Fake EC tunnel prices

[cd288]

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but wanted to circle back on the whole discussion about people monitoring the wiki for fake prices and editing them out. A couple log entries seem to have disappeared on certain items that didn't seem to be fake at all. For example, just a day or two ago there were multiple different entries on Treant staff of like 800, 850, and 1000 pp (I can't recall if they were all from different sellers or not). Do those get edited out by someone? If so, why? Doesn't seem to be fake price gouging on its face

[Gatorsmash]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but wanted to circle back on the whole discussion about people monitoring the wiki for fake prices and editing them out. A couple log entries seem to have disappeared on certain items that didn't seem to be fake at all. For example, just a day or two ago there were multiple different entries on Treant staff of like 800, 850, and 1000 pp (I can't recall if they were all from different sellers or not). Do those get edited out by someone? If so, why? Doesn't seem to be fake price gouging on its face

Had to sit and watch something IRL for most of the day Sat so had EC up on a monitor. I saw a few items magically get pushed up by multiple vendors a few hundred plat throughout the day. People are clearly boxing EC and artificially pushing up prices

Edit- only reason I noticed was because a few items went up 300+ over the course of like 2 hours and it was the only item they were selling

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Gatorsmash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Had to sit and watch something IRL for most of the day Sat so had EC up on a monitor. I saw a few items magically get pushed up by multiple vendors a few hundred plat throughout the day. People are clearly boxing EC and artificially pushing up prices

Edit- only reason I noticed was because a few items went up 300+ over the course of like 2 hours and it was the only item they were selling

I don't think something that is being increased by like 150-300pp for an item that's several hundred pp as is should be considered artificial price gouging if it's at least a few different people selling at that.

The whole editing the auction log based on someone's arbitrary viewpoint that a figure is higher than they think it should be is just as bad as someone artificially inflating prices. If people are willing to pay a price then that's supply and demand in action. I don't think prices should be removed unless they are absolutely egregious and blatantly obvious attempts at price manipulation (for example, someone selling something for 850-900pp that someone else is selling for 650pp is not egregious; someone selling something for 1,600pp that most people are selling for 650pp is egregious).

Edit: Loramin, would welcome your knowledge as to what's been happening with the Wiki logs, if anything.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't think something that is being increased by like 150-300pp for an item that's several hundred pp as is should be considered artificial price gouging if it's at least a few different people selling at that.

The whole editing the auction log based on someone's arbitrary viewpoint that a figure is higher than they think it should be is just as bad as someone artificially inflating prices. If people are willing to pay a price then that's supply and demand in action. I don't think prices should be removed unless they are absolutely egregious and blatantly obvious attempts at price manipulation (for example, someone selling something for 850-900pp that someone else is selling for 650pp is not egregious; someone selling something for 1,600pp that most people are selling for 650pp is egregious).

Edit: Loramin, would welcome your knowledge as to what's been happening with the Wiki logs, if anything.

All I can say is "it wasn't me". It's possible another wiki admin did it, but honestly I don't think most (if any) other than me are very active. The full list of people who could have.

If they did, they surely did so on purpose (you can't accidentally remove entries in one click), so it seems either A) there was just some confusion, B) an admin intentionally (and therefore likely correctly) removed some entries ... or very unlikely option C) an admin removed entries incorrectly.

I don't think there's any kind of log of deletions (that would have made even more work for Ravhin, and "bad" wiki admins could do much worse things that remove price entries, so he probably figured it wasn't needed), but if anyone does ever notice a suspicious pattern of removals, I'd ask that they PM me privately so we can try work out a way to test the theory.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All I can say is "it wasn't me". It's possible another wiki admin did it, but honestly I don't think most (if any) other than me are very active. The full list of people who could have.

If they did, they surely did so on purpose (you can't accidentally remove entries in one click), so it seems either A) there was just some confusion, B) an admin intentionally (and therefore likely correctly) removed some entries ... or very unlikely option C) an admin removed entries incorrectly.

I don't think there's any kind of log of deletions (that would have made even more work for Ravhin, and "bad" wiki admins could do much worse things that remove price entries, so he probably figured it wasn't needed), but if anyone does ever notice a suspicious pattern of removals, I'd ask that they PM me privately so we can try work out a way to test the theory.

Is there a way to at least log if someone accessed that page in an editing capacity or is that just as much work as having a log of specific deletions? Seems like if there's no ability to oversee changes people are making, then the edit ability should be removed.

Seems unfair to allow people to affect the market by arbitrarily removing entries that are clearly (or arguably) not egregious price inflation attempts. For example, I would think things should only be removed if you look at the log and see an individual seller clearly spamming egregious prices to try and block out other entries in the log. In that case that person is clearly trying to manipulate things so that the log doesn't show any data to the contrary.

Removing entries because some different sellers want to sell something for a couple hundred pp more and one person thinks that's too high a price should not be happening because it's just as much market manipulation as someone trying to artificially inflate prices on the log.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Is there a way to at least log if someone accessed that page in an editing capacity or is that just as much work as having a log of specific deletions? Seems like if there's no ability to oversee changes people are making, then the edit ability should be removed.

Seems unfair to allow people to affect the market by arbitrarily removing entries that are clearly (or arguably) not egregious price inflation attempts. For example, I would think things should only be removed if you look at the log and see an individual seller clearly spamming egregious prices to try and block out other entries in the log. In that case that person is clearly trying to manipulate things so that the log doesn't show any data to the contrary.

Removing entries because some different sellers want to sell something for a couple hundred pp more and one person thinks that's too high a price should not be happening because it's just as much market manipulation as someone trying to artificially inflate prices on the log.

Again, this is 100% a fan-made thing. Until Ravhin (someone who doesn't even play here) took a far amount of his time to add this feature for all of us, there was literally no way whatsoever to correct even those most egregious wiki auction prices.

To ask him to spend even more time to solve a "who watches the watchmen" problem that doesn't even exist (by logging every price correction), feels ... unrealistic.

Again, I'm quite possibly the only active wiki admin. Zosymandias made a single edit to his own user talk page in November of last year and hasn't done anything since, Ezri hasn't edited since July of last year. As I said Ravhin doesn't even play, and so on.

It is possible that a wiki admin (not easy to become) has "gone to the dark side", and is abusing their powers to manipulate P99 markets ... but I'd be surprised to even hear that any other admin still plays, let alone gives two figs about the market. And I find it truly hard to believe that someone who put so much time and effort into improving the wiki that they got made into an admin, would then exploit that and hurt the wiki with bad information that only benefits them.

I truly don't think we have a problem here ... but again, in the unlikely event that we do, I'd be happy to discuss the details privately (in the super-unlikely event that we have a rogue wiki admin, we wouldn't want to discuss the "investigation" of them publicly).

[Frug]

Originally Posted by Gatorsmash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Had to sit and watch something IRL for most of the day Sat so had EC up on a monitor. I saw a few items magically get pushed up by multiple vendors a few hundred plat throughout the day. People are clearly boxing EC and artificially pushing up prices

Edit- only reason I noticed was because a few items went up 300+ over the course of like 2 hours and it was the only item they were selling

Would love to see some logs of this.

[Frug]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but wanted to circle back on the whole discussion about people monitoring the wiki for fake prices and editing them out. A couple log entries seem to have disappeared on certain items that didn't seem to be fake at all. For example, just a day or two ago there were multiple different entries on Treant staff of like 800, 850, and 1000 pp (I can't recall if they were all from different sellers or not). Do those get edited out by someone? If so, why? Doesn't seem to be fake price gouging on its face

Could it be that you're misremembering? And/or, do you have any logs of this? I ask because my tracker has a couple 800s and 900s recently-ish* but no 1000's since Feb 8, and no 850's at all. (I also checked the raw log files.)

It could be that I missed them, but I haven't had any downtime in quite awhile, so if they were in EC and formatted sanely, I would have them.

Another possibility is that someone else uploaded auction logs, although I am providing the bulk of the wiki content.

* 2020-02-22 Somin 800
* 2020-02-22 Somin 800
* 2020-02-15 Faew 900
* 2020-02-14 Burningtree 800
* 2020-02-14 Slott 800
* 2020-02-08 Pedilee 1000
* 2020-02-04 Honko 800


https://unixgeek.com/prices-P1999Green-TreantStaff.html