I saw this on another forum long ago (don't remember which one). But, I'll explain the concept :).

It's basically a 'reputation' system like on eBay. Since buying licenses (vB, etc), PHP projects, businesses, domains, etc can be risky through a forum, it would help to see that a member has a good reputation.

So, if you buy something from another member on WHT, and the sale goes smoothly, you give that person a good mark. If someone buys something from you and it goes smoothly, you give that person a good mark.

Hopefully I'm not confusing anyone?

This would make it so other people know who has done a lot of good business with other WHT members.

Its called iTrader and its used over at dnforum.com and avlbl at vb.org.
I would like to see this used as well instead of having to search a members past before doing biz with them.

Its called iTrader and its used over at dnforum.com and avlbl at vb.org.
I would like to see this used as well instead of having to search a members past before doing biz with them.
See I knew someone would know what I was talking about :D

Dennis and Jan? Pweeeeeeze :) :lovewht:

Just a brief glance at it indicates it could be abused like the regular reputation system :s

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=102965

Just a brief glance at it indicates it could be abused like the regular reputation system :s

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=102965
But it could help :)

I think itrader would work great here, I did not read the itrader thread at vb.org, but I use a few boards the utilize the hack and I find it makes my decisions easier when going to buy/trade something being able to see some previous feedback as you do with ebay.

On a larger forum like this, a "reputation" system is just wrong. Why? It's just too easily abused. I've given particular examples before, almost every time this comes up (at least once every 6 months now ;)), will do so again:

Firstly, there is no way of "validating" the feedback without an extraordinary amount of work being placed onto the staff that already do enough of a job without any sort of $$$ or perks.

Secondly, it leaves buyers (and sellers) open for simple attacks. How? Really simple:

Say your DC goes down. They do, they all do at some point (even rackspace). All of the sudden the hundreds of customers of DC X leave negative feedback (or -1 reputation). That company now has a feedback/reputation debt because of something that MAY NOT even be their own fault (ie: outside lines not working properly, outside networks down, etc). This is bad for the company itself, and kills their "reputation" when they couldn't have done a thing about it.

Let's say Customer X and Company Y get into it. For some reason Customer X didn't read Company Y's TOS/AUP before signing up, and gets shut off because he/she is violating that (too much cpu, too many mails in/out, etc). Since Company Y won't restore their account without the proper payment, Customer X is screwed, and then comes running here, complaining, leaving negative feedback for Company Y, when it's really Customer X's fault for NOT paying attention to the details. Again, company Y is harmed because of something that their customer refused to read before signing up.

Are things risky? Yes, yes they are. Unfortunately, that risk is just something that will have to be lived with as a part of day to day business. There are ways to eliminate this risk though:

A> Search for posts made by the user you're trying to do business with. Find out if they seem competent enough to do what they're trying to do.

B> Look for feedback from customers. Not only on THEIR sites, but on community sites such as WHT. This is why any responsible business will place feedback in both areas

C> Look at the user's involvement in the community. If they're older, more posts, then they're most likely pretty well rooted in the community and not going anywhere. If they're new, then test 'em out with something small before you give them huge projects.

D> ALWAYS contact the company before you buy something. This tests the waters out and shows how well the communication is. If it sucks, then don't go there. At LEAST give them 24h to respond though, before you come crying here with "XXX Company didn't respond to me!"

These simple things can help to determine whether or not you're getting yourself into a raw deal. Reputation systems, here especially, not too much of a good idea, because they are incredibly one sided and VERY poor. On amazon/ebay, the transaction is verified and only one bit of feedback can be left per. On WHT, no transaction is ever verified, and a user's reputation can easily be demolished on a whim, by competition, someone with a vendetta, or 3rd party individuals looking to get in on the bashing action. This is a very common thing on WHT, and if reputations were put in, it'd become even more common. Not to mention the fact that it'd kill wht itself.

I've generally been opposed to a reputation system here. But iTrader is a little more than that.

Since it would be bound to only exchanges from the advertising forums, it may be worth a go. Provided we could configure it so only those engaged in a trade could leave feedback.

Since it would be bound to only exchanges from the advertising forums

Which would encourage even more advertising here than already goes on?

The verification problem still comes in, however. How do you verify that the user actually conducted a transaction with the other user? This isn't E-Bay or Amazon, transactions like this aren't logged.

So , in this case, WHT members would have to, not only monitor their own threads, but their own profile to make sure that nothing silly is put in there, because you KNOW it will happen! From competitor bashing to any of the examples given above, it will most definitely happen. It happens already, just not somewhere that the users can click and see centralized (ie: a "profile").

Here's another problem with this supposed "system":
It leads individuals to believe that companies are better than others, when they aren't, and rewards individuals for advertising, instead of participating in the community.

An example of this would be great reviews of certain management companies. This leads individuals to believe that THEY are great, and others are not. Well, this is not always the case. Just because every company doesn't have a crapton of reviews weekly doesn't mean they're ANY less of a "company' than company Y or Z. The reputation system would simply amplify that. Yes, it may not fully be a "reputation system", but in the end, that's what it is. It's a system that's easily exploitable for your own use, and gives individuals benefits of "positive feedback" for transactions that may (or may not) have taken place, and allows individuals to leave negative feedback for the same thing, raising/lowering their reputation level to the community.


Now, if we're forcing all transactions to be validated through WHT before comments/reputation can be made, then I'm ALL for it, but that then places the responsibility for these transactions in WHT's hands, not the business owner, as it is currently.

I've generally been opposed to a reputation system here. But iTrader is a little more than that.

Since it would be bound to only exchanges from the advertising forums, it may be worth a go. Provided we could configure it so only those engaged in a trade could leave feedback.

Agreed. Perhaps make it so that a moderator must moderate the feedback made using the reputation system? That way we can be sure that it isn't being abused. It would mean more mod work, but it may mean less overall when people start looking at somebodies profile and seeing negative seller or buyer reputation.


Alex

I havent looked into the hack much but cant you set it to where you have to include the link of the thread of where the sale was made before leaving feedback? And cant those certain forum permisions be set within the iTrader admin panel?
If not then maybe prohacker can soup it up a little to include those permisions?
I'll study it more when I get back tonight.

I havent looked into the hack much but cant you set it to where you have to include the link of the thread of where the sale was made before leaving feedback? And cant those certain forum permisions be set within the iTrader admin panel?
If not then maybe prohacker can soup it up a little to include those permisions?
I'll study it more when I get back tonight.
Yes, you have to include the thread when posting the feedback.

If you are going to go through that much trouble of confirming the sale - you could just use the reputation system already in place and have all reputation request to be sent to mods for verification and then the mod adjust the rep accordingly. Of course - this would be sooooo time consuming.

Another option is to make it where members with 100 or more post can utilize the itrade system - that would help prevent some level of abuse from newbies coming on and spamming the system.

I don't really see any good way of going about this with people abusing it or it becoming a huge toll on time for moderators.

Another option is to make it where members with 100 or more post can utilize the itrade system - that would help prevent some level of abuse from newbies coming on and spamming the system.

Wouldn't do anything about "competitor bashing" though.

Tru dat. This is why I really can not see this as offering any legit verification of one's business ethics and would consider it a wasteful move for WHT to head towards. Focus on better things like adding an arcade where I can challenge people like Linux-tech or the_pm in some astroids or something. HA!

Really the only way to make sure something like this would work would be to have all sales go through WHT and that just cant happen.

I've generally been opposed to a reputation system here. But iTrader is a little more than that.

Since it would be bound to only exchanges from the advertising forums, it may be worth a go. Provided we could configure it so only those engaged in a trade could leave feedback.
I'm with SWR :agree:

Wouldn't do anything about "competitor bashing" though.Sure it would.

If we set it up so that you had to post in the thread to leave feedback so only those that participated in the sale could leave/receive feedback, I don't see a concern about abuse.

If we set it up so that you had to post in the thread to leave feedback so only those that participated in the sale could leave/receive feedback, I don't see a concern about abuse.

If that's the case, and it can be setup like that, then I see no worries about abuse either.

Sounds great to me, but you can't suggest yourself for purchases can you?

Sounds great to me, but you can't suggest yourself for purchases can you?
Not sure if you can or not.

But, it does show who made the feedback, whether it was positive/negative/neutral, and the comments that the buyer/seller made. People would be able to see if someone said good things about themselves.

Sounds promising but as mentioned before, I think that somehow it'll be abused.

Sounds promising but as mentioned before, I think that somehow it'll be abused.
Anything can be abused. I think it would help for the most part...and any abuse, I'm sure that admins would catch on.

Sounds promising but as mentioned before, I think that somehow it'll be abused.
I'm not going to say it CAN'T be abused

However, if this is able to be setup:

If we set it up so that you had to post in the thread to leave feedback so only those that participated in the sale could leave/receive feedback, I don't see a concern about abuse.

I don't really see too many possibilities of abuse.

Sounds promising but as mentioned before, I think that somehow it'll be abused.

The good thing it's that we are allways watching, so if get abused we will use our super-mod-powers :)

I think that something like irater can be a great addition to WHT, in fact I think can help to prevent some kind of user-abuse of some people with history of let's say not doing the best deals.