I agree, ive sold atleast 50-60 items on here but only 30 people have bothered to leave me feedback, ive had a few people tell me they were unable to use the feedback system

 

The problem or why people don't use it compared to say Amazon review or Ebay feedback is the way it is done and linking sales/transactions to both buyer and seller. Obviously the thread URL is there to stop people abusing the system as the itrader system requires this. Or else I could just leave feedback for any person whether I had bought something or not. However a simple STAR system or radio buttons might be easier. So you could click on the person you have just bought from or sold to and in a few steps give your experience. Negative or positive.

Not quite sure how you could verify that a transaction has actually taken place but it must be possible

 

Youve got a number? Trading standards might be interested?

 

Would that not end up like the old reputation thing on here, Chris?

We know how farcical that was.

 

ah yes we don't want THAT back

gives me the shakes just thinking of it !

 

How difficult would it be to have a rating in %, with number of positive, neutral and negatives, over a month, six months, overall etc??

I don't accept the "ebay is bigger..." premise either.

It ALSO does far more trade than the paltry few on this site.

And every time there is a problem, Stu trots out the "We haven't got that many moderators..." line.

How difficult would it be to have a few more, then?

 

it wouldnt lol
should be a moderator for every section, a membership moderator, a couple general moderators and then site admins
site admins shouldn't have to deal with members problems ect just the website technically

 

I'm trying to be pragmatic here, but I'm tired so I may have missed something.
But..how would more moderators solve Addi's problem, or those in the same situation?

The following are things I already do - and TBH whilst its a headache its not something more mods would cure....

When a private seller is proven to be rogue, I ban them. Simple as that. Nobody can feasibly pre-empt a user as being dodgy until they actually show their true colours. Nor would more mods make investigation quicker; We see what you see with the exception of deleted threads, registration emails and IP addresses. A point about the latter; Some people think IP addresses give us the ability to see everything down to the what size underwear people have, they don't; IP addresses are VERY easily changed, so on its own its useless. I cry everytime someone naively asks us to ban IP address of a rogue user because it just doesn't work (although banning China's IP pools would help stop the spam ).

If its a civilised dispute, I won't get involved; Its difficult to arbitrate from a computer screen, as usually I'll end up siding with the person who types in the best mannered and constructive English (and because of this my initial judgement has been proven wrong a couple of times). But threads that get out of hand will get closed down if it escalates with no sight of amicable resolution. More mods wouldn't necessarily help here either; Even if they are good at arbitrating its doesn't guarantee a resolution if neither side sees eye to eye - that is down to the individuals concerned.

Authorised advertisers; Now that's a hot potato. Its does SN no favours if they do its users a disservice and we have mentioned this in the mods section on more than one occasion. Ultimately its left with Stu; and in this case he chased up Addi's issue with the one mentioned trader. I don't think any mods will ban an advertiser unless extreme circumstances permit or Stu gives that permission incase of his absence (the last time was when two traders kept arguing with each other putting the moderators in a extremely difficult predicament - a very rare situation thankfully). More mods would just mean more PMs to Stu asking him to sort it out.

The only thing more mods could help with (and something I'm not against by the way) is patrol of the sales sections. But it'd have to be someone totally dedicated to doing that. Getting rid of the folks who habitually ruin people adverts by ignoring the rules, and rooting out garden shed traders selling as a income and regular parts breakers pretending to be private sellers. Incidentally its usually these types of people we have problems with both when it comes to us questioning their selling activities and from users who buy item from them. And this is where more use of iTrader would helps us all massively.

Talking about iTrader. Yes its s**t and somewhat non intuitive. But its better than nothing and therefore no excuse not to use it. We can't do anything with it in terms of modifying as it requires the programmers who created it to re-write it (not sure if its open source or if its copyrighted) or for someone else to write a new VBulletin plug-in that also won't **** up the legacy stuff. Bear in mind VBulletin was created to allow people to communicate to each other, its use as a classifieds/rating system was and will always be an afterthought. A software coder isn't going to create or re-write a software plug-in if the costs of doing so don't prove worthwhile, so until then its something we will have to live with.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I am mindful of what will and won't help resolve issues on SN. I do have ideas that I believe are workable, but at the same time they are either massively restrictive to users or their privacy and therefore unpopular, or massively time consuming to implement and operate.

 

dirty mudflaps, what next?

will someone be accused of selling alloys without dustcaps

 

In fairness, Ali, the only reason I mentioned "not enough moderators" was because Stu did...and usually does.

 

Surely if traders are trading through SN then as moderators you should have a responsibility to investigate scenarios like this (using PM's used in SN, pictures, conversations or whatever means to get to the bottom of it).

I believe moderators should act as an intermediate seeing traders pay a premium to advertise. Yes items sold in question are second hand but surely there should be some kind of protection for buyers through SN.

Couple of happy reviews in some people receiving items from traders as what was described, where as others not. 8 people may have had received decent items whereas the other 2 may have received complete junk described as "mint"

 

Did I really? Where in this topic did I say that?

 

Aye, sorry Stu, what you SAID was:

And I read between the lines and remembered your comment to me last time this cropped up.

Fair enough?

 

Perhaps you should stop reading between the lines and quoting rubbish on other peoples behalf then?

I havent said we dont have enough moderators and adding more will not change the fact that moderators are not here to sit and read every single topic on the forum.

Each post has an RTM button that will alert the moderator to a problem and allow them to take a look at it. The webteam are not mind readers nor people who want to sit and read every single topic on a webforum "just in case" there is an issue.

If you have issues, report them, or expect them to go unseen... simple.

 

Yep...our fault as usual...easy to have a go at the people who support the site, rather than the advertisers, eh Stu?

I seem to remember in a previous thread being told that the moderators had lives, unlike some of us.... nice......

And the RTM button? Tells you what it's for, and it's NOT for problems with advertisers.

To be honest, Stu...and I usually am....IB and YOU accept money from advertisers.
I would believe that, in law, that makes BOTH of you liable if the advertisers aren't honest? Since you are VERY quick to point out that the site would be liable if folk on here libel others. What say?

 

This is exactly what iTrader provides, so I'm not sure that your point is? It's as good a tool as there is available, but as with any rating system, only provides value if the community use it. Even eBay doesn't force anyone to leave feedback, but the benefits of doing so is clear to both buyers and sellers.

 

That's exactly what it's for Jeff, along with anything else that needs highlighting to the mods. Problem with an advertiser, Report to Moderator, unless it's you and Bob/Aztec bickering again.

With the greatest of respect to SDB and Shaun, things are a lot different to how SN was run then and how it's ran now. In the olden days, you'd get infracted for abuse of the RTM system if it was something they thought wasn't worthy of an RTM.

I don't tend to bother with it for trivial things, that's not to say that I don't use it as I do. I just find it easier to shout "Lisa, sort this **** out."

 

Now don't we all wish we had own personal moderator RTM button sitting next to us on the sofa


BTW RTM this post, disgraceful

 

This is what you see when you click on RTM:

So...........?

What's your point?

Yes, iTrader is there..hard to find, hard to use, no reminders TO use it, IT'S CR@P!

It doesn't show, afaik, pos, neut and neg.

It should be easier to use, in the buyer's face, reminders etc etc. It's not, It's an afterthought.

I'm probably facing a ban now, because that's what happens if you threaten Stu's little kingdom. Or question his omnipotence.

Easier to ban people who have probably been around as long as he has, and paid for the privilege, than to sort the CR@P traders out!!!

One day, someone who knows the law will have IB and Stu over...I can hardly wait.

He'll come on now with ANOTHER piece of nastiness for me, 'cos I'm not in his gang...... BORING!

 

Or maybe because he didn't make you a mod! Hence your hump

 

Problems with advertisers would fall under problematic, as an ex teacher I would have thought you would know that.

I-trader is ******* piece of **** to use, it's not hard to find. It's a bit of a drawn out process, but, I could leave you feedback in under a minute probably.

Here's a screen grab of yours;



Not sure why you have such a bee in your bonnet about Stu, or being banned for speaking your mind. I wore my permaban with pride. He only runs the place on behalf of IB, his main concerns I would imagine will be in this order: Home/Family>Work>PassionFord>SN. Dunno what hobbies he enjoys so could be way out.

I'm not in any clique, but, I'll say what I want. I don't get any special treatment because Lisa moderates on here, if I stepped too far out of line she'd either moderate me, or RTM my posts and let someone else deal with me.

What SN does need, is another Admin. Not sure on Sal, retired I think, but since Kieran retired all the admin duties are his responsibilty. Been there, done that on a much smaller scale to SN, and trust me it's not an easy task.

 

1 what do you mean rogue though? when traders are delivering goods but there just crap and have very Poor CS then there not rogue and there going to be allowed to keep ripping people off

2 no offence to the mods but your not doing the job your name suggests
as said befor stu shouldnt be dealing with that lower crap. a stronger moderator team with more power and independence would resolve it. one person micro managing a whole site like this wont work.

3. then hire more? there free! how meny mods dose the site currently have may i ask?

4 vBulletin is a very powerful and very flexible bit of kit

id point out though that the version that this site runs on is quite out of date
vBulletin can do a lot though and it can do it well. just need setting up right

 

We are doing the 'job' as it is set out to us. One definition is 'a person given special authority to enforce the rules on a forum'. We do that, but, there are circumstances where we need to call on those higher than ourselves, this topic being a prime example. Same as technical problems, some problems need to be passed on to the tech guys, and the same as subscription problems, admin need to sort those as mods don't have that level of authority.

That is just how this forum runs, right or wrong in your eyes. We do our best in relation to what is expected of us. At the end of the day, it is up to IB how much authority they want moderators to have. If the level of 'power' we have at present is all they wish for us to have, it wouldn't matter in the slightest if the team was to double/triple etc. as these same issues would still need to be passed on.

 

1. Rogue PRIVATE seller (not trader). And I mean rogue as in proven to scam, intentionaly misdescribe goods and rip people off. I ban them, what more can I do?

Traders is Stu's domain due to them being financially tied with SN. We inform him, he makes the decision. I'm not going to act like I own/run the place when I don't (contrary to popular belief).

2. Job? My "Job" (or my voluntary time, to be more precise) here is to try and assist (although I'm mindful that some think that I makes things worse). I generally do what whats outlined in 1. I've monitored this thread since page one (hard not to miss it with the title ), Stu is informed about the known traders, and Addi has currently declined to name the others to give them a chance to resolve the issues, so no further action is required (yet).

3. I've never had an issue with having more, as long as its the right person (ideally with the patience of Job). Anyhoo, off the top of my head I think there are nine active mods (there are more listed, but some are inactive).

4. It is, but why is there no alternative plug-in to iTrader? Nor any upates to it since 2012. The developer who wrote it hasn't been online since July 2013. Like I said VB is optimised as a social platform for communicating, rather than a classifieds listing/rating system, so if there is no demands for a rating plug-in nobody is going to write or support one.

I'm guessing here but I think the older version of VB is used on here is mainly because of the legacy issues we have, SN has always been a buggy forum since the pre-VB days; Those darned scooby logos being one example of something that if messed with can mess up the site's performance. I still remember the issues last time some major updates were performed, it'll be a brave (or nieve) man who tries to update the forum software here LOL.

Sorry that I seem argumentative, but I am worn and weary of the same issues of which I'm relatively powerless to preemptively prevent or resolve.

 

Obviously Micky has replied to your post, but I'll bore you basically saying the same thing. (sort of)

I agree, that iTrader wasn't really advertised all that well, but as a result of this thread, there has been a sticky added to all of the sales sections promoting it, with a guide on how to use it. If that still isn't enough, what else can we possibly do? As has already been said, even ebay, which is a dedicated marketplace, doesn't force people to leave feedback.

As for the afterthought part, yes, it was an afterthought. I don't mean it in the same way as you though. No disrespect to previous owners, but there wasn't even a feedback system at all back in the day. The system was introduced to try to help members, but they have to use it. It might not be perfect, but it's something and if used properly, has the potential to be useful to both members and admin/mods as I said earlier. If a trader is repeatedly crap, and people leave such feedback, both mods and members have easy access to that information in order to investigate further. That isn't me pushing blame onto members, but people do have to take some amount of responsibility. Couple that with RTMs or even directly PMing either a mod or Stu if a problem arises, so we have a chance to actually look into something. A rant on a thread is all well and good, but help us out here, bring stuff to our attention. I can't guarantee the outcome, but if nobody comes to us directly with a problem, how can we be slagged off for not acting or even caring?

As for a ban, you have voiced your opinion and he has replied thus far without resorting to banning you. Everybody is entitled to an opinion, all I would ever say, is just go about it in a civil manner and there should be no reason why discussions would ever enter banning territory.

 

Unless I mention a certain trader...or even post on a thread about them? THEN I get an official warning.......

 

iv never seen any forum use any seller ratings system before. and iv never seen people getting ripped off quite so badly.

one forum i know has the details off all there sellers recorded (through paypal) and has actually reported rouge traders to the police and given details/helped investagations


there are lots off bugs and security problems with this version of VB. upgrading would probably help reduce that but i do understand how much work that is!

do the traders really pay that much that there immune from any repercussions on this forum? are IB trying to squease profit out of the forum? is funding really an issue? a lot of forums don't even have to have adverts to pay for the costs

9 moderators on a forum this size is low. its not tiny but its a lot lower than most

 

check out this

thats a vb plugin


also mod dedicated to the classifieds would more likely be aware of whats going on in that section. when users came up saying trader xy was crap then the mod would know if it was just someone overreacting or weather the trader had a history

 

i don't know about getting more mods but for god sake get yourself a spell checker, if you're serious about being a mod you have no hope with your comedy spelling.
If you cant be bothered to use a spell checker how will people take you seriously??

 

Indeed. He'll be telling us he's dyslexic next.

He keeps banging on about V-Bulletin plugins, yet doesn't seem to realise that the company that owns SN also owns VB.