New Closing Post on Scam Reports

At the moment moderators generally post "Banned, thanks" or something along those lines when closing a scam report. My suggestion is moderators should also include a brief user profile (see examples below) on the last post of a report, if the user being reported gets banned.

The main reason for this is to solve the main issue behind kmjt's Scam Archive Reference Program. The issue in question being many scam reports contain key information in images. This in turn means when using a search engine to search for keywords, which are found in these images, no results to the scam report are produced. Also, if kmjt's program ever did get finished, another beneficial thing of doing this would be that keeping it up to date/maintaining it would be relatively easier.

However, as mentioned above, the main purpose behind this is to try and make it so all possible key information/keywords (which link to a scammer) should be able to be found through search engine searches; whether it be in reports where the information is in images or in reports where there otherwise may be a lack of information.

I would also like to note that I don't expect moderators to crawl back through all the reports and do this, I would just expect it to start from when the suggestion gets approved.

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Examples of what I mean when I say a brief user profile:
(the information will differ for each report, i.e., some may have PP emails, other in-game names, PA account etc.)

Scam Report Link: http://www.sythe.org/report-scammer-archive/1612331-holah-scammer.html

Scam Report Link: http://www.sythe.org/report-scammer/1612721-attempted-keylogger.html

 

This would create a lot of work that a lot of the staff wouldn't really be happy with doing. This would force staff to further investigate users and try and find all of this info. I'm not so sure it's a great idea based on that.

 

I wouldn't mind it personally. Just have it as a 'if you have time' rather than 'oi do this'.

 

As a suggestion, sure all staff are welcome to do it, I personally don't like the idea of mandating it though.

 

It'd take a long time to see any noticeable difference as well. All depends on who's willing to put the work in I guess.

 

When you read through a scam report, writing down the details of their Skype/RSN etc should not cause an excess amount of work. It would only require a further 15 seconds.

I, for one, enjoy hunting down evaders/scammers and this will help people like Lazy and myself.

 

It seems like something worth mentioning. I could have provided a little more info as well; I was just following the template in an attempt to validate my scam report (I reported Holah, the first linked report in Lazy's post).

Specifically @Lazy23, as the one who submitted that report, I feel the need to ask you to remove the "xTD7x" PlayerAuctions account from your post. xTD7x is an honest third party who I used to get the 200m EoC GP Holah was asking for his account. He seems to be a perfectly trustworthy gold seller. And if you do want to add it for reference, the recovered RuneScape account's username is Why_Ma_U_L with a display name of VengComboPls.

And come to think of it, worth noting is that more errors could be made against honest sellers like the one above - any mods or players willing to do the extra bit of investigation after a ban would have to be equally willing to make sure any off-site references are correct.


TL;DR = I agree, but be willing to do your homework thoroughly if you're investigating someone

 

This:

When working on KMJT's project it was easy to see how quick it was to make one mistake. It's a lot more than it looks to look in to scam reports sometimes, you can often leave yourself confused and make errors.

 

Similar to what dangelo said, I don't expect staff to go out of their way to get the information. It's more whilst doing a report just note down obvious things like emails, Skypes, in-game names and then post it at the end if anything comes from it. Plus, generally just looking at their profile or through the last 200 posts of an user and searching for "@" or "Skype" will in many cases reveal their contact details; so an extra minute is all I would expect if they did decide to investigate further.

Also, I understand your concerns of not wanting to mandate it, however without a collective effort from all the staff it really won't have the same overall effect it potentially could have. Maybe compromising and meeting half way so staff would only have to fill in any information found on reports and any further research outside of the report would be optional?

Errors are bound to happen, however it can easily be noted somewhere that these user profiles may in some occasions have errors and that you should always double check the information before using them in further reports. But even with that said, the amount of errors should be minimal if done properly.

After going through your report again I must say the mistake was due to me including inadmissible evidence, so if I had taken the time to actually go through it properly I would have never included it. As even though you stated your "Proof of Payment" as your PA purchase, which could only imply that the PA seller was the same user you paid 200m for an account, the fact you had no proof linking the PA account to Holah would mean it should have been inadmissible and shouldn't have been included in the user profile in the first place. So in general I would only expect admissible information to be included, so cases like that shouldn't happen due to staff actually taking their time to go through reports.

 

I don't think it should be required, but it could be a cool option that would definitely help with search engines.

 

I agree. I've seen stuff like this done before on other forums. They essentially make a searchable catalog of all those previously banned. I'm all for this if the staff wants to put in the extra effort.

 

Denied, will not be forced upon staff