[APPROVED] Rewarding buyers or sellers for vouching.

I don’t see how this is the “unfair” way. The rule is once per 8 hours. If you have performed a trade with someone and they post a vouch on your thread, effectively bumping your thread, then that’s been established as fair game. If you offer an incentive for them to do so, then that’s a win-win for both consumer and supplier. That’s a premier marketing strategy, getting something the company will benefit from that will also benefit benefit the customer at the same time.

And yes, vouches are a form of gauging user trust. Whereas Powerbot has a feedback score on profiles, we have a vouch count and a thread post count that users primarily use to gauge trust. More vouches equates to more posts on a thread which equates to a user being more inclined to click on that thread. Same function, different application.

And just because other sites do it differently doesn’t mean we should adhere to their practices. Sythe is its own site with its own policies. This is effectively the 6th grade argument: “but all my friends have phones so I should have one too!”

Maybe the new user doesn’t ever log onto Sythe again, but maybe he does. Making broad claims that every user this applies to, which is in the thousands, doesn’t hold. I’ll concede even maybe a large majority never return, but some do and this is beneficial. In addition, just because they don’t return doesn’t mean they won’t then mention the site to their friends. The spiderweb effect could very well apply here.

And yes you might as well use this practice because it’s a common sense marketing tactic to drive business. If you’re morally opposed to it, that’s your call as a business owner. People stand for different things. But this is a

 

I've tried to get this issue fixed when I was on staff but unfortunately it didn't get much support. Regardless though, there's a vouch section. It's retarded to post a vouch on any other thread/forum other than the vouch section. That's the basic idea of a forum, you have sections for sales, general talk and feedback. Really baffles me that it's generally accepted to post vouches elsewhere.

 

You guys just need a negative/positive feedback system like literally any other normal trading website,disallow them on threads, and disallow bumping on threads without the use of a bump button (and by that I mean make all threads naturally sink in market section with new replies NOT bumping them unless bump button is used.)

Then reward people for leaving feedback with Sythe Gold and make it against rules to pay people for feedback unless you disclose you do + let them leave both positive or negative for the reward.

 

You have debated / mentioned everything apart from the main point i'm trying to make that vouches are used as bumps (and they get bought) and not actually as vouches.....?

I don't know if you're deliberately trying to avoid this point of issue but it sure seems like it. I'll post it again however :

"I think Sythe is the only forum / platform that vouches / feedback is used for anything else than what it's used for to begin with.... Let me ask u a question, do you think sites would still offer free gold if a vouch wouldn't bump their topic? The answer no, no they wouldn't. So lets call vouches what they really are (atleast on Sythe). They are an unfair way of gaining traffic under the masked name of "vouch" when in reality we should call them bumps. The bump rules is 8 hours on Sythe and if it's that easy to collect free bumps then we migh aswell just change the bump rule to 3 hours or lower."

 

I’m on my mobile so I can’t figure out how to double quote but reread the first paragraph of my latest reply, it addresses this. I’ll post it again below for you:

I don’t see how this is the “unfair” way. The rule is once per 8 hours. If you have performed a trade with someone and they post a vouch on your thread, effectively bumping your thread, then that’s been established as fair game. If you offer an incentive for them to do so, then that’s a win-win for both consumer and supplier. That’s a premier marketing strategy, getting something the company will benefit from that will also benefit benefit the customer at the same time.

So clearly put, yes, you’re right. It is a bump. The rule only applies to the person themselves bumping once per 8 hours. If you have done a legitimate trade with another user and they post a vouch on your thread, which is turn bumps it, I don’t see this as an issue. It’s not circumventing the rule, it’s better for customers, as pointed out in 2 and 3 below. I’ll break it down as to why:

1. There was a legitimate transaction that accompanies this which means it is a vouch and therefore relevant to the thread.
2. Users, including myself, often look at recent posts on the thread as well as thread size to gauge activity and trust. If the last 3 pages are all bumps, I assume they don’t do much business and it’s just a bumper. If it’s a mix of vouches and bumps, I can see a better picture of how much business they do and how much I can trust them. Same goes with amount of posts (thread size). Therefore they are not masked at all. This is a very beneficial practice for customers who don’t have to hunt for a vouch page, they can just see it all right there.
3. This practice is beneficial to the market. This extra gold is usually claimed by those not making hundreds of mills of purchases at a time, but rather tens of mills. They’re more likely to claim the small extra 1M offer. This helps them out and makes them happier. This helps out sites stay up top on the recently bumped list and makes them happier. This is a win-win for everyone in that specific transaction.
4. No they wouldn’t pay for it if it doesn’t give them an advantage, why would they? But this is Sythe and it does. This is common sense to use marketing tactics that give you an advantage over other companies. If you have the resources to do it, why wouldn’t you?

 

We could just make it so vouches go on a vouch thread, and problem solved

 

I really don't understand how you're so pro on something that gives extra advantage for something it shouldn't be used for in the first place. As stated before Sythe is the only forum / platform that allows this method of doing business. Localbitcoins, Paxful, Powerbot, Amazon, Ebay, etc etc. None of these platforms give EXTRA advantages to a feedback. A feedback is a feedback and as said before that's it. Furthermore, even though on these platforms there is no further feedback advantage, it is not allowed to pursuade customers to give feedback in return for financial gain. On localbitcoins.com for example this is actually a bannable offence.

1. Yes, there is a verified transaction that goes with the vouch. However sites can easily gain more than the needed bumps by letting customers order in increments.
2. Claiming a lot of users do this would be overrated. You might be an adult and have the patience for this. Most of Runescape or any game is still played by kids who wont have the patiene for this at all. Just because you do it, doesn't mean most of people registering to Sythe will do it. Sure it's beneficial for you, not for the overal market. Furthermore if i would look at myself for example, as soon as i would see "DONOR 1000$+" i would have enough confidence to place my order with such user, no need to scroll through pages on pages and waste my time.
3. This is beneficial to the market? This is beneficial to the person gathering low quality feedbacks by the loads and the people who have the need for the extra gold. Beneficial for the MARKET? Definitely not. I would call it more unneeded spam. As said before most of feedbacks gained on certain pages are from new accounts with 1-3 postcount so don't say this is beneficial for the market. Sythe has alot of registrants indeed but a very low % of these registrants are active.
4. I don't see how you think this is a good thing? Going back to my original point, what is the use of letting vouches have additional advantages? I don't see any. I don't know what u mean with resources, what resources? U mean the 0.5$ u have to pay per vouch? Every person in the market (i hope) has this resource and more of the people in the market are beginning to use this tactic, which is the problem.

So if this practice is ok, it's ok for me to approach people and ask them to make a purchase of 0.5M every couple of hours and in return i'll give them 1M for free if they order and vouch after. According to you, the actual purchase has happened so the vouch is legal. I'm not doing anything wrong because i'm just giving them incentive to vouch and the fact where i ask them to make a purchase is not wrong either because, well that's what doing business is, isn't it? The only problem that could be brought up is that i wouldn't be making a profit? But that should also be ok because it's a free market and i run my business as i see fit and as i recall Bogla was selling bonds at a loss, back in the day just to gain a name for himself.

^ Above paragraph i would like your view on.

 

As apparantly I'm not allowed to post 'Agree with this entirely.' to draw extra attention on how much I agree with your input in this thread; here I am again to rephrase your opinion - without really having anything substantial to add to the point that you've already made - to keep the mods happy.

The vouches section exists for good reason, and somehow the people who decide to keep all their vouches in there (correctly) face a big disadvantage towards the many others who have them posted in the sales thread for no good reason other than to have their thread bumped within the 8 hour period. All of those people are doing it with the sole intent of having their thread bumped. It may be a win-win for the customer and the seller, but the bigger issue is that this practice is creating an unfair advantage in the market sections to those who don't condone these practices.

It keeps it hard for new sellers to get their name out there as they are constantly pushed off the first pages, they just found the biggest loophole in the bumping rule that for some unknown reason still exists on Sythe after all these years, and frankly the loophole is getting abused more and more.

If you can solely keep vouches in the vouches section - as Astro's point states, and which should have been the entire purpose of having the vouches section - you are able to limit the amount of artificial bumps, hence creating a more fair environment for people to compete in.

 

Couldn't agree more with your post. However i'm starting to realise that this suggestions topic might have been a waste of time because Sythe is a "free market" and everything goes. I would more call it free for the people who already have made a name for themselves and limited for the people just starting off.

 

The main reason why this suggestion is probably not going to pull its weight is because of the supposed traffic it creates to Sythe, I believe that was stated on a similar thread like this in the past. Those people who sign up to leave their vouch hopefully stay around, even though the biggest part just post their vouch, collect the gold, and don't return, as you already stated. I'm on your side and hope that the staff can see that this practice doesn't just create traffic, it also really has a big and bad impact on the market section that should be addressed.

A few trustworthy people that are involved in the gold sales that I know of need to spam their sales on as many Discord trading channels as possible because they don't generate enough sales from the Sythe marketplace directly. It's not because of their rates, as those are probably sharper than the big gold selling threads, and in a free market this would be a big factor to take into account. It might have some other variables to take into account, but one of the biggest reasons is that their Sythe threads don't get the same amount of exposure as those that are non-stop being boosted on the first pages.

This vouch-bumping loophole is being abused and as such harms the market section for those who don't, in which way it's definitely impacting the ones that aren't involved in this practice. It obviously really makes it hard to compete. There is this 8 hour bumping rule in Sythe, but what use has it if this loophole is being condoned? It litterally only makes it harder for the smaller sellers as they can't get back in there unless they wait another 8 hours.

Vouch-bumping delivers a very big and unfair advantage over those who don't, you simply can't deny that. The problem has been stated before though and complained about a lot of times before, yet it's only been getting worse than it ever has been. It would make a lot of sense to stop the practice from happening rather than the 'lets close an eye for it' attitude - even if there's some extra traffic. The negatives are not at all what a free market like Sythe should ever be about.

 

Support. Promoting people to help leave feedback or history on buyers/sellers is good. This naturally should be done by people and I feel like it is done mostly, but there are still cases. Even once recently I have done a transaction and the person I did said transaction with said "I don't collect vouches anymore." Which I understand it can sometimes be a hassle, but it should still be done IMO.

 

Yes but it doesn't matter where they post. If the vouch thread section was actually used instead, then the said new users would also be referred to sythe.org to sign up, plus be able to be introduced to all of the sections they may find desirable.

This being said, these posts are a clear loophole to the bumping system. Speaking generally "everybody" (of course not some newcomer dumb dumb) knows this. Traffic referrals do not have to come to sythe in the form of a thread bump disguised as a vouch.

As RSGM says in a previous post, it would be highly unlikely that sites would offer the $1/1m incentive for a vouch if it did not benefit their business through this practice.

Of course we can jump on the "free market" bandwagon when debating marketing ethics here, or we can also use words along the lines of "your jealous because big boy sites use this and you can't, blah blah blah", but that is besides the point. This suggestion was made by one of these so called "big boys", although he is humble enough to speak from the perspective as the mid-level business owner.

I wasn't going to post again on this topic as I still have no confidence in this actually passing, although I strongly agree it should.

And just for the record, this post isn't just a direct reply to yours. The first paragraph is, but the rest is my thoughts in response to a lot of what I have just read on these two pages.

 

Support. Vouches should be freely given and there should be no incentive to do so. If you have already traded, you are literally being paid to post a positive review of the service instead of leaving a negative one or none at all.

If people are being paid to leave a positive vouch, how can you even trust them?

 

People who claim that Sythe gets alot of contributing traffic due to this method of vouching, have no idea what they're talking about. Having tons of comments on a thread from users with new join dates or 1 postcount looks spammy and thus not good at all. Also it doesn't contribute to growth of the forum. Out of 500 registrants that sign up to vouch for a website, only 1 person will perhaps use the forum again in the future. As said before, Sythe has a huge registrant base but that goes hand in hand with a very small active percentage of users compared to the users in total.

 

This is actually a good point that i haven't thought about myself. If people are being offered gold in return for a vouch then obviously that vouch will be a positive one. Honesty will be hard to find in paid for vouches. Even small details will change. For example a vouch that would say : "friendly service but the delivery was slow" will get turned into "omfg, amazing service!".

 

Buying/Selling vouches is already against the rules.
Any form of purchasing vouches should also be against the rules.

IE (I will leave a donation to anyone who vouches) OR (Save 5% if you leave me a vouch) OR (After your purchase vouch for 1M rebate)

All of that is bullshit ways of selling vouches, ban them all.

 

I’ll be responding to your post above sometime, but if you’re going to make claims using statistics, you really ought to back that up with data. Throwing out numbers with broad claims doesn’t make me more inclined to listen unless you actually have evidence to support that claim.

 

Well the same goes for you, i guess.
There's also not a lot of proof needed. Scroll through some pages of the sites who use such mentioned techniques to get vouches and look at the accounts doing the vouching. What do you see? 1-3 post accounts by the lot. Conclusion? Most of the accounts don't stay on Sythe. There is your proof, where is yours? That the accounts referred by this technique contribute so much? There is none. As stated before you're again pinpointing stuff that have the least to do with the topic at hand.

The only thing i would really need a response on is the last paragraph in my latest post quoting you, to see if you're ok with this. If you can agree to what i said then i know what i have to do.

Also someone else made a good point. If a user is given some sort of financial gain for leaving a vouch, this vouch will always be positive. How truthful is this bought vouch? Small details will change. Vouches that would say : "friendly service but slow delivery" will be posted as 'Superb service!". People who are unsatisfied with the service and would leave a negative response will now instead leave a mild positive one and never use the website again just so they can get the free gold. You're saying that u actually read vouches and scroll through pages, so (i hope atleast) that u would want to read honest vouches, right? Not biased ones from people who can use the gold (like u also claimed before) and who write biased positive reviews for the websites giving them free gp?

 

I support the idea of having vouches remain only in vouch threads, rather than a means to bump a trading thread.
It would also stop all the nonsense of having only quoted vouches in a vouch page which can easily by forged/edited/copied and used with malicious intent.

 

I support this, i think that vouches should be on a vouch page, they're there for a reason
I find it fair that if you sell something they can vouch for it on your page so people can see it's legit but not sure if the selling page should be the vouch page in essence.