Trader Rating

[Anonymous]

I hate to say it, but feedback ratings work in keeping people honest and giving good traders a reputation they deserver.

When someone wins an auction, give the winner the option of giving the seller a thumbs up/thumbs down after completing the transaction. These are then tallied to a simple rating (thumps up = +1 / thumbs down = -1).

You can see a sellers rating in the items details of the bidding window.

For example -

Seller: (Alston) [32]

[sarf]

And where, pray tell, would this information be kept?

Also, how should one prevent people from abusing this system, putting useless stuff up on auctions for 50 gold then sell it to each other and "up" each others rating?

A system such as this should be more generic - allowing you to praise and denounce people, and depending on what people were interested in your opinion (an opt-in solution), other people would then have a generic rating about people. This would lead to social people getting the benefit of having their opinion mean something, while bad apples as well as mule characters would not have a good rating.

I envision a system something like this :

You are interested in the "standing" of individual X. You make an inquiry about that individual (here we have an opportunity for a moneysink, too! :) ), and the system goes to work. You are interested in the opinions of three individuals (let's keep it simple in the example), A, B and C.
Oh, and by the way, you personally don't know X, so you have no opinion of him/her (otherwise, that rating would have been used no matter what others think).

A is a social gadfly, and know many people with respectable opinions, but has not had any dealings with X himself.
B is a loner, only grouping with her guild, which currently is three persons big. She has opted-in to their opinions. She felt ripped off when buying a [Used Leather Belt] from X, so she marked X as being untrustworthy.
C is inbetween A and B, knowing many but trusting only a few (six persons in this case). However, C has had many personal contact (good ones) with X and marked him as "OK".

Now, since both B and C have had personal contacts with the person in question, their opinions matter more than the ones of A... however their opinions cancel each other out. It now comes down to what the opinions about X are among the people A, B and C listen to. Theoretically, one could go even further down, but that would take much time.

This method is fairly computing-intensive, but has the good thing about it in that it is personally relevant, instead of being a "server" average. You thus prevent the problem of big guilds fiddling with peoples ratings (both up and down).

There are other ways to do it, of course, but I hope this helps spark some debate.

Sarf
---
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.