Topic: Replacing DefaultTrust - page 7. (Read 16276 times)

+1. As I said in my previous posts (1, 2, 3, 4), while I like some of the improvement theymos brought to us, I was really concerned about the user-unfriendly results of having few guidelines & helps in the points an user used the most. Some people are lazy for sure, but if needed informations are not readily available the Whole (any) system is useless.

This is not a bad concept having a trust system that can put trust weight on individual ratings, but it would still include all the flaws of the current trust system regardless of this small improvement. The trust system is SUPPOSED to operate as a way to judge who is and who is not a reputable trader, but unfortunately 3rd parties unrelated to the trades in question involve themselves in issues making it not so much just trade related any more.

Something I thought of while reading this thread (not to sure about implementation though) would be a way to either remove trust from yourself or others (not being the one who originally posted it), have it counted less (kind of already works this way as the person who left it incorrectly probably doesn't have positive trust), or have another category under trust, something like, "untrusted feedback and others agree" that would allow people who simply leave neg rep for the sake of it to be able to be mitigated if others don't really agree with the trust, and agree it should be counted less.

I also like the idea of buttons to quickly add and delete people from your trust list, would really speed up the process after a transaction.

Another point to bring up is what about trusted users who don't really do trades.  There are plenty of very knowledgeable forum members who don't spend much time in the markets sections.  Lots of people would trust these users, but since they have never traded with them, have not left positive feedback.  You start to see a lot of bias towards those who spend a lot of time doing trades in the top 50 members, and start to leave these people out.  Perhaps some formula to calculate a number based on forum history (length of time on forum, posts made per week over that time, trust received weekly over that time, etc...) would help to level the playing field a bit?

This largely sums up the problem. All the trust system does is give newbies a false sense of security, because if they don't understand how it works it is useless. Even more so even if they do understand it, it has many inherent flaws that have not manifested much until recently.

The common consensus seems to be that the trust system is specifically in place to help newbies not get scammed but the reality is that 99% of the newbies that come to this board have no idea what the trust system is and how it works.  There is nothing about it in Beginners section and throwing a screen at them and forcing to choose from members they have never heard of/interacted with isn't going to help either.  Even to this day I'm not 100% how the depths work and who gets to be on DefaultTrust. How is a newbie going to know?

There should be a concerted effort to educate newbies on how Trust works and how to set up the list properly if newbie scam prevention is really the goal.

IMO newbies who are willing to spend the effort to learn how to protect themselves should be assisted with more clear information and guidance. The ones who just expect the community to tell them what to think because they are too lazy to research it for themselves, they should be left to deal with the consequences of that. I was perfectly happy in the days before the trust system, and I see no reason why we can not return to those days. It was a good experiment, but it failed. It is time to move on. Preemptive trust ratings, "scambusting" etc are counter productive and destroy more honest users than they do stop scammers. Scammers just return seconds later with a new name and try again. Honest users lose out big time. We can't afford to drive away people who want to contribute.

So in response:
1. No.
2. It should achieve a centralized place for users to comment on another user's trade activity WITHOUT turning it into a penalization system or a system of nepotism.
3.A comment based non red/green ranked trust system could achieve the vast majority of the benefits of the current trust system while removing the majority of the destructive feedback cycles.

I simply see no point in having any kind of specific trust system if not for the newbies.
We were happy back in the days when there was no such thing, so why bother?
Just for my vanity? Because I'm a lot of peoples' trust lists?

The questions are:
1. do we need a trust system after all?
If so:
2. what should it achieve?
3. how can it achieve that?

The newbies are the ones refusing to learn how to trade safely. Why create leave a system that creates infighting and nepotism? Nothing will prevent scamming. It will always continue to happen under ANY system. IMO a series of detailed stickies informing people of the basics of trading safely here could be much more effective. This way the newbies who actually want to learn how to protect themselves do, and the lazy people get punished for their laziness, as it should be.

I have already casted my vote there; nevertheless thank you for your reminder! 


+1. As I said myself before, more established member have learned their way up to avoid potential scams; but a trust system real benefit is to protect vulnerable new user like the newbies.

Sure, why not? I'm okay with that.
Although I don't really see the point in such a system at all. It won't help a newbie.
I've said it before and I will repeat it over and over again, the trust system is not for me or you, it should help newbies to be less likely victims of potential scammers.

Any trust system will have to be measured by the number of scams it prevents.

Right, they don't want to learn. So why have a self destructive default trust system to warn users who don't take any actions to protect themselves? Why not just cut out the middle man and get rid of default trust, red and green, and just let users comment on trust profiles.

I saw that some people liked the idea that I said here ,so I made a new thread to get more intention about it with more few changes , it's an open discussion , just say what do you think  : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=918798.0;viewResults .

~ Madness

And this is precisely how it should be. It has actually been stated many times before (I'm fairly sure theymos was the one who first stated this) that the entire point of DefaultTrust is so that those on Depth 1 pick out a Trust list of people who have valuable feedback to be on Depth 2, or in more common wording, to maintain a trust list of good rating-givers.

People don't want to learn.
They are used to having things done for them.
You can't educate newbie users about something as complicated as our current trust system.

Any trust system that'll do the trick of actually preventing a relevant number of scams will have to "work just out of the box" for a newbie.

Not on depth 0.

I'm still learning & experimenting with the exclusion & addition and by this way i put a piece on the magicaltux issue. I cannot feel however established enough to have only a personal trust list. My reservation are about the forced future scrapping on DefaultTrust who will make things worse for new/not established enough users. I would like some user-friendly improvments theymos worked out and some other addition like a way to upload a list of mine by an ASCII text-file.
+1. 

You can already exclude users, which would have solved the magicaltux issue, and you can already use default trust along with your own list.

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I don't really use the trust list as a list of people I implicitly trust, or know, or have traded with, though some of those are on there, it's just a list of people whose feedback I value more than others.

Getting rid the trust list is not a solution in my view since IF the problem is, as you say "Most people just don't understand that you don't put users whom you trust in your trust list, but rather users where you believe that they maintain a good trust list themselves. This has been a problem from the start" the only way to solve it is to educate members in using it in the right way. As I said before more guideline available to explain how to use feedbacks & trust list. Personally I would put in my trust list ONLY a member that I had known in person/he is a close friend or associate and I trust him as myself (or more) preferably after I have had a succesful large number of high-value transactions AND/OR over long period of association.
But IF you asked me to do this as a Brand New/Newbie or even a few weeks ago i definitely had to random monkey-checking some flag insted of using the DefaultTrust while trying to understand the mechanics of the forum/trust/feedbacks.

So don't get rid of the Baby with the water! Keep the DefaultTrust but explain better how to use/create trust-lists.

Well, no matter what the trust system will look like in the future, the more I think about it, I'd like to see the user-edited trust list go away.

Most people just don't understand that you don't put users whom you trust in your trust list, but rather users where you believe that they maintain a good trust list themselves. This has been a problem from the start and it probably won't ever be a non-problem.

Get rid of the trust list! Now.

I cast my vote on the "keep DefaultTrust list" side since, even with the known problems, it offers more protection to new users. However, I would like to see some of the new features Theymos brought to us like:

• the check box to inject extra users in personal trust lists (hopefully a similar way to also prune it of no more trusted members) to tailor-custom our own list.
• I would also like a box to upload a trust list from an ASCII text file to expedite the maintenance of my list (I keep an ASCI *.TXT file with my list od trusted members and untrusted member i wish to exclude them from my trust network - e.g. as to avoid cases like the well known MagicalTux who remain in the DefaultTrust due to an unpruned trust list of a member).
• Also having the possibility of using jointly both the DefaultTrust and our own list would expand our options for security while ranking up (and learning our responsabilities of more established forum members).

I really think their guideline are helpful to assist people give the appropriate weight to their feedback. As an example IF i do "One or two good transactions" or if  I had "a number of good transactions" with a forum member i could leave a Neutral feedback since I cannot guarantee him/her is not simply doing smaller transactions to build up his/her reputation before doing a bigger SCAM; but if I know a member in person, he is a close friend or associate and I trust him as myself (or more) I would definitively trust a Positive (green) one; the same if I had a succesful "large number of high-value transactions (more of the BTC equivalent of 10$/month) over long period of association" since i can consider such a member very trustworthy. I may give Negative (Red) if the other two case, but if the one with lesser guilt - e.g. the "Person strikes you as a bit flaky. Unreasonable/unexpected delays in payment, etc." improve his/her behaviour, pay his debt, contribute meangiful to community and so on I may revert the judgement to Neutral to leave it as reminder for Others - however SCAMMERS will remain struck with their Negative judgements.
Also stressing more the need to protect themselves from possible frauds maybe with a sticky topic as well as with a link in Trust settings AND/OR near the new feedback box, similar to their avoiding fraud guidelines could be an idea worth to be evaluated.


I don't think like Others said before that a Newbie/Jr.Member know enough to bother themselves about customizing his trust list. However, I would like a more advanced trust-setting panel as I'm becoming a more established and knownledgable user to start doing some advanced customization of my list (but I still use DefaultTrust and integrate it with my own addictions/exclusions). I think a Member/Full Member/Sr. Member level would be more appropriate than a Brand New/Newbie have to custom build his list as soon as he make his first post in a Marketplace. Doing so may require to segregate also new users to a n00bs trollbox to allow the same level of actual protection if using the new system as proposed instead of the DefaultTrust.