Topic: This Is NOT A New Problem... A Walk Down Memory Lane - page 2. (Read 1383 times)

It sure does doesn't it. Considering however there is financial interest in the act of being a "scam buster" itself, this is hardly an argument against my points. That is why I advocate for a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws so this ability to abuse this potential conflict of interest is severely limited.

It creates a conflict of interest too. There is a reason we don't appoint CEOs as judges IRL. DT has accountability in the form of DT1 votes and exclusions.

Well first of all you totally ignored the part about the DT being diverse. Second you did not at all address the point that it is easy to rate frivolously when you have nothing at risk yourself. Like I said you didn't actually address what I said, you just essentially said "no this not that". There was no refutation, just you repeating your narrative and saying I am wrong because lets focus on these things instead. A big part of good judgement is having accountability. Currently there is zero accountability. Having trade interest inherently creates accountability.

You're special, that's true.

My opinion that having something to lose may inhibit one's judgement is directly addressing your opinion that having something to lose leads to more accurate ratings. I don't believe I stated that recently so it's a bit of a stretch to call it "restated". I think you meant to say that you disagree with me.

You mean like I am unwilling to rock the boat? You didn't actually address what I said, you just restated your opinion.

It goes both ways. People who have something to lose may also be unlikely to rock the boat and defy the "cliques" you're so concerned about.

I don't think having a business on the forum should have any bearing on one's DT position. We need people with good judgement in marketplace deals, as well as people with good judgement in gambling issues, ICO scams, fake mining hardware, etc.

And it is currently diverse is it? Seems to me the same people run it. Having business interest is not pre-requisite, no, but it is a lot easier to judge people frivolously when you have no personal financial stake in any of the outcomes. This does however lead to more accurate ratings because they have something to lose. A lot of people here run around judging everyone with nothing at stake themselves.

A lot? Often? What is it? 1%? 10%? 90%?


Business and scams happen on other boards too - altcoins, hardware, gambling. DT1 should be more diverse, not less, and having a business interest is not a prerequisite for having good judgement.

Though I agree with Quickseller point but I do not agree with statement that add only those people who have some kind of business interest.  There is no guarantee that these people with "business interest" will not misuse the system for their own gain. DT issue still remain the same but only faces will change.

A lot of the controversial ratings are highlighting what is often a far cry from a "red flag" although it is often framed this way; there is often a weak/no link between the highlighted "red flag" and the potential to scam in the future. There are also some instances in which someone is displaying a lot of actual red flags, and would be appropriate for them to be labeled a "scammer" because the only reasonable explanation is they plan on scamming in the future.

I would argue when there are a small number of "red flags" AND when all the red flags taken together do not indicate this person will (try to) scam in the future, a neutral would be most appropriate.   


The guidelines have little effect if you are explicitly saying you will not enforce them (within the DT network).

If you have a set of rules and exceptions are consistently being made (or not being made) to a certain person or group of people, then perhaps there is a problem. If there is clear overreach, without accountability or at least an explanation or defense of a rating, there is another problem.

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When the DT system was first introduced (or at least when I joined the forum), those on DT1 were businesspeople with a lot of (ongoing) trading/business experience within the forum. These people would select who would be on their trust lists, and when someone they "sponsor" did something wrong, their reputation would somewhat suffer, especially if this person was not removed from their trust list. A good example of this happening was CITM who had an outsized trust list that was not kept up with, which resulted in many scammers eventually getting onto DT via him; after some time, it became widely known his trust list was not good, and there became calls for him to be removed from DT1 (IIRC, he was only removed when he gave a frivolous rating to Dogie, which IMO was far too late).

I think a good solution to DT troubles is to display the sponsor of each rating for ratings given by someone not directly on a person's trust list. For example, if I was looking at kano's trust page, I would see a rating from -ck, who is in my trust network because theymos, OgNasty and cyrus all sponsor him, who are all in my trust network because they are trusted by DefaultTrust, so adjacent to ck-'s rating would be an indication I am seeing this rating because of themos, OgNasty and cryus, and that each of them are in my trust network because of DefaultTrust. This would give a bigger incentive for those on DT1 to maintain a trust list comprised of good/accurate/fair ratings.

In addition to the above, the DT1 selection criteria should be changed back to those who have an ongoing business interest in the forum marketplace.   

I think this is nothing more different than just using a neutral rating for such cases, it is more softer rating like a "warning" rating as you described. It just needs to be use at the instances, but due to the lack of forum endorsed rules to use them, a neutral rating is often replaced by a direct red, even if sufficient evidence is not provided.

I see this as a very valid statement as the forum has truly grown to a vast extent after some of the current rules were applied and it surely needs a new set of rules to manage the overgrowing community and at the same time scammers who try to attack in any way they can. Its not a bad idea to put more strict rules over a large community as it keep it bonded and productive.

I think you already set the system up to do that by creating neutral ratings. I don't think the trust system needs more additions, what it has needs to be more tightly directed. The more parts you add to a system the easier it is exploited or broken. I realize you don't like hard and fast rules, and I understand your fears here, but you should also realize if those are actually your primary concerns, the current environment allows for MORE of that type of behavior not less of it.

The fact is a negative rating is a penalty for people and inhibits their ability to trade here. These warning ratings will do little but slow down fraud at best. Either they should be a warning which can be widely applied, or a penalty, not both. If it is both then the counterproductive element of catching too many people in the wide net is a problem. This is why I am advocating for using neutral ratings with scam accusation/reputation threads referenced as the warning. This benefit is two fold, it reduces the signal noise of false ratings, and it teaches users to actually read the ratings before trading. Then when you see a red tag it actually means something.

You may want to run this place in a more anarcho-capitalist friendly way, but as I said before the forum is still inherently centralized, there is no way around this. As a result you inherently are the one to define these rules. When it was smaller this free for all kind of approach worked better, mostly because the community was more cohesive.

Now it is getting larger and in some ways unmanageable in the same ways, and frankly this obsession with not wanting any hard rules is hurting this community, not helping it at this stage. I don't think setting up a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws for leaving a negative rating is at all excessive, and in fact is quite minimalist. Furthermore as I defined it would actually allow people to have a fair overview, not just a summary execution by suspicion and its over with.

Currently most of the people in control of the trust system have no accountability as it is. The arbitrary nature of the "guidelines" creates so much ambiguity you could drive a bus through to avoid responsibility for a bad rating. The standard I am advocating for would absolutely leave people responsible for their own ratings. Not only would most people expect them to back the rating up with evidence, but it would have to make sense in an objective way, as opposed to the non-standard we have now of "I feel like...[insert crime here]".

You are afraid of this place morphing into the standard authoritarian type environment. I get it. What I don't think you do get is that we are already largely there, it is just some thing you never see because of the complete ambiguity and lack of accountability of the people doing the ratings and exclusions. Anyone who has a complaint is easily dismissed as a scammer without a second thought, and to you it is as if it never even happened because it happens so often it might as well not have.

Seems very simple.

1. "extreme scam warning" ..those that stole the credit card information and bitcoins

2.  " possible warnings"  but still a strong case for them being potential scammer. This is still not a place for lemon love or hate to feature.

3. Lemons love or hate should really be neutral or just not really mentioned inside a trust system along with other things that have zero or very weak link to scamming.

Theymos' proposal is definitely a step in the right direction I agree, but that doesn't really address the larger problem. It'd be great if people were willing to accept the differentiation between "This person scammed" and "This is a warning sign" categories, but I'd be willing to bet there will still be the same complaints. You'd essentially just be taking all of the controversial negative feedback people have received to this point, and shifting it to the warning category, except in the cases where actual theft has occurred, but I don't see many people contending that type of feedback anyway. I'm under the impression that most people read the type of negative feedback in question here already as warnings and not proof of someone being a scammer, but I could be wrong.

I agree that telling people what they can and can't leave feedback for completely ruins the point. If you can think of a system that allows people to still send negative feedback for spamming, abusive language, or whatever things may be considered "untrustworthy" in some people's opinion, yet isn't weighed the same as, this guy stole my credit card info! That'd be a step in the right direction.

Not that I think its a great thing, but the major rift thats been occurring between the factions of what I'll call forum police and people who don't like the forum police has been interesting. Its been forcing custom trust lists which is a positive thing in my opinion. Default trust really needs to be just default, and then unnecessary after a few months of being here. A guideline for newbies shouldn't be the end all be all that its become for trading with people. I've been a supporter of the default trust system for a long while, and I still am, but thats just because I use it how I imagine it should work.

Sounds like a great idea from Theymos. Let's implement it at once.

Theymos just told you. For red then

Either..

1. you are a proven scammer

or lesser warning sign for...

2. you have done something that STRONGLY indicates they will scam.

That sounds like excellent news.

Anything other than that is not red trust worthy. So let's get removing all the fake red trust abuse (because nobody will stand for this abuse by these proven untrustworthy scum) and if they in future do not operate within these guidelines they get black listed from DT.

So lets then see how these system abusers give out red trust.

I told a proven liar that if he continued to accusing me of lying without evidence (there was none so he was actually lying again) I would then encourage others to explore his post history when I knew there was evidence of him clearly telling a lie. For that I will not have red trust.

I think this new proposal sounds excellent.

It should be accompanied by a RULE that those on DT1 that can NOT present a case to demonstrate a person is either a scammer or a case to demonstrate there is STRONG evidence to suggest they will scam in the future get black listed from DT and get their merit source taken away.

Clear abusers of the trust system need some punishment else they will just abuse it as they see fit and nothing will improve. No point Theymos saying it should be like this then not punishing those that do not do as he tells them.  Treat the trust system as he tells you or else get black listed from it.

So next time you go to red paint someones account make sure you have a strong case or boom black listed. Just having that threat a real possibility will mean most persons (who want to stay on DT) will make sure they start only giving red where there is STRONG case for someone being a scammer or is going to scam.

Why would I complain about this new suggestion Theymos just made. I think it is an excellent idea.

No more petty arguments and bickering resulting in red trust and no more being able to use red trust to silence people from voicing their opinions that are based on observable events demonstrating your prior wrongdoing.

Being able to use the trust system to try to silence others reporting wrongdoing is a total perversion of how it is supposed to operate.

I like Theymos new proposal. Let us introduce it at once. No complaints from me.

1. you are a proven scammer
2. you have done things that build a strong case you will scam people.

If you give red trust but can not prove they have scammed or present evidence that provides a STRONG case they will scam someone then you are black listed and removed. No more abuse for personal gain.

I think that would be fair.  Regardless, there will be people who people who abuse the highest "Scammer" rating in retaliation for their own negative reviews.

Like suchmoon, I'd be curious to see what you have in mind to define what constitutes a warning vs. a full on scammer tag.  Or, would you leave this to the community to work out?  And be prepared for cryptohunter's walls of text complaining about whatever resolution is conceived. 

I have a feeling this would lead to months-long debate on what "scam" means on a spectrum from "deception" to "stealing money".

For example, is Mt. Gox a scam?

The majority of ratings seem to be warning people about red flags, not punishing provable scams. IMO this isn't a bad thing, since once someone has scammed, it's kind of too late.

What do you think about splitting the scam rating, with a "warning" rating for scammed previously OR you strongly believe that they will scam in the future, and a "scammer" rating for scammed previously AND you strongly believe that they will scam in the future? And then if you only have warning ratings, the indication displayed next to posts will be softer.

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I think that you and I have a fundamental disagreement on this stuff, though:

Predictability and guidelines are often good. I wrote some Trust guidelines recently, and I may write more. But I don't believe in having a set of hard rules which is to be applied to all cases. Whenever an argument starts looking like it was written by a lawyer, or relying overmuch on precedent, you've stopped thinking about the real case and have started using rules to retreat into moral and intellectual laziness, divorcing yourself from the decision you're about to make. If you're making a decision about a case, then you're responsible for that case, and you can't say, "I don't agree with it, but I was just enforcing the rules." Every case needs to be handled individually.

Well the thing is this forum is centralized by its nature, so on some levels this anarcho-capitalist ideal will never be possible, but maybe on some. Anarchy means without rulers, not without rules. Unfortunately like it or not Theymos is the defacto ruler so by definition anarchy of any sort is out the window. IMO something close to libertarian would be closest to the anarcho-capitalist goal while still taking into account the fact it is inherently centralized. Unfortunately what we have now is closer to a pure Democracy, also known as mob rule. Under this system the majority is always right and the individual has no rights. I really don't think anyone wants that, even Theymos.

The guidelines don't have to be rigid. I would propose Theymos advise a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws as the standard for users leaving negative ratings. Users would present the evidence of these things in the appropriate section, and if need be make a neutral rating reference to the thread on their trust. Once the standard of evidence is met naturally others will want to negative rate them. This has become too much about playing cops and robbers and too little about justice and building a community.

@TECSHARE

I don't think that your argument is false in anyway, and I'll say again; I agree with your agenda and philosophy.  We all live in societies of laws, and it's always best when those laws are unambiguous.  I just don't think that, strictly speaking that has to be the way a forum is operated.  It is just an internet forum.

To risk playing devils advocate; you said it yourself:


That argument alone demonstrates that he's less likely to implement a rigid set of guidelines for trust.  And after all, it's his forum to operate as he sees fit.  There are several illegal activities that play out here on the forum, and Theymos does little to prevent them.  Some of those illegal activities are conducted legitimately, and people participate in them willingly.  Some are down right scams.  That's what I would expect from a self described anarcho-capitalist.  The trust system applied the way it is allows the community to determine what is what is not trustworthy behavior despite the lack of rigid guidelines.  It can lead to inaccurate ratings, but it can also be worked out when errors occur.

I certainly don't claim it to be perfect, but what set of rigid guidelines is perfect?  Cryptocurrencey was born, and adopted out of the desire and need to decentralize wealth.  A relatively libertarian and anti-authoritarian philosophy, and it's likely to attract those who would like to put that philosophy into practice.