What do you guys like/dislike about the current system?

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Positive, Neutral, Negative.

Thanks,
Jazaray

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It may be useful in someways, but a lot of people get burned when some random idiots decide since they are unhappy they'll came back and switch numbers from 5s to 1s.

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Originally posted by Mr.C:
Like eBay's feedback system.

Positive, Neutral, Negative.

Simple and easy to understand. Everybody just gives 5's anyway for a successful trade.

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This 'grade inflation' is something the Navy evaluation system contends with in cycles, where the tendency is to push everyone up just a little bit. Over time there are no more average Sailors, everyone is at least a 4 out of 5.

I tried to do that here on MOTL, giving a '4' for a perfectly satisfactory trade and reserving '5' for truly exceptional deals. As you may have guessed people became very angry and wanted to know why I was punishing them with a 'low ref'.

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Originally posted by Jazaray:
Personally, I think that references should be mandatory. That way you get a REAL sense of the trader, instead of whom s/he wants you to see.

Thanks,
Jazaray

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Originally posted by Mr.C:
Like eBay's feedback system.

Positive, Neutral, Negative.

Simple and easy to understand. Everybody just gives 5's anyway for a successful trade.

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Originally posted by junichi:
Would be great if we can get more than 1 reference from the same member. I tend to trade with/buy from people who I've dealt with previously, and my reference total only represents 1/3 of my total transactions.

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Originally posted by AGO:
All the above wrapped into one

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My idea is to take all the ideas and mix them together to design a system to replace the current one.

Great ideas so far. But, I'm still looking for more...

- The references should be alphabetized, and be able to be filtered by date, value and type of trade (sale, buy, trade).
- Multiple deals with the same person should be notated, but not considered unique. That way it’s seen, but not inflating things to ensure no shady business is going on.

What about a more… intricate revision, though?

For instance…

You have a new type of ‘message’ you enter into, which is essentially a trade confirmation screen once you’ve worked out the details via PM / Email. You both fill in your portions and when it is submitted by both parties, it is logged as a trade and recorded. It would operate almost like MTGO. This would eliminate any possibility of lost PM’s, Emails, or as we’ve seen recently – photoshop emails because both parties would agree to the final details, in detail, in writing – no room for bs thereafter. Anything not found within this confirmation would not be within MOTL’s jurisdiction for BTA, etc. When both members confirmed receipt, the trade would then be catalogued within the references so you could see exactly what the trade is. Then, when a member attempts to file a BTA, they would simply select the record of the trade (which was logged as mentioned above) and it would be auto-populated with the details of the trade in a completely uniform way to be easily and efficiently handled. The only thing to be typed is the BTA complaint. Members would not be able to even create a BTA if the time from the confirmation and the day’s date were not the 30 days necessary before you’re allowed to do so.

I assume this could be built on quite nicely from my initial idea by the rest of the community here.

To get a ref, you send a link that shows the proposed trade; you get a window for what you want, a window for what you're offering and a little check box for sending first, sending second, third party trade (with a box for the name of the 3rd party) plus an international check box. The other side confirms it.

Every week for a month (every two weeks for a month if international), one side gets a message asking if the package arrived. After which a message asking if this needs to BTA'd is sent. No more messages after that.

Once both parties confirm that they have received, the reference is posted in their refs. In viewing references, you get the standard >5, 5-25, 26-50, 100-200, 200+ for the trade (though no one but mods and the people involved can see what was actually traded) and you see if they sent first, second or was a third party.

edit: I'd also like to see references be tied to other parts of the site as well.

like you'd need 0 references to trade with others, but 50 to sell/buy things.

Other then that, I'd certainly like some sort of confirmation of trade done via MOTL w/ references being required. There are certainly some bad references I'd have left but surprisingly I never received a ref check.

The only thing I have to really add is that I don't see the need for non-MOTL references (i.e., refs from e-mail addresses that aren't attached to a MOTL account).

// Further explanation below, but nothing new //

Refs are more or less just a proxy for a person's established trustworthiness regarding trading on this site.

To get more accurate information, references should be mandatory in some fashion. Only having the 5s in the trades where nothing went wrong doesn't work. When you look at eBay feedback, even people like kidicarus have some negatives just by virtue of the number of deals they complete. That doesn't mean he's a bad seller, but maybe (a) he just dealt with a terrible buyer or (b) he made a mistake out of the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of deals he's made in his eBay life, like any human would probably do at some point. But it's still an accurate reflection.

Multiple references from the same person should be noted, but not necessarily counted as unique. Trading with one person or a few people over and over doesn't necessarily make you more trustworthy as to the entire rest of the community. Just think about all the clique-ish people you know (or knew) in real life. They're great to the people in their little group, but not always necessarily great to the people outside of it.

Ability to sort doesn't bother me much, but it helps people--especially ones that generally have to send first--figure out if the person they're trading with have been active in recent times, if they're suddenly making a $1,000 deal when all of their other deals have been $5-20, and other yellow flags that they might need to be a little more careful.

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Originally posted by JayC:

You have a new type of ‘message’ you enter into, which is essentially a trade confirmation screen once you’ve worked out the details via PM / Email. You both fill in your portions and when it is submitted by both parties, it is logged as a trade and recorded. It would operate almost like MTGO. This would eliminate any possibility of lost PM’s, Emails, or as we’ve seen recently – photoshop emails because both parties would agree to the final details, in detail, in writing – no room for bs thereafter. Anything not found within this confirmation would not be within MOTL’s jurisdiction for BTA, etc. When both members confirmed receipt, the trade would then be catalogued within the references so you could see exactly what the trade is. Then, when a member attempts to file a BTA, they would simply select the record of the trade (which was logged as mentioned above) and it would be auto-populated with the details of the trade in a completely uniform way to be easily and efficiently handled. The only thing to be typed is the BTA complaint. Members would not be able to even create a BTA if the time from the confirmation and the day’s date were not the 30 days necessary before you’re allowed to do so.

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I wanted to suggest exactly this. Whatever else happens, this would go a long way towards fixing some of the problems we encounter. It would also make it possible to enforce the no-trading-while-there's-a-BTA-case-against-you rule, since the system could just refuse to confirm the trade (with an appropriate error message) if there's an outstanding case.

Hell, in an ideal world, you could make the form such that you have to input name/address/email information, and it's automatically checked against the CBT/BTA databases and subject headings.

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Originally posted by Bagbokk:
Multiple references from the same person should be noted, but not necessarily counted as unique. Trading with one person or a few people over and over doesn't necessarily make you more trustworthy as to the entire rest of the community. Just think about all the clique-ish people you know (or knew) in real life. They're great to the people in their little group, but not always necessarily great to the people outside of it.

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I agree with this. You shouldn't be able to get more than one ref from each individual. It sounds like a good idea to keep track of amount of deals between members, but it shouldn't be a unique ref. For instance, when you apply for a job, you only get a single reference from each source no matter how many awesome things you did.

But it would be awesome to be able to track how many deals you did with each ref. Kinda like a job description to go with your ref.

Is it possible to note who received/sent first in each ref and deal? And to note if tracking was used or not? It'll be very useful to me if it could be noted how many trades I've done where I:
1. Received first
2. No tracking was used
3. Honored my end of the deal

In my opinion, having those type of refs are worth the most.

I'm sure we all have noticed those MOTL members who essentially buy refs with ~$1-5 trades and build up into a ~50 ref acct (there are some +100 accts like this), and then start receiving first b/c of ref rule. It's stupid to be able to brag about refs, when most of them should be noted as non-worthy refs. The ideal ref system should be able to allow users to pick out the best MOTL'ers.

If a dude with 50 refs to his acct is trying to sell cards and the only deals he did was buying from MOTL'ers like thaGunslinga, his refs are worthless to me.

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Originally posted by LemonMeringue:
Filling out a reference request is what confirms the trade.

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I like this a lot.

I made a couple trades on a baseball card forum, and their system was like this. It made you fill out the details of the trade, have both parties accept it, and then you both confirmed that you received. I thought it was very helpful.

On a side note, if we could review trades that have been made by our potential trade partners, there's a possibility it could force deals to be more fair overall, because no one wants to be known as a ripoff artist. Might make some people quit making such ridiculous trade offers, as well. I can hope, right?

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Originally posted by MasterWolf:
You could also not let people post on MOTL if they have outstanding ref requests. Then they'd get filled immediately.

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That might be a little extreme.

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Originally posted by BoltBait:
That might be a little extreme.

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