How should we handle open trades with partial feedback?

My trades (other than one I just set up last week) are all over a year old.
I just randomly clicked through some of the names and of the 5 I checked, 4 have not logged on in 12-15 months and the most recent one was last seen 6 months ago. Ive sent them messages before, whats the point in doing it again when they havent even logged on to read my last message?

 

Is it possible to give users who didnt leave feedback a score/rate of neutral instead of positive or negative?


Edit: derp, just catching up on reading replies and saw this was mentioned already

 

Never said you should if you've done it already, especially when they haven't been active. Was just curious if at some point, a week or 2 after the trades you sent a message specifically asked them to leave feedback. As mentioned above, I have 203 feedback, 0 hanging, only twice having to remind my trade partners to leave feedback via PM and I did that 2-3 weeks after seeing hanging feedback.

 

I guess you could try an experiment and see if adding a notification has an effect, otherwise it's all just speculation; as is presuming that it's "laziness" that's why people haven't left feedback.

I've been following this thread and it's still unclear to me just why this is something that desperately needs to be addressed, and particularly why some of the more draconian suggestions would be warranted. Do you have evidence that neglecting to leave feedback is actually correlated with true "bad trader" behaviors like cheating people out of beer, as some folks in this thread have suggested? How many of those 1800 delinquent trades have been followed by bad feedback at a later point? Is it any more or less than the overall rate?

 

The 2 people I had to remind to leave feedback were 2 who infrequently trade. They actually didn't realize I left them feedback. They are active elsewhere on the site, but not the trading forums or bother with their trading stats. A simple notice that a feedback was left for them the way "You have a new reply to your conversation" popup would hurry things along. I think for the most part traders are courteous enough to fulfill their end, down to the feedback. For the rest, I don't think the traders are lazy because it makes little sense to be lazy over a 30-second action. I stated my thoughts on the possibilities of why they don't want to leave feedback a couple of times already so I won't repeat it here.

It seems to me also that people are uncomfortable about reminding others to leave feedback so a system notification would help them and eliminate the need for an extra reminder message.

 

Do we really want to encourage a system where feedback is optional? Whenever a bad trader thread is started, people immediately ask, "Did you use the Feedback System?" Well how good is this system if we don't agree that feedback is a mandatory part of the trading process. It's the only way we can provide transparency to the whole trading community.

I have a hard time understanding how someone can commit to all the other aspects of trading and then fail to leave feedback. Personally I feel like it's laziness but I'm also not going to hound them for feedback. I don't think we need to institute banning and imposing harsh penalties on people who fail to leave feedback, but I don't think we should automatically assign good feedback with a generic message.

I think the simplest solution is to close the trade after X number of days and just put "Awaiting feedback from username." That person can leave feedback in the future if they wish. Sure you don't get "credit" for the trade, but at least other members of the community can see that you've completed a trade and left feedback for the other party.

 

Sorry, what exactly is the goal? I notice that's the one part of my message you didn't reply to: "I've been following this thread and it's still unclear to me just why this is something that desperately needs to be addressed, and particularly why some of the more draconian suggestions would be warranted."

Is it a technical issue that open trades are bogging down the system?

Is it a purely aesthetic concern that some trades don't run the full lifecycle?

Is it a concern that the other half of the trade isn't getting the credit they deserve?

Is it a worry that people who don't leave feedback will not deliver on other trades?

Is it something else?

I don't get the sense from this thread that people agree in general on what the problem is, if any. Each of these potential concerns suggests different solutions. Some of them are amenable to analysis and testing; some of them aren't. But, agreement on what to do necessarily requires agreement on the problem that needs to be solved.

 

There could be something to this. Have you listened to "The Trust Engineers" episode of the Radiolab podcast?

At one point it's talking about the Facebook programmers finding the best solution for people to contact their friends to have them take down pictures they're in that they didn't want to be posted.

Initially they created a free format message box for someone to type their concerns to a friend - only 20% of people used this. Once they started creating pre-populated messages, this went up to 50%.

And then by tweaking the language of the pre-populated messages, they were able to increase the effectiveness of the messages.

 

All things considered, I'd be in full support of implementing the popup notification when BA#1 left feedback for BA#2 and leave the red badge up on the trading tab until BA#2 takes care of the opened feedback, effectively giving him/her an opportunity to take action right away as well as a continuous reminder. If no action from BA#2 after 90 days, turn the positive feedback from BA#1 to 'neutral' - 'did not leave feedback' and automatically give BA#1 a 'positive' - 'system feedback' or maybe with no comments. I do think 90 days is too long, though. I think it should be reduced significantly, say 45 days or even 30.

 

except that this:

Update: Delinquent Feedback

• Added a new trading stat: Delinquent Feedback, to help track and show users who owe others feedback.
• For now, if this stat is > 0 a non-dismissible alert is shown with a friendly prompt for the user to leave some feedback.
• Delinquent Feedback is also shown in Beer Trading Stats sidebars.

doesn't allow for regular trading partners who tend to take some time to "fulfill" trades. for example, I have a "delinquent" trade feedback now, but that's incorrect because I haven't gotten my "half" of the trade yet. My buddy did, and I'm simply waiting patiently for when he can return a box to me. That's how the best traders do it IMO.

while I realize this is likely not a big deal, the word "delinquent" HAS negative connotations, and in my example is completely erroneous. I suspect that many veteran traders will have a very similar scenario.

 

I think that's fair...30 days is a good amount of time IMO. Not sure it will help MY situation (lol) but in most instances it should. Thanks Todd.