What has Happened and its Effect on the Future of Sythe

1. Whoever recommended the OMMs banned for scamming should be punished. Don't make a rule if it isn't going to be upheld.

2. Allow market moderators to vote on OMMs. For all else, ask yourself before voting yes if you'd feel comfortable going first to the OMM in question for $2.5k if the OMM applicant was NOT a staf instead of just $300. As this is the average value of the past few scams, it is appropriate. Many will notice that the staff OMM combo is much more common than people with just OMM ranks. Thus they are relying on their staff rank as a portion of their trust (instead of their market experience. Hahanerd and Video for this reason are arguably more trusted OMMs at this time than several staff/OMM combos because of both of their substantive individual experience.

3. Allow heavy market users to voice their opinion and possibly vote on OMM candidates. These are the people who will be using OMM the most, and can gauge trust through market experience much better than most moderators.

4. Mandatory removal of OMM status in event of even one botched trade. This would prevented vietballer from further scams and Louis from further mistakes, preserving the integrity of the system. Learn from feren, he was luckily able to be removed on a suspicion. That kind of harsh action is what is needed.

 

Far from being unexpected, this is a blackmarket, and drama like this is inevitable, especially with the expanding staff and OMM list. The staff can't see into people souls - some bad apples will slip through. I don't think there is any reason for people to be especially alarmed, but I do think it is an important reminder not to get complacent.

Nonetheless, I think it does send the wrong message to immediately issue promotions (one of them to a user who was himself pardoned for scamming) after the recent problems among staff. Nothing against Josh or Toast, but the site needs to convey that the staff are not chosen hastily, and to newer members, it will certainly appear otherwise.

 

Sin66, I will argue the flipside. Many would argue that sythe is a community first and this kind of drama is insanely counterproductive and detracts from the purpose for which the forum was originally created. To justify the recent drama is such a way is imprudent.

 

You do realise she hasn't tried to sanction the actions or ''justify'' them, but rather express that such occurrences are inevitable and not neccessarily avoidable? There have always been incidents such as these - these simply stand out because they have occurred concurrently.

 

To add on to Viou's point, a reason sythe thrives is because of the trustworthiness of the staff, especially when compared to other site's. It is integral to the survival of the community that this respect and trust is maintained.

Finn: of course occasional occurences are inevitable, but recently 4 OMMs, including the HOMM, have been banned for scamming. The concurrency is unfortunate, yet it still brings up issues in the current system.

 

Viou's points are extremely good, but I'd like to discuss two of them in particular.

Other black market communities, such as MMOE (won't say the full name or URL because I don't want to advertise it), have a "verification" system. Where they get a special badge saying "Level 1 Verified" if they link their Facebook account to their forum account, "Level 2 Verified" if they confirm their phone number with the staff, and so on. I don't see what the problem would be with doing this with staff.

Any staff member or OMM who does not have intentions to scam should have no problem with giving their address, phone number, and other personal information such as photo's of their driver's license or other forms of photo identification to the administration team (or to Sythe himself).

But I think that if someone does give all of their information to staff, then staff will need to take scams that happened by OMM's or moderators into their own hands and either give out the person's personal information to the scammed member, or take it upon themselves to contact the authorities. There needs to be some form of punishment, banning and rank removal hasn't proven to be the best method.

I also believe that if there is a worse punishment, and if OMM's and moderators are required to verify all of their personal information, then there would be a lot less scams from them because they might be a little bit scared that they will get in trouble in real life from their Sythe scams.

Not asking for the badge system, or different levels of verification, just that all staff and OMM's should need to be verified by staff and all information kept on file.

This could work out extremely well too. It would avoid the need for staff decision and polls if a moderator or OMM scams. When being promoted, an administrator should ask them to come out about anything in the past that they did, and they will not be banned no matter what, but will not be promoted if it was too bad, or maybe given a trade with caution.

That way, if later down the road, they decide to come clean about their past before their promotion, or something is discovered, they're instantly banned with no discussion or poll for lying to staff.

That's just my two cents.

 

The pardons were released... a staff had moved them to SL after ~ 2hours..

 

It's happened before. It will happen again. It's better that people understand that than to set unrealistic expectations and assume a different selection process would fix everything.

Most of the mods in question were promoted with a fair amount of community support, and the only difference between the community and staff is the ability to IP check (which doesn't catch everything). The staff should certainly take this as reason to be more cautious; but, it's easy to judge their decisions harshly in retrospect.

 

To add on to the personal information requirement, which I agree with, perhaps the information should be kept in the admin lounge to prevent leaking. Also, a contract like the one Grave uses could be helpful.

Austin: I meant re-released.

 

Yes, that's what I meant, keep it hidden in a secure location.

 

Not all staff are comfortable supplying their personal information, especially as there is a potential for it to be abused. Nor is it especially useful in situations where the fault is unintentional, which means that instead of scamming outright, staff are more likely to do something like sell their Sythe account and claim to be hacked, secretly collaborate with an impostor, or something of the sort (something which would earn them a ban, but likely not encourage legal retaliation).

People will respond to changes with new behaviors, but there's still the question of whether it solves anything. Certainly, there are valid arguments against it - I would not have accepted a staff or MM position if such information was required.

 

What reasons would they have not to give their information? Their taking on a big role, a role that could easily be abused for high reward.

It's not like their suggesting they give them their SSN, credit card numbers, etc. Majority of the information you can find by taking a few minutes to go through facebook looking through people's profiles. You also show somebody your license when you buy things with an age permit such as smokes.

Also, it is highly unlikely that it would be abused. If it's in the admin lounge, there's no chance at all it'll be abused. If it was abused, clearly they shouldn't be admins at all. None of the admins (as to my understanding) have ever given any reason to make people think that this information would be abused.

 

Exactly, they have no reason to not give the information unless they intend to scam.

Click here to read my suggestion on the matter.

 

And what if a staff member is framed? I was in the past, and I'm certainly not the only one it's ever happened to. Fortunately, the kid screwed up, and I was able to prove it as a fake, but there's no guarantee that'll always be the case.

Even then, what good is the information? There was a campaign for legal action against Sigex, a legitimate scammer, and even with his name, phone number, and address it did nothing to deter him.

Leaking isn't unheard of, and there has been a corrupt admin in the past, although I'm sure he'd have had no interest in personal info. Nonetheless, it's enough that people might legitimately be uncomfortable handing out something that could be used against them.

 

I think the staff should at least consider the suggestion. Say the information is only given to Sythe himself. In that case, anyone who says no to giving it
is either hiding something or irrational.

 

I'd just like to say that for the most part, things aren't as bad as people are making them about to be (exception of nate, what he did is truly horrible not just for the people he scammed but the hundreds more who will be unable to trust anyone seeing how someone of his rep still went ahead and scammed people). Try to see the good things in this situation and not the bad; some see this as a sign of dark times, I see it as a great opportunity for rebirth and cleansing.

We have to learn from our mistakes. I'm not much of an idea man but stricter vetting processes for staff seems like as good a start as any. We have to accept that bad candidates will be accepted as staff, or even people who are truly good but later decide to scam, there's really not a lot to be done about that. There should really be great care taken into picking staff and OMMs, not that there isn't already, but perhaps greater care is needed.

Correct me if I'm wrong but most mods seem to be picked for their hardworking nature and dedication to their site, rather than their trustworthiness and quality of vouches. Perhaps I'm biased, but I think that if you have the latter, you have the potential for the former. I think that a greater focus on the trustworthiness of future mods will help to prevent "catastrophes" like this in the future.

Edit: About personal information being a requirement, I don't see the point. You can't actually report people to the police for the kinds of scams that occur on this site for the most part, and I don't think giving up personal information will make people less likely to scam. Maybe I'm missing something

 

Well put. People need to stop looking back on what has happened in the past week and look forward to some of the changes that should be taking place on this website.

 

I support personal information to be asked for (atleast from Globals/Admins/Head OMMS).
This should include a Photo ID (with personal ID covered) and a proof of address.

 

Finn has my name, address, work address and telephone #'s of both places, and I feel zero worry whatsoever.

 

Exactly, then do you agree that if someone does not have intention to scam, then they should be willing to give their information?