The moderator who rejected your report did so with the intention of asking you to resubmit it with any additional evidence you may have. If I recall correctly, some of your reports (or another member's reports of a similar nature) have been rejected many times in the past with the message "please provide additional evidence" in the past. When you or they provided additional evidence, the reports were addressed or, with more complicated cases, moved to a thread in the mod subforum for us to look into.
I would now like to know, which I don't think is unreasonable, whether things have changed because we have always been previously encouraged to report suspected fake accounts, previously banned members, members with multiple accounts etc.
I think this is something reasonable to ask.
No, at most the policy on this was clarified recently by the forum owner, but it's mostly still the same. When I was a regular member submitting reports on suspicious members, I almost always provided as much direct evidence as I could in the reports (and as
@Apricot,
@WilhelmScream, and
@I know SEO will recall, a pun at the end of every report
).
However, there were times where I couldn't provide direct evidence, so I provided circumstantial evidence instead. Despite providing a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence, the reports were rejected. A handful of times, I received messages from the moderators at the time explaining why they couldn't take action on the report. Admittedly, there were times I felt that it was obvious that member X was connected to member Y, or member W was using accounts to bump his BST; but if they couldn't take action on it, I accepted this and moved on to the ones they could take action on. After becoming a moderator, I better understood why they couldn't take action on some of my reports as I've actually seen how easy it is to be wrong in these situations (and yes, I'll admit that even I make mistakes).
Members are definitely encouraged to submit reports. However, and this is similar to the marketplace review section, when they're rejected for missing information, it's important to keep in mind that they're not being "rejected", it's just a request for more information so that we don't miss anything.
I'd like to reiterate what
@davids355 said as we are really stretched thin at the moment due to BHW 2.0, current world events, and an increase in activity around the forum due to said current world events. We want to look into these reports more, but we do get an exorbitant number of reports from members reporting shill accounts, and not all of these reporters have the best intentions (in some cases, it's one Jr. VIP trying to get their competitor banned). Obviously, this in no way applies to you
@Sephrata; but we do like applying a consistent process to every member without showing favouritism, lest that result in complaints as well.
I have no doubt that with BHW 2.0 etc. that staffing has been stretched, but I think rejecting my reports just because I reported a number of shill accounts at the same time (all in the same BSTs) wasn't right. When reporting shill accounts, the key is always going to be looking at the IP history and this is something that we don't have as BHW users.
When I was a moderator-in-training, I thought the IP history would help me catch more previously banned members. After a bit, I learnt that the IP history wasn't the most reliable evidence to find (I mean, you can imagine how many people use proxies here). A large number of shill accounts we ban don't always share IPs, but rather share other details I won't disclose in this thread. In cases where they don't share any details, we end up finding some other piece of evidence to ban them.
Agree, you waste your energy. Some things will never change ...
@Meddie, I've worked with you on several of your BST reviews and I generally regard you as decent, although this isn't a good mentality to have toward the forum as a member or a seller.
@Sephrata isn't wasting his energy by bringing up his concerns and things definitely can and do change.
I am somewhat contemplating this, although I am cautious as
@Zwielicht previously asked me not to (and he was completely right for doing so) because in some cases it shows how I've linked them and it just helps them, or others, avoid being picked up in the future
Thank you for remembering this,
@Sephrata. It's something I wish I was told back when I publicly outing members. It feels like they've gotten harder to catch because of how many of them are aware of the basic mistakes they could make now.
Really appreciate your effort. I hope mods will take action.
Inspired by your latest threads I decided to check the marketplace too. It's weekend though
Found a Seller that has created 6 accounts only to bump his BST.
No other activity, only asking for a discount on his BST, and what's more fun all fake accounts are following only 1 member (the Seller).
Reported all the accounts.
Hopefully, they will get banned and the seller gets warned!
I managed to find your reports from earlier this morning (well, my morning). They're a good example of how things look versus how things are.
For example:
- One of the suspected shill accounts you reported for lack of activity and being used to bump a BST had their older posts removed for selling outside of the marketplace, which I can see from the infraction on their profile.
- Another account you reported actually posted in a different seller's BST. Aside from that, they were having a discussion via PM with another seller.
- One account you reported had the seller respond via PM. Whilst you could argue that the seller is PMing shill accounts to cover their tracks, there just wasn't enough there for the moderator who rejected the report to ban the member.
- The fourth and fifth reports you sent in actually were suspicious only because they did nothing after bumping the seller's BSTs (although the seller did PM them), but because of your previous reports, it's hard to pick these needles out of the haystack.
I'm not trying to be a prick and discourage you from submitting these reports. They are appreciated as reports like these help us remove pick the weeds out of the marketplace. But it is important to know a bit about how things are seen from our end.
