MagickalMemories wrote:Sorrow is dead on about that. If you have two or more people not leave you references in a row -especially if they are established traders- you should start looking inwards for the problem... and BEG them to give you feedback, even if only privately, on what you did wrong.
I didn't say that not getting a ref is the same as getting a negative. Not at all. I said some people will see a NEUTRAL on a new trader as being a bad sign. There's a difference.
Frankly, Scarapis, we won't be installing a counter as you suggest and, frankly, you should not want one.
If I see someone who has left, say, 50 references but has only received 40 in return, I am going to wonder why 20% of their trading partners chose not to leave a reference (per my explanation above). It will make me more hesitant to trade with them and FAR less likely to want to ship or pay first, regardless of their ref score.
Although we rely heavily on a reference score here, and encourage everyone to use it, it is -as I said- optional. As such, Bartertown will not do anything to require it in any way (including the holding hostage of references left for a trader until he reciprocates) or to measure the # of references left vs. received. The reference measurement style, methods and ratio that we have in place -and have had in place since 1996) have served us well for 18 years with only ONE change (neutrals were, at one point, worth a single point, rather than none). There is no good reason for us to change things now.
Eric
but what if it is not? say if I got a handful of traders who did not leave rep, I would not consider it a problem on my end, for the mere fact that I have thousands upon thousands of feedback on other sites, hell my eBay feedback is 100% positive for both selling and buying, which is a big feat to begin with. another site I have a perfect record of feedback for selling, never in my life have I had people have problems with my selling or shipping or anything, and there in lies the issue, if I've done a handful of trades with people and I've left feedback for them, yet they leave none for me, because they cannot be bothered to, then that reflects poorly on me even though undeserved, so why even bother with the rep program ?
(by the way this is a what if scenario, I only have one trade/purchase in progress here at this time)