Did nyktalgia already scammed some people or the negative feedback is created to warn against possible scam in the future?
If it is the latter I believe there is a chance the feedback should be removed if the buyer is an established and trusted that can be proven that he is not an alt of the user who owns the negative accounts.
Based on the feedbacks, it seems like that he was just asking for loans and haven't actually scammed someone.
Trust shouldn't be removed just because an account is sold. If this was regular practice people would just fake a sale to themselves in an attempt to get it removed. Accounts should be ruined or lose most of their value once they have used to scam and if people removed feedback under these circumstances scammers could get a lot more for their accounts or as above cheat the feedback into being removed completely.
IMO if the buyer provides certain credible proof that he's not associated with the seller, then maybe the trust should be changed to neutral, but still providing the same information.
The problem is that the buyer has 0% chance of proving that he's not associated with the seller at all.
How can you prove you're not associated with someone? That can easily be faked anyway and would be abused in the way I detailed above. Scammers would then easily be able to get their accounts restored to normal. If you buy a negatively trusted account then you have bought a negatively trusted account.
Like I said:
The problem is that the buyer has 0% chance of proving that he's not associated with the seller at all.Below is a PM I sent to two other members who are on default trust who had asked for my opinion on the matter:
I told him that just because an account was sold does not mean that negative trust should be removed.Doing so would create a number of problems.
-It would create more of a market for negative trust accounts, which means that scammers can get something out of their account after scamming.
-After this happens enough (remove negative trust from an account after it scams), account buyers will notice and will start to buy negative trust accounts at a discount which will eventually push up the price of negative trust accounts to near that of neutral trust accounts. This will take away the incentive of people not to scam because they would no longer lose the majority of the value of their account when they are caught scamming.
-It will cause scammers to pretend to sell their accounts with the hope of getting their negative trust account removed. We saw what is likely a number of fake scammer account sales after Vod removed negative trust from someone that bought an account from me, and posted that on my thread.
Below is an additional response to the discussion in hand.
They can redeem themselves with many months of good behavior. For the newbie loan scammers I would remove negative trust after 30 days of active participation in the forum. For other members, I would say a more appropriate timeframe would be at least 3-4 months, with a more appropriate time frame being somewhere closer to 6 months. If they are involved in any scam attempts or scammy behavior then I would outright decline to remove negative trust. I would consider them actually posting to be considered "good behavior" and not just abandoning their account for the required time period.
If they scammed for smaller amounts then they can repay their victims to get negative trust removed, for larger amounts then their dox gets removed (if they were doxed) but not the negative trust upon repayment.
This is my policy at least. Either of you are free to adopt it or adopt a variation of it, and I am interested/willing to hear what policy you think is best.
I agree with you that it creates a demand and a market for negative trust accounts, as I already have noticed at least 3 threads that are WTB negative trusted/banned accounts, and they're probably a result of the selling of nyktalgia's account sales. And at some point an admin or a trusted member has to step out and stop it. Prevention is better than a cure.
For the dox part, even if you remove the dox other people probably have quoted it or noted it down. So removing a dox doesn't really do anything. Also, if we use your policy then the scammer can easily pretend to sell his account to one of his sockpuppets, or just paying off a loan directly to the loaner. The record should still be there, but possibly with neutral trust.
Also nyktalgia's account doesn't seem to have scammed anyone yet, there are just some signs that he's about to scam. What do you think the solution would be in this case?
Good points. Also, Negative trust depreciates over time and if you get a certain number of positive feedbacks it can become 'neutralised' so there is still salvation for some accounts though negative feedback shouldn't be removed and they should still bare the marks of previous behaviour regardless of who now owns them.
May I ask what is the rate the negative trust is depreciating by? But by becoming neutralised you'll still have -ve records, which most signature campaigns don't accept. But either way the buyer didn't negotiate at all, it seems with the feedback leavers to get to some kind of solution, so he should take the responsibility of buying this account and not ask for the negative trust to be edited/removed.