Topic: Is the Default trust system still working/active? - page 6. (Read 22791 times)

I think the idea of the current DT system is working in a good way the only problem is that is the that the list of Dt1 is stopped at 5 years ago and the list dt2 is stopped a couple of years ago.
Maybe you just have to expand this list and add a couple of trusted people to the list dt1 (without shady past) and a dozen active people to the list dt2.
Also, you could add to the list dt2 some people who "are taking care of the forum" and who punish the people who are abusing the forum and not only people who managing the marketplace.
Or creating a new DT2 rank with any name and doing this kind of work, it's unpleasant to see that a large part of people here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.new#new and here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.42378900 are not tagged for abusing since a year, since almost nobody of DT cares about them.
Finally, I do not believe that a dynamic dt1 is a great idea, in the end it could be a goot trust network, but for the first months we would have trustworth people with negative rep for revenge and vice versa scammers with positive rep.

Lot of cheaters aren't getting tagged due to unavailability of DT members on this forum and only few members were constantly finding cheaters and negging them so we need to add more DT members for the system to work with full potential I believe.

Best way is to use your own brain and judgement while dealing with others and you do not need any custom list/forum supplied list/ or more people in DT.

Improving the DT system is a good idea, but we should consider the consequences if we remove someone from DT or make a weak system changing every month. Don't forget about the bounty cheaters which will see a chance of getting their account rid of a red tag. When Lauda was removed from DT2 many tagged accounts were untagged. Imagine if some more DT2 are removed, the spam would go to moon  
Adding more members to DT1 or DT2 is inevitable in my opinion. There are so many accounts not tagged yet for bounty abuse although the proof is obvious. The few DT members tagging them are too busy and it's just unfair if most of the recently reported cheaters can still escape. I provided a proof of hacked or sold accounts abusing bounties and they are still not tagged.
There are so many reports not reviewed. If all the cheaters will be tagged the spam would be reduced a lot.

Therefore I would increase the DT1 members up to 30 by adding trustworthy DT2 members. This will keep the existing ratings intact and fix some issues we have right now (not enough DT to tag already reported cheaters).

Edit:
@OP, the link to dserrano5 is wrong, correct version is here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dserrano5-17768

He's not holding the domain.


This is how it should be, but in practice hasn't been like that for years.


I agree. Sadly, DT1 members do not agree with us. I've talked recently with few DT1 members (who I could contact, several of them are unresponsive or inactive) and how they describe DT is very far from your view.


I disagree. DT should be a list of people who are unlikely to scam others. Nothing else. It should not be used as some "ultimately trusted people" -list, as that's as real as unicorns. There have been plenty of scammers in DT. And I can tell you that scammers know their way in to that list, no matter how curated or small you want to keep it. So DT, if it has to exist, should merely act as a list of people unlikely to scam others. People should in general form their own trust networks, so I find the whole DT list largely unneeded.


Untrue. Negatives are largely based on pure opinions and incompetence. E.g. look at my trust rating received from SaltySpitoon (a DT1 member). He rated me red, because I did a vendor bid on my auction ~3 years ago. I had not stated that the auction was without reserve, as it was not without reserve. (E.g. the U.S. law states that auctions are by default with reserve and all no reserve is a special rule.) So I did this vendor bid, which is a sort of a concealed reserve price. SaltySpitoon is lying that I didn't honor the auction. I didn't back then know about the Bitcointalk auction standard, which is quite vague and not specified anywhere, but is something one just has to know. I didn't know back then that vendor bids are not cool in here. They're very commonly done in my country. In any case, vendor bids are not scamming, unethical or anything like that. So this rating by SaltySpitoon is wrecking my trust score and is listed in "trusted rating" page for all the people who trust DT, and it's based on SaltySpitoon's incompetent opinion. It's unfair, unjust and shows incredibly bad judgement, but there's nothing anyone can do about it except theymos. Nobody will go against a DT1 member publicly, Believe me, cliques and what not exist around DT.


Agree. And when negatives are used poorly, like they are... There have been various cases where DT members are misusing or abusing the system to boost their ego or whatever. In even more cases, the negative and positive ratings are given without proper basis. E.g. Vod rated me because I told him privately that I don't specifically trust him. Ego got hurt and shows.


This also highlights one of the issues about DT: people have very different views about what it should be. And people in DT positions have different views too, and use them according to their own view. This makes it a bad thing.

DT list should be removed completely. Right now it's acting as a "elite", "trusted people" list while that's only the perception of it. Reality may be totally different. There have been very nasty scammers on the DT list, even on DT1. It took a long time until the worst ones got removed. There are still untrustworthy people who do their shit only occasionally, so they are not removed. My point is that it's not a list I would suggest trusting. It has objectively not worked very well at protecting big scams from happening. It has and is only working to protect newbies from getting scammed in some ridiculous way. So it should be used for that purpose only. Best would be to remove the DT completely -- it would encourage people to make their own lists just like trust networks are supposed to work. Of course there's some steep curve in the beginning, but isn't there always?

Also, DT1's who have added people to DT2 may have been completely inactive for years, so who will remove them? Curating is not working properly and it's in the hands of a couple people. Not good.


I asked to be included in the DT list. I've been here for years, and around the scene for years. I've also traded a lot, and so on. I've also acted as "a judge" on various cases as I've moderated e.g. Bitcoin IRC channels for years.

I received mainly three kinds of responses from DT members:
1) Adding anyone who has a negative from some other DT is not possible without insane drama. This is where DT has evolved. There are tons of drama always around and obviously some people (DT1) get the heat.
2) I don't post enough positive or negative feedbacks. (one of this came from someone who is a lot less active regarding feedbacks than me, so I wonder this a little...)
3) I've rated positively someone they don't like. (and the person I have rated positively has dozens of positive ratings from various other people too, also from people on DT)


I think this is the best option. They will anyway rely on using DT (with the current system) and this is a step forward where there's no real DT, but still something (individual) that acts as such. Also new users would need to pick the users themselves, so they'd acknowledge it at that very point that they have chosen those "trusted" users themselves, and nobody did it for them.


Here's mine: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5081293.new#new

I've always thought the trust system worked pretty well.  Even in cases where users have positive trust that I don't agree with, it seemed to take community opinion over a "top-down" approach.  However, I'm always open to seeing improvements.


It sounds like the benefit of this approach would be more DT1 users, but also a rotating approach that could help point out users with poor networks who could use adjusting.  Over time, I could see this being great, but would likely involve a more hands on approach from the users being selected and random is a bit scary.

Why not expand the current DT1 system?  It sounds like most of the complaints about it are that people aren't included.  Why not take a look at how expanding the current DT1 members to 30 would effect the system and perhaps moving to a random rotating approach if that goes well?

Maybe start with the annoying message once people reach member status or even full member. With a hint that if they don’t know who to add, then dot add anyone.

DT seems to be overvalued and seems to be made a rank in itself for some reason...

I don't see anything particularly bad about forcing custom lists. Yes, some users will choose poorly but the other options are potentially as much or more dangerous - e.g. if there's a flaw or loophole in the algorithm it would impose wrong choices on users without their knowledge or input.

Other than that - some combination of "Athenian" + "Voting" perhaps, where a certain set of users can vote? Random sounds a bit scary.

I don't like how the current system is working at all. It was never intended to be a top-down "decision-making body". Everyone is supposed to set a custom list, and DefaultTrust is supposed to just be a stepping stone for newbies.

But what do you propose to fix it? Keep in mind that:
 - The #1 thing to be avoided is someone keeping illegitimate positive trust for long, since that facilitates scamming.
 - It's kind of OK for someone to get illegitimate negative trust, but if it's wrong then it should be removed eventually.
 - Other than that, it's best to have as many ratings trusted as possible.

Some possibilities which have come to my mind:

Force custom lists

Display an annoying message instead of a trust score next to every post until the person sets a custom list with the assistance of the set initial trust page.

Pros:
 - No remnant of top-down decision-making remains.
Cons:
 - Newbies will often choose poorly, especially since the suggested list is possibly manipulable.
 - I've been thinking that I might want to enable trust for non-users, and that'd be impossible with this.

Athenian democracy

Every month, pick ~30 random users from the set of users who meet certain fairly strict criteria. Those users are DT1 for the month. As a special exception to the normal trust network construction algorithm, distrusts in DT1 will also affect DT1; ie. if a user on DT1 has -1 or less net trusters on DT1, then they will not be considered to be on DT1 anymore.

Pros:
 - I think that it'd end up being fairly accurate on average.
 - It strongly encourages people to maintain good trust lists at all times.
 - Since it'd be erratic, it'd encourage people to not use DefaultTrust, which I don't want people to be doing.
 - It's not very top-down, though in some cases major failures might require manual adjustment.
 - It can be used by non-users.
Cons:
 - The stability everyone has gotten used to with DT will be gone.
 - Some degree of abuse is inevitable. There will be constant battles to get things working reasonably.

Voting

I'm not a fan of voting, especially in an environment like this where sockpuppets are impossible to prevent, but maybe it could be made to work with sufficient layers and oversight. For a while I was thinking about a complicated system in which users would self-assign themselves to "tribes", elect tribal leaders, and then the leaders would construct DT1 (plus some other stuff). I think I've decided that this particular method would be overly complicated and not sufficiently useful, though. Alternatives are possible.

Algorithmic

Maybe there's some algorithmic way of looking at the universal trust graph and pulling out a DT1 which would guarantee several important properties, even in the face of manipulation. I thought about it for a while, but I couldn't figure anything out.

---

If you have specific suggestions for alterations to the current DT1 list, then make a topic about it. I think that the system is structurally flawed as it is now, though.

Quick seller got caught out, why won’t others @lauda.
@loycev, I’m not surprised by that at all. Generally, like gaining merit, users seem to want to focus on others’ history. It goes without saying mid you’ve been here longer you have more history and more references than someone who has been here for a much shorter amount of time.

Nullius gaining so much trust makes me think he’s a known alt of someone too. There as a core dev or at least someone around bitcoin a few years ago who went by a similar name.

This surprised me too after seeing your sorted list. I didn't expect DT to be filled with mainly old members. The newest DT1 is more than 5 years old (I'm ignoring OldScammerTag here), and about 90% of DT2 is more than 4 years old.
I would guess many of the current DT-members were much less than 4 years old when they were added, which would mean getting on DT is harder now than it was 4 years ago. Of course it doesn't help that so many new users are spammers, but the number of decent posters went up too when Bitcoin gained popularity.

I was put on DT without leaving a lot of negatives. But when I do, I try to be thorough.

All cheer for trust farming via 0.01 BTC trades.



It looks like a lot of people don't understand this here, or at least do not mention it that often. An examplatory question: If you trusted someone after a few smaller trades a few years ago, do you still trust him equally now (assuming you didn't trade with the user anymore after  that e.g.)? The sensible answer would be a no. Decay and inappropriate actions should make it shift.

It could be worse. The system we have isn't perfect but what system is?

I am suspicious of users "Gunning for DT", I think we all should be, we need to keep an eye on them, and even they should understand that and be open to it.
The merit system has made it a bit worse, or should I say increased that activity, because the same avenue is also an outstanding path to a lot of merits. 
But you can't just hate them. I can't blame a guy for being ambitious and some of them have turned out pretty good. But this is crypto, and the internet, and we should be suspicious of everything and keep in mind their ultimate motives.

I don't think a person should be added to DT only for having left a lot of valid feedback, but should also display very good judgment in complex cases, and also be trustworthy enough not to be setting up for a long con. But leaving valid feedback is a good reason to add them.
It's not like DT=Trusted escrow though. I'm not sure I would trust half of them just to not screw up and lose my coins, and be willing and able to reimburse me if they did.

I understand the ideas behind wanting to leave positive feedback for all successful trades, or only trades where you took a risk, or only to those you would vouch for, or be against positive feedback left in the absence of any trade, or for it, or for or against leaving a negative with no trade. They all have pros and cons.
I'm generally for anybody doing whatever they think is the right thing to do even if their ideas are not parallel. As long as they have good intentions mostly in line with my view Satoshi's vision of liberty I guess.

@eddie, I don’t like that sort of system as we have now.

I don’t think scam busters should be on dt merely for being scam busters and it’s why quite a few have gone on to scam and also why mdayonliner got negative trust too.
A system in which verifiable trades get chives positive trust in return, is as I see it, a much better system. Call me old fashioned, I like people to only give trust when they’ve had something at stake and it’s paid off.

I think DT is more for placing valid scammer tags and the only sure avenu to becoming DT is to become a scambuster and leave a lot of valid negative feedback.
DT positive is very conservative because you are basically staking your reputation to vouch for someone, or risking the reputation of your judgment for not much gain. Moreso adding someone to DT2 because then you are staking your judgment on them not only not to scam, but on their judgment of others not to scam. It's just much easier and safer not to, and their isn't much upside.

Negatives are much more common and easier because you just prove a fact and that's it, and can't really be undone or later disproved while deserving a positive vouch can easily be undone in the future by a fact of bad action.
It is widely accepted that one shouldn't leave a positive just for any successful trade because blah blah risk not proof etc.
Negatives are 99.9% provable fact and positives are a judgement call, the way feedback is used.

I think it also has a lot to do with benefit to the community.
Scambusters and negative tags are very beneficial to the community to warn others and stop bad actors while positives are only good for what?, saving some traders some escrow fees and slight complexity in trading?
Positives don't really help a person much while negatives have a massive impact.

It is a lot less risky and more beneficial to add someone to DT2 that places a lot of valid scammer tags than it is to add someone who places a lot of positive feedback.

This site has turned more into a place for service gigs like advertising in one form or another, work you don't really need to be trusted to do, and less p2p trading where trust between parties is key and positive feedback is beneficial.

From what I see, not that I completely agree, not directed at TP, just my 2C.

I meant the last account created and added on the DT list (id not in base of the temporal line), so far no accounts above the account n=881377 as been added on the DT list, we have only u=1294878 loshia1974, but reading feedbacks Here is only an alt account

I recently analyzed the Marketplace Trust network and created this thread:
[TOP-200] The most trusted members (DT1, DT2, DT3)

I am sure that the Default Trust system is still working. I am also astonished by how many inactive members are in the DT2 list.


As far as I know, the last account added to the DT2 list is iluvbitcoins.

Anyways, good work, @OP.

By the way, I need to update my thread, although there are no significant changes.

The most recent thoughts of our Esteemed Leader that I could find about DT were in reply to a proposal to include Level 3 by default setting (as I vaguely recall it being in the Old Days).
 

Well, the only logical way to do that would be to promote selected level D2's to D1, they in turn would bring their currently included DT3's into Level 2. It seems reasonable to think that, if you believe the overall system has value and integrity, that is the only way that any sort of quality control could be maintained.
How to select which current DT2 members for upgrade from the current 200 odd is another matter. Two choices that I can see: either those  currently included by the most DT1's, or by centralized dictat.


Yes. Apart from the hijack/hack danger, trust is dynamic not static.

Got it, fixing the posts n°1&2.

The Pharmacist touched on this, but if someone is excluded, it doesn't necessarily mean they were once included. I believe there are some DT1 members that have excluded accounts whom have never been included, I assume to avoid them getting easily included in the future.