What are we doing wrong?

This post is mostly aimed at the suggestions section. A shitload of suggestions are being denied (nothing to blame to staff) especially the ones on The DO NOT SUGGEST list.. If you however look at this list, those suggestions aren't even that bad. I'm assuming the majority of the people agree, because they even had to put on a list there so we don't have to explain the same thing over and over again. But why are we so afraid of trying new things out? Why are we afraid of change?

I still consider us one of the biggest websites compared to similiar websites such as EpicNPC, ElitePVPers, Ownedcore etc - however the longer I'm in the staff team and the longer I'm reporting ban evaders the more I start to agree with @Yousuckv2 his statement here:

Now I'm wondering; what exactly does this mean? Does this mean scamming is so easy to do on Sythe? Is our staff team doing something wrong? Are we possibly too used to old habits, that we prefer to have our community as it is, even when the market suffers from it?

A couple days ago I was on EpicNPC and it was like I stepped out of a time machine. Their "EpicNPC store" is so nicely set up - surely most of the stuff they sell are useless stuff - but they even have an option to "Import Feedback" from different websites. I was hyped because I couldn't get rid of my Steam wallet funds, so I figured why not upgrade for $6 and import my feedback, however I noticed:



We're not on the list. This made me curious; so I've asked the admin over there and this was his reply:

Therefore I started spitting through all the denied suggestions list and the only explanation given was:

That's quite a weak excuse to me as it doesn't explain why we won't implement it; it only explains we have something else. The whole purpose of suggestions is to expand, to improve, to adjust, so I don't get it - why don't we?

Another example is Hackforums their option to buy signatures through a system; wouldn't that be great? Not only would it spare us a shitload of time but it would even prevent scams from happening.

There are so many things we could improve but the majority of the ideas keep getting shut down because of those being used to what we have here; not willing to adapt. Therefore; instead of making a suggestion thread here's a discussion thread. Don't get pissed at me for speaking up, instead, proof/tell me why I should be wrong here. This website has been around since 2005 (based on Sythe's join date), it is now 2018 - what exactly have we learned? What changes have we actually made to the forum, aside from some design improvements? There are so many ideas shut down because we have "X" instead of "Y". To the blind eye we might indeed be one of the most popular sites as a blackmarket, but in reality it appears to me we're just a website who makes scamming easier; making it a great place to be for known scammers such as Trent Thomas, Chris Kane and Tanner Weber, but a terrible place to be for users such as Time Crunch and all those others who left because they are dissapointed by it's userbase.

Once again, by this thread I do not wish to blame anything to anyone, but I only want to get together and share our opinions with each other. In the end it's either we change by time, or time changes us.

References: Unsatisfied with growth

 

I'm not back because I want to be, unfortunately. I had to get into contact w/ Richard from PA regarding 2 accounts that were recovered from me. I'm selling the rest of my personal accounts and then I won't be back.

Something that we all need to realize is that this site, and many other sites are plagued with vaders, and scammers. I'm sure everyone already knows that, but we do NOTHING to keep them out. I urge everyone to go take a look at the vader thread & pardon threads. Most of the people who are trying to pardon have vaded and scammed on 10+ accounts. When are we going to change things around?? I enjoyed this website before I realized it's filled with scum. & honestly, nothing you say can change my mind on this topic. Changes need to happen. We can't continuously allow people back on the website once they have "repaid" their "debts". Once a scammer, always a scammer. What will stop them from scamming another time, for even more $$?

Why would any legitimate people want to stay on this website when shit like this: Got scammed $7,000 from user profile:Away is going on?

Why wouldn't we want to stay ahead of the game? Why catch vaders AFTER they scammed someone? Go look at the websites statistics. How many "new" accounts are made legitimately? How many are Vaders? I'm sure your answer will be quite clear. Catching 11 vader accounts in 1 day is ABSURD.

This website will eventually implode on itself. Unfortunately, this website is already diseased and has the reputation of being an easy target for scams. Either we'll fight off the disease, or the disease will kill us.

Unfortunately, those who actually cared about the website are being driven away by the lack of security and changes. Hopefully you can keep future members. Best of luck.

 

There will inevitably be always scammers. It's inevitable, you can't stop it sadly.

Scammer's don't kill a site, people leave it and it gets inactive. Yes, people are leaving because of scammers but there are always people joining.

Everyone understands that there will always be scammers, people get scammed, they leave. Some stays. Inevitable.


The main reason that sythe is probably dying is because there more people leaving than joining and this site is only engaged towards runescape players(Actually, not really. There's no type of engagement towards rs players to get people to sythe. The only type of engagement that is bringing people into sythe is gold-websites bringing referrals in for 1M, other than that.)
PR should be networking on twitter. It's not changing. We should be networking towards other MMO's like archage or those MMO's.

Also, would like to mention that Sythe is an "Marketplace" environment and not an "Discussion" environment, if we really want to grow, we need to be doing both.

@Time Crunch, DNT is a good idea and brings alot of people back to this site. Many of us came from being banned. You're using the "plagued with scammers because of dnt system" excuse because you're stressed about something else.

 

I never said anything about the DNT system. DNT's are great. It's when the DNT's are removed, and there is no way for new users to know who has previous offences.

Obviously, Sythe is a black market. We all know that. My only concern is that we are allowing repeat offenders to continue to get back on the forum; and after they "serve their time" there is really nothing new members can do to figure out their past. Of course unless they do extensive research themselves.

Also, I'm well aware to the fact that there will always be scammers. Although there is more WE can do as a community to help PREVENT scams before they occur. We should be PROactive. Not REactive.

 

to me the website seems really mainstream now... everybody and their mother knows about Sythe and it's not hard to create an account and start posting bullshit, those people do get DNT or banned pretty quickly though

there's youtubers making videos about Sythe and no other website which i feel ruins an aspect of the "underground" market that it use to be

the other day i was going to buy gold from a guy but i decided not to because he only had an OSBot account and not a Sythe account, so I decided it wouldn't be worth it if i got scammed

I question how a feedback system would work on Sythe now saying how many traders there are that have 2k + vouches, they would probably obviously have a 100% on services, though how would their previous vouches be used in relation to a system.

Also, I'd wonder how it affects scammers, they can scam, they'll get a 0%, make a new account and scam again

Would you have to also verify that you purchased something before giving feedback, or how easy would it be for somebody who offers free services to get more trust, why couldn't they buy feedback and say they did a free service for somebody

 

Sythe as a market is not dieying at all , sythe is the place to go for Runescape.
The community side of sythe can be discussed , I feel that one of the hardest thing here is being new and start being active as a community member. Let's put as an example I register today and in one week I start being active in the Osrs Discussion section there are always some people that as soon as they see someone new start posting will call that guy a "ban evader" "Who are you ban evading" etc and Im guilty of doing this myself but I lerned my lesson and I no longer do this.

As far as the scammers in my eyes there are only 2 type of scams that are inevitable.

A) A trusted user that has been here for a long time decide his time is up and instead of going away with friends and people he met during his time here the person decides to go away fking some people over. A recent example of this are @Chival and @Ape and it has been some time since this happened so is not that common.

B) The most common scam is buying accounts and If you decide to buy one there is nothing you can do to prevent or stay safe from a recovery.

The other 90% of scams are easily avoidable if you take the time to do some research.
There are a lot of good and smart people in this community that took time out of their days to write stikies to help the community to avoid this scams , people need to understand that there is a reason they are there.
In my example before I started trading I read all stikies that were relevant to me , I learned how Discord works before anything and how to get the Unique Discord ID.

There is also the MM section with again a lot of good people that will help you out when starting out.

Now about the pardons I think this a good system and is not that easy to get back in the community , even after repaying your debts the pardon can still be denied so is not like you pay and you are instantly back. Most of the time mods do a good job voting the people they allow back in the community.

I do think that something should be done about pardoned people and this is my recommendation , pardoned people should get their vouches removed when they are allowed back and start building their trust back again and prove themselves. I have no idea why this isnt a thing already , this is how it works in real life if you get out of jail you will have a pretty hard time finding job and you wont be working for Google.

 

Everybody knows it, nobody has the balls to speak out about it so I guess I’ll have to.
Reason is Richard, hes obsessed with the idea of «free market» that hes not gonna change the core structure of how this site runs. Also we are lacking in developers, we have a lot of good assets and coders here but none of them except Shin and Matthew gets to work and develop this site.

Also everybody hates change it seems like. Whenever a good suggestion pops up everyone votes no

 

Correct me if I am wrong but Chival became active a month or two before he got banned and Ape "scammed" a really small amount due to him wanting to get banned.

 

Yeah Chival got pardoned but normal users even me at the time considered him trusted since he owned a gold website/etc.

Ape didnt scam a small amount he recovered few accounts from people + scammed dicing rolls I think.

 

"Scammer's don't kill a site, people leave it and it gets inactive. Yes, people are leaving because of scammers but there are always people joining."

Disagree. People leave the site because they get scammed, scammers get banned and just evade on new accs because staff can't seem to catch them easily enough. Active people join as well but not as many, honestly, even for someone that barely does any business on here I notice it very strongly, and the amount of people that pm me & end up being banned for scamming/vading in my pms a couple months later.

Also, while we're blunt ; the sythe staff doesn't really do a well job on issues that are reported that are NOT related to scamming. RE : See people posting irl stuff of other members in the Discord etc, "oh its leaked, so we dont care" yeah, that's the wrong way to go about it.

Even when I received my money that was scammed from me which was like only $70 at the time, I wanted to donate 50 of it - but then realised it's just not worth it.

 

Scammers:
They're everywhere, it comes down to user education and error. Not the fault of Sythe, someone can steal from a person in real life then the police cannot prevent it. They can foresee that someone might do it but can't be 100% on prevention. That applies to Sythe and other markets.

It's not the fault of the user for scam quitters. Its part of the game and people must accept the risk when even dealing with reputable traders.

New Users:
The #1 way to gain new users is through SEO, although Sythe is doing incredible right now. There is always room for improvement, such as ranking #1 for Buying/Selling Gold Keywords. In general, there are hundreds of keywords that can bring traffic here, that Sythe isn't doing.

Dedicate & Pay people for a guides section, guides for everything on Runescape. In conjunction with Sythe sponsored YouTube videos, like PKing videos, staking and quests.

That alone will FORCE the active user base of RS to know about Sythe, not the ones that are into buying gold already.

Top Methods of Preventing Scammers:
1. Force all traders to verify their identity. This can go far, although serious frauds can fake everything. It's a first step I recommend.

2. Deploy a deposit system, force all traders to deposit an agreed amount. If for example, a trader does $100/week, force them to deposit $200. This will put them off scamming completely because they have 2 weeks revenue at stake.

3. Force Traders to have a registered business, enable Sythe access to those records. Bogla will never scam, they are legitimate. But others could in theory scam because they have nothing to lose such as not going to the court of law.

4. Free Sythe escrow service, like LocalBitcoins.com. Enable easy trades especially for Cryptocurrency. Could make it a rule of some sort.

Ultimately If It's harder to scam and get away with it that's an excellent first step. Secondly, a global effort to rank Sythe as the TOP site for OSRS Keywords will bring in new users. Combine that with the promotion of new business such as free escrow will help increase too.

Key Note:

As a community, we have the tools to make it much greater, although we're focused on the marketplace. This can be scaled for other things, such as guides and legitimate players can be targetted. In the interest of making a marketplace better, we must invest in new games like the scale of Runescape. Follow the same steps, rank for hundreds of keywords on Google. Get natural users and keep the users coming back for more.

I also think EpicNPC is an ugly website

 

Yeah, too bad there are people who actually care about others. Sucks, right?

 

Let's discuss my wellbeing in another thread. This thread is made to discuss the site's wellbeing.

 

For the record most of the limitations we have are due to Xenforo 1.5.7, not everything is possible to add and there are security concerns.

Any system we put forward is going to be abused and exploited, if there is money to be made people will find a way to cheat the system. EpicNPC, and many other sites have the same issues we have with scamming. A feedback system functions the same as a vouch thread, one is just easier to understand. However, from personal experience, users don't tend to look into the feedback, they take the number presented at face value. The attractive feature of Sythe (at least to me) is that you can verify the vouches yourself and there are even tools that allow you to catch fake vouches. There is surely more effort applied when reviewing someone, but the information is there for anyone willing to practice due cation when trading.

I think what the other sites lack is what makes Sythe such a great market. We provide users a platform to learn and protect themselves with, if you invest more than 10 seconds reviewing the market you wish to trade in and read the stickied posts, you have a good chance at a positive experience when trading.

People are going to make mistakes/lack judgement and its what they choose to do after that matters. This is the main reason I stopped going out of my way to hunt ban evading users, its inevitable and it prevents people from learning. I know you care quite a bit and I respect that, i'm simply expressing the way I feel on it.

 

It all started when I got my DNT. Sythe was active and doing well and then the day came when I was DNT'ed and the entire site started crumbling down. The day I left the entire FrontPage of spamforum was 1-2 days old, now you can see threads a week old at the FrontPage of spamforum.

Some things just arent ment to be.

 

Ban evaders and scammers will ALWAYS resort to these types of things. It's very easy, you can do it over and over again, there isn't any punishment, it's actually absolutely horrible. I think here at Sythe we could take some further action to getting more quality members, such as verification systems, restrictions on new accounts, IP bans first offense, no second chances to pay back in the dispute forum, etc.

Unfortunately no matter what you can do it's going to happen and without steady new people actually brand new to the site joining and being a part of the community it will stay that way and end up crumbling on itself. There has to be activity and discussion across sections of the forums as well as a market and more security to protect against scammers re-joining.

 

I'd easily vouch for the fact that nobody wants change. People who have power and say in this community will abuse it by doing as much as they can to not allow change. Once we realize this - good job Wortel, I expected this out of you - we can implement good suggestions that will improve the community.