Change the "Self Vouching" Rule

Before anyone asks, I will say that yes I made this thread because of Nate's ban.

Instead of always perm banning users for self vouching, a month ban with a TWC for it should also be allowed at the discretion of the staff.

Why?

Because many people who self vouch are just trying to become trusted so that they can make trades more easily. Nate seems to be a perfect example of this, as he has never scammed anyone, which makes it seem like his self vouches were just in order to become trusted so that he could trade easily.

I have dealt with plenty of people who really seemed like that they just hadn't read the rules well enough and made a small mistake and they got perm banned for it when they never hurt anyone.

Notes:

• I am not saying that every self vouching case should be a month ban. I am saying that there should be an option that the staff could ban them for a month if it seems like they just made a mistake.
• I am not doing this for Nate's sake. I've never spoken with him nor do I really care that he is banned.
• No spamming my thread with useless shit. >_>.

 

Self vouching can be used to facilitate trades, but also to facilitate a scam. No-one can know if Nate was actually doing this for the first reason or for a huge scam, so I probably think that the staff didn't go for the risky choice to leave him unbanned.

 

Why exactly?

 

It is not your place to decide on a case to case basis. That is for the staff to do. All I am suggesting is that they have the choice to do this so that the people who genuinely seem to have just made a mistake have a chance to be unbanned and contribute to the community.

 

I agree in some cases like Nates. He only did that when he first started sythe so he could trade more easily. That was like in 2009 I think, or early 2010? Since then he has gathered more then 500+ legit vouches and never scammed..

 

You make a good point, SuF. Given that it should be judged on a case by case basis, but I don't believe this to be very reasonable. Just as Fedora said, there's no way to be sure if a fake vouch was intended to give a person enough trust to scam or not.

To stay on the topic of Nate's ban, we can't be sure if Nate's actions were truly for the good of the site, or if he was just furthering himself in an attempt to scam even more. A fake vouch is a fake vouch, the motives behind it can never be clear because of how deceitful it is.

You're making yourself out to be something you're not, and that's not exactly conducive to building trust.

So, entirely disagree =/.

 

http://sythe.org/showthread.php?p=7114920

Well... there ya go.

 

I forgot to add the giving them a TWC rank in there. Thought Id say that here so you'd see it.

There is no concrete way to tell if someone is going to scam or not and I agree with you, but that doesn't mean anything. Let me make a couple examples.

Case 1:

User joins and fakes some vouches right away and tries to sell a high level account.

Case 2:

User joins and tries to start a leveling service but almost no one will use him and everyone is telling him he is untrusted and a scammer. Having not read the rules (Who really does when they join a site?), and being dumb they fake a couple vouches to get their shop going.

There is a clear difference between the two cases. Now, both being new members the staff (me included) would most likely just perm ban them both without any thought (even if this suggestion was accepted).

User 1 turned out to be a scammer and a ban evader anyways and just ban evaded again.

User 2 read the ban reason and made a dispute. After some checking a mod could see that its most likely that they are not a scammer and just someone who is trying to run their new shop. The mod could decide to reduce the ban to a month with a TWC and remove the fake vouches.

If user 2 is a scammer, they would just make a new account. The account isn't trusted at all anyways and worthless with the TWC so they would just evade anyways.