DavidR

My Feedback: (1)

Ozcan,

You posted a negative rating on my "Trader Karma" I have never traded anything with you.

(edited by RCadmin as topic has changed below...David..fixed per discussion - marc)

mvigod

The karma feedback is to be used only for those who you have conducted transactions with. It is against the sites rules to post a seller or buyer feedback rating for anyone who you have not done business with. These rules will be posted shortly so in the future everyone will know how to use this tool effectively as it was meant to be utilized.

Any user that rates another user or several deliberately and continously after understanding that it is not proper or fair to do so will have their privilege to rate others removed as well as all ratings made withdrawn. This is to be fair to the buyers and sellers here as well as to make this new tool a valuable resource for those who buy and sell here.

Thanks for your cooperation in advance!

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

I hate to say it, Marc, but the ratings system is probably a very ill-conceived idea. Take it from somebody who is a serious ebay trader with 3000+ positives...the feedback system and its implications are much, much more complicated than what you have, and you are going to spend a LOT of time with this for no good effect. I would ditch it ASAP. Good luck.

mvigod

EasyTiger,

Give me some suggestions on how to improve it...I'm a believer that there are always answers out there if you are willing to find them. We are considering a "que" where each rating would be reviewed and validated prior to going live into a members rating. The main difference between our system and ebay as I see it is they only allow a rating when an auction closes where here you could conceivably rate somebody you never did business with. Now by validating a rating and cross checking with the other party some additional legitimacy is obtained.

We have 7000 smart brains on this site so between all of us we can come up with some good ideas on how to make this as bulletproof as it needs to be so it is an effective tool for each user here.

Sound off....

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

My STRONG suggestion is to NOT have ratings. Do it like the old RCO, just like you had it, with a good/bad/ugly forum. That's enough. When people post something negative about someone, the mods can check into it to see about the veracity.
With the ratings system, whether you make it transaction-related or not, always makes for a lot of retaliatory feedback, hard feelings, whatever. Trust me on this. Ebay, with a lot more experience, and a lot more users, has really NOT perfected the ebay system, not by a long shot. And with some 38,000,000 users, and a staff perhaps a bit bigger than yours, they have not really made the system perfect. There are a LOT of really disgruntled people out there, buyers and sellers alike, who are still cringing from undeserved negatives that cannot be removed without making the whole system unfair. It goes around and around.
I'm an ebay gold powerseller, and I belong to the powerseller-only forum and such, and have heard all the opinions and suggestions about feedback systems, and there is no perfect solution. Maybe you can have mods visit each person and get a notarized statement from each side for each transaction to keep people from making false feedback...
This is just one of those things that is going to suck up a HUGE amount of your time for no real gain. I think you have better things to do.
Look...it ALREADY has caused a problem for David Reid. Look at your OWN feedback. Now, if you remove your own neutral, you've already violated the sanctity of the system.
I just think this is not a great idea.

Brian B

My Feedback: (5)

I agree, this is a BAD idea. No good can come from it. This is not another ebay, it is a jet forum. I do not see trading and buying as a meaningful part of this forum, and would urge that the rating system be removed forthwith.

mvigod

What our thinking is actually to do the good bad and ugly in terms of execution (i.e. moderated ratings like that forum) but the presentation is alongside the user instead of in the gbu forum. In other words you track the users good, bad and ugliness with the karma interface which is easier but to get your rating and comment in there would be a que just like in the GBU now...it might require a little more work as the presentation lends itself to more ratings being made than are in the gbu but it could be manageable just like it is now. So really no difference in how the info is input compared to now but more how it is displayed....

Brian - the trading is part of the site...lots of stuff is bought and sold here daily...why would it not be part of this site or forum? Or are you saying the table shouldn't show in the discussion forum display and only when viewing the buy/sell forums? Not sure I understand what you mean here...

bcovish

My Feedback: (8)

I think having this type of rating system is just opening up another can of worms. It seems as though it has already happened to D. R. This was an obvious miskae or someone who has a bone to pick. Trying to get it rectified could take some time, in the meantime his reputation is on the line as far as trading on this list. If it turns out that the post was in error, it's to late sometimes. It's like the judge telling the jury to disregard the last remark. NO WAY
On my posts there is ONE positive, tried to find out who it is from and can't. What if the ONE rating was a negative and couldn't find out who posted it to defend myself. I'm guilty as charged and can't do anything about it.
If anyone wants to do business with me, I can furnish references and they are all on this list.
MY $02.

bcovish

My Feedback: (8)

It seems as though something has since reading about Karma this morning. Then you had to have two ratings before you could out who rated you. Now it's only one. That's a step in the right direction if you are going to have this kind of feedback on the list.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

I think the question becomes this: who is likely to rip people off or do shady deals? Probably someone with a little-used user name. How effective is this system, really? All a person has to do is register a new user name. There's no real piece of mind to be found, and a fair amount of bad feelings that can be created.

It's a nice idea, but it assumes everybody is honest. The nature of the system would suggest that not everyone is, and that destroys the integrity of the system.

Brian B

My Feedback: (5)

What I meant was that the discussion forum is not the place for rating buyers/sellers. That forum should be only for discussion of jet related topics. If you are determined to have a rating system, it should be confined to the Buy/Sell area. Even there, I think it is a BAD idea, pretty much guaranteed to lead to hostility and flaming sessions. Who needs that?

SMALLFLY-

My Feedback: (19)

While I agree ratings sytems are useless, why do they have to appear on every post. Why not make it accessable only from the sellers profile that an interested individual can look up if he likes. Less stuff to load on the screen and it wont have undue influence on wether a persons information on another topic is good

DavidR

My Feedback: (1)

As I mentioned in my personal message to Marc the "Trader Karma" system the way it is now leads to abuse. Anyone can post anything about anyone. You can register as different users and "pad" your own rating if you want. If you make someone mad along the way just with your posts that guy can slander your reputation without any checks and balances. I tend not to put much faith stock in the positive feedback when I do buisness over the net anyway. I know when I used to trade on ebay regularily I had sellers, and buyers alike contact me after the deal asking for me to add positive feedback.

Marc,

You are doing a fantastic job with this site, and are to be commended for all the effort you put into it. Keep up the good work.


David Reid

mvigod

Ok...I've at least temporarily pulled the karma module down until we get some kinks sorted out...

A few quick points..users can only use seperate usernames by having multiple computers, emails and such and then the extra ratings would be by "dummy" accounts with little or no posts and the post counts will show up in the karma rating list so if you had 10 ratings and 4 of them were by users with zero posts you can of course draw your own conclusions whether you trust their ratings...that gets around that.

This will obviously have to be a moderatred feedback system like the good,bad, ugly forum for the reason many of you mention above.

Here are some thoughts...allow positive and neutral remarks only. This lets you know who the good guys are so you can have a better trust of them. Bad buys can be submitted to the GBU forum for review as now. What the system will then do is tell you much better who is good and trustworthy but won't necessarily tell you who is bad if they don't have lots of ratings. This gets around the abuse...any positive ratings with a negative comment gets deleted no questions asked. We may also que and moderate all positive and neutrals to ensure they are valid prior to allowing it to go into a users permanent feedback rating.

There are a few other safeguards to put in to ensure less abuse but I think we can get a working model that helps much without the pitfalls in the first "Karma Beta v 1.0" you witnessed.


As for the data accumulated so far much of it is "dirty" so we will possibly go through it to clean it up or delete it and start fresh as it was only 36 hours of rating data.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

Not really. The point of the system is to inspire confidence. Does that mean only guys with 200 posts and 10 positives will be able to make a deal? There's some cultural stuff to think about here.

Also, you missed my point about dishonest people getting around the system. Many of the items for sale are for sale by new users. How is a person supposed to differeniate between a newbie and someone who's merely registered a new name? IP addresses are largely dynamic, and e-mail accounts are a dime a dozen.

This'll polarize the buy/sell forums. People with positive feedback will be implicitly trusted, while those without will be distrusted.

mvigod

MikeL,

Interesting point....

marc

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

You really should look back at the lessons learned on the old RCO. The dirty dealings forum actually probably caused more trouble than it prevented bad deals.
To this day, there are guys who still bear a grudge against the RCO people for singling them out as bad guys. Look at POURME, for example.
Anybody remember the guy who was "visited" by two RCO moderators, with the local police in tow? This guy had been marked on the forums as a real ripoff artist, but as it turned out, he had been working two shifts and all the stuff was in his garage all packed up and about to be shipped....
I can think of a bunch of instances like this. Internet moderators are not really equipped to really find out what is going on with a bad deal, and there are two sides to every story every time. And it always turns into a big ol' dogpile, everybody likes to get their digs in when somebody is being kicked, including plenty of people who never actually dealt with the guy. I have seen it time and time again.
Go look at the "consumer advocacy" forum over at ezone. Recently renamed and revamped, because it turned into one awful slamfest after another.
I don't think this kind of stuff really ends up saving very many people from a bad deal, and it really creates more problems than it solves, in my opinion.
I would just keep RCU's involvement limited. Caveat emptor.
If someone wants to ASK about dealings with another member, let people chose to respond in their own way, or not.
Anyway...I would ditch the whole idea of the feedback system. You are opening up a big ol' can of chocolate-covered worms, for not much, if any, gain.

seafury_fb11

Marc,
First let me say that you are doing a fantastic job with RCU. I love this site! Keep up the great work. I do also want to say that, I tend to agree that it will not be productive to have a rating system here. I won't elaborate as my feelings have basically already been expressed by other users in this thread - no need to be redundant. I just wanted to cast my vote against it.

Russ.

mvigod

All comments and feedback are being taken into consideration on this highly charged topic.

What I plan on doing is taking as much of the comments and feedback made here and figuring out as many ways to plug up the holes that exist with such a system.

I will only have the feedback ratings show in the trading forums as in discussions it is irrelevant, unnecessary and inappropriate...it was my plan to do that but wanted to debug the core code first. The next version would have to be 100% moderated just like our GBU forum which to date has worked well although requires leg work and time from our senior moderators but never the less it works ok now.

If the new system still proves to be a less than ideal feature (read "no good") I have no problem pulling it off at a moments notice like I pulled down the version 1.0 of Karma here as too many people were rating people they had no transactions with or may have begrudged.

All I ask is that you give the version 2.0 whenever I get it done right a fair shot and if it just doesn't work I'll pull it down again in a New York Minute and sell it to other sites who don't mind the downsides of the system should there be any.

No harm will come in such an event and the data would be purged if it doesn't work...I'm sure we would all know in a few days or less and I will set up a vote for all the users here to get a sitewide opinion as what everyone wants across the board regarding the final version of the Trader Karma. The users decision on it will be final as I only put up here what is asked for so it makes no difference to me. The feedback system was the number one most requested feature so I made it.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Well, I can't hurt to try. So go ahead! Surprised that it was something that was requested.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

Fair enough!

bcovish

My Feedback: (8)

Let's give it a shot