Topic: Time to change the "Negative Trust" description? (Read 482 times)

What I've seen so far, tells me that my initial thoughts were somewhat correct... in that there are quite varied views on Trust, what it means (Positive vs. Negative), how it should be used and how it currently is being used.

Unfortunately, it looks like the pretty decent debate that we were having is starting to degenerate into off-topic/name calling etc. That being the case, I think I'll just stop it here before the thread gets any worse that it already is.

Thanks for all the responses, I appreciate it... it has certainly given me some food for thought.

Sure I know what you mean, and I don't agree, and I explained in detail why, point by point, but you refuse to respond. The word is senseless BTW.

How convenient you start with your hyperdeconstructivist attitude, I take the time to carefully reply in detail, then you just cry about it being a waste of time and you are suddenly above responding. BTW criticism of you, while you may find it insulting does not automatically make it an insult. Only you can control if you are insulted, and I am sorry your ego is to utterly fragile.


I see, so suddenly you want protection under my metric! Thanks for demonstrating its usefulness. Unfortunately we are not operating under my objective metric of a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws, we are operating under a subjective free for all, one you take full advantage of on a regular basis. Under the current standard we are operating under, even Theymos himself said leaving you a negative rating was completely valid, and after seeing you feign remorse and then move right back into unrepentant abuse just as you always do I decided to leave that rating for you because you more than earned it. As far as your mental illness, that is evident from your own continued unyielding escalation of unrepentant abusive behavior, but that is not why I left you the rating, I left it because you doxed and reported a user to the IRS as a form of retribution for their criticism of you. It is more than evident you have trouble controlling yourself.

He is doing this in a lot of places right now. 


Which one did I do before you left a negative rating saying I am "mentally ill"?

I'm sure you know what I mean. Your senses insults here and on most of your posts against me and others.
I'm not wasting more time with you. I should have stopped after your first lies.

You mean like calling me a liar over an over when you run out of arguments? Good show old chap.

You go back to senseless insults as usual 
I've clearly made my point on my previous posts of this thread.

Funny, you completely ignore a giant detailed reply to each of your points then accuse me of avoiding replying to "main points". I didn't lie about anything, I explained myself using solid logic and replied to each of your points, point by point giving very specific alternatives. I am sorry if the hamster running the wheel in your brain has given up for the day and you have to resort to accusing me of lying and ignoring your arguments when I very clearly replied to each of them in an extremely detailed manner. Apparently your ego takes precedence over an intellectually honest discussion, but whats new?

P.S. learn how to use quotes.

You seemed to have missed everything I said. Re-read my previous posts, especially this part:


So you lie, avoid replying to main points, and accuse me of doing that?! Go away.

Great. I am glad I took the time to make a thoughtful, logical, point by point reply just for you to run away because you feel like you have run out of arguments. Good show. Instead you opt for baseless claims that I want to let scammers freely scam. Who is the liar? Some one call chicken little, the sky is falling again. I have come up with an alternative, it is in the wall of text above.

I feel I'm wasting my time with you.

Bottom line is you're not going to convince me and several others to let scammers freely scam. So unless you come up with an alternative to make things harder for them before they scam then we can't reach an agreement.
You can begin with these cases for example.

You are now entering a mode of less of a constructive critical conversation into the realm of hyperdeconstructivism in an attempt to avoid honestly reviewing the information I am presenting.

Your example is a poor one as I already explained. Lets say that those self moderation and locking abilities were removed tomorrow, what then? Is the problem that no one was warned or was the problem that the user did not do due diligence to begin with? You are focusing on treating the symptoms while totally ignoring the cause. Furthermore you are totally ignoring again the negative consequences such as the rampant abuse that results from this massive loophole of subjectivity, as well as the fact that legitimate ratings will be lost in all the noise of the frivolous ratings. Once people see negative ratings are given out for minor infractions, they will literally be trained to ignore them because they are so common, defeating the purpose entirely.

You talk about how we should be less tolerant of abusive ratings, but what does that even mean? What do you OBJECTIVELY suggest be done to limit this? You aren't providing any solution to the issue, you are just saying that's bad and people shouldn't do it. The system would indeed NOT need to change dramatically. I explained in more detail here how this system would operate under these standards.

My statement was not a lie at all. You ceded that "...too many frivolous ratings creates signal noise and allows actual fraud to be buried in the din. Not only that, no one ever addresses the security threat of users having the ability to extort trusted users with false ratings in order to force compliance and silence." The logic then follows that if this premise is correct, then negative ratings can not sufficiently serve as both a warning and as a penalty. These concepts are exclusive. If it is just a warning, then overuse of the warning is literally training people to ignore it, defeating its purpose entirely. If it is a penalty then it creates the security threat allowing for its abuse as a tool of extortion, and needs to have an objective standard applied to it. If it is both a warning as well as a penalty then there is zero clarity in what any of the ratings actually mean, and again they are all lost in the signal noise and real fraud uses this to hide in as people ignore the excessive ratings.

Regarding your underlined area, you misread. The barrier of entry I was referring to was the barrier for THE HACKER, and my point was that the concept is to raise the barrier for them high enough that it is not worth the HACKER attempting to defeat it using that methodology. The point was not to say we shouldn't even try because the barrier is too high.

Again, "proven to work" is totally subjective and open to interpretation, because as you state we are never going to stop it completely, only force them to change methods. Instead of addressing the symptoms (methods) we should be addressing the cause (lack of due diligence). Additionally you are totally ignoring the COST of creating this barrier for fraud. We could hire a 24/7 squad of special investigators to track down scammers and that would be a great barrier, but what would the cost be monetarily and otherwise? My point is the cost of creating your so called barrier of "preventative" rating comes at the expense of not only allowing abuse resulting in endless disputes, extortion, as well as defeating THE ENTIRE PURPOSE of the trust system by allowing it to be abused so much people are trained to ignore the red ratings anyway. All this does it put us firmly right back at square one, only now the community is ripped apart and the trust system is controlled by abusers and real fraud is ignored in all the noise.

How does anyone ever learn anything? They need a feedback mechanism. How to kids learn not to touch a hot stove? How did you learn not to get scammed around here? I know how I did. I never suffered the delusion that some one was weeding out con artists here and made the effort to do my own due diligence. If there are a bunch of people running around tagging users and pretending like they stop fraud, that is counterproductive to the atmosphere of one needing to do due diligence and protect themselves now isn't it? New users see these trust police running around and crying from the mountaintops about how much fraud they supposedly prevented, and new users will most certainly get the impression that they are being protected. It is exactly this atmosphere that feeds new users into the wood chipper of fraud, all so a hand full of wannabe internet police can give themselves a sense of relevance and authority.

Again, nothing I said was a lie. You are agreeing that frivolous ratings are detrimental, yet you pretend that operating under a system allowing them to be used is not counter productive while providing no changes or solutions. Who are you trying to convince, me or you?

"Again, don't try to prove one point giving arguments for another one. These counterproductive effects are not produced by leaving preventive negative trust when clear scam signals are present. They're the effect of leaving too many negative trust for other, poorly justified reasons."

I am not, I am following the chain of logic as I explained above. Your statement that counterproductive effects are not produced under your very specific exclusive metric of "when clear scam signals are present" whatever that means, is automatically exclusive of the abusive ratings which would still be allowed under the metric of preventative use. You are advocating a system that allows for abuse, then exclusively only addressing the non-abusive aspect of it. This is not intellectually honest.  You are free to have a different opinion on this, but you are not free to just summarily exclude all the bad results and say no you only look at the good results.

There is a cost to allowing preventative negative rating. The fact is not having the objective metric for negative rating INHERENTLY allows for the abusive behavior, and I argue the detriment of that system outweighs the benefit. The detriments being constant infighting and degradation of the community as a result of constant manipulation and retaliation, the drowning out of legitimate ratings in the noise allowing actual fraud to go unnoticed, extortion, and most importantly feeding new users into the wood chipper of fraud by giving them a false sense of security as described above.

To clarify, you are using the term "signals" in a very different and confusing way than I am using it. When I say it creates signal noise, I am talking about a technical terminology. If you see a traffic signal, and it flashes red, you know to stop. If that same traffic signal starts flashing red, then green, then red again, that is signal noise and it is hard to know what action to take then. This is what I mean by signal noise. I don't know why you insist on using that specific word in that way but the way you use it, the word "evidence" or "indicators" would be more appropriate. A negative rating is supposed to operate as a signal to treat a user with suspicion. If that signal is misused, then naturally confusion results, ultimately resulting in that signal being ignored. I am advocating for an objective standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws exactly to reduce that signal noise, and again restore meaning of a negative rating by drastically narrowing its definition.

I does work, like in the example I gave.

Yes, over utilization and abuse is wrong. I think we should be less tolerant when there's obvious instances of people leaving negative when there's clearly no attempt to scam. This will be hard indeed. Prohibiting preventive negative trust completely would be hard too. The system would need to change a lot.

The blue part is a lie. Do not lie.
It represents a problem if too many negative ratings are left for insufficient reasons so they're diluted. We do agree on that point. You can't give arguments for one point (excess of unjustified negative trust is wrong) and conclude something different (preventive trust can't work). This, along with your lie, makes me want stop reading your posts.
Now, back to topic, scam can be reduced, as in the clear example I gave. It's impossible to eliminate it completely but it can be reduced.

I agree in general with the bold parts. I don't think fraud or scamming in general can be stopped. I never said that. I think it can be reduced with preventive negative trust and other means.
I absolutely disagree with the underlined part. Scam can be reduced and it is worth trying if we can reduce the number of people being scammed.

Yes, scammers can use a lot of tools, like the locking/self-moderated threads. That's why preventive negative trust is not the only thing we should do. We can ask things to change. This change, along with preventive negative trust, has proven to work reducing scams (not removing them completely of course).

If you have a better idea about how to teach them then post that instead of just attacking my idea with flawed arguments. I just hope it's not something in the lines "They deserve to be scammed" or "They will learn after the first scam"

No, exactly the oposite: I'm using clear examples where scams have been undoubtedly reduced by using preventive scams and other tools. You, on the other hand, have lied, have given arguments for one point to try and prove another one, have give weird comparisons that don't prove anything. So, no, the blue part here is a lie again. Do no lie.

Again, don't try to prove one point giving arguments for another one. These counterproductive effects are not produced by leaving preventive negative trust when clear scam signals are present. They're the effect of leaving too many negative trust for other, poorly justified reasons.


I think negative trust should be left only when:

• Somebody has scammed.
• Somebody is clearly trying to scam and clear signals are present, but not necessarily irrefutable proof. These clear signals can easily be missed by someone else, for example because the signals can be seen only by registered users, are present on another thread, some experience is required to identify the signals. So leaving that negative trust can help others to see the signals and can reduce scam.

No, I think it's fine as it is.

I believe that trust feedback (+/-) should be on every individuals choices but what I consider poor/inadequate feedback are those that are underhanded or amoral especially what I see on some negative feedback being left by the others, I guess those shouldn't be tolerated.

My statements were generalized and not necessarily directed at you personally. The concept that preventative negative ratings will stop scamming is horse shit because it doesn't work, and is furthermore counterproductive as I explained not just because it is an opinion I don't agree with. You agree that over utilization of negative ratings is an issue. Your solution to this issue boils down to: "The problem is trust should not be abused under that excuse." This is not a solution, this is kind of like just asking and hoping people will do the right thing. That is not good enough. There needs to be a simple form of due process here such as requiring a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws before negative rating.

You gave an example of when a negative rating could serve as a warning to "prevent" a scam. There are a couple problems with your logic here. First of all when I say the rating needs to be used as either a penalty or a warning but not both, this is not just my opinion, it is a logistical fact, one that you already ceded. If there are TOO MANY negative ratings, people begin to ignore them totally and then they ALL become worthless. In this scenario you don't get your cake or get to eat it too, you get nothing but conflict, confusion, and more fraud. This is why I say it must be one or the other, but not both, because there is no limiting factor on leaving false or frivolous ratings, and as a result that signal noise will dominate.

The second problem with your logic of negative ratings preventing fraud before it happens is that fraud is like a flow of water. You never really stop it, you can only put up barriers to entry. Much like hacking, there is no such thing as an "unhackable" system, but only such high barriers to entry that it is not worth trying. This in mind all you are doing is redirecting that fraud to other methodologies, which is great, but you are totally ignoring the side effects of this specific strategy which are counterproductive. The cost of creating the barrier to entry needs to be a factor in the equation as well.

Furthermore is the real issue that people can abuse this one little feature by locking/using self moderated threads, or that people are not spending the time to do their own due diligence before trading? Do you really think that people who don't even bother reading trust ratings (neutral ratings) can be protected from their own lax attitudes? Again, at what cost are you attempting to save these fools from themselves? New users need to be taught to review a users trust history before trading, and training them to rely only on green and red numbers is literally just feeding them into a wood chipper of fraud by building false confidence in a flawed system. If they are not taught this then that flow of fraud will just redirect to another vector to fleece people with lax attitudes making your preventative ratings totally useless in the end anyway.

I am using logic and reason, much of which you agree with to demonstrate that preventative negative ratings are overall counter productive. Your argument largely consists of, "but no it does prevent scams, trust me". Again, even if this was correct, the counterproductive effects of this are far more detrimental than the benefits.

I climbed high onto default trust by leaving preventative ratings.  I may have gotten it wrong a few times, but most of the time, I can judge people pretty quickly by how they act/react.    You can call me a fool (unsubstantiated), but your method doesn't seem to work.  :/

Absolutely. Someone who tries to scam deserves negative trust and even (real) legal punishment.

I would agree to that too.

Again. I agree. I'm not sure if this is addressed to me. Read my previous post. I don't see how you'd think I disagree with this.


No, it's not. Just because I try and use negative trust to reduce scamming and you think it should be used to punish it only doesn't mean what I'm saying is horse shit. The fact someone disagrees with you doesn't make that opinion shit.

If it's abuse, then yes. If there are clear signals a user is trying to scam but not definitely proof then that negative trust can reduce scam.

Not always. For example, a lot of non-registered users have been scammed by new accounts creating locked and/or self-moderated threads with links to auto-buy sites. Of course, they didn't deliver anything after being paid.
Those non-registered users didn't see any warning threads or neutral ratings. That situation was improved a lot after the warning theymos added to threads created by users with negative trust. But of course that warning is shown only if those brand new users have negative trust.

Clear scamming signals are there: they are brand new accounts, they lock and self-moderate their threads, they post links to auto-buy links, most of the times (but not always) they get feedback from other brand new accounts (posted on a locked thread). But there's no absolute proof they are trying to scam. Leaving negative trust to them did prevent a lot of scams. Before, more than half of threads on that section were of that kind and there were a lot of "I wish I read this warning thread sooner" posts here, posted by newbies after registering.
Now only a few threads of that kind are posted, a scammer who used that method (with brand new accounts) has said he's leaving the site and no more "I wish I read this warning thread sooner" posts have been seen.

So it's absurd to deny leaving preventing negative trust is usefull. The problem is trust should not be abused under that excuse.

Yes, it can be both. And yes, it's more difficult to trade for someone with negative trust. That's exactly why scamming can be reduced with preventive negative trust.

What people deserve is a useless metric. What is relevant is what is enforceable and logistically possible. I would remind you that ATTEMPTING a crime is still a crime, and if you can produce solid evidence of this attempt I have no issues with that. However I do take issue with the 4 lane highway of a subjective loophole that is just based on opinions and beliefs allowing for abuse of this system.

Something people always ignore is that too many frivolous ratings creates signal noise and allows actual fraud to be buried in the din. Not only that, no one ever addresses the security threat of users having the ability to extort trusted users with false ratings in order to force compliance and silence.

In the end if you are saying we are going to prevent scamming with negative ratings, that is just horse shit. Negative ratings are simply a reaction AFTER THE FACT, and any attempt to leave preventative negative ratings without evidence is not only a fools errand, it creates tons of signal noise allowing real cons to blend in, opens numerous avenues for other abuses, and creates endless conflict that is destructive to the overall community cohesiveness here.

Any preventative warnings can be solved with warning threads and neutral ratings. The trust system can either be a warning or a penalty, not both at the same time, and there is no denying it is detrimental to a user's ability to trade when they receive negative ratings.

I don't think it's necessary those 2 descriptions are exactly the opposite, but I see your point.
What's the opposite of "You were scammed"? It would be "You were not scammed", but that's clearly not reason enough to leave positive trust. "You were not scammed after making a deal where the other person could have scam you" would be enough reason, and that's very similar to "had a successful trade".
The opposite of "you strongly believe that this person is a scammer" would be "you strongly believe that this person is not a scammer" or "you don't think this person will scam, even if given the chance". I'd like that description for positive trust, but in practice I don't think it's very different than "You trust this person".

So I don't think the description for negative trust should change. The description for the positive trust could change; I consider that less important.


So you think only people who have already scammed deserve negative trust? I strongly disagree. I think trust should be used to make things harder for people who are trying to scam too. Unfortunately that is subjective, but I don't see a better option.

Too bad honesty is in short supply around here. This is why I advocate for a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws for leaving a negative rating. Debating people's beelifs is a fools errand and subjective. Facts are mutually observable, objective, and much more difficult to manufacture than simply saying "I honestly believe XYZ."

So should the "Positive Trust" description be changed then and the "You trust this person" part be removed? I find it somewhat confusing that on the one hand, people are saying "Negative Trust ratings should only be used for scammers"... yet seem happy enough for the positive trust description to include a very generic "You trust this person or had a successful trade" description.

So, Positive Trust for someone you simply consider trustworthy = OK... but Negative Trust for someone you consider untrustworthy = not OK?


I guess, the point I'm trying to make is that the descriptions for positive and negative trust are not consistent... hence, I am not surprised at the lack of consistency in how they are interpreted and applied.