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

[far]

trading and thinking of methods to profit is fun. scamming ruins the game for everyone and I don't know why anybody would think that its enjoyable, there are so many ways to gain worth without taking advantage of others. use ur brain. some people are just sad tbh

Agreed. I don't scam or ninja and always state I know a trade is unfair when I send a trade I know is unfair. And I have a couple valuable pets.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think this site is a good example to it's young userbase when opinions like the ones that were anonymously sent are so common.

[Mewfles]

These messages were sent anonymously. Halsie mentioned this as well. Two were sent to a public tumblr blog, and the other was sent on a burner account on Flight Rising to nicole, the original poster of this thread.

There is nothing wrong with scamming.. how else are users expected to profit? >.<

Cs so toxic. They are hating on the scammers when it is literly part of the game smh.. Like if u don’t no you’re values judt say that.

Not a fan of your Chicken Smoothie thread. If your so against scamming why are you on a trading site? Like ofc were going to do anything for profit ;-;

This is the mindset that users have since almost nothing is done about ninja trades, or sometimes even scammers. And it makes for an extremely toxic trading environment here on CS. No new player is going to learn how to play the game and stay if this is how users will treat them and not get punished for it.

If this is how users feel about trading that's really depressing

Agreed with others on how there's ways to profit without scamming, for instance some people will get rid of horses because their personal value for them is low, or rats ect. you can then trade it up to someone who likes them and values them better, it's not scamming, it comes down to some people view different pets differently.
You can also always be active during events with banners and trade those pets off for better pets based on demand and what not, overall there's plenty of ways to up the value of what you have without resorting to scams.
Edit: Wanted to note demand plays a huge role in value of pets, which means that at any point the worth of a pet can lower and drop at any point, just because a pet used to go for lets say a 2020 rare doesn't mean it will always, especially when rarities drop

[nickjr]

I just found this topic but didn't read all 10+ pages since that's a lot of pages maybe later I will

but first I want to say this:

1. I support this. I hate "you should have known" with a burning passion and I hate that I was indoctrinated into that kind of thinking.

2. If I were to send or accept a trade that is unfair to someone who doesn't know their rarities and just wanted shiny pets, regardless of whether it's a complex or simple trade, what would happen to me?

I'm a long-time user, and even if you ignore all the high-value pets I adopted myself, I still traded for many valuable pets through various means. But I am not a confident trader. I don't know trading values. If you look through my posts, you'll find that since about 2015 or so, I don't have many posts pertaining to actual pet values (my posts on the Rares List thread are all about the structure, what to do with it, poll biases, etc. I had nothing to do with pet placement).

2a. I know basic fairness. What happens if someone who's new sends me a trade that significantly but not egregiously unfair to me and I accept it? e.g. I'm not talking about them offering a Sunjewel for my 2021 common, but more like them offering an Advent 2009 rare for my 2021 store pet.

2b. I'm lost with fairness when it comes to more complex trades. What happens if someone who's new sends me a trade with a ton of pets on their side and a ton of pets on my side and I accept it because it doesn't seem that bad in either direction (because I can't tell) to me and they later find out it's unfair to them?

(I assume that sending the trade back asking "are you sure?" would do nothing)

EDIT:

3. I hate to bring this up, but are we even confident about what's fair and unfair? I support something being done about players who have repeatedly demonstrated in recent times that they know pet values yet send blatant ninja trades. But the Rares List was discontinued for a reason (people don't understand exponential growth, and people also don't know why the 2008 pets from certain times are valuable... looking at you, Black Advent and BMD, just as rare as your siblings... looking at you, August 2008 rats, so ridiculously rare yet so ridiculously undervalued.......) so what about more complex trades? Trades involving a lot of pets?

[Fleabag.]

Been reading this whole thread for like 30 minutes now and i agree with all of it. Next month marks my 10 year anniversary on this site and i‘ve taken a lot of long hiatus’s throughout but I’ve watched chicken smoothie evolve in the last decade and a lot of good things have been added but it feels like there hasn’t really been progress made towards some of the negative things (scamming has always been an issue, it’s prevalent on every trading site) but i feel like right now it’s worse than ever especially with dec.18th just passing. People have also just gotten straight up mean. At least in my experience. I really have nothing else to add other than I’m super glad to see someone speaking about this, and i hope mods read this and make change.

Cheers everyone xx

[nicole]

I'm really glad to see a bunch of people supporting me on speaking out about this issue! I've been struggling badly with responding to anything because I've sorta been going through it as I wasn't too sure if this was the right thing to post or not, but it's nice to see people can also see how all of this has gotten way too far. I really do hope we can do something to change this (:

[bark]

Major support.
Warning/posting things on the front page about ninja trading can only help so much.

If a user has been getting reported on constantly about ninja trading/scamming, staff has to do something at LEAST. I can get why it's difficult, (since unfair trades can get easily confused) which is why staff should conduct thorough investigations for scamming before issuing punishments. (Check trade history, check message history to see if they know values, etc...)

Ninja trading IS scamming, no matter how much people make excuses to justify it.

[Ariete]

I don't absolutely not support some trading overhaul, but I do have some thoughts. The thing is that there is, objectively, no such thing as an 'unfair' trade. I mean, the point of most trades is to maximise what you can get from another user by offering them something they want, which is the maximum they're willing to get in return, and so on. But you don't NEED to do that for a trade to be fair. Scamming and ninja-ing where you're being told 'this is clearly worth this or that, go on, you should accept' is obviously misleading and problematic, but if you're happy to accept the trade there is nothing you should have 'known better' because it can be argued there is nothing to 'know' anyway.

Back in the day (from 2011) I was a very active contributor to the FTT. There were only 4 years' worth of pets to deal with, so being able to put them all in a list, remember the list and go off of that was pretty easy. But even then people would disagree with me! I'd be like, sure, just add this, and somebody else would say actually, this should really be like this. That's the problem with trying to assign a value to something. Even back then, things weren't as simple as 'this is worth this!'. It became a case of having to put disclaimers on my posts, like, "Please get a second opinion! I'm no expert!" But then, who is???

If you COULD have gotten more, I don't know if that's worth blame. While I'm very glad it's gone, I feel like the lack of a central 'list' is what has made a lot of trades widely unaffordable now because everyone's overpaying just to 'be on the safe side'. Even slightly rarer pets from this past Halloween and Christmas were auctioned off at values normally reserved for, like, 2010 pets. Were trades lower than that a scam? Were they really worth that? A trade is between two people only, and I would argue that, if you're unsure or making a high-stakes trade, it's best practice to ask what your partner thinks. Directing people to the FTT, where you're absolutely going to get some level of conflicting responses, wouldn't be the worst idea, BUT it would still mean you'd have to do your own research on which one to go for. It might give you a ballpark, but nobody has to agree on that.

Also re: Trade Mods: Disregarding the fact that this won't happen, I would also really dislike for myself and others to be made to feel out of the loop by enforcing user-made trade values against which to judge fair trades. Many, many users would have had no input, and they'd all just be based on somebody sending a trade once way back when which everyone has since copied closely.

[good vibrations]

The thing is that there is, objectively, no such thing as an 'unfair' trade. I mean, the point of most trades is to maximise what you can get from another user by offering them something they want, which is the maximum they're willing to get in return, and so on. But you don't NEED to do that for a trade to be fair.

i'm going to just say that this is absolutely untrue. sending two '09 rares for a dec 18th OMGSR is objectively unfair, and i see that all the time with known ninjas. there has to be something done to curb ninja trades, especially those as egregious as that.

[Lex.]

Popping in to show support. I've read some peoples post, and though I do still believe it's up to a user to find the value of their own pets, seeing how others have said that scamming is just a part of the game kind of disgusted me. Yes, you can scam. Does NOT in any way mean you should. In theory you can do anything, but from a moral standpoint you shouldn't, obviously. Why is the first thing you think of on a children's pet adoption site to scam kids, or anyone on here for that matter?

I can definitely agree that many scammers most likely do get away with a lot and it's disheartening.
After some thinking, reading posts, and looking into some things, there is for sure an issue. When there is a trading feature in a game, there are always going to be people that will try and take advantage of others. That's life, but the fact that so little is done to mitigate those efforts of said players isn't ok.

As I said before, you can't always tell when it comes to ninja trades, but if there were a group of specified staff for this whole trading issue would be great. Users who have been actively trading for years or who are familiarized with demand + values, etc. They could monitor the trade threads, and trades. When receiving reports, they could go through the trade messages and look at different interactions from the users on site. Unfortunately, messaging could be done off-site, and that raises another issue. But I think having that would keep the burden off of other staff members, and help site-wide with these kinds of issues.

I really hate to see this kind of thing on a game that is my kind of escape, and now that I've read about others experiences, I think I'm seeing more of the bigger picture. I'm trying not to be harsh because I know that staff have their own lives and can't always dedicate their entire day to CS, but clearly more needs to be done.

The thing is that there is, objectively, no such thing as an 'unfair' trade. I mean, the point of most trades is to maximise what you can get from another user by offering them something they want, which is the maximum they're willing to get in return, and so on. But you don't NEED to do that for a trade to be fair.

i'm going to just say that this is absolutely untrue. sending two '09 rares for a dec 18th OMGSR is objectively unfair, and i see that all the time with known ninjas. there has to be something done to curb ninja trades, especially those as egregious as that.

I agree with gay here. Many people say these kind of things to take advantage of less experienced traders. I played Animal Jam religiously as a kid, and I've familiarized with so many ways scammers try to take advantage of players it's not even funny. I'm glad I quit that game when I did, the community was horribly toxic and the scammers never gave up and It was awful. To see some CS users be so toxic when trading is not great. It's not a "one size fits all" deal, and there are plenty of borderline scammers/ninjas that I still see trading on this site.

[Ariete]

The thing is that there is, objectively, no such thing as an 'unfair' trade. I mean, the point of most trades is to maximise what you can get from another user by offering them something they want, which is the maximum they're willing to get in return, and so on. But you don't NEED to do that for a trade to be fair.

i'm going to just say that this is absolutely untrue. sending two '09 rares for a dec 18th OMGSR is objectively unfair, and i see that all the time with known ninjas. there has to be something done to curb ninja trades, especially those as egregious as that.

I understand that we go by that. What I'm arguing is that any trade is an agreement between any two people, so if they're happy with it, that's that. I'm not talking about people who are actively encouraging others to give up their pets for a quick laugh - I agree we could do with some sort of assessment of trading in general. But what it boils down to is that you can actually trade your pets for whatever you want. Blanket rules where you get flagged for a trade that you're both fine with just can't be implemented. There is no objective assessment of values beyond rarity bars, and it gets tricky to enforce because where do you draw the line? The solutions seem to be either moderate every trade or link to a post where you can ask opinions. That's fine and might be a start, but there's nothing concrete to base it on, especially when you get to seemingly identical pets with the same rarity bar, or when people start expecting demand. I'd love to treat the Shima Longtail like any other '09 rare. If I didn't know its worth, I'd hate to be called a scammer because I wasn't clued in to CS economics.