Allow new users to “return rep” if repped by other user first

[Blitzkrieg]

I use MCM as a platform to advertise and operate some of my niche MC businesses (as most do here). Most of my customers come to me because they searched for tags or keywords in my post and it came up in google search. I know this because I always ask people who contact me off-site how they heard about me.

A lot of my customers pick me over my competition because I have significant standing here (comparatively speaking) and my reputation is flawless. However, I’ve ran into some issues on account of me serving a niche that is very recently beginning to trend on MCM. Many of my customers either:

A. recently started using MCM (new/“young” account),

B. do not have an MCM account but know how MCM functions and what it is meant to be used for,

C. do not have an MCM account because they don’t know what MCM is nor what it is used for.

I deal with a LOT of these customers. As it stands the reputation is very significant for the acquisition of new customers. However, when most of my customers fit the categories I’ve outlined above, even after we complete our deals with each other I can’t be “rewarded” for our deal with rep because of their status on the site, despite the customer being outstandingly satisfied and happy with their purchase. This is because (as you know), accounts younger than 30 days cannot leave rep on other accounts.

This is an issue because of the sheer amount of volume of customers I have that fit this category. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that I have more than 40 customers who have all expressed that they would like to leave some reputation for me (after I asked them for their MCM to rep them), but they can’t because of their account age.

I propose a change to this system to address this issue. Obviously this “30 day wait” is put in place to deter abusing the rep system, but it’s only a deterrent and obviously it’s affecting legitimate users such as myself. So — how about this: accounts under 30 days old can leave rep, but only on accounts that have left rep on their profile first. That would allow me to add some positive rep to their profile, making them more likely to use this platform in the future as their standing grows, and in turn I am allowed to raise my standing as well.

There are some possible issues with this change, of course. This could be abused by people who make their first account, wait 30 days, then farm out new accounts and add reps to them to gain rep in turn. However, we already have ways to detect this behaviour, I.e. the “proof of transaction” for adding rep. We could also add a financial incentive for users to act correctly, only allowing people who have invested their money for a rank upgrade on this forum to have their reputation count as a 30-day-bypassable reputation. It is not a perfect solution there by any means but it would at the very least ensure that people who want to try and game this system have something to lose (their investment into their rank upgrade) should their bad actions be found out.

EDIT: Another idea to mitigate the risks of abuse from this addition was suggested by alice - “bypassed” rep must be confirmed by a staff member before being posted. This would make it much less appealing for abuse as it would ensure the rep to be legitimate before being posted, or at least legitimate enough to fool a staff member. Combined with the suggestions I have both above and below, I believe that having staff review bypassed rep would effectively cancel out this suggestions negative possibilities.

We could also put more restrictions on the kind of rep that can be “bypassed”, such as only allowing the bypass reps if the receiving user has no open scam reports, a good ratio of negative-to-positive reputation, no history of abusing the reputation system or other site features, etc.

What are your guys thoughts on this?

 

[Blitzkrieg]

If you do disagree with my suggestion, please post your opinions as to why you disagree with the suggestion. It may be possible that I am one of very few users who are affected by this issue, as my biggest business is currently selling Hypixel Skyblock scripts, and my average customer is a Hypixel Player, who more often than not does not have an MCM account. I could post proofs of my PayPal receipts from all of these customers and my chats with them where they express their gratitude, etc, to prove this.

Obviously this suggestion, if implemented, would benefit me (why else would I suggest it?). If this suggestion would benefit you, I’d love to hear how, or even better if it would negatively affect you I’d like to know why as well.[DOUBLEPOST=1576881968][/DOUBLEPOST]

Seems pointless

That’s a curt response for what I’ve already described to be something that very much has a point (at least to me). If I was able to receive rep from all of my (real, legitimate, happy) customers who don’t use MCM regularly, I would have well over 90 rep. But, since they can’t post rep for me, I don’t get to have the standing I deserve for being a trustworthy and reputable vendor on this forum.

Why should I be able to leave rep for them, when our deal is complete, and yet they can’t return the favour back to me? Maybe a better way to do this would be for new users to simply be able to “confirm deals” by clicking a confirm button on rep that I leave for them, which could “queue” the reputation to be left after their account has aged appropriately?

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Obv it has a point to you since your the one complaining about the way things are RN I could see this as doing more harm than good TBH. You only want it accepted for your own benefit

I can only see the world through my own eyes. It would benefit me yes, but it could also benefit others. We already have systems in place to avoid the abuse of the reputation system, and I added points in my suggestion to offer potential ways to tweak this suggestion to make it less susceptible to abuse. Yes, this change, if implemented, could open up new ways for users to defraud the reputation system. However, it stands to reason that if a customer found me through this market, and we completed a transaction, and they are happy with it - I deserve reputation for that.

As said, the things we have in place now to stop abuse of the reputation system are simply deterrents, and people who are focused and dedicated enough can and will be able to get around the 30 day wait. So it’s purpose (and it’s effectiveness at achieving its purpose) is debatable, especially when it is affecting users who act in good faith such as myself.

How do you think this change could be abused? How do you think we could mitigate the risks created by allowing this system? Is there a middle ground you could suggest as a compromise?

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Mc-Market just had a major update to the reputation system I don't think we should change it again.

This isn’t a major change to the reputation system, or at least it isn’t in my perspective. It is clearly a problem that at the very least I am facing (and probably others are facing this as well, however I can only speak for myself).

It doesn’t make sense that if a user finds me through MCM, uses MCM as a medium to contact me and deal with me, and we use MCM as a basis to which they can hold me accountable for my actions (I never go first in deals with customers, most of my customers fit either situation A or B as described above), and so my customers know that I am leveraging the value of my account and my reputation as my “collateral” in our deal with each other.

These users, if I was to scam them, would open a scam report against me and use the sites features to “collect” on my collateral.

So how does it make sense that I can be negatively impacted by new users to this site, but not positively impacted? Not that I am saying I am a scammer (I am not) but it simply doesn’t make sense that I can’t be rewarded by my satisfied customers when we complete our deal with each other.

 

[Lotus]

Promotes quick rep4rep (with new users or alts). That 30d limitation should be absolute to at least try to mitigate such activity.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Promotes quick rep4rep (with new accounts or alts). That 30d limitation should be absolute to at least try to mitigate such activity.

And so what about the changes I added in my post to address this? Do you think that they could help limit the negative impact of this suggestion, while still allowing for the positive impact? If not, do you have any suggestions that could better answer the issue I’ve outlined above?

for reference:

However, we already have ways to detect this behaviour, I.e. the “proof of transaction” for adding rep. We could also add a financial incentive for users to act correctly, only allowing people who have invested their money for a rank upgrade on this forum to have their reputation count as a 30-day-bypassable reputation. It is not a perfect solution there by any means but it would at the very least ensure that people who want to try and game this system have something to lose (their investment into their rank upgrade) should their bad actions be found out.

We could also put more restrictions on the kind of rep that can be “bypassed”, such as only allowing the bypass reps if the receiving user has no open scam reports, a good ratio of negative-to-positive reputation, no history of abusing the reputation system or other site features, etc.

 

[Bcof]

I agree on your suggestion, even though i do not face the same problems as you. I understand your frustrations when trying to gain a rep for your service.

+1 from me deffo

 

[Lotus]

And so what about the changes I added in my post to address this?

for reference:

Overly complicates a system that has no reason to be in such a predicament. Making the reputation system harder to explain isn’t helping anyone, just makes it look like a more complex game.

I don’t see the minor convenience gained for your situation to outweigh all the hassles caused by this.

 

[alice]

Great suggestion. I am also affected by this issue since 90% of my buyers do not use McM. This is why I ask many of my buyers to comment a vouch on my profile instead.

Promotes quick rep4rep (with new users or alts). That 30d limitation should be absolute to at least try to mitigate such activity.

I believe his suggestions mitigate rep4rep abuse. Furthermore, you could add even more restrictions (for example, the rep has to be approved by staff, the account must not be registered on a proxy or a VPN, etc.)

Also, per your logic, what's stopping a serious rep abuser from just registering 30 accounts and waiting 30 days? I don't get it.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Overly complicates a system that has no reason to be in such a predicament. Making the reputation system harder to explain isn’t helping anyone, just makes it look like a more complex game.

I don’t see the minor convenience gained for your situation to outweigh all the hassles caused by this.

I personally disagree with your opinion that this change would significantly complicate the existing reputation system, however I see where you are coming from. I do agree that this change is most definitely niche, and wouldn’t be used by everybody, but I do believe it’s positive impact would be greater than its negative impact, especially if we were to implement any of the countermeasures I suggested to combat bad actors. I think only allowing “bypasses” to be received by users with good standing and a rank would really limit it’s abuse potential, as if you already have reputation and a rank you stand to lose a lot more than you stand to gain should your fraudulent actions be found out.[DOUBLEPOST=1576884372][/DOUBLEPOST]

Great suggestion. I am also affected by this issue since 90% of my buyers do not use McM. This is why I ask many of my buyers to comment a vouch on my profile instead.

I believe his suggestions mitigate rep4rep abuse. Furthermore, you could add even more restrictions (for example, the rep has to be approved by staff, the account must not be registered on a proxy or a VPN, etc.)

Also, per your logic, what's stopping a serious rep abuser from just registering 30 accounts and waiting 30 days? I don't get it.

I think making these reps “queued” until reviewed by a staff member is a great suggestion as well. That would make it much harder to abuse, as anyone attempting to abuse the system would have a much larger chance of being found out if a staff members eyes are on every single bypassed rep they receive before it’s posted to their profile. And I do the same thing with new users, I just ask for a vouch on my profile or post, but I’d rather just have the rep.

If we combine the “must have rank, must have good standing, must be reviewed by staff” suggestions with this, it makes it much harder to abuse, and much less appealing to abuse as well. If all of the above mitigations are used, then it’s more appealing for fraudsters to just make new accounts and wait thirty days as before, so their rep points don’t pass staff scrutiny before being posted.

 

[alice]

I would also like to add that a couple of upgraded users could not vouch me due to the 30 day wait since they had new accounts. I'd say an upgrade should automatically unlock the ability to rep. No one is going to go through the effort of buying a residential proxy, faking reputation and evidence and spending $10-$15+ just to rep themselves once and risk getting banned.

Also, I refer many of my offsite buyers to this website merely because I sell some of my products on here and need a place to gather vouches and build up my reputation. I'd personally feel a lot more inclined to (as well as others) to push my buyers to register and use McM if I could get rewarded for it, at least with an official vouch from them. It really does add up and boost my overall credibility and sales as a seller. Yes, rep matters. Rep is not just a meaningless number.

You could also therefore argue that omitting the 30 day wait would also boost forum activity and bring in a lot of new users. The 30 day wait does nothing to mitigate abuse; it simply delays it. Those who are willing to abuse rep will do so anyway, and there's nothing stopping them from just registering a bunch of accounts and waiting 30 days.

I sold like 30 things the past few weeks, and yet in the end I only have like 5 vouches from all of that, even though I'm far more credible than some other onsite users who have more vouches just because the very nature of their product(s) attracts a certain audience (which happen to mostly be longer-registered onsite users).

 

[Blitzkrieg]

That's more work they don't need

While it’s true that we shouldn’t advocate to needlessly add to the staff workload, if it is something that adds positive aspects to the site (as Ally has said above), it is worth it in my eyes. Furthermore we can reduce the added work on staffs backs by limiting this suggestion to users with ranks or other factors that would serve to decrease the amount of qualified users. This would be a good middle ground to allow the positive impacts to be reaped by those who deserve them while minimizing negative impact and allowing the site to benefit from higher user retention, higher user acquisition, and higher user activity.

It’s also not like the forum can’t just get more staff members, or streamline the process to which the queue of work is assigned to them (not that I know anything of the internals of the site from a staff members perspective). Approving rep isn’t like investigating a scam report anyways, it would be as simple as checking the IPs, checking the proof of transactions, and allowing or refusing the rep as is necessary.

 

[Lotus]

I believe his suggestions mitigate rep4rep abuse. Furthermore, you could add even more restrictions (for example, the rep has to be approved by staff, the account must not be registered on a proxy or a VPN, etc.)

Also, per your logic, what's stopping a serious rep abuser from just registering 30 accounts and waiting 30 days? I don't get it.

Reputation that has to be reviewed by a staff member would probably cause more distress in the community should there be a backlog, and from a staff perspective, not quick to do relative to other tasks. I wouldn't add more workload on top of the daily growing site needs.

Proxies and VPNs are always usable in any circumstance. If Netflix has trouble blocking all VPNs and proxies, MCM can do no better. It could also cause problems for those who may register accounts on mobile data and would make things a lot more confusing in general.

As for your last point, 30 days serve as lag-time for moderators to catch an alt on the loose. By no means you are correct, considering it has happened before, yet not many people are patient enough to wait tactically like that and avoid moderators often. It serves as a disincentive and a barrier which definitely has stopped some potential abusers. Removing it makes things much much easier for all users to abuse after all.

I would also like to add that a couple of upgraded users could not vouch me due to the 30 day wait since they had new accounts. I'd say an upgrade should automatically unlock the ability to rep. No one is going to go through the effort of buying a residential proxy, faking reputation and evidence and spending $10-$15+ just to rep themselves once and risk getting banned.

Actually, you'd be surprised. There's a couple banned users from years ago who've done exactly all that and probably still does, spending far more than what you're suggesting to achieve all this considering they still profit more off of that in the end. But, this is something that sounds a little more feasible than everything else you're suggesting - although people who purchase a rank quite quickly on this site also are more likely to be a ban evader (a bit of an obvious trend at times). This is something where I'd like Justis/Kram/Mick's opinion on.

You could also therefore argue that omitting the 30 day wait would also boost forum activity and bring in a lot of new users. The 30 day wait does nothing to mitigate abuse; it simply delays it. Those who are willing to abuse rep will do so anyway, and there's nothing stopping them from just registering a bunch of accounts and waiting 30 days.

I don't truly believe that 30 days of reputation limitations correlate to forum activity
Delaying works. It's time that's effectively used and I can say from experience it has stopped a lot of users.

To conclude, a simple 30 day limitation serves its purpose and can be explained to anyone in a simple concise manner.

Bloating the reputation policies with 'bypasses' and 'shortcuts' honestly feels like its a game, ignoring the fact that my one-sentence explanation of reputation limitations to a new user suddenly becomes a whole paragraph.

If we're tailoring this for new users as you claim to be, your average newbie probably won't read the reputation wiki on the first day to figure out how to use these bypasses. It would serve more useful to those who already know the system and holds full understanding of the site... which isn't the direct target audience.

When making a product for the general audience, which MCM caters for, always account for the dumbest of users. Simplification as much as you can without compromises. This feels like unnecessary bloat to me, in the end, adding more work for everyone, only to cater to a select few in the community. You're overcomplicating a system that the whole site uses, to only increase the convenience of an incredibly minor sector of the community. The simplest solution to me is simply... wait 30 days.

 

[Joshua C]

Disagreed.

A lot of people can just go ahead and giveaway 0.1$ worth of BTC and get some rep and rep the other person as well, this may only cause in future spam and reputation has no meaning to them.

A user needs to wait for 30days to leave a reputation on the other person and that should stay as it is.

 

[SSH]

I use MCM as a platform to advertise and operate some of my niche MC businesses (as most do here). Most of my customers come to me because they searched for tags or keywords in my post and it came up in google search. I know this because I always ask people who contact me off-site how they heard about me.

A lot of my customers pick me over my competition because I have significant standing here (comparatively speaking) and my reputation is flawless. However, I’ve ran into some issues on account of me serving a niche that is very recently beginning to trend on MCM. Many of my customers either:

A. recently started using MCM (new/“young” account),

B. do not have an MCM account but know how MCM functions and what it is meant to be used for,

C. do not have an MCM account because they don’t know what MCM is nor what it is used for.

I deal with a LOT of these customers. As it stands the reputation is very significant for the acquisition of new customers. However, when most of my customers fit the categories I’ve outlined above, even after we complete our deals with each other I can’t be “rewarded” for our deal with rep because of their status on the site, despite the customer being outstandingly satisfied and happy with their purchase. This is because (as you know), accounts younger than 30 days cannot leave rep on other accounts.

This is an issue because of the sheer amount of volume of customers I have that fit this category. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that I have more than 40 customers who have all expressed that they would like to leave some reputation for me (after I asked them for their MCM to rep them), but they can’t because of their account age.

I propose a change to this system to address this issue. Obviously this “30 day wait” is put in place to deter abusing the rep system, but it’s only a deterrent and obviously it’s affecting legitimate users such as myself. So — how about this: accounts under 30 days old can leave rep, but only on accounts that have left rep on their profile first. That would allow me to add some positive rep to their profile, making them more likely to use this platform in the future as their standing grows, and in turn I am allowed to raise my standing as well.

There are some possible issues with this change, of course. This could be abused by people who make their first account, wait 30 days, then farm out new accounts and add reps to them to gain rep in turn. However, we already have ways to detect this behaviour, I.e. the “proof of transaction” for adding rep. We could also add a financial incentive for users to act correctly, only allowing people who have invested their money for a rank upgrade on this forum to have their reputation count as a 30-day-bypassable reputation. It is not a perfect solution there by any means but it would at the very least ensure that people who want to try and game this system have something to lose (their investment into their rank upgrade) should their bad actions be found out.

EDIT: Another idea to mitigate the risks of abuse from this addition was suggested by alice - “bypassed” rep must be confirmed by a staff member before being posted. This would make it much less appealing for abuse as it would ensure the rep to be legitimate before being posted, or at least legitimate enough to fool a staff member. Combined with the suggestions I have both above and below, I believe that having staff review bypassed rep would effectively cancel out this suggestions negative possibilities.

We could also put more restrictions on the kind of rep that can be “bypassed”, such as only allowing the bypass reps if the receiving user has no open scam reports, a good ratio of negative-to-positive reputation, no history of abusing the reputation system or other site features, etc.

What are your guys thoughts on this?

I agree with this but no we would need more staff if we were to do the edit part bc it’s more load having to verify all those “bypassed” rep.