As someone who recently was the subject of harassment and stalking via slanderous PSA, I think that the forums could use an overhaul. I believe that adding a system in which reports were filed based on specific, credible criteria -- and additionally, are heavily moderated by site admins -- would be better than leaving it up to the discretion of laymen to report upon and document matters of fraud, misbehavior, etc.
Frankly speaking, this system is prone to frequent abuse by puerile and malicious individuals, seeking to cause harm over perceived slights. Leaving laymen to be judge, jury, and executioner can create lasting damage to a person's standing in an online community.
Ideally, crowdsourcing would work, but there are too many free variables in what people assume constitutes an event worthy of creating a PSA. Further, there too are seemingly no repercussions for people posting spurious and unneeded claims. As per my experience, the mod team asserted that nothing could be done to prevent further misdeeds from my harasser aside from blocking -- which had been previously done, and served as the impetus for their ban-evading via side-account, and further stoked the flames in the creation of their PSA.
I understand that in being online I am taking a risk in interacting with a community of strangers, however I heavily believe that the moderation team(s) should be more active and involved in cases such as these. I also understand that resources may be limited, which is why a form/ticket system would be advantageous to keeping things organized -- allowing a more streamlined process in weeding out frivolous claims.
New reviews/feedback feature?
I've been looking over this forum recently and it's not really what I imagined when I first put it up... I do like the idea of a public space for transparent discussion of business transactions, but it feels counter-intuitive (eg. not everyone'll check for a PSA before doing business with a user) and at times overly hostile and personal.
I originally got the idea for a reviews forum from BJD trading forums, where negative reviews are just a thread you make when you receive substandard service or products from a user (or don't receive it at all), and they were more like small posts about single transactions, rather than big compilations of evidence about why the viewer shouldn't do business with so and so. I think it'd be healthy to try moving towards a model where users feel comfortable just commenting on individual good or bad experiences you've had without having to make a case against a user's character. If a user has a large quantity of a certain type of review from a bunch of people, a viewer can more or less imagine what working with them would be like and draw conclusions from there, and it prevents the responsibility of managing a large PSA from falling onto a single individual.
To that end, I'm currently fiddling with the idea of replacing the reviews forum with a reviews feature attached instead to each individual user's page, where users can leave reviews and comments. This would be intended to be a replacement for the Service Reviews forum. It has some upsides and downsides, so I wanted to hear everyone's thoughts.
Basic outline of the feature:
- When posting in the commerce section (Art Marketplace, Design Marketplace, Adoption Center), or when sending a PM, a user's review ratio is shown next to their username badge (this would be a percentage, 0% for all negative reviews, 100% for all positive reviews). This links to their reviews page.
- Any user (blocked or not) can leave positive or negative feedback.
- All reviews have to be directly relevant to a single business transaction (maximum of one review per business transaction). Some form of proof has to be provided (eg. a link to the completed product / traded character, or a link to a thread, or screenshot of the transaction or receipt).
- Only the reviewer and the reviewee can reply to each review, but all replies are publicly viewable.
- Reviews can be deleted, closed, or edited by the user who posted the review.
- I feel like it makes more sense than PSAs; it's immediately visible as a warning when doing business with a user, but also doesn't bring additional outside attention to the matter like PSAs do, which can lead to witch hunts or harassment.
- Easier to browse feedback attached to a specific user (instead of having to search the Reviews forum), and encourages independent users to come forward with their own feedback, rather than having a single person take on the responsibility of collating a large PSA.
- Would encourage people to leave positive reviews which is nice... positivity is good...
- Wouldn't support off-site users.
- I'm not sure if having a rating attached to an account would make people uncomfortable; this is the reason I specifically don't want it visible as part of a user's profile page, and want to keep it to specific areas of the site. I understand that it could create stress for users who don't want to see it, but being able to turn off the feature defeats the point of having it at all, since people with poor reviews could just turn it off.
- There could be an option to hide ratings from the site so you don't have to see or think about them, but other users would still be able to see your rating?
Regarding Moderation:
I've received some requests lately for reviews/PSAs to be more strictly moderated, which I imagine will also apply to any new review feature, so regardless of outcome, I'll be looking at revising the rules for reviews.
From the threads I've reviewed, the main issue seems to be people who present one business transaction with evidence, then use it to piggyback irrelevant accusations, such as personal disagreements, proof-less transactions, or speculation. This is toeing the line on breaking the rules, so I'll be adding another clause clarifying that every section/paragraph of any PSA must be directly relevant to a business dispute with proof, and not just arbitrarily tacked onto the end of a PSA.
If you'd like to see additional moderation for PSAs or reviews, please suggest any additional rules you think would help improve the quality of the forum (or any future features we may add).
Please do chip in with any thoughts or suggestions, either via the thread or by filing a ticket if you're not comfortable speaking in public. Thanks as always for your patience and help.
because there is no way to actually. verify a purchase has ever been made this is a terrible idea. there will 100% be kids going around spamming bad reviews on everyone that didn't accept their picrew oc offer for a money only adopt.
just get rid of the psa forum, otherwise you're just replacing one impossible to moderate feature with another, but unlike a google doc nobody will bother to read the review system abuse could damage people's livelihoods. many commission service tools also offer a review feature already, this is redundant.
i understand the idea behind this, but it's much more damaging to have a feature like this you will not be able to adequately moderate than not to have one at all.