"Find a new argument"?? That's not how it works my guy...
The Reputation System: A History
- Thread starter Justis
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The compromise keeps everyone’s legacy feedback public, never investigating them again for evidence, giving them immunity from past, present and future enforcement. However, if we’re going to do this, and give content we know to have been widely abused, immunity from basic moderation, precautions must be taken to warn and inform our members, particularly new members who would otherwise have no idea that they should be taking this into consideration.
And they should. For their own safety, they should, and we, as the ones voting on how to shape the site, need to be making decisions with this as a priority.
If you have any other suggestions for how we can successfully protect and inform our future members, while also satisfying users who have built up a reputation over the years, I want to hear it. Please, by all means voice it.
However, we’re already offering so much to enshrine a corrupted system’s feedback publicly into our site. I haven’t been able to think of a single thing more that we could offer to older members that doesn’t cross the line into us not to clearly disclosing to future users, the fact that feedback without any evidence was widely abused, and instead imply that it’s exactly the same as our new system’s feedback, when it’s not, we know it's not safe, it’s not reliable, and I cannot accept lying by omission or inaction for the sole sake of making our past users look more reputable.
I care about the people I’ve occupied this site with since joining. I’ve dedicated a great chunk of my life to serving them, and I care about their personal priorities in this marketplace; but I also have a responsibility to consider the users who don’t yet have a voice, and the future of our platform. I ask that you consider them too.
Dont give legacy feedback ‘immunity’. Moderate it lightly. Take it down if there’s proof that the feedback is false. The user does not have to prove that he is innocent. The reporter has to prove that the user he/she reported is guilty. Most of the false rep for legacy reputation is usually negative reputation (this is an opinion) so that would solve any false negatives. I believe that most of the positive feedback given during that time period are generally true and relevant.
Blatantly false positive feedback have already been removed and the majority of reputation farmers during that period have already been dealt with. If users have any reason to believe that a rep is false, they should provide proof to support their claims. If not, they are assumed to be legitimate. Innocent until proven guilty.
Yes, I understand that we have to provide proof to back up our claims and current feedback (as we do in the current system) but again I have to reaffirm that most of all false positives have been already dealt with; removed or edited.
if there are any doubts, like sketchy positive legacy reputation, then it should be subject to light moderation. (Priority ofc given to current and newer reputation which has slightly more relevance)
b) Making all of the feedback without any evidence immune to our past, present, and future policies, enshrining the results of a corrupted system into our site forever, and taking no reasonable action to inform or protect our new and future members
Exactly that! It is nowhere near what you think it is. And I can guarantee you'll come back with something like "bUt i Am sTaFf i hAvE fiRsT hAnD exPeRiEncE" which is correct but you are forgetting that the community also has first-hand experience. Not every single reputation is invalid just because it doesn't have evidence attached at a time when evidence couldn't even be attached. Heck, it was very difficult to even link to a screenshot before evidence could be attached due to character limits. Your goal is to make peoples' rep (such as my own) look completely invalid especially to a new user who will see a great big warning saying the rep "violates rules" and how it shouldn't be trusted.
The users of MCM should not be paying (in the form of lost reputation) for the mistakes of MCM. I'd argue that most reputation left after the evidence changes is in fact invalid because most people will upload a random picture as 'evidence' and call it a day. The evidence system does not work. Nor does trying to force people into using a specific format btw - that's stupid and just leads to copy/pasting.
FINAL WORD/RESTATING THE OBVIOUS AND ALREADY-SAID
Rep left by a banned user does not make it invalid. Rep left without evidence at a time when no evidence could be left also does not make it invalid. You want to make a new user look ridiculously more reputable than a longstanding community member who over many years has made vast contributions to the community and has not scammed. The idea of a warning to users about rep being invalid is a joke in itself - the reputation is not invalid and defeats the objective of keeping legacy rep as any user not aware of the drama over the past few days will assume it (the reputation) should be ignored outright entirely.
Justis - can you explain how a user who received a reputation from a banned member will make them less trustworthy and how that user should not be deserving of the reputation point?
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FYI, I don't recall saying MCM staff was censoring us, I'm just stating the obvious - we're being ignored.
TLDR justis/mick think that 'legacy' rep is invalid as is rep left by banned users. they don't want to change their stance. they want introduce a warning and stop counting reputation that they feel is 'invalid'
the bulk of the community completely disagrees with these changes (which weren't exactly asked for) and feel they are not being listened to.
that's about it.
The thing is with this, however, is Mick strictly said that there will be options to toggle on or off legacy reputation towards people’s totals. (Like I’ve already said)
?"Find a new argument"?? That's not how it works my guy...
I put in my initial message my counter arguments towards the main two points I’ve seen in everyone’s arguments so I would save time in the future.
Legacy rep isn't exactly staying. They're graying it out; want to exclude it from totals and adding a warning to it basically saying how it should be ignored. If legacy rep was staying then neither of those three things would be happening. Allowing us to add evidence for it to be counted as per normal is only 'okay' to an extent. Discord accounts get terminated which can make it IMPOSSIBLE to find 'evidence' and that combined with the fact many of these reps go back years where proof is no longer available at all (paypal history only goes back ~3 years).
They still want to screw over users by graying out and not counting rep left by banned users which is stupid in its own right because how does a rep left by a banned user make the receiver any less trustworthy? Hint: it doesn't.
How is a new user supposed to tell apart someone from trustworthy and not trustworthy? They use the reputation system. Are they going to read through the reputation? NO. They just want to look at the number relative to everyone else.
FURTHERMORE, it would also be somewhat of an unfair advantage to users who have reputation with existing evidence as much of this evidence is bullshit evidence (e.g. an upload of a meme or a blank picture - and yes these really are prevalent!!).
Until they leave legacy & rep left by banned users alone, I don't think the community is going to be settled. Look at the funny ratings on the announcement; the disagree ratings on the compromise and all of the agree ratings on my messages related to these changes. They are in far greater quantities than those in support. Majority rules (or at least, it should..)
tl;dr your opinion is invalid because legacy rep is not staying.
There's a lot of people with opinions on this topic, and many people are angry with the new update. Just pushing an update like this is of course doomed to not suit everyone, but is the majority of the members for this update? I think as a community we should decide what gets added, at least have a stronger part in what gets added.
So my idea is this:
Have an official poll where people can vote on this update, where they can vote whether they want the update or not. I think with a big update like this it should have been done pre-update so all of this drama wouldn't have to happen.
So my idea is this:
Have an official poll where people can vote on this update, where they can vote whether they want the update or not. I think with a big update like this it should have been done pre-update so all of this drama wouldn't have to happen.
Exactly what I've suggested (multiple times!). Mick seems to like waiting a few months to announce it and he releases loads of changes in one go - some changes are good and have been asked for for years, others haven't been asked for at all and with no debate except internal debate. Then again, I guess it's better than unannounced policies like the deletion of banned users' rep which was apparently a policy for at least a year before December's announcement.
Unfortunately, it seems Mick is going to proceed on with his 'compromise' despite the continuation of backlash. Or at least... that's the gist I got from a short shoutbox conversation with him.
Legacy reputation, to an extent, is staying. You just have to toggle a preference that makes it count towards your total.
While I agree with the fact that getting rid of rep left by banned users is sort of idiotic, I’d rather see this compromise go through rather than the initial plan, and you cannot change my opinion on that.
The entire point of that ‘compromise’ is to discredit legacy reputation altogether. Yes they may still be there but they are 1) greyed out, 2) do not count to the existing total and possibly 3) displayed with a warning of its credibility.
What does this mean? It means that legacy rep is not acknowledged or appreciated by the staff team of MCM. ~2 years of many valid and relevant positive rep built up by members will be removed. (Yes, I count them being greyed out and not counting towards the total as removed.) The majority of them are legitimate and to an extent true. There is undeniably bound to be some false positives or negatives here and there but they are the very small minority. Since when do we go against significant majority in implementing policies? If something works, as it’s pretty much proven to be, why fix it?
To sum up all my opinions (tldr)
1. Don’t grey out banned or legacy rep. Count them towards the total.
2. Resume light moderation towards those kinds of reps. They are not exempt from moderation if someone reports.
3. The reporter has to provide proof. The user does not have to supply evidence if it’s beyond his means to do so. Innocent until proven guilty.
4. The ‘abuse’ to the system which the staff have been championing as their main cause to make these changes, the rep4rep situation is not as rampant and out of control as they paint it out to be. Moderation can always solve the issue, and yes we have enough staff to do that. (We have a Feedback Mod. specifically catered to that which we didn’t have 2 years ago)
5. Have a real and easily understood poll with all the choices for forum members to vote before implementing this ridiculous change. And have all the options for them to choose, not just some ultimatum or compromise forced down our throats.
The warning is stupid and shouldn't exist.
If there's going to be a toggle, it'll need to DEFAULT TO SHOW the reps.
Before I create a big long response, I have a quick question:
How does negative feedback exist in a system that is designed only for completed deals? What's the end game here Justis Mick? It sounds like you just want a system that shows the number/quality of deals a user has completed, since they must provide evidence for deals being completed (and I've seen suggestions for "$ done", i.e. how many resource sales you have multiplied by their price).
If you had a deal with someone that resulted negatively (not receiving what you paid for) that's sounds like a scam which would result in the user being banned for scamming.
It's no wonder so many people such as BeBosny and myself wanted a simple "reputation" system where you could post whatever your opinion on someone was. If you think they're toxic or making posts/offering services promoting borderline blackhat activity, you could leave a negative reputation for someone.
I (and assuming others have as well) have been able to straight up abuse the current system with it's rules in place. Someone thinks your a dickhead and gives you a negative rep? Well I didn't deal with them it gets reported and vanishes forever.
With the new(er) and "improved" system, when/where would negative reputation exist for someone who isnt about to be banned for scamming?
How does negative feedback exist in a system that is designed only for completed deals? What's the end game here Justis Mick? It sounds like you just want a system that shows the number/quality of deals a user has completed, since they must provide evidence for deals being completed (and I've seen suggestions for "$ done", i.e. how many resource sales you have multiplied by their price).
If you had a deal with someone that resulted negatively (not receiving what you paid for) that's sounds like a scam which would result in the user being banned for scamming.
It's no wonder so many people such as BeBosny and myself wanted a simple "reputation" system where you could post whatever your opinion on someone was. If you think they're toxic or making posts/offering services promoting borderline blackhat activity, you could leave a negative reputation for someone.
I (and assuming others have as well) have been able to straight up abuse the current system with it's rules in place. Someone thinks your a dickhead and gives you a negative rep? Well I didn't deal with them it gets reported and vanishes forever.
With the new(er) and "improved" system, when/where would negative reputation exist for someone who isnt about to be banned for scamming?
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Absolutely not.
It is only negative feedback, where one person is directly harmed that a report get filed and again, the person providing the feedback is expected to provide evidence. They’re not "innocent of having left fake negative feedback until proven guilty", because how is the receiver of that feedback supposed to prove that they never spoke to that user? They can’t. Evidence is required by the person leaving the feedback. That’s the case for positive and negative feedback because it is the only possible way to moderate it and verify claims as legitimate.
If user X and user Y have given each other fake positive feedback, how is it possible for some third party to ever obtain evidence in order to report it? Unless the two users were careless, it’s impossible. Both users benefit from giving each other fake feedback, why would one snitch? They would be snitching on themselves. It almost never happened. Which means almost all of the abused positive feedback still remains in our system, never reported.
Anyone could claim anything on anyone and need to provide no evidence. In this community, do you really believe that wasn’t taken advantage of in order to boost totals?
I’m not sure how you can claim "It’s nowhere near where you think it is" when you have absolutely no means of differentiating valid positive feedback from rep4rep positive feedback. That’s the whole problem after all. There is absolutely no way for our users to see that it’s a result of abuse, and report it.b) Making all of the feedback without any evidence immune to our past, present, and future policies, enshrining the results of a corrupted system into our site forever, and taking no reasonable action to inform or protect our new and future members
Exactly that! It is nowhere near what you think it is. And I can guarantee you'll come back with something like "bUt i Am sTaFf i hAvE fiRsT hAnD exPeRiEncE" which is correct but you are forgetting that the community also has first-hand experience. Not every single reputation is invalid just because it doesn't have evidence attached at a time when evidence couldn't even be attached. Heck, it was very difficult to even link to a screenshot before evidence could be attached due to character limits. Your goal is to make peoples' rep (such as my own) look completely invalid especially to a new user who will see a great big warning saying the rep "violates rules" and how it shouldn't be trusted.
The users of MCM should not be paying (in the form of lost reputation) for the mistakes of MCM. I'd argue that most reputation left after the evidence changes is in fact invalid because most people will upload a random picture as 'evidence' and call it a day. The evidence system does not work. Nor does trying to force people into using a specific format btw - that's stupid and just leads to copy/pasting.
FINAL WORD/RESTATING THE OBVIOUS AND ALREADY-SAID
Rep left by a banned user does not make it invalid. Rep left without evidence at a time when no evidence could be left also does not make it invalid. You want to make a new user look ridiculously more reputable than a longstanding community member who over many years has made vast contributions to the community and has not scammed. The idea of a warning to users about rep being invalid is a joke in itself - the reputation is not invalid and defeats the objective of keeping legacy rep as any user not aware of the drama over the past few days will assume it (the reputation) should be ignored outright entirely.
Justis - can you explain how a user who received a reputation from a banned member will make them less trustworthy and how that user should not be deserving of the reputation point?
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FYI, I don't recall saying MCM staff was censoring us, I'm just stating the obvious - we're being ignored.
With our current system, if someone uploads a random picture, as you’ve said, it can easily be reported, and quickly be removed. It’s very clear that it’s abuse. Same with copy pasting random words. Easy to identify. Easy to report. Easy to get removed. With the legacy system, the abuse prevailed because it stayed entirely unnoticed and unreported.
Judging from your complaints, it seems you have less of an issue with the splitting up of the totals that include legacy feedback, but more with the warnings that we’re wanting to display to our future users, who would otherwise be left to assume that the totals they’re seeing represent feedback from the only system that they’re familiar with, where evidence is required for claims. After all, if we’re warning users of the abuse with the past system, and informing them that legacy feedback was able to be authored for any made up reason on anyone and there would be no way to know, they might take your totals with a grain of salt; and you don’t want that, because that system is what the majority of your feedback was authored through.
But they should be taking it with a grain of salt.
I understand that you personally might not have abused with your totals. There’s no way for me to know this of course, because there’s no evidence for any of it, but let’s say you never took advantage of the weaknesses of our previous system. Would you be willing to claim the same for the rest of our community? Our community?
There exists a small handful of users who are trusted here, and they have a lot of positive feedback.
But they make up such a small portion the feedback authored during the time where evidence was not required to make a claim, and just because they didn’t abuse doesn’t mean that the significant majority of the less trustworthy members of our community didn’t. Even just going by the tip of the iceberg, the members that were idiotic in their abuse and got snitched on, it was a lot.
In consideration for our old members and everyone who hasn’t abused the system, we’re no longer even asking to delete it from everyone’s profiles and everyone’s totals. We just want to separate legacy feedback from the new system, and allow everyone to choose how they see their totals so that when they opt into seeing it, we can prompt them with a warning explaining the situation.
We need to also be thinking about the new and coming members who will be joining this site throughout the indefinite future. If they’re not properly warned and advised about the differences between the legacy system and the one they know of, as well as the abuse that occurred prior to evidence being required, they're easy prey for the members who are looking to make one last score before exiting the community and want to rely on their legacy feedback that they abused to accumulate, in order to make their scams successful. We have a responsibility to ensure that they know what they’re participating in.
It’s also not fair to them.
Even if the countless remaining people who’ve abused to get feedback, never do anything malicious with their bloated totals. Our new users are subject to much harsher requirements in order to receive feedback. The people who leave it need to leave evidence, and if the evidence that’s left isn’t good enough, it will be reported and deleted.
If we’re going to do as you want, and stop asking for evidence for legacy feedback, and stop deleting it, we need to distinguish the legacy feedback from our new system’s feedback, because it’s not the same.
Not only was it far easier to abuse and not get caught, it was easier to receive, and with the moderation immunity that you want, it’ll also remain in spite of all of the restrictions within our current system. The totals from both systems aren’t even fairly comparable.
They need to be separated. It needs to be systematically made clear that the systems that the totals came from were very different, and were moderated very differently, and will continue to be moderated very very differently.
It’s the only way forward for this platform.
The Chearful post you quoted, and the one I was responding to did not make a valid argument.
All it said was "We don’t want your changes. You’re trying to <insert strawman>. Do this instead. They’re just as good as the current system’s. We don’t want your changes. How could you even continue to suggest changes."
Again, that’s not an argument. That’s a list of demands as well as attacks at the suggestion, but it’s not an argument.
If it was an argument. An argument explains "why" something is the case. If it was an argument, Chearful would explain why the legacy feedback is as good as the current system’s feedback, why his suggestions solves the concerns regarding our new and future members, and he would explain why he thought our changes didn’t address the concerns he had. Granted, he did start to offer some explanations of "why" in his future responses, and I have just responded to those explaining why his argument is significantly flawed, but in the message you quoted, no argument was provided.
What exactly qualifies as enough "evidence"?
In my experience, most users are not willing to go through the effort to provide solid evidence in their attachment(s), so they just attach some random image that's tangentially related to the deal, such as a small snippet of the chat or the name or the avatar of the account or something — nothing that's really verifiable and absolutely nothing that can't be faked within a couple of minutes, especially if two friends are willing to fake vouch each other or exaggerate the value of their deal.
Any solid proof would likely involve leaking extensive chat transcripts and sensitive information about the account and/or deal, which is viewable to public's eye. Of course, the sensitive information can be censored, but as a seller myself, that means less sales for me if I have to convince and guide buyers to go through all of this effort/hassle just to vouch me after a deal, especially considering that many of my buyers barely use the forums, and many merely register just to purchase a product from me and don't really care about their reputation.
Now, on the other hand, unlike an attachment, a deal URL, which for some reason is "optional" when vouching someone, I would argue has far more merit as evidence than some vague image of the deal or chat, and it's far less work than gathering an attachment as proof. I think fakers are a lot less likely to post a fake thread since then anyone can see it and bid on it and discuss the product, and it would weed out fakers even easier since you'd probably have to leave the thread up for days and go through all of this effort just to fabricate a legitimate-looking, non-faked vouch.
I understand why you wouldn't want to make deal URLs required since a lot of stuff is sold underground / hand-to-hand, but I thought the entire point of the vouch system was that it would be mainly used for onsite market deals. Other solutions might include hiding attachments/evidence from public's eye so users feel safer with exposing more information about the deal, although this also hurts their privacy, and you can never really fully trust staff either.
What I would recommend is writing a guide on what constitutes as "minimal acceptable evidence" when vouching someone. Maybe add an optional text-based form for evidence so you could put stuff there like the Blockchain address for BTC-related transactions and write a little about the inner details of the transaction, obviously only viewable to staff.
Our reputation system is an opinion based system. https://www.mc-market.org/wiki/reputation/
I have always fought against making our reputation system deals only.
That said, we’re still a marketplace, and not every opinion or action which resulted in that opinion is relevant to our platform. Any feedback which fails our relevance expectancies would not be allowed, but I believe the wiki I’ve linked does a fine job of explaining that.
Also, I disagree with your implication that a transaction is always a positive one unless its a scam. Surely, lots of scam reports get created for transactions where one of the involved parties is unhappy, but you’ll notice that not all of them result in bans.
Even if a staff members resolves the dispute, there is likely one or more unhappy members of that transaction and so negative feedback for deals is still prominent.
A lot of feedback submitted via our new system does fail our expectations, and it does result in a staff member needing to walk the users through uploading acceptable evidence. I’m in complete favor of your suggestion for creating a guide, so that we waste less staff time and users have a better idea of why certain things aren’t conclusive and what they can post in order to meet our requirements. I’d like to write that myself, actually, and provide a link to it on every feedback edit/submission page.
Regardless of what happens to legacy feedback, users will be getting the option to upload evidence to feedback that they’ve received. This will ensure that when someone leaves feedback on their account, they’re able to ensure that they won’t lose it due to the person they dealt with not bothering to comply with our policies.
I believe I’ve seen a suggestion previously which would allow users to submit sensitive information for staff but not the public to review in order to validate the claims being made. After some thought, I would be in favor of this as long as it’s done correctly.
I’m also wanting us to allow users to submit links to images as evidence, and have MCM auto-convert it into an attachment, making it easier to submit. Any other suggestions you have, where submitting evidence can be made easier and or more reliable, I’m probably completely down for.
I think reputation is basically irrelevant anyway.
So easy to farm it with rep4reps.
So easy to farm it with rep4reps.
A user is innocent until proven guilty.
If someone reports a positive reputation the user has received, the reporter would have to provide proof. The user does not have to prove his innocence.
If a user receives negative reputation and he reports it, the user is innocent until proven guilty. The reputation provider would have to give proof for that negative reputation he left.
And yes Justis, I am very confident in saying that the significant majority of our community didn’t abuse the reputation system back then. If possible, I’d like you to specify exactly how much work the staff team has/had to deal with legacy reputation and also current reputation as a contrast. I do not believe that the rep4rep abuse that you have championed all this while is as rampant as you say.
And how many of those reports were invalid at that.
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