Topic: [Suggestion] Technical Trust [TT] (Read 214 times)

No:  The main purpose of the merit system is to reward and encourage good posts.  Why is everybody focusing on the implicitly consequential negative, rather than the explicit primary positive?


Good idea; so do I.  Then, perhaps you should rely on my post as to which you replied.  Look above.

In Development & Technical Discussion, I also suggest that you should watch posts awarded merit by DannyHamilton.  If you are a learner, follow his own posts, too:  He excels both at providing good information, and tearing apart misinformation.

There are other expert users whose merit endorsement should tell you that a post is meritorious on technical grounds; but I think those are the most consistently active.  Merit is somewhat transitive; thus if you see that a particular user is often awarded merit by somebody whose technical judgment you trust, then merit awarded by that user should be a good guide, too.

As such, consider Dev & Tech merits to function as a de facto peer review and reputational system.

I'm happy to focus on suggesting solutions to the problem of uninformed users in the technical section, but nobody is going to be happy with the suggestion(s). 99.99% of the questions in the sections you're talking about can be solved by reading material and information that is already out there. If users read the official material already released, the whitepapers, the development, Satoshi's posts/emails almost every single question asked these days would disappear.

The truth is that it is not on anybody else to make sure you are getting good information from a 3rd party. The solution is to become more informed, use the search bar, read guidelines, rules, announcements, manuals, etc. It would be nonsensical to impose a greater workload on the moderators and community, because some users are unwilling to verify the validity of information, or even seek information from the proper source. Although no, I do not see this as a problem in itself, as Lauda mentioned it is stemming from elsewhere, one problem being the incentive to post without considering what you are even typing. Ranking up from spamming (Merit fixes this) in order to get into a signature campaign or something similar. Educating and informing our community is the best way to avoid bad answers and ignorant questions; there is no way to police idiocy without damning the curious.

I was originally trying to help reconcile your disagreement with Lauda about the criteria for which we would be judging these posts, seemingly that would be part of the solution should we have decided to go your direction.

The main purpose of the merit system is to avoid very low quality posts and topics but the specificity of technical discussions makes it inappropriate

• merit points are not controlled.
• can be given to anyone who adds you new information.

sometimes I rely on the posts that gets merits from achow101.

The main purpose of my suggestion is that this forum is considered a reference for the most of those who want to learn.
Developers posts deserve a privilege "Technical Trust or Anything that makes me concentrate on post".


Let's focus on suggestions to solve this problem (if you consider it a problem)

Subjectively bad Vs. Misleading seems to be what they're getting at, even if they explained it absolutely horridly. I think the difference between the two is, at least partly, intent. Someone can not know they are lying or providing a bad answer, because it very well may be the case that they do not know the truth to begin with. A dumb answer may come from an uninformed person or someone with an opinion seen as fringe and in that respect misleading to what the average may conclude; that being said, dumb answers may be given by someone who has been misinformed, so in that respect I would say there is no difference. This may be a significant minority, but there are different words for a reason and to act like no distinction should be made is in my opinion, misinformation.  


Although, I will agree that their answer certainly was in that category, of significant minority in which the answer is dumb and misinformation. I too, do not see the distinction between these two answers; I just wanted to throw my two-cents in and try to explain how I see the two distinguish themselves.

That being said though, we have no way of determining one's intent and therefore it would be impossible to adequately enforce Technical Trust or Lauda's Section Ban, given the simplified criteria laid out here, at least. I don't think people should be banned from a particular section for being uninformed, but if they can be proven to be maliciously and intentionally misleading then I maybe can get behind your idea. I agree though, the problem stems elsewhere and we can take care of this at the root without adding another complex layer. Section bans may be the answer, but not simply for dumb answers.

Too many discussions are also opinion based, so then adding TT would only serve to make their opinion king.

I am inclined to disagree with the idea of “technical trust”.  I don’t see how it could be made to work, without the cure becoming worse than the disease.  But OP highlights a real problem.

As a regular on Development & Technical Discussion, I certainly see difference between what OP calls “dumb answers” versus “misinformation”.  The section is infested by trolls who regularly and repeatedly post wrong information at high volume.

There is a very deliberate quality to much of the misinformation (and disinformation; there is an old and subtle distinction between the two words).  It derails threads, and poisons sincere discussion.  I dislike incorrectness anywhere; but if somebody speaks in ignorance, that can be corrected, whereas spreaders of “misinformation” are incorrigible and ineducable.  Worst of all, they present a real danger of misleading newbies who earnestly seek to learn.

A few recent examples of “misinformation” trolls:

• In the thread I started on Bitcoin’s Public-Key Security Level (OP currently +18), Anti-Cen #1423316 posted so much gibberish about using Microsoft Windows RSACryptoServiceProvider(512) for Bitcoin keys (!) that I myself had difficulty wading through it to pick out the real replies so I could respond to them.  That has a real impact on readers.  Anti-Cen’s post history includes claims of his own extraordinary expertise to support grossly wrong technical statements about Bitcoin, extreme hostility toward Core, a persistent suggestion that fees be capped at 1.5 (without specifying a unit), etc., etc....  At some point, I gathered a representative selection of quotes from Anti-Cen’s posts.  As I have not hereto revealed publicly, Anti-Cen has also tried to bait me by PM.  I think that Anti-Cen is probably the most odious troll in Dev & Tech right now.
• In a thread ChiBitCTy started on Important Lighting Network reading- for everyone! (OP currently +9, including +1 from me), dinofelis #376659 derailed the thread into discussion of his attack on nodes:  “Nodes are ‘vote by IP number’, which is what Satoshi wanted to nullify by vote by PoW”, “The only reason why they talk Joes into running nodes in their basement, is because bitcoin needs a story, and decentralization sounds like a good selling argument”, “nobody will give a shit that 10 000 Joes find their nodes switching off because they don't find the ‘right’ block chain any more”, etc., etc., plus a sprinkle of crazy:  “People very knowledgeable of that system cannot ignore the basic design principles of that system, can they ?  So there must be a deceptive reason for telling this [that the system is decentralized —Ed.], given that it is objectively wrong.”  I tried to cut the discussion off—I mean it—so as to set the thread back on track.  Any thread which catches dinofelis’ attention is liable to go in a similar direction.  I see that Wind_FURY seems to be trying to draw fire, I presume to unclog other threads.  I’d expect that all the technically competent regulars must be sick of dinofelis.
• My first exposure to the troll problem there came when I made a long reply to abominably incorrect information by “bitfools” #1152876.  DannyHamilton clued me in that IHBT.

There are a few others.  But for the sake of examples, I’ve necessarily already brought too much attention to people who are evidently seeking it for whatever reason (or unreason).

Thus, I appreciate OP’s concerns.  Unfortunately, I don’t see any easy solution to this, nor how a benign “technical trust” system would not be redundant.  Setting a system to be the arbiter of “true” and “false” is always—problematic.  Is this proposal supposed to function as some sort of peer review?  The merit system already does that:  Good, correct technical posts there tend to get showered with merit, whereas false and stupid posts of all kinds usually get none.

I’d like to find a better solution to this problem.  I doubt this be it.  Am I missing anything?

Both of those answers are all wrong. Therefore, I don't see how you are trying to differentiate here. I don't think you should as the difference is minuscule, often non existing (in the context of those two sections).

What exactly do you think is the difference between a "dumb answer" and "misinformation"? Please indulge me.

Both are unnecessary and/or flawed. The problem that is present in those section, albeit to a weaker degree, stems elsewhere. Adding another complicated layer of stupid solutions will not help. What those sections actually need is the following:
a) Stronger global moderation and more frequent bans for bullshit.
b) Enable section-bans for the moderators who moderate those sections. So, once achow finds someone posting "Coinbase is the best wallet", he can just ban the user from posting in that section for a long time.

I noticed in Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support a lot of bad advice's, misinformation, Indirect answers and nonsense which makes any useful information lost in the middle of all this. In addition to the lack of reliability in relying on the answers.
I'm not saying that the answers/posts are not meaningful but you have to read all the answers/posts to get useful information especially if you are looking for a solution to your problem and have been directed by the search engines.

My suggestions:
1. A list of technical trusts such as "Default Trust" They can stick their answers or get a distinctive color or pattern when answering.
2. Mods can give "the best answer" or "answer recommended".

What do you think of these ideas?