Topic: Requesting theymos to remove CanaryInTheMine from DefaultTrust - page 6. (Read 15798 times)

That would be good IMHO. How about restricting newbies from giving feedback till they get 14 points or become Jr. Member? It would decrease the pain for moderators.

   ~~MZ~~

Good suggestions , but  maybe   theymos can add the function "report"  near the feedback so we can easily report the "fake"  & *abused* feedback.

[it is only a suggestion]

I think the main problem is that the trust system has given members that haven't proven themselves responsible enough the ability to mark someone's account with negative trust, and essentially ruin the account. Even if 90% of the time the people are right, there's still a 10% rate that it will be abused. Given the weight that a trusted negative feedback carries (Warning: Trade With Extreme Caution!) it doesn't seem to me that the system would work in the long run as more and more people would start to gain this power, and it would become harder and harder to monitor and deal with.

I see a main problem is negative feedback is being given because of a personal view on things, and not having to do with scamming or potentially scamming. Even if 90% of everything is right, again it still opens up the chance for 10% abuse, which would be 1/10 times a reputable members account would be damaged. As the trust web grows it would be harder and harder to deal with this, and there's a lot of problems you could run into when removing it. In order for this to not happen I think it would be a good idea to keep the trust system in a monitored rate, where only people that have proven that their opinions are correct, that are willing to quickly correct something they did wrong, and that show the responsibility to not abuse the system and their power if something doesn't go their way or if they get mad are given the power to negative rep someone's account and have it show up on their main profile.


The Default Trust Members and people who carry the high feedback weight are like the Bitcoin Police. In a regular police force, a cop wouldn't be able to give a recommendation to someone and them become part of the team. Sure, the cop might personally know that person and know they're a good person, but they haven't gone through the process of being a cop. As more and more recommendations are given out, you'd eventually have citizens killing other citizens and making decisions that aren't really applicable to the law or what they are supposed to be doing. It would be hard to monitor because there would be so many people to deal with that finding the rights and wrongs would take more time than humanly possible. If the trust system isn't kept at a monitorable rate, pretty soon there will be newbies having more say in a situation than a reputable member who's been here for years (Which I believe is already close to what happened in Canaries case).

Going back on topic - it appears that Chris_Sabian was recently added to CanaryInTheMine's trust list. I noticed because as of when this thread started Mabsark has zero trust feedback, however he now has a positive report from both CanaryInTheMine and Chris_Sabian. I had noticed that Chris had given Mabsark positive feedback a few days ago, but it was showing as 'untrusted'

When I look at the Hierarchical view of the default trust network, I see that he is roughly in the middle of his trust list, that appears to otherwise be in roughly the order that people were added in. It also appears that KaChingCoinDev was recently added to the bottom (last active November 10 2014), as well as sjc1490 who appears to have given Canary feedback several months ago, along with FACTOM which I have no idea why he is on his trust list as he was registered ~a month ago with 7 posts and no trade history.

I am not 100% sure on the above three (although if they were previously on his trust list, their position was recently moved, because I know that suchmoon was ~the 2nd from the bottom. I do know for certain that Chris_Sabian was not on default trust network previously

But as you said, those with a direct interest have reason to keep the default trust list under control. Thats fine and dandy for a "Default" Trust group. I honestly think that for new members joining the forums, Default Trust isn't a bad way to start off. By the time they are no longer newbies and can gauge the community, they can build their own trust groups. There is nothing stopping a decentralized trust network from starting in tandem with Default trust. If people are too lazy to switch from default trust to their own systems, that would be the case regardless of whether Default Trust was in play or not. By the time you are around a while, you realize trusted trust and untrusted trust don't make a difference, you find yourself looking for specific names as references rather than green letters. For example Mabsark under CanaryInTheMine. I don't care if they are on default trust, I had no idea who they were before this thread, so I'm not going to value their feedback anymore than someone else I dont know. I'm looking for feedback from longtime members and businesspeople before I trade with someone.

That sounds great, but reality doesn't always meet expectations. I hope I'm wrong, I really do. Nothing is stopping you from doing it now, nobody is forced to use default trust. Really the only people who should be using default trust are those who choose to, and new people with no idea who to trust. I don't even use just default trust, I chose to add it along with others to my trust list because I find it to be fairly accurate.  I've said it before, but default trust is a good starting point, and that's all it is, and that's all it was intended to be. (example https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2812517) People seem to be using it as the end all be all for everything, and that isn't what it's for.

I'm not a huge fan of default trust either, never have been (and really I could care less if I'm on it, last I checked I was pretty high up on the list of people in custom trust lists, and that's not counting people who didn't add me because I'm already in their list via default, so I'm highly trusted enough without it where I can do good within the community, and that's what's important), but I do recognize why it's needed. You don't see the need because you have been here a long time and know people, but there are a lot of people who haven't been here very long, and don't know anyone. Those are the ones who need the help.

I'm not going to derail this thread anymore with talk about defaulttrust though, this thread isn't about that.

This is quite an assumption to make. The forum itself is earning income and interacting with users of the forum. The moderators are paid, and that income comes from ads sold. There is a DIRECT FINANCIAL INTEREST in keeping this trust list under control of the people who are the primary beneficiaries of this (mods, any paid staff).

Even assuming that you are all 100% honest at your word, that alone is enough to influence your actions drastically regarding how you moderate the default trust. This is why a distributed solution to this is the only solution. Will it ever be exploited? Yes probably, but so is the current system. At least a distributed system has the ability to react and shift reputation to individuals who deserve it and remove it from those who don't THEMSELVES, not from a central position of a small group of otherwise disinterested financial beneficiaries.

He does have hundreds on his trust list, more specifically he has over 200 (201 as per an above post). I agree that he probably doesn't have everyone that has participated in a group buy on his trust list, but looking at the number of untrusted trust reports verses the number of trusted trust reports I would say that he puts most people who have participated in a group buy on his trust list.

You are right, it is not possible not even try to come close to enforcing only allowing people to have one account, plus there are legit reasons for someone to post from another account (for example to post something controversial they do not want associated with their "real" account or to post an anon scam report with 'leaked' information). 

I very much agree that CanaryInTheMine should give positive feedback to people he has a positive experience trading with (this is really how most/all trades should result in) however he seems to also make a habit of adding them to his trust list which happens to also put them on default trust. Now once someone is on default trust they can leave fake feedback to their alternate accounts saying that they purchased something from these alternate accounts and that they risked large amounts of BTC. Going back to reading the feedback that someone has received, the alternate account now has the potential to scam someone who is looking to buy a certain product because a potential buyer would read the alternate account's trusted feedback and see several successful trades when the other party risked money so they might be willing to risk similar amounts of money. The person on default trust would have plausible deniability as they would claim that actual trades did in fact take place from the trust feedbacks given. 

It's naive to think you can stop multiple accounts, you can't. I'm not going to sit here and list all the ways to do it, but suffice it to say the scammers know all of them, and it isn't very hard. It's their livelihood, it's what they do, and most of them are good at what they do. Multiple negative ratings by the same user already do not increase one's negative rating, but they shouldn't be stopped from giving more than one because there may be more than one issue at stake (there are good reasons to leave more than one negative feedback, and there are bad). Trust spam does get removed.

Default trust isn't perfect and incorruptible, but a trust list run by someone else (and let's be real here, if default trust didn't exist, someone would make a "default" that everyone would end up using anyway) would be much more corruptible.

If the trust list itself didn't exist and all comments were given equal weight, it would just turn into a numbers game, and scammers/spammers would win that game by a large margin. I found a spammer/account farmer in the local boards with over 130 accounts, and they weren't newbie accounts either. Under your system, that guy, if he wanted, would probably be the highest trusted member on the forums, lol. I've found other spammers with similar numbers, or even more.

Also newbies wouldn't know who to trust, and just throwing newbies in the water with the sharks when they don't know sharks exist (most forums ban anyone who's even suspected of scamming) isn't right. And if you're going to say ban scammers, we have no interest in banning people from participating in the forum just because they are breaking a law. Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Guy Fawkes, fuck it even Robin Hood just to make the point, all "criminals" who break laws. (Alleged) rapist, (alleged) treasonist, (attempted) mass murder, and theft. All Criminals who should be banned if they posted here?

I don't claim he hasn't done business with them. I'm merely saying I wasn't part of his group buy and don't imagine all the others are either. He obviously didn't put everyone on his trust list from the group buys, he'd have hundreds if that was the case.

Having multiple accounts is something we can't enforce, so it would be irresponsible to say that its disallowed. The number next to someone's name is pretty irrelevant, if anyone is using the trust system solely by the green or red number, thats their fault. Its like Ebay feedback, before you buy a yacht from someone with 100 positive feedback for purchases, you should probably check and see what that feedback is for. Allowing people to leave more than one rating really isn't a big deal. I haven't seen any issue with people spamming feedback. Giving someone positive feedback does not mean that they are on the default trust list, I have done many deals with people, but if you check my sent feedback it accurately describes the transaction so that people can gauge what my feedback means for themselves. I have added four people to the default trustlist and left probably 50 different positive feedbacks. Mr. CanaryInTheMine gave positive feedback to people he had a positive transaction with, not a problem. That goes back to the point of reading what someone has gained feedback for and the Ebay example. If someone has 50 positive trust for buying things from group buys, that doesnt mean they are trustworthy to sell you something. The feedback system is a tool, there is no preventing it from people that use it wrong. The default trust system just means that someone in the line trusts that they will give others accurate feedback. If not, changes are made.

If you look at his trusted trust you will see that he has many people that have left him positive feedback that have not themselves received any feedback from anyone. These people are on his trust list (meaning they are on default trust because of him). You should be able to reasonably conclude that he has put many people on his trust list because he has done business with him (and he unlikely risked anything because he has his customers send funds to him prior to him sending his product)

I can't speak for others, but Canary added me to his trust list and I've never participated in one of his group buys. I'd suspect the majority of the people there are in a similar situation. There's no reason for Canary to add random group buy participants, as he doesn't have to trust them at all to take their money and send it to Fried cat.  They need to trust him.

I see your point. You actually touched another vital one - multiple accounts, which IMO shouldn't be allowed. People with multiple accounts are already using them to push their opinions, scam signature campaigns and so on. Not allowing newbies and juniors to leave trust ratings wouldn't be a problem, because it would discourage the most obvious spammers, those too lazy to even write a couple of posts.

You're right that it could be abused by people with multiple accounts, but allowing 1 rating per user should be fairly easy. It would only require the software to block multiple ratings by the same user. You should really consider this, even if you're not planning to change the default trust in any way.

As for the people on default trust, I'm not completely sure if people are responsible with their ratings. Just take Mr. CanaryInTheMine. He gave positive trust to a lot of people, who participated in his group buy, so in a way by buying something from him they also bought trust. The trust list is also rarely moderated. Mark Karpeles was on the list for months after his exchange imploded.


@malaimult I've seen some of these plants who bash certain mining companies while pushing their own through paid or unpaid signatures. A common practice these days

This part is crucial for me.
What if the trusted member make a new account and make it trustable ?

This is ridiculous. You conclude that just because two people have the same opinion that you do not agree with that they must be a puppet of eachother. This just shows how open you are when discussing this.

I also question you regarding your (un)paid signature. Anyone who sees a paid signature advertisement can reasonably conclude the reason someone is wearing a signature of one of the companies that you claim to be a scam - they are being paid to do so. With your signature on the other hand there is no such clear incentive. Both yourself and others who appear to be trustworthy because of a small circle of people giving each-other trust are in the same situation, along with others who appear to be random are wearing the signature of a thread that is one sided (and self moderated to prevent an opposing side to voice their counter points) that claims the competition of the site you are promoting is a scam.

To put it another way:

• You are wearing a signature promoting a specific company
• The company is not your own
• There is no clear evidence you are getting paid to promote such company
• There is no affiliate/referral link to track how much traffic/business you bring to the site discrediting any potential claim you receive any kind of referral income for wearing your signature. 
• From what I can tell these signature went up at all the approximate same time
• From what I can tell these signatures are exactly the same with somewhat complex formatting features

The above would make me conclude that you are either all puppets of ASICminer in order to get more people to buy shares so the operator can run away with investor money (just because mining power is "real" does not mean the operator is forced to deliver mining revenue to shareholders), or are all colluding to pump the price of AM1 that you all own.

People with multiple accounts would then have greater weight. With your proposed system, you just make 100 accounts, age them, and then become very trusted, and start scamming, or ruin/build up other's trust. That would also give people a free pass to scam newbies and jr.members because they couldn't voice their opinions. As it is now, the trust system is not moderated. Allowing staff to alter trust in any way would leave it completely useless. Staff members could then be influenced to do shady things for others or themselves.

As it is now, the people on the default trust list have a vested interest in the forum. First Theymos, those he picked, and from there those that the 2nd layer has picked, etc. If someone does something wrong with the trust system while on the default trust list, it effects the person above them, discouraging abuse, and encouraging those in a position to add others to the trustlist to think carefully about who they add, and act quickly to fix any situation that comes about. If you don't like the default trust system, individuals can remove the Default Trust list from their own account preferences, and replace it with people they personally trust.

Every system can be exploited, just like the current one is. What I'd propose is:
Remove the default trust and make all comments equal. Rate the profile by the number of positive/negative votes.
Allow only 1 vote per account and don't allow newbies and jr. members to leave comments to prevent spam.

What I find strange at the moment are people leaving multiple trust ratings with the same purpose. Why doesn't the staff ban trust spammers or allow only 1 rating per person?

If you have a better solution please speak up. As it is the current system is the most stable that we have had. Find a plan for forum trust that can't be exploited, or has a lower risk of being exploited, and I'm sure it will be adopted.

This!

People who are "accepted" by the owner of the forum should not be in any way promoted and be able to tag other people's profiles.
What matters now is not how many transactions the account is involved in or how many people left a trust rating but if these people are among the privileged.