[Denied] Apply TWC to traders who deliberately fail to keep logs

Describe the problem:

A user was recently banned for scamming. I had been keeping an eye on this particular user, and had noticed reports against him started appearing around February of this year. Surprisingly, multiple reports were all dismissed against him until he was eventually banned. The interesting thing about all these reports is they had near-identical stories.

This user had potentially been operating through Sythe and successfully scamming for a few months without any repercussions. Part of the reason this was allowed to happen was because buyers were not able to produce sufficient evidence, but this was in part to how the seller had set up his discord server:

All ticket correspondence was contained to the discord server, and a bot created/deleted tickets. In an audit log, this would more or less show up as a bot deleting/creating tickets. If you had joined the server a few days prior to creating a ticket, it wouldn't be obvious which ticket was associated to you or what might've been discussed in it.

How most of the reports went: buyer traded OSRS to seller (didn't take pics/vids of this interaction), ticket was deleted by a ticket bot so there was no way to recover anything discussed or who might've created a ticket, and the sellers cop out of "I don't keep ticket logs" helped them continually get away with it.

The RAS section and system had failed for almost half a year of reports. Allowing scammers to operate in a fashion like this hurts Sythe's reputation.

What current rule(s) tackle this problem:
There isn't any. The situation I described is a blatant failure of the system IMO. I'm sure some people might simply assert proof of the entire interaction falls on the buyer, but I believe sellers are equally as responsible in producing records of any transactions that transpire.

If this was potentially going on for months with the scammer getting multiple people with it, that is more indicative of a problem with the system rather than the customer, IMO.

Explain the change:
If it is discovered that a seller is not retaining logs of conversations/transactions, they should be TWC'ed at the very least.

- Basically, ticket transcripts are sufficient. If someone uses a ticket system but does not keep transcripts that is TWC worthy.
- DMs already serve as a means of good logs. You usually cant delete an entire "DM". That said, there are exceptions to this, e.g using an app like snapchat that auto deletes conversations - if all of your comms happen through apps like this it is TWC worthy.

You can set a limit on log retention, e.g logs must be kept for at least 100 days from the moment of correspondence.

Sellers should have equal responsibility to buyers to produce logs of any correspondence - these are digital goods being served on an online forum, not a VPN service.

Explain why this change will fix the problem:
I don't intend for this to serve as a punishment for sellers, simply a means of more accountability, and should keep other parties more aware (e.g the idea is if I'm more aware that someone isn't keeping logs, I will be more likely to record everything).

Even if the expectation is buyers have to record interactions on their end - I think if this particular seller had not been permitted to get away with not retaining ticket transcripts, he would've been caught much sooner.

Side-effects:
I can't think of why adding more accountability would have a side-effect, but open to hearing any counter points.

 

Personally I feel that keeping logs/gathering evidence will never be possible to be properly done or even controlled outside of Sythe. That's why I always require my deals to have PM confirmation on site.

The fact is, either side of a deal can always delete evidence in discord. Sellers mostly use ticket systems and you can lose your entire ticket history whenever they feel like it. DM's can be deleted, even if they can't easily be deleted en-masse. Even if you retain screenshots, unless they are GIFs with the UUID, there is no way to know for sure that the screenshots are real. That's why the only real way to keep logs is Sythe PMs, which is why all deals should be confirmed through there.

I think the premise of this suggestion is great. However I don't totally agree with the solution. I think that sellers or buyers should be punished only if they attempt to modify/remove logs. But I don't think they should be responsible for keeping the logs. If you don't have evidence, then you can't prove your side of a dispute and that's on you, and that goes for buyer and seller who should both be aware of this and responsible for keeping enough evidence to have proper logs. However, I think that sellers or buyers who try to destroy or modify logs should be punished as they are actively impeding the other party's ability to keep proper evidence.

 

You seem to have misread the thread title: look up the word "deliberately", it is in alignment with your sentiments.

edit: I seem to have misread what I had thought you had misread. I am fundamentally in disagreement with you - it's equally both the buyers and sellers responsibility to keep record of a transaction. If I am using a ticket system, and immediately close a ticket, thereby triggering a ticket bot to delete said ticket logs with no record of anything ever having occurred, this can be considered bad trading practice.

You can't expect the other party (the other party being the one not running the ticket system) to think they need to record every single thing happening in a ticket, this essentially means resigning yourself to not trusting anyone, ever. This is ultimately wishful thinking.

edit2:
This suggestion isn't really one born out of a hypothetical situation - someone had literally used a method of not keeping ticket logs for almost half a year whilst operating on Sythe until they finally got banned very recently. This is a failure of the RAS section and the report process overall.

edit3:

I'm pretty sure modifying/removing logs deliberately is already punishable and has been in the past. The "loophole" to this is simply not keep logs/records to begin with, that way you get around having to actively modify or remove anything. If you already support the former, the latter isn't much of a stretch.

 

Support.

 

You can lead a horse to water - but you cannot force it to drink. The situation you've described above is not much different in principle.

That said, I'm not referring to the people who fail to make a report, I'm referring to the people who actually did open a report and were failed by RAS (more than once). The worst part is the mods who reviewed the previous cases which were dismissed looked through the audit logs of the server themselves and weren't able to fully corroborate anything.

The user who I've cited as my example for the reason behind this suggestion was a prime reason for why there needs to be something proactively done. If someone is running a scam for almost half a year and even the people who are trying to report the user isn't enough to get him immediately caught, that's a call to re-evaluate either the current rules, the report process, or both.

Nobody should be getting away with scams for that long without facing some kind of repercussions on Sythe (and I'd say issuing a TWC is relatively mild for someone who is likely scamming).

Pretty much this. Even keeping transcripts on hand for a few months should avoid most ambiguous cases.

 

Agreed

Mostly cuz im biased against discord server bots with the whole "ToS" thing. Feels like discord servers get a huge chunk of unnecessary leeway in multiple areas of the rules.

 

no support.
The IRS might see my $1 profit last year and see my logs during an audit

 

It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt

 

using the logic of this report, anybody banned on discord deserves a TWC?

There are multiple times when you might lose logs of something thats out of your control

 

I encourage you to look into the word "deliberate".

If an external factor like that were to occur - a discord server being banned or your account being banned, these are usually not deliberate actions of your own doing and more likely caused by external factors - in fact situations like these would be exceptions to the rule - but that does not mean we should allow exceptions to set the basis for how rules are defined.

 

every great rule has 2 different exceptions baked right in.
Also even better is when nobody has a way to verify the exception occurred as anybody can just make a new discord account and claim their old one was banned

 

If you claim your old Discord account/server was banned you'd need to provide some kind of evidence of it being banned - simply claiming something does not equate it to being true, and I don't think it'd hold up very well in a report if you had no basis to your claim.

Let's look at typical "ban" scenarios though:

- Assuming your correspondence happens via DMs and a dispute is raised: the other party from the dispute will still have access to the DMs, so this would still be well within the bounds of logs being readily available.

- Assuming your correspondence only occurs via tickets in a Discord server, most bots offer ticket transcripts outside of Discord: which would be referenceable even if your Discord were to be banned if I'm not mistaken. If you're that worried about your Discord server being banned, you should have contingencies in place to have logs stored in additional places in the event that happens.

"I don't keep logs" should never be a reasonable or valid excuse in a dispute or report.

 

I got banned, then proceeds to delete their discord account.

 

There is a 14 day grace period (noted on Discord documentation) from the moment an account is deleted, so it wouldn't show up as a deleted user immediately.

Quite a few stars would have to align for your intended scenario to have happened though - you would have had to have recently scammed someone + gotten banned on discord + deleted your account right after (although I'm not sure if Discord allows banned users to delete their accounts post-ban), and even if you somehow managed to execute this elaborate scam scenario, that still gives a reporter 2 weeks to collect the evidence before your account is changed to a Deleted User.

 

or..... hear me out here
if somebody scams someone they could potentially also not tell the truth. I know shocking.


they could claim their account got banned and instead just delete their discord

 

Or... and hear me out here, if you do decide to lie, you'll need to show some kind of proof, whether it be notification/email etc that upholds your claim that you were banned - and if you do not have such a thing, will need to contact Discord support and get a confirmation from them that you are in fact banned on the account you say you are banned on.

Typically, lying on a report deliberately isn't going to go well for you if discovered.

Nevertheless, if you are finding yourself in a situation where you are being banned on Discord on a regular cadence that is a you problem.

I've been trading with plentiful of few folks who have thousands of vouches on Sythe and their join dates go back to 2016/2017 on Discord. If you're finding yourself being banned off Discord, whether on a regular cadence or at all, that's a situation you should be adapting to, not using as a cop out excuse in a report if one were to arise.

That said - if such a situation were to arise and it's clear that someone was banned out of their control for example mods would evaluate that specific report based off the evidence available/the severity of the report etc, and decide whether or not a TWC/DNT is warranted. The reason mods exist in the first place is to make calls in situations that are not black and white and they have done so before for other rules.

The intention of this rule to be added isn't for mods to go around asking everyone if they keep logs and TWC them if they do not - it is to keep people honest, and if a report is ever made and it turns out you chose not to keep logs - that would be a good place where this rule would come into play.

If you're confident that you'll never scam a single soul and you don't need logs ever then this rule technically wouldn't ever make it into your wheelhouse because nobody would ever have to report you in the first place. That said, it's simply just a good practice to follow if you value integrity in the slightest.