Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Peter_Spaeth]

You're moving the goalposts now and or making a straw man point. I never claimed my method would catch or stop all shill bidding. I only claimed, and stand by it, that it was enough to spot serious repeated anomalies in PWCC auctions that to me were strongly suggestive of impropriety. And, had PWCC taken the time to do the same, would have alerted them, if indeed their claim is they were unaware.

As Dylan sang, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You're moving the goalposts now and or making a straw man point. I never claimed my method would catch or stop all shill bidding. I only claimed, and stand by it, that it was enough to spot serious repeated anomalies in PWCC auctions that to me were strongly suggestive of impropriety. And, had PWCC taken the time to do the same, would have alerted them, if indeed their claim is they were unaware.

As you say, it isn't all that hard to find one suspicious transaction. What someone is not seeing here is what happens when you start to pull on that string. Maybe nothing. But, maybe the whole sweater comes unraveled.

What I think has gotten lost here is that the counter argument is an exercise in question begging. Despite the fact that the argument that "there are two many transactions to audit" is patently false, it presupposes that there is a will to prevent shill bidding.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

As you say, it isn't all that hard to find one suspicious transaction. What someone is not seeing here is what happens when you start to pull on that string. Maybe nothing. But, maybe the whole sweater comes unraveled.

What I think has gotten lost here is that the counter argument is an exercise in question begging. Despite the fact that the argument that "there are two many transactions to audit" is patently false, it presupposes that there is a will to prevent shill bidding.

In that vein, on a number of occasions I pointed out to Brent serial retractors that were bidding in his auctions. Despite his announced policy of zero tolerance above a certain number of retractions, he (or Betsy) more often than not made excuses for the individual but did not ban them.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

As you say, it isn't all that hard to find one suspicious transaction. What someone is not seeing here is what happens when you start to pull on that string. Maybe nothing. But, maybe the whole sweater comes unraveled.

I don't see how this entire sweater unraveling could possibly happen though simply from "pulling a few threads". Moreover, I would argue that pulling out a few threads not only fails to unravel the sweater but those threads will just be replaced by more threads the following day when 'bannedBidder123' comes back as 'bannedBidder1234'.

Let's just pretend for a moment that PWCC (or Probstein or whoever) hires an internal BODA-like team of researchers to hunt down these bad actors full-time. And let's just pretend for a moment that the labor is entirely free so that they don't have to raise their prices and can still compete in this market. Perhaps they can hire a crew of college interns whose lifelong dream is to save the hobby. Let's say they succeed in compiling a list of all the eBay usernames who certainly, or at least very likely, shill bid on their consignments (or the consignments of others and they were just trying to pump cards with no intention to pay if they win). So now they have this master list of 100,000+ eBay IDs. What next? They've already added as many of these people as they can to their blocked bidders list (5,000) and they already ban them internally from consigning with them again in the future. What next? Even if they succeed, those same people just consign with the next company and do it again. And even if they get reported enough to where eBay bans that account, 'iShillCards2' just pops up again as 'iShillCards3'. The juice here isn't even worth the squeeze when the squeeze is free. But, of course, in reality it's not free. It would be extremely expensive to hire a team to do this. And for what? The end result is the same unless eBay itself decides to take drastic measures to address this problem at the ground level. They need structural changes in place to combat this and they need to care about the problem first in order for it to go away. To place these expectations & responsibilities on the shoulders of the sellers is a prime example of missing the forest for the trees.

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I don't see how this entire sweater unraveling could possibly happen though simply from "pulling a few threads".

At this point, I think its is clearly established that you aren't able to conceptualize anything except through the prism of your experiences as a programmer. You can continue to construct all the hypotheticals and what-ifs you want to explain why you think such a thing is impossible. But, it is inescapably true that tens of thousands of companies do it everyday as part of the normal course of business. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is unremarkable as things go.

You fancy yourself as some kind of devil's advocate pointing out the logical fallacies in everyone else's arguments. Yet, you seem to accept the PWCC story line with complete incredulity. Forgive me if this cuts too deeply, but I would remind you of what Feynman said:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

And, with that, not only have we strayed from Small Traditions, we have strayed from even talking about cards. So, since every thread needs a card, but I am not a pre-war collector, here is an Obak I do have in my collection.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

At this point, I think its is clearly established that you aren't able to conceptualize anything except through the prism of your experiences as a programmer.

Ah yes, the old, "Snowman is too stupid to comprehend this" argument. The bottom line is that there is only one person in this thread who actually knows what they are talking about. There is only one person in this discussion who is not only capable of providing a solution to the problem of how to identify and eliminate fraud of this scale, but who also has direct experience solving such problems. I was hired to build precisely this sort of solution for a major insurance company here in CA several years back, and built out a fraud detection algorithm/predictive model that resulted in capturing and prosecuting widespread industry fraud. I've also been contacted numerous times by eBay's recruiters to join their team to do what sounded like similar work from the emails. However, I have no interest in working at eBay so I didn't respond. You guys can sit here and pretend like you know what you're talking about, but you don't. Sorting through the top 10 to 20 (or even hundreds) of listings randomly clicking around like a buffoon, writing user names down in your little notepad with no access to their user ID history or IP addresses and turning over your cute little list to the eBay police is not going to solve this problem. If this was PWCC's own platform, then yes, of course it would be their problem to solve. But it's not their platform. It's eBay's platform and eBay is the only entity with the resources necessary and available to solve it. All of these "solutions" you guys keep coming up with are tantamount to trying to cut down a redwood tree with a pocket knife.

[Peter_Spaeth]

LOL but I am the arrogant one. What a piece of work you are. And it's all a straw man, I never proposed a solution to all the fraud on ebay, so you are attacking something that never was offered for that purpose. Buffoon indeed. Maybe a little reading comprehension would be in order for you. And how long before your massive ego problem causes you to self-destruct here as it did on BO?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

LOL but I am the arrogant one. What a piece of work you are. And it's all a straw man, I never proposed a solution to all the fraud on ebay, so you are attacking something that never was offered for that purpose. Buffoon indeed. Maybe a little reading comprehension would be in order for you. And how long before your massive ego problem causes you to self-destruct here as it did on BO?

Yet with all your wisdom and humility, you still somehow cannot seem to grasp the simple fact that eBay is the only entity that houses the keys to the door you wish to unlock.

You honestly think that PWCC could and should just hire a team of BODA-like researchers to go on an eBay bidder hunting spree, clicking away at random links (sorry, 'sorted' links, perhaps just the top 10 or 20 ought to do) and suddenly all is well in shill bidding land. Perhaps Brent himself could get this all done over a coffee break or two?

I've pointed out numerous very specific problems to every solution you guys have put forward here. None of you have addressed a single one of them. I have pointed out the scale of how many auctions they're doing (over 10,000 listings per month, and millions in total). I have asked what you propose they should do even if they could find a way to compile this magic list of 100,000+ naughty eBay userIDs for free. Again, you provided no answers. I asked how much manpower you thought it would take to research and address this problem. Again, crickets. You're not here for an honest conversation or dialogue. You're just here to sling mud. At PWCC, at Probstein, at me. You have no interest in listening to someone with real-world experience in what it actually takes to solve a problem like this. Nope. You're the expert!

"Just sort by the top 10 to 20 listings and look at the bid histories. You don't need a data scientist for that."
- Peter S., September, 2021

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Ah yes, the old, "Snowman is too stupid to comprehend this" argument.

I never said that.

I will say this though: you are ignorant. You are ignorant in the same way we are all ignorant: outside our areas of expertise there is a vast world we know very little about and have to rely on other experts to navigate successfully. I am sure, within your area of specialty, you are every bit as brilliant as you have told us you are.

I know several accountants just at my current employer that I could turn loose on a huge dataset and within a week they would be back with a long list of anomalous transactions and a fully fleshed out audit plan to keep themselves busy for months on end. The fact that you are incapable of understanding that this is possible is not evidence that it is impossible. Failure of imagination is not an argument.

FWIW, the only T206 I own, a trimmed Frank Delehanty.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

...you are ignorant... outside our areas of expertise there is a vast world we know very little about and have to rely on other experts to navigate successfully...

I know several accountants just at my current employer that I could turn loose on a huge dataset and within a week they would be back with a long list of anomalous transactions and a fully fleshed out audit plan to keep themselves busy for months on end. The fact that you are incapable of understanding that this is possible is not evidence that it is impossible. Failure of imagination is not an argument.

Oof. I don't even know where to begin with this one. So I guess I'll just leave it be. You guys just have no idea what you're talking about. Accountants? Keeping themselves busy for months on end? lol.

1983 called. They want their "solution" back.