First of all it should be known that I’ve done livechat work for kaii (rsgoldmarkt) for the past 2-3 months. Thus I am potentially biased & definitely influenced by that. Also this is simply my view of the situation (that I’m somewhat involved in but not really, unless of course you guys think that I was in on this and that I also need to prove my own innocence). I’ll be listing them all as separate points so that it’s easier to respond to any of the points that you guys wish to (and I can then expand on my thoughts on that specific matter).
1) The vouches were done incredibly sloppily. Looking over the situation, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make the fake vouches at least somewhat credible (without getting too much into this for obvious reasons, swaps, with a few bond & small rwt trades (I’ll happily expand on this point to staff in private, or if you guys decide that it's fine for me to post on how to better do fake trades publicly though this isn't exactly an important thing to be expanded on anyways and I'm sure you guys can already think of ways)). If we were thinking so far ahead as to make them obviously fake in order to say that they’re obviously fake and that we’re being framed, a much better risk/reward ratio would come simply from having fake skype logs (at least with those vpn’d accounts that were constantly vouching us over and over) pretending to do the trades that I mentioned above instead and to also make them not look so obviously fake (again, not expanding on how specifically to do this publicly for obvious reasons, can be expanded on privately/publicly if staff desire that).
2) I think that a relatively fair resolution would be to have all vouches since the fakes started that we don’t explicitly prove as legit being wiped (up to us to go through all trades and link the vouches that shouldn’t be wiped (with proof) with everything else being nuked), us not being able to receive vouches bumping our threads for as long as the fake vouches were occurring and finally being forced to keep a very keen eye on vouches going forward forever (higher level of expectation for us/kaii than others going forward)
3) This isn’t nearly as beneficial nor all-encompassing as some think it is (“basically stickied” It’s definitely akin to that but not at all equivalent, I can expand on this if any staff members currently disagree with this point. “0 chats, he admits that nearly every single vouch on his thread since the middle of March is fake” That’s not true and kaii never said that it was. Since mid march kaii’s english site has had well over 1,000+ legitimate and provable trades (1,645 before counting out refunded, rejected & orders not on his English site)+his skype trades (which he’s stated he can give full access to in order to audit if you guys believe any of those might be fake)+alex’s skype (who does almost 100% of the swapping) + his dutch site. Ron (mmorpg) can verify the exact # of trades completed on his English site since mid march and the fact that the payments went through.
Here’s 10 trades (full uncensored version & corresponding order (receipt along with other info) through ron’s system can be provided for all of these to any staff member) that most likely resulted in us receiving a sythe vouch, within the time period of the fake vouches:
http://i.imgur.com/f0QE4Cl.png
http://i.imgur.com/sduHbUu.png
http://i.imgur.com/9QKfyJF.png
http://i.imgur.com/98eX8fy.png
http://i.imgur.com/XvYhHxw.png
http://i.imgur.com/meCCSmL.png
http://i.imgur.com/maLUSb2.png
http://i.imgur.com/Z4AoWom.png
http://i.imgur.com/rz5bndr.png
http://i.imgur.com/GQol9RQ.png
That’s not a lot of trades but it does help back up my point of the sythe vouches not all having been fake (also why we weren't taken aback by actively being vouched. If this was on my own vouches thread that would ofcourse be different, but if you go through my own vouches I'm sure none of those will look like fakes)
4) Regardless of the outcome of this dispute, the practice of fake vouches for major trader could still be used as a weapon by shady traders that're looking to do be in the market for many years, in order to damage the reputation of other traders that they see as potential longtime competitors. I would recommend a system change that allows us to more easily identify people that're posting from a vpn (outside of
asking a moderator to check it all or guesswork on an ip audit which wouldn't show which posts specifically were from a vpn, I've personally most likely logged into sythe on a vpn in the past but that doesn't mean that most of my posts were done via a vpn ip), at least on our own market threads more easily (e.g if a post was posted from a vpn it might have something added to it identifying it as having been done so)
5) Looking at how much effort some people put in for getting rid of competitors (e.g ddosing), it’s not at all a stretch to imagine that if another major trader was already involved in shady things then they would see this as a good thing to do (ranging from hard to nearly impossible to trace back to them, potentially get rid of us, potentially tarnish our reputation, and at the very least be a big nuisance and force us to not be able to receive vouches freely after it was revealed (hopefully this dispute will result in us merely receive the later ^). With the benefit of temporarily being bumped for a while on 1 site potentially tarnishing somebody who’d be major competition for years (kaii is clearly dedicated to trading and planning on doing this for years longer). Kaii has said a little otherwise (“This is indeed a long stretch and indeed i know sounds a bit crazy.”) but I definitely disagree with that statement of his, it’s neither a long stretch nor crazy, but infact plausible.
6) There is no doubt a clear benefit for competitors to try to harm our reputation. He is a big trader (pb, tribot, and osbot along with sythe & since he has a lot of workers doing trades for him that leaves him even more open for a framing like this) and has been so for a while prior to the fake vouches.
7) Regarding this “neither him nor his 5 workers have once looked at the vouches in his thread and realized they are all completely fake.” Yes, that is 100% correct. Of the workers for kaii, all but 1 of us can be considered as relatively experienced forum traders at this point and yet none of us noticed that we were being fake vouched (it simply hadn’t occurred to us to be watching out for that). So, how can we prove that we weren’t also in on this? Well, that’s pretty hard to prove... I have my own rep and trading history outside of working for kaii, my first vouch alone on here (by ron (mmorpg) 2 years ago should say a good amount about me having offsite rep (if anybody (staff or just a regular member reading this post) would like to know more about my offsite trading/rep/etc just pm me and I’d be happy to link that) but all of my own rep is nothing close to Agent Chris. He is one of the most trustworthy people on powerbot ([member=chris]) and I’m sure you r2pleasant have interacted with him personally and thus can reasonably assume he wasn’t involved in the fake vouching for bumps and that when he says he didn’t notice the fake vouches, he isn’t lying and a part of some huge cover up for something as [relatively pedantic] as this.
So, all in all, this is my view of the situation (that’s turned into a full defense for kaii, unfortunately a bit of repetition between this post and kaii’s so sorry for the extra reading but hopefully I’ve helped). If a staff member would like to ask any personal questions or w.e else, feel free to pm me for my personal skype.
