Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 12:39 am

Title: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 12:39 am
UPDATE (08/18/2013 2213 UTC):  Wow!  So much feedback and ideas for ratings.  I think this will be a major focus for a while until we can really flesh everything out so both vendors and buyers can have all of the information and tools they need to decide who they want to work with.  At this point, there are so many things to do, we have to start thinking about what order to do things in and how to transition.  Everyone responds to change either positively or negatively, and I'll keep doing my best to keep the negative to a minimum.

An idea I had not yet mentioned, but want to implement is moving discussion to the main site.  What I am thinking is that there will be a "discuss" link on every vendor page, item page, and even the category pages.  This link will go to a thread with the latest posts about the vendor, item, or category.  I'm thinking we'll require a minimum spent of maybe 1 btc to post.  Each post will include the user's account age, total purchased, number of transactions, and number of vendors they've bought from.  For the item and vendor pages, we can display whether the user has bought that item or purchased from that vendor, and we'll highlight posts from the vendor themselves when they post on their own thread or a thread of one of their items.  I'll want to enforce a strong policy of courteous conduct and will have a link for you to flag posts for admin review, and we'll give admins the ability to suspend posting privileges.  Also, we'll want you to have the option to post anonymously, so I think we'll put a "discussion name" field on the settings page, so you don't have to post under your account name.

My hope is that this feature will fill in any unexpected gaps that might be created by changes in the rating system, so at worst, free and open discussion between buyers and sellers can be looked to when making decisions.


UPDATE (2028 UTC): Ok, I've rolled out the first set of major changes.  We've done away with the percent based rating score entirely and are now displaying the ratings as a bar chart that shows the relative weight of each rating category (1 through 5) and a total average.  This chart shows up next to each listing when browsing, and on the vendors page.  I outlined the change to the vendor, buyer, and rating weights, but will put it here again:

The rating algorithm has been changed to the following:
A vendor's score, which determines their rank and factors into the weight of buyers, is found by adding up all of their sales with each sale multiplied by a factor that starts at 100% now and tapers off to 0% after 8 months.
A buyer's score, which affects how heavily their feedback is weighted when determining a vendor's rating (not rank), is found by multiplying the price of their purchases by the vendor score of the vendor they purchased from, and then adding them all together
A rating/review's score, which determines it's weight when averaging with other ratings, is found by multiplying the buyer weight of the buyer leaving the rating, the volume of the purchase, and the same dampening factor used for the vendor's score.

---

Normal protocol dictates that updates don't get talked about until they are ready for release.  This is because if they get delayed or put on the backburner everyone won't be disappointed and the less info that is released the better in general.  It also keeps the developers unconstrained as they work on the update.  I want to try a different approach for an update we are working on.  I want to include the community in the process, get feedback as we go, and pull back the curtain just a little bit.

The update we are working on is an overhaul to the feedback, rating and ranking system.  The current system has been in place for a long time and served us well, but I believe we can learn from how it has performed over the past couple of years and make some much needed improvements.  This system is integral to the proper functioning of Silk Road and affects everyone, which is partly why I want to make this development process public so I don't overlook it's affect on all of the various people involved.

So, here's what we have so far...

I want to rework how both buyers and vendors are rated.  We've identified 6 critical dimensions that I think affect how SR users should be judged.  They are:

buyer weight
   total amount spent
   total purchases
   number of vendors purchased from
   purchase distribution across vendors
   weight of vendors purchased from
   account age

vendor weight
   total sales volume
   total orders processed
   total number of customers
   sales distribution across customers
   weight of customers serviced
   account age

Some of these are self-explanatory, but I'll go through the ones that may not be.

"Purchase distribution across vendors" is a measure of how evenly distributed a buyers purchases are across the vendors they have purchased from.  Let's say two users have spent $1000 on 10 items from 5 different vendors.  If one of them bought 2 items from each of the 5 vendors and spent $100 on each item and the other bought 6 items from one vendor and 1 from the other 4 and spent $900 at one vendor, I think we should judge these two buyers differently.  I think the feedback from the one with an even distribution is more valuable, all else being equal.  The same is true for a vendor looking at "sales distribution across customers".  If most of a vendors sales are to just a few customers, this is not as impressive at a vendor who has good feedback across a large distribution of customers.

"weight of vendors purchased from" and "weight of customers serviced" is a kind of feedback loop connecting the weights of both vendors and buyers.  Basically with a vendor who has serviced buyers with a high weight as measured across the 6 dimensions defined above, we should weight them more highly than a vendor who has only serviced low weight buyers.  Conversely buyers who've made purchases from high weight vendors should be weighted more highly themselves.

I think the other 4 dimensions are self-evident.  Part of what must be considered is how much to emphasize the 6 dimensions relative to one another, and how to weight high values in each dimension relative to low values in the same dimension.  So for example, how much should account age influence a buyer's weight compared to how much they've spent?  Should a user who has been around for a year and spent $1000 be weighted higher or lower than a user that has been around one month and spent $5000?  Looking at a single dimension, should a vendor who has completed 100 transactions be weighted twice as much as a vendor who's completed 50, or more, or less?

These are questions that are hard to answer without looking at past data and experimenting with different settings and seeing how they affect things.  This is something we'll be doing and sharing with you in this thread.


Another thing I'd like to change is how feedback is displayed on vendor and item pages.  Right now it just shows up as it is left in a continuous stream of feedback.  Instead I'd like to push the higher quality reviews to the top and filter out the low quality ones.  There are a few dimensions I can think of to judge the quality of a review:

buyer weight (as defined above)
amount spent on the purchase
age of feedback
length of review (just thought of this one.  not too long not too short?)

Looking at it this way, recent feedback from high quality buyers who've spent good money will be seen first.  With the age factor included, no one feedback will stick around forever even if a very high quality buyer spent a lot of money.  This will also have the added benefit of obscuring how much business a particular vendor is doing.  As it is, one can simply count the feedback being left and get a good estimate of how many sales a vendor is doing.


There are a couple of other changes I have in mind, but this post is already getting long and complex, so let's leave it at that.  I look forward to your hearing your feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 12:44 am
How about customer feedback while you're at it? :D
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 12:52 am
How about customer feedback while you're at it? :D

heh, this is exactly why it's not advisable to do what I'm doing.  It opens the door for everyone to bring up their favorite feature request.  An important part of the development process is scoping, keeping the scope and complexity of the update as small as possible.  So in the interest of staying focused, please keep the conversation limited to what I bring up.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: MrBlack999 on August 11, 2013, 12:59 am
DPR- Excited to see the changes implemented! Keep us posted good sir!


Mr.Black
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: HEATFan on August 11, 2013, 01:02 am
I'm definitely on board with the new ideas for displaying feedback. I hate going through pages of useless feedback like "good shit", "5/5", "thanks" and such. If there was a way to see what I consider "valuable" feedback prioritized over the others it would make the decision process much easier.

One thing to consider with your system detailed above is that vendors who pad their feedback might have a reputable buyer account with a good amount of money spent - we don't want their padded feedback always being shown amongst the "top reviews".  Some vendors may be able to gain an unfair advantage with such a system.

Also, another risk when listing the "top reviews" rather than the most recent ones is that when a vendor experiences problems, buyers may not be made aware of such issues since they will not be seeing the most recent feedback but rather the "best" feedback. Viewing recent feedback allows you to make sure the vendor is still on their toes, rather than the fact that they were once in the past.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 01:09 am
One thing to consider with your system detailed above is that vendors who pad their feedback might have a reputable buyer account with a good amount of money spent - we don't want their padded feedback always being shown amongst the "top reviews".  Some vendors may be able to gain an unfair advantage with such a system.

I thought about that too.  That will definitely be a problem.

Also, another risk when listing the "top reviews" rather than the most recent ones is that when a vendor experiences problems, buyers may not be made aware of such issues since they will not be seeing the most recent feedback but rather the "best" feedback. Viewing recent feedback allows you to make sure the vendor is still on their toes, rather than the fact that they were once in the past.

This will also be a problem for the opposite reason.  Big spending longtime members now have even more incentive to extort feedback because their feedback will stay at the top for a long time for everyone to see.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 11, 2013, 01:09 am
weighting it so that high value buyers feedback is more prominent than anyone lowly will mean that scammers will always make sure that the high value customers get their goods and the minnows get done, as you'll be hiding the poor reviews from easy sight.  which will make it harder for objective judgements to be made on whether to trust the vendor.  Also, the feedback in its current form allows people to see an early trend if they seller is going bad - either non deliveries, increase in FEs or poor quality.  If you're trying to protect vendors from the prying eyes of LE, I'm sure they'll quickly knock up a script (as will anyone else) to extract the data, however much you try to obfuscate it, so it just keeps the nosey competition and potential buyer scammers away

 you just want to make it an overall star rating where you have to click on each of the star values to get the reviews?  that'd take some of that newfangled scripting stuff which might cause issues

for overall weightings, it seems to be fair.  Really, what are you trying to fix here though?  If you're trying to make it more nuanced so people will actually leave reasonable feedback scores, I'm all for it but if it still means buyers are still under pressure from the threat of a blacklist to leave 5/5 no matter how good, bad or indifferent the process and quality has been, then why bother?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 01:11 am
I'm definitely on board with the new ideas for displaying feedback. I hate going through pages of useless feedback like "good shit", "5/5", "thanks" and such. If there was a way to see what I consider "valuable" feedback prioritized over the others it would make the decision process much easier.

One thing to consider with your system detailed above is that vendors who pad their feedback might have a reputable buyer account with a good amount of money spent - we don't want their padded feedback always being shown amongst the "top reviews".  Some vendors may be able to gain an unfair advantage with such a system.

Also, another risk when listing the "top reviews" rather than the most recent ones is that when a vendor experiences problems, buyers may not be made aware of such issues since they will not be seeing the most recent feedback but rather the "best" feedback. Viewing recent feedback allows you to make sure the vendor is still on their toes, rather than the fact that they were once in the past.

I think the changes I've outlined will make feedback padding that much harder.  Right now all a vendor has to do is sell a one cent item to themselves and bang, their review is at the top.  If they have to build up a solid rep in order to get their reviews toward the top, it is that much harder, and if we identify fraud, then we can kill the buyer account and force them to start all over.

Regarding timely updates of a vendor's performance, I have an idea for this, but I don't want to put out too much at once.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 11, 2013, 01:12 am
hi hi DPR!

i like the ideas!

as to some of your questions, specifically "who weighs more: a buyer who's been here a year and spent 1k vs a buyer who's been here a month and spent 5k"

i feel the old saying "money talks." applies here. simply being an old account and purchasing small amounts every so often i dont feel is equal to someone who spends quite a bit more in a shorter amount of time.  that being said - there is definitely something worthwhile to note that a buyer has stuck around for awhile vs a buyer that's been here under a week or under a month.

for "should a vendor who completed 100 tx be weighted more or less than a 50 tx vendor" i think that you cant simply deduce that from a single dimension. the 100 tx could be all $20 items, where the 50 tx vendor could be selling $1000 items, that would mean, to me, that the 50 tx vendor should be weighted higher.

personally, for me as a vendor, when i evaluate a prospective buyer's stats i tend to look for the "avg price" of what they're buying. so, total spent / number of tx gives me the buyer's approx spending habits.

now, speaking for myself again, i have a few customers that have come back for more purchases a number of times. how would you suggest to weigh that? i feel they come back to me because the service is excellent and the price is fair... should that count more than someone who blasts out a bunch of one-off orders and the customers never return? could this be abused by vendors who offer "grand opening or limited time sample sale - limit X per customer"?

i'm not so crazy about weighing the item feedback based on character count. when i was young, i always got in arguments with teachers who wanted essays of a certain # of words. i hated that. i feel if you can properly get your point across in 5 words, then there you go. no need to get all verbose to make a point. (for the record i won those battles and was a straight A student)

as for prioritizing feedback left on the vendor pages, i happen to specialize in a specific product. some vendors have a multitude of products with very very different prices. does this mean their lower cost items will rarely have visible feedback?


while we're on the topic of feedback..... please please PLEASE make it so that buyers can not change feedback!! it should, however, be plainly obvious to the buyer that they do not need to write feedback when they finalize, and should only write feedback once they have tried the product. i feel this would completely eliminate feedback extortion scamming. i would personally be much more open to dealing with new buyers if that were the case. as it stands now, i have a moratorium on new buyers due to this.

finally, it's quite cool that we get to influence an upcoming feature :)
xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: james frazer on August 11, 2013, 01:22 am
Major search engines such as Google have a similar type of problem when deciding how to rank search engine results. To prevent users manipulating the system they make minor changes to their ranking algorithm(s) on a regular (daily?) basis, and periodically they have a major shake up. Perhaps the new code could be written with this in mind?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: wavelength on August 11, 2013, 01:25 am
I really like the idea of this but I simply ask that you think of as many possible ways to scam using your "new feedback system".

if you can think of it so can anyone else, so just try to keep it secure and I'll be happy :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: m1ck3y on August 11, 2013, 01:40 am
just an idea, but what about an ebay/amazon sort of thing like 5 star ratings - clickable to see them 4 star, 3, 2, 1..

that way it address the issue of possibly scamming low end buyers?

just an idea.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 01:46 am
Major search engines such as Google have a similar type of problem when deciding how to rank search engine results. To prevent users manipulating the system they make minor changes to their ranking algorithm(s) on a regular (daily?) basis, and periodically they have a major shake up. Perhaps the new code could be written with this in mind?

That's a great analogy and the main reason we are doing this.  It's become too easy to game the system and it's time for a shake up that will make it that much harder to do so.  Thinking of google, they've added in factors to their search rank that make it harder and harder to game, things like how a user interacts with the site, how many high quality sites link to the site, etc.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 02:00 am
This is great!  Your feedback and attention is energizing the development process.  If this goes well, and I hope it does, we may make this a regular practice :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: cirrus on August 11, 2013, 02:18 am
Sounds like ones credit score!! :)  On one hand you have the ability to create a fluid, highly sensitive system that could potentially rate the buyers and sellers through a system of weights and measures. And on the other hand you can look at other sites that have gone the complete opposite route using extremely simple methods to rate their buyers and sellers. 

I see you have chosen factors that can be weighed universally, which is necessary, but since there are only so many parameters to choose from that can actually carry a universal weight it leaves you wondering exactly what type of customer do you truly have after the computation is complete.  I think the parameters you have chosen are good -  total amount spent, total purchases, vendors purchased from, purchase distribution across vendors, weight of vendors purchased from, account age.

A good way to test this concept is to compare two completely different buyers (one well respected buyer and another not so respected buyer) using equal vendor weights to see how each would be reflected. 

But yes, the question now is how much weight should each individual factor equal overall. 

IMHO, I would weigh each in a percentile such as this:

-Buyer
 35%- total amount spent
 30%- total purchases
 15%- number of vendors purchased from
 10%- purchase distribution across vendors
 5%-  weight of vendors purchased from
 5%-  account age

Haven't thought much about the sellers but maybe we could do something similar with that too.

Whatever we decide I just want to mention that I have secured the domain DPRsList.com in anticipation of this turning into the Angie's List for drug dealers.  I see a future in this :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BruceCampbell on August 11, 2013, 02:22 am
How about implementing a feature that shows how many times a customer took something to resolution and how many times they won or lost? That would deter scammers and help vendors decide who they'd like to do business with in the future.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 02:25 am
How about implementing a feature that shows how many times a customer took something to resolution and how many times they won or lost? That would deter scammers and help vendors decide who they'd like to do business with in the future.

not a bad idea, but it is out of scope.  please start a thread in the feature request board if you want to discuss this.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BruceCampbell on August 11, 2013, 02:35 am
How about implementing a feature that shows how many times a customer took something to resolution and how many times they won or lost? That would deter scammers and help vendors decide who they'd like to do business with in the future.

not a bad idea, but it is out of scope.  please start a thread in the feature request board if you want to discuss this.

Meh. Just trying to contribute.

How about average finalization time after order marked in transit? I had a few auto-finalizations and near finalizations and waiting two weeks to get paid for a domestic order as a low volume vendor sucks.

Then you'd probably need to make a category for domestic and international..

God dammit brain say smart things to DPR and make him happy with your ideas.

:(

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Mr. Fluffles Schrodinger on August 11, 2013, 03:28 am
First of all, thanks to DPR and crew for actively listening to the small folk.  Big love.


now, speaking for myself again, i have a few customers that have come back for more purchases a number of times. how would you suggest to weigh that? i feel they come back to me because the service is excellent and the price is fair... should that count more than someone who blasts out a bunch of one-off orders and the customers never return? could this be abused by vendors who offer "grand opening or limited time sample sale - limit X per customer"?


Yes!  I love this idea.  Customer loyalty should be a very important aspect of any legitimate vendor's business.  Dedicated vendors also deserve the best, most hassle-free customers. This new system gives those customers a more organized ladder to climb, and more incentive to climb it. 


while we're on the topic of feedback..... please please PLEASE make it so that buyers can not change feedback!! it should, however, be plainly obvious to the buyer that they do not need to write feedback when they finalize, and should only write feedback once they have tried the product. i feel this would completely eliminate feedback extortion scamming. i would personally be much more open to dealing with new buyers if that were the case. as it stands now, i have a moratorium on new buyers due to this.


It seems simple enough that vendors could possibly break new buyers in with "sample purchases only" policies. This would also prevent their feedback from weighing in heavily.  More of a screening process than a moratorium.

Ability to change feedback may be important to newer users due to inexperience.  They may have negative thoughts at first and change them after research, further sampling, etc., or vise versa.



Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: stenr on August 11, 2013, 03:42 am
I really like the idea of this but I simply ask that you think of as many possible ways to scam using your "new feedback system".

if you can think of it so can anyone else, so just try to keep it secure and I'll be happy :)
Pretty much this.

I'm really happy you're sharing info on future updates, and I'm sure once it's all said and done it will be great. Gives me and the SR community something to really look forward to. Can't wait to see where the Road is a year from now, and beyond. It really is amazing watching this thing grow.
Thank you for all your hard work!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Yoda on August 11, 2013, 03:46 am
Why do we have to be assigned a single credit score number like cirrus mentioned?  Why not make all these categories sortable?... or let us display their/our page in this or that way (e.g. display all items in USD, BTC, or some other currency).  Obviously these categories hold different levels of importance for different people... some may think amount spent is most important, while others something else.

The same with feedback.  I like being able to see feedback displayed as a timeline so I can see trends... but I'd also love to be able to hit a button and see feedback arranged by amount spent, buyer SR age, rating, etc.  This would give me many angles I could look at and judge.

Maybe this is suggesting way too much though.

Guess I just don't buy into the whole aggregate scoring... whatever factor ends up holding the most weight in it will be exploited anyhow.  Might as well give us the whole picture imho. 

Anywho... just hope I'm not going to be punished for being loyal.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RealJohnnyDepp on August 11, 2013, 03:50 am
I don't believe this is the original DPR anymore, which is a shame.

With the threads about the articles coming up in the next couple of days and such, I don't see how the real DPR could be letting this happen.

DPR, no offense, but can't you do more then 1 thing at a time? I mean ya your suggestions about the feedback overhaul is wonderful it seems, but security is number 1 and there has been a lot of shit going on lately and I'm not feeling good about it.

I hope you don't go down as the DeadedPirateRoberts...no offense, I give you respect for what you have built, but damn....

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BruceCampbell on August 11, 2013, 03:57 am
I don't believe this is the original DPR anymore, which is a shame.

With the threads about the articles coming up in the next couple of days and such, I don't see how the real DPR could be letting this happen.

DPR, no offense, but can't you do more then 1 thing at a time? I mean ya your suggestions about the feedback overhaul is wonderful it seems, but security is number 1 and there has been a lot of shit going on lately and I'm not feeling good about it.

I hope you don't go down as the DeadedPirateRoberts...no offense, I give you respect for what you have built, but damn....

I don't know what in the good gobbledy fuck you're going on about good sir.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RealJohnnyDepp on August 11, 2013, 04:05 am
I don't believe this is the original DPR anymore, which is a shame.

With the threads about the articles coming up in the next couple of days and such, I don't see how the real DPR could be letting this happen.

DPR, no offense, but can't you do more then 1 thing at a time? I mean ya your suggestions about the feedback overhaul is wonderful it seems, but security is number 1 and there has been a lot of shit going on lately and I'm not feeling good about it.

I hope you don't go down as the DeadedPirateRoberts...no offense, I give you respect for what you have built, but damn....

I don't know what in the good gobbledy fuck you're going on about good sir.

WELL, IM SORT OF OUT OF IT RIGHT NOW...BUT STILL YOU GOT THE POINT DIDN'T U?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 11, 2013, 04:47 am
These are a very good set of metrics to base the feedback's weight on.

Though it might seem counter-intuitive, new/newish vendors would be wise to NOT do business with very active long term buyers given the additional weight their feedback carries versus a newish, less active buyer. One 1/5 left by a single active long term buyer can undo weeks of 5/5s from average buyers and would take a slew of 5/5s left by relatively active medium term buyers to undo. Heck, even a 4/5 or 3/5 left by a single active long term buyer can shave off a lot of percentage points from the newish vendor's rating. All of which makes veteran buyers "persona-non-grata" to newbie vendors.

The exception would be to do business with veteran buyers who have a good forum presence and reputation. They are less likely to commits acts of feedback blackmail on new vendors and are more forgiving of newb vendor mistakes.


But there's one critical element that must be addressed with regards to feedback and that is the duration period to leave feedback and ability to change feedback.

Currently, it's something on the order of up to about 4 months that a buyer can change feedback. There is no viable excuse or scenario where something of this sort is necessary. In 3 months, a buyer's weighting can change if they've been very active since they left a vendor feedback. That would change the weight of the feedback even though the original feedback's weight has been aged some what. If this buyer has done a few bulk buys since they left a particular vendor feedback, the weight of the old feedback would necessarily increase.

The duration to leave or change feedback should be limited to 2 weeks after order finalization.  This will of course negatively affect those who finalize early, especially for international orders. But you know what? That's an additional part of the risk they take by not staying in escrow. But more importantly, it puts a sense of "urgency" to feedback which should also help with deterring feedback blackmail. Those who engage in feedback blackmail would have a limited time in which to effectuate their nefarious plan. The run the risk of the vendor not complying with their evil plan and them not being able to change the feedback back to a 5/5. If their clock runs out and they can't change the 1/5 blackmail back to a 5/5, the feedback blackmailing buyer runs the critical risk of being blacklisted and exposed for their attempt at fraud.     

TL;DR:

DPR, limit the duration that a buyer can leave or change feedback from the current 3+ months to 2 weeks after finalization.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: punkrocksucks on August 11, 2013, 04:55 am
With this "weighting" system, will buyer's and seller's "weights" be publicized? As like a number, or how would this work? Or perhaps that's what you're trying to figure out.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 11, 2013, 05:00 am
I don't really see a need for this. I feel like it's just going to complicate things. I've never once gotten fucked over by a vendor. It's not that hard- read their profile page, the first 3 pages of feedback, the last 3 pages of feedback, and some random ones in between, then search their name on the forums.

As mentioned earlier, this makes me more confident we have a new captain. If this is a new DPR, I wonder what the original would say about this.

For vendors saying they don't want buyers to be able to change feedback or only have a short time to do so, I don't think that makes sense. I  leave feedback regarding shipping time, packaging, vendor him/herself, and initial reactions of the product when I receive it. Then I try the product and update the feedback accordingly. I can see how 3+ months might be a bit much but sometimes it takes a little while to consume. I think a month to update would be good.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: HighStandards on August 11, 2013, 05:17 am
I didnt read the whole page, forgive me if this has allready been mentioned.   

I think the Feedback should be LOCKED IN once posted.   You can only revise the feedback once the seller oks the revision request.

I recently had a dispute/ smear campaign, and a user was able to revise prior feedback he had left me, for extra damage.  I went from 100% rating 5 of 5 on 90+ orders, to 95% rating, All this after i gave a 110% refund for the discrepency user to user.

Thank you DRP.  STAY SAFE your everything to alot of people :)

Also love the reference.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 11, 2013, 05:46 am
I don't really see a need for this. I feel like it's just going to complicate things. I've never once gotten fucked over by a vendor. It's not that hard- read their profile page, the first 3 pages of feedback, the last 3 pages of feedback, and some random ones in between, then search their name on the forums.

As mentioned earlier, this makes me more confident we have a new captain. If this is a new DPR, I wonder what the original would say about this.

For vendors saying they don't want buyers to be able to change feedback or only have a short time to do so, I don't think that makes sense. I  leave feedback regarding shipping time, packaging, vendor him/herself, and initial reactions of the product when I receive it. Then I try the product and update the feedback accordingly. I can see how 3+ months might be a bit much but sometimes it takes a little while to consume. I think a month to update would be good.

30 days is long but is better than the almost 4 months currently allowed. But even 30 days is too long really. Is a detailed review comment all that necessary? It's nice, sure. No doubt. But it shouldn't have anything to do with the rating #/%. All that really goes into considering the feedback rating number can be assessed in a few days after receiving it.

I mean, who's really reading the long feedback comments? It'd be great if buyers would read vendor profile pages which most don't as evidence by the questions they ask that are already answered on the profile page.

Tell you what then. Compromise time. 2 weeks max to be able to change rating number and an additional 2 weeks to only modify the comment. Fair enough?


@highstandards - most e-commerce markets do lock feedback in once placed. The grand majority of buyers do not ever need or even consider changing their feedback. It would significantly cut down on the feedback blackmail that occurs. But a revision request should be handled by third party. Giving the vendor that ability distorts the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

BTW, it's probably time you get access to the vendor section. Put in a request.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: nacho on August 11, 2013, 05:50 am
I didnt read the whole page, forgive me if this has allready been mentioned.   

I think the Feedback should be LOCKED IN once posted.   You can only revise the feedback once the seller oks the revision request.

I recently had a dispute/ smear campaign, and a user was able to revise prior feedback he had left me, for extra damage.  I went from 100% rating 5 of 5 on 90+ orders, to 95% rating, All this after i gave a 110% refund for the discrepency user to user.

Thank you DRP.  STAY SAFE your everything to alot of people :)

Also love the reference.

Can't lock feedback in.   Yes some buyers use it as a weapon but sometimes it really needs to be changed.   If I order some LSD you want me to finalize asap as a 5.   But I can't eat LSD on a tuesday afternoon when I receive the product.   But once I try it that weekend and its bunk.  I should be able to change the feedback to a 1.  And a seller cant be in charge of who changes their own feedback. 'oh yes you can change your feedback to a 1 since i sent you that fake shit' will never ever happen.



Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 11, 2013, 06:00 am
I don't really see a need for this. I feel like it's just going to complicate things. I've never once gotten fucked over by a vendor. It's not that hard- read their profile page, the first 3 pages of feedback, the last 3 pages of feedback, and some random ones in between, then search their name on the forums.

As mentioned earlier, this makes me more confident we have a new captain. If this is a new DPR, I wonder what the original would say about this.

For vendors saying they don't want buyers to be able to change feedback or only have a short time to do so, I don't think that makes sense. I  leave feedback regarding shipping time, packaging, vendor him/herself, and initial reactions of the product when I receive it. Then I try the product and update the feedback accordingly. I can see how 3+ months might be a bit much but sometimes it takes a little while to consume. I think a month to update would be good.

30 days is long but is better than the almost 4 months currently allowed. But even 30 days is too long really. Is a detailed review comment all that necessary? It's nice, sure. No doubt. But it shouldn't have anything to do with the rating #/%. All that really goes into considering the feedback rating number can be assessed in a few days after receiving it.

I mean, who's really reading the long feedback comments? It'd be great if buyers would read vendor profile pages which most don't as evidence by the questions they ask that are already answered on the profile page.

Tell you what then. Comprise time. 2 weeks max to be able to change rating number and an additional 2 weeks to only modify the comment. Fair enough?
Good fucking response. I appreciate your professional and thought out response. +1. I would prefer 3-4 weeks to be able to change the number because, as posted above me, it the product is bunk or whatever the rating should be able to change as well as the comment. Otherwise, the feedback would say "shit shit shit" with a 5 star rating. If people are skimming over the feedback, they'd just see the 5 and continue on. However, I see where you're coming from. How about 2.5-3 weeks? Pick one and you got yourself a deal.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: nacho on August 11, 2013, 06:11 am
@highstandards - most e-commerce markets do lock feedback in once placed. The grand majority of buyers do not ever need or even consider changing their feedback. It would significantly cut down on the feedback blackmail that occurs. But a revision request should be handled by third party. Giving the vendor that ability distorts the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

BTW, it's probably time you get access to the vendor section. Put in a request.

Most e-commerce markets do lock feedback is correct.   But also most e-com markets you are buying things that you will know immediately if its good or bad.   This clock is broke.  1 out of 5.   This chair is missing pieces 2 of 5.     But with silkroad people order drugs and don't get to use them immediately.  I've ordered stuff I didnt use until  2-4 weeks later.  Even longer..  You can't lock in this sites feedback simply because of the types of things that are being sold here.

edit:  Very interesting that i'm getting negged while i'm trying to have a discussion with my 'fellow' silkroaders.   
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 06:16 am
@highstandards - most e-commerce markets do lock feedback in once placed. The grand majority of buyers do not ever need or even consider changing their feedback. It would significantly cut down on the feedback blackmail that occurs. But a revision request should be handled by third party. Giving the vendor that ability distorts the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

BTW, it's probably time you get access to the vendor section. Put in a request.

Most e-commerce markets do lock feedback is correct.   But also most e-com markets you are buying things that you will know immediately if its good or bad.   This clock is broke.  1 out of 5.   This chair is missing pieces 2 of 5.     But with silkroad people order drugs and don't get to use them immediately.  I've ordered stuff I didnt use until  2-4 weeks later.  Even longer..  You can't lock in this sites feedback simply because of the types of things that are being sold here.

Get a test kit.  Atlantis does great with locked in feedback from what I've heard.  They also had a FE button so that FE buyer's can change their feedback once they receive.  They also have buyer feedback.  I hear it all works very nicely.  I don't know from first hand experience.  I really hope we get to have these features over here sometime in the near future.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: nacho on August 11, 2013, 06:20 am
@highstandards - most e-commerce markets do lock feedback in once placed. The grand majority of buyers do not ever need or even consider changing their feedback. It would significantly cut down on the feedback blackmail that occurs. But a revision request should be handled by third party. Giving the vendor that ability distorts the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

BTW, it's probably time you get access to the vendor section. Put in a request.

Most e-commerce markets do lock feedback is correct.   But also most e-com markets you are buying things that you will know immediately if its good or bad.   This clock is broke.  1 out of 5.   This chair is missing pieces 2 of 5.     But with silkroad people order drugs and don't get to use them immediately.  I've ordered stuff I didnt use until  2-4 weeks later.  Even longer..  You can't lock in this sites feedback simply because of the types of things that are being sold here.

Get a test kit.  Atlantis does great with locked in feedback from what I've heard.  They also had a FE button so that FE buyer's can change their feedback once they receive.  They also have buyer feedback.  I hear it all works very nicely.  I don't know from first hand experience.  I really hope we get to have these features over here sometime in the near future.


So a vendor presses pills with 10 mg of MDMA and 180 mg binder.  Sells them as 190 mg MDMA pills.  Tests positive for MDMA.    But you don't get any effects whatsoever.   

Test kits are great but they don't earn a vendor a perfect feedback score.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 06:22 am
So a vendor presses pills with 10 mg of MDMA and 180 mg binder.  Sells them as 190 mg MDMA pills.  Tests positive for MDMA.    But you don't get any effects whatsoever.   

Test kits are great but they don't earn a vendor a perfect feedback score.

10mg MDMA ecstasy pills would test horribly.  It would not be a dark purple at all.  Even so, if you bought them as ecstacy or MDMA pills and they have MDMA then you got what you paid for unless he advertised them as containing  a different amount which many vendors here already do without a problem or punishment.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: nacho on August 11, 2013, 06:27 am
So a vendor presses pills with 10 mg of MDMA and 180 mg binder.  Sells them as 190 mg MDMA pills.  Tests positive for MDMA.    But you don't get any effects whatsoever.   

Test kits are great but they don't earn a vendor a perfect feedback score.

10mg MDMA ecstasy pills would test horribly.  It would not be a dark purple at all.  Even so, if you bought them as ecstacy or MDMA pills and they have MDMA then you got what you paid for unless he advertised them as containing  a different amount which many vendors here already do without a problem or punishment.

So are you saying that if a vendor sells a pill that doesn't contain enough MDMA to make you roll at all but does have MDMA in because it tests positive.   You got what you paid for and should give a 5 of 5?   I seriously hope you aren't that nearsighted.  I have heard that jacking off causes blindness. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 06:35 am
So a vendor presses pills with 10 mg of MDMA and 180 mg binder.  Sells them as 190 mg MDMA pills.  Tests positive for MDMA.    But you don't get any effects whatsoever.   

Test kits are great but they don't earn a vendor a perfect feedback score.

10mg MDMA ecstasy pills would test horribly.  It would not be a dark purple at all.  Even so, if you bought them as ecstacy or MDMA pills and they have MDMA then you got what you paid for unless he advertised them as containing  a different amount which many vendors here already do without a problem or punishment.

So are you saying that if a vendor sells a pill that doesn't contain enough MDMA to make you roll at all but does have MDMA in because it tests positive.   You got what you paid for and should give a 5 of 5?   I seriously hope you aren't that nearsighted.  I have heard that jacking off causes blindness.

I did not say that you should give a 5/5.  But yes, if you paid for "ecstasy" or "MDMA pills" and they contained MDMA then you got what you paid for.  There is one vendor on here selling "225mg MDMA ecstasy pills" that contain no MDMA at all.  Most vendors make up bullshit amounts of MDMA for their tablets.  It is very hard to get a consistent amount of MDMA in all the pills throughout a batch.  They vary a lot.

If you pay for a pepperoni pizza and it only has two slices of pepperonis on it then you still got what you paid for.

I never said that you should give a 5/5.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: nacho on August 11, 2013, 06:44 am
I order drugs with the intent of getting intoxicated with those drugs.  Yes its hard for vendors to get an exact amount down but as long as its relatively close then its not a big deal.   If the vendor knowingly sends something that is obviously a far lesser amount than whats advertised they should get a 1 of 5(claim:200 mg mdma, actual: 25 mg mdma).   This has never happened to me on here but its a possibility and thats why feedback doesn't need to be locked.  And If a pizza place brings me a pepperoni pizza with 2 pepperonis,  I send that motherfucker back to the kitchen just like any normal person would.... I'm having a hard time believing you are so black and white about this jack.  They obviously did NOT get what they paid for at all.  You are paying for QUALITY as well as QUANTITY.   You can't give me a bag of candy covered in shit and be upset when I give you a bad rating.   Yea.  You gave me candy but its covered in shit!  Its not the same!


And theres another problem with our feedback system.  Most vendors only want a 5/5 and anything less gets you blacklisted and called a scammer.   You can't honestly judge vendors on here without some sort of consequence it seems.    Its either 5/5 or go fuck yourself. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on August 11, 2013, 06:46 am
My question is - do the proposed weightings directly affect the % feedback score? i.e. instead of having the majority of users with 100, 99% we would actually see a more useful scale across a wider range of scores?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 11, 2013, 08:20 am
I'm with Nacho. Jack N Hoff, I don't even see where you're coming from. If I buy a listing for 190 mg of MDMA for $10, I paid for 190 mg of MDMA. I expect 190 mg of MDMA (+/- a small amount of mg for error because like you said, pills aren't always consistent throughout the batch). If I did not feel anything from that pill, I got ripped off. People deserve to know that that vendor ripped me off. This is the point of feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 11, 2013, 09:36 am
I consider the most recent feedback extremely important at times. Other times I would be interested in this weighted system. So, how bout if the viewer can click a button to toggle between most recent and the new system. If such complexity is not difficult, might have buttons that sort for each of the 6 factors? I like the idea of the most recent sort not going back so far that a vendors sales can be calculated.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 11, 2013, 10:28 am
If this is to stop vendors gaming their scores then you're into a whack-a-mole scenario.  Whatever you do they'll work it out (because there are people who are so determined to sell that they will do what they can) and work around it.

Also, if you are going to use averages for buyers and sellers ( average amount spent per transaction on the site for buyers and average amount purchased from the seller) to map their weighting to, then zero transactions distort everything and just getting rid of zero transactions doesn't help because people will just increase it to a few .000s of a bitcoin.  Removing anything under say .1 btc should remove that particular gaming temptation but will affect new sellers trying to build a reputation with samples.

wouldn't it just be easier to create a job that runs that looks for some of the more common characteristics you've identified of feedback fraud and then do a visual inspection? Unless you think it's extremely widespread it might be quicker and easier to implement and manage.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 11, 2013, 10:45 am
I'm with Nacho. Jack N Hoff, I don't even see where you're coming from. If I buy a listing for 190 mg of MDMA for $10, I paid for 190 mg of MDMA. I expect 190 mg of MDMA (+/- a small amount of mg for error because like you said, pills aren't always consistent throughout the batch). If I did not feel anything from that pill, I got ripped off. People deserve to know that that vendor ripped me off. This is the point of feedback.

You interpreted my post incorrectly.  I said if you buy MDMA pills that do not say how much MDMA they contain and they DO contain MDMA then you did get what you paid for.

I also said that MANY vendors here are claiming dosages that are incorrect or just flat out lies.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: bbbaac on August 11, 2013, 01:00 pm
can we set something up so we can see the buyer when you go to the feedback whether were a vendor or buyer. maybe be able to see anyones total amount spent if they even send a message to and SR vendor so we know if there talking out there ass or are serious. maybe its a bit of something against there rights or something but if its all anonymous it shouldnt matter. its numbers and they want to talk numbers lol so we should be able to see.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: PowerToCharm on August 11, 2013, 02:11 pm
I've always thought it a little strange that finalizing orders and leaving feedback were all part of the same function. On most e-commerce sites, the seller getting paid and the buyer leaving feedback are two completely separate functions. I advocate a system whereby buyers finalize when they receive their orders and then leave feedback if and when they choose. Once they leave a feedback, it can never be changed, i.e. edited for content, but it can be removed by the buyer if the situation warrants, say if the vendor and buyer resolve the buyer's issues without going to SR resolution. And of course feedback can be removed by site admin if it is in violation of site policies.

True, a lot of buyers will never leave feedback, but a lot of buyers don't leave feedback with the current system, unless you consider Leave Feedback Here or "thanks" to be helpful feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ananas_xpress on August 11, 2013, 02:19 pm
I'm with Jack N Hoff,

For once SR only has to look at its competition to see how feedback should be done correctly,
While this system is better just like the method used to calculate fees it's all very confusing/behind the scenes and the metrics used to calculate are not really clear or at the very least confusing to the average user.
You are still a better marketplace overall than Atlantis but I cant praise their feedback system highly enough and in this case your not really losing face to copy some aspects of it

Feedback is locked to prevent vendor threats (or at least makes the issue of retroactively intimidating a customer for a 4/5 moot)
Buyer feedback, Buyers are assigned a unique "ID" So you can easily see the 20 reviews for a vendor are from 20 accounts (making it much more time consuming for scammers to game feedback since they would have to setup 20 accounts to do this)
Feedback also includes the value of the transaction so same scammers would have to pay fees for each of their "padded reviews" thus making it expensive to even get into the scamming business"

What you propose is an improvement but like some posters have said people will still find the easiest method to exploit it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: royalblue on August 11, 2013, 02:27 pm
From a buyers perspective, I think you need to be careful not to hide recent feedback.  Recent feedback is crucial when making a purchasing decision.

Quote from: heatfan
Also, another risk when listing the "top reviews" rather than the most recent ones is that when a vendor experiences problems, buyers may not be made aware of such issues since they will not be seeing the most recent feedback but rather the "best" feedback. Viewing recent feedback allows you to make sure the vendor is still on their toes, rather than the fact that they were once in the past.
This.

Quote from: abby
weighting it so that high value buyers feedback is more prominent than anyone lowly will mean that scammers will always make sure that the high value customers get their goods and the minnows get done, as you'll be hiding the poor reviews from easy sight.  which will make it harder for objective judgements to be made on whether to trust the vendor.  Also, the feedback in its current form allows people to see an early trend if they seller is going bad - either non deliveries, increase in FEs or poor quality.
This.

I consider the most recent feedback extremely important at times. Other times I would be interested in this weighted system. So, how bout if the viewer can click a button to toggle between most recent and the new system. If such complexity is not difficult, might have buttons that sort for each of the 6 factors? I like the idea of the most recent sort not going back so far that a vendors sales can be calculated.
and this.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: cirrus on August 11, 2013, 02:32 pm
We could maybe even make it point based too... such as each transaction is worth one point. Your total amount spent can be based on a tiered system such as every $100 is worth 1 points, or something like that.  Vendors can be tiered by points too from 1 to 3 points.  So for example buying from a well established vendor can earn you up to 3 points per transaction, and buying from a newer vendor is worth 1 point.

There could even be things that could cause you to loose points, such as inactivity for over 5 months will trigger a point loss, or even causing orders to go to into resolution that result in a refund could net you .5 points... or something like that.  I'm only throwing out some thoughts. :D
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Purpletown on August 11, 2013, 03:14 pm
The problem is not feature set.  You can't attack a cultural problem with code revisions.  The "Vendors are entitled to 5/5 unless it's bunk or it never arrives" culture cripples the SR feedback system.  Everybody is afraid to give less because they don't want to get (dun dun dunnn) "blacklisted."  You should establish norms for the community (forums/site banner/etc.) around norms for reviews. 

Right now vendors feel slighted for anything less than a 5/5, and your competitors don't suffer from this problem to the degree SR does.  Vendor didn't respond to your messages?  Didn't mark it "in transit" until the end of the 4-day "processing" period or longer?  Stealthed your package shittily?  Doesn't matter, you got your order, give them 5/5.  Conversely, buyers who get held up in transit for reasons not due to the vendor can review vindictively, and this should be discouraged as well.  These phenomena devalue the feedback engine, and the most powerful thing you can do (in my opinion) is to establish a set of guidelines for feedback and encourage healthy discussion about what constitutes different star ratings.  Link to it prominently on the review page so it pops in a new tab.

You don't have a 100-point feedback scale.  You have a 5-point scale (95-100).  Because most people will run like hell from someone with a 95, and it's for the above reasons.

That being said, for the current work, if a weighting system is introduced a view toggle should be introduced along with it.  As others have said, "Customer weight" (call it "frequent customers" or something in the UI) should be switchable to Most Recent.  Can't take away the most recent; if a vendor is stellar but starts to fall off, only a most recent view is going to show this to buyers.  You need the most recent view to protect them.

The biggest problem I see with a weighting system is that it enforces a sort of classism amongst vendors.  If you know that somebody's review will "count less" you can inherently deprioritize the processing and shipment of their order.  This information should not be available to vendors.  It should be an invisible part of the weighting algorithm.

The "FE 5/5" reviews need to go away, period.  This is the biggest problem with the feedback system and should be higher priority than any weighting algorithm.  Purchasers should be able to choose "fund directly" or "use escrow" and the feedback mechanism should be decoupled from this, enabling a review to go in once a product has been received or dispute resolution has been reached.  Just having another state on the orders page; "awaiting review," that occurred after finalize (and finalize not requiring a review) would solve so much.  Leave it to vendors to PM followup and ask for reviews if customers don't leave them.

That being said, in a perfect world, there would be three 5-star blocks for feedback for each transaction - communication, stealth, quality. 

And for disclosure, the above are my opinions and I am NOT a buyer who would weight highly in this system.  I would be closer to the end of the list.  But I'm still somebody :-)

P.S.  What about BG's customers who made a new account?  Do they lose their weight?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 11, 2013, 03:52 pm
Another idea that is necessary (IMHO)...

If an order is left to auto-finalize, vendor gets an immediate 5/5 with comment "Order left to auto-finalize" and the buyer is locked out of changing feedback. Hey, they lost the right to leave feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 11, 2013, 04:37 pm
The problem is not feature set.  You can't attack a cultural problem with code revisions.  The "Vendors are entitled to 5/5 unless it's bunk or it never arrives" culture cripples the SR feedback system.  Everybody is afraid to give less because they don't want to get (dun dun dunnn) "blacklisted."  You should establish norms for the community (forums/site banner/etc.) around norms for reviews. 

Right now vendors feel slighted for anything less than a 5/5, and your competitors don't suffer from this problem to the degree SR does.  Vendor didn't respond to your messages?  Didn't mark it "in transit" until the end of the 4-day "processing" period or longer?  Stealthed your package shittily?  Doesn't matter, you got your order, give them 5/5.  Conversely, buyers who get held up in transit for reasons not due to the vendor can review vindictively, and this should be discouraged as well.  These phenomena devalue the feedback engine, and the most powerful thing you can do (in my opinion) is to establish a set of guidelines for feedback and encourage healthy discussion about what constitutes different star ratings.  Link to it prominently on the review page so it pops in a new tab.

This isn't Amazon or eBay or whatever else. And vendors who are risking their freedom in exchange for risk capital cannot be compared to Amazon or eBay vendors or rated in the same manner. You are literally coming here to acquire illegal contraband items that you yourself cannot readily source. There's no seedy back alleys, meeting at street corners with thugs, etc. etc. It's coming right to your door or drop relatively risk free all things being equal.

Quote
You don't have a 100-point feedback scale.  You have a 5-point scale (95-100).  Because most people will run like hell from someone with a 95, and it's for the above reasons.

You don't seem to understand how the feedback system works. Not your fault. But you're most definitely wrong. It is a 1 to 100 point system. Not 95 to 100. There are some sub 70% rated vendors out there. Look around, you'll find them.

The biggest problem is that given the current algorithm, a lot of percent can be taken off a vendor's rating if the feedback left is a 4/5 to 1/5. It all depends on who's leaving it and for what order. That's why vendors want a 5/5 all the time and blacklist buyers who are nitpicky and shave off points for relatively little things. We don't want other vendors to have to lose points over this buyer with unrealistic expectations. Or scammers who use feedback as blackmail. (Also rival vendors who use buyer accounts to deliberately place an order with the intention of leaving a 1/5). Are you beginning to see the kind of BS we vendors have to deal with? You probably wouldn't believe the kinds of things vendors have to deal with even if we showed you. You'd have to become a vendor yourself to experience it. That's not to say buyers don't put up with BS from vendors. There's lots of BS to go around.

Quote
That being said, for the current work, if a weighting system is introduced a view toggle should be introduced along with it.  As others have said, "Customer weight" (call it "frequent customers" or something in the UI) should be switchable to Most Recent.  Can't take away the most recent; if a vendor is stellar but starts to fall off, only a most recent view is going to show this to buyers.  You need the most recent view to protect them.

The biggest problem I see with a weighting system is that it enforces a sort of classism amongst vendors.  If you know that somebody's review will "count less" you can inherently deprioritize the processing and shipment of their order.  This information should not be available to vendors.  It should be an invisible part of the weighting algorithm.

You really, really have no idea how the system works. Again, not your fault. Many vendors don't either. It's all a big secret. It can be partly reverse engineered. But there is no classism or metrics to properly discern who counts more or less. It is literally a guess - educated or gut feeling guess. If you have a refund rate or a few auto-finalizations on your history, you might get your order cancelled and rightfully so. You've demonstrated that you're a PITA to deal with. If you've been making so many purchases then suddenly make a purchase that is larger then the previous sum of your purchases... red flag. If you're on a blacklist, a vendor can decide if they want to be bothered with you or not and when and for how much. Best bet... stay off the blacklists. It's easy. You can leave a 5/5 but comment on what bothered you. Most vendors don't mind truthful feedback commentary. It's mostly viewed as constructive. Docking points is viewed as destructive. Unless really warranted. Major fuckups cry out for a 1/5. Keyword1: Major. Keyword2: fuck. ups. (or fuck downs. depends on your point of view.)

Quote
The "FE 5/5" reviews need to go away, period.  This is the biggest problem with the feedback system and should be higher priority than any weighting algorithm.  Purchasers should be able to choose "fund directly" or "use escrow" and the feedback mechanism should be decoupled from this, enabling a review to go in once a product has been received or dispute resolution has been reached.  Just having another state on the orders page; "awaiting review," that occurred after finalize (and finalize not requiring a review) would solve so much.  Leave it to vendors to PM followup and ask for reviews if customers don't leave them.

Mmm... Nah. Then that legitimizes the practice of F/E. It like going to a brothel and there are two doors to two different sections. "Condoms" "No Condoms." It would be better that condoms be used for all involved.

Quote
That being said, in a perfect world, there would be three 5-star blocks for feedback for each transaction - communication, stealth, quality. 

Nope. Not here, not ever. Most buyers aren't responsible enough to use it properly.

Come on brother (or sister), look at what is sold here. Drugs. Drugs that can and are often abused.

Scenario:

You get someone in withdrawal or about to be who ordered 1st class mail, who's asking a vendor every 5 minutes, "did it ship yet? Huh? Huh? Huh? Answer me goddammit!" 
What kind of stars you think he or she will leave with regards to vendor communication?

Quality? So much plays into that. Tolerance for one, certainly does. Many don't even understand the bio-mechanics of tolerance to a drug. (That's how we get so many people harming themselves on opiates. They take a break, tolerance drops, and when they return, they start off at the dosage they left off at and bam! Overdose.)

Stealth? Some think everything should be in triple MBB packaging inside a hollowed out book or stashed inside a $100 pair of Beats headphones. They have no idea about how the postal system operates and the procedures involved. They don't even know anything about Federal law in the US. Package got there. Packages keep arriving. So maybe there's a method to the madness that you, the buyer, didn't contemplate?

Quote
And for disclosure, the above are my opinions and I am NOT a buyer who would weight highly in this system.  I would be closer to the end of the list.  But I'm still somebody :-)

Well, first thing we can agree on. Everybody is somebody and everyone counts. :)

Quote
P.S.  What about BG's customers who made a new account?  Do they lose their weight?

Yep. Them's the breaks. But on the plus side, they cannot be attached to their old accounts. A security measure. An opportunity cost. ;)

You take the good
you take the bad
you take them both
and there you have
the facts of life. The facts of life.

Toodle dee do.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 04:48 pm
thank you everyone for your input.  It's helping me get a sense of what's important to you when it comes to feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: XxWINxX94x23 on August 11, 2013, 04:55 pm
Brilliant!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: brodie on August 11, 2013, 04:58 pm
When placing a review there should be a pre determined setup for how the person should review so we don't end up with "good" or "thanks" or "5/5"

For example the page would be set up like this

What you ordered:

Stealth/Delivery:

Potency:

Quantity (was it on weight):

Did You Get What You Ordered? Y/N

Vendor Communication:

Would You Do Business With Same Vendor? Y/N

Additional Comments:



Maybe more or less, but you get the point... I think this would encourage people to leave more detailed reviews about what they bought instead of just saying "cool thanks"
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 11, 2013, 04:59 pm
I don't really see a need for this. I feel like it's just going to complicate things. I've never once gotten fucked over by a vendor. It's not that hard- read their profile page, the first 3 pages of feedback, the last 3 pages of feedback, and some random ones in between, then search their name on the forums.

As mentioned earlier, this makes me more confident we have a new captain. If this is a new DPR, I wonder what the original would say about this.

For vendors saying they don't want buyers to be able to change feedback or only have a short time to do so, I don't think that makes sense. I  leave feedback regarding shipping time, packaging, vendor him/herself, and initial reactions of the product when I receive it. Then I try the product and update the feedback accordingly. I can see how 3+ months might be a bit much but sometimes it takes a little while to consume. I think a month to update would be good.

30 days is long but is better than the almost 4 months currently allowed. But even 30 days is too long really. Is a detailed review comment all that necessary? It's nice, sure. No doubt. But it shouldn't have anything to do with the rating #/%. All that really goes into considering the feedback rating number can be assessed in a few days after receiving it.

I mean, who's really reading the long feedback comments? It'd be great if buyers would read vendor profile pages which most don't as evidence by the questions they ask that are already answered on the profile page.

Tell you what then. Comprise time. 2 weeks max to be able to change rating number and an additional 2 weeks to only modify the comment. Fair enough?
Good fucking response. I appreciate your professional and thought out response. +1. I would prefer 3-4 weeks to be able to change the number because, as posted above me, it the product is bunk or whatever the rating should be able to change as well as the comment. Otherwise, the feedback would say "shit shit shit" with a 5 star rating. If people are skimming over the feedback, they'd just see the 5 and continue on. However, I see where you're coming from. How about 2.5-3 weeks? Pick one and you got yourself a deal.

I'm cool with up to 17 days (2.75 weeks) after finalizing. Gives wiggle room because a buyer can extended it by not finalizing immediately after receiving their order. So in a way, you get your 3 weeks give or take.

But...

Reading JackNhoff's commentary about Atlantis... I did not know that they locked in feedback. Having been a long time buyer on SR myself, I don't know how comfortable I am with immediately locked feedback. Have to be honest. The thought makes me want to hold myself and tell myself it will be OK while fighting to recoil a finger away from the mouse button that's about to click "submit."   
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ogbryan on August 11, 2013, 05:06 pm
Anything else coming in this update?  Like SR BTC rate algorithm change *hint hint**
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 11, 2013, 05:11 pm
ok, a couple of thoughts I'd like bring up...

This idea of decoupling feedback from the transaction is interesting.  Right now, when a transaction is completed, a big box shows up on the order page with a 1 - 5 and message field, so just about everyone fills it out in order to remove it from their page.  They could wait as long as they like to fill it out, but many fill it out as soon as it's available, even if they haven't tested their product.  So, what if we removed the message field and left just the 1 - 5, and instead put a link to "review this item" and "review this vendor" on the vendor and item pages.  Instead of a stream of little comments, you'd get reviews left only by people who really want to leave the review.  This, I think, would be enough to hide the true volume of any given vendor as many customers are fine leaving a 1-5 rating and not a message.

Another suggestion I really liked was being able to sort the feedback.  Some sorting options might be "newest" and "buyer weight".

Also, I think some of you misinterpreted the OP, thinking that I want to roll up everything about a buyer into a single score and hide the rest.  This is quite the opposite.  I'd like to make the buyer stats easily accessible so you can judge the review according to your own tastes.  The six dimensions I listed were the only ones I could think of that might be important to someone judging another's review.  I could pose the question differently... What information about the transaction and buyer would you like to see next to a review?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: OneBadDream on August 11, 2013, 05:24 pm
Weeding em out n' such, eh? This will definitely make it harder for anyone to call anyone else illegitimate without actually having proof. Not bad. This'll be cool to see man. :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Tessellated on August 11, 2013, 06:21 pm
How about customer feedback while you're at it? :D

Lets hope that they are quietly working on this behind the scenes and will account it soon.

I think all vendors agree that there are good customers and there are bad customers.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: cirrus on August 11, 2013, 06:27 pm
Well, just providing all the buyer stats to the seller makes it simple instead of trying to create some combined rating.  As far as the information that can be seen next to the transaction about the buyer would probably be the age of the account and the number of vendors they purchased from.  This allows those who see feedback to have an idea how much credibility to give the reviewer about the transaction. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: XxWINxX94x23 on August 11, 2013, 07:05 pm
Any estimated date said updates will be implemented, or is the idea still on the drawing board?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: cactuschomper on August 11, 2013, 07:43 pm
Amazing ideas guys! +1's everywhere!!!!!


When placing a review there should be a pre determined setup for how the person should review so we don't end up with "good" or "thanks" or "5/5"

For example the page would be set up like this

What you ordered:

Stealth/Delivery:

Potency:

Quantity (was it on weight):

Did You Get What You Ordered? Y/N

Vendor Communication:

Would You Do Business With Same Vendor? Y/N

Additional Comments:

Maybe more or less, but you get the point... I think this would encourage people to leave more detailed reviews about what they bought instead of just saying "cool thanks"

As far as a new feedback layout that would be amazing. A premade sheet to fill out would be great for detailed review, even add a spot to upload pictures for reagent kit tests/quality photos(photo size limit of course).

ok, a couple of thoughts I'd like bring up...

This idea of decoupling feedback from the transaction is interesting.  Right now, when a transaction is completed, a big box shows up on the order page with a 1 - 5 and message field, so just about everyone fills it out in order to remove it from their page.  They could wait as long as they like to fill it out, but many fill it out as soon as it's available, even if they haven't tested their product.  So, what if we removed the message field and left just the 1 - 5, and instead put a link to "review this item" and "review this vendor" on the vendor and item pages.  Instead of a stream of little comments, you'd get reviews left only by people who really want to leave the review.  This, I think, would be enough to hide the true volume of any given vendor as many customers are fine leaving a 1-5 rating and not a message.

Another suggestion I really liked was being able to sort the feedback.  Some sorting options might be "newest" and "buyer weight".

Also, I think some of you misinterpreted the OP, thinking that I want to roll up everything about a buyer into a single score and hide the rest.  This is quite the opposite.  I'd like to make the buyer stats easily accessible so you can judge the review according to your own tastes.  The six dimensions I listed were the only ones I could think of that might be important to someone judging another's review.  I could pose the question differently... What information about the transaction and buyer would you like to see next to a review?

Also DPR's idea about seperating the feedback is perfect. In my personal opinion buyers who are brand new should not have a very big say in anything. Another good point DPR has is being able to sort through the absurd volume of feedback from "MEGA Vendors" perhaps through feedback search options.

As far as information to judge the buyers review of a transaction? # of vendors bought from, # of times bought from this vendor, amount spent with this vendor, and age of buyer account. Hope this opinion helps!

Well, just providing all the buyer stats to the seller makes it simple instead of trying to create some combined rating.  As far as the information that can be seen next to the transaction about the buyer would probably be the age of the account and the number of vendors they purchased from.  This allows those who see feedback to have an idea how much credibility to give the reviewer about the transaction.

Could not agree more with the last sentence. The credibility of those who leave feedback is VERY important. The days of vendors buying their own low price listings to boost rep. needs to end. I feel with all these great minds at work it will surely happen soon!

Best reguards,
CC
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: HollyMolly2012 on August 11, 2013, 08:15 pm
What a story, great to hear this. Coincidentally I think about this
 a few days ago .



Keep up the good work DPR
Please think about the SR Gox Rates..  :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: HighStandards on August 11, 2013, 08:37 pm
@ all the hubub over the locked in feedback.  It was late and i was rushing. That would indeed tip the favor in the seller's direction.  Thats not how i ment it.

I just think that 4 months is terribly long.  but a solution is needed.  It makes it possible to really influence a new sellers stats. given a small investment.

 It shouldnt be a problem, when you go ot of your way to do good by people.

But a rival can launch a smear by building a few buyer accounts. and if you are unaware they can cripple your stats.  Its kinda bs imo.


Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: XxWINxX94x23 on August 11, 2013, 10:31 pm
@ all the hubub over the locked in feedback.  It was late and i was rushing. That would indeed tip the favor in the seller's direction.  Thats not how i ment it.

I just think that 4 months is terribly long.  but a solution is needed.  It makes it possible to really influence a new sellers stats. given a small investment.

 It shouldnt be a problem, when you go ot of your way to do good by people.

But a rival can launch a smear by building a few buyer accounts. and if you are unaware they can cripple your stats.  Its kinda bs imo.

+1 to you sir, for having Hank III as your avatar. Finally someone who knows whats up!!!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 11, 2013, 10:49 pm
DPR,

Feedback rating decoupled from feedback comments is a great idea.

Whatever you do, keep in mind the security of buyers and seller alike. Also be careful not to give new buyers the wrong impression that this site is other than is at its core, a black market. Otherwise they will fail to maintain a healthy amount of skepticism and paranoia and do stupid things that may have life long consequences. While Libertarianism is about self empowerment, it's also about self defense. The best way to assist buyers in self defense is to NOT make this site like an Amazon.com. They need to be reminded at all times that they are buying illegal drugs from persons truly unknown and perhaps unknowable all the while giving up their identities to some degree in order to obtain these drugs of one's choice.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abrakadabra on August 12, 2013, 04:29 am
DPR,

Feedback rating decoupled from feedback comments is a great idea.

Whatever you do, keep in mind the security of buyers and seller alike. Also be careful not to give new buyers the wrong impression that this site is other than is at its core, a black market. Otherwise they will fail to maintain a healthy amount of skepticism and paranoia and do stupid things that may have life long consequences. While Libertarianism is about self empowerment, it's also about self defense. The best way to assist buyers in self defense is to NOT make this site like an Amazon.com. They need to be reminded at all times that they are buying illegal drugs from persons truly unknown and perhaps unknowable all the while giving up their identities to some degree in order to obtain these drugs of one's choice.
+1
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abrakadabra on August 12, 2013, 04:42 am
I would like to see the link next to feedback in profiles labeled "Item" for an Item no longer listed to still show legacy listings in some manner so you can still see what the FB was for. This would help if a vendor sells multiple unrelated products and you want to see if the "weak product" comment was for pot or coke....
 Also this would help identify padding if you see great feedback for some lowball priced item no longer listed, since I assume vendors are less likely to pad themselves via huge priced items since they will cost them more in fees.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Diceman on August 12, 2013, 04:57 am
Quote
That being said, in a perfect world, there would be three 5-star blocks for feedback for each transaction - communication, stealth, quality. 

Nope. Not here, not ever. Most buyers aren't responsible enough to use it properly.

Come on brother (or sister), look at what is sold here. Drugs. Drugs that can and are often abused.

Scenario:

You get someone in withdrawal or about to be who ordered 1st class mail, who's asking a vendor every 5 minutes, "did it ship yet? Huh? Huh? Huh? Answer me goddammit!" 
What kind of stars you think he or she will leave with regards to vendor communication?

Quality? So much plays into that. Tolerance for one, certainly does. Many don't even understand the bio-mechanics of tolerance to a drug. (That's how we get so many people harming themselves on opiates. They take a break, tolerance drops, and when they return, they start off at the dosage they left off at and bam! Overdose.)

Stealth? Some think everything should be in triple MBB packaging inside a hollowed out book or stashed inside a $100 pair of Beats headphones. They have no idea about how the postal system operates and the procedures involved. They don't even know anything about Federal law in the US. Package got there. Packages keep arriving. So maybe there's a method to the madness that you, the buyer, didn't contemplate?

I agree with your point on communcation.  In my book a perfect transaction involves no communication.

However the 'ebay model' of being able to rate stealth, speed to ship, and product quality would be very useful.  For instance, I value stealth highly and would like to see it rated individually.  You have a valid point about some customers not being able to rate quality accurately, but I believe this would average out over time.  The top vendors would still be the top vendors.

Also, however unpopular the idea is to vendors, making the feedback anonymous would both improve honesty and give the feedback scammers less leverage imo.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 12, 2013, 05:39 am
Quote
That being said, in a perfect world, there would be three 5-star blocks for feedback for each transaction - communication, stealth, quality. 

Nope. Not here, not ever. Most buyers aren't responsible enough to use it properly.

Come on brother (or sister), look at what is sold here. Drugs. Drugs that can and are often abused.

Scenario:

You get someone in withdrawal or about to be who ordered 1st class mail, who's asking a vendor every 5 minutes, "did it ship yet? Huh? Huh? Huh? Answer me goddammit!" 
What kind of stars you think he or she will leave with regards to vendor communication?

Quality? So much plays into that. Tolerance for one, certainly does. Many don't even understand the bio-mechanics of tolerance to a drug. (That's how we get so many people harming themselves on opiates. They take a break, tolerance drops, and when they return, they start off at the dosage they left off at and bam! Overdose.)

Stealth? Some think everything should be in triple MBB packaging inside a hollowed out book or stashed inside a $100 pair of Beats headphones. They have no idea about how the postal system operates and the procedures involved. They don't even know anything about Federal law in the US. Package got there. Packages keep arriving. So maybe there's a method to the madness that you, the buyer, didn't contemplate?

I agree with your point on communcation.  In my book a perfect transaction involves no communication.

However the 'ebay model' of being able to rate stealth, speed to ship, and product quality would be very useful.  For instance, I value stealth highly and would like to see it rated individually.  You have a valid point about some customers not being able to rate quality accurately, but I believe this would average out over time.  The top vendors would still be the top vendors.

Also, however unpopular the idea is to vendors, making the feedback anonymous would both improve honesty and give the feedback scammers less leverage imo.


I don't think it's truly possible to make feedback anonymous. Especially for custom orders, low volume items, and vendors who aren't selling multiple orders per day. Worse, feedback scammers/blackmailers would have increased attack area since they can claim that an anonymous feedback was left by them. Vendor might given in to their demands not realizing that it wasn't them in the first place. Too much anonymity brings out the worse in some.

Ship speed, stealth and quality are all too subjective measures and are metrics that can be used by LEO to profile a vendor with greater ease especially if a search/sort feature is added. There are vendors who purposely only ship on certain random days to avoid profiling. If you let buyers rate shipping speed, some of those vendors would be unfairly rated. Stealth... another very subjective measure meant only to calm the fears of the paranoid. The vendor who has been shipping weed for 10 years using tried and true methods might get docked for not using MBB which is all the rage by the overly paranoid. Not to say it's not effective. It's just not as necessary as many are lead to believe in all circumstance. Plus that rating would would mark some vendors as primary targets for LEO. There's a reason why packaging is not allowed to be discussed in feedback. And many vendors change up packaging methods every so often. So rating stealth means you might be rating an already obsolete method.

If you're worried about stealth, ask a vendor before purchasing. They would appreciate it because many vendors don't like doing business with fussy buyers. A common complaint about buyers especially the new breed. That's why it looks like DPR is warning us all ahead of time that mainstreamers will be signing up after the article is posted bringing with them all their unrealistic eBay-like expectations. 

Interesting times ahead. I just hope DPR & co don't make a feedback system that aids LEO in profiling vendors. Make those LEO bastards work for it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 12, 2013, 06:14 am
Why do we have to be assigned a single credit score number like cirrus mentioned?  Why not make all these categories sortable?... or let us display their/our page in this or that way (e.g. display all items in USD, BTC, or some other currency).  Obviously these categories hold different levels of importance for different people... some may think amount spent is most important, while others something else.

The same with feedback.  I like being able to see feedback displayed as a timeline so I can see trends... but I'd also love to be able to hit a button and see feedback arranged by amount spent, buyer SR age, rating, etc.  This would give me many angles I could look at and judge.

Maybe this is suggesting way too much though.

Guess I just don't buy into the whole aggregate scoring... whatever factor ends up holding the most weight in it will be exploited anyhow.  Might as well give us the whole picture imho. 

Anywho... just hope I'm not going to be punished for being loyal.

I've always thought it a little strange that finalizing orders and leaving feedback were all part of the same function. On most e-commerce sites, the seller getting paid and the buyer leaving feedback are two completely separate functions. I advocate a system whereby buyers finalize when they receive their orders and then leave feedback if and when they choose. Once they leave a feedback, it can never be changed, i.e. edited for content, but it can be removed by the buyer if the situation warrants, say if the vendor and buyer resolve the buyer's issues without going to SR resolution. And of course feedback can be removed by site admin if it is in violation of site policies.

True, a lot of buyers will never leave feedback, but a lot of buyers don't leave feedback with the current system, unless you consider Leave Feedback Here or "thanks" to be helpful feedback.

I consider the most recent feedback extremely important at times. Other times I would be interested in this weighted system. So, how bout if the viewer can click a button to toggle between most recent and the new system. If such complexity is not difficult, might have buttons that sort for each of the 6 factors? I like the idea of the most recent sort not going back so far that a vendors sales can be calculated.

ok, a couple of thoughts I'd like bring up...

This idea of decoupling feedback from the transaction is interesting.  Right now, when a transaction is completed, a big box shows up on the order page with a 1 - 5 and message field, so just about everyone fills it out in order to remove it from their page.  They could wait as long as they like to fill it out, but many fill it out as soon as it's available, even if they haven't tested their product.  So, what if we removed the message field and left just the 1 - 5, and instead put a link to "review this item" and "review this vendor" on the vendor and item pages.  Instead of a stream of little comments, you'd get reviews left only by people who really want to leave the review.  This, I think, would be enough to hide the true volume of any given vendor as many customers are fine leaving a 1-5 rating and not a message.

Another suggestion I really liked was being able to sort the feedback.  Some sorting options might be "newest" and "buyer weight".

Also, I think some of you misinterpreted the OP, thinking that I want to roll up everything about a buyer into a single score and hide the rest.  This is quite the opposite.  I'd like to make the buyer stats easily accessible so you can judge the review according to your own tastes.  The six dimensions I listed were the only ones I could think of that might be important to someone judging another's review.  I could pose the question differently... What information about the transaction and buyer would you like to see next to a review?

Yes, yes, yes,  and yes! Trying to make some type of complex archaic formula weighting a slew of factors to rank vendors (or buyers for that matter) is IMO an exercise in futility. Not to mention one serious math headache.

Just decide what data you can make viewable, and give people menus to sort by. I think this is the most logical choice for a free market. Let the people decide what ranking factor is most important to them.

I also really love the idea of having the endless stream of "Leave feedback here" and "thanks" feedbacks not crowd out all my good feedback.

I know for some reason you want to limit the "scope" of a "feedback system overhaul" to completely ignore buyer feedback...but I can't help myself:

I would be very careful implementing a feedback system overhaul without implementing buyer feedback at the same time. I know it's a lot of work to do at once, but I think the community is willing to wait for a well polished product.

I even think that you could make things much simpler than they are in a way by combining these issues. Do it like amazon does it - completely remove the obvious demand for people to leave feedback to "get rid of the window" in their orders page. If they want to leave feedback, they can. What incentive will they have? Two fold: Buyers who have received bad product will obviously have incentives to complain about vendor out of frustration, and more importantly, buyers who receive good product will have an incentive to leave a quality review because then when the vendor leaves feedback for the buyer, it will be better!

I hope that makes sense. I really do think it is all one interconnected and very important circle. To ignore the need for appropriate evaluation of buyers seems folly to me. The way things are now though, I suppose the only factor that really matters at all for buyers is total amount spent:

If you are not going to change anything else about buyer feedback, like letting vendors leave actual feedback; at least you should change the default number in orders page to show total amount spent rather than transactions. Total # of buyer transactions is 100% completely useless. Completely. Total amount spent and refund % in percentages. Should look like this:
Buyer ($1,567/0%). Would be infinitely more useful. As it is right now, I literally do not ever bother to read buyer stats. Don't see the point. Maybe options to in account settings to choose the default display? Putting bandaids on real wounds though I suppose, really we just need buyer feedback and we need to not tiptoe around the issue.

Not mention buyer feedback in a thread for "feedback system overhaul?" I do not think it is wise to have the 'scope' quite so narrow DPR.



Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 07:57 am
@ DPR

How about limiting the time frame someone can edit their feedback. Also if they do edit it...then make it so the original can stay up there. Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

I think you should take a que from eBay. Also a lot of buyers use the feedback system to thank the vendor. I do not think it would be a good idea to not have them leave comments but a link to leave them somewhere on the forums...as a lot of people will not take the time to do that. Also a lot of buyers are not forum members.. I know there are buyers who have spent over $100k+ that do not have forum accounts.

What is important for the buyer is to know how long the seller has been here for...how many transactions they have done successfully. I know you put the 300 there for a reason....as maybe you thought it was "bad" if a vendor showed they have done 4000 transactions...as they would not like LE to target them. And if they feel that way then they can go into stealth.

But the fact is...that if you are a vendor with over 4000 transactions and all of them are 5/5...then you should be rewarded...and I would think a buyer would feel a lot better using a vendor with those stats...then one with 200 transactions... and some 5/5.

Also you commented how a vendor could sell themselves $0 listings and leave themselves feedback. I actually think this happens a lot less then others seem to think...BUT the fact is it can happen. So it would make a lot of sense that feedback for transactions over $500 or whatever amount you feel is right...from buyers who have purchased over $25k in orders... should have a lot more weight...A LOT MORE... then a $0 order from a newbie. And I saw that you now do that...I think at least on the $$ side...but I think it should even have more weight....Also I do not think you have it where a buyer that has spent $25k+ has more weight then a buyer that has spent $300.

The bottom line is feedback is there to help others trust that vendor. So anything that addresses that is good.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 12, 2013, 08:16 am
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: bluedev1 on August 12, 2013, 08:52 am
#1 -- Whatever the final system is, do not provide information about it which can be used to exploit it by vendors.  This will eliminate an endless cycle of modifying the system to ameliorate the problems. 

#2 -- Similarly, showing buyer weight in feedback is only useful to a buyer if the heavy-weight is being honest.  But their position of power can also have the opposite effect intended.  For example, when other buyers are able to see buyer weight, this gives the vendor an incentive to treat the heavy-weight in a special manner (or worse, bribe them).  This problem would worsen if you implementing a way to sort the feedback based on buyer weight as well.

#3 -- Please consider that any data that you publish on buyers or vendors are  statistical points of reference that could be used to track someone down eventually.  Any new system should not cause security risk to increase and this needs to be evaluated very carefully.   Do not underestimate the power of statistical analysis.  If anything, use the change as an opportunity to make data mining more difficult, not easier.

The last point is perhaps the most important, not only but especially if it affects past data.  If I have made a choice to use the system based on my assessment of the risks involved, as most of us have, if I can't come to the same risk assessment conclusion under a new system, you have essentially given me the middle finger.   If risk increased like that, you would be decreasing the amount of responsibility people can take for their choices, and I think that goes against what SR is all about.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 12, 2013, 08:59 am
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!

No.  Unless there's a % to resolution figure beside the vendor stats.  You may be perfect but a lot of vendors aren't and you're effectively muzzling buyers from talking about poor vendor performance.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Mrdobalina on August 12, 2013, 09:04 am
Often I see buyer feedback that indicates everything went well and that they "will report back once tested."

9 out of 10 do not return. I'll dig through the feedback but if I go back a month what's the likelihood that the product is exactly the same as what the vendor is selling now?

Would be interesting to investigate if users can link their forum review to the feedback to leave on the vendor page.

Vendors have issues with the current system also and do make it better they quote feedback on their profile page - but this isn't pulled across onto specific product pages.

Great idea though DPR.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 09:13 am

#2 -- Similarly, showing buyer weight in feedback is only useful to a buyer if the heavy-weight is being honest.  But their position of power can also have the opposite effect intended.  For example, when other buyers are able to see buyer weight, this gives the vendor an incentive to treat the heavy-weight in a special manner (or worse, bribe them).  This problem would worsen if you implementing a way to sort the feedback based on buyer weight as well.


Do you not realize we already see the buyer that you call a "heavy-weight" information???? So we already know he is a heavy-weight??? Also a guy that spends 14k on an order....is already going to be treated  different then a guy who spends $76. Unless you deal with a vendor like myself...that treats every buyer like his order is 14k. Though to be honest...I do not know how you would treat one guy "better" then the other.

At the end of the day...are only job is to get the buyer their order as fast and safe as possible. And as a vendor...you should want to do that with every order you except...and I believe that 98% of vendors do that already.


 Also why would the "buyer" need to "see" anything? I think it is something that would be behind the scenes...as it is now. As in how the feedback is "weighted". That the buyer who spends 15k and leaves a 5/5 feedback is more heavy weighted... then a buyer that spends $1. Also a buyer that has been around for 1 year...that has spent 100k+ ...that has200+ orders...and has used 10+ vendors...should have more weight then the buyer that has been here for 1 day, spent $5, placed 1 order. This would actually HELP that little guy that is just starting. It would also take away the power of a vendor that creates his own feedback with $0 priced items from a buyer account that has no stats.

Also you do realize that the good vendors...do not need to...and have no reason too...ever bribe or do anything like that at all..meaning they do not need to manipulate their feedback in anyway. PERIOD.

The feedback system should be in place to help the buyer understand that the vendor is legit and trustworthy. And a vendor that has been around a long time, that handles high volume and high priced volume should be more trusted then a new vendor that does neither. And the fact is that if you chose that vendor...and you do not FE..then you are in great shape.

In fact....you can choose any vendor...and be in great shape if you just FE. PERIOD.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TNS on August 12, 2013, 09:14 am
Brownie points would go to you if this could be something that is user customizable (under an "advanced" tab unlocked after a buyer's 5th purchase for newbie safety). Possibly a list of cleverly named presets that include a short description followed by a bullet list of the pros and cons of using each method. The default would of course be the site standard.

If I had to number the weights:

buyer weight
   total amount spent -25
   total purchases - 25
   number of vendors purchased from - 20
   purchase distribution across vendors - 10
   weight of vendors purchased from - 5
   account age -15

vendor weight
   total sales volume - 25
   total orders processed - 25
   total number of customers - 15
   sales distribution across customers - 10
   weight of customers serviced - 10
   account age - 15


I like the idea of locking feedback in after a certain time but would it also be possible to include timestamped edit history? Perhaps the post is fully editable for a certain period (two weeks maybe?) and after that time has passed buyers can only leave additional follow up information. The locked feedback would only be revisable if the buyer and seller reach a mutual agreement to do so or a site mod allows it.

I agree that feedback should be sortable by preference  and that more buyer info should be given. A rough idea of buyer transaction count (or whatever weighting system gets used) should also be provided. As some people might not want the exact number of their transactions made available perhaps their experience should be something like:

1=less than 5 transactions
2= >5 but <10
3= >10 but <25
4=  >25 but <50
5= 50+

Granted, the numbers are examples and the real ones should be based on a standard of deviation of a normal curve of the site's users. I do think it would be wise to put a cap on the buyer weight to prevent LE from easily tracking the top buyers. Granted, there are a lot of people that get stat pride and might want this information but I myself would not want to be the tall one in a crowd. Openly displaying weight can help a buyer surmise whether a seller's critical reviews are legitimate or if they show signs of selective scamming low rated buyers.

It would be nice if the transaction's weight could be visible as well using a similar rough increment system as above with the intervals being somewhat like 0-10,10-50,50-100, 100-250, 250-500,500+. An $ symbol could denote every level above the $10 mark (or currency equivalent). Once again I don't make the numbers. It would certainly make it easier to determine legitimacy of feedback considering it is probably not a good idea to include listing information in the feedback profile to help keep things still relatively anonymous. This would make it harder for sellers to pad their feedback without moving large amounts of BTC around, costing them money.

The cons of that sytem is dollar weighting wouldn't cut down on the WU Bitcoin scams as most their transactions are small trivial amounts. They would need to be dealt with separately should this become a bigger issue. I would like to see some improvement on that. Would probably best be solved by some sort of reverse escrow. Then again I wouldn't be buying coin on SR. There's a saying about not relieving yourself where you also eat. Buying the coin anywhere else has some sort of plausible deniability about it. There are thousands of legitimate places that use them. Take the time to buy something from one with coin just so you can say you did. /rabbit

For all fairness and to make judging buyers easier I believe a categorized ratings system with composite rating would be a more informational way to go. It may prevent a lot of sellers from achieving high numbers but, as a whole, provide more a more accurate feedback rating.

I'd want an of 5 star (possibly with half increments) rating for stealth, description accuracy, shipping speed, and communication as well as any additional criteria that might be deemed necessary. The composite rating would be displayed beside the vendor's username where the feedback score goes now. A composite will be given after 10 feedback. Individual ratings will be available with the reviews and someone could calculate a rough composite. This is to prevent a new seller dropping to the bottom of any searches after making any newbie mistakes that may have damaged their rating.

If communication occured, buyer contacted vendor, or other systems took place like resolution center or excess processing time then the buyer would have the option of leaving a rating.
If communication did not occur then the rating would be left out of the composite.

The theory is, that it would encourage vendors and buyers to communicate with one another more since a good communication score would add additional weight to the review and result in higher numbers should they find their other scores lacking. Most useful for buyers who want to know if long lead times to transit are because of shipping delays or a consequence of the seller's actions.

Description ratings could cause the buyer to look back at the listing and reread the description to determine how well the product matches up. This would cause vendors to do their best to provide good and accurate descriptions on their listings. This would also cause the buyer to think twice about the rating they leave and notice any details they may have missed upon first read. The anticipation of awaiting the package in the mail causes buyers to guild the lily as they build up their own idea of the product in their heads. By the time they have bragged to their friends about their "shipment" they open to box and are disappointed because the product is not as good as expected. By encouraging them to give the listing a second look it could lead to more accurate reviews.

Shipping speed is self explanatory and promotes accurate in-transit times. Could be an auto 5 if finalized within a specified number of days. Con: Doing so could be bit iffy because transit times vary greatly by location.

Stealth is easy enough as well. Should not be a problem for the sellers that are already up to par. Include a link to an appropriate shipping security thread from the forums.

This is just my .002 Btc on the matter. I have seen similar thoughts and ideas, it is just far easier to put them in my words than to spend an hour quoting every single person who touched on a same or similar point I did. This is something that should take a lot of thought and planning and I feel like I spent some good money on a B.B.A. by doing what I can to help this oasis survive.

Thanks for listening to us. The collection of ideas en masse are almost always helpful.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: bluedev1 on August 12, 2013, 09:23 am

#2 -- Similarly, showing buyer weight in feedback is only useful to a buyer if the heavy-weight is being honest.  But their position of power can also have the opposite effect intended.  For example, when other buyers are able to see buyer weight, this gives the vendor an incentive to treat the heavy-weight in a special manner (or worse, bribe them).  This problem would worsen if you implementing a way to sort the feedback based on buyer weight as well.


Do you not realize we already see the buyer that you call a "heavy-weight" information????

I was talking about showing buyer weight to other buyers.  Yes, I realize vendors can see buyer stats and that's fine.  My point was that buyers should not see the buyer weight of feedback. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: bluedev1 on August 12, 2013, 09:37 am

Also you do realize that the good vendors...do not need to...and have no reason too...ever bribe or do anything like that at all..meaning they do not need to manipulate their feedback in anyway. PERIOD.


Um, yes, I think you must have misunderstood me.  Bad vendors are the ones who would do shady shit like send high quality stuff to someone who has more influence over other buyers than someone else, or flat out bribe them, to get good feedback they don't deserve.   Obviously good vendors don't need to but we want to differentiate them from the bad vendors more not less.  There is always a potential for corruption of course, but the point is not to create a system that looks more useful but in reality is less useful by giving buyers more reason to be dishonest.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 09:41 am
The buyers should see nothing bit the feedback left...BUT internally...the feedback from a high priced order, from a buyer that has big stats..should be weighted a lot more then a buyer with zero stats on a $1 item.

Also an item that was free or near free...should not even be counted or seen. As a potential buyer can't tell if the feedback is from a $0 item....or from someone that ordered $15k  in items.

Also if buyers just stayed in escrow...they would eliminate a lot of headaches.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 12, 2013, 09:51 am
The buyers should see nothing bit the feedback left...BUT internally...the feedback from a high priced order, from a buyer that has big stats..should be weighted a lot more then a buyer with zero stats on a $1 item.

Also an item that was free or near free...should not even be counted or seen. As a potential buyer can't tell if the feedback is from a $0 item....or from someone that ordered $15k  in items.

Also if buyers just stayed in escrow...they would eliminate a lot of headaches.
That's a bit silly, why would you want $0 listings to not be seen whatsoever? How would new vendors listing sample items for the soul purpose of receiving feedback... Show that they've had items sent and received?

And staying in escrow isn't always the best option, say in the case of a new buyer with an established vendor. The main problem it seems you're getting at with this is more so that buyers aren't returning to update feedback if they FE. But I'd hazard a guess that most customers that FE, and then fail to receive anything or believe they've been scammed will generally come back and change their rating\feedback. If some of the other suggestions go through it seems these bad ratings would be more easily viewable, and hopefully at least improve this issue.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 12, 2013, 09:54 am
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!

No.  Unless there's a % to resolution figure beside the vendor stats.  You may be perfect but a lot of vendors aren't and you're effectively muzzling buyers from talking about poor vendor performance.

If the customer wins in resolution then he should be able to leave feedback.  Scammers that lose in resolution should not be able to leave feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 12, 2013, 10:01 am
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!

No.  Unless there's a % to resolution figure beside the vendor stats.  You may be perfect but a lot of vendors aren't and you're effectively muzzling buyers from talking about poor vendor performance.

If the customer wins in resolution then he should be able to leave feedback.  Scammers that lose in resolution should not be able to leave feedback.
I think it might be a bit too hard to distinguish the scam buyers in that scenario, and scam sellers alike. In my opinion it'd be best to show it all, but let individual buyers make up their mind as to the legitimacy of the feedback based on the buyers stats, and perhaps even a small amount of info on the resolution itself if at all possible.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 10:04 am
The buyers should see nothing bit the feedback left...BUT internally...the feedback from a high priced order, from a buyer that has big stats..should be weighted a lot more then a buyer with zero stats on a $1 item.

Also an item that was free or near free...should not even be counted or seen. As a potential buyer can't tell if the feedback is from a $0 item....or from someone that ordered $15k  in items.

Also if buyers just stayed in escrow...they would eliminate a lot of headaches.
That's a bit silly, why would you want $0 listings to not be seen whatsoever? How would new vendors listing sample items for the soul purpose of receiving feedback... Show that they've had items sent and received?

Because a sample doesn't mean shit. A sample is not paid for...and anyone can send out samples for reviews. And anyone that receives free drugs is not someone that is going to give  honest feedback. And even if the feedback was honest...it was for a sample....

So yes I agree that it might prove the buyer has SOME real drugs...and that he can send them in the mail...it proves NOTHING else. And it is an EASY WAY for the vendor to establish feedback and then scam buyers. How you can not see this is what is disturbing. As a buyer...I would never want to base me choosing them on free listings for samples!! And I would hope everyone feels the same!!


And staying in escrow isn't always the best option, say in the case of a new buyer with an established vendor. The main problem it seems you're getting at with this is more so that buyers aren't returning to update feedback if they FE. But I'd hazard a guess that most customers that FE, and then fail to receive anything or believe they've been scammed will generally come back and change their rating\feedback. If some of the other suggestions go through it seems these bad ratings would be more easily viewable, and hopefully at least improve this issue.

I never said it was the best option. I just said that if they did...they would eliminate a lot of headaches! And once again...what I said is 100% true.

I am all for someone who wants to FE. That is their choice. They know the risk. And I love it is an option. As I know some vendors need it. I do not use it. And I never will. I actually do not like when buyers FE...as it messes up my system. But this is not about me..it is about helping to protect the buyer form getting scammed. Something I HATE. And NOT FEing...would help them. And not counting feedback from a $0 item would help them. There are other ways that a new vendor can sell his wares. FREE SAMPLES are a really shitty way to go about vending...and the feedback or forum reviews from such transactions....are ...WORTHLESS!!!!

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 12, 2013, 02:51 pm
The buyers should see nothing bit the feedback left...BUT internally...the feedback from a high priced order, from a buyer that has big stats..should be weighted a lot more then a buyer with zero stats on a $1 item.

Also an item that was free or near free...should not even be counted or seen. As a potential buyer can't tell if the feedback is from a $0 item....or from someone that ordered $15k  in items.

Also if buyers just stayed in escrow...they would eliminate a lot of headaches.
That's a bit silly, why would you want $0 listings to not be seen whatsoever? How would new vendors listing sample items for the soul purpose of receiving feedback... Show that they've had items sent and received?

Because a sample doesn't mean shit. A sample is not paid for...and anyone can send out samples for reviews. And anyone that receives free drugs is not someone that is going to give  honest feedback. And even if the feedback was honest...it was for a sample....

So yes I agree that it might prove the buyer has SOME real drugs...and that he can send them in the mail...it proves NOTHING else. And it is an EASY WAY for the vendor to establish feedback and then scam buyers. How you can not see this is what is disturbing. As a buyer...I would never want to base me choosing them on free listings for samples!! And I would hope everyone feels the same!!


And staying in escrow isn't always the best option, say in the case of a new buyer with an established vendor. The main problem it seems you're getting at with this is more so that buyers aren't returning to update feedback if they FE. But I'd hazard a guess that most customers that FE, and then fail to receive anything or believe they've been scammed will generally come back and change their rating\feedback. If some of the other suggestions go through it seems these bad ratings would be more easily viewable, and hopefully at least improve this issue.

I never said it was the best option. I just said that if they did...they would eliminate a lot of headaches! And once again...what I said is 100% true.

I am all for someone who wants to FE. That is their choice. They know the risk. And I love it is an option. As I know some vendors need it. I do not use it. And I never will. I actually do not like when buyers FE...as it messes up my system. But this is not about me..it is about helping to protect the buyer form getting scammed. Something I HATE. And NOT FEing...would help them. And not counting feedback from a $0 item would help them. There are other ways that a new vendor can sell his wares. FREE SAMPLES are a really shitty way to go about vending...and the feedback or forum reviews from such transactions....are ...WORTHLESS!!!!
I really disagree, if the market is flooded in a particular category or someone is offering a premium product that people will generally be skeptical of paying a high price for, low-priced or free samples to trusted members are a great way to get feedback and business rolling in. In a lot of cases it's necessary. I agree it's far from perfect but it's a start.

And on your point of it only showing that they can ship out drugs, in a lot of cases that's the information I'm looking for when browsing through new vendors. I can judge quality and the vendors general honesty from a transaction with them, but I'm never going to get to that stage until I see a good bit of feedback showing they can actually deliver drugs in the first place and aren't scammers\LE. But nothing definitive, all just helps to different degrees.


To be honest I think a lot of the proposed improvements reflect the Atlantis model on feedback fairly closely, though I admit I haven't looked into it properly. But it might be looking at how successful they've been with their feedback system and the reception\criticisms they've gotten for it. Again I've not read into it properly so might be misinformed, but it sounds like their FE button is an excellent addition. It would a lot less work on the admins side as far as weeding out new vendors doing FE scams, and it would be easy to show (as you've just been discussing I believe RxKing) which transactions have been finalized early and which ones have remained in escrow - more valuable info to the buyers looking at feedback, and no risk at all to the vendor\buyers anonymity.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: jackofspades on August 12, 2013, 03:16 pm
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!

No.  Unless there's a % to resolution figure beside the vendor stats.  You may be perfect but a lot of vendors aren't and you're effectively muzzling buyers from talking about poor vendor performance.

If the customer wins in resolution then he should be able to leave feedback.  Scammers that lose in resolution should not be able to leave feedback.

Members who lose in Resolution Centre aren't automatically scammers.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 04:29 pm

I really disagree, if the market is flooded in a particular category or someone is offering a premium product that people will generally be skeptical of paying a high price for, low-priced or free samples to trusted members are a great way to get feedback and business rolling in. In a lot of cases it's necessary. I agree it's far from perfect but it's a start.

And on your point of it only showing that they can ship out drugs, in a lot of cases that's the information I'm looking for when browsing through new vendors. I can judge quality and the vendors general honesty from a transaction with them, but I'm never going to get to that stage until I see a good bit of feedback showing they can actually deliver drugs in the first place and aren't scammers\LE. But nothing definitive, all just helps to different degrees.


To be honest I think a lot of the proposed improvements reflect the Atlantis model on feedback fairly closely, though I admit I haven't looked into it properly. But it might be looking at how successful they've been with their feedback system and the reception\criticisms they've gotten for it. Again I've not read into it properly so might be misinformed, but it sounds like their FE button is an excellent addition. It would a lot less work on the admins side as far as weeding out new vendors doing FE scams, and it would be easy to show (as you've just been discussing I believe RxKing) which transactions have been finalized early and which ones have remained in escrow - more valuable info to the buyers looking at feedback, and no risk at all to the vendor\buyers anonymity.

This is the beautiful thing about SR..you can disagree!! And you can respect the man u u disagree with! I think that samples are complete junk and a waste of time for the buyer..and only the guy receiving  them thinks they are great....hmmmm I wonder why!  All I know is that a buyer I would not trust a review from someone that was given free drugs to review. And I think there are many other things a vendor can do


 But  each his own!! I have a lot of respect for you... a ton...so I hear you...and you could be dead right.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 12, 2013, 04:57 pm

I really disagree, if the market is flooded in a particular category or someone is offering a premium product that people will generally be skeptical of paying a high price for, low-priced or free samples to trusted members are a great way to get feedback and business rolling in. In a lot of cases it's necessary. I agree it's far from perfect but it's a start.

And on your point of it only showing that they can ship out drugs, in a lot of cases that's the information I'm looking for when browsing through new vendors. I can judge quality and the vendors general honesty from a transaction with them, but I'm never going to get to that stage until I see a good bit of feedback showing they can actually deliver drugs in the first place and aren't scammers\LE. But nothing definitive, all just helps to different degrees.


To be honest I think a lot of the proposed improvements reflect the Atlantis model on feedback fairly closely, though I admit I haven't looked into it properly. But it might be looking at how successful they've been with their feedback system and the reception\criticisms they've gotten for it. Again I've not read into it properly so might be misinformed, but it sounds like their FE button is an excellent addition. It would a lot less work on the admins side as far as weeding out new vendors doing FE scams, and it would be easy to show (as you've just been discussing I believe RxKing) which transactions have been finalized early and which ones have remained in escrow - more valuable info to the buyers looking at feedback, and no risk at all to the vendor\buyers anonymity.

This is the beautiful thing about SR..you can disagree!! And you can respect the man u u disagree with! I think that samples are complete junk and a waste of time for the buyer..and only the guy receiving  them thinks they are great....hmmmm I wonder why!  All I know is that a buyer I would not trust a review from someone that was given free drugs to review. And I think there are many other things a vendor can do


 But  each his own!! I have a lot of respect for you... a ton...so I hear you...and you could be dead right.
Likewise ;) I certainly agree to a certain extent as well don't get me wrong, just more so from personal experience it's worked out well for me. For instance a few vendors recently I only really spotted because they'd been getting good feedback from free samples being sent out, so I jumped on one myself (doesn't bother me too much writing a review, pointless or not) and have since been back a few times.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: danconia on August 12, 2013, 05:32 pm
Perhaps vendor and buyer stats should weight recent purchases more than old purchases (I'm not saying heavily weighed, necessarily).  It seems like vendors have been able to coast on their previous hundreds / thousands of transactions so that their more recent scamming doesn't hurt their score enough.

Or does the current algorithm already do this?  In general I believe the more stats we can look at, the better.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 12, 2013, 06:43 pm
Likewise ;) I certainly agree to a certain extent as well don't get me wrong, just more so from personal experience it's worked out well for me. For instance a few vendors recently I only really spotted because they'd been getting good feedback from free samples being sent out, so I jumped on one myself (doesn't bother me too much writing a review, pointless or not) and have since been back a few times.

And your a stand up guy and your reviews would be valid. But you are far away from the average user...and I  still think you...I should say I know you can succeed as a vendor and never have to give out samples. As I did it..And so have a lot of others. And I also think that any item that is $0 should not be counted. Sure it might hurt the new guy a little...But if he is dealing with a legit person...that tried the sample...then that person should buy from him and leave a real review.

But what it does protect is the community from vendors stacking their feedback to scam. And as DPR said it..that's how they do it.

And if you are a new buyer...then you should never FE. And  you will have no problems..and the great thing is..there are PLENTY of vendors to use that do not require it. I do not want it gone...I am just saying to protect new buyers.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: wheardego on August 12, 2013, 08:15 pm
This all sounds crazy to me. We want MORE info on buying/selling recorded? I think the route to go would be less. Cant we find a way to store less incriminating statistics to figure out if we want to work with someone or not?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: silvia777000 on August 12, 2013, 08:22 pm
Wow, DPR is always innovating. Admirable and loyal of you.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: mtsthelen-forums on August 12, 2013, 08:51 pm
"weight of vendors purchased from" and "weight of customers serviced" is a kind of feedback loop connecting the weights of both vendors and buyers.  Basically with a vendor who has serviced buyers with a high weight as measured across the 6 dimensions defined above, we should weight them more highly than a vendor who has only serviced low weight buyers.  Conversely buyers who've made purchases from high weight vendors should be weighted more highly themselves.

I think the other 4 dimensions are self-evident.  Part of what must be considered is how much to emphasize the 6 dimensions relative to one another, and how to weight high values in each dimension relative to low values in the same dimension.  So for example, how much should account age influence a buyer's weight compared to how much they've spent?  Should a user who has been around for a year and spent $1000 be weighted higher or lower than a user that has been around one month and spent $5000?  Looking at a single dimension, should a vendor who has completed 100 transactions be weighted twice as much as a vendor who's completed 50, or more, or less?

While I totally understand the logic applied here, I fear that implementing this system will make it even MORE difficult for new buyers (and new vendors) to make a name for themselves. Vendors will be *disincentivized* from working with new buyers for fear that it will bring their overall rating down, and I think you can see the vicious cycle that can happen.

There are already enough legitimate reasons for a vendor to be leery of a new (or newish) buyer. Creating an artificial reason like this may make it so that new buyers have NO ONE to purchase from.

And that would be very bad.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 13, 2013, 06:39 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 13, 2013, 09:27 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges
+1 this would really be invaluable to a lot of buyers and sellers alike. Give this man a medal.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 13, 2013, 10:18 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges
I think if this stat data came from anonymous buyer reports, this would be easy to use in smear efforts to make a vendor look bad anonymously. If SR gathered this info automatically, that would be fine, I guess, but, I am thinking people claiming non-delivery can't be anonymous. They would need to tell the vendor they did not get the package.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: flwrchlds9 on August 13, 2013, 10:28 am
No time to read 7+ page right now and add very meaningful to discuss. Will revisit.

One thing stand out, weight of number of vendors bought from, very low we think. relevant but very low. buy you find few solid good vendor for what you need then stick with them. This not negative.

Like idea of receive/not receive as %. Careful balance with not provide or store too much information also.

And about FOX article.... UGH :(
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dreamt on August 13, 2013, 07:34 pm
I would love to have the ability to sort through reviews. Newest, oldest, trusted (based on buyer stats), and negative would all be ideal sorting options. It gives the buyer a robust perspective on the way a vendor conducts his or her business.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 13, 2013, 10:38 pm
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges
I think if this stat data came from anonymous buyer reports, this would be easy to use in smear efforts to make a vendor look bad anonymously. If SR gathered this info automatically, that would be fine, I guess, but, I am thinking people claiming non-delivery can't be anonymous. They would need to tell the vendor they did not get the package.

its not 100% essential to be anonymous, but i think it would give more accurate data.

Also it would effect the buyers received/not received stats. So they wouldnt be able to claim it unless it was true.

Also another good stats for the vendor to be able to see on the Buyer  is "Average Time to finalize"

it may encourage to finalize quicker ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: tango on August 13, 2013, 10:41 pm
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges


good idea!!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: mtsthelen-forums on August 14, 2013, 04:12 am
Another thought: somehow rewarding vendors who work with new buyers. This, after all, is in DPR's best interest. He wants SR to grow, and for that to happen vendors need to be willing to take a (reasonable) chance with new buyers and, if they do, should be rewarded for it. Good stats mean that older buyers will also want to order from these vendors, so it's good in two respects.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 14, 2013, 04:49 am


its not 100% essential to be anonymous, but i think it would give more accurate data.

Also it would effect the buyers received/not received stats. So they wouldnt be able to claim it unless it was true.

Also another good stats for the vendor to be able to see on the Buyer  is "Average Time to finalize"

it may encourage to finalize quicker ;)

Average time to finalize is not a good stat. What if I order something intl and it takes 12 days to get to me. That would significantly hurt my stat compared to a domestic order even if I finalize the second I get back to a computer.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 14, 2013, 05:11 am


its not 100% essential to be anonymous, but i think it would give more accurate data.

Also it would effect the buyers received/not received stats. So they wouldnt be able to claim it unless it was true.

Also another good stats for the vendor to be able to see on the Buyer  is "Average Time to finalize"

it may encourage to finalize quicker ;)

Average time to finalize is not a good stat. What if I order something intl and it takes 12 days to get to me. That would significantly hurt my stat compared to a domestic order even if I finalize the second I get back to a computer.

true.. for it to work, it would need to be split up into domesitc + International.
would also be good if domestic autofinalise was less than o/s auto finalise.. ohh dear.. anyone heard of "feature creep" :)  (i stand by original show/no show stats tho :) would be EXTREMELY helpful in preventing selective scamming
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 14, 2013, 05:16 am


its not 100% essential to be anonymous, but i think it would give more accurate data.

Also it would effect the buyers received/not received stats. So they wouldnt be able to claim it unless it was true.

Also another good stats for the vendor to be able to see on the Buyer  is "Average Time to finalize"

it may encourage to finalize quicker ;)

Average time to finalize is not a good stat. What if I order something intl and it takes 12 days to get to me. That would significantly hurt my stat compared to a domestic order even if I finalize the second I get back to a computer.

true.. for it to work, it would need to be split up into domesitc + International.
would also be good if domestic autofinalise was less than o/s auto finalise.. ohh dear.. anyone heard of "feature creep" :)  (i stand by original show/no show stats tho :) would be EXTREMELY helpful in preventing selective scamming

Even if you split that up, what if a vendor marks an order in transit then takes 2 days to actually ship it. Now my stat is hurt. There are also random variables involved in the amount of time it takes for an order to be delivered. Those variables shouldn't really affect my stats. (Except that they may affect a current stat, refund rate, so my argument is a little weak)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TheIndigoChild on August 14, 2013, 05:35 am
no matter what I think changing the display order I think is bad, as a buyer and as a vendor I hold these views!

The buyer feed back is a good system to show the current state of the  vendor you are about to buy from, if they are currently scamming every one you can see easily from the feed back that they are doing bad things.. other wise you'll have to dig ( meaning youll never find it at least most wont)  The way it's set up it pormotes good vendor habit's of being active on the forum to be seen and we all know if someone's active on the forums they most likely have better communication habits and are more efficient and professional at running their store.  As a vendor I like to keep a look at my reviews to see if there's any issues at all that may come up that I am not aware of seeing as most buyer's will buy and never respond sometimes..  and many who tend to leave bad reviews wont even respond to you ever!

Keeping newest reviews current is mainly important for understanding the vendor's current quality of operation since not all vendors host their review forums habitually as it takes a lot of dedicated time to keep up on it.  I personally never used to buy from a vendor unless I A. saw good reviews and no outlier's in service, and saw a couple reviews on the forums on the vendor's quality of service could be vouched for by a reputable looking buyer.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GreenDragon on August 14, 2013, 05:38 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges

+1 for this idea.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CannabisCrusader on August 14, 2013, 05:59 am
Fuck yeah, I had been hoping the feedback system would be revamped. Really liking how the ideas you stated in the first post sound.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: YOABC123 on August 14, 2013, 06:37 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges

+1 sounds delicious.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shiznit on August 14, 2013, 06:44 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges

this is a great idea. perhaps its possible to set it up for users of certain countries if everyone does not want it..
give us the same option of choosing this like we do with incognito browsing. i know to the users downunder this option of feedback would be invaluable.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: samesamebutdifferent on August 14, 2013, 06:50 am
I think an anonymous feedback (as well as the standard feedback) would be a good idea. Just something that says "Item Received / Not Received"

Then we would be able to see on every vendor the stats like this:

Domestic: Received 99% / Not Received 1%
International: Received 70% / Not Received 30%

This could even work both ways, The Vendor could see the buyers stats for how many he has received/not received


This would be VERY VERY Beneficially to prevent selective scammers :)  and the feedback would need to be anonyomous otherwise people would just always say received so they dont burn the bridges

+1 sounds delicious.

Delicious and awesome, I bet DPR is regretting opening this up now but this is a truly inspired suggestion.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: aoeniacqc on August 14, 2013, 09:17 am
Although it seems like "weight of vendors purchased from" is a good measure for buyers who exclusively buy from high rated vendors, I worry that the result will be a reduced desire to order form unestablished vendors.  It's already really difficult for a new seller to gain trust and a customer base.  This stat might make it even harder if people feel discouraged from trying out anything other than the highly established vendors.  It also gives the established vendors a very high incentive to run a 'FE sale' scam when they're ready to quit.

Maybe that goal is to shift more traffic to the established, reliable vendors and away from the new guys, but it isn't one that I necessarily agree with.  If we're going to increase competition, the barrier for entry for a new, legitimate vendor should not be made unnecessarily daunting.  And buyers should be able to buy from a vendor they're not quite sure is legitimate but are willing to take a chance, without having to worry too much about their stats getting hit if something goes wrong.

These are all theoretical desires for which I don't have a great solution, other than maybe having "weight of vendors purchased from" a statistic that can only go up, and goes up faster with a higher vendor rating, but does not go down when purchasing from a vendor with a low rating.

Kudos to DPR & SR for your attempts thus far.  And I parrot the 'international vs. domestic success rate' statistic, especially if there's one that is specific to delivery to the buyer's country.  That would be killer.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on August 14, 2013, 09:47 am
Although it seems like "weight of vendors purchased from" is a good measure for buyers who exclusively buy from high rated vendors, I worry that the result will be a reduced desire to order form unestablished vendors.  It's already really difficult for a new seller to gain trust and a customer base.  This stat might make it even harder if people feel discouraged from trying out anything other than the highly established vendors.  It also gives the established vendors a very high incentive to run a 'FE sale' scam when they're ready to quit.

Maybe that goal is to shift more traffic to the established, reliable vendors and away from the new guys, but it isn't one that I necessarily agree with.  If we're going to increase competition, the barrier for entry for a new, legitimate vendor should not be made unnecessarily daunting.  And buyers should be able to buy from a vendor they're not quite sure is legitimate but are willing to take a chance, without having to worry too much about their stats getting hit if something goes wrong.

These are all theoretical desires for which I don't have a great solution, other than maybe having "weight of vendors purchased from" a statistic that can only go up, and goes up faster with a higher vendor rating, but does not go down when purchasing from a vendor with a low rating.

Kudos to DPR & SR for your attempts thus far.  And I parrot the 'international vs. domestic success rate' statistic, especially if there's one that is specific to delivery to the buyer's country.  That would be killer.

Very good point. It would also weight towards those vendors with a wider product range that reach a larger customer base. 'Specialist' vendors wouldn't build a rep very quickly at all.

Also, say a buyer doesn't enjoy a range of different products and just jumps on for one particular product. They still have an opinion to share but apparently it won't be treated equally?

Also, kudos to GUS.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 14, 2013, 05:16 pm
great ideas everyone.  I'm really glad I opened up the discussion.  The delivery success rate and transit time metrics are ones I've wanted to have for a long time.  The problem with transit time is when to count an item as delivered (when it's finalized?  What about FE?  Depend on the user to submit the data?  What about different postage options like express vs first-class vs. international and variations in the postal systems of different countries?).  Then the problem with delivery success rates is the same problem we have with feedback in general, which is fraudulent data, whether it's vendors padding their own stats, or knocking their competitor's stats, or buyers using their review as leverage over the vendor's stats.

So as you can see, it's a tough nut to crack in its own right.  For now, I'd like to focus on improving just vendor feedback and reviews.  I've been playing around with different systems and parameters and seeing how it affects the current and historical stats.  One thing I keep coming back to is something that was said earlier in the thread:  "money talks".  It's looking more and more like the most important parameter for weighting buyers and sellers is simply how much money they've spent/earned.  Basically, it's really hard for a scammer to fake feedback from buyer accounts that have spent lots of money with vendors who have lots of sales.  I think one of the main reasons for this is that, to fake a transaction, you still have to pay the commission, so pretending to be a top vendor through dummy transactions with high volume buyers simply costs a lot.

I've gone ahead and implemented one behind the scenes change that I think has improved things a little bit already.  The vendor weight, which determines their percent ranking as displayed on the vendor pages is now determined with just two variables: sales volume and age of sales.  So, the vendor weight is the sum of all of their transactions, but each transaction is weighted from 100% today down to 0% once it is 8 months old.  There is a whole thread in the vendor forum of vendors who are really pleased with the effect this change has produced.

I'm still liking the idea of decoupling the 1 - 5 review and the written feedback.

Another idea I am liking is displaying not just the average review expressed as a percent, but the actual distribution of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 point reviews.  I think this will make it much more acceptable to leave a 4 because instead to damaging the average, it just puts a little more weight in the 4 column.  This is something Amazon does and I think we should adopt it.

This, I think, is enough to chew on for now and get pushed out into production so we can see it in action.  We don't want to change too much at once because it is hard to foresee all of the effects a change will have until it is actually made.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ananas_xpress on August 14, 2013, 06:59 pm


I've gone ahead and implemented one behind the scenes change that I think has improved things a little bit already.  The vendor weight, which determines their percent ranking as displayed on the vendor pages is now determined with just two variables: sales volume and age of sales.  So, the vendor weight is the sum of all of their transactions, but each transaction is weighted from 100% today down to 0% once it is 8 months old.  There is a whole thread in the vendor forum of vendors who are really pleased with the effect this change has produced.


I noticed an issue yesterday where a noob buyer changed his feedback from 1/5 to 5/5 but my overall percentage ranking never improved like it should or at least didn't return to what it was previously.
Could be anything to do with the update?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 14, 2013, 08:14 pm


I've gone ahead and implemented one behind the scenes change that I think has improved things a little bit already.  The vendor weight, which determines their percent ranking as displayed on the vendor pages is now determined with just two variables: sales volume and age of sales.  So, the vendor weight is the sum of all of their transactions, but each transaction is weighted from 100% today down to 0% once it is 8 months old.  There is a whole thread in the vendor forum of vendors who are really pleased with the effect this change has produced.


I noticed an issue yesterday where a noob buyer changed his feedback from 1/5 to 5/5 but my overall percentage ranking never improved like it should or at least didn't return to what it was previously.
Could be anything to do with the update?

no.  there could be a couple of reasons for it.  If it's an issue for you, you can contact vendor support and they'll dig around and see what's up.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 15, 2013, 04:06 am
sounds excellent ;)

Also with the delivered/undelivered stats.. Every stat is going to be manipulated a little bit. But all vendors will probably be on a level playing field. Its just a law of averages.. Hopefully there is enough sales to make manipulating difficult.

Perhaps these stats should only be counted if a Buyer has more than 10 sales + $1000 spent?

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 15, 2013, 09:00 am
sounds excellent ;)

Also with the delivered/undelivered stats.. Every stat is going to be manipulated a little bit. But all vendors will probably be on a level playing field. Its just a law of averages.. Hopefully there is enough sales to make manipulating difficult.

Perhaps these stats should only be counted if a Buyer has more than 10 sales + $1000 spent?
I'd like something like that to happen at least behind the scenes at some stage as a means of weeding out vendors who are either selectively scamming or having a suspiciously high failure rate in shipping.

If it does in fact prove to be somehow detrimental to buyer or seller to reveal such info, it would be good piece of mind to know that the admins are aware of shipping success\failure rates and could alert the community or audit the vendors that are behaving suspiciously in this respect.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 15, 2013, 03:42 pm
I was just thinking about this, not sure if anyone else said before me, but I like the new ideas with the feedback system however I feel like you should put a sorting feature for it kind of like with the listings. Always have the most recent feedback first but have a button so you can switch to see the feedback left by the buyers who have spent the most money, or the buyers who have bought the most items, and so on and so forth. That way people can look at the stats they want depending on what type of order they will be placing with the vendor. I don't see anyone having a problem with that because it will be exactly the same as before except now instead of JUST having the most recent feedback you can have the feedback that you're SPECIFICALLY looking for. Hope that makes sense.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: envioso on August 15, 2013, 04:29 pm
DPR: I hate to bring this off topic as you have previously said not to, but I simply would like to hear your reasoning behind the No Customer Feedback policy that has been here forever. Does it not make sense for vendors to be able to call out users who they potentially believe to be LE/non-finalizers to warn other vendors? Trolls that leave bad feedback for no reason? I am sure you have good reason for not implementing this feature considering it's been a hot topic since the road was brought up, so please enlighten me.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaliforniaCannibas on August 15, 2013, 05:42 pm
I believe allowing buyers the ability to go back and change their reviews 2,3,4 months ago form a 5/5 to 1/5 has to be revamped.....all that leads to is scamming........the feedback should be locked not  be able to edit 10 days after the order is finalized.......and when the buyer goes to SR resolution and loses.....they lose the right to provide a review rating.....again.....this only effects scammers.....Every vendor has scammers to deal with....and this is a way to prevent some of the scamming from happening......Additionally.....the seller should be able to rate the buyer......that will clean up scamming.....an make this rating system a way better place to conducts business.

great ideas everyone.  I'm really glad I opened up the discussion.  The delivery success rate and transit time metrics are ones I've wanted to have for a long time.  The problem with transit time is when to count an item as delivered (when it's finalized?  What about FE?  Depend on the user to submit the data?  What about different postage options like express vs first-class vs. international and variations in the postal systems of different countries?).  Then the problem with delivery success rates is the same problem we have with feedback in general, which is fraudulent data, whether it's vendors padding their own stats, or knocking their competitor's stats, or buyers using their review as leverage over the vendor's stats.

So as you can see, it's a tough nut to crack in its own right.  For now, I'd like to focus on improving just vendor feedback and reviews.  I've been playing around with different systems and parameters and seeing how it affects the current and historical stats.  One thing I keep coming back to is something that was said earlier in the thread:  "money talks".  It's looking more and more like the most important parameter for weighting buyers and sellers is simply how much money they've spent/earned.  Basically, it's really hard for a scammer to fake feedback from buyer accounts that have spent lots of money with vendors who have lots of sales.  I think one of the main reasons for this is that, to fake a transaction, you still have to pay the commission, so pretending to be a top vendor through dummy transactions with high volume buyers simply costs a lot.

I've gone ahead and implemented one behind the scenes change that I think has improved things a little bit already.  The vendor weight, which determines their percent ranking as displayed on the vendor pages is now determined with just two variables: sales volume and age of sales.  So, the vendor weight is the sum of all of their transactions, but each transaction is weighted from 100% today down to 0% once it is 8 months old.  There is a whole thread in the vendor forum of vendors who are really pleased with the effect this change has produced.

I'm still liking the idea of decoupling the 1 - 5 review and the written feedback.

Another idea I am liking is displaying not just the average review expressed as a percent, but the actual distribution of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 point reviews.  I think this will make it much more acceptable to leave a 4 because instead to damaging the average, it just puts a little more weight in the 4 column.  This is something Amazon does and I think we should adopt it.

This, I think, is enough to chew on for now and get pushed out into production so we can see it in action.  We don't want to change too much at once because it is hard to foresee all of the effects a change will have until it is actually made.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 15, 2013, 05:55 pm
It also seems necessary to have an auto-ban or audit or something when vendors hit a certain rating, i.e. certain amount of bad feedback. I've just seen a Thai MDMA vendor with the rating of (19) - all feedback says it's not even MDMA or wrong amount sent, apart from 1-2 that either look completely fake or saying "haven't tried yet". Seems ridiculous a vendor could drop below (70) let alone a rating of (20) before SR support steps in.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: geedogg on August 15, 2013, 06:26 pm
yeah I remember a meth vendor Jason Woods who was at such a ridiculously low % on feedback I was literally like 'how the hell is this guy still allowed to vend!?' I can't remember the exact figure but it was 60% or something....

Sounds like a good option to upgrade scoring system! Big up DPR!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 15, 2013, 10:29 pm
It also seems necessary to have an auto-ban or audit or something when vendors hit a certain rating, i.e. certain amount of bad feedback. I've just seen a Thai MDMA vendor with the rating of (19) - all feedback says it's not even MDMA or wrong amount sent, apart from 1-2 that either look completely fake or saying "haven't tried yet". Seems ridiculous a vendor could drop below (70) let alone a rating of (20) before SR support steps in.

Perhaps pins should be locked out if feedback drops by 10% within a week or something like that?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 16, 2013, 04:11 am
It also seems necessary to have an auto-ban or audit or something when vendors hit a certain rating, i.e. certain amount of bad feedback. I've just seen a Thai MDMA vendor with the rating of (19) - all feedback says it's not even MDMA or wrong amount sent, apart from 1-2 that either look completely fake or saying "haven't tried yet". Seems ridiculous a vendor could drop below (70) let alone a rating of (20) before SR support steps in.

Perhaps pins should be locked out if feedback drops by 10% within a week or something like that?
I second this
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: moksha on August 16, 2013, 05:49 am
It also seems necessary to have an auto-ban or audit or something when vendors hit a certain rating, i.e. certain amount of bad feedback. I've just seen a Thai MDMA vendor with the rating of (19) - all feedback says it's not even MDMA or wrong amount sent, apart from 1-2 that either look completely fake or saying "haven't tried yet". Seems ridiculous a vendor could drop below (70) let alone a rating of (20) before SR support steps in.

Perhaps pins should be locked out if feedback drops by 10% within a week or something like that?
I second this
Excellent idea. This + stopping auto-withdraw until the vendor is cleared would be perfect.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 17, 2013, 06:48 am
ok, we're just finishing up some of these changes and starting to push the data out to the pages on the site.  Most of it is hidden at the moment, but you can see the layout on the vendor pages has changed.

Here's where we are at:
The rating algorithm has been changed to the following:
A vendor's score, which determines their rank and factors into the weight of buyers, is found by adding up all of their sales with each sale multiplied by a factor that starts at 100% now and tapers off to 0% after 8 months.
A buyer's score, which affects how heavily their feedback is weighted when determining a vendor's rating (not rank), is found by multiplying the price of their purchases by the vendor score of the vendor they purchased from, and then adding them all together
A rating/review's score, which determines it's weight when averaging with other ratings, is found by multiplying the buyer weight of the buyer leaving the rating, the volume of the purchase, and the same dampening factor used for the vendor's score.

We also have a graphic that will appear on vendor pages and when browsing listings that shows the relative weight of the ratings 1 through 5.  I've looked at many of these for different vendors and I think it is much more informative than the simple average we have now and will take the pressure off of buyers to leave only a 5 or a 1.  This is hidden at the moment.

on deck:
The average rating (number in parentheses after a vendor's name) is still being calculated the old way.  We need to compare the new to the old before updating and make sure there aren't any major discrepancies.  Once this is done, we'll switch to the new system and display the rating graphic.

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

then, we'll give the option to sort reviews by most recent or by review weight and display the buyer's stats next to the review (total spent, total transaction, number of vendors bought from, and maybe buyer weight)

There is one last thing on deck, but I'm going to leave it as a surprise ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 17, 2013, 07:10 am
ok, we're just finishing up some of these changes and starting to push the data out to the pages on the site.  Most of it is hidden at the moment, but you can see the layout on the vendor pages has changed.

Here's where we are at:
The rating algorithm has been changed to the following:
A vendor's score, which determines their rank and factors into the weight of buyers, is found by adding up all of their sales with each sale multiplied by a factor that starts at 100% now and tapers off to 0% after 8 months.
A buyer's score, which affects how heavily their feedback is weighted when determining a vendor's rating (not rank), is found by multiplying the price of their purchases by the vendor score of the vendor they purchased from, and then adding them all together
A rating/review's score, which determines it's weight when averaging with other ratings, is found by multiplying the buyer weight of the buyer leaving the rating, the volume of the purchase, and the same dampening factor used for the vendor's score.

We also have a graphic that will appear on vendor pages and when browsing listings that shows the relative weight of the ratings 1 through 5.  I've looked at many of these for different vendors and I think it is much more informative than the simple average we have now and will take the pressure off of buyers to leave only a 5 or a 1.  This is hidden at the moment.

on deck:
The average rating (number in parentheses after a vendor's name) is still being calculated the old way.  We need to compare the new to the old before updating and make sure there aren't any major discrepancies.  Once this is done, we'll switch to the new system and display the rating graphic.

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

then, we'll give the option to sort reviews by most recent or by review weight and display the buyer's stats next to the review (total spent, total transaction, number of vendors bought from, and maybe buyer weight)

There is one last thing on deck, but I'm going to leave it as a surprise ;)

I'm thoroughly impressed. Well done sir.

If the implementation goes half as smoothly as the planning and design phase this will be an enormous improvement to the site.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 17, 2013, 07:14 am

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

So is there a certain amount of time that the buyer has to leave a review? Can the buyer still edit feedback?

edit: When this change takes place that is
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: murderface2012 on August 17, 2013, 07:28 am

lovin the new look!!
the new criteria seems fine to me!!

regarding the editing of buyer feedback..
as a buyer, i feel it very necessary to be able to edit feedback.. especially in the case of a FE purchase..
BUT, i do however feel that only ONE edit is necessary!! in case of a burned FE purchase.. and one edit can decrease buyer feedback scamming!! just a thought..

much love!!
long live SR!!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RS7FI8ZRkm on August 17, 2013, 08:19 am
:) very nice
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: schuldig on August 17, 2013, 11:37 am
ok, we're just finishing up some of these changes and starting to push the data out to the pages on the site.  Most of it is hidden at the moment, but you can see the layout on the vendor pages has changed.

Here's where we are at:
The rating algorithm has been changed to the following:
A vendor's score, which determines their rank and factors into the weight of buyers, is found by adding up all of their sales with each sale multiplied by a factor that starts at 100% now and tapers off to 0% after 8 months.
A buyer's score, which affects how heavily their feedback is weighted when determining a vendor's rating (not rank), is found by multiplying the price of their purchases by the vendor score of the vendor they purchased from, and then adding them all together
A rating/review's score, which determines it's weight when averaging with other ratings, is found by multiplying the buyer weight of the buyer leaving the rating, the volume of the purchase, and the same dampening factor used for the vendor's score.

We also have a graphic that will appear on vendor pages and when browsing listings that shows the relative weight of the ratings 1 through 5.  I've looked at many of these for different vendors and I think it is much more informative than the simple average we have now and will take the pressure off of buyers to leave only a 5 or a 1.  This is hidden at the moment.

on deck:
The average rating (number in parentheses after a vendor's name) is still being calculated the old way.  We need to compare the new to the old before updating and make sure there aren't any major discrepancies.  Once this is done, we'll switch to the new system and display the rating graphic.

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

then, we'll give the option to sort reviews by most recent or by review weight and display the buyer's stats next to the review (total spent, total transaction, number of vendors bought from, and maybe buyer weight)

There is one last thing on deck, but I'm going to leave it as a surprise ;)

Awesome news DPR, you are as always the best, have a great weekend!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shazmo009 on August 17, 2013, 12:01 pm
I am fairly new to SR considering the age of my account but I have spent roughly $800 in under a month and as I am new I base my purchases on feedback and this forum. I like to scope through the feedback before I decide who to buy through but tbh it really is a pain in the ass sifting through pages and pages of invaluable feedback like "thanks" "5/5" or "Leave feedback here".

Having valuable feedback from respected buyers easily accessible would be an extremely useful resource for newcomers to SR and people looking to try out a new vendor. I think what you are planning is a fantastic update for vendors and buyers.

Love seeing the dedication DPR and the community put into SR and I am grateful to be a part of it :)   
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 17, 2013, 01:25 pm

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

So is there a certain amount of time that the buyer has to leave a review? Can the buyer still edit feedback?

edit: When this change takes place that is

those things won't change, but realize that the longer they wait, the less their review counts for anything and the less likely anyone else is to see it.  I'm hoping that it won't be as much of an issue with the changes we are already making and if it is, there are still some things we can try before putting in hard limits.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 17, 2013, 02:34 pm
Stay golden Roberts, stay golden....
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaliforniaCannibas on August 17, 2013, 03:02 pm
There is no reason for a customer to be able to go back and change their feedback more than 10-14 days after finalization ....the only reason for that is scamming...or if in SR resolution.......another change that has to be made is when a customer finalizes.......BUT does not leave a review......then waits 30-90 days to make another purchase.....then give you a 3/5....and sends you a message saying they will move it up to 5/5 with a discount on a new purchase......Also.......someone can make a purchase up to 4 month and then wait to do their review and try a scam tactic of 1/5 and that will show up on the first page of reviews.......to me that is unacceptable that sale took place  120 days ago......but shows up as a recent sale......like a yesterday sale.......

That needs to change.

Also......From a vendors standpoint......I want to be able to comment on the feedback left.......just makes sense to me.......You can do that on Ebay.





next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

So is there a certain amount of time that the buyer has to leave a review? Can the buyer still edit feedback?

edit: When this change takes place that is
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 17, 2013, 03:11 pm
There is no reason for a customer to be able to go back and change their feedback more than 10-14 days after finalization ....the only reason for that is scamming...or if in SR resolution.......another change that has to be made is when a customer finalizes.......BUT does not leave a review......then waits 30-90 days to make another purchase.....then give you a 3/5....and sends you a message saying they will move it up to 5/5 with a discount on a new purchase......Also.......someone can make a purchase up to 4 month and then wait to do their review and try a scam tactic of 1/5 and that will show up on the first page of reviews.......to me that is unacceptable that sale took place  120 days ago......but shows up as a recent sale......like a yesterday sale.......

That needs to change.

Also......From a vendors standpoint......I want to be able to comment on the feedback left.......just makes sense to me.......You can do that on Ebay.

I personally like to finalize once I've received product, weighed and inspected it. I then like to wait a few days after testing the product out to leave a review. I can see where vendor's do not like this and from a buyer's point of view I would say that 7-14 days after finalizing is more than enough time to leave an adequate review. I would say the limit of time you have to write a review should be 10 days and the once that review is left you should only have 14 days from that time to be able to make any changes to it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaliforniaCannibas on August 17, 2013, 03:17 pm
Just looked at the buyers stats ......once you click a buyers stats........I do not see any difference.....than what we had before. :(
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 17, 2013, 04:20 pm

next, we'll remove the "leave feedback" box from the orders page and leave just the 1 - 5 rating, and add a link to the vendor pages that shows up when you've ordered from them that you can click on and leave a review.

So is there a certain amount of time that the buyer has to leave a review? Can the buyer still edit feedback?

edit: When this change takes place that is

those things won't change, but realize that the longer they wait, the less their review counts for anything and the less likely anyone else is to see it.  I'm hoping that it won't be as much of an issue with the changes we are already making and if it is, there are still some things we can try before putting in hard limits.

hi hi

sorry DPR, i just dont believe there to be any GOOD reasons for allowing a buyer to modify feedback an unlimited number of times for months on end. it's simply ludicrous. decoupling the star rating and the words is a good start, but it means nothing to me if a buyer can simply change it at any time in the future.

i understand there are things like typos, customers who want to wait a few days to try or even pick up the product, and long shipping times. that is not the point we are trying to make.

there needs NEEDS to be a hard set limit. buyer gets ONE "free" edit of the feedback for up to 48 hours after it's initially left, and that's IT. i do not have any earthly idea why buyers feel the compulsory need to have the ability to change it a week or two later.

nowhere is there a gun pointed to anyone's head saying "YOU MUST LEAVE FEEDBACK IMMEDIATELY! RAWR!" as a buyer, you simply *finalize* once you receive the package, and you have the OPTION to leave *feedback* at that time. but the stars should be set in freaking stone! when you leave feedback that should be IT. that should be THE FEEDBACK!

it is not intended to be a messaging system or an extortion mechanism.

i will continue to deny all new buyers because of this silly system.  the only tools we vendors have keeping buyers honest is tracking information and the looming threat of being put on the blacklist if they choose to mess around. and an established buyer with great stats does not want to be found on those lists, as the stats become meaningless when no one will serve them because of it. those honest established buyers are the ONLY customers i serve. and it looks like it will continue to be that way for some time now....

sorry newbies, nothing personal  :(
xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TLT13 on August 17, 2013, 04:45 pm
Following this thread.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: KevinMitnick on August 17, 2013, 08:34 pm
Did transactions that happen in stealth not count in the Vendor Stats Transactions box? Also, feedback left for transactions in Stealth, have they vanished?

I left a feedback/rating for a vendor last week.. and it's gone now.

Also, another vendor I'm a fan of.. whom I know has a gazillion transactions, their Vendor Stats show like 249 or 250 or something like that.

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong..
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 17, 2013, 08:37 pm
OP updated
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: danb15 on August 17, 2013, 08:39 pm
New look is great, the thing i don't like is the way beside a vendors name before it had (100) ect now its just the name, also there is no overall rating maybe its still getting changed but i think it should be added again as it was easy to see what the vendor was like.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 17, 2013, 08:48 pm
New look is great, the thing i don't like is the way beside a vendors name before it had (100) ect now its just the name, also there is no overall rating maybe its still getting changed but i think it should be added again as it was easy to see what the vendor was like.

like I said in the OP, we did away with the 0 - 100% rating and are just displaying the 0 - 5 ratings that buyers submit.  The 100% thing was derived from this, but now you have even more info about the vendors rating from the widget.  I think once you get used to it, you'll find it more informative than the single 0-100 number.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 17, 2013, 08:51 pm
This conversation again. Okay let me bring this up

For vendors saying they don't want buyers to be able to change feedback or only have a short time to do so, I don't think that makes sense. I  leave feedback regarding shipping time, packaging, vendor him/herself, and initial reactions of the product when I receive it. Then I try the product and update the feedback accordingly. I can see how 3+ months might be a bit much but sometimes it takes a little while to consume. I think a month to update would be good.

30 days is long but is better than the almost 4 months currently allowed. But even 30 days is too long really. Is a detailed review comment all that necessary? It's nice, sure. No doubt. But it shouldn't have anything to do with the rating #/%. All that really goes into considering the feedback rating number can be assessed in a few days after receiving it.

I mean, who's really reading the long feedback comments? It'd be great if buyers would read vendor profile pages which most don't as evidence by the questions they ask that are already answered on the profile page.

Tell you what then. Comprise time. 2 weeks max to be able to change rating number and an additional 2 weeks to only modify the comment. Fair enough?
Good fucking response. I appreciate your professional and thought out response. +1. I would prefer 3-4 weeks to be able to change the number because, as posted above me, if the product is bunk or whatever the rating should be able to change as well as the comment. Otherwise, the feedback would say "shit shit shit" with a 5 star rating. If people are skimming over the feedback, they'd just see the 5 and continue on. However, I see where you're coming from. How about 2.5-3 weeks? Pick one and you got yourself a deal.
Also, not all vendors have review pages on the forums or are even talked about on the forums so it's important to have as much info as possible.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Thetruthseeker1234 on August 17, 2013, 09:10 pm
Will the number score be out next to a vendors name like before with the 100 point system.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ChemCat on August 17, 2013, 09:30 pm
So....for Vendors like myself, that don't or can't move in large "Volume" Even though we have or I have Awesome Customer service and explanatory skills that means Alot to Loyal Customers....this means we will be rated as bad Vendors?  Hmmmmm..... No Offense meant....but, Explain Please.


Hugs,

ChemCat
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 17, 2013, 09:39 pm
So....for Vendors like myself, that don't or can't move in large "Volume" Even though we have or I have Awesome Customer service and explanatory skills that means Alot to Loyal Customers....this means we will be rated as bad Vendors?  Hmmmmm..... No Offense meant....but, Explain Please.


Hugs,

ChemCat

I see a nice average of 5 on your user page.  Not sure what the problem is.  You are unranked because you are on vacation mode, but when you come back you'll get your ranking. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ChemCat on August 17, 2013, 09:46 pm
Quote from: Dread Pirate Roberts
So....for Vendors like myself, that don't or can't move in large "Volume" Even though we have or I have Awesome Customer service and explanatory skills that means Alot to Loyal Customers....this means we will be rated as bad Vendors?  Hmmmmm..... No Offense meant....but, Explain Please.


Hugs,

ChemCat

  Not sure what the problem is.  You are unranked because you are on vacation mode, but when you come back you'll get your ranking.

Well No "Problem"  at all, I just didnt understand. Would it be possible in the Future to have Our Ratings based on some part of Our Customer Service? Not to sound like an ass or offend anyone else...but some Vendors have Shitty Customer Service....you know......  (Rolls Eyes)  No Offense meant to anyone  LOL  :P


Peace & Hugs,
 

ChemCat
                    O0
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: trabsh on August 17, 2013, 09:50 pm
Hey all,
would be great to see the new "average score" in this format : x/5


trabsh
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: betaraybob on August 17, 2013, 09:55 pm
Thanks DPR(and all admins and moderators for working so hard to making SR a safe and reliable place to both vend and buy while always working on making the site easier to navigate. 3 cheers! :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 17, 2013, 10:19 pm
Excellent updates

Ref the weighting - you'll be unlikely to get consensus - I think your relative weight and priority approach is excellent.

I would like to see the opportunity to respond to feedback - but that is indeed an additional feature and I'm sure you have this in hand as a possibility in the future.

Excellent work all round - though I am viewing this and contributing from an island paradise while on vacation...so perhaps the frozen cocktails and long hours of sun will effect the neutrality and sense of my contribution ;)

Seriously though, marvellous work. Thank you.

Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 17, 2013, 10:52 pm
This has been mentioned before, but it would be better for everyone to give buyers the ability to rate speed, stealth, communication, and product quality separately, like each one has its own 5 stars you can give it. This is alot more important than written feedback which is more onerous to sift through and can often be muddled or vague.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: barthonney on August 17, 2013, 11:03 pm
then, we'll give the option to sort reviews by most recent or by review weight and display the buyer's stats next to the review (total spent, total transaction, number of vendors bought from, and maybe buyer weight)

Great addition!   Can't wait for that!   I will spend more time just browsing then ever!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 17, 2013, 11:28 pm
Well, one thing I have immediately noticed is that this has caused me to appear as a much lower feedback vendor.

My "feedback score" used to be 99.8%~. Now it is 4.76/5. That is a very significant drop. For those who are a little slow at math, that means I am essentially now appearing to have the equivalent of what was 95.2% positive feedback before.

So I guess my point here besides whining is that it appears to me there are ZERO disincentives in place to stop buyers from leaving false/blackmail feedback.

I think this is a pretty serious problem. There really is nothing at all I can see to stop them in place. The vendor blacklist is not an efficient or feasible method to deal with this problem on a systemic scale.

What is preventing me from using a buyer account I've built up to have very good stats to buy competition's listings and leave bad feedback? Possibly getting put on the vendor blacklist which only 10% of vendors actually check? What recourse does a vendor really have when that happens? Currently, it's writing a line about it in your profile! Seems absolutely primitive and barbaric to me. I feel silly doing that, so I don't. Vendors need to be able to respond to feedback left, maybe even challenge it.

Perhaps more importantly, I think what type of feedback a buyer leaves NEEDS to be immediately made part of the visible buyer stats. Has this buyer left 1/5 feedback for the last four items he purchased? Yeah, I'll think I'll pass on your business. In a real marketplace we would be able to have access to this information. If you cause trouble for one storeowner in town, they will let the other storeowners know and you may find yourself without a place to shop! This is really the foundation of a Free Society. We want to have a "civilized" society with some amount of order, and that can be done by Reputation. 'A man's word is all he has' is an important phrase that our society will need to learn once again imo.

Making all these information about vendor feedback public just gives 'customers' even more power and in my opinion will bring out the worst in people and lead to inter vendor wars. But maybe I'm just a negative nancy. (While giving the customer all the power may seem nice to some of you, consider that the customer is NOT always right. this isn't walmart. some of our 'customers' are trying to put us in a dungeon for the rest of our lives.)

I know you're doing a lot already but I feel like vendors are much more vulnerable right now, otherwise I wouldn't bother to bring it up. And of course the feedback hit I took...curious why that is. Change in the way that number is averaged I suppose.

edit to clarify: I suppose a possibility is that now your feedback score is as you say in the OP "a total average." Which would mean that my little low-value lottery tickets that are only a few cents a piece are now an enormous vulnerability for me. If a "high ranked buyer" leaves 1/5 feedback for a $1 purchase, how much will it affect me in comparison to the same high ranked buyer leaving 1/5 feedback for a $300 purchase? I suspect it will affect me far too much in comparison, and that is the issue here. But I could be wrong.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 18, 2013, 12:03 am
Cork1Screw, has some good points. However, I wouldn't say your feedback "dropped", it just changed to a new standard. The vendor being able to comment on feedback isn't a bad idea. I also like the vendor being able to see the type of feedback the buyer has left. That would be an easy way for vendors to spot scammers/people who don't know how to use SR properly (ie getting packages sent to the wrong address, somebody taking their package, etc.).
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 18, 2013, 12:29 am
To me it certainly seems like it dropped. 99.8% of 5 is 4.99. 4.99/5 sounds a lot more appropriate than 4.76/5.

(I do see your point though, just offering maybe not even my perspective but what I have to assume will be the customer's perspective, if that makes sense)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: morrisen on August 18, 2013, 01:44 am
Hi @ all Roader´s!!

For me as a buyer it is most interesting at vendor stats,

1. how many items were arriving safely and

2. the item is off good quality!!

So there should be a statistic (like mentioned by GUS) about % received international/national.

Even if quality is a "subjective" perception, there should be a rating from 1-10 about quality.

The icing on the cake would be, when it´s mentioned if the vendor uses MBB (gives
some extra points)!


Now the "feedback changing thing":

I had an order at a vendor with (99), he required FE, I did.
Then the vendor had some private issues (hacked account, death in family,...) and he didn´t
send it out.
After 2 weeks I messaged him - no response.
Another 10 days later I messaged him again, he unnoticed my order.
More than 30 days after placing the order I received the package.

So at the end I understood his problems and changed the feedback to 5/5, the quality
was very ok! Everybody can get in trouble (gf leaves, death in family,...)!!
Even communication was ok when he recognized his fault.

I was happy to change the feedback, at the end he earned a 5/5, he even gave a little extra.

Everything has 2 sides...
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ~o~WaterWalker~o~ on August 18, 2013, 01:47 am
To me it certainly seems like it dropped. 99.8% of 5 is 4.99. 4.99/5 sounds a lot more appropriate than 4.76/5.


I've only been on the road a few months but it seemed like only a few vendors had bad rating and most kept 100 or 99 which kind of made them worthless.   Perhaps your new score is still really really good..  what is the median now?  other vendors take more of a hit?  let's check it out for a few days and see if things are really out of wack...  you got some good ideas though like the other guy said
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 18, 2013, 02:02 am
To me it certainly seems like it dropped. 99.8% of 5 is 4.99. 4.99/5 sounds a lot more appropriate than 4.76/5.


I've only been on the road a few months but it seemed like only a few vendors had bad rating and most kept 100 or 99 which kind of made them worthless.   Perhaps your new score is still really really good..  what is the median now?  other vendors take more of a hit?  let's check it out for a few days and see if things are really out of wack...  you got some good ideas though like the other guy said

Well, your post made me look into it. Turns out every other vendor I looked at seemed to have a much more appropriate rating. Now I'm especially curious why people who sell the same products, were at the same vendor rank, and had 96-98% positive feedback instead of 98.7%~...are now 4.98/5 or 5/5, while I am down to 4.76/5.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: lostinmyland on August 18, 2013, 02:26 am
All hail the great DPR! :) Seriously, it takes a LOT of work to constantly improve this site in the ways the he does. I truly do like this update as I had always thought it would be better if the feedback was weighted in some way and I do agree with these standards! Cork1Screw does bring up a good point though.

Keep up the great work DPR! Just wanted to let you know that your hard work doesn't go unnoticed.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: titoprince on August 18, 2013, 03:18 am
Oh this is a great update. I'm new, but I just went back and looked at the vendors I sifted through before and the breakdown is much clearer. I can tell, from the little bar graph things, who constantly has issues.

I agree with the above comments about needing to ask people to rate the individual aspects of the service. Anything to break people out of this 'well, I never got my order and no one responded to my messages, but 5/5 because oh well.'

I'd also love to see vendor ranks in terms of numbers, like who is the best seller, etc. I think it would encourage some healthy competition.


I don't mind the idea that vendors should be able to see my past ratings/feedback. That would actually work in most people's favor I think. I'm not quite on board with letting vendors, respond though. Just because the responses I've seen in the forums are people bickering back and forth. I also left a less than stellar rating recently and got TEN freaking messages from the vendor, most of which made no sense and asked things like 'why do you hate us'? So when I think of vendors commenting on feedback, I just see potential for flamewars.

Anyway, cool update, thanks :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: rkk1993 on August 18, 2013, 03:42 am
sounds kinda dumb. but its all goo i gues.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 18, 2013, 03:57 am
This guys post just made me think of something:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=203340.0

Let vendors see a buyer's 'profile page' the same way buyers can see vendor pages now, and show the feedback they have previously left for vendors on it. Limit it if you must.

 They can also write a little blurb about themself, put their (the buyer's!) PGP key, etc. This solves all the concerns in one fell swoop with minimal work I would think.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 18, 2013, 05:51 am
This guys post just made me think of something:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=203340.0

Let vendors see a buyer's 'profile page' the same way buyers can see vendor pages now, and show the feedback they have previously left for vendors on it. Limit it if you must.

 They can also write a little blurb about themself, put their (the buyer's!) PGP key, etc. This solves all the concerns in one fell swoop with minimal work I would think.
I like it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 18, 2013, 05:53 am
I'm not quite on board with letting vendors, respond though. Just because the responses I've seen in the forums are people bickering back and forth. I also left a less than stellar rating recently and got TEN freaking messages from the vendor, most of which made no sense and asked things like 'why do you hate us'? So when I think of vendors commenting on feedback, I just see potential for flamewars.
I thought of this too before my post but thought it could still work. On secondhand, you're right, no it couldn't haha
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Isobetadine on August 18, 2013, 06:20 am

DPR, limit the duration that a buyer can leave or change feedback from the current 3+ months to 2 weeks after finalization.

-By your logic SR should then have a No-FE official policy.
Problem with some good vendors is that once established some make crazy ass demands to be considered a non-FE buyer.
Like spending +1000's of dollars is the latest i've seen.

Just because they are doing well us buyers are at their mercy.
That's not right.



-Not quit sure if i have understood this correctly but if the fact that the amound you spend should somehow penalize you as a buyer if it is not a "high" enough seems LESS then fair and somehow between the lines..elitist perfume is being dispersed.
And it stinks >:(.

Feedback ,no way that this should be locked in or dramatically shortened.
Too many factors especially when ordering internationally would make this  plan difficult.
Also the powerbalance is shifted completely to the vendor who would just have to stall.
And believe me ... i have had this experience already.And this with a vendor considered top notch by most here ..including myself.
I'm pretty sure the feedback system protected me from that situation going sour as it was the only card i held.Not that i threatened with it ...on the contrary but i know that the vendor in that particular situation only arranged the situation to avoid bad press.
Resolution is something to be avoided in my opinion for buyerstats and risking discrimination when you are not at fault AT ALL from other vendors.

-DPR i'm all improvement but please do not go into the elitist direction  and give vendors free reign.
A few vendors that are prominently active on the forum push for this a little bit too much. Don't know if the motivation is greed but i don't buy the fact that us buyers are SO horrendous they should be entitled to be in the position to push us around to THAT level.

I hope i don't have to worry about SR-spirit being corrupted.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Isobetadine on August 18, 2013, 06:33 am
Also make it so that if a buyer go's to resolution and loses....  they can not leave feedback.

Yes!

No.  Unless there's a % to resolution figure beside the vendor stats.  You may be perfect but a lot of vendors aren't and you're effectively muzzling buyers from talking about poor vendor performance.

If the customer wins in resolution then he should be able to leave feedback.  Scammers that lose in resolution should not be able to leave feedback.

This is the first time you express a more reasonable and level-headed way to handle feedback.
This i like.

Those scammer bad feedback are very obvious 99.99999 of the time..but they urk me BIG time.
That i could live with but it has to be clear it's a scammer.
So the REASON you lose resolution matters if you want handle it that way.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 18, 2013, 06:57 am

DPR, limit the duration that a buyer can leave or change feedback from the current 3+ months to 2 weeks after finalization.

-By your logic SR should then have a No-FE official policy.
Problem with some good vendors is that once established some make crazy ass demands to be considered a non-FE buyer.
Like spending +1000's of dollars is the latest i've seen.

Just because they are doing well us buyers are at their mercy.
That's not right.



-Not quit sure if i have understood this correctly but if the fact that the amound you spend should somehow penalize you as a buyer if it is not a "high" enough seems LESS then fair and somehow between the lines..elitist perfume is being dispersed.
And it stinks >:(.

Feedback ,no way that this should be locked in or dramatically shortened.
Too many factors especially when ordering internationally would make this  plan difficult.
Also the powerbalance is shifted completely to the vendor who would just have to stall.
And believe me ... i have had this experience already.And this with a vendor considered top notch by most here ..including myself.
I'm pretty sure the feedback system protected me from that situation going sour as it was the only card i held.Not that i threatened with it ...on the contrary but i know that the vendor in that particular situation only arranged the situation to avoid bad press.
Resolution is something to be avoided in my opinion for buyerstats and risking discrimination when you are not at fault AT ALL from other vendors.

-DPR i'm all improvement but please do not go into the elitist direction  and give vendors free reign.
A few vendors that are prominently active on the forum push for this a little bit too much. Don't know if the motivation is greed but i don't buy the fact that us buyers are SO horrendous they should be entitled to be in the position to push us around to THAT level.

I hope i don't have to worry about SR-spirit being corrupted.

SR spirit is already corrupted by buyers who run the gamut of scams against vendors (and vendors who scam buyers). Especially new vendors. You're a nice guy/girl so it would probably never occur to you to use feedback to blackmail or strong arm vendors into getting free or discounted drugs. But that's what a number of bad buyers do.

The time limit on the ability to change feedback can be segregated:

1. International orders
2. Domestic orders
3. Orders in resolution 

For none of these is a 4 month ability to change feedback necessary. It's absurd. The majority of e-Commerce site feedback is permanent. Even on Atlantis, it's permanent.

There was a suggestion to decouple finalization from feedback. That would work. And to set the limit for leaving or changing feedback starting from the point of finalization of an order. 

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 18, 2013, 07:20 am
New look is great, the thing i don't like is the way beside a vendors name before it had (100) ect now its just the name, also there is no overall rating maybe its still getting changed but i think it should be added again as it was easy to see what the vendor was like.

like I said in the OP, we did away with the 0 - 100% rating and are just displaying the 0 - 5 ratings that buyers submit.  The 100% thing was derived from this, but now you have even more info about the vendors rating from the widget.  I think once you get used to it, you'll find it more informative than the single 0-100 number.

CHANGE BACK TO THE 100% system please... vendors work hard for that.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GlenRunciter on August 18, 2013, 07:29 am
^Cimicon-Rep seems overly biased against buyers, as if we were all skeezy scammers looking for a free ride.   I guess as a buyer, I am more heavily biased against shady vendors...so maybe it all equals out in the end.   Anyway...just an observation.   

Sorry if it's been broached...but I noticed the number of "fans" a particular vendor has either disappeared or been moved elsewhere.  I find this a handy, quick way to discern the popularity/trustworthiness of a certain vendor.  If a vendor has 350 transactions, but only 30 "fans"...that will raise a red flag with me.   I'd like to see a positive correlation between "fans" and total transactions.   So 350 transactions and 200 "fans" would be a good sign for me.  I don't know if this is a very scientific way to access the viability of a vendor by itself, per se....but I do factor it in along with other metrics when I decide on using a new vendor.  I think it would be helpful to keep this information easily accessible.   Thanks......
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: subtickle on August 18, 2013, 09:22 am
The charts are a great idea! They work well. Also the new ranking looks good

Many thanks for the improvements Team SR. Very much appreciated. Looking forward to the next set of updates :)
ST
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: T5 on August 18, 2013, 09:27 am
There is one thing we would like to put emphasis on...

Vendors should ALWAYS have access to recent feedback in the order that they are submitted. This way, we are aware if there is any issue at all. We had a minor shipping problem a couple of weeks ago and the feedback helped us a lot to fix the problem. Feedback is useful for bother buyers and vendors, and everyone needs to see what is the present state of a vendor. This needs to stay!

We absolutely love that SilkRoad is trying to enhance the rating/feedback system, these are all great ideas. Perhaps a division between Featured Reviews and Live/Recent Reviews would be helpful. While you get the most important reviews on top, you also get a "live feed" of recent feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: neo67 on August 18, 2013, 10:52 am
Sorry if this or something similar has already been suggested but......

I thought about having a default template for leaving feedback that everyone has to use;

Something like:

Service and Communication = (score out of 5) = (Description of service and communication given)

Stealth and Delivery = (score out of 5) = (Description of stealth and delivery)

Product Quality = (score out of 5) = (Description of product quality)

What do you guys and DPR think to that?

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Qthello on August 18, 2013, 12:21 pm
How about customer feedback while you're at it? :D

heh, this is exactly why it's not advisable to do what I'm doing.  It opens the door for everyone to bring up their favorite feature request.  An important part of the development process is scoping, keeping the scope and complexity of the update as small as possible.  So in the interest of staying focused, please keep the conversation limited to what I bring up.

Ya'll just keep on trucking. I am just happy to be here and a part of it. Along with any changes that are made or, not made.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: evetSFree on August 18, 2013, 02:44 pm
 I have only been on the road a few months and this is the way i see it is.   

    I see a lot of vendors that lets say have been selling for 9 or 12 months and have over that time 300+ transactions and all there sales are for lets say a gram or two of pot or for $10 or $20 pill or so on and they do well in the comment section and get a 100% rating.  Then out of the blue the same vendor is selling once's of coke or meth or something thats big money.    So now just like that the vendor who got there 100% rating from 300+  $20 sales now has $2000 listings up and your led to believe this vendor is worth a 100% rating ?  And i have seen that quit a bit in the short time i have been here.
 
   Vendors stats     (  For buyer to see )

   1,   How long have been a vendor.    ( Thats not to say they have not brought another vendors account )
   2,   Average amount in $ per sale.    ( Say over the last  12 months )
   3,   What % of sales are domestic and % international.  ( This will help very much the international buyer )
   4,   Buyers Comments   being ;
        5/5  for communication
        5/5  for time of order into transit
        5/5  for delivery
        5/5  for stealth
        5/5  for product

     And overall % out of 100

    Anyway this is just my idea from some newbie that you will say has no fucking idea.

   Cheers Silkroaders.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DopeSneaky on August 18, 2013, 03:59 pm
I would love to have the ability to sort through reviews. Newest, oldest, trusted (based on buyer stats), and negative would all be ideal sorting options. It gives the buyer a robust perspective on the way a vendor conducts his or her business.

Wouldn't it be a good idea if other buyers from the same vendor who has recently made a purchase within the same timespan (say that they placed an order 7 days apart) could upvote/downvote on eachothers feedback/review of the product as this way the community could help to promote a vendor in case of bad feedback just for the sake of ruining a vendors reputation?.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 18, 2013, 04:07 pm
^Cimicon-Rep seems overly biased against buyers, as if we were all skeezy scammers looking for a free ride.   I guess as a buyer, I am more heavily biased against shady vendors...so maybe it all equals out in the end.   Anyway...just an observation.   

Nah, not biased against buyers. There's a nice mix of posts supporting both buyers and sellers in my posting history since I've been on both sides of the coin.

Just pointing out the often overlooked or forgotten aspects of vending. The majority of buyers and vendors are just fine, decent people. But the few bad apples are really bad apples. Plus these bad buyers are capable of having multiple buyer accounts and can switch identities at will and whim. The feedback system is favorable towards their antics and scams. Vendors have been asking SR staff to level the playing field for the longest time and finally some progress is being made. But the progress might end up being superficial if some loopholes aren't closed up. The biggest one being the ability to change feedback months after finalizing. There is no justification for it. 

The thing is, if the new feedback algorithm heavily discounts old feedback, then the ability to change feedback weeks and months later doesn't really matter. Something that would be most important to new vendors who are often victimized by feedback blackmail.

You want new vendors to survive to add more choice and price normalization.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 18, 2013, 05:59 pm
i dont understand the change to a 1-5 system, is this to stop pitting vendors against eachother for positive feedback? Seems like the whole feedback system is less relevant now that this bar chart obfuscates it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GGGreenbud on August 18, 2013, 06:04 pm

But there's one critical element that must be addressed with regards to feedback and that is the duration period to leave feedback and ability to change feedback.

Currently, it's something on the order of up to about 4 months that a buyer can change feedback. There is no viable excuse or scenario where something of this sort is necessary. In 3 months, a buyer's weighting can change if they've been very active since they left a vendor feedback. That would change the weight of the feedback even though the original feedback's weight has been aged some what. If this buyer has done a few bulk buys since they left a particular vendor feedback, the weight of the old feedback would necessarily increase.

The duration to leave or change feedback should be limited to 2 weeks after order finalization.  This will of course negatively affect those who finalize early, especially for international orders. But you know what? That's an additional part of the risk they take by not staying in escrow. But more importantly, it puts a sense of "urgency" to feedback which should also help with deterring feedback blackmail. Those who engage in feedback blackmail would have a limited time in which to effectuate their nefarious plan. The run the risk of the vendor not complying with their evil plan and them not being able to change the feedback back to a 5/5. If their clock runs out and they can't change the 1/5 blackmail back to a 5/5, the feedback blackmailing buyer runs the critical risk of being blacklisted and exposed for their attempt at fraud.     

TL;DR:

DPR, limit the duration that a buyer can leave or change feedback from the current 3+ months to 2 weeks after finalization.

 As a buyer: Two weeks after finalization sounds fair, however, some substances aren't used right away, and cannot be reagent-tested with sufficient efficacy to determine potency, such as LSD, but this is the exception.   I think there should be an option for 1 update on feedback, at about 2-4 weeks.   This would allow for FE'd int'l customers to test and evaluate product.  Remember, us buyers like to horde chems, especially psychedelics.  I honestly think that the current stats speak for themselves.  The only time I really update feedback is when I try a new dose or method of consumption, just to help promote the vendor's product.   I honestly pay more attention to the positive feedback, and give little attention to people who would say "this sucks" or something vague like that.  The no-feedback leaving people are who piss me off more than anything.  I almost think users should be REQUIRED to leave feedback, until they can order again, but that is another issue.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 18, 2013, 06:26 pm
New look is great, the thing i don't like is the way beside a vendors name before it had (100) ect now its just the name, also there is no overall rating maybe its still getting changed but i think it should be added again as it was easy to see what the vendor was like.

like I said in the OP, we did away with the 0 - 100% rating and are just displaying the 0 - 5 ratings that buyers submit.  The 100% thing was derived from this, but now you have even more info about the vendors rating from the widget.  I think once you get used to it, you'll find it more informative than the single 0-100 number.

CHANGE BACK TO THE 100% system please... vendors work hard for that.

the average rating is basically the same thing except on a 1 - 5 scale instead of 0 - 100, and you get much more information seeing it broken down by 1 through 5.  If you were striving for a 100%, now you are striving for a perfect 5 average.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 18, 2013, 06:39 pm
hi hi

in the immortal words of Popeye the sailor "that's all i can stands! i can't stands no more!!"

there have been a number of incorrect sentiments on this thread. i had posted this earlier, but apparently everyone is just skimming, so i'll reiterate myself:

BUYERS:::: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEAVE FEEDBACK WHEN YOU FINALIZE!!!

this is a very important point to make. NO ONE is forcing you to leave a rating and feedback words IMMEDIATELY when you finalize. i have personally had quite a few buyers finalize an order, and NOT leave feedback for a day or two. this is PERFECTLY FINE!!! it means they are respectable people who understand the coins are valuable to us vendors and release them when they receive their gear, and that they also want to leave proper feedback when they HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO TRY THE PRODUCT!!

there is ZERO good reasons to allow feedback to be changed all the time. the argument of "well, i *had* to FE" is complete BS. NO you did NOT have to FE, and you did NOT need to write feedback early, EITHER. you CHOSE to FE because you wanted to buy from that vendor!!!!! that is even more important of a point to make! these points go together and it's plain as day that due to naivety/ignorance/misinformation buyers are assuming they need to drop feedback right when they click finalize. this is simply untrue.


please DPR, i feel we really need to ditch the constant feedback changing. i'm ok with infinite feedback changes for like 24-48 hours after it's written, but after that it should be set in stone. so silly that it's not.

and for all the buyers saying this new update favors the vendors: it most certainly does not. there is a major outcry on the vendor forum about this. personally it worked out better for me, and here i am complaining about it! because i know it's not fair for all vendors!!

sorry for the rant, but i feel i have to stick up for what's right
that's my 2 satoshi
xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 18, 2013, 07:04 pm
BUYERS:::: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEAVE FEEDBACK WHEN YOU FINALIZE!!!
Good point.

and for all the buyers saying this new update favors the vendors: it most certainly does not. there is a major outcry on the vendor forum about this. personally it worked out better for me, and here i am complaining about it! because i know it's not fair for all vendors!!
What is with this buyer vs. vendor shit everywhere lately? Vendors need buyers. Buyers need vendors. We're a fucking community. Let's just keep that in mind.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 18, 2013, 07:09 pm
This guys post just made me think of something:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=203340.0

Let vendors see a buyer's 'profile page' the same way buyers can see vendor pages now, and show the feedback they have previously left for vendors on it. Limit it if you must.

 They can also write a little blurb about themself, put their (the buyer's!) PGP key, etc. This solves all the concerns in one fell swoop with minimal work I would think.

I don't like this idea. There is no reason for vendors to see all the things I've been buying. Makes me feel uneasy.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 18, 2013, 07:11 pm
+1 Miss Bliss.

DPR, the call is growing (again) to lock feedback once left. It's just a haggle over time-frames to lock it relative to the order type. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 18, 2013, 07:18 pm
BUYERS:::: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEAVE FEEDBACK WHEN YOU FINALIZE!!!
Good point.

and for all the buyers saying this new update favors the vendors: it most certainly does not. there is a major outcry on the vendor forum about this. personally it worked out better for me, and here i am complaining about it! because i know it's not fair for all vendors!!
What is with this buyer vs. vendor shit everywhere lately? Vendors need buyers. Buyers need vendors. We're a fucking community. Let's just keep that in mind.

Yes, it's a symbiotic relationship. But vendors need protections too. Most especially new vendors from predatory buyers. Just trying to level a playing field. After all, vendors can't rebut feedback or leave feedback for buyers. Though we do have blacklists. So there's that.
On the streets, this isn't a problem. ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: a845631 on August 18, 2013, 08:31 pm
On a buyers point of a view, the visual rating system is a step in the right direction. But the design (bar graph style) seems off and confusing at first glance.

Is the bar graph the product ratings? Then I hover for overall vendor ratings, right? I shouldn't have to read your post to figure out how it works. It should be more natural.

Something simpler and easier to understand would be nice. Perhaps a title on the top saying "product ratings". Or stealing some cues from a popular website and using stars instead of plain boring 'rating'. 'Stars' mean something, if that makes any sense.

I like the amazon rating system (X)(X)(X)(X)(X) (98)
Your stars would be the rating, next to the # indicating amount of reviews for the product

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 18, 2013, 09:11 pm
can we not put the rating x/5 in brackets next to the vendors name?

blah(4.85)

i never browse categories :( so i dont get to see the pretty graphs.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Revenantchild on August 18, 2013, 09:24 pm
There is no reason for a customer to be able to go back and change their feedback more than 10-14 days after finalization ....the only reason for that is scamming...or if in SR resolution.......another change that has to be made is when a customer finalizes.......BUT does not leave a review......then waits 30-90 days to make another purchase.....then give you a 3/5....and sends you a message saying they will move it up to 5/5 with a discount on a new purchase......Also.......someone can make a purchase up to 4 month and then wait to do their review and try a scam tactic of 1/5 and that will show up on the first page of reviews.......to me that is unacceptable that sale took place  120 days ago......but shows up as a recent sale......like a yesterday sale.......

That needs to change.

Also......From a vendors standpoint......I want to be able to comment on the feedback left.......just makes sense to me.......

I agree with this.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 18, 2013, 09:36 pm
On a buyers point of a view, the visual rating system is a step in the right direction. But the design (bar graph style) seems off and confusing at first glance.

Is the bar graph the product ratings? Then I hover for overall vendor ratings, right? I shouldn't have to read your post to figure out how it works. It should be more natural.

Something simpler and easier to understand would be nice. Perhaps a title on the top saying "product ratings". Or stealing some cues from a popular website and using stars instead of plain boring 'rating'. 'Stars' mean something, if that makes any sense.

I like the amazon rating system (X)(X)(X)(X)(X) (98)
Your stars would be the rating, next to the # indicating amount of reviews for the product

amazon's rating system won't work for SR.  they are product centered while we are vendor centered.  The reason is that they sell standardized products where many sellers can sell the exact same thing.  We don't have that luxury.  So, all ratings are vendor ratings.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: smogmonster13 on August 18, 2013, 09:38 pm
I don't think that people who can afford to spend more money should be heard more loudly. And as a buyer, I don't want to see more comments from big purchasers than small purchasers. I would like to see all comments in time, and make up my own mind.

I think decoupling is a good idea, as it will lead to more helpful comments.

I also agree that a little education on how to rate would raise the level.

As a buyer it would be helpful to know whether the vendor is great at stealth, not just selling great product.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 18, 2013, 10:28 pm
Why dont we just do away with written feedback entirely? Most of whats written is really unhelpful and it takes too long to read through everything, and we have the forums which is often more honest since buyers do not feel threatened by vendor blacklisting.

Also +1 on having feedback only be changable once, and in a certain timeframe. The only reason to have changed feedback is at the end of a dispute.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 18, 2013, 10:40 pm
I know its off topic a little bit. but a Mandatory Link to Forum Review Thread would be good.. (ontop of feedback)

and agan putting the rating in brackets next to vendor name would be good vendor(4.85)

my opinion ;) everybodys got one.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 18, 2013, 10:55 pm
OP updated
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 18, 2013, 11:08 pm
OP updated

DPR this is one of the things i have been waiting for :) GREAT WORK  :)

Only comment I have (I always have at least 1) Raise the minimum spend amount to 2btc to comment.. 

But this is GREAT :) Means the comments actually means something. Shill accounts will be *limited* and we can get some good true feedback :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: a845631 on August 18, 2013, 11:22 pm
Why dont we just do away with written feedback entirely? Most of whats written is really unhelpful and it takes too long to read through everything, and we have the forums which is often more honest since buyers do not feel threatened by vendor blacklisting.

Also +1 on having feedback only be changable once, and in a certain timeframe. The only reason to have changed feedback is at the end of a dispute.

Almost all of my purchase decisions are based of information I read in comments. Sometimes i go through 2-4 pages of comments before I am comfortable making a purchase. As a buyer, comments are vital.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 18, 2013, 11:25 pm
UPDATE (08/18/2013 2213 UTC):  Wow!  So much feedback and ideas for ratings.  I think this will be a major focus for a while until we can really flesh everything out so both vendors and buyers can have all of the information and tools they need to decide who they want to work with.  At this point, there are so many things to do, we have to start thinking about what order to do things in and how to transition.  Everyone responds to change either positively or negatively, and I'll keep doing my best to keep the negative to a minimum.

An idea I had not yet mentioned, but want to implement is moving discussion to the main site.  What I am thinking is that there will be a "discuss" link on every vendor page, item page, and even the category pages.  This link will go to a thread with the latest posts about the vendor, item, or category.  I'm thinking we'll require a minimum spent of maybe 1 btc to post.  Each post will include the user's account age, total purchased, number of transactions, and number of vendors they've bought from.  For the item and vendor pages, we can display whether the user has bought that item or purchased from that vendor, and we'll highlight posts from the vendor themselves when they post on their own thread or a thread of one of their items.  I'll want to enforce a strong policy of courteous conduct and will have a link for you to flag posts for admin review, and we'll give admins the ability to suspend posting privileges.  Also, we'll want you to have the option to post anonymously, so I think we'll put a "discussion name" field on the settings page, so you don't have to post under your account name.

My hope is that this feature will fill in any unexpected gaps that might be created by changes in the rating system, so at worst, free and open discussion between buyers and sellers can be looked to when making decisions.



+1. I'm not certain what I think yet about the proposed forumish integration into the main site, but on the surface it seems like a great idea. There's bound to be some turmoil over changes to the base mechanics of the site, but I think it's been pretty minimal over all and you seem to be handling it well.

I will say though, that I noticed you did not make any mention of vendors being able to see what feedback customers have left. Not the actual text or reviews necessarily (although I would include that), but just the strict 1/5 average the same as you've done for vendors.

If a customer has 100+ transactions and a lot of money spent but leaves on average 3.5/5 feedback and recently left a long string of 1/5 feedback...that is an excellent "flagging" system for scams imo, without being too intrusive. Maybe that user recently got hacked, for example.

Other than checking blacklist, this would provide a very ready at hand way to quickly get some real insight into a buyers recent attitude/activity without being too intrusive.

(P.s. - not discounting that I may have misread your update. Maybe you are already talking about letting everyone see the reviews/feedback buyers have left and just didn't mention it specifically enough for me to notice)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: MasterGrow on August 18, 2013, 11:27 pm
An idea I had not yet mentioned, but want to implement is moving discussion to the main site.  What I am thinking is that there will be a "discuss" link on every vendor page, item page, and even the category pages.  This link will go to a thread with the latest posts about the vendor, item, or category.  I'm thinking we'll require a minimum spent of maybe 1 btc to post.  Each post will include the user's account age, total purchased, number of transactions, and number of vendors they've bought from.  For the item and vendor pages, we can display whether the user has bought that item or purchased from that vendor, and we'll highlight posts from the vendor themselves when they post on their own thread or a thread of one of their items.  I'll want to enforce a strong policy of courteous conduct and will have a link for you to flag posts for admin review, and we'll give admins the ability to suspend posting privileges.  Also, we'll want you to have the option to post anonymously, so I think we'll put a "discussion name" field on the settings page, so you don't have to post under your account name.

Love this idea.
Rock on guys. 

8)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: royalblue on August 19, 2013, 12:35 am
can we not put the rating x/5 in brackets next to the vendors name?

blah(4.85)

i never browse categories :( so i dont get to see the pretty graphs.
Seconded, please provide rating next to vendor name so it's visible on links to the vendor profile.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 19, 2013, 01:04 am
Also, we'll want you to have the option to post anonymously, so I think we'll put a "discussion name" field on the settings page, so you don't have to post under your account name.
Allowing anonymous comments on a vendor's pages/items/etc seems like a really bad idea to me. If staff would be responsive to removing clearly false accusations, that would help. I'd guess staff will not have time to help with even blatent false statements, though, so this seems like a really bad idea to me.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: titoprince on August 19, 2013, 01:29 am
I would love to have the ability to sort through reviews. Newest, oldest, trusted (based on buyer stats), and negative would all be ideal sorting options. It gives the buyer a robust perspective on the way a vendor conducts his or her business.

Wouldn't it be a good idea if other buyers from the same vendor who has recently made a purchase within the same timespan (say that they placed an order 7 days apart) could upvote/downvote on eachothers feedback/review of the product as this way the community could help to promote a vendor in case of bad feedback just for the sake of ruining a vendors reputation?.

As if newbies don't get fucked enough as it is. If a vendor is selectively scamming, his other customers are going to downvote out of loyalty when they really can't know whether or not the allegation is true.

I posted a couple days ago asking for a quick LSD vendor. Someone messaged me suggested one and it happened to be the same guy I had a horrible first buying experience a couple days ago. When I told him that, he seemed genuinely shocked. This was in PM's so obviously I had no reason to lie, but had it been a comment and others were reading it? Under your system it would get buried.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 19, 2013, 04:21 am
So now is it not a cardinal sin to give anything below a 5 as a rating?

If I get an order on time, on weight and the quality is good... but the stealth was shitty, does that warrant a 4/5? What does warrant a 4/5 or a 3/5?

Any system that still pressures buyers into needing to give a 5 or be blacklisted is flawed.

Maybe we should have some sort of posted community guidelines as to what sort of issues and things should cause a transaction to receive under a 5.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 19, 2013, 05:41 am
So now is it not a cardinal sin to give anything below a 5 as a rating?

If I get an order on time, on weight and the quality is good... but the stealth was shitty, does that warrant a 4/5? What does warrant a 4/5 or a 3/5?

Any system that still pressures buyers into needing to give a 5 or be blacklisted is flawed.

Maybe we should have some sort of posted community guidelines as to what sort of issues and things should cause a transaction to receive under a 5.
YES!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 19, 2013, 06:20 am
So now is it not a cardinal sin to give anything below a 5 as a rating?

If I get an order on time, on weight and the quality is good... but the stealth was shitty, does that warrant a 4/5? What does warrant a 4/5 or a 3/5?

Any system that still pressures buyers into needing to give a 5 or be blacklisted is flawed.

Maybe we should have some sort of posted community guidelines as to what sort of issues and things should cause a transaction to receive under a 5.

Agreed.

If the feedback algorithm wasn't so complex (math geek level complex) these things would be easier to figure out.

Someone mentioned in either this or another thread the idea of simplifying the feedback system and going the eBay route of positive, neutral, negative along with a comment. It's not a bad idea.

During my days as a buyer, I never left less than a 5/5 mostly because I couldn't figure out exactly what constitutes a 4/5 or 3/5 or even a 2/5. I wasn't even worried about being blacklisted since it never occurred to me back then that you could be. The only thing I knew was, I got my order usually hassle free and it came in decent enough time. So 5/5. Some vendors gave a little "street" attitude on occasion but I didn't think it was anything to dock a point for. Had been in resolutions a couple of times and everything worked out in the end. I got shorted a time or two, but I contacted the vendors and they were cool about it and made it up to me.

Saying all that to say, not having had experienced a situation that warranted less than 5/5, IMO, and that didn't deserve a 1/5, the ratings in between don't seem to have much practical or sensible use.

It's hard to quantify using numbers how you might "feel" about a transaction. Words like "positive," "neutral," and "negative" seem to better convey how someone might feel about the total transaction experience.

The numbers from 1 to 5 I guess could be quantified like a survey's fill in the bubble thing.

Such as:

5 = positive
4 = less than positive, but not neutral
3 = neutral
2 = less than neutral, but not negative
1 = negative.

Yeah, looking at it, that doesn't make sense especially considering that a 4/5 can have as much impact on a vendor's rating as a 1/5 does depending on who's leaving it and how much the order was for.

Probably need to do away with the number system and move to the 3 word rating system.

As miss Bliss would say... that's my 2 Satoshi.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jack N Hoff on August 19, 2013, 06:58 am
You can have 200 5/5 and a single scamming 1/5 can toast your average score like a nuclear missile.  I miss the percentage. :(
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: flwrchlds9 on August 19, 2013, 08:13 am
Do not like the missing (xx) next to vendor names. Reconsider removing. Replace with VENDOR (4.85) or something so can see at a glance from list of names and can easy tell when vendor is demoted etc.

Buyer and Vendor can be scam fuck, important to no give either too much leverage. Also shit happen sometime and should no be able to hurt vendor too much. Balance important.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on August 19, 2013, 10:39 am
So now is it not a cardinal sin to give anything below a 5 as a rating?

If I get an order on time, on weight and the quality is good... but the stealth was shitty, does that warrant a 4/5? What does warrant a 4/5 or a 3/5?

Any system that still pressures buyers into needing to give a 5 or be blacklisted is flawed.

Maybe we should have some sort of posted community guidelines as to what sort of issues and things should cause a transaction to receive under a 5.

It should be based on your personal opinion. If there were guidelines, would that not be 'pressure' for people to respond in certain ways?

However, since you asked. Does something like this seem reasonable:

1 = Order never arrived and no communication received
2 = Wrong product; Reship due to seller mistake; Extremely late; Other problem but eventually resolved
3 = (Any two or more of the following) Considerably underweight; Poor packaging; Considerably Late; Poor communication; Other problems with transaction
4 = As for 3 but just the one problem
5 = Perfect/Nothing to complain about
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 19, 2013, 12:05 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 19, 2013, 12:11 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.

I have all that off as well and don't see any bar graphs either.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 19, 2013, 04:28 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.

I have all that off as well and don't see any bar graphs either.

we don't use javascript anywhere in the site for just that reason.  You should be able to see it next each item when browsing categories and on vendor pages.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Snoopish on August 19, 2013, 04:36 pm
Just chiming in to say thanks and my compliments on the current adjustments -- I was a bit surprised when I first saw the first roll-out of changes and thought there was something wrong with my interface! That said, any feedback or suggestions I might imagine have likely been mentioned so I'll just add that I'm glad improvements to the rating system are a matter of attention and wish ya the best (and that those who gripe about changes are few :P ).


Cheers to ya, DPR -- your service is appreciated by all of us,


Snoopish
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TLT13 on August 19, 2013, 04:38 pm
Do you think maybe it's useful to show a number greater than 300 for the amount of transactions has? Not sure if it would add a lot, but I think it's maybe interesting to see a vendor who for example has 2000+ transactions as opposed to 400. Especially for vendors who have been around for many months/years.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 19, 2013, 04:40 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.

I have all that off as well and don't see any bar graphs either.

we don't use javascript anywhere in the site for just that reason.  You should be able to see it next each item when browsing categories and on vendor pages.

nope. the only change I see is that the stats are in a box at the top.  everything else is the same.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaliforniaCannibas on August 19, 2013, 04:48 pm
Well........you could......but that same thing will happen to you as you described..........I see threads were customers leave a 3/5 or 4/5.....for something like......."could of used 3 more days of cure"....or "ordered on Wednesday.....got it on Saturday....I wanted it Friday...so 3/5".........you do that......bam......you on the black list......

So now is it not a cardinal sin to give anything below a 5 as a rating?

If I get an order on time, on weight and the quality is good... but the stealth was shitty, does that warrant a 4/5? What does warrant a 4/5 or a 3/5?

Any system that still pressures buyers into needing to give a 5 or be blacklisted is flawed.

Maybe we should have some sort of posted community guidelines as to what sort of issues and things should cause a transaction to receive under a 5.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TurpenT on August 19, 2013, 06:05 pm
Great way to weed out LE. I love it
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 19, 2013, 06:10 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.

I have all that off as well and don't see any bar graphs either.

we don't use javascript anywhere in the site for just that reason.  You should be able to see it next each item when browsing categories and on vendor pages.

I can see it when browsing categories but not on the vendor pages.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 19, 2013, 06:47 pm
so, I'm not seeing this mythical bar chart.  Is it because I have turned on no script and have shut off all the java etc etc in the torbrowser options?  you know, like we should be doing to stay safe.

I have all that off as well and don't see any bar graphs either.

we don't use javascript anywhere in the site for just that reason.  You should be able to see it next each item when browsing categories and on vendor pages.

I can see it when browsing categories but not on the vendor pages.

I too see it on the category pages but when I mouseover it I just get the average, I don't seem to be able to click on any of the bars to bring up the review details.  Is this right?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 19, 2013, 06:57 pm
The weighting is interesting to say the least.  I went for a nosey through one of the categories and found this seller http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/user/e1a2aec8fe/    just briefly looking at the feedback, it seems hard to believe that the result is right.  probably 15% of his reviews are 1/5 (I saw 3 but didn't check all the pages) so that means those poor reviews hit harder than the positive ones.

I'm all for putting sunlight on poor vendor behaviour when it happens but that kind of penalty seems harsh..  or have I missed something?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 19, 2013, 07:31 pm
Quote
An idea I had not yet mentioned, but want to implement is moving discussion to the main site.  What I am thinking is that there will be a "discuss" link on every vendor page, item page, and even the category pages.  This link will go to a thread with the latest posts about the vendor, item, or category.  I'm thinking we'll require a minimum spent of maybe 1 btc to post.  Each post will include the user's account age, total purchased, number of transactions, and number of vendors they've bought from.  For the item and vendor pages, we can display whether the user has bought that item or purchased from that vendor, and we'll highlight posts from the vendor themselves when they post on their own thread or a thread of one of their items.

Awesome idea this will really add alot of transparency and accountability to feedback though wouldnt this force users to link their forum handles to their SR accounts?


Do you think maybe it's useful to show a number greater than 300 for the amount of transactions has? Not sure if it would add a lot, but I think it's maybe interesting to see a vendor who for example has 2000+ transactions as opposed to 400. Especially for vendors who have been around for many months/years.

+1, even fly by nights can get 300 easily. Is the number low to keep them from being targeted? Might as well do away with it entirely if that is a problem.
 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BusteR on August 19, 2013, 09:01 pm
All seems like far too much going on, if its not broke don't fix it, a few small tweaks here and there is fine but SR has started running very slow for me since all these changes and now its started kicking me out ggrrrrr
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: pzvTVzD6OL on August 19, 2013, 10:06 pm
we don't use javascript anywhere in the site for just that reason.  You should be able to see it next each item when browsing categories and on vendor pages.

Same thing here, I don't see any bars when I look at a vendor's page, but I do see them when I browse for items in the categories.

Not seeing them on the item's pages either, but I may have misunderstood this one and it may be normal.

Great job anyway.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: loobaloo on August 19, 2013, 11:09 pm
To all those vendors clamoring to lock feedback and not allow editing, as a buyer, I'm against this, because there have been a number of times I ordered product I was unable to try for weeks or even months. This becomes particularly important for psychedelics. You can't just take them upon receipt, at least I can't. Plus, I have ordered things I didn't necessarily need at the moment to stock up in case of an SR blackout, as we all experienced several times earlier this year (maybe I'm the only one doing this kind of thing but I don't think so). I like to be able to edit feedback to include comments on the quality of the product, for the vendor's benefit, after leaving initial feedback on shipping, stealth, and overall transaction. There are a lot of people who aren't on the forums, especially with the 50 post requirement to be seen on regular threads - buyers and vendors. Leaving thorough feedback on SR proper is essential for a lot of vendors who might never be seen or discussed otherwise, and invaluable for me as a buyer shopping around. I am absolutely willing to pay more for product based on feedback.

I might be SR naive since I'm not a vendor, but if I have a serious problem with a vendor, I take it up with them in PMs to resolve things and come to a mutually beneficial resolution before I leave feedback that could really hurt a vendor. I know SR isn't some utopia where this happens with every buyer, but I do think most buyers and vendors are decent people. Perhaps you could have a month or two month limit on editing, or limit buyers to a single edit, something like that. I understand vendors' frustrations, I really do. But I'd respectfully ask for the editing feature to remain in some form simply so I can try and do right by each vendor when I can.

I totally support the idea of having buyer's profiles. I think this might help vendors feel more comfortable especially with newbie buyers and encourage more openness all around. We can see so much about vendors, I think turnabout is only fair.

Some great suggestions and changes here.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: HappyPig on August 20, 2013, 12:05 am
To all those vendors clamoring to lock feedback and not allow editing, as a buyer, I'm against this, because there have been a number of times I ordered product I was unable to try for weeks or even months. This becomes particularly important for psychedelics. You can't just take them upon receipt, at least I can't. Plus, I have ordered things I didn't necessarily need at the moment to stock up in case of an SR blackout, as we all experienced several times earlier this year (maybe I'm the only one doing this kind of thing but I don't think so). I like to be able to edit feedback to include comments on the quality of the product, for the vendor's benefit, after leaving initial feedback on shipping, stealth, and overall transaction. There are a lot of people who aren't on the forums, especially with the 50 post requirement to be seen on regular threads - buyers and vendors. Leaving thorough feedback on SR proper is essential for a lot of vendors who might never be seen or discussed otherwise, and invaluable for me as a buyer shopping around. I am absolutely willing to pay more for product based on feedback.

I might be SR naive since I'm not a vendor, but if I have a serious problem with a vendor, I take it up with them in PMs to resolve things and come to a mutually beneficial resolution before I leave feedback that could really hurt a vendor. I know SR isn't some utopia where this happens with every buyer, but I do think most buyers and vendors are decent people. Perhaps you could have a month or two month limit on editing, or limit buyers to a single edit, something like that. I understand vendors' frustrations, I really do. But I'd respectfully ask for the editing feature to remain in some form simply so I can try and do right by each vendor when I can.

I totally support the idea of having buyer's profiles. I think this might help vendors feel more comfortable especially with newbie buyers and encourage more openness all around. We can see so much about vendors, I think turnabout is only fair.

Some great suggestions and changes here.

I agree, I am also against vendors being able to lock feedback for the reasons mentioned by loobaloo but also because I have been in a situation where after a purchase has gone to resolution and then finalised for an order not arriving, the order later turned up, so obviously I needed to change my feedback to reflect this. It's not always about amending feedback to make it poorer, and this was to the benefit of the vendor.

Some great ideas to be implemented though, looking forward to the changes and more transparency from both vendors and buyers enabling more informed decisions/purchases.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ladyjane on August 20, 2013, 12:45 am
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I think a good addition would be making the feedback ratings click-able, so if someone has 5 rating 1's or 2's, you can click on those and go straight to them, right now you have to sort through pages of feedback to see the different feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Real_Drugs on August 20, 2013, 01:04 am
I do not want everyone to see how much I have spent etc..
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 20, 2013, 01:07 am
I do not want everyone to see how much I have spent etc..

like it says just above where you submit a post, you can change your discussion alias to something different than your username.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CrazyBart on August 20, 2013, 01:08 am
I do not want everyone to see how much I have spent etc..

You can change your alias on the settings page
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 20, 2013, 01:38 am
I feel like this whole discussion system is just sort of redundant....

What would I put into a discussion post that would not be a part of my review if I bought a product from the vendor?

What would I want to say about a vendor that I wouldn't put in their rumor mill thread or some other thread on the forums?

Maybe it gives someone without a forum account some sort of voice that isn't just a review, but if you haven't ordered from a vendor or actually bought a product why should you be able to say anything public about them anyway? I think that "discussion" is probably going to be less reliable than any reviews that are made after a purchase and real experience with the vendor.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 20, 2013, 02:20 am
I feel like this whole discussion system is just sort of redundant....

What would I put into a discussion post that would not be a part of my review if I bought a product from the vendor?

What would I want to say about a vendor that I wouldn't put in their rumor mill thread or some other thread on the forums?

Maybe it gives someone without a forum account some sort of voice that isn't just a review, but if you haven't ordered from a vendor or actually bought a product why should you be able to say anything public about them anyway? I think that "discussion" is probably going to be less reliable than any reviews that are made after a purchase and real experience with the vendor.

we have more changes to come to the review section of vendor pages, so you will be able to see what people who've bought from the vendor have to say (you can now too).  The discussion part is so people can ask questions of the vendor, compare products, give tips, ask for new products, etc etc.  Its an open format so long as you are polite and stay on topic, so we'll just wait and see what people use it for :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ChemCat on August 20, 2013, 02:27 am
Heya DPR  ???

Ok, i posted a response in my discussion thing..then tried to delete it..well it says "Deleted"  LOL  but my name is still there...so...if a Vendor deletes a response of theirs..it stays there? 

i deleted to make my response better...however..like i said...my screen name is still there with "Deleted"  in the comment box  LOL  :P


Peace & Hugs to ya,   8)

Chem

 O0
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: flwrchlds9 on August 20, 2013, 03:25 am
All seems like far too much going on, if its not broke don't fix it, a few small tweaks here and there is fine but SR has started running very slow for me since all these changes and now its started kicking me out ggrrrrr

This also valid point of view. Adding much complexity.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: somewhere27 on August 20, 2013, 04:14 am
I think this is the best idea.  Buyers never get good or bad feedback, and sellers post on the profile page "by ordering from me you agree not to leave anything but 5/5".  So Almost every vendor, even the ones that suck, have 100%.   I literally always have to leave 5/5 even though it was marked in transit when it wasn't, the vendor doesnt even read any messages, 3 days late, "but priority isnt gauranteed thats why we do it because it can take forever but you still must leave 5/5 and once u order dont even try to message me and think ill respond.   

Then they always end up in stealth mode, but they really wouldnt have to if they got to pick and choose who they would let order, and buyers would have access to more sellers as long as they dont ask for refunds half the time
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: generalm3sS on August 20, 2013, 09:07 am
I think this is the best idea.  Buyers never get good or bad feedback, and sellers post on the profile page "by ordering from me you agree not to leave anything but 5/5".  So Almost every vendor, even the ones that suck, have 100%.   I literally always have to leave 5/5 even though it was marked in transit when it wasn't, the vendor doesnt even read any messages, 3 days late, "but priority isnt gauranteed thats why we do it because it can take forever but you still must leave 5/5 and once u order dont even try to message me and think ill respond.   

Then they always end up in stealth mode, but they really wouldnt have to if they got to pick and choose who they would let order, and buyers would have access to more sellers as long as they dont ask for refunds half the time

Sounds like your talking about super selective scammer supertrips there, I wouldn't be surprised!

The answer is use long standing reputable vendors that treat there customers with respect and offer them good deals! Its not rocket science and you got remember alot of new vendors are here for the ££££/$$$$ alone. I don't come on the forums a lot due to just the sheer amount of retardedness on here and people that use our services know what were all about! And it ain't just for the dollar like most new comers. Do you think people who have been here 2+ years have not made there dollar? A lot of good vendors have gone over the time but the really good ones that care about there customers and have a higher goal than just monetary profit are here and serving to the highest standards!

At the end of the day its your choice/risk and ive been scammed by Supertrips (£600 on 100G Speed (ENPTY CASE AFTER FE)), TrippyNation(£1100 on 25G 2C-B (NEVER POSTED!)) & a few others over my time. ST is the biggest scammer on here and SR need to ban this fool. Its a shame idiots like him get to carry on scamming people. As for trippynation, Notice his 25G listing as dissapeared! You know why don't you, Cause my feedback exposed him!

You learn all this in time and its apart of this business but eventually we hope we can clean the scum out of this industry and have it with smart, reputable people that can move things forward instead of just been selfish pricks! We can all dream  :)

Peace & GL to all

P.S - Were buyer's as well as been a seller, Here are our stats without including other 'buying' accounts

1 month   3 months   1 year   all time
total transactions    6    20    47    95
total spent    £1,550.40    £3,847.90    £9,510.40    £17,962.00
total vendors    6    15    33    57
refund rate    0%    0%    0%    0%
auto-finalize rate    0%    5%    4%    5%

So as you can see..... we don't mess around. We also care about the small person as much as the big dude! Everyone's equal when it comes to dealing with us and we do our best to make this community a better thriving one. We welcome competition as it's all a win win situation and there enough business for everyone in this new world of free markets. This was another reason why we were so disappointed in TrippyNation, Shame really but he showed his true colors by the end.

people change there spots when it comes to the crunch, Be aware of imitators!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: somewhere27 on August 20, 2013, 10:03 am
I just checked, I've ordered from a total of 54 different vendors, but to be honest, there are some sellers, who started out so polite, nice, always made good on whatever, who then actively tried to become "The boss who will set the rules and if you don't like it F*UCK OFF",  what the hell happen?  I watched one vendor who literally couldnt have been better when they first started selling here, as soon as they hit 300+ they forget I've placed 100 orders with them and dont even read my message when ill just ask for something extremely basic, or just to say "thanks I got it"  I mean ill bet that no one is ever happy, everyone is looking to get something for nothing, and that must take a toll, and Im not looking at it from their point of view.  but Ive only seen one get to 300+ and no start with establishing laws and giving ultimatums. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: jerseycow on August 20, 2013, 12:13 pm
Discussion link is overkill, isn't that what this forum is for?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: metabolicman on August 20, 2013, 12:35 pm
This is a great idea thank DPR.

Could someone help me out understanding the new system though,
That box next to items and vendors that has 5 spots for a green bar diagram and says vendor rating when you hover over it... Well what do the five different bars represent? Im confused
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abitpeckish on August 20, 2013, 01:52 pm
Quote
FROM: Do not reply
SUBJ: Discussion privledges suspended
BODY:
Your discussion privledges have been suspended for 0 day(s) because of the following post:

(deleted)

Please use a polite tone and stay on topic when posting next time.

Best regards,
Silk Road staff

NOTE: This is an automated message. Replies will not be answered

Weird. First of all, everyone be sure you know that deleting doesn't appear to immediately delete your posts on the category discussions (set your alias). Second of all, this reads like malicious spam. Perhaps a little copy editing is in order? :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaliforniaCannibas on August 20, 2013, 03:12 pm
Somewhere...............I can easily see how that has happened.......in my case 99.5 % of my customers are polite good karma customers....I answer every message from them.....but it's easy for vendors to gt hardened by a few scammers.....you have to figure that in my case I get 30-40 messages every day.......3 of those messages are from someone trying to scam you......happens everyday.....so.....you have to establish some guidelines....to weed out those people.......When you first start out.....you happy to help everyone.....until you get scammed a couple times.....an when that happens....you have to live with that for months..........anyway......that is what happens.......good luck

I just checked, I've ordered from a total of 54 different vendors, but to be honest, there are some sellers, who started out so polite, nice, always made good on whatever, who then actively tried to become "The boss who will set the rules and if you don't like it F*UCK OFF",  what the hell happen?  I watched one vendor who literally couldnt have been better when they first started selling here, as soon as they hit 300+ they forget I've placed 100 orders with them and dont even read my message when ill just ask for something extremely basic, or just to say "thanks I got it"  I mean ill bet that no one is ever happy, everyone is looking to get something for nothing, and that must take a toll, and Im not looking at it from their point of view.  but Ive only seen one get to 300+ and no start with establishing laws and giving ultimatums.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cimicon-Rep on August 20, 2013, 05:39 pm
I have taken some time now to read through most of the posts in this 16 page thread and I'm happy to see that I agree with just about everything that the community has suggested and everything that DPR has proposed. Many of the suggested changes, such as the vendor discussion, separation of review and rating, rating system improvements, and vendor and buyer stats improvements are all things I have thought about and desired over the past few months. If I had realized that these types of changes were possible and eminent, I would have posted in the forum and contacted staff with ideas. In the future I will be sure to voice my ideas more. It's interesting how everyone has the same ideas and how they are exposed naturally through this discussion. I think this is very productive. Like others, I have a few concerns that the changes will negatively effect things that I currently use to educate myself about vendors and products.

Some more ideas:

1) Integrate the official vendor review thread posts into the vendor profile or some of the recent posts like the last 5. This should motivate vendors to be active in their vendor review threads and will be useful to buyers who post in and routinely view these thread posts before buying.

2) Show the true number of transactions that vendors have completed or add higher level greater than labels for more than 500 transactions, more than 1,000 transactions and so on. I think this has been mentioned earlier.

3) Detection and moderation of shills that are used for trolling / spam / feedback scamming, items listed in the wrong category, items that are getting fake sales / items that people are obviously not buying that have sales (browse digital goods), short bursts of fake sales to boost listing placement and rank in a category.

4) Some sort of home page that shows top vendors by category, top products by category/price, user and vendor stats, site stats, newest vendors, newest members, etc.

Options... we need options. Not everyone wants all these new features and some don't want certain things revealed. So give buyers and sellers options to turn on/off some features.

For instance, displaying # transactions, that should be under vendor control. They should be able to show 100+, 300+, 500+, 1000+, or "not disclosed". Some vendors might not want to show the exact number so they can't easily be profiled by LEO.

If vendors can't be given mod power over discussion on their page, give them the option to turn it on/off.

If buyers don't want to show how much they spent, they should have the option of showing >$500 spent, >$1000, >$5000, etc. or not disclosed.


I think we're getting a little too comfortable and forgetting that this is a black market which predominately trades in illegal items. There needs to be a better balance between security, anonymity, and safety.


Also...

Vendors now have more work. Not only do vendors have to field daily questions from buyers sent via PM but now we also have to deal with what's posted on discussion pages. New vendors might have time to deal with this (although adding discussion potentially means they have two attack surfaces to defend, feedback blackmail and now discussion smear campaign blackmail) but high volume vendors won't have time to deal with both.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 06:51 pm
Some nice site improvements.

But could we see a return to vendor ratings next to vendor name? Using the new rating system of course.
By this I mean when we become a fan and the vendors are listed down the right side of our page, it used to be Vendor (rating).
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: astor on August 20, 2013, 06:59 pm
Who cares about this new discussion system when the feedback that already exists is ignored for so long.

Goldmax was allowed to scam for 12 or 13 days. How long will PlanetExpress be allowed to scam? How much more feedback do you need to act in a timely manner?

Faster banning of scammers. That's the new feature we need.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 07:16 pm
Who cares about this new discussion system when the feedback that already exists is ignored for so long.

Goldmax was allowed to scam for 12 or 13 days. How long will PlanetExpress be allowed to scam? How much more feedback do you need to act in a timely manner?

Faster banning of scammers. That's the new feature we need.


Poignant point.

And now SR admins will probably have their hands full with moderating discussions so they might have inadvertently increased the time to respond to reports of scammers.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 20, 2013, 07:21 pm


Also...

Vendors now have more work. Not only do vendors have to field daily questions from buyers sent via PM but now we also have to deal with what's posted on discussion pages. New vendors might have time to deal with this (although adding discussion potentially means they have two attack surfaces to defend, feedback blackmail and now discussion smear campaign blackmail) but high volume vendors won't have time to deal with both.

Of all the proposed changes to the feedback system, this little "discussion page" thing is by far and away the least useful and least needed change. I see this quickly becoming a place for angry customers to take their grievances and force vendors to respond to their bullshit publicly.

How long before the scammers catch on and start blackmailing vendors through nasty comments on discussion page? It's even worse than changing old feedback. Old feedback will at least be buried by the time someone tries to change their review from "5/5 this bud is so amazing, smells incredible, one hit quit" to "all shake and stems, way overly dry, waiting response from vendor but will probably not purchase again unless he at least partial refunds."

Know what I mean? Maybe not. I guess it'll sort itself out one way or another.

Also, excellent point BenJesuit. It boggles my mind a bit why the admins would want another thing they have to do on a daily basis.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 07:48 pm
They're probably trying to get the site up to the standards of the Forbes reading demographic who are all about social media and commenting on every fraking thing. It's all an attempt to legitimize a black market and bring black marketry into the mainstream.

Of course scammers and blackmailers are going to take advantage of the new commenting system. Vendor rivalry is likely to pollute the category discussions as well as individual listing discussions. 

It'll probably be a mess.

Time will tell, but some things are guaranteed to occur.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 20, 2013, 08:28 pm
amazon has discussion boards for products and even there most people don't use them.  The good thing about them is that people might get a question answered by others rather than having to wait for the vendor to respond but for most items it will probably not be used..  particularly if there's no way of notifying people they've had a response, so they may very likely forget to go back to check.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 09:12 pm
amazon has discussion boards for products and even there most people don't use them.  The good thing about them is that people might get a question answered by others rather than having to wait for the vendor to respond but for most items it will probably not be used..  particularly if there's no way of notifying people they've had a response, so they may very likely forget to go back to check.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.



Good point. If vendors aren't notified about someone posting on their discussion page, they might not know unless they religiously check it.

Most of the busy vendors don't even check their messages.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 20, 2013, 09:17 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 09:21 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

Hold us. We're SR old timers and we're scared of change. :D
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RS7FI8ZRkm on August 20, 2013, 09:21 pm
:) thank you, for putting in the effort to make SR a better place, sir.cpt.roberts

if even the changes aren't liked by many ::)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 20, 2013, 09:27 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

Sometimes I feel the saturnine role is needed more than the optimistic one because of the nature of what we are doing here.

Didn't mean to be too negative nancy ;)

Everyone appreciates the changes rolling out, those of us that are vocal on the forums are probably just going to tend towards being the most reactionary as well. 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 09:30 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

Sometimes I feel the saturnine role is needed more than the optimistic one because of the nature of what we are doing here.

Didn't mean to be too negative nancy ;)

Everyone appreciates the changes rolling out, those of us that are vocal on the forums are probably just going to tend towards being the most reactionary as well. 

Buyers are getting a whole host of new tools. We're empowered to the hilt.

So I hope you don't mind my asking, but what are you vendors getting?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 20, 2013, 09:35 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

Sometimes I feel the saturnine role is needed more than the optimistic one because of the nature of what we are doing here.

Didn't mean to be too negative nancy ;)

Everyone appreciates the changes rolling out, those of us that are vocal on the forums are probably just going to tend towards being the most reactionary as well. 

Buyers are getting a whole host of new tools. We're empowered to the hilt.

So I hope you don't mind my asking, but what are you vendors getting?

hi hi

*crickets*   ;)

xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 09:39 pm
LOL. I should have said that was a rhetorical question.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 20, 2013, 09:46 pm
LOL. I should have said that was a rhetorical question.

It's a little strange to me that Discussing buyers was not included as one of the many areas/things we can now 'discuss'. We can discuss vendors, categories, items....but not buyers?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 20, 2013, 10:29 pm
Well, if you look at eBay as an e-commerce business model, the biggest complaint in the early days was that sellers had too much power. Especially when it came to their ability to leave retaliatory feedback. So I don't think you will ever see the ability to leave buyer feedback. Though it seems to work just fine on Atlantis.

If there's anything to maybe look forward to, it's trimming down the time feedback can be left and possibility what conditions trigger the inability to leave feedback.

SR has to focus on buyers and making buyers feel comfortable doing business if they expect to grow and attract the kind of people who might not otherwise join.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 20, 2013, 10:38 pm
amazon has discussion boards for products and even there most people don't use them.  The good thing about them is that people might get a question answered by others rather than having to wait for the vendor to respond but for most items it will probably not be used..  particularly if there's no way of notifying people they've had a response, so they may very likely forget to go back to check.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.



Good point. If vendors aren't notified about someone posting on their discussion page, they might not know unless they religiously check it.

Most of the busy vendors don't even check their messages.

There appears to be a board for each listing and one for the vendor.  Vendors with a large number of listings are going to have a great time nipping into each listing and their vendor page to check to see if anyone's posted..  ok I lied ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 20, 2013, 10:58 pm
Well, if you look at eBay as an e-commerce business model, the biggest complaint in the early days was that sellers had too much power. Especially when it came to their ability to leave retaliatory feedback. So I don't think you will ever see the ability to leave buyer feedback. Though it seems to work just fine on Atlantis.

If there's anything to maybe look forward to, it's trimming down the time feedback can be left and possibility what conditions trigger the inability to leave feedback.

SR has to focus on buyers and making buyers feel comfortable doing business if they expect to grow and attract the kind of people who might not otherwise join.

I'm not at all comfortable with the various ebay-SR comparison arguments. On ebay, it takes nothing to become a seller. It makes sense to me that they would have to protect buyers more in that situation. It's really just apples and oranges if you ask me, I don't think ebay's success and silk road's will be because of the same reasons at all. Just way too many variables there.

I personally don't think having buyer feedback would be any worse the current atmosphere of "Leave 5/5 or I'm putting your name on the blacklist!" that seems to be the entrenched attitude in the system.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BenJesuit on August 21, 2013, 01:08 am
Well, if you look at eBay as an e-commerce business model, the biggest complaint in the early days was that sellers had too much power. Especially when it came to their ability to leave retaliatory feedback. So I don't think you will ever see the ability to leave buyer feedback. Though it seems to work just fine on Atlantis.

If there's anything to maybe look forward to, it's trimming down the time feedback can be left and possibility what conditions trigger the inability to leave feedback.

SR has to focus on buyers and making buyers feel comfortable doing business if they expect to grow and attract the kind of people who might not otherwise join.

I'm not at all comfortable with the various ebay-SR comparison arguments. On ebay, it takes nothing to become a seller. It makes sense to me that they would have to protect buyers more in that situation. It's really just apples and oranges if you ask me, I don't think ebay's success and silk road's will be because of the same reasons at all. Just way too many variables there.

I personally don't think having buyer feedback would be any worse the current atmosphere of "Leave 5/5 or I'm putting your name on the blacklist!" that seems to be the entrenched attitude in the system.

You make a good argument and I have to agree. You're right, you can't compare eBay to SR. But it seems that is the way the powers that be are trying to make it seem like. The potential negatives of the new discussion will probably prove to outweigh the positives intended. The fact that it is anonymous on top of the anonymity the site provides is a recipe for trouble. Though it seems that posters can be banned from being able to post in discussions if they violate the arbitrary "be polite, not inflammatory" rule. And of course, anything that a vendor feels is negative can be construed as inflammatory. And in most cases, the vendor would probably be right. But will SR admins agree?

A few people opined that the discussion system is redundant to the feedback system and forum. When you think about it, they are probably correct. If feedback can be abused, so can the discussion system.

But on the plus side, vendor ratings next to vendor name are back!

So what's the score? Buyers 12, vendors 0? :p
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 21, 2013, 02:21 am
is the discuss button suppose to disappear when the vendor is in stealth?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 21, 2013, 04:15 am

I'm not at all comfortable with the various ebay-SR comparison arguments. On ebay, it takes nothing to become a seller. It makes sense to me that they would have to protect buyers more in that situation. It's really just apples and oranges if you ask me, I don't think ebay's success and silk road's will be because of the same reasons at all. Just way too many variables there.

I personally don't think having buyer feedback would be any worse the current atmosphere of "Leave 5/5 or I'm putting your name on the blacklist!" that seems to be the entrenched attitude in the system.

You make a good argument and I have to agree. You're right, you can't compare eBay to SR. But it seems that is the way the powers that be are trying to make it seem like. The potential negatives of the new discussion will probably prove to outweigh the positives intended. The fact that it is anonymous on top of the anonymity the site provides is a recipe for trouble. Though it seems that posters can be banned from being able to post in discussions if they violate the arbitrary "be polite, not inflammatory" rule. And of course, anything that a vendor feels is negative can be construed as inflammatory. And in most cases, the vendor would probably be right. But will SR admins agree?

A few people opined that the discussion system is redundant to the feedback system and forum. When you think about it, they are probably correct. If feedback can be abused, so can the discussion system.

But on the plus side, vendor ratings next to vendor name are back!

So what's the score? Buyers 12, vendors 0? :p
[/quote]

The discussion system does seem redundant. And also less reliable than feedback. If anyone who has not actually used that vendor can leave a discussion, how am I supposed to trust that? Especially if I can make 12 accounts randomly and just start discussing vendors in a negative, but not inflammatory way as to incite a mod to delete my posts. Unless mods will just delete any negative post that gets reported.

Buyers too need a lot of time to be able to change reviews. Not all of us can receive LSD on a Wednesday and take a whole bunch immediately.  Personally, I think I leave good, informational reviews on the products I buy, even if I have to fill in the details in a month. If I don't try something right away, but it measures out right, came on time and all looks right... I'll give the vendor the benefit of the doubt and leave a 5 for now. Come back and comment on the quality (always has been good) later.

I also don't get how buyer feedback would be a better measure than stats? Maybe we should add reships as a buyer stat, like we have refund rate. But knowing that I have 16 successful transactions on my account and no refunds should show I'm legit. If I have 16 transactions and a bad comment, because I gave a vendor a 4/5 for shipping a week late, now I look worse and the system isn't as effective.

The real problem with the current feedback system is that its unacceptable to give a vendor anything below a 5 on a review. That is what taints the system. Its not honest and open.

Any improvement should just be geared to make it so that if a vendor gets a single 1/5 it does not blow up their entire score. That way, if some buyer threatened to change their feedback a month later, it wouldn't be such a massive fucking deal if they did. One 1/5 out of 500 transactions can be seen as an outlier to any intelligent buyer. Unless it brings down a sells ranking so drastically.... That system just doesn't make sense

Until the feedback system exists so that I don't have to give out a 5. It is broken. When I can give a 3/5 because the vendor sold me okay weed, packaged in something not so stealthy that stank, and came a week late, the system is broken. Right now I would have to give that person a 5 and just type that stuff out.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Chewable on August 21, 2013, 05:24 am
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

ETM, lucydrop, tony76, jimmy buffet,  i can list a bunch more  scammers that many of us warned SR about and SR waited until they made off with a shit load of BTC before SR acted.. I can agree on one point that you cant stop morons from FEing, but SR can limit the amount a vendor can have in FE's and his listings freeze when he exceeds that. a vendor can have as many orders in escrow as they want. but when you see 5 pages of FE and the forums are lit up with no orders being received thats BS...many of the buyers are domestic and it dont take 8 days to get a letter. i have received stuff from Germany, UK and canada in 7 days.   the other idea is to limit the amount of FEs a vendor can ask for in a weeks time. than they lose it for a week... by than most orders should be received within 14 days.  If you have the smarts to develop SR, finding a way to curb this kind of abuse should be easy.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: mojorizen on August 21, 2013, 03:38 pm
lots of critics today...  not sure what to say except sorry for giving you more info, tools and options?  We have the manpower to moderate the discussion boards and everything else.  We aren't stretched thin or anything like that.  If you don't like the speed at which vendors you think are scammers are demoted, I encourage you to flag them and provide DETAILED EVIDENCE for why they should be demoted.

ETM, lucydrop, tony76, jimmy buffet,  i can list a bunch more  scammers that many of us warned SR about and SR waited until they made off with a shit load of BTC before SR acted.. I can agree on one point that you cant stop morons from FEing, but SR can limit the amount a vendor can have in FE's and his listings freeze when he exceeds that. a vendor can have as many orders in escrow as they want. but when you see 5 pages of FE and the forums are lit up with no orders being received thats BS...many of the buyers are domestic and it dont take 8 days to get a letter. i have received stuff from Germany, UK and canada in 7 days.   the other idea is to limit the amount of FEs a vendor can ask for in a weeks time. than they lose it for a week... by than most orders should be received within 14 days.  If you have the smarts to develop SR, finding a way to curb this kind of abuse should be easy.



Tell 'em.

I think DPR is trying to bring the forum, SR side since a lot of peeps don't read the forum. Problem is, using an alias to post and because anybody can post in a discussion, the discussion has less value than the forum and feedback. DPR thinks it's more valuable because buyer stats are posted with the post. But because of that, anyone can say any kind of shit and feel safe talking shit. Or so they think.

The smart vendors are going to start keeping buyer stats and attach them to aliases and blacklist those talking shit. In a month or two, the discussion feature will be corrupted and unreliable and only a dummy would use it.

Vendors will do it. Guaranteed. Because DPR has been ignoring vendor requests for like ever and keeps forcing things on them.

Vendors are running out of lube.   
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 21, 2013, 04:50 pm

I'm not at all comfortable with the various ebay-SR comparison arguments. On ebay, it takes nothing to become a seller. It makes sense to me that they would have to protect buyers more in that situation. It's really just apples and oranges if you ask me, I don't think ebay's success and silk road's will be because of the same reasons at all. Just way too many variables there.

I personally don't think having buyer feedback would be any worse the current atmosphere of "Leave 5/5 or I'm putting your name on the blacklist!" that seems to be the entrenched attitude in the system.

You make a good argument and I have to agree. You're right, you can't compare eBay to SR. But it seems that is the way the powers that be are trying to make it seem like. The potential negatives of the new discussion will probably prove to outweigh the positives intended. The fact that it is anonymous on top of the anonymity the site provides is a recipe for trouble. Though it seems that posters can be banned from being able to post in discussions if they violate the arbitrary "be polite, not inflammatory" rule. And of course, anything that a vendor feels is negative can be construed as inflammatory. And in most cases, the vendor would probably be right. But will SR admins agree?

A few people opined that the discussion system is redundant to the feedback system and forum. When you think about it, they are probably correct. If feedback can be abused, so can the discussion system.

But on the plus side, vendor ratings next to vendor name are back!

So what's the score? Buyers 12, vendors 0? :p

The discussion system does seem redundant. And also less reliable than feedback. If anyone who has not actually used that vendor can leave a discussion, how am I supposed to trust that? Especially if I can make 12 accounts randomly and just start discussing vendors in a negative, but not inflammatory way as to incite a mod to delete my posts. Unless mods will just delete any negative post that gets reported.

Buyers too need a lot of time to be able to change reviews. Not all of us can receive LSD on a Wednesday and take a whole bunch immediately.  Personally, I think I leave good, informational reviews on the products I buy, even if I have to fill in the details in a month. If I don't try something right away, but it measures out right, came on time and all looks right... I'll give the vendor the benefit of the doubt and leave a 5 for now. Come back and comment on the quality (always has been good) later.
I also don't get how buyer feedback would be a better measure than stats? Maybe we should add reships as a buyer stat, like we have refund rate. But knowing that I have 16 successful transactions on my account and no refunds should show I'm legit.

I think refunds/reships is no doubt an important buyer stat that should be shared. If you have 16 decent sized transactions and no reships or refunds you certainly look legit.

If I have 16 transactions and a bad comment, because I gave a vendor a 4/5 for shipping a week late, now I look worse and the system isn't as effective.

Well, I guess I partially agree with this. I think if you have 16 transactions and one vendor was a little upset it might be fair to say you "look worse," but I don't think that means the system isn't as effective. As soon as DPR changed the rating system from (100) to being x/5, my rating went down significantly. I was (100) in the previous system, now I'm (4.8) in this system. Do I look worse? Yes. Does that mean the system is necessarily less effective? No. Your next points highlight the real problem I think.


The real problem with the current feedback system is that its unacceptable to give a vendor anything below a 5 on a review. That is what taints the system. Its not honest and open.

I think this is indeed a big problem with the current system. It started with the very unfortunate choice of words they picked - "Negative" and "Positive." If anything less than 5/5 is counted as "NEGATIVE" feedback, it only makes sense that a system would evolve that really pressured people to only leave 5/5. If a C-grade experience warrants a 5/5, but an A-grade experience also only warrants a 5/5, and I have to have an F-grade experience to warrant anything else, the system is definitely broken.

Any improvement should just be geared to make it so that if a vendor gets a single 1/5 it does not blow up their entire score. That way, if some buyer threatened to change their feedback a month later, it wouldn't be such a massive fucking deal if they did. One 1/5 out of 500 transactions can be seen as an outlier to any intelligent buyer. Unless it brings down a sells ranking so drastically.... That system just doesn't make sense

Again I agree. As it is right now, I have no idea how they calculate how much a 4/5 brings you down, but it is a LOT!!! From my rough math, I will need about a hundred 5/5s of the same value to "get rid of" the negative effects of a 4/5. Vendor JacknHoff had a similar issue where a couple stray feedback among hundreds have brought him down to like 4.0/5. Is the actual AVERAGE of his feedback 4/5? Hell no, but some weird mathematical formula that gives WAY too much weight to "negative feedback," makes him look like a shitty vendor. While this is still the case, it only makes sense that vendors will still be heavily encouraging leaving 5/5 feedback. I can tell you right now if I get a 4/5 feedback from someone in the current system they will have to be at the very least personally blacklisted.

Until the feedback system exists so that I don't have to give out a 5. It is broken. When I can give a 3/5 because the vendor sold me okay weed, packaged in something not so stealthy that stank, and came a week late, the system is broken. Right now I would have to give that person a 5 and just type that stuff out.

I agree. I think you're on the right track. I honestly think the answer is two fold: One, Buyer Feedback. Vendors need to be able to see this. Two, "negative feedback" (anything less than 5/5) should not count so heavily!

Personally, I think if I have 99 5/5 reviews and one 3/5 review my average should be 4.98/5!!! That just makes simple mathematical sense. As it stands right now your average would be more likely to be way lower depending on a slew of variables no one really understands and is ultimately terrified of. If 99 5/5 reviews and one 3/5 review can drop my rating by 0.20 instead of by 0.02, I think there is a problem.

The only real argument I can see for not making negative feedback have less impact is that "oh well but then scamming vendors wont be as easy to pick out early." And I think that's pretty much a non-point. AFAIK the vast majority of scamming vendors have near perfect feedback when they run their scam anyway - see Planet Express for example.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: sbraser on August 21, 2013, 06:10 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RS7FI8ZRkm on August 21, 2013, 06:12 pm
very interesting discussion going on here *munch* *munch* :) please continue..
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 21, 2013, 06:19 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 21, 2013, 06:40 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!

Decided to look into his feedback some more, and I'd like to share what I found because I think it highlights the problem very well.

I looked through ten pages of this guy's feedback. 10 entries per page, 100 total.

Of those 100: 97 were 5/5s. One was a 2/5. And two were 1/5s.

Yet his average rating is now 1.4/5.0. Does that seem fair? Does that not make it incredibly obvious why there is a culture of "leave 5/5 or you're blacklisted forever" ?

I think it does. If out of 100 transactions, 97 are 5/5s, one is a 2/5, and two are 1/5s, I would personally think his average would be 4.89/5.00.

However the weird formula that is used that no one actually knows means his rating is 1.4/5.0. Pretty big disparity.

We need to address this issue before addressing ANY OTHER PART of the feedback system imo.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: sbraser on August 21, 2013, 06:48 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!

Decided to look into his feedback some more, and I'd like to share what I found because I think it highlights the problem very well.

I looked through ten pages of this guy's feedback. 10 entries per page, 100 total.

Of those 100: 97 were 5/5s. One was a 2/5. And two were 1/5s.

Yet his average rating is now 1.4/5.0. Does that seem fair? Does that not make it incredibly obvious why there is a culture of "leave 5/5 or you're blacklisted forever" ?

I think it does. If out of 100 transactions, 97 are 5/5s, one is a 2/5, and two are 1/5s, I would personally think his average would be 4.89/5.00.

However the weird formula that is used that no one actually knows means his rating is 1.4/5.0. Pretty big disparity.

We need to address this issue before addressing ANY OTHER PART of the feedback system imo.
I'm the only one in the market? LOL ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 21, 2013, 06:54 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!

Decided to look into his feedback some more, and I'd like to share what I found because I think it highlights the problem very well.

I looked through ten pages of this guy's feedback. 10 entries per page, 100 total.

Of those 100: 97 were 5/5s. One was a 2/5. And two were 1/5s.

Yet his average rating is now 1.4/5.0. Does that seem fair? Does that not make it incredibly obvious why there is a culture of "leave 5/5 or you're blacklisted forever" ?

I think it does. If out of 100 transactions, 97 are 5/5s, one is a 2/5, and two are 1/5s, I would personally think his average would be 4.89/5.00.

However the weird formula that is used that no one actually knows means his rating is 1.4/5.0. Pretty big disparity.

We need to address this issue before addressing ANY OTHER PART of the feedback system imo.
I'm the only one in the market? LOL ;)

You just happen to be a good example, didn't mean to pick on you ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: WhiteShark on August 21, 2013, 06:58 pm
sbraser I recommend you message support directly from the main site to have this looked into. Who knows how many potential customers you could be losing.

Rather have this dealt with immediately.

WS
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 21, 2013, 08:51 pm
did "DISCUSS" get cleared?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 21, 2013, 11:36 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!

Decided to look into his feedback some more, and I'd like to share what I found because I think it highlights the problem very well.

I looked through ten pages of this guy's feedback. 10 entries per page, 100 total.

Of those 100: 97 were 5/5s. One was a 2/5. And two were 1/5s.

Yet his average rating is now 1.4/5.0. Does that seem fair? Does that not make it incredibly obvious why there is a culture of "leave 5/5 or you're blacklisted forever" ?

I think it does. If out of 100 transactions, 97 are 5/5s, one is a 2/5, and two are 1/5s, I would personally think his average would be 4.89/5.00.

However the weird formula that is used that no one actually knows means his rating is 1.4/5.0. Pretty big disparity.

We need to address this issue before addressing ANY OTHER PART of the feedback system imo.

I'm looking into this.  could be a bug.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 21, 2013, 11:58 pm
Hi guys, i haven't readen all the 18 pages of this topic, i don't have too much time to do that.
There is a problem on my account,

for example here:  http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/be4526b340

i have only 5/5 feedbacks, but the stats bar shows bad stats. the 5/5 feedbacks are displayed as 1/5....
there is a bug? or something that i'm missing?
thank you :)

CASE IN POINT!!

DPR you need to look at this guy's profile immediately, 'cause what the system is doing to him is bullshit. His first page of feedback is all 5/5, yet somehow his AVERAGE FEEDBACK is only 1.4/5????????

That makes zero sense, and this is why vendors will blacklist people who leave less than 5/5 feedback regardless of whether or not we have buyer feedback which we desperately need for other reasons.

His average feedback should not be anywhere near that low. This needs to be fixed. In addition, the bar graph is CLEARLY BROKEN.

His bar graph shows a tiny bar for 5/5s and a huge bar for 1/5s and NOTHING else...yet I have to go back three pages in his feedback to find anything less than a 5/5, and what do I find but a 2/5 and a 1/5. And do I see that reflected in the bar chart? No I do not. If I went by the bar chart, it seems this guy gets 90% 1/5 feedback and 10% 5/5 feedback and never anything else.

If you can't figure out how to implement the bars properly please just remove them until you can. Misinformation like that is just not cool.

BAD DATA is WORSE than NO DATA!!!

Decided to look into his feedback some more, and I'd like to share what I found because I think it highlights the problem very well.

I looked through ten pages of this guy's feedback. 10 entries per page, 100 total.

Of those 100: 97 were 5/5s. One was a 2/5. And two were 1/5s.

Yet his average rating is now 1.4/5.0. Does that seem fair? Does that not make it incredibly obvious why there is a culture of "leave 5/5 or you're blacklisted forever" ?

I think it does. If out of 100 transactions, 97 are 5/5s, one is a 2/5, and two are 1/5s, I would personally think his average would be 4.89/5.00.

However the weird formula that is used that no one actually knows means his rating is 1.4/5.0. Pretty big disparity.

We need to address this issue before addressing ANY OTHER PART of the feedback system imo.

I'm looking into this.  could be a bug.

have a look at this one too http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/user/e1a2aec8fe/..  the vendor has the full range of review scores yet the bar chart only identifies the 1s and 5s and the 1s outnumber the 5s - which they shouldn't
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 22, 2013, 12:09 am
ok, it's working as designed, but maybe the design needs improvement.  As I've said before, the review weight is a combination of 3 factors: age (how long ago it was left), size of the transaction being reviewed, and the weight of the buyer.  The weight of the buyer depends on two factors: how much they've spent on SR, and the weight of the vendors they've bought from.  The weight of the vendors depends on two factors: how much buyers have spent on their items, and how recent each purchase was.

With that in mind, the two 1 of 5 ratings and the one 2 of 5 rating outweigh the 111 5 of 5 ratings by a factor of 10.  This is because the low ratings are for large transactions by highly rated buyers and the high ratings are for small amounts from low weight buyers.

We are still working on features to help you drill down into the ratings and see why vendors are rated the way they are, which should help make situations like this more clear.  I'm going to look into tweaking the weights as well.  Maybe instead of the weight rising linearly with each factor, it can rise logarithmically.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Jediknight on August 22, 2013, 12:24 am
whose cock do i have to suck around here to say thanks DPR. !
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 22, 2013, 01:18 am
Maybe instead of the weight rising linearly with each factor, it can rise logarithmically.

hi hi

maybe that could work... or maybe you are over-thinking things, and improving a near masterpiece into a failure...

usually the simplest solution is the most elegant and best. the armed forces have a saying: "KISS" = keep it simple, stupid.

say what you will about them from an intellectual point of view, but when it comes down to push and shove, they sure do get things done....


i'm just lucky i havent been negatively affected by this monstrosity of a discussion system yet... it's completely ludicrous that someone i have had no interaction with can post directly on my store page without having prior completed dealings.  and i'm also lucky that the vast majority of my past customers have all been honest, happy, and loyal.

if we could turn back time on the SR site development a few weeks that would be great..... and regroup. 3 things i would rather have seen:

buyer feedback should be permanent, make it more obvious that buyers dont need to drop feedback immediately when finalizing (for those of you keeping score at home, you currently are not forced into leaving feedback when you finalize as it stands already), and simply the overly complex weighting formula.

i'd wager 5BTC the result would be much smoother than screwing with # of transactions, messing with the weights, continuing the madness of the feedback extortion threat (mostly due to aforementioned weighting problems), and introducing anonymous slander/rumors in the form of "discussions" directly on the main SR site.

xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: qasm on August 22, 2013, 01:25 am
did "DISCUSS" get cleared?

I posted a discussion on the weed category and a few on some vendor pages and it's all been reset to 0
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 22, 2013, 01:30 am
did "DISCUSS" get cleared?

I posted a discussion on the weed category and a few on some vendor pages and it's all been reset to 0

yeah it all got cleared because of an error
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 22, 2013, 02:39 am
Maybe instead of the weight rising linearly with each factor, it can rise logarithmically.

hi hi

maybe that could work... or maybe you are over-thinking things, and improving a near masterpiece into a failure...

usually the simplest solution is the most elegant and best. the armed forces have a saying: "KISS" = keep it simple, stupid.

say what you will about them from an intellectual point of view, but when it comes down to push and shove, they sure do get things done....


i'm just lucky i havent been negatively affected by this monstrosity of a discussion system yet... it's completely ludicrous that someone i have had no interaction with can post directly on my store page without having prior completed dealings.  and i'm also lucky that the vast majority of my past customers have all been honest, happy, and loyal.

if we could turn back time on the SR site development a few weeks that would be great..... and regroup. 3 things i would rather have seen:

buyer feedback should be permanent, make it more obvious that buyers dont need to drop feedback immediately when finalizing (for those of you keeping score at home, you currently are not forced into leaving feedback when you finalize as it stands already), and simply the overly complex weighting formula.

i'd wager 5BTC the result would be much smoother than screwing with # of transactions, messing with the weights, continuing the madness of the feedback extortion threat (mostly due to aforementioned weighting problems), and introducing anonymous slander/rumors in the form of "discussions" directly on the main SR site.

xoxo
-mb

the system we have been using up to this point was much more complex, involving averages, standard deviations, log functions, and a complex web of interconnected variables... and it still had it's problems.  The KISS simple solution would be to count every rating the same and take a straight average.  Hopefully you can see that, in a fully anon environment like SR, this could be broken easily.  Weighting as I have outlined is fairly easy to comprehend and makes it substantially harder for fake feedback to have much effect and gives weight in the right places imho.

I urge everyone to have patience as we continue to flesh out this new system.  At each step I get lots of angry people acting like the current state is permanent, or they are reacting to what they think will happen, not what is actually happening, or aren't reading the discussion.  There is much more to come that will make all of this fit together nicely, including additional help for vendors to judge buyers.  I'm not trying to stifle discussion, but I think we can take the emotional edge off of it and get back to discussing ideas and having fun with that.

At the end of the day, if all of this really is a huge mistake, it will take a few hours at most to roll everything back to exactly the way it was.  I do think we are going in the right direction though.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 22, 2013, 02:43 am
Maybe instead of the weight rising linearly with each factor, it can rise logarithmically.

hi hi

maybe that could work... or maybe you are over-thinking things, and improving a near masterpiece into a failure...

usually the simplest solution is the most elegant and best. the armed forces have a saying: "KISS" = keep it simple, stupid.

say what you will about them from an intellectual point of view, but when it comes down to push and shove, they sure do get things done....


i'm just lucky i havent been negatively affected by this monstrosity of a discussion system yet... it's completely ludicrous that someone i have had no interaction with can post directly on my store page without having prior completed dealings.  and i'm also lucky that the vast majority of my past customers have all been honest, happy, and loyal.

if we could turn back time on the SR site development a few weeks that would be great..... and regroup. 3 things i would rather have seen:

buyer feedback should be permanent, make it more obvious that buyers dont need to drop feedback immediately when finalizing (for those of you keeping score at home, you currently are not forced into leaving feedback when you finalize as it stands already), and simply the overly complex weighting formula.

i'd wager 5BTC the result would be much smoother than screwing with # of transactions, messing with the weights, continuing the madness of the feedback extortion threat (mostly due to aforementioned weighting problems), and introducing anonymous slander/rumors in the form of "discussions" directly on the main SR site.

xoxo
-mb

the system we have been using up to this point was much more complex, involving averages, standard deviations, log functions, and a complex web of interconnected variables... and it still had it's problems.  The KISS simple solution would be to count every rating the same and take a straight average.  Hopefully you can see that, in a fully anon environment like SR, this could be broken easily.  Weighting as I have outlined is fairly easy to comprehend and makes it substantially harder for fake feedback to have much effect and gives weight in the right places imho.

I urge everyone to have patience as we continue to flesh out this new system.  At each step I get lots of angry people acting like the current state is permanent, or they are reacting to what they think will happen, not what is actually happening, or aren't reading the discussion.  There is much more to come that will make all of this fit together nicely, including additional help for vendors to judge buyers.  I'm not trying to stifle discussion, but I think we can take the emotional edge off of it and get back to discussing ideas and having fun with that.

At the end of the day, if all of this really is a huge mistake, it will take a few hours at most to roll everything back to exactly the way it was.  I do think we are going in the right direction though.


a Stats for Average Finalize time would help vendors i think ;) Im sure it must be annoying for vendors who have to wait 17 days for their $$

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: hallucinating horse on August 22, 2013, 02:55 am
Whoever had the idea to add "total vendors" under the buyer stats holy fucking shit thank you!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 22, 2013, 03:00 am
a Stats for Average Finalize time would help vendors i think ;) Im sure it must be annoying for vendors who have to wait 17 days for their $$

they get to see what percent of a buyer's orders autofinalize
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 22, 2013, 03:05 am
a Stats for Average Finalize time would help vendors i think ;) Im sure it must be annoying for vendors who have to wait 17 days for their $$

they get to see what percent of a buyer's orders autofinalize

haha i know that dpr :)

I just hear from vendors who always complain that they see their tracking has been received, but dont get their order finalized until day 12/13/14 (even tho they received on day 4)

A solution for this, would be if the Vendor could see the average time to finalize..  It'd make people finalize quicker most likely.. .

I know, I always finalize within 24hours of receiving.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: hallucinating horse on August 22, 2013, 03:08 am
a Stats for Average Finalize time would help vendors i think ;) Im sure it must be annoying for vendors who have to wait 17 days for their $$

they get to see what percent of a buyer's orders autofinalize

haha i know that dpr :)

I just hear from vendors who always complain that they see their tracking has been received, but dont get their order finalized until day 12/13/14 (even tho they received on day 4)

A solution for this, would be if the Vendor could see the average time to finalize..  It'd make people finalize quicker most likely.. .

I know, I always finalize within 24hours of receiving.

"if your average finalize time is greater than 4 hours you must FE!"

"if tracking shows you did not finalize 5 minutes after item was delivered you will be black listed"
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: heatcheck on August 22, 2013, 04:54 am
Maybe this deserves a different thread and I hate to really beat an almost dead horse, but I really think our main problem here is not necessarily with the feedback itself but more a societal issue.

What if from now on all the buyers just started to give vendors 4/5 for your average successful transaction. A 4/5 is still like getting a good grade on a test. Sure, buyers feedback will all drop at first, but they will all drop together.

Over time we would end up with the plummet coming to a stop and we should hit some sort of equilibrium. Now we have all the vendors with not perfect stats. This allows for them to adjust up and down based on actual performance quality.

As it stands, the majority of the vendor pages I look at just have graphs with a single bar in the 5 line. If every vendor is perfect too, it makes it more difficult to really spot who is doing a good job.

This doesn't take discussion. Or even an algorithm change to fix. Maybe add buyer stats, but that's another thing.

We just really need an attitude shift toward how ratings are given out.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ladyjane on August 22, 2013, 05:16 am
Maybe this deserves a different thread and I hate to really beat an almost dead horse, but I really think our main problem here is not necessarily with the feedback itself but more a societal issue.

What if from now on all the buyers just started to give vendors 4/5 for your average successful transaction. A 4/5 is still like getting a good grade on a test. Sure, buyers feedback will all drop at first, but they will all drop together.

Over time we would end up with the plummet coming to a stop and we should hit some sort of equilibrium. Now we have all the vendors with not perfect stats. This allows for them to adjust up and down based on actual performance quality.

As it stands, the majority of the vendor pages I look at just have graphs with a single bar in the 5 line. If every vendor is perfect too, it makes it more difficult to really spot who is doing a good job.

This doesn't take discussion. Or even an algorithm change to fix. Maybe add buyer stats, but that's another thing.

We just really need an attitude shift toward how ratings are given out.

I really agree. I don't know if this will ever happen though.  I think the only way that buyers would leave truly honest feedback and ratings is if if were anonymous. But that brings a whole host of other problems for vendors so I don't know what the solution is.  I received a bad order recently but I just don't think it is worth it to piss off a vendor with a 4/5 or 3/5.  As you said there would have to be a site wide change to the attitude of feedback to make it acceptable.

Maybe having an outline of what each score should mean by SR itself, or rating a vendor on different aspects rather than just a overall number, so rating them out of 5 on product, speed, stealth etc.  Maybe making feedback optional, so if someone is unhappy they can just refuse to leave feedback.  If there is feedback for buyers, this will just increase the unreliable feedback, because if you leave bad feedback for a vendor they will do the same to  you.  It's a complicated issue.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: BruceCampbell on August 22, 2013, 05:24 am
Does feedback or transactions @ $0.01 show up on your vendor profile anymore? I gave out a free sample in a private listing @ $0.01 and have the same amount listed for a lottery prize and the sample feedback isn't on my profile, nor is the transaction. I needed to boost my reputation on my new account and if the transactions or feedback isn't going to show up. Well, that sucks.

 :(
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Love Inc on August 22, 2013, 07:10 am
...ok, it's working as designed, but maybe the design needs improvement...

...With that in mind, the two 1 of 5 ratings and the one 2 of 5 rating outweigh the 111 5 of 5 ratings by a factor of 10.  This is because the low ratings are for large transactions by highly rated buyers and the high ratings are for small amounts from low weight buyers...

Hello all!

There seems to be a lot of discussion and criticism coming from the vendors perspective. Not so many buyers active in this thread. Maybe that's because the vendors in general are more active in the forums than the buyers? Or maybe the buyers don't care so much, just as long as "the spice flows"? Or maybe this really is hurting the vendors so much that they feel the need to come out more loudly?

The example above might seem to be a bit unfair. However, I think it is still a step in the right direction, just maybe needs some adjustments.

For me as a buyer, those numbers are totally relevant. I want to know where the feedback comes from. A vendor with stats like these seems to have a serious problem if all their large transactions are so fucked up that they get 1:s and 2:s from them. Maybe they are even selectively scamming? I want to see these kind of issues reflected in their stats. If all the feedback would have equal weight, then a vendor like in the example would seem to be really legit, even though every time they send out a large order they have serious problems with it. For me this is especially important, as I don't buy personal amounts, only bulk. I really want to know how a vendor handles serious transactions. It is so much easier to ship a g of coke succesfully, than say 250g:s of MDMA.

This also almost totally solves the problem of feedback padding, and the problem many see with lotteries and such (of which Miss Bliss was worried about also if I recall correctly? Hmm I think her issue had a different, very valid point though...). Manufacturing fake feedback will be very very costly, if the weighting is anywhere like this.

Now I'm not saying sbraser is a scammer or anything like it! I have no history with this vendor what so ever.

His poor stats could, on the other hand, be a result of another problem with the system: Extortion from buyers with very good stats. If a vendor mostly has small listings, and then someone with very good stats claims a non-arrival of a large order and leaves 1/5, a vendor will be royally fucked. A quote from sbrasers vendor page:

Quote
*** my last feedback
1 of 5 no package
was an international shipping, i proposed for a 50% refund (against my rules), but this guy claimed for a 100% refund.
***

Of course, this is also not good at all. In any case, sbrasers rating seems to bit "a bit" unfair, and something clearly needs to be done here.

All in all, I think there are good things happening here, and I'm sure DPR and the team will figure out the right balance with the weighting and everything. Maybe the buyers high rate should not be weighed as much? Or maybe the size of the order should not weight as much? I dunno, but I do know that I, as a buyer, want to see larger transactions effect the vendor rating more than smaller ones.

And I would really like to see a clickable sorting for 1-5 ratings, so I could use my own judgement to evaluate the feedback of a vendor and decide if they are relevant to me or not.

Keep up the good work! I'm sure the right balance will be found!

Lots of love to you all!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: pzvTVzD6OL on August 22, 2013, 08:04 am
Just throwing out an idea there :

If the 1 to 5 rating bars could be a little more detailled (for example by clicking on it or something in that style), wouldn't it be possible to make something that looks like that ?

----------------------------------------------
5   420 ratings   $20 avg. purchase
4   10 ratings     $150 avg. purchase
3
2   5 ratings       $200 avg. purchase
1
----------------------------------------------

This way an interested buyer could more precisely have an estimated success rate for the price range of the listing he is looking for, and the general score would be more easily understood (and won't hurt as much in cases like sbraser's one).

Because that may be just me, but I don't really care if a vendor has a lower average rating than normal that seems due to him having problems dealing with big orders if I am looking for a small listing. And the other way around, I don't care if a vendor has a very high success rate with small listings if I am looking to buy bulk.


Edit: Yeah, the clickable rating numbers linking to the feedbacks left with that rating would be an even nicer addition to this.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 22, 2013, 08:07 am
Maybe this deserves a different thread and I hate to really beat an almost dead horse, but I really think our main problem here is not necessarily with the feedback itself but more a societal issue.

What if from now on all the buyers just started to give vendors 4/5 for your average successful transaction. A 4/5 is still like getting a good grade on a test. Sure, buyers feedback will all drop at first, but they will all drop together.

Over time we would end up with the plummet coming to a stop and we should hit some sort of equilibrium. Now we have all the vendors with not perfect stats. This allows for them to adjust up and down based on actual performance quality.

As it stands, the majority of the vendor pages I look at just have graphs with a single bar in the 5 line. If every vendor is perfect too, it makes it more difficult to really spot who is doing a good job.

This doesn't take discussion. Or even an algorithm change to fix. Maybe add buyer stats, but that's another thing.

We just really need an attitude shift toward how ratings are given out.
This idea would be perfect if the rating was out of 10. 4/5 is only 80% but 9/10 is 90%. The vendor would have to go above and beyond to get the last 10% such as sending freebies or next day shipping or just being awesome in some other way.

Also, I like the idea of being able to click on each individual rating (1,2,3,4, or 5...unless it went to 10, of course) to see all feedback that was given that rating.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: missbliss on August 22, 2013, 08:22 am
hi hi

@love inc:  i think there has been plenty of buyers in this thread voicing their opinions, mostly positive on the feedback system changes. and i believe you are correct in your summation that vendors are generally negative on this. personally, the rating system has worked out well for me SPECIFICALLY, as with the x/100 system i was at like 98.x%, and now i'm a straight 5 star.   

what i take most offense to, is the ability for random anonymous strangers of which i have had no prior transactions being able to leave "feedback" in the form of a discussion comment on my vendor profile, item listing, or general category. i do not feel that it is fair to force me into stealth mode and lose my position on the category to "disable" discussions. again, of which i have been lucky to not have to deal with yet.

i also feel the 5star system does not address the main crux of the problem which as was pointed out earlier is mostly societal - and can not be easily remedied.


you had mentioned i had qualms with lotteries (as they exist now), and you would be correct. to that end, i have posted awhile ago in the feature request forum what i felt to be a suitable solution to the lottery "problem".   the short story on that is a separate "type" of listing that would be just used for lotteries. please see that thread for more information on what i proposed. i believe it would fix all aspects people have about lotteries, and overall improve user experience for those who wish to gamble.


sadly, the only real counter we vendors seem to have to feedback extortion is the blacklist, and that continues the nasty cycle of "you must leave 5/5 or be shunned" 

i've already said my peace on this, and feel feedback should be locked, which would allow me to vend to newbies and veterans alike without the fear that they will at some point weeks later decide to try and hold feedback over my head for a discount/free drugs. we'll see how DPR wants to move forward with it, as it is his website and he is the boss.

xoxo
-mb
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Boobonicchronic on August 22, 2013, 09:18 am
READY FOR THE WRENCH?

Ok so here is my issue... I think that some real scammers could come in here open a vendor account and generate false feedback. How you ask? You would be paying a small fee to SR for your transactions from one of your buyer accounts to one of your seller accounts.... This would in turn be you paying for your feedback to be bosted.

Once you have reached an amount of feedback needed to start requesting FE's ( I know I know don't FE.... same story when they told me not to do drugs cause they are bad for me... where did that get me???) and you in turn get them... enough so you make your money back and then some. Is this a hard operation? Yes. Does it require some of your money upfront? Yes. Is it worth your time and effort? Depends on who it is because I see some sellers showing 1-5's and no sign of these in the feedback provided for that item.

As a buyer I don't know how to make a purchase because the guy I want to buy from has been here less then two months... this in turn has me not making a purchase because I don't know if it in fact is true feedback or false. I think the feedback should be a much more complex system on my end.

I think you should have more security measures to make sure a true buyer is placing that feedback... If you do infact FE you do not get any feedback at all for that transaction. This again is just what I think should be done but if you mix what I am saying in with what some of you have come up with I think we could all be happy.

In the end all I am saying is some of you smuts are inflating your feedback....  ::)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Naloxone on August 22, 2013, 09:53 am
This is great! The changes since I was last here are great. You've done an excellent job. I can't wait to get back into buying some top quality stuff!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on August 22, 2013, 11:04 am
Maybe this deserves a different thread and I hate to really beat an almost dead horse, but I really think our main problem here is not necessarily with the feedback itself but more a societal issue.

What if from now on all the buyers just started to give vendors 4/5 for your average successful transaction. A 4/5 is still like getting a good grade on a test. Sure, buyers feedback will all drop at first, but they will all drop together.

Over time we would end up with the plummet coming to a stop and we should hit some sort of equilibrium. Now we have all the vendors with not perfect stats. This allows for them to adjust up and down based on actual performance quality.

As it stands, the majority of the vendor pages I look at just have graphs with a single bar in the 5 line. If every vendor is perfect too, it makes it more difficult to really spot who is doing a good job.

This doesn't take discussion. Or even an algorithm change to fix. Maybe add buyer stats, but that's another thing.

We just really need an attitude shift toward how ratings are given out.

Exactly!!!!!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 22, 2013, 11:32 am

sadly, the only real counter we vendors seem to have to feedback extortion is the blacklist, and that continues the nasty cycle of "you must leave 5/5 or be shunned" 

xoxo
-mb

I think that's the biggest problem we have here.  5/5 has become the expected norm - whereas I'd expect 3/5 to be it.  3/5 should be neutral or as expected, with 4s and 5s only for vendors who go above and beyond.  I saw one bit of feedback today where the buyer gave 5/5 despite the fact that the package didn't arrive and it went to resolution.   Without a way to manage buyers expectations (100% should not be the norm.. 50% should) we're not going to be able to find a way to work this out. 

@ Boobonicchronic   The biggest problem with FE is that you can't really tell if it is a FE or not.  I've ordered stuff that has turned up in my postbox less than 18 hrs. How would you tell the difference between me finalising an order and it being a FE?

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: RxKing on August 22, 2013, 12:09 pm

As a buyer I don't know how to make a purchase because the guy I want to buy from has been here less then two months... this in turn has me not making a purchase because I don't know if it in fact is true feedback or false. I think the feedback should be a much more complex system on my end.


The whole point of not finalizing early and using the Silk Road escrow system is so you can buy from a vendor with out worry. If you do not FE then you have none of the risk you talk about here. I mean that is the whole point of escrow!!!!

And your analogy of getting people not to finalize is like being told not to do drugs is really not even close to accurate. Meaning it is a terrible analogy. I get what you are trying to say...that no matter how many times we warn "them" they will still FE. BUT...the facts are that most people do not FE. And that the scams that vendors pull with the FE option is actually not that big a number at all. Now of course I wish it was zero. But that is never going to happen. Sure YOU can not control the other morons who FE...but you can control you...and you can totally buy from this vendor and have nothing to worry about at all if you do not FE.

Also...as to your theory of fake feedback....it of course happens...but again...fake feedback is hard to do. Sure you can do a few...but if you just pay a little more attention as a buyer you could easily spot it. And fake feedback has never been a real issue here. In the forums you have some people ..like your self...that totally over value fake feedback and they believe that it is something that happens a lot more then it does...or they believe it is easy to do and is worth the time to do it. You actually address those issues...but the one thing you left off is that fake feedback is actually really a waste of time for a vendor and that is why it does not happen that often.

I have no idea if you are  a new buyer or just someone that is overly cautious....but the fact is if you just use the simple guide line of not FE'ing ever....you will pretty much eliminate any chance of getting scammed. You would also find that this is not at all how vendors scam here. They do not do it offering items for sale or with  new accounts. They almost always involve BTC. And the accounts that end up scamming the people here are in fact accounts that are totally legit..no fake feedback at all...ever...and actually are model vendors...then when they want  to leave......they start asking people to FE....and they blindside long time customers. That is what you have to look out for ...just giving you the real facts.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Shaggy Shaman on August 22, 2013, 09:16 pm
Just adding that I too can't see any of my new feedback on my vendor page, only by going to view feedback under my account.

SS
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 22, 2013, 09:34 pm

As a buyer I don't know how to make a purchase because the guy I want to buy from has been here less then two months... this in turn has me not making a purchase because I don't know if it in fact is true feedback or false. I think the feedback should be a much more complex system on my end.

[..] you can totally buy from this vendor and have nothing to worry about at all if you do not FE.
Well, actually, purchasing stats can get fucked up (in case of a refund) and lead vendors not wanting to deal with you. Alternatively, a resolution can come up where the buyer did nothing wong but only gets a 50% refund or something so he/she would still be getting fucked over to some extent. But, yes, RxKing, I see your point.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 22, 2013, 10:20 pm
Just adding that I too can't see any of my new feedback on my vendor page, only by going to view feedback under my account.

SS

this isn't right.  looking into it now.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GlenRunciter on August 22, 2013, 10:21 pm
Just wanted to reiterate, as a buyer, I like to see the amount of "fans" a vendor has...and compare this to total transactions and their longevity on SR.  This is a quick way for me to ascertain if the vendor is popular and is satisfying his or her clients.   This statistic is now missing altogether from the vendor profile page.   

I also concur with some folks above that if we are rating on a 1 to 5 scale...we really need to define what it takes to earn a 5.    What it takes and what criteria should be met to earn a 4, etc. etc. etc.       As a buyer, if I get my gear on time, and the stealth is adequate, and the quality is better than average (or sometimes even just average) I still feel obligated to leave a 5 out of 5.   But should I ?       If we have clear definitions for each rating...I think that would help make feedback more meaningful.


thnx for everything and for allowing input... 8)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GetUp on August 22, 2013, 10:26 pm
A thought on feedback refinement from a buyer's perspective:

I'm routinely reading feedback from customers rating no-shows. I've had this situation myself and was not really sure how to express my best judgement. Sure, the vendor's communication might be one factor in this process but without any product, ratings are pretty meaningless. How should I say anything about the transaction and the product quality if I never received anything? There are many 5/5 ratings for no-shows and I believe buyers should have another option - at least after the order went into the resolution phase.

I would very much welcome to know a vendor's success rate. I think it's an important performance indicator often missed when talking about vendor feedback. It could be nothing more but a check box disabling the usual feedback controls indicating that transaction rating was not applicable.

What are your thoughts about this suggestion?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 22, 2013, 11:05 pm
Just adding that I too can't see any of my new feedback on my vendor page, only by going to view feedback under my account.

SS

this isn't right.  looking into it now.

Everything is working properly.  Shaggy Shaman, your items are in stealth mode, so feedback from them don't show up on your homepage.  And the reason your avg rating is still zero is because all of your transactions so far have been for zero btc, so they have no weight.  Hope that helps.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 22, 2013, 11:36 pm
I liked the bar graph at first, but after seeing it for a few days I'm starting to dislike it. Maybe you should get rid of the 5/5 section of it since that's full on everyone's page and doesn't really need to be displayed. Just display the 1,2,3,and 4's so people can focus on the ratings other than 5/5 when looking at vendors. The only thing the bar graph really seems to tell me is that a vendor either has all 5/5's or 5/5's with some 1's or 3's which you could easily tell just by looking at the number and seeing if it is a 5.0 or 4.9 or 4.8 ect. Just my two bitcoins.  :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Shaggy Shaman on August 22, 2013, 11:37 pm
Thanks DPR.

The listing for the sample giveaway isn't stealthed, its purely gone and deleted. I did that days ago, not knowing i needed to keep the sample listing active for that feedback to show. The price of $0 for samples not giving the reviews any weight kinda makes the whole New Vendor Giveaway a dead duck.

So, should I try out this new "discussion" thing and see if I can get my sample winners to comment in "my" thread? Or should I do another sample giveaway and then keep that sample listing active afterwards by having the price at 1,000,000 BTC?

This sux!

SS
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cork1Screw on August 23, 2013, 05:25 am

I also concur with some folks above that if we are rating on a 1 to 5 scale...we really need to define what it takes to earn a 5.    What it takes and what criteria should be met to earn a 4, etc. etc. etc.       As a buyer, if I get my gear on time, and the stealth is adequate, and the quality is better than average (or sometimes even just average) I still feel obligated to leave a 5 out of 5.   But should I ?       If we have clear definitions for each rating...I think that would help make feedback more meaningful.

I think the multiple people like this guy that have mentioned this point are spot on the money here. We really do need to change the culture from "5/5 is positive feedback, anything less is for scammers and only the worst service." But you don't do that with a hope and a prayer.

I would do two things here DPR: First, implement a short and sweet helpful guide for people leaving feedback. (At some point it would be nice to have a few categories of feedback, with each being optional and independent of the other. Ex: Stealth, Quality, Communication. Worth noting I think is the side benefit that implementing the three independent categories of feedback would have: it would allow for a "fresh start" in many ways. Unlike retroactively applying a new formula to old feedback, like you have done (this is always going to cause a bunch of complaints for you to look into as I'm sure you experienced), you can leave everyone's old feedback visible still at the bottom of the listing/profile and begin collecting NEW AND FRESH feedback on Stealth, Quality, and Communication categories from people who actually want to leave a review. In addition, with the guidelines for feedback going into place at the same time, this would in one fell swoop I am certain, be our best chance of instantly changing the culture of "5/5 or DEATH!!! RAWR!")

If you are going to stick with a */5 system, then I would make a guideline for that. Poll the community, do whatever you think is best to come up with it. But put a guideline together that people can look to. Whatever you come up with will have to work better than the current system where 5/5 is left for everything from a D-grade experience to an A+ grade experience and the entire 1/5 to 4/5 range is reserved for D minus grade experiences and below.

Quick example guideline blurb: "3/5: Good service. Product arrived successfully and matched description. 4/5: Above Average service that meets or exceeds expectations. 5/5: Superior service in every respect." or something to that effect. That's if we don't expand to multiple categories of feedback, which I would strongly recommend. (Stealth, Quality, Communication)

So, after implementing a guide for people leaving feedback (and hopefully splitting the entire feedback system up into three categories), onto the second thing I would do: make it so vendor's have independent feedback averages for each listing.

 As many users have mentioned even in the last few pages of posting, it is important to see how a vendor handles bulk vs small vs different KINDS of orders. Shipping weed is very different than shipping some blotter sheets, even high value blotter sheets. I think the answer to this is to show, for each listing, a feedback average. And really, I just keep coming back to the three categories. I want to see the simple average (add the numbers together and divide them man) of all the feedback a vendor has got for a SPECIFIC item he is selling, and I want to know how his Communication, Quality, and Stealth was in regards to that SPECIFIC item. Anything less is selling yourself short.

IMO, preferably not a complex formula ;) which I know will pain you to hear DPR. Just a simple average. I too like to tend towards the KISS (keep it simple stupid) methodology, and to me utilizing a simple average rather than a complex one has some clear benefits.

Something that would have to be fixed before this got implemented is vendors being able to change their listings to cost $0.01 and then leaving a bunch of feedback on their high dollar items and changing prices back. That could be abused by a simple average system if it wasn't changed beforehand, but I would just make it so that next to each feedback it showed the total price of the listing in $ or btc or however you'd like to display it. Would make it painfully obvious when then manipulation occurred. Downsides? Potentially showing a look into vendor's pricing history, but to counter that I would just limit the data to the same time window that feedback has weight for.



Quick cliffnotes/reiteration:

 + Make guidelines for feedback that are more appropriate than "5/5 for product received, 1/5-4/5 for everything else" so we can leave the current culture behind. Community poll/discussion in order?

+ Split feedback into three independent categories: Stealth, Communication, and Quality.

+ Make it so every individual listing shows the average feedback rating for each category. Sure the vendor has great product, but how is their stealth? Different things are important to different people. User A may not care about poor stealth if quality is great while User B may be the opposite, and yet User C may not care about Quality so much at all as long as the Communication is excellent and the stealth is good.

+ Display the price of the transaction next to the feedback so vendors cant manipulate the system by changing high dollar listings to $0.01 and leaving fake feedback/ratings.

+???

+Profit
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 23, 2013, 07:00 am
Just came across something strange- I finalized an order in escrow and a bunch of "jibberish" popped up that had a bunch of numbers and shit and I remember seeing the words "vendor weight". There was no green camel or anything, just a white page. I clicked back and got an error message on SR saying I can't access the page or something. I looked at the vendor's feedback and my feedback was there (I even checked the feedback I left in my account) so it went through and everything. It was just an odd occurence I felt I should share.

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed there's a thread on this (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=206101.0)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: livestr0ng on August 23, 2013, 07:23 am
Also, I think one should be able to see all the feedback one ever left of vendors. I understand if I don't have the ability to edit it (maybe after 3-4 weeks) but I'd like to see it. That way, if I know I've done business with a vendor before, I can look at my feedback and see what I had to say about him/her/them. This would especially be useful to get an ETA of the package. Additionally, when I do reviews for vendors on the forums, I provide a link in the feedback on SR. If I ever wanted to look at past reviews, I could easily just go to my feedback page and have all the links right there.

I can see how some people might want no record of their purchasing history available anywhere. To this I say make it an option for the user to enable/disable like the incognito feature. For bonus points, give the user options like "never keep any feedback", "keep feedback for 3 months", "keep feedback for 1 year", and "keep feedback forever". That'd be awesome!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Ophidian on August 23, 2013, 06:43 pm
Quote
What I am thinking is that there will be a "discuss" link on every vendor page, item page, and even the category pages.  This link will go to a thread with the latest posts about the vendor, item, or category.  I'm thinking we'll require a minimum spent of maybe 1 btc to post. 
must i pay 1 btc to post when i use the discuss button? why?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on August 23, 2013, 06:53 pm
Just came across something strange- I finalized an order in escrow and a bunch of "jibberish" popped up that had a bunch of numbers and shit and I remember seeing the words "vendor weight". There was no green camel or anything, just a white page. I clicked back and got an error message on SR saying I can't access the page or something. I looked at the vendor's feedback and my feedback was there (I even checked the feedback I left in my account) so it went through and everything. It was just an odd occurence I felt I should share.

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed there's a thread on this (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=206101.0)

I've just left some feedback and got that page too..  and there's a couple of errors I think I detect so I'll go post the details in that thread.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: sbraser on August 25, 2013, 04:43 pm
DPR, nothing about my reverted feedbacks?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 25, 2013, 04:46 pm
Just came across something strange- I finalized an order in escrow and a bunch of "jibberish" popped up that had a bunch of numbers and shit and I remember seeing the words "vendor weight". There was no green camel or anything, just a white page. I clicked back and got an error message on SR saying I can't access the page or something. I looked at the vendor's feedback and my feedback was there (I even checked the feedback I left in my account) so it went through and everything. It was just an odd occurence I felt I should share.

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed there's a thread on this (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=206101.0)

I've just left some feedback and got that page too..  and there's a couple of errors I think I detect so I'll go post the details in that thread.

Yup same with me I saw vendor weight a bunch of times and I saw a bunch of different transaction numbers.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 25, 2013, 04:58 pm
Just came across something strange- I finalized an order in escrow and a bunch of "jibberish" popped up that had a bunch of numbers and shit and I remember seeing the words "vendor weight". There was no green camel or anything, just a white page. I clicked back and got an error message on SR saying I can't access the page or something. I looked at the vendor's feedback and my feedback was there (I even checked the feedback I left in my account) so it went through and everything. It was just an odd occurence I felt I should share.

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed there's a thread on this (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=206101.0)

I've just left some feedback and got that page too..  and there's a couple of errors I think I detect so I'll go post the details in that thread.

Yup same with me I saw vendor weight a bunch of times and I saw a bunch of different transaction numbers.

sorry about that.  it was just some debugging output and not anything sensitive.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 25, 2013, 05:10 pm
No worries, keep up the good work.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: teqno on August 26, 2013, 02:48 am
I'm in a total rush right now but, I'll try to point some of my thoughts as best I can with one foot out the door. (And if some of these were brought up I'm apologize as I only read through a few pages, rush, one foot out the door. Sorry!)

Feed back system, on 2 columns would be great! The good and the bad so buyers can read both on the same page. As you mentioned early on , the higher quality review would swing up top (or make a like system so that the one with most attention and buyers agree on would float to the top) This to be worked also with the bad reviews.. Also the point system as one member mentioned is another thing that I found useless and couldn't base anything from it. He brought an idea, which woulld be helpful and to have each category it's own 1-5 score card and the buyers would choose each one 1-5 would click the score per category of what their experience was with the vendor and the final will deter main it's rating...A pro's and con's option would work well I think along with a "other comments" for buyers who need to share a little more. The feed back system we have no is completely useless, for one vendors tend to try and force a 5/5 score which makes the overall feed back system have no value at all. A score for each category

1. Customer service - 1 5 stars system or 1-5

2. Processing and shipping - This to be followed by a number system from 1-5 but also have 2 separate boxes to fill in the times of each (This is something buyers can use to judge or get an idea if a order placed will he /she be able to get it on this date. I found myself in a couple situations that I could of use info like this instead having to wait for the vendor to reply hours later to find out it can't be done or it's to late.) and the boxes are for the buyers overseas to also get the burning question answered.

3. Stealth - 1-5 point system but I want to mention and this is for new vendors that I've made a couple orders with and while expressing my concerns and wonder how it made it through a response was never replied from the vendor till weeks later and what pissed me off was the excuse of trying to save cost on stamps and shipping material..........This is found to be very troubling and careless and selfish on the vendors part and this I believe should be more strict on with and if a buyer gives a low score on it's stealth a box giving the buyer to express his/her concerns on what the problem was only to be seen by the vendor of course AND THE STEALTH SCORE TO BE IN BIG BOLD BRIGHT LETTERS to advise a warning that it's not safe till the vendor understands and agree's with the buyer. To bring it back to normal.

4. Quality of product - 1-5 points


5.  Over all experience, will buyer be back 1-5.

A pro's and con's box?

6. Other thoughts

One more thing, a display of the buyers tolerance or experience level on what was purchased. with the fair amount of people here doing the choice of drug for a short period of time would almost always say the product was the best..to only be with a product was decent for an experienced user. The boards do help on this matter as new users do state their tolerance and the experience users only look for specific reviews from from specific users because of the level difference.

Also an idea, to be brought to another page when clicking on the order number with all the details on the order but also options to leave the feed back,  PM's to the vendor or continue on pervious messages share back and forth, to being linked or having the discussion of the vendor shown on that page also. I can see this might take up some space but to show only show the important few and link to point the person in the right direction to read more would help people find things quicker.

I tried to put into much detail as possible with the amount of time I have but shoes are starting to fly at my head and I got's to go.

Nice job so far DPR and the crew! Keep up the hard work and hopefully by the end we'll all have something that will have everyone happy..Which life has taught me is impossible. :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Revenantchild on August 26, 2013, 11:35 am
So now we can't see who's left feedback..?
I see the "View Feedback" section in the account section is no longer there...
How are we going to identify buyers who leave unfair feedback..?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: WhiteShark on August 26, 2013, 12:13 pm
The inability to see who left what feedback I think is a very bad decision. I like to reach out to dissatisfied customer to rectify the situation. What the heck is going on here
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 01:13 pm
The inability to see who left what feedback I think is a very bad decision. I like to reach out to dissatisfied customer to rectify the situation. What the heck is going on here
Why would you reach out to a dissatisfied customer if they cannot change their feedback?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shroomin1 on August 26, 2013, 01:53 pm
The inability to see who left what feedback I think is a very bad decision. I like to reach out to dissatisfied customer to rectify the situation. What the heck is going on here
Why would you reach out to a dissatisfied customer if they cannot change their feedback?

Just because a customer can't change his feedback doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve his experience.  That's what this is all about, satisfying customers.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 02:50 pm
Just because a customer can't change his feedback doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve his experience.  That's what this is all about, satisfying customers.

So you agree that if a vendor fucks up an order they deserve to have a 1/5 set in stone even after they have made the situation right and have made the customer happy.

Logic???
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: WhiteShark on August 26, 2013, 02:59 pm
Glad the view feedback is back
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 03:07 pm
Glad the view feedback is back
But buyers cannot change their feedback so when we leave a 1/5 we just get balcklisted. What an awesome update.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shroomin1 on August 26, 2013, 03:12 pm
So you agree that if a vendor fucks up an order they deserve to have a 1/5 set in stone even after they have made the situation right and have made the customer happy.

Logic???

No, I don't agree that a vendor should have a 1/5 set in stone.  I feel that customers should be able to change feedback.  Maybe they should only be able to change it for a certain period of time afterwards, say 2 weeks.

My post was in response to:
Quote
Why would you reach out to a dissatisfied customer if they cannot change their feedback?

My point was that you should try to improve a customer's experience if you fail him somehow, regardless of whether or not he is able to change his feedback.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 03:49 pm
My point was that you should try to improve a customer's experience if you fail him somehow, regardless of whether or not he is able to change his feedback.

What a vendor should do and what they will do are two different things, at the end of the day vendors are running a buisness not a charity. And why would you take the time of day to make someone happy when on your profile there is still a review saying 1/5.  The customer who left 1/5 has hurt your buisness, your not going to reward him.Your going to blacklist him.

Also vendors escrow is going to baloon like a fat bitch in a chocolate factory, expect higher prices and alot more vendors asking for FE.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Tessellated on August 26, 2013, 04:18 pm
I think that buyers should have the option to delete a feedback outright.

Many times I have gotten a low feedback from someone who did not bother to contact me. After contacting them and making it right they often change the feedback to something better to reflect the improved experience. I will miss this.

Allowing a buyer to delete feedback also allows them to retract a good feedback if they find the product not up to snuff.

Allowing the deletion of feedback without the option to change it will improve buyer/vendor relations without creating the danger of extortion.

Just saying...
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 26, 2013, 04:21 pm
I think that buyers should have the option to delete a feedback outright.

Many times I have gotten a low feedback from someone who did not bother to contact me. After contacting them and making it right they often change the feedback to something better to reflect the improved experience. I will miss this.

Allowing a buyer to delete feedback also allows them to retract a good feedback if they find the product not up to snuff.

Allowing the deletion of feedback without the option to change it will improve buyer/vendor relations without creating the danger of extortion.

Just saying...

not a bad idea...
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shroomin1 on August 26, 2013, 04:25 pm
What a vendor should do and what they will do are two different things, at the end of the day vendors are running a buisness not a charity.

I agree.  And I cannot speak for anyone other than myself.  On all of my listings and on my vendor profile, I state that if a package does not arrive within 10 days, I will reship if I have stock or refund the buyer's bitcoins.  And I stand by that. 

It's rare, but occasionally someone will tell me his order did not arrive.  Of course I try to figure out what happened.  And I know that some or most of these are probably just scammers trying to get something for nothing.  But I will reship or refund regardless.  Why?  Because I said I would and I stand by my word.

And why would you take the time of day to make someone happy when on your profile there is still a review saying 1/5.  The customer who left 1/5 has hurt your buisness, your not going to reward him.Your going to blacklist him.

If someone gives me a 1/5, I want to find out why and what I can do to fix it.  If I totally fucked up, then I need to know that I did.  Or else how can I improve?

If I did everything correctly and  the buyer leaves me a 1/5 for shits and giggles, then there is obviously nothing I can do to make that better.  I would never sell to that person again, obviously.   But I still want to find out what happened.

I get a lot of return customers because I go out of my way to give them a great experience.  And I sell a lot more to return customers than I do to new ones.

Also vendors escrow is going to baloon like a fat bitch in a chocolate factory, expect higher prices and alot more vendors asking for FE.

Like I said before, I can only speak for myself, and I am not worried about how much I have in escrow.  Most of the buyers I have done business with on here have been a pleasure to deal with.  They are honest, finalize quickly, and come back again and again.  These are the ones I do the most business with, and their funds don't stay in escrow long.

I strongly discourage my customers from Finalizing Early.  If I don't think he can trust someone, I cancel his order and let him know why.   If I required someone to Finalizing Early, what is to stop him from FE'ing but not leaving feedback yet.  Then he gets the product and doesn't like it or doesn't like fact that I made him FE, and leaves me a 1/5 anyway?


All that said, I believe that buyers should be allowed to change feedback for a certain period of time after finalizing.  But what I want and what reality is are not necessarily the same thing.

Thanks for the discussion. This is very enjoyable!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 04:36 pm
I think that buyers should have the option to delete a feedback outright.

Many times I have gotten a low feedback from someone who did not bother to contact me. After contacting them and making it right they often change the feedback to something better to reflect the improved experience. I will miss this.

Allowing a buyer to delete feedback also allows them to retract a good feedback if they find the product not up to snuff.

Allowing the deletion of feedback without the option to change it will improve buyer/vendor relations without creating the danger of extortion.

Just saying...

not a bad idea...

No its not a bad idea... its a fucking tremendous idea.

Tessellated saves the day.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Trollin on August 26, 2013, 04:49 pm
Like I said before, I can only speak for myself, and I am not worried about how much I have in escrow.  Most of the buyers I have done business with on here have been a pleasure to deal with.  They are honest, finalize quickly, and come back again and again.  These are the ones I do the most business with, and their funds don't stay in escrow long.

You only sell domestic meaning the average order will spend 3/4 days in escrow.

I live in the UK where the quality of cannabis provided domestically is appauling, thus i must go abroad (normally Canada) an average order for myself spends 7-10 days in escrow.I can see this being a big problem for the vendors i currently use.

Thanks for the discussion. This is very enjoyable!

That it is. 8)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abitpeckish on August 26, 2013, 04:51 pm
This may have already been proposed, as this is a very long thread. In addition to Tess' idea, perhaps down the road the ratings can be split in some way between buying experience and product quality. The buying experience would be what is displayed for the vendor (as it already is), and the product quality could be attached to individual listings. The listings themselves could then build up their own reputation based on quality. New listings would have zero reputation, of course, but from what I can tell a lot of vendors use the same listings again and again.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: shroomin1 on August 26, 2013, 05:03 pm
You only sell domestic meaning the average order will spend 3/4 days in escrow.

I live in the UK where the quality of cannabis provided domestically is appauling, thus i must go abroad (normally Canada) an average order for myself spends 7-10 days in escrow.I can see this being a big problem for the vendors i currently use.

True, I did not consider shipping times for destinations across the pond.  Good point!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 27, 2013, 01:04 am
Very disappointed I cannot see the most recent feedback on my vendor page anymore.

I see i can go to another page and resort it to get what MAY be my latest feedback. Breaking a freshness sort into sub-categories, makes it not a freshness sort. I have only gotten less than 5/5 once and that was an accident (which, if it ever happens again, can't be repaired - another disappointment). So, the freshness sort works for us at the moment. The new text on the 5-point scale encouraging buyers to give less than a 5/5 (another disappointment) makes the sub-categorized "freshness sort" less likely to be useful when people want to know what has been happening most recently.

A 4/5 rating is a huge minus (-20%). If you want people to be able to give less than a 5/5 for small vendor disappointments, the scale should be 10/10 or 100/100. And, we probably need hundredths 0.00 rather than just tenths 0.0 if we are to be well informed. I know this is a complex update with a lot of issues to consider. I think the current "build" needs a lot of work to be as good as the old system. I do appreciate the big effort going into trying to make things even better all the time :-)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Vanquish on August 27, 2013, 01:32 am
This new feedback system is worthless, it's infinitely better to use the forum to gauge the quality of items now.
As it always has been because of the vast knowledge shared on here.
Now the user interface is just incredibly clunky and painful to scroll through reviews.
This should seriously be considered for being reverted or implemented in some other way.
Say keep a similar appearance to what it was and add options in a much more minimalistic and simple manner.
Things could have been changed and slowly added instead of destroying a perfectly viable and quick and easy to see feedback/review system.
Just simply adding the ability to sort by rating, and other features would have worked fine.

Now we have gigantic boxes, that look completely out of place and it just doesn't look or feel "right".
Tone down the scaling and make it more legible and easy to use.
The boxes are just too damn big, and the huge - Alias Hidden, Buyer Stats Hidden, (hidden).  These are completely useless to have on each review.
Remove them completely.

Plus we don't need this huge box saying -
           Vendor ratings:             weighted   unweighted
5     WOW! Outstanding!                78%   97%
4     Solid, would recommend            0%   0%
3     Meh, they're ok I guess             0%   1%
2     Definitely needs improvement   0%   0%
1     NEVER AGAIN!!!                         22%   2%

Simplify it just like the streamlined interface that was implemented a few days ago.
That looked professional and aesthetically pleasing.
Seriously, this just looks sloppy.
Not to rant, but I'm just not a fan of the changes.  Can't we please make this look better?
It would be a grave injustice to see it stay this way.

It looks completely unprofessional.  No offense to whoever designed all this.
Was the goal of these aesthetic changes to appeal to younger people?
Really I don't grasp this at all.
It's simply my opinion, and take it with a grain of salt.

TLDR - I'll be sticking to the forums and vendor's profile for all my information and future purchases.  At least for the time being.

Regards,
Vanquish
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Revenantchild on August 28, 2013, 11:41 am
The inability to see who left what feedback I think is a very bad decision. I like to reach out to dissatisfied customer to rectify the situation. What the heck is going on here
Why would you reach out to a dissatisfied customer if they cannot change their feedback?

Just because a customer can't change his feedback doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve his experience.  That's what this is all about, satisfying customers.


Agreed..! I conduct my business in exactly the same way, in contrast to some of the shabby treatment I received from certain vendors when I was a customer.

At any rate, THANK YOU DPR for reinstating feedback on the main profile page and on individual listings. I know when I am shopping around, that feedback goes a long way to influencing whether I'm going to buy or not.
Title: Editing feedback is very important !
Post by: maligan on August 28, 2013, 11:49 am
Buyers need to be able to edit there ratings and reviews no matter how you look at it! I dont want to go into many many examples why.

Editing existing ratings and reviews is a must for the benefit of both buyers and vendors !
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Hungry ghost on August 28, 2013, 02:42 pm
I agree there are many situations where a buyer needs to edit feedback. I propose the solution:
     Buyers should only be able to edit there most recent transaction with a vendor. This would prevent feedback blackmail while still allowing a buyer to adjust the latest feedback. (After all the fact a buyer has ordered again shows they were happy with the previous transactions.)
      As for the rest of the new system, I have to admit I preferred the old system, but maybe that is just familiarity. I'll have to give it chance.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Tessellated on August 28, 2013, 03:06 pm
If a buyer were allowed to _delete_ a feedback but not change it then they could remove a good or bad rating but their ability to extort would be very small.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 28, 2013, 03:15 pm
I'm missing any feedback at all for over three days now...

feeling lonely tbh...the community feels fragmented and lacking communication right now.

I don't know if my customers are happy or not...

I am unsure of my order flow now either and feel unresponsive.

Not sure this is a good thing guys...please sort the system FAST!!!!

I know you're trying your best to maintain a complex system and keep it on the leading edge but taking away this basic interface and functionality will harm our (and your) business IMHO

Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: WhiteShark on August 28, 2013, 03:36 pm
I'm missing any feedback at all for over three days now...

feeling lonely tbh...the community feels fragmented and lacking communication right now.

I don't know if my customers are happy or not...

I am unsure of my order flow now either and feel unresponsive.

Not sure this is a good thing guys...please sort the system FAST!!!!

I know you're trying your best to maintain a complex system and keep it on the leading edge but taking away this basic interface and functionality will harm our (and your) business IMHO

Doc

If you got all 5/5 they should be considered happy. Plus I would expect unhappy customers would definitely take the time to leave a bad word on your discussion page.

The sample bias is existent in nature, but for both sides such that it balances out. Extremely dissatisfied/satisfied customers alike would both take the time to learn how to leave a review and post on the discussion page. So if you are lacking any reviews and comments on your discussion page praising you can safely assume your customers are all dissatisfied/satisfied to a mediocre degree.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 28, 2013, 03:41 pm
I'm missing any feedback at all for over three days now...

feeling lonely tbh...the community feels fragmented and lacking communication right now.

I don't know if my customers are happy or not...

I am unsure of my order flow now either and feel unresponsive.

Not sure this is a good thing guys...please sort the system FAST!!!!

I know you're trying your best to maintain a complex system and keep it on the leading edge but taking away this basic interface and functionality will harm our (and your) business IMHO

Doc

If you got all 5/5 they should be considered happy. Plus I would expect unhappy customers would definitely take the time to leave a bad word on your discussion page.

The sample bias is existent in nature, but for both sides such that it balances out. Extremely dissatisfied/satisfied customers alike would both take the time to learn how to leave a review and post on the discussion page. So if you are lacking any reviews and comments on your discussion page praising you can safely assume your customers are all dissatisfied/satisfied to a mediocre degree.

Oh well that makes me feel better ;)

Funnily enough knowing this would be the worst position for any business - I need communication channels open and full flow...I really think this is a big mistake and will ruin the SR business model.

The whole point about feedback is to encourage and then enter dialogue - I know it needed tweaking (a simple right to reply on both sides alla ebay would have been all it took btw!!)....but this effectively neutralises the vendor - customer feedback in my opinion...

And I still feel lonely...well apart from you WhiteShark...obs... ;)

Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CaptianKirk on August 29, 2013, 12:42 am
IM LIKING THE NEW UPDATES IT MAKES IT SIMPLE FOR THE NEWBIES MAKING THERE FIRST ORDER AND DONT KNOW WHO TO SHOP WIT 
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NorthernStar on August 29, 2013, 10:32 am
IM LIKING THE NEW UPDATES IT MAKES IT SIMPLE FOR THE NEWBIES MAKING THERE FIRST ORDER AND DONT KNOW WHO TO SHOP WIT
That's the point of it all, glad somebody sees that!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 29, 2013, 03:57 pm
If so, perhaps someone can explain why almost every top 20 vendor has seen drops and has a stream of complaints...

Fine to make life easy for customers...but without a product you have no SR...and vendors need to feel this is working for them too. At this stage I think we have a disconnect.

If business dries up, there's no fee...then no site.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: envious on August 29, 2013, 04:15 pm
This feedback system is extremely buggy. I've seen it display the values as 'a' 'b' 'c' repeatedly. It also makes no sense to put old feedback on the front of your profile page. I don't even sell most of those items anymore and haven't for quite some time. Sales have DEFINITELY dropped to almost nothing. Also, if you go to view feedback in account, the new feedback does not show. You can only see it if you go through it on your profile and sub page and then half the usernames are "alias hidden" and half of them show, which is a security risk for the buyers. This is just a major major MAJOR fail. The old system had its flaws but this is just terrible. It's like replacing Facebook with Myspace. This is a downgrade. Really I applaud the effort and in theory it seemed good, but it is not working.

DPR: If you aren't aware, take a peek at the Roundtable section and you can see how many problems this is causing.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Cher on August 29, 2013, 05:51 pm
yes, a peek in the roundtable section is definitely warranted!
i applaud the effort and attempt but, there seems to be lots of issues all around, especially from the vendor's point of view. rollback to what we had for now, and take on board all the thousands of points made over the past week then incorporate the good ones into a silkroad v.2.
its not the kind of site to roll out changes like this, and then try test for bugs after.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Poobanator on August 29, 2013, 06:08 pm
It's been a few days now.. And i have to agree that there is definately a disconnect going on now.  I've began planning my next purchase, but viewing the main vendor page is pretty well useless as far as knowing whats going on over the last few weeks.

Specially when your dealing with weed, we all know most of the weed vendors are buying their weed from Uncle bob, cousin sally, and Joseph down the street.  All of the vendor's sources may well have Purple Kush, but all the sources will also be of slightly different in quality.  I.e.

Which means when I look for 1 lb of Purple Kush, I'll see review's at random of purchase made over time and from many different batches.  I now don't have a clue what to feel about those reviews...

So instead what I do is shoot my preferred Vendor's an message and ask them... Which isn't a bad thing, if your preferred vendor's are good dudes, who shoot straight (which i believe mine are :P). But lets be honest... A lot of vendors will swear up and down that their shit is better then anyone's while at the same time talking shit about his compititors (rude dudes).  hmmmm. What i'm trying to say the feedback review system has just become almost useless to me.

And the Time/review/information disconnect, makes me very uneasy, especially if your dealing with a newer or unestablished vendor.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: 88fxstc on August 29, 2013, 06:44 pm
I haven't read this whole thread , but, a lot o folks , including myself, must be complaining about the feedback system on the vendors pages showing random feedback from who knows when. Why are they not in chronological order from newest to oldest like they used to be? That way we can keep up on what is currently going on with a vendor from the more recent buyers point of view.     WTF??
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on August 29, 2013, 06:49 pm
I haven't read this whole thread , but, a lot o folks , including myself, must be complaining about the feedback system on the vendors pages showing random feedback from who knows when. Why are they not in chronological order from newest to oldest like they used to be? That way we can keep up on what is currently going on with a vendor from the more recent buyers point of view.     WTF??

I think it just got changed back to the most recent ones first.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: convergedlight on August 29, 2013, 07:43 pm
One more thing to add.  It is better now that they are chronological, but it is really awkward having the 5/5, 4/5, 3/5, 2/5, and 1/5 reviews all sorted in separate lists.  Now, while there is some value to being able to get a list of each number, for instance if you want to check all the 1/5 reviews without scrolling back many pages, I don't think this should be the default view.

The default view should be sorted chronologically first (ratings 1-5 mixed together in chronological order), and at the top of this list, it can say something like
[all]   [5]  [4]  [3]  [2]  [1]
which would be clickable links for which ratings to show.  [all] would be the default so you would see all the ratings regardless of number, and then if there were no low ratings recently it would not be on the first page, but this is reasonable because older low ratings may be not relevant anymore.  But, for a user that wanted to be safe, they can click on the 1 to doublecheck.  In fact, the links for the specific rating can have the number of ratings total in parenthesis, such as:
all(5847)  5(5800)   4(40)  3(0)  2(0)  1(7)
so that users won't waste their time checking the 1 ratings if there are none, for example.
Title: The new feedback system is......
Post by: maligan on August 29, 2013, 07:58 pm
.......not popular at all.  Many hours of work and effort was put into this but going through all  the comments I have to say  ........It is a failure.

Time to admit it and go back to the old feedback system which was not perfect but far better than this.....
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: holamigo on August 29, 2013, 08:58 pm
Sorry if this has already been suggested, but:

It would be nice to be able to alter the sort order of feedback.
The ability to sort by newest, even if default is the new "feedback from highly rated buyers first".
If I suspect a seller is now sending out poor quality product, yet they have an impeccable reputation from the past, it would be good to see what other people are saying right now about the product that's being sent out, without having to go through every page and look at the age of each entry.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Isobetadine on August 29, 2013, 09:05 pm
I haven't read this whole thread , but, a lot o folks , including myself, must be complaining about the feedback system on the vendors pages showing random feedback from who knows when. Why are they not in chronological order from newest to oldest like they used to be? That way we can keep up on what is currently going on with a vendor from the more recent buyers point of view.     WTF??

One more thing to add.  It is better now that they are chronological, but it is really awkward having the 5/5, 4/5, 3/5, 2/5, and 1/5 reviews all sorted in separate lists.  Now, while there is some value to being able to get a list of each number, for instance if you want to check all the 1/5 reviews without scrolling back many pages, I don't think this should be the default view.

The default view should be sorted chronologically first (ratings 1-5 mixed together in chronological order), and at the top of this list, it can say something like
[all]   [5]  [4]  [3]  [2]  [1]
which would be clickable links for which ratings to show.  [all] would be the default so you would see all the ratings regardless of number, and then if there were no low ratings recently it would not be on the first page, but this is reasonable because older low ratings may be not relevant anymore.  But, for a user that wanted to be safe, they can click on the 1 to doublecheck.  In fact, the links for the specific rating can have the number of ratings total in parenthesis, such as:
all(5847)  5(5800)   4(40)  3(0)  2(0)  1(7)
so that users won't waste their time checking the 1 ratings if there are none, for example.

Yup agree with this.
Best way to check the state of affairs of a vendor or to detect scammer,selective or otherwise.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: plainsman1963 on August 29, 2013, 09:11 pm
Don't know about anybody else, but I see the default search for feedback set to "freshest" with the option of switching it to "weight" if you want.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: convergedlight on August 29, 2013, 09:46 pm
I haven't read this whole thread , but, a lot o folks , including myself, must be complaining about the feedback system on the vendors pages showing random feedback from who knows when. Why are they not in chronological order from newest to oldest like they used to be? That way we can keep up on what is currently going on with a vendor from the more recent buyers point of view.     WTF??

One more thing to add.  It is better now that they are chronological, but it is really awkward having the 5/5, 4/5, 3/5, 2/5, and 1/5 reviews all sorted in separate lists.  Now, while there is some value to being able to get a list of each number, for instance if you want to check all the 1/5 reviews without scrolling back many pages, I don't think this should be the default view.

The default view should be sorted chronologically first (ratings 1-5 mixed together in chronological order), and at the top of this list, it can say something like
[all]   [5]  [4]  [3]  [2]  [1]
which would be clickable links for which ratings to show.  [all] would be the default so you would see all the ratings regardless of number, and then if there were no low ratings recently it would not be on the first page, but this is reasonable because older low ratings may be not relevant anymore.  But, for a user that wanted to be safe, they can click on the 1 to doublecheck.  In fact, the links for the specific rating can have the number of ratings total in parenthesis, such as:
all(5847)  5(5800)   4(40)  3(0)  2(0)  1(7)
so that users won't waste their time checking the 1 ratings if there are none, for example.

Yup agree with this.
Best way to check the state of affairs of a vendor or to detect scammer,selective or otherwise.

Another idea to make it more visually clear what the ratings are, since it kind of blends together with these review boxes, is if the boxes were lightly tinted with a color corresponding to the rating, for instance:

5 -> green
4 -> yellow
3 -> orange
2 -> red
1 -> brown

A very light tint would be sufficient, but I think this would really make the ratings stand out and be easy to assess the vendor at a glance once the ratings are in a uniform list.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ~o~WaterWalker~o~ on August 29, 2013, 10:26 pm
right now it is best to go back to your internal sketch detector..  if it starts to beep, just move to the next one..  if you aint got that detector get out of the game :D

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: holamigo on August 29, 2013, 11:24 pm
It's a shame past feedback can't be edited.
What if you voluntarily FE'd for a trusted vendor. Usually they would ask you to put "Voluntary FE" in the feedback, and you would hope to be able to update that later with actual feedback when the deal was done.
At least maybe a 3 week window for edits anyway?
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 29, 2013, 11:41 pm
It's a shame past feedback can't be edited.
What if you voluntarily FE'd for a trusted vendor. Usually they would ask you to put "Voluntary FE" in the feedback, and you would hope to be able to update that later with actual feedback when the deal was done.
At least maybe a 3 week window for edits anyway?

voluntarily FE, then dont leave any feedback until you receive product.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Magic Man on August 29, 2013, 11:44 pm
Yes that is correct I believe you can choose to not leave feedback right away for those deals that require FE then upon arrival of the product you can leave feedback.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 30, 2013, 02:03 am
IM LIKING THE NEW UPDATES IT MAKES IT SIMPLE FOR THE NEWBIES MAKING THERE FIRST ORDER AND DONT KNOW WHO TO SHOP WIT

Is that sarcasm? How is it simpler for newbies? I have to work much harder to check out a vendor now.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Chewable on August 30, 2013, 02:09 am
The FEED back is GREAT! ...hell of a lot better than before..
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: maligan on August 30, 2013, 05:12 am
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on August 30, 2013, 05:42 am
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

Who conducted the survey?

I Love it.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: WhiteShark on August 30, 2013, 07:07 am
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

99% of statistics are made up

new system is great step in the right direction

But where the heck did the view feedback button go!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: plainsman1963 on August 30, 2013, 03:58 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

99% of statistics are made up

new system is great step in the right direction

But where the heck did the view feedback button go!
Click on account and then recent orders. Your feedback is there. ;)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: plainsman1963 on August 30, 2013, 04:01 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

Who conducted the survey?

I Love it.
The survey he is talking about is a poll in another thread. There are 3 negative choices and one positive one (and if you don't think the changes are "wonderful", that's not a choice for you). A total of 63 people have voted in that poll.

http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=207677.0

From that, this member has decided that 90% off all members are against the changes. New math. Go figure.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 30, 2013, 05:16 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

99% of statistics are made up

new system is great step in the right direction

But where the heck did the view feedback button go!
Click on account and then recent orders. Your feedback is there. ;)


SO GLAD IT"S THERE AGAIN NOW!!!!!!!

:)

Maybe we can get back to communication and response...knowledge is power

Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Chewable on August 31, 2013, 02:03 am
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

I think you meant to say "Vendors", not voters... ;D
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on August 31, 2013, 03:56 am
Maybe buyers can see their own feedback by clicking "Account" and then "Recent orders". That does not work for vendors anymore. They stripped out the feedback. (ruined it)

Also, the "Freshness" sort on my vendor page only shows transactions where the buyer left feedback. So, it appears I have very few recent sales. Very offputting to potential new buyers. Seeing all recent transactions is crucial to being able to check out a vendor. Please bring that functionality back soon, we need it badly.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on August 31, 2013, 08:39 am
Some sudden support for the new system I see...
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on August 31, 2013, 08:53 am
I don't like the odd rogue 1/5 from a scammer still being visible after months now....it used to drop away and not be relevant...
Now it serves as a put off..
Shame...
All feedback should drop after three months INMHO as only recent is key
Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: holamigo on August 31, 2013, 05:56 pm
It's a shame past feedback can't be edited.
What if you voluntarily FE'd for a trusted vendor. Usually they would ask you to put "Voluntary FE" in the feedback, and you would hope to be able to update that later with actual feedback when the deal was done.
At least maybe a 3 week window for edits anyway?

voluntarily FE, then dont leave any feedback until you receive product.

I know that, although thanks for the advice anyway. The thing is though, on both times I have FE'd (voluntary, and forced), they have asked that I put "FE" or "Voluntary FE" in the feedback as soon as I FE, to help them keep track of who has FE'd or something (sounds bit weird to me.. but that's what both vendors asked).
This was before the feedback overhaul though, except that one of them has crossed over into the new system while I was waiting for product, so I can't edit it now and I'm not totally happy with the product. Nevermind :)
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: evetSFree on September 01, 2013, 12:53 am
I would like to say to DPR a great BIG thank you for the new discussion page for each vendors listings.   I feel it is a great step ahead for the silk road.   
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NorCalKing on September 01, 2013, 03:32 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

Who conducted the survey?

I Love it.

We conducted the survey, & for justifiable reasons.  While we are all the for the benefits that it may have brought to the buyers side of the experience, it handicapped the vendors.  It stripped out a number of features that most vendors use to keep up on their business, & then many of the other features were not working.  It took away one of the single simple features to see at a glance if a vendor is handling his business by eleminating the (100) rating with the vendor's name, & it encouraged customers to give a vendor a 20% lower feedback rating for doing exactly was a 5/5 transaction a week before!  So if if vendor's are having a tough time with how they are able to conduct business, shit will flow down hill which is why so many (2/3) of the top vendors went stealth or vacation time.

This is just a glimpse of why that poll was put up & why.

Now that DPR has had a chance to watch & listen, he has made a number of small tweaks which have made some things better & some even palatable!  But when the system was rolled out, it was premature, with too many things now well thought out which handicapped most good vendors.
NCK
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DrCol on September 01, 2013, 04:03 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

Who conducted the survey?

I Love it.

We conducted the survey, & for justifiable reasons.  While we are all the for the benefits that it may have brought to the buyers side of the experience, it handicapped the vendors.  It stripped out a number of features that most vendors use to keep up on their business, & then many of the other features were not working.  It took away one of the single simple features to see at a glance if a vendor is handling his business by eleminating the (100) rating with the vendor's name, & it encouraged customers to give a vendor a 20% lower feedback rating for doing exactly was a 5/5 transaction a week before!  So if if vendor's are having a tough time with how they are able to conduct business, shit will flow down hill which is why so many (2/3) of the top vendors went stealth or vacation time.

This is just a glimpse of why that poll was put up & why.

Now that DPR has had a chance to watch & listen, he has made a number of small tweaks which have made some things better & some even palatable!  But when the system was rolled out, it was premature, with too many things now well thought out which handicapped most good vendors.
NCK

I have to wholeheartedly agree...and thanks for your work on this guys
Doc
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 01, 2013, 04:21 pm
Its really great ! It must be ! Thats probably why 90 % of SR voters dont want it......

Who conducted the survey?

I Love it.

We conducted the survey, & for justifiable reasons.  While we are all the for the benefits that it may have brought to the buyers side of the experience, it handicapped the vendors.  It stripped out a number of features that most vendors use to keep up on their business, & then many of the other features were not working.  It took away one of the single simple features to see at a glance if a vendor is handling his business by eleminating the (100) rating with the vendor's name, & it encouraged customers to give a vendor a 20% lower feedback rating for doing exactly was a 5/5 transaction a week before!  So if if vendor's are having a tough time with how they are able to conduct business, shit will flow down hill which is why so many (2/3) of the top vendors went stealth or vacation time.

This is just a glimpse of why that poll was put up & why.

Now that DPR has had a chance to watch & listen, he has made a number of small tweaks which have made some things better & some even palatable!  But when the system was rolled out, it was premature, with too many things now well thought out which handicapped most good vendors.
NCK
+1 to NCK for the great effort to educate people on this issue. I agree the Poll was set up in a biased way, but, I think an unbiased one would get very similar results. I don't think this update was good for buyers and bad for vendors as some seem to imply when dismissing vendor concerns.
There are great parts and ideas in the update. It just seems to me that it has problems which overshadow the good for both buyers and sellers so far. I have high hopes that we will get a lot of good from this effort in the long run. I just wish I did not feel so scared of the current dangers that I agree I should be going into stealth-mode while I wait for that great future day.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TrippyNation on September 01, 2013, 07:36 pm
I think this is the best idea.  Buyers never get good or bad feedback, and sellers post on the profile page "by ordering from me you agree not to leave anything but 5/5".  So Almost every vendor, even the ones that suck, have 100%.   I literally always have to leave 5/5 even though it was marked in transit when it wasn't, the vendor doesnt even read any messages, 3 days late, "but priority isnt gauranteed thats why we do it because it can take forever but you still must leave 5/5 and once u order dont even try to message me and think ill respond.   

Then they always end up in stealth mode, but they really wouldnt have to if they got to pick and choose who they would let order, and buyers would have access to more sellers as long as they dont ask for refunds half the time

Sounds like your talking about super selective scammer supertrips there, I wouldn't be surprised!

The answer is use long standing reputable vendors that treat there customers with respect and offer them good deals! Its not rocket science and you got remember alot of new vendors are here for the ££££/$$$$ alone. I don't come on the forums a lot due to just the sheer amount of retardedness on here and people that use our services know what were all about! And it ain't just for the dollar like most new comers. Do you think people who have been here 2+ years have not made there dollar? A lot of good vendors have gone over the time but the really good ones that care about there customers and have a higher goal than just monetary profit are here and serving to the highest standards!

At the end of the day its your choice/risk and ive been scammed by Supertrips (£600 on 100G Speed (ENPTY CASE AFTER FE)), TrippyNation(£1100 on 25G 2C-B (NEVER POSTED!)) & a few others over my time. ST is the biggest scammer on here and SR need to ban this fool. Its a shame idiots like him get to carry on scamming people. As for trippynation, Notice his 25G listing as dissapeared! You know why don't you, Cause my feedback exposed him!

You learn all this in time and its apart of this business but eventually we hope we can clean the scum out of this industry and have it with smart, reputable people that can move things forward instead of just been selfish pricks! We can all dream  :)

Peace & GL to all

P.S - Were buyer's as well as been a seller, Here are our stats without including other 'buying' accounts

1 month   3 months   1 year   all time
total transactions    6    20    47    95
total spent    £1,550.40    £3,847.90    £9,510.40    £17,962.00
total vendors    6    15    33    57
refund rate    0%    0%    0%    0%
auto-finalize rate    0%    5%    4%    5%

So as you can see..... we don't mess around. We also care about the small person as much as the big dude! Everyone's equal when it comes to dealing with us and we do our best to make this community a better thriving one. We welcome competition as it's all a win win situation and there enough business for everyone in this new world of free markets. This was another reason why we were so disappointed in TrippyNation, Shame really but he showed his true colors by the end.

people change there spots when it comes to the crunch, Be aware of imitators!

generalsalms quite your shit.  We still have your address if you want to cause any more shit. Remove this thread or we will take action.  You are a scam artist.  You want free drugs. ABUSE the refund system and and just want to make mega bucks from your 2cb caps whilst everyone loves our 2cb powder.  Just leave us alone and let us run business if you want to make loads of money go suck old mens dick.  I am sick of people like you ruining the community.  Ruining DPR's wonderful system and how everything runs.  You want to get ruined. How about we have a little chat to him.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CrazyBart on September 01, 2013, 08:02 pm
I think this is the best idea.  Buyers never get good or bad feedback, and sellers post on the profile page "by ordering from me you agree not to leave anything but 5/5".  So Almost every vendor, even the ones that suck, have 100%.   I literally always have to leave 5/5 even though it was marked in transit when it wasn't, the vendor doesnt even read any messages, 3 days late, "but priority isnt gauranteed thats why we do it because it can take forever but you still must leave 5/5 and once u order dont even try to message me and think ill respond.   

Then they always end up in stealth mode, but they really wouldnt have to if they got to pick and choose who they would let order, and buyers would have access to more sellers as long as they dont ask for refunds half the time

Sounds like your talking about super selective scammer supertrips there, I wouldn't be surprised!

The answer is use long standing reputable vendors that treat there customers with respect and offer them good deals! Its not rocket science and you got remember alot of new vendors are here for the ££££/$$$$ alone. I don't come on the forums a lot due to just the sheer amount of retardedness on here and people that use our services know what were all about! And it ain't just for the dollar like most new comers. Do you think people who have been here 2+ years have not made there dollar? A lot of good vendors have gone over the time but the really good ones that care about there customers and have a higher goal than just monetary profit are here and serving to the highest standards!

At the end of the day its your choice/risk and ive been scammed by Supertrips (£600 on 100G Speed (ENPTY CASE AFTER FE)), TrippyNation(£1100 on 25G 2C-B (NEVER POSTED!)) & a few others over my time. ST is the biggest scammer on here and SR need to ban this fool. Its a shame idiots like him get to carry on scamming people. As for trippynation, Notice his 25G listing as dissapeared! You know why don't you, Cause my feedback exposed him!

You learn all this in time and its apart of this business but eventually we hope we can clean the scum out of this industry and have it with smart, reputable people that can move things forward instead of just been selfish pricks! We can all dream  :)

Peace & GL to all

P.S - Were buyer's as well as been a seller, Here are our stats without including other 'buying' accounts

1 month   3 months   1 year   all time
total transactions    6    20    47    95
total spent    £1,550.40    £3,847.90    £9,510.40    £17,962.00
total vendors    6    15    33    57
refund rate    0%    0%    0%    0%
auto-finalize rate    0%    5%    4%    5%

So as you can see..... we don't mess around. We also care about the small person as much as the big dude! Everyone's equal when it comes to dealing with us and we do our best to make this community a better thriving one. We welcome competition as it's all a win win situation and there enough business for everyone in this new world of free markets. This was another reason why we were so disappointed in TrippyNation, Shame really but he showed his true colors by the end.

people change there spots when it comes to the crunch, Be aware of imitators!

generalsalms quite your shit.  We still have your address if you want to cause any more shit. Remove this thread or we will take action.  You are a scam artist.  You want free drugs. ABUSE the refund system and and just want to make mega bucks from your 2cb caps whilst everyone loves our 2cb powder.  Just leave us alone and let us run business if you want to make loads of money go suck old mens dick.  I am sick of people like you ruining the community.  Ruining DPR's wonderful system and how everything runs.  You want to get ruined. How about we have a little chat to him.

-1 to TrippyNation for saying he still has an address...and threatening to use it
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on September 01, 2013, 08:12 pm
grow the fuck up.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on September 01, 2013, 08:18 pm
I have never dealt with TrippyNation on here so I have no idea about the accusations made, but I think you just fucked yourself man.... threatening a customer with their address.... really, really not cool. I would highly recommend no one use this guy for fear of having sensitive info revealed. I believe generalmess was right when he said


You learn all this in time and its apart of this business but eventually we hope we can clean the scum out of this industry and have it with smart, reputable people that can move things forward instead of just been selfish pricks! We can all dream  :

I would recommend everyone steer clear of this guy. Threatening someone with the possibility of being locked in a cage, fuck you man.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NorCalKing on September 01, 2013, 10:42 pm
WOW!  Things can sure go sideways in a heartbeat!

NCK
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: DanDanTheIceCreamMan on September 01, 2013, 10:57 pm
I'm normally very nice. But there's something about a vendor that threatens people with their freedom that really gets my blood boiling. >:(
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Diceman on September 01, 2013, 11:31 pm
The new feedback system is going through growing pains, no doubt.  But you can't deny the usefulness regarding obvious FE scammers like KetamineOcean that just racked up 50+ "beware of scammer" feedbacks before his inevitable vendor demotion.  While I'm sure he got some newbie FE money, it was caught far sooner than under the old system.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 02, 2013, 12:11 am
The new feedback system is going through growing pains, no doubt.  But you can't deny the usefulness regarding obvious FE scammers like KetamineOcean that just racked up 50+ "beware of scammer" feedbacks before his inevitable vendor demotion.  While I'm sure he got some newbie FE money, it was caught far sooner than under the old system.
I don't know the facts. I really wonder if you do Diceman? To get 50 beware of scammer feedbacks under the new system would seem likely to take a really long time. So long, the scammer would be rich by then. I believe the old system was much faster on being able to leave negative feedback. The discussion page is a great new addition and is likely the place to see trouble with a vendor under the new system - since feedback is now glacially slow. I don't think this is just some kind of sarcastic humor, since I think I have seen other cheering for the new system from Diceman. If you are serious, please explain how the new feedback system helps catch FE-scammers faster.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Diceman on September 02, 2013, 12:48 am
The new feedback system is going through growing pains, no doubt.  But you can't deny the usefulness regarding obvious FE scammers like KetamineOcean that just racked up 50+ "beware of scammer" feedbacks before his inevitable vendor demotion.  While I'm sure he got some newbie FE money, it was caught far sooner than under the old system.
I don't know the facts. I really wonder if you do Diceman? To get 50 beware of scammer feedbacks under the new system would seem likely to take a really long time. So long, the scammer would be rich by then. I believe the old system was much faster on being able to leave negative feedback. The discussion page is a great new addition and is likely the place to see trouble with a vendor under the new system - since feedback is now glacially slow. I don't think this is just some kind of sarcastic humor, since I think I have seen other cheering for the new system from Diceman. If you are serious, please explain how the new feedback system helps catch FE-scammers faster.

Well, since you are calling me out, here is what I know:

- since there was alot of forum speculation of KetamineOcean being a similar FE scam as Planet Express (as well as speculation they are the same person), I had bookmarked his vendor page and looked at it when I was on SR (every 1-2 days).  If he turned out legit, I may have ordered as the prices were very good.

- the last I looked before he got banned, he had 46 messages of "vendor page dicuss" messages, at least 90% were scam warnings.  I extrapolate this to 50, I think it's a reasonable number since I don't log on every day.  If I took liberties there, my bad.

- since this was viewable on his main vendor page, it would be reasonable to assume it would have saved a number of buyers from being ripped off if they had done even a minimum of due diligence by reading the vendor page.

- I don't have a dog in this fight.  I am a small time buyer (5months, $2500, 0%, 0%).  The old system worked fine for me, and I expect the same going forward.

- My opinion is simply my opinion, just like any other.  FWIW, YMMV ect

cheers
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Libertas on September 02, 2013, 12:53 am
generalsalms quite your shit.  We still have your address if you want to cause any more shit. Remove this thread or we will take action.

Your vending privileges have hereby been revoked for keeping addresses and threatening a buyer. Not a wise decision, I'm sure you'll agree. Your kind are absolutely not welcome here.

Libertas
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TrippyNation on September 02, 2013, 01:07 am
Account now suspended... Thanks generalsalms.  You cant claim a 25 gram order has gone''MISSING'' and then claim a refund especially a UK-UK order.

We are not in the wrong.  For you to try and STEAL from us is wrong. You better message vendor support and tell them that you are messing with us because we are 100% innocent and you just sell our 2cb in capsules.  Just do the right thing and everyone will be happy.  I wtell you what.  If you get our account back on within 4 hours we will send you 5 grams of 2cb and some coke and 25i. Just sort all this shit out.  Its not fair!
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Kiwikiikii on September 02, 2013, 01:14 am
Account now suspended... Thanks generalsalms.  You cant claim a 25 gram order has gone''MISSING'' and then claim a refund especially a UK-UK order.

We are not in the wrong.  For you to try and STEAL from us is wrong. You better message vendor suppoprt and tell them that you are messing with us because we are 100% innocent and you just sell our 2cb in capsules.  Just do the right thing and everyone will be happy.  I wtell you what.  If you get our account back on within 4 hours we will send you 5 grams of 2cb and some coke and 25i. Just sort all this shit out.  Its not fair!

ur competition just pwned u.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CrazyBart on September 02, 2013, 01:15 am
Justice has been served!
Thanks Lib
I hope other vendors see this and make sure to get rid of all address' as soon as they are printed

Trippy, the fact that this guys' package went missing has nothing to do with your account being suspended. It is the fact that you are keeping addresses That is and always has been a big no-no
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Libertas on September 02, 2013, 01:22 am
Account now suspended... Thanks generalsalms.  You cant claim a 25 gram order has gone''MISSING'' and then claim a refund especially a UK-UK order.

We are not in the wrong.  For you to try and STEAL from us is wrong. You better message vendor support and tell them that you are messing with us because we are 100% innocent and you just sell our 2cb in capsules.  Just do the right thing and everyone will be happy.  I wtell you what.  If you get our account back on within 4 hours we will send you 5 grams of 2cb and some coke and 25i. Just sort all this shit out.  Its not fair!

You're blaming this on another person?! YOU just threatened a buyer whose address you had saved! Did you even read the Seller's Guide?!?! You are ENTIRELY in the wrong. Furthermore, you are not permitted to make sales without a vendor account (whether in return for BTC or favours such as getting an account reinstated).

Consider this your first and only warning; sales are not permitted on the forum, and advertising items for sale on the forums is not permitted without a vendor account. Any further attempts to make sales without a vendor account will result in your account, and any further accounts you set up for that purpose, being deleted.

Libertas
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TrippyNation on September 02, 2013, 01:28 am
I dont even have his address.

Its just a bribe to get him to leave me alone!!!!

Scan my whole computer there is nothing on there.

Just please reactivate my account.  I think the whole paying to get a vendor account again is just corrupt as I am a very loving and caring customer and when I get crap like that especially from a vendor I expect to be treated fairly.  Not be to be abused by the refund system.  I work with many vendors and we are friendly and trustworthy.  If we make a fake complaint about drugs not arriving this will create distrust.  Dishonesty and this will mean we will lose our connects.  We are not stupid.  We just want our account back please.  We buy a new hard drive every month and male sure everything is super stealth.  Just look at out reviews. Its not fair.  Please reactivate our account. Innocent hard workers should not be shot down.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: samesamebutdifferent on September 02, 2013, 01:45 am
I dont even have his address.

Its just a bribe to get him to leave me alone!!!!

Scan my whole computer there is nothing on there.

Just please reactivate my account.  I think the whole paying to get a vendor account again is just corrupt as I am a very loving and caring customer and when I get crap like that especially from a vendor I expect to be treated fairly.  Not be to be abused by the refund system.  I work with many vendors and we are friendly and trustworthy.  If we make a fake complaint about drugs not arriving this will create distrust.  Dishonesty and this will mean we will lose our connects.  We are not stupid.  We just want our account back please.  We buy a new hard drive every month and male sure everything is super stealth.  Just look at out reviews. Its not fair.  Please reactivate our account. Innocent hard workers should not be shot down.

You should have thought about that before posting threats on the forums regarding the saving of the buyers address. irrespective of what you allege the buyer may or may not have done that is actually irrelevant under the circumstances, if you cannot manage your business without resorting to making threats you have no business vending.

Your account will not be reinstated.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TrippyNation on September 02, 2013, 01:59 am
If someone can get my account reactivated I will send them 100 grams of 25I-Nbome.  I am really desperate to get my account running as more stock will be ready the beginning of the week.  I need to support a family and I am very desperate.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: Libertas on September 02, 2013, 02:14 am
If someone can get my account reactivated I will send them 100 grams of 25I-Nbome.  I am really desperate to get my account running as more stock will be ready the beginning of the week.  I need to support a family and I am very desperate.

Further to my message above (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=200309.msg1510162#msg1510162), your forum account has now been deleted for attempting to make sales without a vendor account having previously been warned of the consequences of doing so.

Libertas
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: CrazyBart on September 02, 2013, 02:17 am
TrippyNation done fucked up.  What an idiot
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 02, 2013, 02:25 am
The new feedback system is going through growing pains, no doubt.  But you can't deny the usefulness regarding obvious FE scammers like KetamineOcean that just racked up 50+ "beware of scammer" feedbacks before his inevitable vendor demotion.  While I'm sure he got some newbie FE money, it was caught far sooner than under the old system.
I don't know the facts. I really wonder if you do Diceman? To get 50 beware of scammer feedbacks under the new system would seem likely to take a really long time. So long, the scammer would be rich by then. I believe the old system was much faster on being able to leave negative feedback. The discussion page is a great new addition and is likely the place to see trouble with a vendor under the new system - since feedback is now glacially slow. I don't think this is just some kind of sarcastic humor, since I think I have seen other cheering for the new system from Diceman. If you are serious, please explain how the new feedback system helps catch FE-scammers faster.

Well, since you are calling me out, here is what I know:

- since there was alot of forum speculation of KetamineOcean being a similar FE scam as Planet Express (as well as speculation they are the same person), I had bookmarked his vendor page and looked at it when I was on SR (every 1-2 days).  If he turned out legit, I may have ordered as the prices were very good.

- the last I looked before he got banned, he had 46 messages of "vendor page dicuss" messages, at least 90% were scam warnings.  I extrapolate this to 50, I think it's a reasonable number since I don't log on every day.  If I took liberties there, my bad.

- since this was viewable on his main vendor page, it would be reasonable to assume it would have saved a number of buyers from being ripped off if they had done even a minimum of due diligence by reading the vendor page.

- I don't have a dog in this fight.  I am a small time buyer (5months, $2500, 0%, 0%).  The old system worked fine for me, and I expect the same going forward.

- My opinion is simply my opinion, just like any other.  FWIW, YMMV ect

cheers

Cheers to you as well :-)
I was not giving you a hard time over 50 vs 46. Discussion comments are not the same as "feedback" on a vendors page. You were apparently just referring to liking the new discussion page (rather than the new feedback system). I think almost everyone likes the discussion page. It is likely to be abused and troublesome at times, but I like it so far. Saying:
   "The new feedback system is going through growing pains, no doubt.  But you can't deny the usefulness regarding obvious FE scammers like KetamineOcean that just racked up 50+ "beware of scammer" feedbacks before his inevitable vendor demotion.  While I'm sure he got some newbie FE money, it was caught far sooner than under the old system.",
suggested you were referring to the "feedback system" that I think makes evaluating scammers more difficult. I actually tried to see if a vendor was legit today. No way to tell since most transactions appear to be hidden now. He had some nice feedbacks, but only a few. He had done some gambling game and it gave him a lot of transactions in the past. No way to tell if his account had current transactions. So, I did not order from him.
Sorry to get on you personally, I'm just sensitive about the real "feedback system" these days. I should have realized people who say it is great could easily be referring to something else.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: TLT13 on September 02, 2013, 08:56 am
I dont even have his address.

Its just a bribe to get him to leave me alone!!!!

Scan my whole computer there is nothing on there.

Just please reactivate my account.  I think the whole paying to get a vendor account again is just corrupt as I am a very loving and caring customer and when I get crap like that especially from a vendor I expect to be treated fairly.  Not be to be abused by the refund system.  I work with many vendors and we are friendly and trustworthy.  If we make a fake complaint about drugs not arriving this will create distrust.  Dishonesty and this will mean we will lose our connects.  We are not stupid.  We just want our account back please.  We buy a new hard drive every month and male sure everything is super stealth.  Just look at out reviews. Its not fair.  Please reactivate our account. Innocent hard workers should not be shot down.

You should have thought about that before posting threats on the forums regarding the saving of the buyers address. irrespective of what you allege the buyer may or may not have done that is actually irrelevant under the circumstances, if you cannot manage your business without resorting to making threats you have no business vending.

Your account will not be reinstated.

Thanks for this. Keep running a tight ship guys, SR will only grow if you keep up the customer service.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GUS on September 02, 2013, 10:09 pm
If someone can get my account reactivated I will send them 100 grams of 25I-Nbome.  I am really desperate to get my account running as more stock will be ready the beginning of the week.  I need to support a family and I am very desperate.

Further to my message above (http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=200309.msg1510162#msg1510162), your forum account has now been deleted for attempting to make sales without a vendor account having previously been warned of the consequences of doing so.

Libertas

And these are the days of our lives.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: ChemCat on September 02, 2013, 10:28 pm
Like Sands through the Hour Glass
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: electriccrazyman on September 14, 2013, 09:42 pm
I think the new rating system is fine except for one thing - if I choose not to leave feedback I should be able to leave feedback later. The way it is now forces me to choose between finalizing as quickly as I can versus providing a rating after I have had a chance to try the product.

When I receive the package I finalize. Period. If I don't like the product or it is light I will work with the vendor to resolve it. My primary reaction to bad vendors is that they go on my private blacklist - I don't buy from them anymore. I would, in the past, change my ratings based on the interactions with the vendor as well as to provide updates on the quality of the product which I often haven't tried before I finalize.

So I just made my first order under the new rating system and I said "Don't rate" thinking I could go back and provide a rating when I tried the product. But I couldn't. The two vendors probably deserve 5's due to their incredibly fast service but until I had a chance to examine the products I didn't want to do that.

But my issue is that I want to finalize so they get their money. The way the rating system works now forces me not to finalize quickly in order to be in able to provide a review based on facts.

I don't think this is good for vendors. And I don't like not leaving reviews in order to finalize ASAP.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: pzvTVzD6OL on September 15, 2013, 12:59 am
I think you don't fully understand how the new system works electriccrazyman.
If you wanted to wait before rating/leaving feedback, well you just had to do so.

Once you click finalize, vendors get their coins, and after that you have all the time you want to leave a rating or a feedback.
The "I don't want to rate this seller" is here precisely for what it says, which is if you don't want to rate the seller, be it now or later.

Also on this issue the following quote from the orders page is quite clear I believe :
Quote
* DO NOT leave a rating if you are still waiting on your order!
** All ratings are final. Do not leave a rating expecting to change it later. Make every attempt you can to resolve problems with your vendor before rating.
*** Click here for more information : http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/wiki/index.php?title=Ratings_%26_Reviews

Hope this helps :)
Title: Re: feedback system fail
Post by: Righteous on September 15, 2013, 03:21 am
i'm very peeved that customers can't update their feedback anymore. this is nonsense. i've been several hundred user's first vendor on SR, and so believe me when i say that people accidentally put negative ratings not realizing how the system works. this also takes away incentive for fixing issues. if someone leaves a 1/5 because of USPS's mistake, it's going to stay a 1/5 even if i reship it for them. not fair.

how many customers are really going to wait another five days or so before announcing their frustration anyways? if a customer wants to leave a temporary feedback about how their order's progress is going, i think that's fine. the previous feedback system has worked great for this for thousands of orders. now i foresee my 11 negative feedbacks over the past 8 months probably doubling or tippling in number within the next 2 months because of USPS fuck-ups.

also as a buyer, i don't order things when i'm ready to use them. i order them way in advance. so why should the vendor be withheld from my positive feedback in the meantime? i should be able to announce successful arrival, and then later announce how much i liked the product.

i'm also not excited about the idea of buyer's feedback being anonymous. i should have the ability to know who leaves me negative feedback. some new customers are under the impression that their negative feedback shows up in my inbox. one customer even got irate with me when i told him that he never msged me about his problem. BTW thank you DPR for giving us the recent orders page back.

i want the feedback system to go back to exactly how it was a month ago.

as for improvements to the feedback system, i'm sure that all of the veteran vendors would agree with me on these:

1) let my buyers update their feedback.

2) if i issue someone a full refund at my own expense there better be no way in hell that they have the ability to leave me negative feedback.

3) i need to ability to leave my own comment about someone's negative feedback.

4) i would love to have the ability to challenge negative feedback and have it removed from my profile if the user disappears and never even gives me a chance to address the issue. many people people won't respond to my msgs and i'm assuming most of them are accounts that got hijacked, they forgot their password, they changed their username, or they're just not even a part of the SR community anymore.

5) i like FuzzzyYak's idea to have a private Trusted list. i would love to reserve special deals for users that already have an established reputation with me. or better yet, i would love to have a higher price for newcomers, and have a series of tiers that customers can earn their way into to get better prices.

6) correct me if i'm wrong, but there needs to be a way to see how many disputes with reships a user has initiated.

as for the new 4/5 feedback standard... i don't care what it says when they click on the 4/5 option, i'm still going to warn every user that i'm going to sever my business relationship with them if they leave anything less then a 5/5.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on September 15, 2013, 04:45 am
as for the new 4/5 feedback standard... i don't care what it says when they click on the 4/5 option, i'm still going to warn every user that i'm going to sever my business relationship with them if they leave anything less then a 5/5.

Every time I see someone posting a variation of this, it makes me more convinced I'm going to stop leaving feedback on principle.  If your order process/item is less than superb, I don't see why I should have to be subject to duress and be forced to participate in your fraudulent marketing - because it is fraud if people are forced to lie about how good you are just so they can keep ordering from you.

Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 15, 2013, 04:52 am
as for the new 4/5 feedback standard... i don't care what it says when they click on the 4/5 option, i'm still going to warn every user that i'm going to sever my business relationship with them if they leave anything less then a 5/5.

Every time I see someone posting a variation of this, it makes me more convinced I'm going to stop leaving feedback on principle.  If your order process/item is less than superb, I don't see why I should have to be subject to duress and be forced to participate in your fraudulent marketing - because it is fraud if people are forced to lie about how good you are just so they can keep ordering from you.
If my service is a little less than superb, I might deserve a 4.8 of 5. In this situation, a 4 of 5 is also a lie and a buyers only option when trying to show a vendor was not perfect. So, If I deserve a 4.8+ and I get a 4, I don't want a buyer that fell for the "4= solid, would recommend" trick having a chance to keep "lieing" about my service because they thought they were supposed to.
I support any buyers right to not leave feedback and wonder if any vendors are saying you have to rate them. I think they are all saying don't give a 4 or lower if you want to keep shopping there.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: abby on September 15, 2013, 05:11 am
as for the new 4/5 feedback standard... i don't care what it says when they click on the 4/5 option, i'm still going to warn every user that i'm going to sever my business relationship with them if they leave anything less then a 5/5.

Every time I see someone posting a variation of this, it makes me more convinced I'm going to stop leaving feedback on principle.  If your order process/item is less than superb, I don't see why I should have to be subject to duress and be forced to participate in your fraudulent marketing - because it is fraud if people are forced to lie about how good you are just so they can keep ordering from you.
If my service is a little less than superb, I might deserve a 4.8 of 5. In this situation, a 4 of 5 is also a lie and a buyers only option when trying to show a vendor was not perfect. So, If I deserve a 4.8+ and I get a 4, I don't want a buyer that fell for the "4= solid, would recommend" trick having a chance to keep "lieing" about my service because they thought they were supposed to.
I support any buyers right to not leave feedback and wonder if any vendors are saying you have to rate them. I think they are all saying don't give a 4 or lower if you want to keep shopping there.

If 4 means a "solid" vendor, why wouldn't you shop from them? A 4 rating is much more honest on the whole than a vendor who has a perfect 5 record, particularly since many vendors have made it clear that anything less than 5 will incur penalties - from vendor blacklisting to them telling other vendors to blacklist. Which means a 5 is tainted.

I don't particularly want to get into an argument here as ratings seem to be a major sticking point between buyers and sellers and this latest round of changes doesn't seem to have made ratings any more useful to buyers but I will point out that you do not "deserve" any rating - you *earn* your rating and feedback through the quality of the sale process and the goods.

The attitude that buyers should be grateful that they got their drugs (or their money back) and should give top marks because of it, no matter what the quality of the service, shipping and drugs themselves, is not helpful to anyone.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 15, 2013, 06:04 am
If 4 means a "solid" vendor, why wouldn't you shop from them? A 4 rating is much more honest on the whole than a vendor who has a perfect 5 record, particularly since many vendors have made it clear that anything less than 5 will incur penalties - from vendor blacklisting to them telling other vendors to blacklist. Which means a 5 is tainted...
...
The attitude that buyers should be grateful that they got t1heir drugs (or their money back) and should give top marks because of it, no matter what the quality of the service, shipping and drugs themselves, is not helpful to anyone.
A 4 does not really mean "solid, would recommend". That's a trick SR is using to lower the perfect 5/5 vendor's scores. If A vendor had a (4.0) after their name, I would avoid them bigtime. I bet you would also, even if you don't realize it yet. I agree 5.0 is tainted. It is guaranteed to be tainted by having a 4 be the only other option for buyers near a 5.
Buyers should be grateful if we can get illegal drugs delivered or pay a refund when we can't. I am assuming great service and doing it all correctly at my end. If I blow it somehow, I would not have an attitude that they should be grateful about it. I do hear where you are coming from and agree with much of your sentiments.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: james frazer on September 15, 2013, 06:24 am
If 4 means a "solid" vendor, why wouldn't you shop from them? A 4 rating is much more honest on the whole than a vendor who has a perfect 5 record, particularly since many vendors have made it clear that anything less than 5 will incur penalties - from vendor blacklisting to them telling other vendors to blacklist.

If A vendor had a (4.0) after their name, I would avoid them bigtime. I bet you would also, even if you don't realize it yet.

Not necessarily. The pressure on buyers to give 5/5 is so great that it detracts from its value.

When I look at reviews, I am less interested in the 5/5 ratings than knowing the likely worst case scenario. I want to see what happened when something went wrong, and how the vendor handled it. For example, if vendors get 3/5 or 4/5 because the product took longer than expected, then if I am not in a hurry it's not a problem for me. Again, if a lower rating is given just because that product is not exactly as described (eg colour or crystal size), this is unlikely to affect my decision as to whether to buy. With the new feedback system it is the discussion feature which I turn to first, and then the forum posts.

I don't expect vendors to be perfect, but neither do I expect buyers' ratings and reviews to be 100% accurate.

Since the new feedback system came in I have not given any ratings yet because it is not possible for me to relay feedback on product quality for a month or so. (Note the word "relay".) Fortunately the discussion feature does allow me to comment on delivery stealth and packaging. For the record all the ratings I have given have been 5/5, and I am grateful for the excellent service my SR vendors have provided. However faced with an option to leave 5/5 or else be banned from using that  vendor again, I would buy from another vendor or do without.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: GotGas on September 16, 2013, 08:26 am
Under the new feedback system, a rating can drop dramatically. For example just one rating of 3/5 could pull a perfect 5 down below 4 easily.

I think it's time users perception of good vendors changed as although a perfect 5 is good, a 4/5 could still indicate an excellent vendor.

Just be wary of the 1/5 or 2/5 vendor. This is the benefit of the new system. With the old feedback, buyers had to actually read through pretty much ALL the feedback to get a good picture of them as even a 97-98 could have signifcant issues.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: NW Nugz on September 16, 2013, 01:31 pm
I think it's time users perception of good vendors changed as although a perfect 5 is good, a 4/5 could still indicate an excellent vendor
I understand that's the theory of the update. Sadly, I think the scale is too coarse and the math too volitile to be able to tell good vendors from bad using the rating number. I also think it is getting worse over time rather than leveling out. I have been wrong before though, so, I hope I am now if we have to "get used" to this seemingly broken system.
Title: Why ?
Post by: maligan on September 17, 2013, 08:30 pm
It is not logical to hold onto something just because its " new " ........

maligan
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: convergedlight on September 17, 2013, 09:15 pm
I think it's time users perception of good vendors changed as although a perfect 5 is good, a 4/5 could still indicate an excellent vendor
I understand that's the theory of the update. Sadly, I think the scale is too coarse and the math too volitile to be able to tell good vendors from bad using the rating number. I also think it is getting worse over time rather than leveling out. I have been wrong before though, so, I hope I am now if we have to "get used" to this seemingly broken system.

I think the main problem is people's opinions are too subjectively different to work well with a scale that has 4 as default and 5 basically extra credit.  When 100% or 5 was the default, it was easy for people to agree that if there were no real problems with the transaction and the product was good to give a full score.  With 4 as the default, people will have a different perception of what level of 'above and beyond vending' will earn a 5 and this 'extra credit', if it is given too lightly, could counteract lower scores of 3 which indicate actual problems but which might no longer bring the number under the default of '4 - solid, would recommend' rating.  This assumes people even want to work with the new system and have a 4 as default.  It's obvious many vendors are still insisting 5 as a default score and any buyer looking out for his or her own best interests may keep giving a 5 if there are no problems in order to keep on good terms with the vendors.  So, this lessens the accuracy even more of the already subjectively flawed ratings.
Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: holamigo on September 17, 2013, 11:18 pm
We need eBay style category-specific ratings, e.g. 1 -5 stars for comms, 1 - 5 stars for speed of delivery, 1- 5 stars for packaging, 1 - 5 stars for product.

That way, a buyer would feel no guilt in giving a 4/5 for comms, because they gave a 5/5 in all the other categories. To the buyer it feels like giving genuine feedback and helping the seller to be even better, while giving praise at the same time.

It would be important to not make the mistake of presenting and combining the above into an overall single-number score though, as that would completely undo the core principle of the system. Just average out everybody's ratings in each category and display the average star-ratings for each category (including half-lit stars so that the overall average for each category is on a 1 - 10 scale).
Title: Last feedback?
Post by: maligan on September 18, 2013, 08:10 am
In many cases I dont even know if buyer left feedback or not simply because I have no idea where the feedback is hiding . " Freshness " make no sense to me.
Anyway ...I guess I have to go back to school to be able to figure out those math equations we have been given....:)

Good luck to you all 

Title: Done !
Post by: maligan on September 18, 2013, 04:48 pm
It happened to me 2 !

I found out ( as a vendor )  by mistake that a buyer gave me a 4 by mistake...

Mistakes from both sides.....

This new feedback system is a mistake too....

Guys !

Is it really that  hard to except the fact that this new feedback system is a total failure ?
Title: Re: Done !
Post by: holamigo on September 18, 2013, 06:10 pm
It happened to me 2 !

I found out ( as a vendor )  by mistake that a buyer gave me a 4 by mistake...

Mistakes from both sides.....

This new feedback system is a mistake too....

Guys !

Is it really that  hard to except the fact that this new feedback system is a total failure ?

4 out of 5 is VERY GOOD!! Jesus..

Surely you guys can accept that it's OK and normal to not always get a total 100% in every single area every single time? It's good to have the incentive to want to do even better... that competitive drive... If all of the non-scamming vendors have 5.0 then there's no competition for excellence is there. I may be rambling again, sorry.

Like I said last night, I personally feel that a separate-category rating system would allow for a variance in feedback score without causing any upset.
Title: Re: Done !
Post by: Jack N Hoff on September 18, 2013, 06:46 pm
It happened to me 2 !

I found out ( as a vendor )  by mistake that a buyer gave me a 4 by mistake...

Mistakes from both sides.....

This new feedback system is a mistake too....

Guys !

Is it really that  hard to except the fact that this new feedback system is a total failure ?

4 out of 5 is VERY GOOD!! Jesus..

Surely you guys can accept that it's OK and normal to not always get a total 100% in every single area every single time? It's good to have the incentive to want to do even better... that competitive drive... If all of the non-scamming vendors have 5.0 then there's no competition for excellence is there. I may be rambling again, sorry.

Like I said last night, I personally feel that a separate-category rating system would allow for a variance in feedback score without causing any upset.

I have had a few customers give me 4/5 by mistake.  You need to understand that for a newer vendor like me that does not already have 1,000s of 5/5s from before this new system that it will really ding my average rating unlike an older vendor who can receive a dozen multi thousand dollar 1/5s without it even affecting their rating.  It is not an even playing field out here.  It's broken.
Title: Read it carefully !
Post by: maligan on September 18, 2013, 07:44 pm
I repeat my self  !
He gave me 4 by mistake and I did not even know about it till I found it accidentally ! 

This new feedback system with its math equations is .......well .sorry to say  but its nothing but a """".......

All we have is anger and confusion from the day it was born !

Why cant we vendors just simply vote :   NEW or OLD

I would bet a  coin or 2 on the failure of the new one !

Best regards

maligan



Title: Re: feedback system overhaul
Post by: holamigo on September 18, 2013, 08:08 pm
OK how about this idea:

DPR re-winds to before the feedback system change, and freezes those scores that vendors had then and displays that as the seller's "Legacy Feedback Score:"
Each seller also has a second feedback rating - their score from feedback under the new scheme - their "New Feedback System Score:"

Then it's a level playing field going forwards, and no one feels their old hard earned feedback is being wiped out.
Title: Re: Last feedback?
Post by: holamigo on September 18, 2013, 08:10 pm
In many cases I dont even know if buyer left feedback or not simply because I have no idea where the feedback is hiding . " Freshness " make no sense to me.
Anyway ...I guess I have to go back to school to be able to figure out those math equations we have been given....:)

Good luck to you all

Freshness means "newest first", but of course a buyer might wait a long time after finalizing the order before actually leaving the feedback.
Title: Whatever :)
Post by: maligan on September 18, 2013, 11:26 pm
Never mind.......I guess I just have to get used to it somehow...... I just found 2 more ratings below 5  :(
I am  100 % sure that those 2 were given by mistake too.....How do I know ?

No one gives 1/5 while going into details how much he loved my product.....

Anyway ....I am sure this new feedback system is here to stay ..(with its funny math equations :)...we like it or not


Best of luck  to you all to clean up the mess you might have