add something to the rep page to incurage them to click on the owner and compare profiles
also i think we should petition steam to revers these scammers gifts.
My view on what to do with the reputation system:
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Post a sticky explaining the problem of people trying to impersonate. Forum users need to maintain a certain level of responsibility on their own. If it's not scamming through impersonation, it's going to be scamming in another form. Best action is to be prepared.
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Designate reputation moderators to approve reps (at least negative), because a lot of the negative reps are misplaced. Also, if someone gives a negative rep, someone usually automatically gives one back.
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Don't disable the reputation system because some of us also use it as proof of rep for trading on other sites and we don't intentionally abuse the system.
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Possibly create a system for identifying new accounts, accounts with multiple aliases, or accounts classified as a scammer account on steamrep.
We were thinking of designing approving negative reputation before you can add it before but I forget why we scrapped it.
It's unfortunate that it happens, but I'm really at a loss as to what could be done to prevent it.
If a person adds you with the same name and picture and then links you to someone else's rep. You have the link to the real profile right there where you can compare games, friends and what have you against the person who added you. Most legit traders have a public profile as they have nothing to hide so it's not hard to do.
I don't think disabling rep would solve anything. I think maybe 2-3 of the people I've traded with since it was implemented have left anything on my Steam profile. I'm sure many others have experienced the same.
It all really comes down to the traders awareness in my opinion. If you add more to our profiles or make another sticky, it still requires those people to read them. If they hadn't done the easy steps to verify the account that I listed above then I don't think they'd see anything you add.
Ignoring that, the two possible solutions I've come up with are to either make a sticky with traders over a certain amount of rep. This would give scammers a list of people to impersonate, but would also bring awareness to the people who will most likely be impersonated. The second idea is to create a SteamTrades Verified Group or something like that in which traders with a certain rep are invited to. This way if the scammers Steam account isn't in the group, then it's clearly not that person who has over xx rep. You could put a notice on their SteamTrades profile stating to check for the group once they were over the required rep.
Or you could just put the View Steam Profile with bigger letters and place a warning saying something like: "Remember checking the profile of who you trade with" or something
I like this idea: Add an editable note that you can make on your own profile (Moderators can edit too in case it includes referrals/spam or anything inappropriate).
The ratings system system is a little flawed. I gave someone a negative review for being rude and flipping me off for making an offer and they came right back and gave me one for making the offer. :|
Under the rules, neither of those negatives should have been left, although many wish you could.
If you want to take a look here, you'll see it says that negative should only be used for "Warning the community if someone is a scammer or did something suspicious during a trade". It also states that it shouldn't be used for "Reporting a rude or slow trader".
You could contact support to have yours removed. Personally I just use the block feature on Steam if anyone is suspicious or whenever someone posts about a scammer which you aren't supposed to do either. You should report them to support and SteamRep.com.
Just adding an idea to the pile; couldn't the SteamTrades profile show the comments on the person's Steam profile? That way you could have a reasonable way to identify the profiles, plus getting all rep together.
don't think that would work, nt all steam profile comments are not all reps and can be deleted.
Yeah, but the legit reps would be visible, and if the person has their profile private or something there could be a warning on the screen saying "SteamTrades can't verify the reputation of this person, be extra careful trading with him"
I like the warning idea but the other one sounds hard to code and unpractical for the UI
Pffff, Steam profile's comments can be easily faked. I can make 3425657264 fake steam accounts, assign an avatar, friend them all, then voila, a "trustable" profile in a day. If you want to do it right, just hit all cyber cafes of your cities then create the Steam accounts there.
If you think like that, the rep we have on steamtrades can be faked too; you just can't be 100% sure
maybe make the rep page smaller. a +/- # and a "please verify user" warrning would do just as good and have it when you click on the -/+ # you can see the comments. this would make the page small enuff so the warring and profile link will be noticed also it should be in big red letters for the slower foke.
another idea is have 3 rep - 0 +. -=negitives 0=window trades (cause theres not much of a chance of scamming and people rack these for rep) +=some non window items and special case trades or maybe add say a gold +/* # for key/money/special case trades only to the normal rep.
or check new member of steamtrade of their current game value in profile, if their curent value 0 $ then disable their rep system.
most scammers have cheep indie keys or stolen games on account. i don't think any would come up with a $0 account. could the rep page show # of games owned by that user. if so they could use the game count to verify. like "does the user your talking to have X games"
then set a standard limit like 10$ or something, well acceptable for legit peoples.
Best solution should be including a direct link to steamrep or something similar to the right of every name and a BIG warning about that the user should check everywhere when trying to trade with someone.
Also, scammers should have their name in another color (like, red) here in steamtrades.com, or a special tag directly, without needing the user to click on a username. And a public list with all the bans, with their respective Steam IDs.
More warnings = users that actually do their job preventing scams = less scammers.
Also, private profiles should be completely forbidden.
reddit enhanced did something like the codded scammer tag thing. maybe we could borrow some codes ;)
most scammers like the imposters don't have account on this site so this may end up being a wast of time and since when 1 is reported they are pretty good at banning them, but could help stop marked account from even trying to come here. it would be nice but how much of a help it would be would be debatable.
So we shall make the site private, I guess? You can only see the site after logging in with a Steam account with more than X months old.
As of late, a group of scammers has been changing their names to random people on the site and linking the reputation of another users profile as their own. We are considering disabling reputation again either temporarily or permanently and would like your input on this.
Possible options:
1) Add an editable note that you can make on your own profile (Moderators can edit too in case it includes referrals/spam or anything inappropriate).
2) Take reputation out of the site completely, reducing the chance of people to pretend to be other people by a lot.
3) Come up with your own option that would work.
Thanks for giving input on this matter as it's becoming more and more serious.