Topic: Restrict newbies from posting in the lending board? (Read 1017 times)

I didn't have much hope of this suggestion being implemented, but it was worth a shot.

In the mean time, I've created a thread which theymos has been kind enough to pin at the top of the lending section: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lending-board-rules-of-engagement-attention-lenders-and-borrowers-5460744

Hopefully the post will help keep the honest people from making silly mistakes that end with them being tagged and labeled scammers.

Please take a look and let me know if you have any suggestions, or think I should add anything I overlooked.

I have noticed that there are newbies posting in the lending section, sometimes it makes you wonder if they are just teasing to request a loan that is too big and then say collateral, and the others are non-collateral and the size of the loan is also the same.

       That's why I support that thing that the newbies should be restricted in the lending section, now you say that it is self-moderated by the lenders, it will just be extra work for them and a waste of time.

Well, I feel like you still got some anger for what happened a year ago. I understand that you guys don't have a good understanding, but let's not continue what started over a year ago. Once both of you forget those days, you can start your day with a fresh mind and produce quality content (Which you guys already do). Look at the way she responded to me. I don't think she took it with a heavy heart. I would suggest the same if you don't mind.

let's forget what you guys were. But, I am happy to see that you did not take it too seriously. Both of you guys are good and prominent members of the forum. If that fight still continues, I will feel guilty for mentioning you guys.

Oh my memory! I guess both of us were asshole back then 🤣

I see few topics which are totally useless on that board every week. They ask for loan and others just troll them. It's an entertainment though.

I do not think it has ever done before, no. I am fairly new in this community so I am not the best source to reference the past actions by the administration. Since I joined, the forum has remained the same.

They only example of implementation-and-reversal I can think of  was the existence of the so-called Newbie jail. It was put in place and then removed, I do not know how much it lasted, though.

Still, it was just a random recommendation or opinion I had on how we could try and improve the life for those who do business in the forum. 

Has that ever happened in the forum? I mean that of doing a temporary test to see the results and decide. As far as I remember, theymos takes his time to make changes, but when he makes them they are permanent, he doesn't test to see.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't think it's the way he usually acts.

I personally do not spend much time in the lending section of the forum, but the occasions I have took a look at it, I recall several instances of newbies asking for unrealistic quantities without offering collateral. They do not even care to read the sticky thread with the rules about loans.  

So I can understand the frustration of those who seek to do business and have to deal with those unsavory users. That being said, I would be in favor on giving this suggestion from OP.a try and restrict new users from participating in that board, for some weeks and see what happens, if the results are not satisfactory, it can be reversed and deal with it with the usual tools we already have: ignore lists, red tags, trust, etc.  

People are looking for some necessary boards like Cybersecurity and Privacy and some others are looking for their Local boards as well. I am not sure if it takes extra time to code or maybe theymos just felt like those are not necessary at this moment. But, I don't think we will have a new board for similar reasons. I mean we have a Lending board, Adding another board for a similar purpose won't be approved.

Yes. It's a good option. Read above.

Well if you want to open a lending thread you could always make it "self moderated" and delete all the unwanted customers.
I know that's extra work but an option.

I think giving away loans can be a good business. Seeing how many loans for example Shasan gives out in a month I bet the % he collects adds up to a nice extra amount.

This is very accurate. Newbies and I will suggest Jr.member also should be restricted from posting in Lending section.
Just 2 days back I went to Lending board to see how it works because even I wanted to start lending out money but I was disappointed.

All I could see was newbies asking for loans and getting tagged in return. It was all that I could see and no real benefits from lending.
If newbies can get away with it so easily by creating new accounts then there's no point for them to make posts in the section at first place.

If there were more real lending posts out there then it would have interested not only me but many others.
Further more, moderators would have to spend lest time moderating this section.

Recently there have been a couple of newbies who have been trolling not just the lender's threads it anyone's threads that are started ranging from Legendary down to newbies.

Take away the newbies and the trolling would stop overnight.

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If I can use an analogy to answer your observation...Grey areas wouldn't occurr if things were more black or white.

I'm glad we both feel there is a need for change from how things are at the moment.

Yeah, I had a hunch that that's how you might feel. (Don't ask me why, you just seem to be the type that finds rigid rule enforcement to be a very satisfying thing.)

I'm looking at this problem through a different lens than you, I suppose, and I'm basing my thinking on what DireWolfM14 is hoping to achieve:

Someone would have to walk me through how to do that, but the issue DireWolfM14 raises is newbies are total unknowns and as such are more likely to walk off with funds acquired in a loan than a user who has climbed the ranks through posting thoughtful posts that along the way are merited.  Lenders facilitating loans can see their posts and get a feel for the application whereas newbies don't have any credibility at all and therefore shouldn't apply for a loan.

Fiat banks don't give loans to children.  Street lenders ^{(*cough* sharks)} likewise wouldn't lend to children (not without collateral I would imagine).

Blocking newbies from my view isn't what I'm hoping to achieve in my support of what DireWolfM14 is proposing, it's blocking newbies from being in the lending section totally.

While that is a cool idea (using a bot to enforce local rules in a self-moderated thread), it's got nothing to do with what I suggested.

You're talking about individual threads, and I'm talking about whole boards. You're talking about deleting posts, and I'm talking about hiding them.

What I'm saying is that people have their own ideas about OP's suggestion (whether and how it should be implemented), and a consensus is unlikely to be reached, so why not think about the problem in a decentralized way?

If people could define personalized "board rules" that hid posts (on a given board) according to some criteria (probably given by entering an expression in some simple programming language), then we wouldn't have to agree on anything and we could all just set things up how we like them:

(*) DireWolfM14 would set his "Marketplace -> Lending" expression (somewhere in settings) to: exclude($memberRank < 2), because that's how he wants it to work (doesn't want to see posts from newbies on the lending board).

(*) Timelord2067 would set his to: exclude($memberRank < 3), because that's how he wants it to work (even more restrictive, only wants to see posts from "Members" and above on the lending board).

(*) Someone might decide that they don't want to see posts on the lending board from anyone with less than 100 merits, and they would set their expression to: exclude($memberEarnedMerits < 100).

(*) People that don't care would leave their expression box empty (and nothing would change for them). Alternatively, the forum might pre-populate it with: exclude($memberRank < 2) as a kind of "soft" policy (i.e. one that you can override, but only by going into your settings and deleting the expression).

Now, obviously none of this prevents newbies from posting on the lending board in the first place (which is probably a good thing considering theymos' stance on restricting freedoms) but it does solve the problem of lenders ever having to deal with any of those posts, or even see them (if they make use of this feature, that is).

It's also general-purpose and (I believe) would find uses on other boards. I know it seems like a seriously complicated thing to pull off (and it kind of is, I guess) but it's essentially just a very beefed-up version of my existing member filtering patch (i.e. you can think of that patch as being a special case of what I've been outlining here: whenever you click the diamond "on" in that patch, it's basically the same thing as one of these hypothetical exclusion expressions being in effect).

(I'm not suggesting that myself or anyone else should be working on this, it's a pretty heavy lift with lots of cross-cutting concerns, performance considerations and thorny problems to work through; it would take a few months to implement properly. All I'm doing in this post is clearing up confusion and explaining what I meant in my previous post.)

If i can get your point clearly here, you are referring to situations where newbies will even be disallowed to post on some particular threads made by members of the forum, not only on the boards but this time being extended to threads, i can partially agree with this because if we are to close eyes for the bad ones to byepass then the good would have also gone together with them while our eyes remain closed, which means not every newbie is a newbie, secondly bot every newbie is a troller or spammer, they can in rare cases although give upto the quality of what a higher rank individuals can deliver.

 Let look at the consequences also before suggesting such, we were once a newbie remember, and they should not be deprived right for posting where they feel they have something to offer except on certain conditions like the board(s) where the forum restricted them from posting, members could abuse the opinion and everyone restricting newbies from making a reply on their post.

Newbie never ask to borrow money by PM. they seek loans in the landing board. however, such incidents are not seen regularly. sometimes it is done by scammers and spammers. So I don't think it is logical to keep the pm option closed for the newbie. Because a newbie may need to pm to some senior members to share some kind of information. or they may try to pm for any help in distress. this forum is a friendly place so don't be hard on anyone here. In this case you can just ignore that post if a newbie opens a landing topic or if you are annoyed by someone's post's


Just click Ignore button..

I have no skills creating code.

How does the above prevent newbies creating their own threads seeking loans?  From what I can tell, my own recollection is that most newbies in recent times are asking for loans without providing collateral or with goods that are not crypto related which is contrary to the "unofficial" (wink wink they are official when we want them to be wink wink) rules contained in threads pinned to this section with titles such as "no collateral = no loan" or words to that effect.

These rules aren't enforced by the admin/mods, so either we get admin/mods who do enforce the rules, OR, we change the rules by banning the newbies and Jr Members.

Until then, newbies and jr members will continue to receive negative trust feedbacks and flags as appropriate.

I am not in support and I don't oppose. What you want is to restrict the future of this forum. Since you encountered spammers you are now freaking out.

I would never block my clients.What i would do is to tackle them and if for some.reason I cannot.then I would ignore them.

What's the reason for that? 

For a newbie all boards are new.

This is the slippery slope I mentioned.

I'd choose adding a new board with certain restrictions over restricting existing boards.

I've seen similar suggestions before. Why not make use of the self-moderation feature? It could even be maintained by a user bot.