The Reputation System: A History

[Chearful]

if im completely honest i did skim read justis's reply but i will just reply anyways.

i feel that rep4rep is a pretty rare occurrence

but if you do want to add a toggle, then i'd like it to default to being able to have legacy rep included in totals; legacy rep being shown without a warning; legacy rep being shown without being grayed out......... or at least for existing members. im yet to see an argument as to how legacy rep is less valid than rep that has evidence attached. an interaction between two users took place in each instance... (this paragraph also applies to rep left banned users)

asking for proof for legacy rep is unreasonable especially on older reps.

i know i haven't abused the reputation system. i know that the bulk of the community hasn't either. i don't think myself (and the bulk of the community) should be punished for something that the very few do..

there are many flaws with the reputation system as it stands now such as it being very opinionated rather than trade based; being forced to format the rep in a specific way which just ends up in copy-paste because you basically have to repeat yourself as well as the fact there's no guidelines as to what evidence is and many do not want to post evidence such as proof of payment etc. for privacy concerns.

--

my stance is that i do not want a 2019 member look more reputable than me just because i lost all but 3 of my reputation to these changes which are completely out of my control. i don't have a time machine to go back to 2016 when i had my old discord account in order to dig up some proof.

if the warning is going to be taken as a grain of salt, then do not include it. do not include it even if it was going to be taken more seriously than a grain of salt.

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at this point it's not even clear what changes are being made because it's split up into this thread, the announcement, the suggestion thread, my suggestion thread, others' suggestion thread. and apparently the changes are changing each day???? maybe someone (i.e. justis/mick) make a new thread in suggestions to clarify what the current proposed changes are so comments can be made?

 

[Blaze.]

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 you "prove your innocence", you're literally providing proof. :rofl:

A user is innocent until proven guilty.
If a user receives a 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.

Whenever I had some negative reputation, I had to prove to the person who gave them to me that they were false with proof? What are you on about?

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.

I'm 100% confident there was a lot of rep-4-rep going on, but unfortunately, neither I nor you can prove whether there was or wasn't.

 

[Justis]

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.

That’s a double standard that strongly favors a positive bias within the reputation system. Especially when there’s already a strong bias because negative feedback is disproportionately more likely to get reported by the receiver than positive.

Note that neither the author of positive feedback or negative feedback is assumed guilty until proven so. That’s why neither receives a warning until it’s proven they’ve abused.

However, both are stuck with the burden of proof. Both the author of the positive feedback and the author of the negative feedback must prove that their claims are true. Same goes for neutral feedback. Unbias of the rating. That’s the only way to properly moderate a system. That’s the way we’ve been moderating the system for the past four years, and it wasn’t able to keep its hands around the positive feedback abuse for even a second because evidence needed to be manually requested.

A lot of staff time was wasted on feedback abuse in the old days, but I’m sure you know I can’t retroactively measure how much, years later. Especially considering feedback was permanently deleted from our database when removed from public view, prior to a year ago. But I know that most positive feedback didn’t end up reported because rep4rep abusers both profited from it and there was no reason to report it. I’m unable to provide you the extent to which it was abused, because there’s no way to differentiate fake positive feedback from real positive feedback, which is the whole problem.

im yet to see an argument as to how legacy rep is less valid than rep that has evidence attached. an interaction between two users took place in each instance...

An interaction between two users didn’t necessarily take place at all, and that’s the entire problem.
I understand that in your case, you know for yourself how much of your feedback was faked, and maybe none of it was. I wish all of our members were as honest as you, but the size of our ban list demonstrates how not the case that happens to be.

We need to think about the safety of our new and future members, and I just don’t think you’re properly considering them.
You’re not the only person that they’re going to encounter with legacy feedback that will influence whether they choose to deal.

You want us to:
1) Stop checking legacy feedback for abuse the way it’s been moderated for the last four years
2) Not require that it abide by our current policies or any of our future policies that the current system’s feedback must
3) Stop allowing reports to be made on this feedback, since it is granted moderation immunity
4) Not require evidence be uploaded to prove that an interaction actually happened

And you ask how it’s less safe? Less valid in general than feedback which not only has evidence provided, but is also subject to strict moderation, can be reported and will be investigated for abuse in the same way legacy feedback used to be, but no longer will be?

Again, even if all of your feedback is legitimate, that is not the case for everyone else on our website.

Even if it wasn’t the case that legacy feedback could be left on anyone for any reason and not need to provide any evidence. Even if that wasn’t the case, which it is: The sole fact that old feedback is to no longer moderated and checked for abuse, is reason enough to warn our users about it.
Our users knowing that there are different standards, significantly lower standards and less enforcement for legacy feedback is necessary in order to ensure they’re being responsibly informed.

Regarding the wiki you want, I will absolutely be drafting that, as suggested by Ally.

Regarding the proposed changes, it would take forever to get a change through if we created a new suggestion thread every time a minor detail was adjusted. However, the minor details are mostly up for alterations, as long as they're reasonable.

 

[AlarminqAppeal]

yes please

 

[jxhdvn]

if you admit the system was flawed can you please just leave all the shit done under that flawed system intact and not retroactively apply shit

 

[Justis]

if you admit the system was flawed can you please just leave all the shit done under that flawed system intact and not retroactively apply shit

Evidence has always been requested by the author of feedback whenever a report is received, in order to investigate if it was valid. If no evidence was provided, it was deleted. Always. That’s not retroactive.

We’re accepting the suggestion to stop asking for evidence, as we’ve done for the past four years, and to provide legacy feedback immunity from moderation, but if we do that, we need to also be distinguishing that feedback from our current system’s feedback which is still moderated. Our users need to be kept informed so that they can make their own safe decisions.

What you want us to do, which is to stop the abuse checking we’ve been doing for four years, give legacy feedback moderation immunity, but also not provide any warning or distinction completely disregards our new and future users who would be left to assume that the totals they see are for feedback of the system they’re using, and it’s not. Completely different standards, no moderation. These users need to be taken into consideration.

 

[User]

if im completely honest i did skim read justis's reply but i will just reply anyways.

i feel that rep4rep is a pretty rare occurrence

but if you do want to add a toggle, then i'd like it to default to being able to have legacy rep included in totals; legacy rep being shown without a warning; legacy rep being shown without being grayed out......... or at least for existing members. im yet to see an argument as to how legacy rep is less valid than rep that has evidence attached. an interaction between two users took place in each instance... (this paragraph also applies to rep left banned users)

asking for proof for legacy rep is unreasonable especially on older reps.

i know i haven't abused the reputation system. i know that the bulk of the community hasn't either. i don't think myself (and the bulk of the community) should be punished for something that the very few do..

there are many flaws with the reputation system as it stands now such as it being very opinionated rather than trade based; being forced to format the rep in a specific way which just ends up in copy-paste because you basically have to repeat yourself as well as the fact there's no guidelines as to what evidence is and many do not want to post evidence such as proof of payment etc. for privacy concerns.

--

my stance is that i do not want a 2019 member look more reputable than me just because i lost all but 3 of my reputation to these changes which are completely out of my control. i don't have a time machine to go back to 2016 when i had my old discord account in order to dig up some proof.

if the warning is going to be taken as a grain of salt, then do not include it. do not include it even if it was going to be taken more seriously than a grain of salt.

--

at this point it's not even clear what changes are being made because it's split up into this thread, the announcement, the suggestion thread, my suggestion thread, others' suggestion thread. and apparently the changes are changing each day???? maybe someone (i.e. justis/mick) make a new thread in suggestions to clarify what the current proposed changes are so comments can be made?

only the announcement is final, the suggestion thread from mick is likely to be added in and probably is already in the process of being added in, and this thread + anyone elses suggestions threads are just that, suggestions. i'd say the best place to go to actually know what's going on is mick's suggestion thread, as that seems to be the changes we're gonna see going into 2020

 

[Chearful]

only the announcement is final, the suggestion thread from mick is likely to be added in and probably is already in the process of being added in, and this thread + anyone elses suggestions threads are just that, suggestions. i'd say the best place to go to actually know what's going on is mick's suggestion thread, as that seems to be the changes we're gonna see going into 2020

my interpretation of justis's comments in this thread are that the changes are different to those in mick's suggestion thread :shrug:

can't have a proper debate if i dont even know what im supposed to debate

 

[Justis]

my interpretation of justis's comments in this thread are that the changes are different to those in mick's suggestion thread ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

can't have a proper debate if i dont even know what im supposed to debate

The suggestion thread has the most detail regarding the entirety of the suggested changes.
It would be tedious and redundant them in their entirety every time I want to reference a specific change, so I have paraphrased.
That said, I’m personally still considering who legacy totals should be displayed to without the need for toggling it on and being prompted with a notice describing the differences between the old system’s feedback and the current system’s, including the info described in the initial history post, the evidence requirements and the absence of moderation.
I’m thinking that anyone with legacy feedback shouldn’t need to toggle on the setting to view legacy feedback, or perhaps anyone older than 2020; though I’m favoring the latter.