[Denied] Making Sythe more newcomer friendly

Hi,

In light of recent events, I think we should try to make the experience of newcomers a bit better. I think when we all joined we all had our fair share of getting scammed. Anyways the 3 suggestions I have are 1) Anybody who has a thread in buying or selling gold should be expected to screenshot trades. I think this is quite basic and a good trading practice so if anyone claims they got scammed it would be very easy to debunk it or if it has any merit or should at least warrant a TWC if they can not supply it. Also could save sellers and buyers hassle as if a fake report is lodged they can get TWC'd and their rsn and discord could be added to some kind of list. 2) The report with Halo where the cancelling of a ticket and no evidence is left seems sketchy if a ticket is made it should be saved it seems pretty simple. 3) The final suggestion is there is quite a cool rule if you have been scammed you can be added to a repayment system where people who are pardoning repay their victims and if their victims are inactive or been banned themselves it goes to the community repayment system. I think once someone has been scammed they should be made aware of this community repayment fund and explain it to them. I am sure not many people know about it especially newcomers and when people get scammed when they are new they usually end up leaving. This would help them and also encourage them to come back and increase the traffic of the site. I think Sythe needs to become more newcomer-friendly it would be beneficial to everyone however I will say the guide's and stickies have improved a lot.

Let me know what you guys think

 

a suggestion to your suggestion. spread out your words/points/suggestions.

 

[S]

1) Anybody who has a thread in buying or selling gold should be expected to screenshot trades. I think this is quite basic and a good trading practice so if anyone claims they got scammed it would be very easy to debunk it or if it has any merit or should at least warrant a TWC if they can not supply it. Also could save sellers and buyers hassle as if a fake report is lodged they can get TWC'd and their rsn and discord could be added to some kind of list.

By expectation, I presume you mean it should be an official rule? If so, forcing users to take certain arbitrary precautionary measures does not hold much value, and the risk v reward factor is negligible. If the expectation is for every user buying/selling gold, then how would established businesses processing over 1000's of transactions daily cope? Will they be required to take said screenshots? Secondly, the amount of legitimate trades that are conducted, vs the amount of scams that take place aren't even comparable. We presume that the number of scams taking place is likely say, a 1:50 ratio (50 being legitimate trades). In actuality, that number is likely to be 1:10000. Thus, implementing something as such doesn't hold much value, with respect to how applicable and useful it will be.

Lastly, it's likely many users will take their own precautionary measures. We shouldn't forcefully impose them upon them. IIRC, the introductory message PM'd to all new account registrations may suggest to take screenshots - could a staff member confirm?

2) The report with Halo where the cancelling of a ticket and no evidence is left seems sketchy if a ticket is made it should be saved it seems pretty simple.

I assume this is referring to website tickets? Then sure, I agree - all tickets lodged should be recorded/saved/archived.

3) The final suggestion is there is quite a cool rule if you have been scammed you can be added to a repayment system where people who are pardoning repay their victims and if their victims are inactive or been banned themselves it goes to the community repayment system. I think once someone has been scammed they should be made aware of this community repayment fund and explain it to them. I am sure not many people know about it especially newcomers and when people get scammed when they are new they usually end up leaving. This would help them and also encourage them to come back and increase the traffic of the site.

A potential quick fix could be - have a standard template created, for staff members to post on scam reports, which iterates something along the lines of, 'Please refer to the community repayment thread for X, to understand how you may be eligible to enter a draw to receive a portion or all of your scammed funds back'. I'm sure it can be worded more eloquently by someone who understands the concept of the community repayment thread better than me.

 

We already heavily encourage people to document their trades. This is a rather idealistic situation in that people don't always think ahead, regardless of whether we make it a requirement or not, some people will not screenshot or record their trades properly.

As for letting people know about repayment, there is a sticky in the report a scammer section that references the repayment system and we tend to let people know about it where applicable.