Scamming Subforum Closed

[711]

While Mindbuster and I come up with a workable solution for managing the Scamming subforum, it has been temporaily removed.

The problem is that such a forum makes it much too easy for one member to run a smear campaign against another member, often without proof of wrongdoing. Presumably the purpose for this is to appeal to the EF commmunity to make a judgement, or to inform other members to beware. The problem with this approach is that there are always two sides to every story, and one side will always present the story in a manner that is favorable for one's own "case". It is unrealistic, then, to expect the court of public opinion (other EF members) to make a fair and unbiased judgement, since this "court" rarely ever has enough information.

Another problem is that the scamming forum demands an inordinate amount of attention from the moderators, who are already very busy. Their valuable time should not be spent settling flame wars, scandals and pissing matches. If it is, the rest of the forum suffers.

The general rule on EntropiaForum is that such issues should be worked out via PM, or through the filing of a support case with Mindark. The purpose of this forum is not to discuss such private matters in public.

Rule # 13
Personal issues between individuals or within a society should NOT be debated in the public forum areas. Such threads will be removed, since they often promote an escalation of rudeness, insults, and flaming. There are always multiple sides to a story, and airing the issues in a thread invites other forum members to become third-party subjective judges regarding issues of which they have no first-hand knowledge. Too often, this results in problems not only to the individuals, but to entire EU societies and the EU and EF communities as a whole.

At the same time, we understand that reporting certain common scam tactics on this forum helps other members avoid becoming victims. We are trying to find a compromise that is in the best interest of EF as a whole.

The scamming section on EF has so far caused more arguments and division of the EF community than it has done good, in mine and Mindbuster's opinion. We are considering creating instead a special section that outlines the more common scam tactics, so that newer players can learn what to avoid (such as the armor upgrade scam, etc.). An announcement will be made once MB and I come to a final decision on the bast way to handle this issue.

Please do not post threads that were formerly permitted in the scamming section, such as accusing an individual of wrongdoing. The first step should always be filing a support case.


All of the old threads are still in the database, so if it is decided to reinstate the old scamming forum, nothing will be lost.

Thanks for your cooperation.

[Draggger]

good call on this

[stevel]

Seems everything is censored now, what is the definition of a forum I wonder!

[Jimmy B]

Think that's a good plan. There's value in people being able to post about types of scams they've witnessed so that people are aware of the dangers. But naming and shaming here is pointless and problematic imo:

(i) Possibility of false accusations,
(ii) Should be dealt with via MA not EF,
(iii) Is of no use to people unless they are planning on memorising the names of all the supposed scammers,
(iv) Only causes arguments,
(v) Just warns scammers that people are on to them, whereupon they can close down their old avatar and restart with a new unknown avatar.

[Draggger]

great points Jimmy

[EyeContact]

It's not closed; it's completely removed if I'm not mistaking

While working toward a solution, just disabled creating new posts in that section, but keep the existing threads readable.

If you don't, then now is the time for former soc-scammers to get into new socs again because noone can check their history

[EyeContact]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

(iii) Is of no use to people unless they are planning on memorising the names of all the supposed scammers,

You never run a check on someone by searching for usernames on this forum before trading or allowing them to soc?

[Sionkiewicz]

Originally Posted by stevel

Seems everything is censored now, what is the definition of a forum I wonder!

I think this is a great idea. Freedom of speech should not be a means to defamation of character. If the person did the crime then proof is needed. I'm glad that 711 and Mindbuster have recognised this and are working to put a system in place to report scammers with the needed safeguards to protect the innocent. Sorry if you view this as censorship. I view it as due diligence.

[The Nightbird]

In my opinion, a good compromise would be to disallow the naming of a scammer to prevent smear campaigns. Scam tactics and screenies can be posted but names cannot be mentioned and must be removed from the pictures posted.

[Centech]

Naming names is almost always pointless anyway. 99% of the time it's a fake account that probably doesn't exist any more by the time someone posts here. The other 1% of the time when it's a known avatar the post will just start a war of people arguing whether or not the person is really a scammer.

What if the forum was only for posting about the MO of scammers and how specific scams work. This is the actual information that is useful for noobs that want to make sure they don't get scammed.