, you need to specify an item as well. 

 

edit: Same goes for all other qualities. 

 

NVM i cant read

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

9 minutes ago, Grimes said:

It's already limited in that you can't just filter for unusual on its own, you need to specify an item as well. 

Read my post, I covered that and said that you can filter for specific item

 

Thank you for telling me though, I shall clear that up in my post

[Torb]

Well, the mod team has shown that when given a reasonable argument with community members supporting it, they have shown some willingness to make changes, for example changing premium so it's harder to find new unboxed hats, trading with scammers rules ect, and out of the ideas you proposed, the time limit between premium searches seems a bit iffy to me, but the "Search specific hats with specific effect" feature does sound like quite a good idea. Doesn't harm suggesters as they're likely searching for a specific effect/hat combo anyways, same with people searching for an unusual they want, but directly inhibits "sharks" or "sharkers".

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

Suggesting wise, people do use that script manic has to instantly get the histories of items that are usable for the suggestion but I'm not sure how many people use that or know of it, it would inhibit suggestors and that is one of the flaws in my argument

[mb_]

Adding cool-down period and limiting query for specific hat/effect combo sounds like good idea. People that are looking to purchase specific hat will still be able to search database, same goes for price suggestors. On the other side a lot more work  for "sharkers".

[Izi]

If backpack tf makes premium search harder for sharkers, it means less sharkers are going to buy premium, less profit for backpack tf and less moderator donations. People are still doing other sharks anyway

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

5 minutes ago, Izi said:

If backpack tf makes premium search harder for sharkers, it means less sharkers are going to buy premium, less profit for backpack tf and less moderator donations. People are still doing other sharks anyway

People do not just buy Premium just to shark, the vast majority use for price suggestions, promoting unusuals, the double listing limit and the list goes on.

If you think the bp team are solely profit driven then you are wrong, they care for the economy and aren't willing to throw that out the window just for more money.

 

Edit: I background checked you, looks like you attempted quick switch scamming as well as laughed at the problem with festive and festivized weapons, not quite sure how much you want that to affect your opinion but heyho

[Argylekicks]

I think the time cools downs should only be appiled to ones who already have the - reps on their profile and the more strikes they get the longer cooldown ex. warning 1 = 1 min cooldown warning 2 = 5 min cooldown etc etc. the reason why is that when i used  to make price suggestions it is very important to use the premium search to find all the sales of a certain type of hat i could be wanting to look at 10-15 hats at once especially with the way minis trickle down

[TheVirtualEconomist]

Good post, I definitely think there should be some kind of a rules change here. IMO,  isn't the simplest solution tho just to prevent users from searching for untradable unusuals? I mean that's how sharks find victims anyway, they just set the parameters to untradable and 90% of the hats that pop up are new unboxes. 

[Mucy]

Indeed. I feel like there needs to be a way implemented that a user can be marked as a "shark" (in a yellow banner, caution-like) and that it deactivates their right to search via Premium search to prey on unboxers. Whatever you feel like adding to that Caution Mark idea uh... Make a different thread for that and I'll discuss it there with you. 

 

TL;DR is that this implementation of a Caution mark and the deactivation of Premium search for these users might solve the entire problem all together but I'd need more opinions on that.

 

Man talking about sharks seems inevitable in such a topic, hot damn.

[Zeus_Junior]

5 hours ago, TheVirtualEconomist said:

Isn't the simplest solution tho just to prevent users from searching for untradable unusuals? 

Sometimes unusuals are bought from the community market, making them untradable. Before they were sold they might have been traded just for items a couple times, disabling searching for untradable items entirely would make suggesting harder

 

Of course this doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's nice to be able to search for untradable hats

[Julia]

As a Premium user I don't have any issue with limiting results to only specific items. I never searched for Unusuals using broad filters such as by only effect or hat.

 

Though I don't agree with removing untradable Unusuals from results. It would be a hindrance to my trading as I sometimes find Unusuals on the market which aren't tradable that I want to find the history for. It would also limit Premium search as a research tool, sometimes missing the occasional untradable Unusual which has recent sales.

[Sniper Noob]

11 hours ago, Zeus_Junior said:

Sometimes unusuals are bought from the community market, making them untradable. Before they were sold they might have been traded just for items a couple times, disabling searching for untradable items entirely would make suggesting harder

 

Of course this doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's nice to be able to search for untradable hats

 

What's of higher priority though? Allowing people to make a few extra keys profit in an uncommon circumstance, or preventing sharkers from using a tool you charge money for from scamming unknowing unboxers in a much more common circumstance?

 

To me, sacrificing a little profit for taking a stance against the numerous sharkings that have taken place because of premium is a no-brainer every time.

[TheVirtualEconomist]

40 minutes ago, Sniper Noob said:

 

What's of higher priority though? Allowing people to make a few extra keys profit in an uncommon circumstance, or preventing sharkers from using a tool you charge money for from scamming unknowing unboxers in a much more common circumstance?

 

To me, sacrificing a little profit for taking a stance against the numerous sharkings that have taken place because of premium is a no-brainer every time.

 

That is exactly how I see it. Preventing lots of 100+ key sharks should be much preferable to giving other people the ability to findings certain hats/histories in corner-case scenarios. I also think this solution would be preferable to only being able to search for a specific unusual because the persistent user could still easily search for every possible hat/effect combo out of a newly released case and shark new unboxes that way. 

[Diamond jozu]

ok well if you think this is a major issue then we could do some punishment to a real sharker/user misusing the premium search.

 

lets say a user has been found doing too many sharks and is a premium user.as a punishment,they should be given a limit of how man searches they can do depending what sort of sharks he/she has done.sharkers wont get a ban on bp.tf ofc but some kind of small punishment should be just fine.if necessary,a permanent ban from the usage of premium search will be used.

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

13 hours ago, Diamond jozu said:

ok well if you think this is a major issue then we could do some punishment to a real sharker/user misusing the premium search.

 

lets say a user has been found doing too many sharks and is a premium user.as a punishment,they should be given a limit of how man searches they can do depending what sort of sharks he/she has done.sharkers wont get a ban on bp.tf ofc but some kind of small punishment should be just fine.if necessary,a permanent ban from the usage of premium search will be used.

I think the main problem to that argument is it seems like targeting, not quite sure how you would dictate which "sharks" are definable to be punished. It's easy enough for them to create alts and proceed to get premium

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

21 hours ago, Julia said:

As a Premium user I don't have any issue with limiting results to only specific items. I never searched for Unusuals using broad filters such as by only effect or hat.

As many other premium users feel too I presume, it would not hassle typical traders looking for their dream hats or items.

It could draw into question though, items of high value such as gpans that are also "sharked" and sell for less that they could and how we could counteract that.

[Torb]

20 minutes ago, AJ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

As many other premium users feel too I presume, it would not hassle typical traders looking for their dream hats or items.

It could draw into question though, items of high value such as gpans that are also "sharked" and sell for less that they could and how we could counteract that.

I was going to say make it only unusuals, however some users also make unbalanced trades with australiums/rare stranges ect

[Sniper Noob]

10 hours ago, AJ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

As many other premium users feel too I presume, it would not hassle typical traders looking for their dream hats or items.

It could draw into question though, items of high value such as gpans that are also "sharked" and sell for less that they could and how we could counteract that.

 

9 hours ago, Torb | Elite Spell Trader™ said:

I was going to say make it only unusuals, however some users also make unbalanced trades with australiums/rare stranges ect

 

10 hours ago, AJ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

I think the main problem to that argument is it seems like targeting, not quite sure how you would dictate which "sharks" are definable to be punished. It's easy enough for them to create alts and proceed to get premium

 

 

I don't think (at least that I can think of) there's a solution that will prevent 100% of sharks. At the end of the day, people will find ways to defraud unsuspecting players, but you can limit the vast majority of it by disallowing searching of untradeable unusuals. Yes, some GPans and things like that end up getting sharked because you can still search for them, but GPans are much less common than unusual unboxings which is where the bulk of the sharks take place.

[Torb]

4 minutes ago, Sniper Noob said:

 

 

 

 

I don't think (at least that I can think of) there's a solution that will prevent 100% of sharks. At the end of the day, people will find ways to defraud unsuspecting players, but you can limit the vast majority of it by disallowing searching of untradeable unusuals. Yes, some GPans and things like that end up getting sharked because you can still search for them, but GPans are much less common than unusual unboxings which is where the bulk of the sharks take place.

Yeah, theres no set sollution for it, but there are ways to limit it. While disabling untradable unusuals may be good, it would only really protect the unboxer for 7 days, which still wouldn't be a big help imo.

[LeROY]

On 8/18/2018 at 12:20 AM, AJ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) said:

I'd like to open up this discussion again.........

 

I put the words "shark" and "sharkers" in quotation marks so no-one decided to nitpick me for using wrong definitions.

 

Gonna bump this: This has become such a sore subject that community is afraid of even using the word "Shark", cause no one(admins) knows how to fix/deal with it.

 

I respect you trying to approach the problem in a new way, but I think its time to stop walking on eggshells about this topic!

 

This is a Pebble in every-ones shoe and needs to be tackled head on. I dont know how or when everyone was scared to silence but the Community needs- and have the right to speak up when theres an issue that affects and bothers most of its users.

I know it wont be easy but I also know its worse to pretend it doesnt exist.

 

*Take 1 Key from someone and its called scamming.

*Pay 5 Keys for $1000 item and its called......... "outlier" if anything......

 

Im not saying to owner/admin/mod "fix this now or else..." but at least make it easier for the community to take action and dont shut down every conversation on the topic.

I think most of us feel Sharks are somewhat "protected" cause admins are not sure how to deal with it