[DENIED] The weight and importance of bumps - increasing timers

I'm creating this post as a follow-up since it seems that there's some positive progress lately in this forum.
Related post(s)
removal of autobumping
removal of autobumping

My suggestion is to increase the weight of customer's feedback and boost community's engagement by giving customer's bumps stronger bumping privileges / weight than the service.

The current timers are 4H manual bumps, 2h customers bumps.
My suggested bump timers would be 24h for the service providers and their affiliates, 6h for customers bumps; giving more incentive for service owners to ask for reviews. Services should decorate their threads for legitimacy, not race for automation or bumps. This also helps giving more value to threads themselves not the poster's post count and donations, making it easier for buyers to determine who's legitimate / experienced and who's not.

1. 4h manual bumps fairly easy to automate and mask, you can only avoid people from auto-bumping if there's no incentive to do so. There's no reason for a serious service to auto-bump or create tools for bumps in a 24h interval.
2. Nobody really even needs those customer bumps like this because the possible spam which will be generated will be even higher than before.
3.The worst thing for any customer in a marketplace forum is seeing threads full of "bump" posts without any feedback - it's impossible to make an educated guess on the service's quality.

Fake bumping, fake vouching or anything along the lines of such behavior should be punished.
If you want to read more thoroughly on the subject, feel free to go through the related posts posted above.

Extra: There was also something about improving SEO - legitimate posts, multiple users and relevant keywords are the key for SEO; services are not going to give their creativity a test every 4 hours and services getting constantly legitimate customer bumps every 2h can be counted on one hand's fingers.

 

Only thing in your whole post i agree with is #3.

But then if a customer only reply on thread, then the vouch thread would missing out unless buyer posted in both spots. Im not saying they wouldn't, but I'm sure we all know some won't. So then the question is how all over the place is vouches going to be?

 

To start, no Customer vouching shouldn't be more important than the business bumping themselves. ESPECIALLY considering that not every customer vouches, so if a little business weren't to get any vouches they now have to wait a day to bump again? Absolutely not, that is ludicrous.
The entire point of Sythe is to have a free market where businesses and people alike advertise their services, get customers, and move on with their day.
The "spam" generated from customer vouches now on the 2 hour accord is not spam at all, it is a business showing their customers satisfaction with the service. To add to that if everyone uses the system properly, everyone will see more foot traffic as they will be on the front page more often than before. Whether that is every 2 or 4 hours doesn't really matter.
Quoting you here "Fake bumping, fake vouching or anything along the lines of such behavior should be punished." That is all already punishable, if you see it report it. Or at least bring up the case to a moderator to where they can make a report of it if you aren't willing or don't know how to.
And to your #3 that the guy above me likes, that is the risk you take using a new business. If you are skeptical look elsewhere and probably pay a premium for using the renowned service. It isn't anything new to where new markets try to thrive on lower prices, but that is at the cost of not having a reputation, once you build a reputation you then become more known and can then adjust your prices accordingly.
The entire point of the change was so that businesses that were truly inactive couldn't abuse autobumpers to keep getting foot traffic when in reality they weren't available to provide the service anyways. I'm sure mods will keep track of who bumps when and then follow up with the businesses accordingly if it seems to be a problem. A mod could go on a site and pretend to be a customer, but really test the person to ensure that their bump was proper. I think @video and the staff team did a good job on the rule change, props to them.

 

Vouch threads as a whole are very counter-intuitive, never, even as a savy forum user and regular buyer have I ever thought about digging up or checking vouch threads. If I want to buy a service or a product, I want to see what the users have left as a feedback for that very specific service - I don't care if he's the best Runescape gold seller in the world, I want to know about his CSgo boosting. This is common for an average user, maybe not so much for Sythe experts.

Not every customer leaving feedback is an anomaly which every service experiences, if anything the smaller guys have an upper hand there.
Customer reviews is the only tool for all marketplace sellers which has an equal playing ground. I have been that little seller in exactly such environment and I am now the biggest seller in that platform. Why? Because I put in the effort and provided a better service than the others which also made customers more likely to leave feedback in my thread.

In Sythe, the new guys don't have a chance because they cannot compete with anything at all because:
1) Bumps don't matter
2) Reviews are hidden by bump spam
3) No post count
4) No $100+ donations
What does a new guy do then? Nothing, leave.

The entire point of Sythe cannot exist in a functional manner if nobody has a clear view on the quality of services.

You don't seem to understand that no business gets a customer every 2 hours here meaning that if there won't be customers bumping, there will be thread owners themselves bumping. This isn't a theoretical observation, go browse literally( literally) any thread and see how it looks like - you can start with the ones which you're bumping yourself. It's not like customer reviews until now have had no value at all.
Not to mention that plenty of your threads which you are bumping have first posts with plenty of vouches but threads themselves have no feedback. That's deceiving for everyone and if there's tens of pages of "bump" posts, nobody is going to spend time to verify these first post vouches.

The lasts posts of each thread should be the reflection of the service in it's current state and nothing else. A customer should not have to go through 10 hoops, dig through vouch threads and Google the service provider to make an educated guess. Customers don't do that, they simply go to other forums where the first sentence of this paragraph is true.

If you'd know anything about customer behavior then you'd know that the low price is almost never a competitive tool for services which rely on trust. Sythe isn't a marketplace for physical goods which can be tracked easily, Sythe offers services / virtual goods which base on trust and aren't protected by any form of protection in real life. Sure, the new guy can lower the prices minimally but one cannot just "build a reputation" with no tools for it.

Anyone can create an autobumper even right now if they wanted and Sythe would have no proof of one being used, if anything, the incentive for one has drastically increased.

 

No support.

There were 3 changes abaout bumping last month we dont need another one. [pre sure sites dont like the fact that one day they can bump every 8h other day they need to bump every 4h and third day they get dnted cus they use autobumper]

 

Following that logic, it's prime time to do all the changes as people haven't even adapted to the new rules yet. A very minuscule discomfort is worth it for a healthier environment for both the sites and the forum sellers.

 

1.4h bumps [2h customer bumps] Serious services can handle that without autobumper not to mention if its easy to mask 4h bump its easy to mask 24h bump so what is your point. NO SUPPORT

2. Not allowing autobumpers actualy decreased spam if you just checked all sections you would of noticed that. NO SUPPORT

3.Well thats why theres vouch thread where customer can leave feedback and Service provider can quote that feedback and post it on w/e thread they want.[gold sale feedback on gold sale thread] so NO SUPPORT

 

And if bump would be every 24h wouldn`t that mean you have to be online for next 24h =? like now if you bump you need to be on for next 4h. =? or am i wrong =?

 

1. I already answered that in the quote. The problem is not the moral philosophy of autobumping, but the effect it has on the forum.
2. That claim isn't backed up by anything, not to mention the system is not even in effect properly but I do know that 4 is lower than 6.
3. I've already explained that as well but let me illustrate it through Brian's experience.
⭐️Quest masters⭐️❤️Baod's Services❤️$300 Donator❤️✔️ 8 SKILLED workers✔️⭐️Now recruiting⭐️
This thread appears to have 10 vouches in the first post, although the thread itself has one. Nobody has the time to go through all pages and verify the legitimacy of the vouches. This is deceiving and customers are being fed false information.

Not for, but after. After 24h you can bump again as an OP.

 

So large businesses get 99% of time on the front page because they're able to constantly get sales. How is a regular user supposed to even get a vouch when his threads are always on page 4?

 

I promise you that every section has less "large businesses" than the first page fits, there is no such thing as being as active as possible & "always page 4".
You are very highly overestimating how many customer reviews these "large businesses" organically without any influence get. The largest factor in getting reviews is the salesmanship and the quality of the product / service; the mere size of the business has no impact on these.
If a small business can generate 80% of the customers into positive, detailed reviews but a large business can do so only with 20% and poorly, the smaller business will become the large one and the larger one is bound to decline into irrelevancy - as it should be.

 

Yeah.. no support.
As Sheedy mentioned, they've made several major changes. Let's give them a chance to actually take effect.

1) If a user is auto-bumping from their own account then who cares..? They are still limited by the bump timer rules established by staff. That wasn't the issue, anyways. The issue was that users were having other people auto-bump their threads. This allowed them to rack up post count, receivers of auto-bumps weren't having to do anything, etc.
2) lolwut?
3) It's really not hard at all for a buyer of services wants to verify the validity of a specific servicer if they want to. There are many ways to do that.

I don't mean offense, but your points just seem redundant & far-fetched to me.

 

As much as it's an interesting thing to look into, you do understand and need to take into mind that people also "buy reviews" such as @ARIBA as shown here -

https://osbot.org/forum/topic/156463-false-feedback-report/

The problem is, a lot of people do not value their customers. I remember getting my first 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000 feedback/vouches and now i'm over double that (roughly 2.2-2.3k or so) and it gave me a good feeling each time I knew I was doing right.

The point is to gather actual feedback to know that your trade was a good thing and not a bad, not to get if you reward them money in return and such which is what happens a lot of the time with this.

 

As mentioned already; I have existed, grown and thrived in such environment already.
You cannot "buy" feedback because it's obvious when only 10 post accounts bump your thread all the time.
Even if one would buy a customer review, it's only a drop in the bucket with the competitive edge being minuscule since the customer bump timer is 6 hours. It's very difficult to sustain such activity without getting caught and looking legitimate while not being constantly paranoid about it; the time and effort put into that could have grown you already legitimately.

Sythe is the only platform where I don't ask for any customer feedback ever because there is no point. I have absolutely no reason to do so because it yields nothing but I'm not the one who's losing, the platform is losing by having threads worse by their own design.
Which thread or forum looks healthier out of these 3?

Sythe
ALL REGIONS — Mr. Fox's Boosting — CHEAPEST ON SYTHE — 7x EUW & NA Challenger — Boosting Since 2013
Epic
Selling - All Servers - Mr.Fox's Boosting | Super Cheap | 7x Challenger | 6 Years Online
ePvP
All regions — Mr. Fox's Boosting — CHEAPEST ON EPVP — 7x Challenger — 6 Years online

I don't think that the other platforms are inherently better, they have their own big flaws and are as, if not more unbearable than Sythe but they definitely do( in my opinion) look drastically healthier and easier for the customer to make an educated decision on.

If the big service owners don't care about their customers then the more enthusiastic services who do care for their customers( and their feedback) will eventually out grow the ones who don't - this is how it always should be.

 

1) you can "buy a customer review" my example has shown that.
2) I wasn't referring to offsite being better, more just an example as they do in fact do the same on Sythe.

The fact of the persons "post count" makes no real difference, some people come on to vouch on their vouch thread and not their actual service thread, which in fact could over look the whole system as a whole. If it was once every 6 hours on VOUCH thread only, that would make more sense.

As for thread links, I wasn't referring to threads as a whole was I? I was simply linking that thread as a example, I don't care where you are doing best or worse off.

 

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

 

Yes, that is also fraudulent activity and very easy to get caught if the customers are aware that such activity is forbidden; sooner or later someone will obviously complain about it, making the whole endeavor too risky to be used.
I was covering the whole spectrum of the subject.

It does make a difference as it's easy to spot low post count and spammy profiles for such activity. If one would be to create hundreds of posts for variety and less detectability, they're already overinvesting in something which again, can be done very legitimately and with far less headaches or risk.

Vouch threads themselves are a complete travesty which make no sense whatsoever. I've already covered it and it's implications plenty above.

I provided you thread links so you would see the environments where services can actually incorporate customer feedbacks in their threads legitimately and have value set to them, something with Sythe lacks - "The point is to gather actual feedback to know that your trade was a good thing and not a bad". Even in the other forums threads it's rather poor( compare 2 years ago vs now) because of the platform's autobumpers and paid features which discourage and devalue customers feedback but at least it exists in a transparent and somewhat adequate manner.

This whole thread is an elaboration on that subject and statement.

 

All of your posts/threads talk in circles.

You’re saying customer feedback and vouches are completely pointless here, yet you 1) have a vouch thread and 2) update it with pictures of completed work.


Have you ever heard the saying by Ghandi, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
You’re providing all of this criticism about Sythe, but you’re perfectly capable of going ahead and implementing a lot of your suggestions on a personal level. If what you’re suggesting works so well, why haven’t you put it into practice?

 

My actions are irrelevant to my ideas - I have my own developed autobumper as well and you know my stance on that. I act as I must, even Ghandi cannot change the fact that right now everyone has to spam to get customers; even the mighty Mister Fox.

Either way, my vouch thread was updated by my customer support on their own will until I asked to stop as there's no point in wasting perfectly good feedback in a place what nobody will ever see; that course is visible as well. It's not like from 2014 - 2019 I had no customers.
I don't link my vouch thread anywhere or to anyone.

I'm also not sure why are you participating in the discussion if you have absolutely no arguments or ideas to put forward.

 

Not sure if to face palm, you have no clue what i'm referring to.


What I will say though, why not suggest a feedback system if vouches are the problem in your eyes.