[DENIED] Lets start using the Vouch forum properly and stop the bumping loophole?

Please refrain from e-dick measuring contests as he could equally say that you're posting to do the exact opposite.

Let's keep this on track.

 

mine was on topic

just saying imposing rules to manipulate the market is direct intervention, worsening a free market. Not making it a free market.

 

yes , because they should be regulated; equality is important in the free market. Big gold traders monopolizing the system does not go hand in hand with a free market as it smushes the equality aspect of it

 

Free Market
In its purest form, a free market economy is when the allocation of resources is determined by supply and demand , without any government intervention

Now re-read what you put.

 

Support, whats the point of regulating it at all if we can use loop holes like this

 

support as this gives an unfair advantage to larger gold sellers. I personally don't collect any vouches on any thread except my vouch thread for this reason. Giving this advantage to bigger gold sellers makes it harder for smaller gold sellers to start up their businesses, as their threads are CONSTANTLY getting piled over top by the larger ones.

Also, it's easy for ANY size runescape gold dealer to use fake vouches on their thread for free bumps.

 

Didn't read my full post or you didn't understand it. I said as long as "spreading" isn't allowed then it's still a bullyish tactic but not a big deal imo.

Also, it's not clearly stated in the official rules that you can't "spread" vouches as far as I can see.

 

Ah mb!

im not sure if its in the official rules but its mention in the gold market stickies at least; which i believe the OP is referring needs this regulation mostly

 

Thanks.

I also only use my vouch thread except a few in the past which I mentioned in the OP.

I'm not going to have my offsite traffic sign up to post on my vouch thread, nor my gold topics. And I am sure none of the examples I have used are having their offsite traffic post on their vouch topic anywhere enar as often as their gold topics. This emphasizes my point that merchants are doing this to bump their topic more often.

 

Gotcha, I figured it was somewhere since everyone seemed to stick to the hypothetical of just posting vouches on corresponding threads, but I wasn't sure where it was if it was anywhere tangible.

Yeah so, I think in that case it's still a bullyish tactic that favors the big guys who sell more frequently, but I don't see it doing a lot of harm myself, granted I don't participate in market much at all. So support, but don't care if it doesn't go through

 

After futher discussions with @Lime i'd like to add that i believe incentivised vouching should be prohibited (such as extra gold / discount if you vouch). Bribing for some good feedback is immoral and somewhat sketchy behaviour, however vouches for good service should still be allowed on the relevant threads.

 

This came up in my mind today what if i dont like service and i leave bad vouche for gold site will they still give me 1m that they promised ?

 

A note on guest traffic to consider as well as registered users:

- Gold buyer goes to google, enters a key term

- clicks on a sythe.org link and ends up finding way on to gold section (they are not a registered user. they are guest traffic)

- They are going to convert from traffic to customer for the topics constantly bumping their topic - Because of this, people like the examples shown are using sythe.org to monopolise the guest traffic that nobody can see, and nobody even thinks about unless they know about SEO and sales funnels

 

Immoral/unethical =/= Against the rules/not allowed.

You peeps really need to understand that.

 

You resigning off staff was a loss to the team tbh. We disagree about a good amount but you can at least be a voice of reason and a moderate, If im not mistaken you fall inbetween harsh rule punishers like wortel and a more moderate staff like char/champ/King.

You should consider reapplying IMO, I know you disagree with DNT on some levels but some of the shit that's being suggested lately is borderline site-collapsing and its scary when you don't have enough moderates on the team anymore.

To answer everyone talking about bonuses for vouches though - That acts as a counter balance to what Lime suggested above, while users are pulled off-site by threads that are bumped a lot and than become perm customers with that website - This is counter balanced by the fact that so many users are pushed to the site by sites offering bonuses to vouch on Sythe.

Without knowing the actual figures, I imagine it offsets quite well, so no sites promising bonuses does not hurt the site, infact it would probably hurt the site more to ban bonuses for vouching, with bonuses at least you have a teeter-totter effect which keeps the site in balance.

 

Enforcing this is easier said than done. When I was in the market I legitimately had users post their vouches on my thread without me asking because this is what made sense to them. Most of my off-site customers were from PA and most likely didn't understand that they should be posting in the vouch forum. Good luck trying to tell me and other sellers to tell our customers to post their vouch in the vouch thread instead. It is not our job to control our customers' posting habits. If they happen to post in our thread and it gives us a bump, we aren't going to go out of our way to ask them to do something that is counter-productive to our business.

Of course there are times I did ask users to post in my selling thread, that is just strategy. Just like getting customers to post an order form in your thread prior to contacting you because you know that is a free bump for your thread too. How are mods going to tell when I am asking users to post on my thread and when I'm not? It's not fair for mods just to start assuming and punishing us for stuff that may be out of our control (we can't always dictate where a customer is going to vouch).

And yes there are also times where I got my PA buyers to register a Sythe account to post on my thread, but hey this is also helping Sythe grow lol.

Every seller is capable of rising up to the top. We shouldn't be penalizing sellers who have been here loyally for years because newcomers don't know how to run their business. If other new sellers can grow their client base and you can't, the problem is how you run your business.

 

If your offsite customers are from Playerauctions then YOU are the one choosing which url to send them to post.

It's not like if you send them your vouch topic you use different words to when linking your gold topic/s.

Also to add:

Let's forget about the whole "ohhhh so much work for the mods" kind of ideology. If @FlyingToast 's solution was incorporated and the vouches did not bump quicker than the 8-hour bump rule, then mods wouldn't have to even check them.

It would also be interesting to see how many merchants suddenly had a decrease in hourly vouches on their topics.

 

Apologies if this has already been answered but how exactly is this not fair? Every single gold seller currently has the option to have customers leave feedback on their thread(s) meaning everyone has an equal opportunity to 'bump back to the top' as you describe it. Sounds fair to me

 

In my opinion the existance of vouch section is absolute nonsense nowadays.
Noone scrolls down the whole thread just to see how many of vouches the trader has whilist threads are actually browsed and read, vouch thread is nothing else than wall of useless text now.
I dont keep my vouch thread updated since 2013, it leads to nowhere.
However threads bumped by vouches on service/shop threads actually make the whole section live, every thread expands and old threads are abandoned like they should be if they arent active.
As it's now it makes vouches useful- they're used to bump by constructive customer opinion, if that'll change the whole idea of "vouch" will be useless, entire pages will be spammed with bumps.
Noone will want to use services or shop where the only people who post are service/shop owners without any opinions from customers about trader.
Another disadvantage of vouch thread is literally all vouches are listed from the oldest to the newest so people still ask for service you provided years go and you don't do them anymore. In my opinion it should
1) Stay like it is now.
2) The whole form of organisation of vouches has to changed in order to remove "loophole" which is on do not suggest list.

Saying all that as owner of #2 the biggest vouch thread on Sythe.org

Definitely no support for this idea