Trading Forum Post

Just when I thought you couldn't be a bigger moron, you always prove me wrong. Stop putting on a show for everyone else, you know you guys got caught on that keep auction. I don't care who you bought it from. You were caught trying to screw JohnM. Game Over.

Oh well.

@RavenMagi I think what would be of a benefit to the trade forums would be to have a designated forum moderator just for that sub forum. It's the busiest of all of them and we currently only have 4 moderators.

I think there should be a "see something - say something" approach and guidelines for trade forum activity but it should be done via the report button only.

If you think something is suspect report it and let the trade forum moderator look into it and act if necessary.

What we currently have is too much like martial law with people being accused by other players of shadiness who then take it upon themselves to act accordingly in a self involved way that potentially benefits their sole agenda.

It's not helpful. And it makes everyone look like morons. Myself included. I've got better things to do then defend myself against people who by their own admission rarely come on the forums or even play here any more but when they do, only do so to fling shit.

I think temporary bans to the trade forum subsection should be handed out and you're given a strike.

24 hours for your first offence (1st strike)
48 hours for your second offence (2nd Strike)
1 week for your third offence (3rd Strike)
1 month for your final offence and after that you shouldn't be allowed to engage in the trade forum. (4the strike)

I think strikes should decay at double the time the ban lasts. For example after your first offence and 24 hour ban, you have 1 strike. If after the 24 hours you come back and goof again - that's the second strike and a 48 hour ban.

This would mean that a permanent ban from the trade forum would be highly unlikely but not impossible to achieve.

Bans and strikes should be handed out for the following offences:

Trash talk in an auction (we have a sub forum for that)

Posting of anything unrelated to the auction if OP has requested a bid only auction.

Shill bidding (that's been reported and confirmed by a moderator only)

Use of an alternate account.

Attempting to sell your own items in someone else's thread.

Being Air.

I'm not saying any of these ideas are perfect, I'm sure my concepts got more holes then Swiss cheese, but I'm trying.

Because I want this place to be even more dope than it already is.

What a waste of time.


If they appointed a moderator specifically for that forum it would be someone people think has a "side". Assuming Telamon is 100% impartial (which it is impossible) and personally checked each and every thread for rule breaking, he would miss some, and of those, some would favor side A, and some favor side B, but one of those sides would be favored more and people would be unhappy. Short of someone from the community that nearly everyone agree is reasonable and impartial doing it, which I can only think of Jupiter and maybe Peace, nobody is going to be happy. Besides, why would anyone WANT to do it.

It's not even worth the effort to spend so much on moderating stupid wizard item trades on the forum. People will still create a fake accounts and bid up their friends auctions. It's up to the consumer to be cautious and members of the server to call out what they suspect is shenanigans.


Just moderate like it's normal forum thread.

i think some of this "keep it to bids only" snowflakeness is to prevent discussion forming that might reveal undisclosed/undesired information to the public should a thread start spiraling out of control. there's absolutely zero reason why anyone should care if there's 7,000 non-bids in their magical wizard gear/high-priced auction if they've got active bids. the people who'd want it are going to bid regardless of the mud slinging, especially in the 1%er auctions.

and now that clowns are reporting posts and pretend to sub-mod their own threads, it feels like maybe there's information being withheld. it just further prevents the community from policing things if people can't raise questions.

I don't think people asking questions about an auction is bad, I think people turning a trading forum into a 6 page trash talk thread that has to be moved or nuked by mods is bad.

^^ is why we should be aware of this problem

It would be an interesting forum feature, for any forum system, if there was a blind moderator view. So the moderator of the Trade Forum wouldn't see usernames, signatures, etc., they'd just see anonymous ID numbers instead of usernames, and they would see the text of the message. Could potentially reduce some bias or appearance of bias.

It would be insane to build such a system for a UO forum, but I'm just saying if a popular forum architecture included one in the product, it would be beneficial to use here.

I do see the moderators cleaning up threads, moving them around, locking them etc, but to me, I see its literally just a handful of people that cause 90% of the problems. So its really just finding an effective way to deal with the worst repeat offenders. The mods do a good job, but they shouldn't be expected to clean up after the same people over and over.

Would be too easy to log out of mod view and put 1+1 together to figure out who is who. The only solution is to mod nobody, or use an impartial mod assuming they exist.

Yeah this seems like a community issue rather than an administrative issue, we can't expect the staff to police behavior like its a full time job, especially with a fast-moving section like the trade forums. The issue of fake accounts or shill bidding becomes even more complicated and involves even more time from the staff to track down the offenders.

Players should always do some research before completing a trade, and if they suspect an auction or trade is anything but legitimate they should just avoid it all together, yet it's all too common for a thread to devolve into a 10 page smear campaign with people that have no interest in bidding. Throwing shade or unfounded accusations does nothing but stir the pot and ruin the trade for any genuine buyers, those same players are then surprised when their own auctions are filled with trolls or off-topic posts. What's worse is that it seems that any legitimate evidence regarding the validity of the seller is usually buried under a dozen pages of "he said, she said" rhetoric. The search function exists for any player to use, they can search the entire history of a seller and validate themselves whether they're trustworthy enough to bid on their auction.

I've listed dozens of trades over the years and rarely had any issues, and I've seen lots of other players with hundreds of trades that go well, but now it seems a week can't go by without some sort of controversy or accusations of shill bidding. Ultimately it feels as though we have cultivated this sort of attitude on the forums, as a community there's a lot we can do to create safe trades where both parties are satisfied and alt-accounts of shill-bidding is ineffective; but it seems the general consensus is to let the admins deal with it with their limited time, then complain that it's not done quick enough.

Chris has to keep the server running, that's of course task #1 regarding UOR.

Hunting down pedos/haxx0rz has to be #2.

Any remaining time he has for is spent on fixing bugs.

If he has MORE time still it needs to go to new content.

I would be all in favor of a transparent mod. Not some shady alt. I don't even mind if it's someone I don't particularly like, just as long as they are accountable.

But if that can't happen, f*** it. Caveat emptor. Don't bid more than you want to pay.

Regarding trash talk, anyone who has a hand, an eye, and a brain can scroll past. Bigger fish to fry.




Either that or some player(s) can make their own trade forum and moderate it themselves. Nothing preventing that.

While I've been "offensive" as of late, those that have been around awhile know that I despise forum bullshit. It is a blight on the server and has been proven to discourage players.

Sorry but, I've had a question that required an extreme experiment to answer.

Virtual Life Extreme Experiments, you could make a Youtube channel. I bet you'd get tons of views.

Anyone who's been around long enough knows all you do is meem, stir the pot and add spam.. you finally bit off more then you can chew and your true colors are starting to show. You love dancing around he drama.. Own ur shit wylwrk.

Noble post Raven, I like the concept of cutting down on garbage posts - It maybe a white rabbit concept though.

It's clear there are two sides on the server... and, I think it's a good thing, if everyone was friendly it wouldn't be fel...

Why do we need Mod/GM support to fix the issue? It's pretty simple, lets have teams police their own sides.. Keep our names out your mouth and ur meems out of our threads and we'll do the same..

I'm pretty sure anyone I'm friendly with would agree to this... can your side pony up?

Is this like a "being the hero UOR deserves but not the one it needs" situation?

I think the problem is the community trying to police itself. It wouldn't be a bad idea if bad blood and obvious bias didn't exist at every corner.

99% of the forums, especially the trade forums, would be clean of any drama if people didn't try to insert themselves into the thread. It's been said here, many times, that if you find a problem or something that needs to be addressed then you PM a staff member.

The problems arise when you have people trying to piece together conspiracies and people trying to defend themselves entirely within a sales thread.

It's very easy:
PlayerA: Hey Telamon, someone is obviously shill bidding in this thread "xxxxxx"
Telamon: Ok, I'll look into it, thanks.

But that's not how it works. People want to appear like a white knight and then the thread goes to shit.

There is no proactive moderation, that I've ever seen. You need to report.

Agreed, the every forum post turning into a trash talk thread is too much. +1 for temp bans for violating rules

Thank you for your opinions UOR community. I am glad that we can talk and discuss this relatively like adults. @The Cigarette Smoking Man @Telamon Im curious on your guys opinion on increasing consequences(incremental short term bans) for rule breaking in the trading forum post.

You realize the mods allready go through, delete half of a thread, move them around, lock them, warn people etc. The only thing different I think they should do is slightly increase punishments which will really only effect the 2 or 3 people that do this shit non stop. I think Telamon is too nice sometimes

i personally think. if ppl start with themselves and realise trash talking aint helping, they would stop. by stopping it sets an example.

lead by example

i challenge everyone to "behave" just for 1 week.

thats all i wanted to share. short & brief.

gl to you all.

I think that might end up being the best solution @Labeler, hopefully people can rethink their behavior and how it effects the community as a whole. There seems to be a general consensus that accusations and trash talk don't belong in the trading forum, and hopefully everyone realizes that now.


ON a more positive building up the community note, Public Champ Group is one more Champ away from another Public Harrower. Its been a busy week for me, one of these mornings though we'll bang out the last one.

lets get this oaks done with it.