Doing something about Ninjaing/Scamming. [Poll Added!]

[Lanayru]

In the nicest way... yeah, the staff mostly feels VERY out of touch with the trade scene and that reply reflects that very clearly. Of course trades aren't the current mods' top priority and I do not fault them for that, but maybe having a couple mods or at least helpers who are actually on top of the current trade scene would help. We have specialized staff for RP and Oekaki but not trades (something VERY integral to the site itself)? Feels a bit... silly.

[Nicnova]

In the nicest way... yeah, the staff mostly feels VERY out of touch with the trade scene and that reply reflects that very clearly. Of course trades aren't the current mods' top priority and I do not fault them for that, but maybe having a couple mods or at least helpers who are actually on top of the current trade scene would help. We have specialized staff for RP and Oekaki but not trades (something VERY integral to the site itself)? Feels a bit... silly.

I agree with this, I would personally love to have mods that are just there to give trade advice and speak on pet values, as well as moderate trading better so that newer players don't get the short end of the stick when it comes to trades. Because at this point, trading can be so complicated that a lot of players just choose either not to trade or to leave the site altogether. And trading is a huge part of the site.

[Halsie]

In the nicest way... yeah, the staff mostly feels VERY out of touch with the trade scene and that reply reflects that very clearly. Of course trades aren't the current mods' top priority and I do not fault them for that, but maybe having a couple mods or at least helpers who are actually on top of the current trade scene would help. We have specialized staff for RP and Oekaki but not trades (something VERY integral to the site itself)? Feels a bit... silly.

Agreed. It’s very silly not to have specialized staff for trading because trading is a HUGE part of this site. It’d be especially helpful and then “trade mods” could help determine who got scammed and whatnot. I think it’s a little ridiculous when someone so clearly got scammed and report it and all they get back was, “it wasn’t clear whether they were intentionally scamming you or not” (something along those lines).

[Coraline]

In the nicest way... yeah, the staff mostly feels VERY out of touch with the trade scene and that reply reflects that very clearly. Of course trades aren't the current mods' top priority and I do not fault them for that, but maybe having a couple mods or at least helpers who are actually on top of the current trade scene would help. We have specialized staff for RP and Oekaki but not trades (something VERY integral to the site itself)? Feels a bit... silly.

Yeaaah the part I agree with the most here is that there should be at least a COUPLE staff members familiar enough with the trading scene because its one of the biggest parts of CS yet it feels so.. forgotten? I guess not forgotten but I don't know how else to word it, knowing that people who blatantly take advantage of others and create a really toxic environment wont ever get punished but have the ability to push users away from the scene purely because of the ninjaing/scamming going around really just doesn't sit right with me at all.

Its hard to watch the trading scene turn into what it is especially when its the main reason I even use CS and the one thing I actually enjoy the most and I've tried a LOT to help out keeping it all stable and not feeding into other users greed/foul practices but my efforts just seem so useless. In the CSTM discord alone I have over nearing 7000 messages in the advice channel helping out users, providing proof and trying to keep things afloat but at the end of the day knowing that there are people (the SAME people) still doing these things, really just makes me feel like I'm wasting my time which is why I've put my support into this thread ^^;;

(just hoping that sheds a little bit of light on why my opinion is what it is.)

[Lacuna]

The structure of the site is for trade values to be subjective. It was created this way by Tess and Nick, who have stated since the beginning of CS that they do not desire to share a specific list of how many of each pet exist. That is what my reply speaks to, and why we do not and probably cannot have Trade Moderators who set values based on the people who spend all day trading and say someone was scamming based on conversation they didn’t know existed. My reply also speaks to 8 years of experience moderating subjective user interaction, and seeing people’s replies to how it was handled (privately and publicly) and doing my best to make the rules on behavior, content, etc. clear and enforceable.

A game that is focused on an intentionally subjective economy cannot enforce strict rules on that economy without ruining the nature of the game. Does this result in some people belatedly finding out they were “scammed” in a trade they were happy with? Yes. I won’t deny that. Should people intentionally try to manipulate others? No, but the probably will. However, I believe the most likely group to be hurt here is people who are not plugged into the pet value machinations, since that is statistically most people. They will send trades that get reported that are then evaluated by someone else’s standards of worth. So, we can only go by exactly what people say. When people do scam and get reported, we see it and deal with it, generally when they are a user who is very plugged in and has posted a lot showing that they are not trading based on their own posted beliefs.

I would support a tiny modification to the current rules that explicitly extends to examination of your recent posted interactions with other players or stated beliefs in your trade rules if you send an unfair “ninja” trade with no message about its fairness. Perhaps knowing they were accountable to that would kill people’s desire to argue down to tiny bits of value like .1 of some rare pet, which I think would make for healthier trading overall and harken back to the intention of the site. However, it would not change the fact that unfair trades are not against the rules since they cannot be as users don’t actually know what is fair.

[phxyvi]

The structure of the site is for trade values to be subjective. It was created this way by Tess and Nick, who have stated since the beginning of CS that they do not desire to share a specific list of how many of each pet exist. That is what my reply speaks to, and why we do not and probably cannot have Trade Moderators who set values based on the people who spend all day trading and say someone was scamming based on conversation they didn’t know existed. My reply also speaks to 8 years of experience moderating subjective user interaction, and seeing people’s replies to how it was handled (privately and publicly) and doing my best to make the rules on behavior, content, etc. clear and enforceable.

A game that is focused on an intentionally subjective economy cannot enforce strict rules on that economy without ruining the nature of the game. Does this result in some people belatedly finding out they were “scammed” in a trade they were happy with? Yes. I won’t deny that. Should people intentionally try to manipulate others? No, but the probably will. However, I believe the most likely group to be hurt here is people who are not plugged into the pet value machinations, since that is statistically most people. They will send trades that get reported that are then evaluated by someone else’s standards of worth. So, we can only go by exactly what people say. When people do scam and get reported, we see it and deal with it, generally when they are a user who is very plugged in and has posted a lot showing that they are not trading based on their own posted beliefs.

I would support a tiny modification to the current rules that explicitly extends to examination of your recent posted interactions with other players or stated beliefs in your trade rules if you send an unfair “ninja” trade with no message about its fairness. Perhaps knowing they were accountable to that would kill people’s desire to argue down to tiny bits of value like .1 of some rare pet, which I think would make for healthier trading overall and harken back to the intention of the site. However, it would not change the fact that unfair trades are not against the rules since they cannot be as users don’t actually know what is fair.

Who is reporting others for simply sending trades? The concern of EVERYONE is just means to reverse ninja trades! Prevention is difficult as obviously, it isn’t against the rules to send an unfair trade. But when that trade gets accepted and you can prove the person who sent it knew it was very unfair then it should be taken as scamming.

If the person isn’t “plugged in” to trading then their posts on the forums and their trade rules WILL reflect that. They aren’t in any dangers at all.

[nicole]

The structure of the site is for trade values to be subjective. It was created this way by Tess and Nick, who have stated since the beginning of CS that they do not desire to share a specific list of how many of each pet exist. That is what my reply speaks to, and why we do not and probably cannot have Trade Moderators who set values based on the people who spend all day trading and say someone was scamming based on conversation they didn’t know existed. My reply also speaks to 8 years of experience moderating subjective user interaction, and seeing people’s replies to how it was handled (privately and publicly) and doing my best to make the rules on behavior, content, etc. clear and enforceable.

A game that is focused on an intentionally subjective economy cannot enforce strict rules on that economy without ruining the nature of the game. Does this result in some people belatedly finding out they were “scammed” in a trade they were happy with? Yes. I won’t deny that. Should people intentionally try to manipulate others? No, but the probably will. However, I believe the most likely group to be hurt here is people who are not plugged into the pet value machinations, since that is statistically most people. They will send trades that get reported that are then evaluated by someone else’s standards of worth. So, we can only go by exactly what people say. When people do scam and get reported, we see it and deal with it, generally when they are a user who is very plugged in and has posted a lot showing that they are not trading based on their own posted beliefs.

I would support a tiny modification to the current rules that explicitly extends to examination of your recent posted interactions with other players or stated beliefs in your trade rules if you send an unfair “ninja” trade with no message about its fairness. Perhaps knowing they were accountable to that would kill people’s desire to argue down to tiny bits of value like .1 of some rare pet, which I think would make for healthier trading overall and harken back to the intention of the site. However, it would not change the fact that unfair trades are not against the rules since they cannot be as users don’t actually know what is fair.

I know of somebody who recently came back and got scammed and they reported it and were basically told, "It's up to you to learn your rarities and avoid getting ninja traded because there is really nothing the staff can do in regards to ninja trading." It was reported, however it was not dealt with? Also it doesn't make sense that unfair trades such as scamming are against the rule when they're taking advantage of another user's unawareness of values when this is literally a rule: "Players who create or control other accounts in order to get around our adoption limits will be banned and their pets will be taken away. All trades on Chicken Smoothie are permanently recorded and will be checked by our cheating detection system for signs of unfair gameplay."

^ Another way to take advantage of a something that was however taken into account and is punishable.

[bfdi]

Staff post links, warnings, and guides everywhere we currently can, especially around December 18th. I would not be opposed to a link in the trading page, but to what thread? No one can 100% accurately answer “is this trade fair” since it’s intentionally subjective. We cannot endorse just one guide; that failed in the past.

warning! a long paragraph! if you want everything in 2 words just skip to the end

i may start looking bad and offensive right now, but i don't think it'd be bad to add the FTT directly to the trade tab,
since it is supported and recreated by moderators every month as far as i have seen. even if it has failed before, it's not hurt to try.
and i just want to say about FTT that we come there not because we just want to hear a simple "yes fair accept" or "no unfair decline", but because we want to get opinions. nobody, nobody would ever accept the trade they're struggling with because someone told them it's fair without explaining nothing. or at least i don't know such people.
there is already a moderation and a clear tip saying to report users giving "bad" advices on purpose to get the successful trade

and let's be honest, we can't predict what people are going to say. "Fair Trade Thread" is not only used to know if something is fair or not. somebody may actually know the value, but ask about the demand and if someone would take that trade or not. because someone may offer a UR rat for a dragon cat pps, and it's not the deal of just value anymore, it's the deal of demand. and as a person who accepted a UR rat for dragon cat pps i'm telling you NOT TO DO SO IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR TRADE-UPS unless you are a rat fan of course. i were literally getting 20+ trades daily on dragon cat while i got none on my UR rat. how were i supposed to know that it has such a bad demand amongst the users? i'd say this paragraph's getting too personal, but this is a conclusion, finally.
we need the FTT in there not because someone before giving an advice must know every value of every pet, but because we can get and tell opinions. of course it is an overpay for the dragon cat pps, but would you take that trade knowing that you'll gain literally 0 offers on the rat besides our favorite scams or people trying to lower it's worth for the reason above? would you? this is also a question to ask in the FTT.
and i know that FTT is pretty active nowadays and never falls asleep, i can see it pretty often in recent forum messages, but it's still kind of hard to find it within all those forums.
a situation :
you are a newbie and you barely know how everything works here, but you heard of so called thread where people gather together and solve trading issues. but. where do you find it? how are you supposed to find this thread among all the other ones?
and you wouldn't believe how many scam trades i've gotten while just sharing what did i get from the pound not knowing about FTT existence
and talking about, the FTT and the other threads linked in my signature are being used by if not everyone, but by massive part of CS community. and if you are a newbie and want to get into all the trading as fast as possible, is it bad to know what is everyone's opinions based on? yes, i know that the pets' values are subjective and unstable due to demand, but we all do start from nothing and have no idea what a non, a sorb or a ma is.

okay, summing everything up, why do we need a FTT straight in trading tab?

- it may be hard for newbies to find it in all those forums, since we have a lot of themes and sub-themes ;
- FTT is not just a place to give or get a specific answer for your question. it's known as a thread where people get opinions, since you might not really know if you should accept that UR rat for your dragon cat pps, even if that's an overpay, because you have no idea how do other users value it ;
- FTT and such threads used by everyone on this site, even if every value is subjective, when we're joining CS we have no opinion nor value idea, so it's not bad to start off with the threads that were used by everyone from the start so we get at least some context of fair and unfair ;
- FTT has an actual moderation for bad advices which are only written to take an advantage of unexperienced player. this thread supported by moders where they do often give advices themselves ;
- scams actually has gone too far if we think about it. it's no hurt to at least link the Fair Trade Thread in trading tab or as one of helpful tips appearing in the forum.

i'm done. i deeply apologize if this looks messed up or you don't get my logic, because english is not my first language.

that is my opinion, it's not bad if you are disagreeing with me, it's free to tell your opinion here too.

[eyesemote]

Support, I was very active when I joined back in 2011 and it was nowhere near as bad as it is now, I'd argue the site trade-wise USE to be better back then. You'd be able to do simple rarity swaps, I remember having the Shima long tail or the drink me dog from doing legit trades. Now you'll be lucky to get any pet in demand regardless of rarity without massive OP. C$ seems to now be totally useless with one list pet costing upwards to over a hundred dollars which is plain ridiculous considering it seems everyone has forgotten all C$ comes from paying customers. The staff need to take trading more serious considering it's the main pull of the site, I'm not talking the volunteers either, I mean higher ups in management. Y'all will seriously lose people who are willing to drop hundreds on this game from inaction. See this post as warning, don't let CS drop into the void where less than a hundred players actually participate.

[Halsie]

One thing I would also like to add is that I know quite a few people who have been scammed(ninja’d) by the same user(s) and they reported it as well. Since multiple people have reported certain users who have scammed, why are these users still on the site? I think it’s obvious if you’re getting multiple reports about the same individual that clearly they are the problem and something should be done. I hope that didn’t come across as harsh, I’m just confused as to why certain known scammers are still around and are still scamming.