Sythe Staff

First, let me point out this is not me having a go, just stating my opinion.

Recently, I've been trying to sell/buy several things on Sythe, and obviously come across a huge amount of scammers. I'm not stupid enough to fall for 99% percent of them, but many of them don't even take the time to make it difficult to catch them. Appie070 is a great example, added me on msn to sell GP, claimed he had so many high value vouches, PMed me and everything looked good. Checked his vouch thread, and yeah there was over 30 vouches, some for very large trades, but since I'm not an idiot, I checked where the vouches were from, and would you believe it, they are somebody elses. I have came across several users with multiple accounts vouching themselves, many using other peoples vouches and so on. I thought the best idea is to contact the staff directly to report this, as this way the user has no idea they are under suspicion so doesn't have time to edit threads, think of cover stories etc. I added several staff on MSN, and also PMed various staff members on here. Out of the very few that accepted me on msn, most were ignorant enough to just completely ignore me. The one that did answer me said hello, then when I explained the situation just completed ignored me.

I find it no wonder that Sythe is so populated with scammers when A) The staff are so difficult to contact, and B) If you do manage to get in touch with them, they are rude, ignorant, and just simply don't care.

Most of the staff I have spoken to on here have come across as 'up themselves', they seem to have some idea that because they have a rank on an online site they are better than the rest of us. Did they not start somewhere? Did they not have to be a new member at some point? It's extremely difficult for new members to get any response from the staff, and basically we just don't get listened to. What type of community are they promoting when they make it seem like you must have a rank just to speak to them?

In short, my point is that I feel the Staff should be much easier to contact, should actually try to help build a real community, and definitely should emphasise the fact Sythe is here for legitimate users by taking the time to actually get rid of scammers. Yes, I realise they don't get paid, and searching through the forums looking for scammers seems like an undesirable task, but it is ridiculous that so many users are being scammed by other users who if Staff spent 5 minutes checking, would be banned.

The only argument I can see in response to this is that users should always take necessary precautions when completing trades, but don't forget some users may be new to blackmarket forums, sometimes MM's aren't available or the user doesn;t have funds to cover the costs, and scammers have so many methods of gaining the trust of other users.

 

Add me, I'm happy to help with things like this: [email protected]

 

Much respect and appreciation to Video, I was expecting staff to misinterperate my post and be more so un co-operative, but Video has actually took the time out to listen to what I have to say, check some of the users in question, and this has resulted in 3 bans within a few minutes of me getting in contact with him.
This goes to show how quickly scammers can be removed from the site, yes I understand many will come back again and again, but if we work to keep on top of it, and make it as difficult as possible for them, eventually the work will pay off.

I would just like to reiterate that my post is not directed towards every staff member, as some can be, and are extremely helpful and polite.
My opinion of many staff members here remains unchanged, as many are just simply ignorant towards many members, but to those who do actually put the effort in, listen to people no matter what their rank, and help make the community in general more as one instead of having a huge divide, I give you my thanks.

 

Its best to pm the proof rather than try to contact a moderator on MSN. At least that way you know one of the moderators on at the time will take care of it, rather than waiting for one to accept an msn invitation.

 

My problem was that I added several on MSN, got ignored by the ones that accepted me, and also PMed several. The proof was long, so I would of preferred to just send a PM asking them to contact me to make sure they will reply before I type everything out. I also noticed one of the staff I PMed was active on his PMs when I checked his profile, but decided to ignore my message. I would of liked a quick response, as this eliminates the chance for any proof to be removed/edited by scammers, but this didn't happen.
Video has now banned the 3 users I was on about, and it took a few minutes from first contact to the bans being applied. If those users managed to scam someone between the time I first PMed staff, to now, I highly doubt the staff that ignored me would be prepared to refund the users who lost out, so all i ask is they stop making it seem like we can't speak to them unless we are ranked here. As has been proved this whole matter could have been sorted within minutes with no need for this thread, but The sheer ignorance shown by certain staff made this thread necessary

 

Everyone should have the right to speak to the staff and for them to listen to what they have to say, regardless of their "rank" on the site. Not all the staff use/are super active on MSN, and the ones that are are usually very busy and such dealing with stuff on and off site, not to mention they have busy lives just like we do.

I don't think the staff were deliberately "pushing you away" or ignoring you, I'm guessing they were just very busy or had something to deal with. Regardless, it was great to see you attempting to contact someone in order to get some malicious members banned from the site.

 

You have obviously just been dealing with the wrong staff. You are probably trying to contact the busiest and most swamped-down staff members, and therefore your experience trying to contact them has been so negative.

Not to toot my own horn, but you can ask anybody and they will tell you that I always reply to PM's promptly and help out users with the most menial of tasks, and I am more than happy to do so. The only thing I DO NOT do is accept invites from people on MSN. The reason for this is simply because I get so many of them per day that I never accept people unless they have PM'd me first.

If you have an issue and need to speak to me immediately, simple fire me a PM and I will get back to you quickly. If you need me to add me on MSN, just provide your e-mail address in the PM and I can do that.

 

I contacted any staff I could find at the time, as I feel when it comes to scammers it's a matter of urgency to have the gone ASAP to ensure we minimise the potential losses to legitimate users
Edit: Thankyou for the positive responses. I'm glad to see the thread hasn't just been closed by anyone getting the wrong impression, and I'm happy to see that staff are listening to my opinions instead of just telling me I'm wrong

 

I agree that scammers are a very urgent matter, and for me personally they are held as a high priority when I am online.

You should try some other methods of getting staff attention. For example, try writing up scam reports/ban evader reports when you have evidence of somebody who is scamming or who deserves a ban - like somebody who has 30 completely fake vouches.

When I am online, I am regularly checking in to the Report A Scammer section every 10-15 minutes, and I make sure I deal with reports immediately. Or like I said, shoot me a PM with all the information on the person you are reporting, and I will drop whatever I am doing to take care of that (unless I am doing another report, in which case I do them in order as they arise).

 

My only concern with 'Report a Scammer' is that if they see that, they have a little time to try and remove any fake vouches, edit things, basically time to try and get rid of any incriminating evidence against them. I'm glad to see so many of you offering to help out, I'll know for future reference who is best to contact

 

If we are ignorant for not accepting you, you are very arrogant and I wouldn't want to add you or even talk to you. If you meant to say arrogant, then yes perhaps some of the staff are a bit arrogant (not saying they are but they could be perceived as such).

Secondly, just report the person here: http://sythe.org/forumdisplay.php?f=253

If you are worried they will edit their thread, just report it with: and it will quote that post in a thread automatically made in the Report a Spammer section. That way, even if they edit their post the staff can still see what it used to say (if they know you have reported the post).

The staff aren't here to be your servant. Just because we are online (and not in hidden mode which all mods have access to) does not mean we want to be doing mod stuff at that exact second. Reporting in the appropriate section makes our lives much simpler because:

A) We can do them when we want and not get annoyed people's feedback about how we ignored their PM
B) We can skip any that we are unsure of and let another mod look at it as they might have a much different perspective
C) We can put the thread link into the ban reason so that if / when the person disputes we have the proof in front of us without having to track down and find the mod who is responsible

And the fact of the matter is that responding to PMs gets really fricking irritating sometimes. I've got two PMs when I looked at this thread and then replied to it. I (and I'd assume a lot of the staff) try to respond to most of our PMs but if one PM is just plain stupid I generally ignore it. Sometimes I say I'll respond to that later and then forget about it. If the fact that I only respond to people who actually know what they are on about makes me arrogant then fine. It just gets very frustrating when you first have to figure out what the person needs and then have to walk them through giving it to you and then just realize that they were just being silly and wrong the entire time.

So, with that^ in mind do this stuff. When you PM a moderator put all the information in the first PM. If you are reporting a scammer or you've found a java drive by or whatever, don't just link the damned thread. State specifically why the moderator should look at that thread and give them the proof / reason behind it. Like for a phishing thread, tell the mod its a phishing thread and copy and paste the URL into the PM and bold it so the mod knows right away exactly what you saw so that they can look for it too and take appropriate action. The most annoying thing in the world is when someone tells you something and you spend your time looking for whatever it is they told you and you can't find it. Maybe you will if you look for a bit longer but if you recall what I said up there^ awhile ago, PMs are annoying because you may not want to be spending hours modding at that exact moment. Oh and thanking the mod for their time and being polite is always nice as it makes us feel appreciated for our work.

So essentially take it into your own hands to do the work and then just pass it off to a mod to check and take action on and I'll bet most of the time it gets done fairly quickly and without incident.

 

That's why you should always take screenshots of fake vouches and such, no amount of editing can hide it then.

 

Exactly the type of response I expected. I class ignoring somebody as pure ignorance, whatever your dictionary says. But yes, arrogant also applies to several of the Staff i have contacted.

Never once stated that I expected staff to be my 'servant', I don't even expect a reply instantly, but days later and no reply is just beyond a joke.

Staff should be contactable? Ignoring PMs is arrogant as you said, and gives many users the impression that the staff aren't really bothered about the site.

I never asked for instant decisions nor expected them from any staff member, I just requested they look over my case, if they then chose to leave it or pass it onto someone else then fine, I'd prefer that to being completely ignored.

Fair point, understandable.

Yes responding to PMs may be irritating, but I never contacted any staff member with just a link to a thread. I either requested that they contact me via MSN to make explaining the situation easier, especially as Sythe can be very unreliable, or I gave a brief description of the situation, as I didn't want to type out a whole essay to just be ignored.

When someone does take the time out to listen to me, help with any problems I have etc, I will thank them as I greatly appreciate the fact that it is through choice. I do believe that if you are staff, you should be prepared to assist users when required, but I understand that it's unpaid and could be time consuming/irritating so I am very thankful.

I have taken up a lot of my own time to catch scammers. I look through pages of vouches, I check the legitimacy of each one etc and I do the work so staff don't need to, then just pass my findings on to either get their opinion on the situation, or get the user banned. I work 50 hours a week, have 2 ill grandparents to see, and have other things to do, but I still find enough time to do my best to keep the forum free from users with the intention of scamming.

 

One question from me:

Why is your scam report more important than the ones users actually bothered to follow the proper procedure?

 

I never said it was, the report a scammer section is usually quite empty as it's kept on top of, I just prefer to try and keep it all done in private so the user has no idea they're being investigated. My point wasn't specifically in relation to scammers, it was that some staff are out and out rude, and extremely difficult to contact

 

Well that's the problem. Asking a moderator do something for you when there is a very clear queue for the same thing is not the way to go.
The staff have our ways to see edited threads (google caches, etc), and even the edit dates of the thread can be lead to a ban. So it is in your best interest to post a scam report.


Oh well, I banned you for scamming anyways.

 

To anyone reading this, I'm writing this as an explanation more than anything as the OP is banned.

1) Expecting a negative response shows that you have a negative view of the staff. This clouds your judgement and makes everything they do seem much worse than it is (even if it is bad or even very bad you will see it as much worse than reality). Trust me on that one.

2) There is a difference between ignoring you and ignoring your issue. People can handle the issue you raise without telling you about it. Ignoring someone is just not very polite while ignoring their issue could be ignorant if it is bad enough which, just for everyone's information, is something worse than a reporting a scammer. Saying R2's MSN or website is hacked is bad and if a mod ignores that they are pretty ignorant.

3) You told an unnamed person that PM'ed you your experiences with Sythe staff. He specifically mentioned both being ignored and being treated badly. You supplied in your response only being ignored. If you were treated badly, post some proof. I'm not saying this because I do not believe you. I'm saying this because it is impossible for others to judge what really went down with just one side of the story, especially if that side is angry and their judgement is impaired (which your's is). Otherwise you are just ranting at the staff over things that may not have even happen or things that are blown out of proportion and generally you just piss off the staff instead of getting them to solve the problem you were faced with. Also, if a staff member is extremely rude or flames you or something in private, report them. If its a sectional, PM a global. Global? Admin. Admin? PM Govind. The feedback forum isn't the place to deal with individual specific cases if they are very severe as it just causes drama and anger.

4) My servant comment is not me saying you were treating us like servants or that you thought we were. Its about how moderators will perceive your actions. How you view things depends on which side you are on. The staff see things one way and the community sees it another. This has been shown to be extremely true and sometimes very very very obvious (I fucking know). Essentially when you PM a mod and expect them to do something for you, the mod will view that as commanding. If you ask them and they do nothing and you make a feedback thread about being ignored, they will view it as you are unhappy that they did not do as you said. Servant is the word that came to mind.

5) I do not believe ignoring PMs is arrogant. Much like the servant comment, you view it as arrogant but that is not how the staff sees it. The staff also has a valid reason to ignore PMs. You also have a valid reason to want the staff to listen to you. Instead of getting mad about the disconnect, ask for an explanation as then both sides will understand each other and everything can be worked out easily and peacefully. Also: Saying it's "just beyond a joke" that the staff won't respond to you really is the reason I thought of servant. Just think about that one.

6) Staff are contactable about most things. The medium we use generally is spam / scam reports. For things other than this (which 99%+ of stuff can be handled with this) there are various methods to contact staff: PM, IRC (if its really pressing or a quick question and you won't mind if we ignore you), LiveHelp (if someones on), MSN, Sythe.org Support Section, etc.

7) Completely ignored is false. Passing something to someone else is much more annoying if it is in PM rather than as a report. That's why you should use the reports sections.

8) Type out the essay and post it in the report a scammer section. You won't be ignored there and if you have to type and essay, the staff member most likely will not want to handle it at that exact second and you will most likely be ignored. If its something really quick that can be done in 5 seconds a PM is much less likely to be ignored and is more viable. Use the correct medium and you will get the best results.

9) I'm glad that you thank the staff. It feels very nice when you are appreciated or have some positive feedback left for you. Just in case anyone didn't know: Positive feedback works better than negative feedback. Any decent animal trainer will tell you that. Applies to people as well. Think about that.

10) I'm glad that you have spent a lot of time looking for scammers. Mods do it too. If it takes you more than a few seconds to catch someone, report it, don't PM it as I said above.

Inafterfuckinglock. +1 to Cosrob, by the way.