Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: phubaiblues on July 21, 2011, 10:21 pm
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I'm part of the opiate buyers crew. Many of us are pretty active on the forums and have found out how vital they are to our success on SR. We usually start threads on sellers, and find that the good sellers themselves take part, and welcome the opportunity to chat with the buyers, to clear up problems, and to explain themselves.
We also find regularly that when newbies are ripped off, or have problems with sellers, and finally end up here, how often they wished they'd come here first. I found out from a friend on here how few of the users of SR actually make it here: a very small percentage.
Once there are problems with a seller, by starting a thread we can see what others have been going through, get ongoing feedback, and often work out ways to sort out problems, rather than having to just give bad feedback, or go into dispute mode because we aren't getting our pms returned.
Lately I"ve also realized that some of the 'problem' sellers aren't on here. But new buyers don't realize this. They go strictly by feedback, and we have one seller who seems to have found a way to 'game' the system, and talk them out of escrow thru pm's...if they had come here, they would see this seller is in bad repute.
I do wish there were some way to get new buyers to come here, rather than rely on the feedback that they see, before making purchases. I also wish the sellers could be persuaded to come over here first also, so they don't get into problems through lack of communication. One of the first things you see, when buyers start freaking out, is "The seller doesn't return my pm's!" and often cancelations without explanations make things worse, on both sides. Also, buyers who don't click on finalize after getting product cause severe problems for sellers, and over here we can make sure they realize this. Encouraging sellers to use PGP is another area these forums are useful
The reason I started a separate thread on this, was in the hopes that maybe some of you might have some ideas on ways to make it more probable that newbies would come here, rather than buy or sell without use of the forums. Any way that SR could put a note, or link in first post, or maybe we could start a FAQ here, where they'd have to come...we still seem to have scammers that are taking advantage of naive buyers, by convincing them to bypass escrow without really knowing seller.
All this could be avoided if we could come up with a good way to get them to come here. Simply having a link at bottom of page to 'Community Forums' doesn't seem to have enough convincing authority. Could we not find a better way? It's to all good buyers and sellers benefit if we do this, and I know SR has always been open to improvements. Any ideas are welcome.
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Good idea. It would make it much less easy for a Barry Sneaky to profit, that's for sure.
1,500 people are registered here but only 25-30 are here at any given time. Not so great.
Since there's no advertising possible, then the only other thing is for the seller's to mention something in their seller profiles telling buyers they can get a lot of their questions answered in the forum. I can't think of another way to "push" them to come here. Maybe others have good ideas?
Otherwise, it's just waiting for people to have their own issues...when it's their money at stake, they will turn up here. :)
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Considering last I heard SR's membership is over 20k users, that is a HORRIBLE turnout.
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Yes, I was thinking of BS also, and illy, and a few others...and just about every problem has been revealed and talked about here, but I suspect people are still getting scammed. I don't know about anybody else, but I came to SR pretty trusting, and I probably would have lifted escrow too, since I didn't really understand it: that's how I got burnt so easily on Black Market. But I've also found that the forums are a good place to iron out difficulties between buyer and seller. Hell, if I've seen a guy on here, and chatted with him once or twice, I'm much more inclined to trust him.
Also, by coming to the forums, and getting into a few of the discussions, I've learned better how to protect myself, and have much more sympathy for sellers and their problems. I mostly just wish we could find a way to encourage new people to come here, maybe get a FAQ together in the forums. It'd be kind of a job, that's for sure, as much of it is somewhat complex. But once they've figured out TOR enough to get to SR itself, if they were then sent to forums, they could learn much more about PGP, and also about what to be careful of. Not to just immediately believe feedback. I wonder if we could get a bunch of us together and work on a FAQ, if then we couldn't say to them to come to FAQ before posting first buy, and then give them a few warnings...*including* to finalize the damn order once it gets there, and to not use feedback for nitpicking on stuff they could better work out in forums...I don't know, lots of ideas, but lately what I've read makes me realize how much more important these forums are, than they are in most areas...
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As a seller it would be cool to have some templates built into PMing. I try to follow up with my customers on the 10th or 9th day to finalization and it's a pain in the ass to have to even copypaste and customize every message. A little dropdown menu like [reply] [reply with --> template1, template2, etc] would be pretty sweet.
At minimum it should be a big bolded headline when someone signs up to spend at least an hour or two perusing the forums. Most of the questions that could possibly be asked are answered on here.
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I agree with everything you're saying.
A crowd source type FAQ for newbie buyers would be great. I've been trying to find someone who could do a FAQ on isolating your machine as a virtual machine with VPN, TrueCrypt, etc. There's 8-10 things that need to be done and most people can hire a tech locally (since it's all legal and such) if they just had a good instruction sheet to show them what they need. I don't have that expertise.
And there should be a seller's FAQ. But not in public. I'd be willing to answer the 100+ questions a new seller needs answered in detail, but I wouldn't invest that kind of time for free. You're talking a LOT of time for that and some of it will be very specific to just one person. So there ought to be some (just a little) free drugs or BTC for any fools willing to mentor like that. IMHO :)
So, a good place to start is "buying online for newbies" because it's the exact same for everyone, regardless of state, city, age, product. And I'd like to see 100% of the "gonna stick around" sellers using PGP on SR anyway. So it's good for everyone to instruct the noobs.
It's your rodeo (I guess?) phubaiblues, you want to do an outline, pass it to me when you're done, and I'll pass it to the next person? Or just give you comments and send it back to you? Just PM if you do one and I'll be happy to work on it too.
The forum will need a "posts of distinction" type area where all the procedurals (and maybe some very instructive threads, like illy's one) can be put and left for eternity.
Anyone else want to help write a tutoral? Pm my good friend, phubaiblues...hehehe :D
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Haha :) Let me think. Mostly I just want the basic stuff, as you said, the first and most basic warnings are just to buyers, how to get basic protection, what to look for, what to do, what to not do...but there's *tons* from setting up better protection, to 'how to do pgp' to pming ...lots
My original idea is just to get a way to send newbies to forums before they make bad mistakes-- faq is another, and much more work intensive chore. I'd help out on the buyers basics, we all could, but I'm not good at organizing. And I think we need SilkRoad to give an o.k., say how he wants it done.
The main reason I would like to see a FAQ, is simply that it would be a good way to get newbies over here...in FAQ, we could then say to look/start thread on Sellers they have questions about. If they had some instructions saying: Read FAQ before posting!, and that would link them here to an FAQ, then we could tell them the most basic stuff they need to know...I'm willing to do just general cautions for buyers, if someone else would do just basic cautions for sellers. I don't mean the detailed one you're talking about...just enough to where they don't get in serious trouble...anything else, they could either pay somebody, or just ask in forums, which is the whole idea.
And finally, if we do that, then those who just refuse to come to forums, well, they loose money or in trouble, they can't say we didn't try...
I'll start out by working up some basic buyer's cautions and post here to have others add to it, or if SR starts up a FAQ area we could go from there...if he'd give one buyer and one seller permission to modify the forum, we could then take input and get it together. Then make a link or SR to FAQ, with maybe a warning! you know, if you don't read FAQ, don't cry if you get burnt!
And one they are in FAQ, we can stress the use/importance of forums for their detailed questions...and you or anybody are more than welcome to sell/rent time explaining details...mostly I just want general stuff: we're seeing some pretty slick scams, and they always seem to involve a scammer getting hold of a naive new buyer...but anway, I'll put together my basic 10 things to do/not do when buying on SR, and we'll see what SR himself wants to do with this...
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how about whenever a vendor reaches so many complaints /or/ a rating of 1.5 or less total over how ever many transactions the forum adds a click through warning on all their listings as well as their profile?
it would read as follows -
"We regret to inform you but the vendor you are trying to access has failed to provide the product as advertised or has failed to provide proper packaging or has attempted to bypass systems put in place to protect your anonymity and that of silk road itself. Please refer to the vendors reviews as well as those on forums (link to proper part of the forums )
Consider your purchases carefully, and thank you.