Topic: Having an "I solemnly swear / attestation / liar liar pants on fire" thread - page 2. (Read 456 times)

Well, yes, I like both ideas, but consider this: liars are everywhere. It is inevitable that they will be here. I doubt that such people will voluntarily publish incriminating evidence about themselves here ... at least not if they have any common sense or self-preservation. Liars will always try to cover their tracks. If they admit to lying or confirm their lie and a thread provides proof of their guilt - then yes, they are guilty as charged. If they deny it - then there isn't much more you can do because of the nature of this place. You cannot force someone to admit they are a liar.

So, I think it will be more useful to have a thread where members can post evidence that someone is lying. And just like we have threads to expose alt accounts or plagiarists, I think it would be helpful for members to post evidence about someone who has lied. If someone is obviously lying, and you can prove it - then it would be great if we could have a thread where the evidence could be posted. It would also help if other members could verify those claims and offer additional proof, if necessary. I think a thread like this will help clear up confusion about what is true and what isn't, especially in regards to controversial topics.

Without reading the topic title, it looked to me like a thread where other users can archive evidence, with a specific format regarding different users, so anyone looking for it can easily search using that format and find it, and I was down for that.

A thread where users are sworn to truth is not quite feasible, neither do I think it would be used or that a forum rule would be added cause of that.
If there is evidence to show out a user to be lying it should be posted, they should not be compelled to prove innocence by posting on a thread.

Yeah I think there is not much of a benefit in doing something like that.

Staked addresses are useful for e.g. recovering an account or some other proof of identity. Staked truth (or lie) doesn't really benefit a truthful person and surely doesn't benefit a liar.

BTW tagging, let alone banning, for lying - not something we need IMO, unless that lie has broader consequences causing "high risk" in trading with the person. Which is a whole other thing beyond the scope of such thread and again, slim chance that "criminals" would incriminate themselves in said thread.

Yep. I suppose it's a matter of how much usage you believe a thread like that would have, though. I mean, especially with the caveat that it should only be used for declarations that are potentially falsifiable by forum members, do you think it would be used so much that it would be unmaintainable? With millions of members, you'd think the "Stake your Bitcoin address here" thread would be overflowing, but it just quietly ticks over (582 pages and counting) with only a post every now and then (I know that's a very different demographic, and a topic that most people use one time and then never again, but still). Although, maybe I'm underestimating how often people would enjoy putting each other to the test and saying "Oh really, why don't you post that in the pinocchio thread?"

Edit: Reading Chymist's post again, it looks like maybe my horse-kissing joke might have confused things. Just in case it did, I want to be clear that the proposal is for people themselves to post their declarations in the right thread, not in random places like I did. I'm not expecting some poor soul to have to scour the forum looking for declarations to quote. All the maintainer of this hypothetical new topic would have to do is delete off-topic posts and occasionally quote a declaration themselves, when the community itself has failed to do so (which won't happen very often if the "Stake your Bitcoin address here" topic is anything to go by).

Oh man, you don't know what you're missing. 

I see a lot of problems with your suggestion, with the first being the maintenance of such a thread.  There's no way any moderators are going to have time to do a job like that--nor should they when there's so much crap that needs to be swept up off the filthy floors of some sections.  But even if it were just a volunteer (or even a team of volunteers), the task seems like it'd be a never-ending one, not to mention an organizational nightmare. 

Think of how many members there are on bitcointalk.  Millions.  Who chooses which statements by which members are important enough to be quoted in a thread like what you proposed?  It almost hurts my brain to think about it, sort of like contemplating infinity for too long.

I'm not saying those lying-ass liars that lie around lying 24/7 don't need to be called out on their falsehoods, but I don't see it being done like this.  By the way I just looked at when you registered, PowerGlove, and I could have sworn you were around for a lot longer than you have been.

I think it would be cool if the community had some kind of tool (however blunt) to help smoke out liars. So, the way I see it working is that someone senior (maybe a mod) maintains a thread (in Reputation?) that's meant to collect and quote truth "declarations" (kind of like how address staking works, the quoting is to prevent edits/deletions). The idea is that if someone says something like: "I don't have any alt accounts.", then you can encourage them to state that fact in this new topic. Then they go over there and post something to that effect in a format like this: "I, $MEMBER do hereby state the following: As of $TIMESTAMP, I $DECLARATION."

If it later turns out that this person was full of shit, then tagging can ensue. Even better, if this system were supported by a new forum rule that lying in that specific thread is a bannable offense, then people would think very carefully about what they write there. I don't believe that banning is too harsh of a punishment, because nothing (except community pressure) forces anyone to ever write anything in that topic, if they don't want to. Of course, their refusal to do so would also be a semi-reliable signal that they might be full of shit.

I'll go first: "I, PowerGlove do hereby state the following: As of Oct 15 2022, I've never open-mouth kissed a horse." [This is a joke and a terrible example]

Anyway, I'm not wedded to this idea and I realize I'm still too junior to make suggestions like these, but maybe it'll spark some interesting discussion between more experienced members!

Edit: To be clear, the only kinds of "declarations" that I have in mind are things which are potentially falsifiable by other forum members (otherwise, why bother) and that ends up being a pretty small set of things (alt accounts, merit abuse, trust abuse, etc.)

Here are a few things I'd like to say about this proposal:

• I had a very specific thing in mind when I thought of this (the recent naim027 drama, which is what got me thinking about honesty).
• I'm against reckless tagging and don't want to encourage misuse of the trust system.
• My position is scattered throughout this thread, and you'll have to read each my posts to understand it.
• This proposal is (I feel) a little more subtle and sophisticated than most people are giving it credit for.
• Please try and give it a "generous" reading, steel-manning leads to better discussion than straw-manning does.