Why no troll thread?

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Vertigo Acid

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Am I the only one that thinks it would be benificial to keep a thread of banned troll information... like every other FS/T forum does?
 
There's plenty of sites that have that recorded. It would be nice to have though.
 
So no comment from the people who "work" here?
Is it because there is absolutely no fucking excuse?
 
There should be a sticky of confirmed trolls. At least right?
 
Yeah those two sites are good, but that doesn't help if the person has a different name for the [H].

I think there isn't a [H] troll list because of the amount of time that it would eat up for whom ever mods it. Which is understandable.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
So no comment from the people who "work" here?
Is it because there is absolutely no fucking excuse?
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We deal with trolls as we come upon them and find evidence to ban them.

You trade here or anywhere else at your own risk, don't ever forget that.

Frankly, I get tired of hearing people scream "troll, troll!" when they didn't take proper precautions in 99.99% of the cases. Then they cry for help with their deals gone bad. Sorry, but that ain't our job.

We are not here to hold your hand or lend a virtual shoulder to cry on when you get ripped off because you didn't follow safe trading practices.

We are not planning to start any troll list. Bad traders here are given that as a custom title when they are banned. Do your homework before you trade.

I don't mean to sound cold or heartless, but if you knew how many PMs I get asking me to intervene in bad deals, you'd understand how I feel.
 
Not cold at all. Just matter-of-fact, which is good.

Thanks on the clarification. :)
 
mgleason007 said:
Or maybe because they already said it in something you should've read first :rolleyes:
http://www.hardforum.com/announcement.php?f=99&announcementid=4
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Great :rolleyes:
Linking to other forums for troll lists... that's great for people that originate here :rolleyes:
When are we going to start realizing that we can't have a safe trading forum unless things change?
Lethal said:
We deal with trolls as we come upon them and find evidence to ban them.

You trade here or anywhere else at your own risk, don't ever forget that.

Frankly, I get tired of hearing people scream "troll, troll!" when they didn't take proper precautions in 99.99% of the cases. Then they cry for help with their deals gone bad. Sorry, but that ain't our job.
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Like hell it isn't. Y'all should step up and be there for the membership like the Mods are at every other FS/T forum. Besides, you made it that much easier for trolls by allowing free-emails... I completely understand that everything in FS/T is always at one's own risk... but that is no excuse for opening the floodgates for the trolls to pour in and thrive here due to lax policy. It's a bunch of reactionists, no one wanting to take the pre-emptive, proactive steps to reduce the problem *before* people get ripped off.
Lethal said:
We are not planning to start any troll list. Bad traders here are given that as a custom title when they are banned. Do your homework before you trade.
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Isn't that what a troll list is for, so you can quickly check out a person before you trade with them? :rolleyes:
Lethal said:
I don't mean to sound cold or heartless, but if you knew how many PMs I get asking me to intervene in bad deals, you'd understand how I feel.
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No, actually I have no sympathy for you at all Lethal. You're a great admin around here, but with great power comes great responsibility. How hard would it be to make a list of the people you are banning as "Bad Traders"? If I remember correctly, you used to have a thread in here that was just that, but it basically ended up never being used and then disappeared altogether. It all smack of laziness or lack of motivation, every bit of it.
 
I appreciate your thoughts on how we should do things and they will be seriously looked at. However, the fact that things are not done the way YOU would like to see them done does not make anyone here as you have likely described them as above. The bottom line is that it is my forum and I set the rules that it opperates on. If you feel you need to attack anyone, please make sure I am the focus of that.

If you have anything new to say, please add it now. Bringing this up over again in a new thread will lead to you losing your posting rights. Being redundant will lead to the same. I do not have all day to run around replying to the same rant over and over. (Not saying you do this, it just tends to be an overall pattern I see.)
 
Vertigo Acid said:
If I remember correctly, you used to have a thread in here that was just that, but it basically ended up never being used and then disappeared altogether.
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Man, there's a lot of hot blood around here, lately. Threads get "post deleted" out for the faintest scent of something stupid. Makes you shake your head.

And on this, how can you not agree with DA? I mean, it's like a "duh?!!" For goodness sake, trolls are everywhere. They appear to be multplying geometrically. The problem is that any forum that works is magnetic to them. It's seems like any tool that could help reduce the problem just HAS to make sense. And Lethal, denial of knowledge of "trollness" just DOES NOT preclude liability. You chose to live in a changing world.

On the other hand, most troll lists are a waste of time. Look at AT's. Useless. (But they are so WAY more aggressive in trying to control)

I'd like to see a troll list that had an alphabetic leftmost list of known user names with each name clickable and linked to the details of his case. Maybe a username searchbox on the top. Maybe in the middle of each record row a link to known alias' Maybe on the rightmost an update or activity date. Whatever. It just needs to be easily searchable.

VA is right about another thing: a decent troll list would be LOTS of effort. But the [H] leads the way in so many areas. Why not this one? You could probably get volunteers. Maybe VA wants to do it.

It's a good idea. Why not try to find a way to do it well instead of a reason not to do it at all?
 
Feel free to make and maintain you own troll lists and we will happily put a sticky link to them in our forums. Now that the work is in your lap, lets see how aggressive you care to be about it. This offer is open to anyone.
 
Definitely a heated topic and one that looks like you'll probably never find the "optimal" solution. Bottom line, like others have been saying, updating and maintaining a list takes alot of time. And besides that, even if we did have a Troll list in the forum, it would take about 2 seconds for the Trolls to come up with a new nick so you'd more than likely be spending a boat load of time updating a list for nothing. Its just like the others have been saying all along, YOU need to use safe trading practices and are responsible for what happens in YOUR trade and don't bitch at Kyle and the others when your not paying a cent for use of their forums. Be thankful you have a forum in the first place!

Just my opinion anyway :D
 
Traders just need to be smarter, verify peoples heat... make sure you have their contact info.. if someone has no references don't send money or items first... just use common sense and you should be ok.
 
you have to reg with a non free email, If you want the person your trading withs non free. email, then ask for it.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
Besides, you made it that much easier for trolls by allowing free-emails... It's a bunch of reactionists, no one wanting to take the pre-emptive, proactive steps to reduce the problem *before* people get ripped off.
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Do you know how much time the mods had to spend trying to enforce the "no free email" policy? Now that was an example of spinning our wheels over something petty when people would post "Here's my obligatory non-free email addy, but don't use it because I don't check it." If you want a non-free addy, ask for it, verify it, tell them you won't do a deal without it. How hard is that? The ball is in your court. And for the record, most ISPs allow multiple email addys these days... I can log in and make a new one in about a minute's time.

Exactly what "pre-emptive, proactive steps" are you suggesting we take? We don't know who's a bad trader before there's a bad deal any more than you do. No crystal ball here, if you have one in good working order, pay it forward and I'll put it to good use.

ickywu said:
And Lethal, denial of knowledge of "trollness" just DOES NOT preclude liability. You chose to live in a changing world.
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I have no idea what you are talking about. Liability for what? "I sent hundreds of dollars up front to a newbie with no references and all I've got is a hotmail addy and now he's ignoring me. OMG, help me, I've been trolled!" Whose fault is that?

ickywu said:
What's your best advice?
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There's a lot of good advice about safe trading in the FS/T Rules. But I'd say the best advice is to trust your gut instincts. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don't let the dollar signs in your eyes cloud your vision and lure you into something your instinct otherwise warns you against.

You want to know how we catch most of the returning bad traders? They give themselves away by using the same heat, the same IM or posting the exact same items they were trying to sell when they got banned. The FS/T mods here notice things like that. If you see something that looks suspiciously familiar from a brand new member, do a search, report their post. The trading community needs to be proactive in looking out for their own as well. The FS/T forum moves very fast and there is no way for the mods to review every post in every thread.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
Kyle,
Could I get a list those traders that have already been banned as "Bad Trader"?
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Sorry no, we do not have an easy way to go through the 40K+ registered accounts to pull that information.
 
I have to say I agree with the mods. I have done many high $ trades here and have never been burnt. Why? Well I simply do my homework up front. And when I do a deal, I get sufficient information on who I am dealing with or the deal doesn't happen. If I get a bad feeling about a deal or don't feel good about I don't do it. You are taking a risk in every deal you do in any forums. But you can be smart. I get full information on every deal I do, and I make sure I follow up fully. If someone is hedging on providing me what I require, I walk away from the deal. Heatware is good, but there are many other steps to take to minimize your risk. I have traded Laptops, PC's, LCD's and parts, and all have went exactly as expected. Why, because again I follow my own preset guidelines. If people don't like them, then we don't deal. And especially if a person has very minimal heat or negative heat, they either ship first or no deal. Life is too short to stress out over a trade.. :)
CTSxViper
 
I agree with CtxViper here. He and I have done a ton of trades and even now we still do 75 PMs and probably a phone call or 3 to work things out. I have probably scared about 10 [H] members by asking for their phone #s and then calling them if I am buying something for much more than $50. It amazes me that people don't get all teh info up front when doing trades. I have built up some heat doing trades and all of my trades have gone smoothly simply because of this.

At the same time it would be nice to have a quick "troll" rundown thread stickied here and I would be more than happy to help in administering to it. Seems like I spend about half my day staring at these forums anyway might as well be doing something constructive :)

Trey
 
Tormond said:
At the same time it would be nice to have a quick "troll" rundown thread stickied here and I would be more than happy to help in administering to it. Seems like I spend about half my day staring at these forums anyway might as well be doing something constructive :)
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Well, we're on our own then. There's no way to find out who has already been banned, and unless a mod or someone feeds info about bannings, then we have nothing save TTT threads that as of late have been getting locked before the outcome is even known, with the message that since the private parties are communicating, that it is no longer public.... that also bothers me. If I read a thread that X might be a troll, and it is locked without an outcome, what am I supposed to think? There is rarely follow-up :(

Anyways, I'm working on a script that will pull bad trader info from member.php
for example:
http://hardforum.com/member.php?u=66655
Bad Trader shows up on that page
 
Tormond said:
I have probably scared about 10 [H] members by asking for their phone #s and then calling them if I am buying something for much more than $50. It amazes me that people don't get all teh info up front when doing trades.
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That is exactly the point I was trying to make here. :)

Most people simply don't bother taking those kinds of precautions to protect themselves. If someone is scared away because you asked for their phone # and wanted to call to confirm, then you just don't deal with people like that.

Instead, they get stars in their eyes and think a deal is too good to pass up, and it's on [H] so it must be legit, right? :rolleyes:

Truth is, just about every "bad deal" I've ever investigated could have been avoided if proper precautions had been taken.

Then they scream "Troll!" and want us to make it right for them. Sorry, but I don't have a magic wand that can retroactively erase your naivete.
 
Yeah if they won't give me the info I request then I just don't need to do the deal. There is nothing online I need badly enough to potentially lose hundreds of dollars over. I am not a tightwad and I do tend to blow a lot of cash on the stuff that I find interesting but I will spend an extra $50 if that is what it takes to have a safe trading experience.
 
Well, looks like this thread has sort of wandered off into "how to protect yourself against trolls" land...
Probably said a few things in this thread that are inflammatory at best, and poorly thought through intentional baiting at worst, and I want to appologize for that, as that's not my intent; I don't wish to let this devolve into arguing back and forth with a mix of personal insults that doesn't end up benifiting anyone. It's not good for the community, and that's really what I'm trying to help out. If anyone wants to talk to me about this topic, PM or e-mail. Not sure yet how the troll thread will work out but we'll see ;)
Thanks to Kyle and Lethal for hearing me out on this :)
Good night all
 
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