The Situation:

I very often have to deal with people saying things like:
I have more FG than you, so I won't be going first.

The Problem:

This doesn't make any sense as it doesn't say anything about the user being active or trustable.
Someone could have made 18 000 FG 5 years ago without having spent a single digit since and then try to convince people that he's trustable.

I can personally move tens of thousands of Forum Gold in a month so I'm sometimes pretty low, sometimes pretty high.

The Solution:

What I propose is to have a kind of "FG In & FG Out" information available for everyone to see. This In & Out would always be for the last 30 Days period.
I much prefer to trust someone that has 258.25 FG left but has moved over 47 000 FG in the last 30 days. Than to trust someone with 21874 FG that has moved 3 FG in the last decade.

Example:
Pardon my MS:Paint skills. Feature could be much nicer but that gives' ya'll an idea of what I mean.


This post was edited by LordAzuRa on Oct 11 2021 06:57pm

Maybe if you paid a premium like with the 'search' feature of 25fg, I'd be okay with you seeing my gold in/out. But to have it readily displayed, no thank you.

Somehow this didn't cross my mind... It could reveal some information that people aren't comfortable sharing.

Alternative Solution 1:
What about something that is less explicit then?
Like a kind of float value between X and X that shows if the user's been moving FG around or not (maybe based on his current total?) Uncertain how this would be calculated but I'm sure there are math-savvy people in here that would be pleased to come with a formula.

Alternative Solution 2:
Maybe something that, without displaying the actual amount of FG moved, displays how many transactions the user has done in the last 30 days?

This post was edited by LordAzuRa on Oct 11 2021 07:03pm

I feel like the amount of fg moved is a bit unfair to some. Some dude farming/selling low runes because that’s all his gear can handle just trying to build up what he can might have 300/200 in/out. But that might have been 80 trades. That’s way more successful trading than someone that made 6 trades of higher value items that’s got 4000/3000 in/out. Or let’s say someone just bought a bunch of fg, that’s a lot of fg moving, but they didn’t actually trade once.

Part of me agrees with what you say, but another part also thinks that:
Someone just doing 80x 20 FG trades will still fall in the category of "I have more FG than you" (most of the time).
The current false-sense of "High FG = Trustworthy" already doesn't help the hard-working, more-successful small-traders.

I would also most likely only count trades within Users, not "Intake from purchasing FGs".

The whole thing is about trying to figure out "Who is trustworthy" at a first glance. And I would be tempted to believe that someone that did 3x trades of 4000 FG without scamming anyone is more trustworthy than someone that did 80x of 20 FG.

This post was edited by LordAzuRa on Oct 11 2021 07:20pm

Why not something like

Group: Member
Posts: 4,640
Joined: May 5 2007
Gold: 557.70
Rating: -Active+

Only users who have exchanged forum gold with UserA can -/+ to avoid abuse.

Weird, I know, but I honestly have nothing coming to mind.

Like a kind of:

"This trade went very well" so you click on the +.
or
"This trade went poorly" so you click on the -.

?

I don't hate where this idea wants to go, but I feel like a manual rating system is bound to create tension if someone doesn't click the "+" after a positive trade.
I would leave it to an automated system as much as possible.

At the same time we’ve both been around long enough to unfortunately see tagged members and members of the staff prove to be untrustworthy and get banned/forcefully lose their tag. There’s never a 100% guarantee. Showing if someone is “trustworthy” or not is hard. I feel like it’s not very fair to the average little trader to publicly put them on blast just because they aren’t moving a predetermined amount of fg in/out. Don’t get me wrong I totally understand wanting a way to help weed out potential scams with the HUGE increase in new accounts, that’s just my 2 cents is all.

True.
I always imagined that "Trusted" members and up that goes rogue would be people that haven't logged in a long time and got their accounts hacked/sold. But we'll never have substantial proof of that.

Does it mean that the answer lies elsewhere?
If we can't make it so there's a "Quick Glance" way to see if someone is trustable or not, maybe there's a way to make the trades safer for everyone involved.

The safest way to trade we currently have is by using a mediator. Although if EVERYONE started using a mediator because of the new influx of users (new users are also getting scammed by older accounts), there'd be a queue of days to get anything done.

Does this forum need more Mediators.
Or does it need a way to "Self-Modiate" itself?

What if users had a way to send the FG to a "Website Mediator Helper" as a safety measure and the FG is sent to the seller only once both parties clicked on "Confirm Delivery"?

What I like with this idea is if someone doesn't deliver and attempts to scam the buyer, the FG remains safely inside the account of the "Website Mediator Helper" and the mediator of the Scammer Accusation can decide to release the FG back to the Buyer, or the Seller, or not (depending on the result of the investigation).
That way, people with 9000 that scammed someone wouldn't:
1. Be able to send all their FG elsewhere before being Locked and receiving the Scam tag.
2. Be able to continue making false purchases with a huge amount of FG.

The user that got scammed would also receive the FG from the S-A moderator instead of the current trade method that doesn't reimburse anyone.

This post was edited by LordAzuRa on Oct 11 2021 08:09pm

That’s actually a pretty interesting idea, but I wonder what kind of network upgrades the Jsp servers would need to handle the sudden increase of transactions like that?