ideas & discussion for feedback system for sellers in Classifieds

[tsadi]

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good day to everyone and to the site admins. hello to beor, kung kanumdum paka nako.

i'm just wondering if you guys get enough complaints about scammers here in iStorya.

and if yes, maybe adding some kind of feedback system to the sellers profile in Classifieds might help?

the reason i'm asking here is, the owners of the vBulletin forum that I admin hinted at me that sometime in 2010, they'd want some modifications in their Classifieds section so that it will have some kind of feedback system. something like the one in TipidPC.com - and they wanted me to write that mod.

here's an example:
http://www.tipidpc.com/ratings.php?u...ennyvillamayor
*note*: i just randomly clicked this user from TipidPC, i have no affiliation whatsoever with her.

i tried searching for mods in vbulletin.org that might provide me with what i need - pero wala ko'y nakit-an.


so if you're interested - wanna make this a joint effort? we write this vBulletin mod together, test it in our respective boards, then maybe release it [for a fee OR for free?] to the public.

paminaw nako, this will be a huge modification man gud, and writing and testing this thing will not be easy - mao nang dili ko gusto mag solo flight ani nga project. daghan pasad kaayu ang huna-huna-on nato ani. off the top of my head, these are some questions or issues that would need to be decided firsthand before writing the first line of code:

1. will all users be allowed to leave feedbacks?
2. if not, who will be allowed to leave feedback and what will the requirements be that would need to be met?
3. how do we protect the board from feedbacks written by people who didnt buy anything from the seller?
4. should it be a 2 way feedback? that is, the seller can also leave the buyer some feedback?

5. what if some sellers will just sign up for multiple accounts and write good feedbacks for themselves. any ideas how we can prevent this from happening? or at the very least, make this sort of thing very difficult to do.
.....5.a. one thing that comes to my mind is to have a group of users called "verified merchants/sellers". to become a member of this group, you have to submit some proof of identification or billing before your account gets manually included in the verified group. ang problema lang ani, is that it might create too much additional work on the part of the staff.

6. both our sites are not dedicated to just classifieds. so should the feedback system also apply to the users who don't even use the Classifieds forum at all?


i posted this in a publicly viewable thread because maybe some readers have some really good ideas. kung naa moy idea, do post them here.

and in case my Google-fu just failed me and there already is an existing vBulletin modification that does this - please please point them out to me.


much thanks and i hope daghan mu chime in with their ideas

[stealthghost]

Hi tsadi! I'm not an admin or a moderator, but I've been with Istorya for quite some time now.

We have this Karma Points before.. (I don't know when pa to but it was available in old istorya site)

Now, the problem comes when people debate so much on some other topics, outside Buy and Sell, where they abuse the KARMA System.. Basta maka lalis na gani nila, "-" Karma points.. Some, just add up Karma points to their other accounts para lang maka make og impressions sa other user.

Anyways, here are my opinion on your queries:

1.) If ibalik ang "KARMA" Points, all users must have the same function..
2.) If not, then naa ka'y point. Tipidpc have some Verified Users nga i-submit sa ilang office aron maka Premium Member. But Istorya have also this Premium Members here.
3.) Protecting this is no easy task. Even if there's a back-end program who can manage this, disallow "Repeating IP address" or whatever method that will work, there's still a loophole in this method. Dapat naa jud tao mag bantay... coz programs can't think.. programs do their tasks.. and daghan variables ang dapat i-consider. Lisud pangitaan og Unique Variable sa "KARMA Points" especially to users who put "karma points" on their other accounts.
4.) Tipidpc is also a 2-way feedback and it should be. Aron ang seller maka sulti nga "this is a good buyer.."
5.) like number 3.
5.a) Having this user-group is a nice idea, but Mods/Admin will always have the final verdict.

6.) Classified ads is for everyone to view, not all for members to post at.. like number 1 opinion, it should be applied to all..

well, those are just my opinions.. ^_^

[AntitaniC]

woops... too much work indeed....

istorya.net was SMF bulletin before with karma karma effects... that was certainly abused before....

either way ma naay karma or wala... fraud sellers will still exist... it's really on the buyers negligence to buy their own items...

coz even if there's an approved sellers it won't be 100% guaranty that there won't be any
disputes/unsatisfied buyers....

so buyers.... purchase wisely...

[tsadi]

stealthghost, very nice input sir! what you said about how the karma system was abused made me realize that a feedback system like this has to isolated in the classifieds section of the forums ra gyud. i dont know how yet - but people must be allowed to leave negative to a seller or buyer just because they didn't like what that seller/buyer said in a forum outside of classifieds.

that makes this thing even more complex.


AntitaniC; there's no such thing as a fool proof system sir. any system can be beaten. so the main goal for a project like this is not to give 100% guarantee about the commerce going on in the Classifieds section, but just to give "ideas", or "suggestions" as to how a certain seller/buyer behaved or handled their business in previous transactions.

Murag word of mouth lang sir ba - which although is a good way to learn about other sellers/buyers track record - can't really be trusted 100% - kay pwede raman nga binayran rato ang mga nag-promote via "word of mouth".


Anyone else have any ideas?

[BeoR]

Hello tsadi,

How are your servers holding up?

I like this idea and in fact I've been looking at iTrader for quite sometime now. I am very much willing to do this project but I have a question for you. Will you guys move up to vB 4? If you will, that would make it a lot easier for us to do this.

Best Regards

[dmelsie]

2. if not, who will be allowed to leave feedback and what will the requirements be that would need to be met?

i think mas maayo mahimo nga elite member para maka hatag og feedback sir
kay kinsa man gud mag kapoy kapoy sigi post para lang di tinarong ang feedback niya mo spend pa og time para ana,(like kana sigi lang post og walay klaro naa ko daghan nakita mo post nakabutang "pa level lang" kana ban ng ngana if mag sigi buhat ana

ang prob pod ani is naa daghan good seller and buyer nga dili tig post post naa ko daghan amigo sa computer bs ngana naniguwang nag trade2 pero junior pa or senior

[xxxancientxxx]

ok tnks for infos

[tsadi]

BeoR: our servers are doing good so far. but only after we recovered from a massive crash last Nov 2 where we completely lost the entire post table sa vB installation namo. a post table that contained 39million posts! (a kind of problem wherein if you ran myisamchk on the corrupted table, myisamchk will die with a segmentation fault)

and what made it worse is that since limited kaayu among hardware, that is, wala mi available slave server that we could have taken database backups from, nag rely lang gyud mi ug lain nga backup solution which involved taking incremental snapshots of the data directly from the mysql server's hard drives.

dire nisulod ang problema because our host took a good 60 hours before they were able to re-assemble all our data. so our site stayed dead for 4.5 days!

human aning hitabu-a, naa mi mga gi-pang-upgrade nga hardware. unya tungod kay mas kusgan naman ang among servers pag nahuman na ug upgrade, naa ko'y usa ka web server nga akong gi set para 50% less ang ihatag nga load niya sa among load balancer. so kani nga web server akong gigamit as slave mysql server - unya akong gi usab ang vB para tanan search queries adto ra gyud i send sa slave mysql server (this is a pretty powerful web server in itself, but not if it is compared to our master database server).

human ana - practically na wagtang intawn ang table locking problems sa among master database server kay ang dagko nga queries nga maoy maka cause sa table locking ang search queries raman gyud.

ang slave mysql server nga maoy hatagan sa tanan search queries mag segi gihapon ug lock sa post/thread table during big queries, pero at least ang uban nga searches ra ang ma affected, dili ang tibuok site.


taas na kaayu akong gi asoy dire sa? hehehe...

anyways. thanks for the tip on iTrader. 'google-fu fail' gyud kaayu ko da kay wala gyud ko ka kita ani, hehehe.

and vB4 is supposed to solve the problem of table locking present in vB3 without resorting to using InnoDB tables (and losing fulltext indexing) - so we're definitely moving to that version. maybe a few months siguro after it has gone gold. kanang stage wherein dili na sila mag segi ug release ug hotfix every few days.

and your right that if we ever work on this - then lets do it in vB4.

so, looking forward to that. sa pagka-karun, testing testingan ko ni ang ang iTrader.

[tsadi]

...
ang prob pod ani is naa daghan good seller and buyer nga dili tig post post naa ko daghan amigo sa computer bs ngana naniguwang nag trade2 pero junior pa or senior

sakto gyud ka boss. dapat pangitaan gyud ni ug solusyon. sa pagka karun wala gyud ko'y mahuna-hunaan unsaon.

basin naa mo idea - naay mga nagbasa dire nga naay idea unsa-on ta ni pag solbad.

thanks and please keep the ideas coming!

[tsadi]

BeoR: vB 4 has gone Gold na bai.

nus-a mu plan mu migrate to that version?