The Reputation System: A History

[BrianGrug]

Here’s my 2 options in this and I’m for either or at this point

Remove rep as a whole, I don’t wanna see one more thing about rep on here

or

Undo the changes. I see where you guys were going to prevent scamming but this isn’t the way. Leave good enough at good enough and let’s as a community come up with some ideas

 

[Justis]

Here’s my 2 options in this and I’m for either or at this point

Remove rep as a whole, I don’t wanna see one more thing about rep on here

or

Undo the changes. I see where you guys were going to prevent scamming but this isn’t the way. Leave good enough at good enough and let’s as a community come up with some ideas

Does this really seem like the brilliant conclusion that management of a business should be deciding on when considering the future of their marketplace?

 

[Ghast]

Probably the best ‘history’ class I’ve had so far.

 

[styx]

Aussie would fix the issues.

 

[Chearful]

your "history" is biased towards supporting your case. this thread is only a ploy in an attempt to garner a bit more support for some pathetic changes.

hardly any abuse happened with the reputation system and where it did, it was swiftly dealt with because it was VERY obvious when it had taken place.

 

[Ajdin]

your "history" is biased towards supporting your case. this thread is only a ploy in an attempt to garner a bit more support for some pathetic changes.

hardly any abuse happened with the reputation system and where it did, it was swiftly dealt with because it was VERY obvious when it had taken place.

This is so true. I'm actually surprised a member is able to see this.

I honestly don't feel like going into more details or reading this entire thread because it'll just be a massive rant from my end. I'm also just going to assume the thread is mostly factually correct with some light biases but that's normal.

Let's clear this out: At a certain scale whenever you run a company, site or community, every feature is problematic to a certain amount of users. You simply can't avoid this. Combine that with a bunch of kids that care about how tough and elite they look on the internet, you have some of the ingredients to reach chaos and disaster. Just because you have those ingredients doesn't mean you'll reach them.

When I was responsible for the site and the reputation system, my opinion still stands that it didn't have many of the issues it has now. It had issues but I think they were not even close to problematic and most of them were addressed by light moderation. Not the type of moderation we see now on MCM where a forms need to be filled out that ends up on a pile. Then these reviews end up being dealed in a way too consistent and robotic manner. These are the changes that can be classified as 'pathetic' as Chearful is saying.

Whenever people used to complain about a certain reputation, I mostly looked into this myself because I realize how important it was. My judgement, experience and gut feeling with analyzing a situation that includes reputation simply couldn't be put into guidelines for other staff to deal with. Maybe in the future once the system was settled in more in the community the way of dealing with it could be looked into again.

I simply had a very specific vision of this system that not many other people had or could have. I was aware of this and when I left the site I knew this whole thing would be a mess, amongst other things obviously.

That being said, after leaving MCM I did doubt some of the decisions I made but I would have been there to correct them quickly without backlash.

Then again, if I look at myself where I am now, the companies I work for and the decisions I get to make that literally impact things reaching millions of people, MCM was really lucky to have me and my value was greatly underappreciated.[DOUBLEPOST=1575367592][/DOUBLEPOST]

Again, users wanted the system removed, because all the old members who were considered reputable within the community seemed to be "on the same level" as users who had just joined.

Yes, users wanted to have it removed, just like some want every other feature removed, but there wasn't backlash and the community was open to trying changes. There was very little negative feedback.

 

[Shooting]

Why is everyone making such a big deal out of it. The past is the past so why are we going into detail about it so much. I do though feel both sides (what I've seen). I don't see why reactions have to do with it. Unless you're trying to change that too then its really not a big deal here.


This community is going to be a wreck if everyone is putting so much effort for this case.


Just end it quick with a poll vote not that hard[DOUBLEPOST=1575369353][/DOUBLEPOST]There is more positive feedback then negative

Regarding the banned users two thing. If there is enough proof a deal was done then it shouldn't be removed. If some show a lack of proof then removing it is fine


Thanks for reading just my opinion

 

[Cold]

When the reputation system was added. The rep4rep WITHOUT DEALS that you claimed happened wasn’t that rampant and it was usually a select few who gained a lot of reputation in a short period of time. Those few were dealt with swiftly.

The rep4rep scenario that you have painted usually occurred when people were giving out very cheap items in exchange for a rep such as steam keys, $1-2 dollars or cs skins. The receiver would then leave the giver a positive reputation in exchange. Again, this can easily be identified, especially now when we require proof and 100 characters. Those who previously did this in the past have either been banned or had their reputation removed, so I see no issue?

where is the problem Justis? Just leave it as it currently is and add more moderation (which has already been done with the addition of Feedback Moderators! Kudos).

 

[MrAniman2]

I don't think the compromise would change anything much.

While I have been here for a long time and seen all the changes mentioned here I wasn't really aware that rep farming was such an issue.

From my point of view it looks like this:
I have been here since 2014, made thousands of deals but due to nature of how my business works (buyer receives the product automatically) I haven't had a need to personally interact with many clients... only when the issue arises. I have never asked or hinted for reputation (as far as I can remember) therefore I have comparatively very little reputation ... since rarely any person go out of his way to leave a rep or any kind of feedback if you don't do business with a person personally.

Seeing how you intended (original idea) to reduce the rep to 4 (for me) was obviously unacceptable even despite the fact I don't value much this number. But the number - 4 quite frankly would make me look like I joined yesterday wouldn't it?

I truly don't know what would be the correct solution. Maybe people should be limited to leave only one rep per week (in this case you would leave the rep only when other party truly would have earned it). But people who are trying to collect as much rep as possible would obviously be against it. As they would probably argue that rep should be given for every deal. But then I have a question why resource sales doesn't translate into rep given? It's a legitimate purchase, verified by MCM...?
The current system focuses largely on people who do "hand to hand deals" (personally speaks to seller and makes a deal) for example account sellers and commission/exclusive content creators but am I less reputable if I sell the same product via resource section?

The more I think the more I start to believe we would benefit from some kind of rating given out to users by MCM. Rating that cannot be improved simply by making couple of quick deals and doing rep4rep or completely destroyed by 1-2 negative rep. Of course evaluating user and giving such rating would be a lot of work and could be controversial in some cases but seeing how many reputation related issues there are and how much of staff work it takes maybe it would benefit in long run...
Couple of possible things that could be taken into account:
- Registration date, (let's face it people who have been active here for 2+ years are less likely to scam)
- Activity time period (has the user been active from the time he registered his acc or was inactive for years and only recently came back),
- Warning points (this actually can tell a lot about the person),
- Does a user have a business (small scale/large scale (registered))(read: something to lose in case of ban)
- Published resources/resources sold.

There will always be dishonest people who will try to fake the rep but honest people should not be affected/held responsible for their actions... and by touching honest peoples rep you are doing just that.

If the rep farming is the main issue for these changes then maybe it would be a good idea to remove the "Reputation" number altogether therefore reducing the reason for people to farm it and just leave it uncounted so who wants can look through it on users profile and should not be mislead by the big number displayed under profile picture but rather focus on the rep quality/description. Maybe even rename it back to "User feedback"
Although this is a hard question and no matter the decision you will make I am sure there will always be people who will disagree.

Just my two cents regarding this topic.

 

[Sloth]

I understand why the reputation system was implemented but I’ve never really been a huge fan of it. I definitely preferred people having to go out of there way to learn who was reputable instead of relying on a number next to a users name.

I also never really saw all reactions or “ratings” as they were called as reputation. The only rating I considered to have any weight was the vouch rating and everything else was simply there for the fun of it.

 

[Violet]

Not even going to bother reading this gay shit, fuck y’all.

 

[Justis]

your "history" is biased towards supporting your case. this thread is only a ploy in an attempt to garner a bit more support for some pathetic changes.

hardly any abuse happened with the reputation system and where it did, it was swiftly dealt with because it was VERY obvious when it had taken place.

Any time there’s a situation where a person can say "As someone who has held a position as <x>", there will implicitly be bias. My bias is coming from the perspective of a staff member that’s had to deal primarily with all of the combatting of the reputation system’s abuse for the past four years, while your bias would be coming from the perspective of someone who has dealt primarily with the effort of trying to build up reputation within the community.
Your bias is not a wrong one to have. In fact, I’d say it’s necessary to consider when making decisions that effect the active MCMarket community, however I do not believe that mine is the wrong one to have when making decisions regarding the moderation of content present on this platform.

When I was responsible for the site and the reputation system, my opinion still stands that it didn't have many of the issues it has now. It had issues but I think they were not even close to problematic and most of them were addressed by light moderation. Not the type of moderation we see now on MCM where a forms need to be filled out that ends up on a pile. Then these reviews end up being dealed in a way too consistent and robotic manner. These are the changes that can be classified as 'pathetic' as Chearful is saying.

Whenever people used to complain about a certain reputation, I mostly looked into this myself because I realize how important it was. My judgement, experience and gut feeling with analyzing a situation that includes reputation simply couldn't be put into guidelines for other staff to deal with. Maybe in the future once the system was settled in more in the community the way of dealing with it could be looked into again.

I simply had a very specific vision of this system that not many other people had or could have. I was aware of this and when I left the site I knew this whole thing would be a mess, amongst other things obviously.

That being said, after leaving MCM I did doubt some of the decisions I made but I would have been there to correct them quickly without backlash.

Then again, if I look at myself where I am now, the companies I work for and the decisions I get to make that literally impact things reaching millions of people, MCM was really lucky to have me and my value was greatly underappreciated.[DOUBLEPOST=1575367592][/DOUBLEPOST]
Yes, users wanted to have it removed, just like some want every other feature removed, but there wasn't backlash and the community was open to trying changes. There was very little negative feedback.

The problems in the old system were not addressed by light moderation.
The only false feedback that got reported and addressed was the negative feedback, despite abuse of positive feedback being of such a higher scale.

It wasn’t obvious at all when people were rep4reping unless we were lucky enough to get someone who snitched and provided screenshots of the abuser explicitly asking for it. However, as a staff team, we knew that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and even if you were only there for the beginning of it, I can’t believe you would consider what you experienced to be a minor problem and instead look back on it as something to publicly pat yourself on the back for.

What do you mean forms that get filled out now end up in a pile? The feedback being submitted these days with evidence aren’t an issue at all. Moderation of those is a breeze by comparison. You were never around as a staff member when the evidence requirement was added, so you haven’t been privy to the difference between old feedback and new, but it is massive, and any staff member who’s been around to moderate both systems can attest to this.

What do you mean the reports on feedback get dealt with in too consistent of a manner? That makes no sense. Consistent enforcement for all of our members is a goal we strive for. It is the only means of reliably ensuring fair treatment to our users.

"My judgement, experience and gut feeling with analyzing a situation that includes reputation simply couldn't be put into guidelines for other staff to deal with." Wow.
I won’t bother disagreeing with your assertion that your moderation skill is at all more spectacular than any other human here, but entertaining the idea, if a system can only be moderated by a single exceptional individual, your system isn’t scalable, and is undeniably a terrible one for a business where staff terms average between one and four years.
100k feedback submitted during the legacy system. One person could not have moderated all of it. You hardly moderated a fraction of it.

"Then again, if I look at myself where I am now, the companies I work for and the decisions I get to make that literally impact things reaching millions of people, MCM was really lucky to have me and my value was greatly underappreciated."
Again, wow.

"I simply had a very specific vision of this system that not many other people had or could have. I was aware of this and when I left the site I knew this whole thing would be a mess, amongst other things obviously."
I’d argue that a good manager would aim to ensure that their business can function without themselves, but this is completely off topic, and I’m sure anyone who cares to can clearly see the intent behind this message and most of what you’ve written in your response to this thread.

I don't think the compromise would change anything much.

While I have been here for a long time and seen all the changes mentioned here I wasn't really aware that rep farming was such an issue.

From my point of view it looks like this:
I have been here since 2014, made thousands of deals but due to nature of how my business works (buyer receives the product automatically) I haven't had a need to personally interact with many clients... only when the issue arises. I have never asked or hinted for reputation (as far as I can remember) therefore I have comparatively very little reputation ... since rarely any person go out of his way to leave a rep or any kind of feedback if you don't do business with a person personally.

Seeing how you intended (original idea) to reduce the rep to 4 (for me) was obviously unacceptable even despite the fact I don't value much this number. But the number - 4 quite frankly would make me look like I joined yesterday wouldn't it?

I truly don't know what would be the correct solution. Maybe people should be limited to leave only one rep per week (in this case you would leave the rep only when other party truly would have earned it). But people who are trying to collect as much rep as possible would obviously be against it. As they would probably argue that rep should be given for every deal. But then I have a question why resource sales doesn't translate into rep given? It's a legitimate purchase, verified by MCM...?
The current system focuses largely on people who do "hand to hand deals" (personally speaks to seller and makes a deal) for example account sellers and commission/exclusive content creators but am I less reputable if I sell the same product via resource section?

The more I think the more I start to believe we would benefit from some kind of rating given out to users by MCM. Rating that cannot be improved simply by making couple of quick deals and doing rep4rep or completely destroyed by 1-2 negative rep. Of course evaluating user and giving such rating would be a lot of work and could be controversial in some cases but seeing how many reputation related issues there are and how much of staff work it takes maybe it would benefit in long run...
Couple of possible things that could be taken into account:
- Registration date, (let's face it people who have been active here for 2+ years are less likely to scam)
- Activity time period (has the user been active from the time he registered his acc or was inactive for years and only recently came back),
- Warning points (this actually can tell a lot about the person),
- Does a user have a business (small scale/large scale (registered))(read: something to lose in case of ban)
- Published resources/resources sold.

There will always be dishonest people who will try to fake the rep but honest people should not be affected/held responsible for their actions... and by touching honest peoples rep you are doing just that.

If the rep farming is the main issue for these changes then maybe it would be a good idea to remove the "Reputation" number altogether therefore reducing the reason for people to farm it and just leave it uncounted so who wants can look through it on users profile and should not be mislead by the big number displayed under profile picture but rather focus on the rep quality/description. Maybe even rename it back to "User feedback"
Although this is a hard question and no matter the decision you will make I am sure there will always be people who will disagree.

Just my two cents regarding this topic.

MCM automatically assigning a template feedback for resource transaction is a very fair suggestion, and I’d like to see more community feedback on it. This would really incentivize the usage of the resource system.
Another possibility would be to tie resource reviews in with user reputation, with resource purchases being auto-filled in as the reason, the transaction logs being used as the proof, and the opinion being whatever the resource author has to say about the resource. Again, it would need a suggestion thread and more discussion to work out the details, since there’s a lot that needs to be considered in order to make it into an intuitive and well-functioning experience.

Regarding your concerns about reputable users appearing "on the same level" as new members:

I see this as as similar situation to when users didn’t want to switch from using reaction totals as "reputation" to a real reputation system, because it would start older members near the same level as newer member. It’s a very valid concern. But given the abuse that occurred with the old system, I strongly believe that allowing what has built up as a result to continue to sit here, untouched and of equal standing for the rest of MCM’s history is short sighted and is only so strongly backed because the majority of the current and respected community has benefitted from using the old system where feedback was so easy to gain, and many people don’t want to watch themselves lose their advantage over newer members.

I ask everyone to please vote for what’s right for MC-Market’s future and the community we will grow to be, not for what’s most beneficial for us personally as old members of this community.

Moreover, as many users have pointed out, reputation totals being used as a means of judging how reputable someone is is a common misuse of the reputation system. Users should be paying attention to the contents of the feedback, and the join date, and the messages they’ve sent from their account, the quality of their messages and the character that they demonstrate. Many things should be taken into consideration when determining how trustworthy someone is.

The new suggestion: Forcing users to opt-into seeing legacy feedback in the totals, so that we can prompt them with a warning, but still displaying all of that feedback publicly regardless of whether or not they’ve opted into counting them. All this does is encourage that people pay attention, be careful, and be considerate of the facts before engaging in a transaction with someone. That’s something we should always be encouraging anyways.

 

[Zyger]

Yeah I agree with most of this, but you're making it seem as if every person that had high rep abused it, which isn't the case.

 

[Justis]

Yeah I agree with most of this, but you're making it seem as if every person that had high rep abused it, which isn't the case.

It’s not that every highly reputable person did it, it’s that the system is simply flooded with abuse that can’t be cleaned.
If it were up to me, I would want to make the tools and systems on this platform as reliable as possible, and purge the old system’s feedback.
But the current compromise of simply having users opt into seeing the totals so we can prompt them with a warning to consider, and always displaying the legacy feedback on profiles, I truly believe is fair, responsible, and satisfies the concerns of everyone involved.

who the hell has time to read all that. until I have time I will just stand by Chearful 's point of view as he's the most level headed person on here.

I took the time to write it and gather all of the references because I deeply care about this platform and its community.
Who would bother reading it? Anyone who also cares.

 

[BrianGrug]

who the hell has time to read all that. until I have time I will just stand by Chearful 's point of view as he's the most level headed person on here.

I don’t get this comment. Why not save your comment until you read both sides

 

[Sloth]

I don’t care i’m new and can’t see this forum being around much longer

Many new members over the years have said that and have been proven wrong. This update won't be the end of Mc-Market.