[Don Vito Corleone]

Hello,

I really like the recent market changes and the contract system, that's why I'm suggesting the following:

I've had a couple of threads in the market section, and there have always been some members rating my threads 1 star with no reason. They've never bought my services, they've never talked to me before and they've never commented on the thread itself. Even when I PM them I get no response back, while I know this is not against HF rules, it still makes the thread look a bit less appealing. I've spoken to other marketplace users that have had the same experience.

It would be fair (in my opinion) to only let contracted customers rate market threads so that random people having a bad week (or the competition) can't influence the star rating. Another reason this would benefit the marketplace is that the star rating of a market thread would actually represent customers' feedback. The posts in market threads already get a green check mark to verify that the user that posted actually bought the service, this uses the same principle as what I'm suggesting.

Let me know what y'all think.

[J. McCarthy]

That’s a really good idea for abuse

[Store]

I agree. Would be a good idea. Had an idiot down vote my thread because we had a disagreement. I returned the favour. So because someone made a comment the other didn't like, threads got a 1 star. Which doesn't reflect the real rating.

[Angela White]

I like this idea, I've already had an UB3R -3 me for something related to the lounge and he went ahead and 1 starred my post in the marketplace (completely unrelated to the lounge post) about selling pages, so this would be nice to prevent things like that in the future.

[Almonds]

Absolutely!
if not too much of a hassle to apply to all market place related threads.

[TB12]

Fantastic suggestion, no reason to rate a market thread if you haven't used the service.

[Armada]

Good idea, and I kinda really like it.

However, to my understanding from speaking to Xerotic is that the contract system is primarily designed for Currency exchanges.

In this case, and mine for an example. Majority of my users do not purchase or make contracts with me, they purchase off site, so how would that affect my threads ratings?

[000]

I had suggested the similar idea before but then what about the products that are auto-purchased without contracts?

Unless an API is implemented for contracts, I don't think it will be wise to allow only contracted users to rate threads.

But I still suggest adding the permissions for non-upgraded contracted users.

Edit:

However, to my understanding from speaking to Xerotic is that the contract system is primarily designed for Currency exchanges.

In this case, and mine for an example. Majority of my users do not purchase or make contracts with me, they purchase off site, so how would that affect my threads ratings?

Exactly.

[Don Vito Corleone]

Good idea, and I kinda really like it.

However, to my understanding from speaking to Xerotic is that the contract system is primarily designed for Currency exchanges.

In this case, and mine for an example.  Majority of my users do not purchase or make contracts with me, they purchase off site, so how would that affect my threads ratings?

I love this post as it covers some uncertain aspects I didn't mention in my OP.

The contract system was designed with currency exchanges in mind indeed, but after using it for a bit, I and many sellers I've spoken to are seeing the benefit of it in many other marketplace areas as well. There is an option to select a sale of a product or service while creating the contract instead of selecting a currency exchange. Deal disputes are done in a more professional way as well since the contract system. So it can work in many areas.

To your point about new users. The majority of my sales are also done without contracts since many new users don't understand how it works, so this leads to 2 things if my suggestion is implemented:

1. New users don't create contracts and thus are still not able to rate a thread.
2. The users that do have the site knowledge to create contracts are able to rate threads, which will be a good representation of the quality of the product or service instead of non-customers, haters, or even the competition rating a thread.

Worst case scenario; your thread doesn't get a lot of ratings or if you are selling a shitty product you would receive a low amount of stars. This is much better than how it is now, where any upgraded member (except L33T/3P1C) can rate any thread.
Best case scenario; your contracted customers rate your thread with their honest opinions.

---

I had suggested the similar idea before but then what about the products that are auto-purchased without contracts?

Unless an API is implemented for contracts, I don't think it will be wise to allow only contracted users to rate threads.

But I still suggest adding the permissions for non-upgraded contracted users.

Auto-purchased products will keep going as they have always been... like..... only without fake star reviews...... which will be eliminated.
If you ask your customers to rate your thread and create a contract for it, I'm sure some of them will do, that's all you need, you don't need fake star reviews of people that haven't even bought your product or service, whether this is a positive or negative review. You also don't need many star reviews, you only need your customers only to rate your sales thread and no one else.

Not sure what an API implementation has to do with this.

But I believe we are on the same page, just wanted to clear things up.

[Xerotic]

However, to my understanding from speaking to Xerotic is that the contract system is primarily designed for Currency exchanges.

The contract system is designed for all deals. However, for currency exchanges it is required to have a contract. In the future all deals may require a contract. Who knows.

[VmX5]

I had suggested the similar idea before but then what about the products that are auto-purchased without contracts?

Unless an API is implemented for contracts, I don't think it will be wise to allow only contracted users to rate threads.

But I still suggest adding the permissions for non-upgraded contracted users.

Edit:


Exactly.

Why is an API required for this?

---

@OP I think it's a great idea.

[000]

Auto-purchased products will keep going as they have always been... like..... only without fake star reviews...... which will be eliminated.
If you ask your customers to rate your thread and create a contract for it, I'm sure some of them will do, that's all you need, you don't need fake star reviews of people that haven't even bought your product or service, whether this is a positive or negative review. You also don't need many star reviews, you only need your customers only to rate your sales thread and no one else.

Not sure what an API implementation has to do with this.

But I believe we are on the same page, just wanted to clear things up.

Why is an API required for this?

Products that are purchased using third party websites could verify that the purchaser is a Hack Forums user and can rate a thread or something similar? I don't know I haven't really given it a thought to the API part. Restricting thread rating to contracted customers only is in my opinion a terrible idea, even though I had suggested it before. But if you think about it, not everyone wants to manually accept/start contracts. This slows down the payment process. There's a reason for automated payment systems to exist, right?

And I understand fake ratings can be frustrating, I had 1-star rating from a user on my sales thread even though he never purchased or contacted me about the product. But what can you do? Move on and hope someone else rate it 5-stars. Lol.

Also can we ask customers for thread ratings? I never knew that. I thought it was not allowed here?

[Don Vito Corleone]

Products that are purchased using third party websites could verify that the purchaser is a Hack Forums user and can rate a thread or something similar? I don't know I haven't really given it a thought to the API part. Restricting thread rating to contracted customers only is in my opinion a terrible idea, even though I had suggested it before. But if you think about it, not everyone wants to manually accept/start contracts. This slows down the payment process. There's a reason for automated payment systems to exist, right?

And I understand fake ratings can be frustrating, I had 1-star rating from a user on my sales thread even though he never purchased or contacted me about the product. But what can you do? Move on and hope someone else rate it 5-stars. Lol.

Also can we ask customers for thread ratings? I never knew that. I thought it was not allowed here?

The API part doesn't make sense to me, look, my only point for what you're saying is that your (and my) auto buy products will lose nothing in terms of functionality, they will only gain the protection against fake reviews. You lose literally nothing and other users get to see the actual customer feedback for the product/service.

[VmX5]

Products that are purchased using third party websites could verify that the purchaser is a Hack Forums user and can rate a thread or something similar? I don't know I haven't really given it a thought to the API part. Restricting thread rating to contracted customers only is in my opinion a terrible idea, even though I had suggested it before. But if you think about it, not everyone wants to manually accept/start contracts. This slows down the payment process. There's a reason for automated payment systems to exist, right?

And I understand fake ratings can be frustrating, I had 1-star rating from a user on my sales thread even though he never purchased or contacted me about the product. But what can you do? Move on and hope someone else rate it 5-stars. Lol.

Also can we ask customers for thread ratings? I never knew that. I thought it was not allowed here?

Having an API for it means that the part where no one can rate unless they purchase becomes useless because the OP can now give the API to their friends to 5-star. There's not way to make sure a user on HF purchased the product UNLESS it's on HF. So an API would defeat the purpose.

[βlack Hat™]

Good idea, and I kinda really like it.

However, to my understanding from speaking to Xerotic is that the contract system is primarily designed for Currency exchanges.

In this case, and mine for an example.  Majority of my users do not purchase or make contracts with me, they purchase off site, so how would that affect my threads ratings?

This may sound stupid, but what about a request rating system.I guess then you could maybe abusive the idea of the rating system.