Every day I shuffle through Trapster support emails and new forum posts helping users with technical problem, listening to new ideas/suggestions, and answering questions. The questions range from extremely technical to very simple. And here lies the root of this blog post. I’ve found that there are many Trapster secrets. Are they really secrets? Well, no. But through the support emails and forum posts, I’ve found that we haven’t communicated with our users some of the basic in-n-out’s of Trapster. So here are a few tidbits of information about Trapster I bet you didn’t know…

1. Aged Traps

These traps are translucent in color and ONLY apply to Police Often Hide Here traps. A trap becomes “aged” after there has been no activity on the trap for three weeks. You will see four different translucent levels. The POHH trap becomes more translucent with each week.

These traps become active again if a user votes positive on the trap or a user reports the same trap in the same location. When the latter happens the aged trap automatically turns active and the new trap that was reported in the same spot counting the users vote as positive).

Translucent Steps to Becoming an Aged Trap:
A. Trap was last voted < 1 week ago
B. Trap was last voted >= 1 week ago but < 2 weeks ago
C. Trap was last voted >= 2 weeks ago but < 3 weeks ago
D. Trap was last voted < 3 weeks ago (aged trap)

2. Voting Over & Over Again!

Yes, yes, and yes! Vote as many times as you can on traps to keep them accurate and up-to-date. Votes don’t multiple (aka count more than once) but it does update the votes time stamp. And this keeps the trap current and from becoming aged.

3. Trapologist Do What?

We have a few in house employees who’s sole job is to review your traps all day. With over 3 million users world-wide that’s a lot of traps! Luckily our trapmap is run on Google maps with the ability to see traps on street view level, satellite, and even hybrid. Making trap data accurate and up to date.

4. How to become a Trapster Moderator

Ever asked yourself, “How can I help Trapster?” The answer is simple, become a Trapster Moderator! When choosing moderators we look at the following:

1. Accurate traps being reported/voted via mobile and trapmap
2. Reporting users you think are abusing the system by sending a PM (private message) with the abusers username to a Trapster Moderator (Trapster Moderators have a badge next to their name)
3. Trapster Trapmap, blog, facebook, and/or twitter activity.
4. How long you’ve been a Trapster user.

If you’re new to Trapster and would like to be a moderator give yourself some time to get familiar with the system and do some of the ideas mentioned above. When you’re ready to apply to become a moderator fill out the Moderator Request From.

5. Did you hit #?

Did you hit the pound (#) sign after you called in a speed trap on our 1800 line? If you report live police and other such traps through our 1800 voice line don’t forget to hit pound (#) after you’re done giving the report. Otherwise, it never reaches us.

Didn’t know about our 1800#? If you don’t have a smart phone you can call Trapster’s 1800 number to report live traps. To setup your account just visit our 1800 page. We recommend that you save the number in your mobile phone and set up a hands-free dialing shortcut.

6. Need Support?

Check out our new support site, Get Satisfaction. When you enter our support community remember to Search!!! first. The reason search!!! has lots of exclamation marks is because your problem was most likely posted already. Search!! first. Your solution could be seconds away instead of waiting for someone to get back to you.

And there you have it! So to recap; remember to vote as much as possible on traps to keep them active, become a Trapster moderator and help keep Trapster accurate, visit our new support site if you need help, and don’t forget to hit the pound (#) sign after you call our 1800 line.

Happy Trapping!