Topic: ABUSE OF TRUST SYSTEM - whiskers75 (Read 1789 times)

I think this seems like an amicable resolution.  I mean if you agree that your issue isn't that important to you and it's obviously important to marco, I think it's good that you decided to delete the negative rating.

I would also like to point out the fact that I do specify in my profile that I do not get Bitcointalk PMs, so no wonder I didn't reconsider earlier.

Well hello there. I'm back, and I have reconsidered that trust, and it's still not getting deleted. (edit: fine, I'll delete it, what does it matter)
(the whole trust thing was why I quit these forums in the first place).

But this is exactly what happens very often, I've seen the trust war go down and it's not pretty for the forum or for the users involved.

Light brings up a very good point about the inherent flaws of a trust system that's moderated, how it boils down to trusting in the moderators rather than the community as whole.  The latter is very much more in line with the spirit of open-source, peer-to-peer, etc.

I personally think that one solution would be to simply make the trust system a little less noticeable on people's accounts.  I mean, in the trading forums, people should be able to easily look up the trust record of another individual, but perhaps if putting negative trust didn't generate the 'red mark' on an account in any area of the forum, it would be less used as a weapon of dislike.

Like I mentioned, I suffered from the red mark one time in the past when tradefortress took an issue with me.  Because he was on default trust at the time, I had to wear a 'trade with extreme caution' scarlet letter for a while.  This was despite the fact that 1) I had never traded with TF or anyone else on this forum 2) I wasn't involved in trading. In a sense, the scarlet letter didn't really hurt me since I wasn't a trader, on the other hand, it was an embarrassment.  In my own case, TF turned out to be one of the biggest scammers known to our community, so in that sense, I was justifed.

This issue has been raised in the past. It is pointless to have a trust system that is moderated - then the trust system wouldn't really reflect the views of all users but rather the opinions of only the moderators and staff which would completely break the system. Not to mention, who is it to say someone isn't trustworthy - it is your opinion to voice and someone else should be able to voice their own but not change or remove the voice of others.

There are limitations in place - spamming trust affects it less and people who are not on DefaultTrust to a trust level of 2 or less are not considered to have their trust as 'Trusted Feedback'. This is to ensure adequate weighting for trust feedback based on an individuals trust level. If you are a completely new account, I personally would trust your judgement less than that of an established member but I would not prevent them from actually placing feedback. Hence they are able to do so - just that it doesn't count to the number next to your name (if you're on DT - if not it depends what you have chosen).

People who believe they have been 'wronged' are always going to claim abuse. It shouldn't be up to them to decide their trust but the person your conducting business to interpret and judge based upon others feedback that they may trust.

The most important thing you have missed is that the trust system is not moderated. There are no rules for leaving feedback. What is important is if whiskers75 should be in the trusted list or not.

Well it's unfair to Macro to have that on his profile when he hasn't done anything. He will most likely lose trades and have to explain in depth the situation everytime somebody wants to trade him. It's kind of hard to not "trust it" when the system is called Trust Summary. So if someone makes a post demanding evidence of why a user has left on their profile something about being untrusted, do no trust, trade with caution, etc, that user should be able to post proof of why he thinks that. If the user has no proof of why he shouldn't be trusted then it gets removed. If he does have proof, then more than likely the recepient wouldn't even be making a post about it. Then for the people who abuse the system they should just be given a stupid rank by their name for so many days, and if they keep doing it then just ban them from posting trust ratings for awhile. I agree no trust system is flawless, so maybe it should just be labeled "User Feedback" since there's already a reputation sub-forum and it doesn't seem like very many people use the trust system anyway.

The point is it's there as a guide. You dont have to trust it and you can read the feedback left by whiskers and make your own mind up whether to trust marco based on that. You can also make up your own mind whether to trust whiskers based on the feedback he has left and now recieved (and now also tysat). If mods got involved then people would complain when feedback they thought was just was removed or that the mods are now abusing the system. It's not perfect or flawless, but I don't think any feedback system would be.

It's not filing a scam accusation against someone, it's addressing a scam accusation [or subliminally calling someone a scammer if you want to put it that way] that's been made. And that seems like the most appropriate place to do it. If mods don't remove false feedback that's given there's no point in even having the trust system.

There's no point in having a trust system if people are just giving negative feedback because they're mad at each other. And if the only punishment someone gets is a retaliation with more negative feedback that doesn't have anything to do with trust or trading.

I didn't misread it. He said he doesn't trust him, not that he's a scammer. The scam accusations forum is for people who have scammed or attempted to scam you and no such incident took place, so this is still probably the right forum to discuss such matters of the trust system, though it'd be better being trying to be resolved through PM but it looks like he exhausted that option. Even if he did create a thread in the scammers sub what good would that really do? It would probably just make the situation worse. Mods also don't remove feedback either, but it looks like whiskers has got his 'punishment' in the form of a negative feedback from tysat. Does that mean tysat is now abusing the system and whiskers should file a scam accusation against him?

I think you misread my post. Whiskers called Macro untrustworthy, or in other words a scammer. So now anyone who goes to Macro's profile will see that. Macro needs to post in the scammers accusation sub-forum (This thread could even be moved there) to make whiskers provide solid PROOF that Macro shouldn't be trusted. If he can't do that (maybe a rule should be made where there's a time limit in which you have to provide proof) then it should be easy for Macro to message a staff member and have it removed. Whiskers should get some kind of punishment for misusing the trust system. If there's no kind of system to stop people from abusing the trust system threads like these are just going to be popping up everywhere in random sub-forums.

But whiskers isn't a scammer and never accused marco of being one either. Accusing him of being a scammer probably won't do any good. Hopefully whiskers will just reconsider when he logs back on and sees the feedback from tysat.

Yup, my name appeared in the red for many months because TF took some offence to me and my account on coinchat.org (one of his sites).  He decided that even though we hadn't met or discussed anything on this forum that it was okay to put negative trust on me.  In the end, in my case, he was finally removed from the trust list so I don't have the mark anymore.  But it is certainly a system that can be abused.

I don't know what happened between whiskers and marco but I do know that the trust system here is a bit of a fickle thing.  Lol: don't trust the trust system, decide for yourself.

You're best route would probably be to post in the scammer accusations sub-forum (since he's calling you a scammer), and make him provide proof of why he thinks you're a scammer. If he can't then PM a staff member that deals with trust ratings and I'm sure they'd be happy to remove it for you.

Too bad, this plan won't work then. This matter won't draw theymos' attention and worth his time.

Bad trust system. Don't rely on it. We've seen how this kind of trust system works. (TradeFortress scams for example)

Only theymos can do that AFAIK, good luck getting a response!

I heard that mods can see deleted post and all edit history.
So, maybe we could have a mod taking a look at that post...

It may not be okay to make that post public to us, but at least the mod can tell us what kind of post is that, like scam or personal insult or something else.

Actually just out of reference I'm pretty sure it had a working reference - I do remember looking at it was some months back. Considering that it's missing now (and the thread is not self-moderated) the only logical conclusion would be to assume you deleted it. Would you mind explaining why? Also, if it was an innocent post I don't see why one would delete it or at least raise the issue then (three and a half months ago). I dunno, seems a bit suspicious to me.

No, I don't believe it matters. The negative feedback is fresh, meaning it weighs more I think, and the positive feedbacks are fresh with no risked BTC meaning they weigh less.