Topic: Should people fighting for good on the forum receive positive trust? (Read 303 times)

In my opinion, a person who are here for long time and fighting against scams, is unlikely to scam anyone. Positive feedback represent the same theme. If someone is here for long term, leaving feedback is acceptable but for a short time like 6-12 months doesn't deserve a positive feedback for busting scammers. If DT people use positive feedback for busting scam to new people who are 6 months or 1 year old here (which is unlikely to be true), that would be a bad practice certainly. Scammers may try to feedback abusing and scam a bigger amount.

Good example!  A user sends payment up front, needing no trust at all, and is left positive trust by a DT1 member wanting reciprocation.  This happens a lot.  :/

I always appreciate to encourage who are trying their best to keep this forum safer for newbies and upcoming users. Its not an easy task to continue deep investigation against scammers and every user who are doing this deserve our support. Who got scammed somehow only they can feel the pain of losing their money and undoubtedly they don't wanna get scammed again. Forum scam busters are making the way smoother for them for future investment and its undoubtedly worthy of getting green trust or merits.

Purpose of using this forum is to help its users by sharing proper information and revealing scam is one of them. People like to use this forum to enrich their knowledge vault with crypto currency related information and guideline and being well notified about scammers is an necessary element too.

Completely agree with you.

My response to this would be not necessarily.  The first positive trust I got from a DT member was from Vod, which was this:


That was left after I started my crusade against account buyers/sellers, but I'd been a member of the forum for about a year and a half before he did.  I don't think there is anything wrong with that kind of feedback for scam busters, whether from DT or not, but I do think that the member receiving the feedback shouldn't be a newbie who's just started to bust scams. 

I think some members go that route right from the beginning, hoping to get onto DT because of it--and I've seen it before, and a couple of those members turned out to have abused bounties and such.  One of them was KeithBeeCham, whose reports I acted on quite frequently, but in the end I had to give him a negative feedback.

Anyway, positive trust from DT members should always be handed out conservatively, especially if it's one that doesn't have to do with money being at risk.  Non-DT members ought to be careful as well, because you never know if you're going to end up on DT (although a history of questionable feedback might preclude that anyway).

I have a different take on this: Someone who's had many small loans apparently is often out of money, which probably means he's also "bad with money" in general.
I'd much rather trust someone who doesn't need the money at all, than someone who's all the time in need of small loans.

You do have a +1 from JollyGood.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=550439;dt

If you're unlikely to scam anyone then you shouldn't worry about it

Beyond that, it comes down to how much other people trust JollyGood's judgement and if they include JollyGood into their trust lists.

thats a nice summary.
i never made a trade here. i am not a scam buster and i nearly report posts.
why should anybody trust me? but i looks like i have a green +. or am i wrong?

It's quite clear on the trust page: "Positive - You think that this person is unlikely to scam anyone."

To me this means that even a successful deal shouldn't necessarily lead to positive trust, but on the other hand positive trust may be based not just on deals. If someone has been around for a long time, hasn't exhibited any questionable behavior, doesn't have a "get to the top at any cost" attitude - they might be considered "unlikely to scam". If someone has been applying for a bunch of micro loans or making tiny trades - they might not.

But this also means that it's going to be highly subjective. Everyone can have their own idea of how "unlikely" something is.

The users who are outing scams regularly, and are leaving accurate trust ratings might be a candidate for your custom trust list rather than giving them positive trust. I think in exceptional cases where users are dedicated to busting scams, and have shown that over a few years positive trust could be given. Although, a better suited way of handling it would be putting them on your trust list if you trust them to make good judgement calls, and leave accurate feedback. Of course, if they're just exposing these scams, and aren't leaving trust feedback then they aren't much good on your trust list.

Positive feedback isn't the same thing as trust.  One might lead to the other but they are different things.  I think there would be a lot less drama related to the trust system if people would contemplate and acknowledge the differences.

Some members want the feedback and the trust system as a whole to be specifically for trading, but I disagree.  There are many reasons to give someone positive feedback (such as helping the community in general,) even if that person never engages in a trade.  A person who spends their time finding scammers is indirectly helping those of us who do trade on the forum.  There are also many good reasons to include such a person in your trust network.

I agree.
There should be a different score for Scam Busters and other type of reputation scores. Your example about the scam buster who disappeared with 5 BTC is a good example that busting scammers doesn't mean the person is trusted to trade with.

Theymos mentioned he was going to make a badge for reporting posts, which is a great idea. Maybe badges for scam buster would be nice as well.

I disagree
It takes a lot of effort to be recognized on this forum for "fighting for good", while it's very easy to earn positive feedback by doing a few trades.
As an example: geophphreigh, has +4 positive feedback. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I am saying it's very easy to gain Trust by buying or selling some items on the Collectibles board.
If anyone wanted to game trust, that's the place to be!

I have received quite a bit of positive feedback for things like "one of the best members of the forum". And although I highly appreciate those, I think it's up to any future trade partner to judge the value of those feedbacks. But I sure as hell disagree that this is "easy to game": it's a hell of a lot of work!
I'd say there's a difference between a reputation based on trades, and a reputation based on forum actions, but unfortunately it's all dumped into the same feedback scores.

There's a risk though with Trusting "scam busters", and warningsigns is a good example of that: I knew the account for posting many warnings against possible scams, and in the end it disappeared with close to 5 BTC from a loan.

It all comes down to putting feedback into perspective. If I start asking for 5 BTC loans, you shouldn't just trust it! I think I can get away with $200, and probably more, but part of having a good reputation is staying far away from the limits of this reputation.

Just come on my mind something,
Here is almost 2.6 million user on bitcointalk, how many people are exposing scam actively. Every person's have different beliefs but it doesn't means other beliefs are wrong. I am not saying that everyone should leave positive feedback's for them or just anyone should not leave that when expose couple of scams. A scam buster overall activity should noticed during leave positive feedback. I might trust you for multiple reasons.

I'm not of the belief that someone should be given positive trust for exposing a scam. All they did was expose something that anyone with the knowledge should do anyways. Maybe give em a couple merits for their work.

With the trust system we are kind of limited as to what type of "reward" we can give users for certain actions. We have trust and merits, that's it. Some people feel like trust should be used only for traders, while others feel it should be used to tag spammers, account traders, scammers period, loan defaulters, and more.

This stuff is why I say we should have a trust system for traders and a reputation system for the rest. Merits do not exactly qualify as a reputation system. I also believe there should be a DT system associated with both systems.

What happens is theymos call but the more a topic is discussed, the more it could make something happen.

I've seen this on occasion - 'scam-busters' / DT / some like these, receive "doing good" as trust. Bit unnecessary at least/easy to game at worst, @theymos give us a hi-five button instead. Respect =/= trust. Wyt?