Topic: Trust is Broken (Read 363 times)

I'm certainly not going to die on this hill. But it does bother me, and has for some time. Not just this one example. I think, though, that your edit says it all. The system needs an overhaul, but I don't have any really good ideas as to HOW that might be done. It is definitely worthy of discussion. The problem, as always, is people. The very fact that it does happen with people who have default trust, and who, frankly, have done fairly well with that level of responsibility overall, makes it even harder.

As I said earlier, I would not want default trust. I try to be somewhat gentle in my words, but my opinions are often quite extreme, and I could easily see myself abusing it in a moment of anger. How do you fix that? I'm not sure it can be.

At any rate, you've certainly given me some interesting perspectives. Perhaps I'm reading more into this than there really is. Or maybe it's just the best that can be done at the moment. All things evolve...

I'm gonna bow out for a while, see what others have to say. Thanks for a good conversation. Given the venue, I expected polemics, not thoughtful debate. That was refreshing in itself.

Most DT-members are doing great work and the trust system is accurate in my opinion. No need for a new system.

Well, that's more complicated than I thought. In any case, it changes little in my mind about the trust system, since most people don't know how to change their trust list and they have it on default so the power lies with the people in the default trust list. I know people want or even need someone to tell them who to trust and who to avoid but I find that it's better for a person to take some time and decide on their own if they want to do business with another person in here (or anywhere else, really). I, too, have seen examples of the trust system being abused and negative trust being given to people whose only crime was not getting along with those who gave them the negative trust. I don't usually notice when positive trust is being given when it's undeserved but this is also bad. It's just that in the case of an unjustly given negative trust, the consequences are far more severe because negative trust can drive a person out of business in this forum.

The part of your response that I put in bold texts is where subjectivity, opinion and the contradictions in criteria that are bound to happen is taking place. It would be very reasonable to argue that he has/is crossing a line, because this is a Bitcoin forum; not a political organization. There has been nothing that defines what "Crossing the line" is, and theymos saying it is acceptable to rate a user in general would seem particularly fitting in this case.


I know you just provided this as a particular example because it is something close to you and I'm not saying there isn't a systematic problem, but as we seem to agree there is minimal to no harm done in this case so I wouldn't pick this hill to die on. I like to tackle specific problems, and if this is a systematic problem we can surely find more egregious examples of DT ratings based on opinion stopping a user's day-to-day operations on here. I would be more willing to stand by you and call out the problems if we had an example where harm has been done and can be agreed upon communally.

If he were doing business here, then it might have more of an impact, but if he were doing business here he probably would have less time to spread his own ideology in the toxic Politics and Off-topic sections. He has made a name for himself by having a strong-will and strong(unpopular)-opinions and this is bound to manifest itself in their trust score. Anyone thinking to do business should look into the ratings themselves and judge if they are in agreement to their standing on trust. I know this is uncommon for newbies, but this is not the responsibility of DT members, in my opinion.


If you got the right people, not even mods as far as I know, to agree that Vod is being unreasonable, breaking guidelines, acting maliciously or thwarting users from using the forum based solely on their opinions (opinions which don't affect their actions on the forum) then they would remove him from their trust networks and his ratings would all become irrelevant in the context of our discussion.

EDIT : I can certainly agree that there is too much opinion and not enough substance in the trust system, but I do not know how to adequately modify that without losing much more value overall.

I largely agree with you, and again, I chose this example because the men in question are known to me. Vod is generally not malicious. BADecker is generally a PITA. But Vod is in a position of trust within the forum, and should restrain his disgust when dealing with someone who has not ACTUALLY crossed any lines. In this particular example, you are probably right that no harm is done. I've seen little evidence that BADecker is doing anything here other than running his mouth, so it doesn't greatly affect him. But what if he WERE doing business? And what if you were a new guy, seeing red trust? I, after being here for many years, am quite aware of how to remove someone from default trust FOR ME. There is no way to do it IN GENERAL, other than action by the mods, therefore it behooves those on the default trust list to behave.

Again, I would simply point out that BADecker is unaffected by this trust; if you could provide some or even one example of someone being unable to operate on the forum as they normally would if not for a trust rating about their opinion, then I would 100% be on your side. I just feel like this has no negative affects on BADecker's experience on the forum, nor is it stopping them from using the forum as they do.



I don't think, and we may disagree, that Vod is giving out ratings too easily. I know you said that this is a systematic problem, but we can not target an abstract system, we must target individuals and individual acts one at a time.

According to theymos, it is ok to rate a person "in general", not tied to a trade at all. As long as you are not rating them on the quality of their posts. I would say this is different from rating them in the way Vod has.

You're wrong... sort of.

Which is where my problem lies. Anyone can add trust, but there is a group who are "default" trust, and they show automatically to everyone, unless you know your way around and set up your own default trust. If you click on trust, you'll see two lists, one from people you trust (which is the default trust group unless YOU specifically change it), and a second from untrusted members, which just means they aren't on your list. The untrusted feedback doesn't show against the ranking that is displayed under your avatar in posts.

To the best of my knowledge, I am not in the default trust list. I'm fine with that, I'm probably too opinionated to be fair. I think the list is too large, and as I demonstrated above, even generally levelheaded members give in to fits of pique. This is why I don't like the system as implemented. I fully understand that the moderators are too few for there to actually be a true centralized ranking system, but over the years, this one has seemed to gather far too much opinion and not enough substance. It doesn't greatly affect me, but I think it unduly influences new people. I've seen far too many examples of both negative and positive trust being given for truly trivial matters, or for matters of opinion that really do not speak to the trustworthiness (from a business sense) of the person being given the trust.

In the example above, I actually added neutral trust to BADecker, because even though a positive might balance a negative, I can't stand the guy. But he did not deserve negative trust that I saw.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm far from an expert here, but I thought that the trust system is not open for all to vote. The power to give trust, positive or negative, is something that few members have and since I've only seen it on moderators I assumed it is only a privilege moderators have.

In any case, I don't really disagree with what you're saying. I certainly wish there was a better and more fair way to judge members and weed out the bad ones or show the rest of us who should be trusted.

Correct. I was browsing through the marketplace because I saw some things I wanted to buy or sell to, but the OP had red trust ratings. So I immediately closed the thread.

But then it baffled me why someone with such a high level account and offering so many services, and with a thread that sounded legit... why he had such a red score. So I clicked and realized it was just people dissatisfied with his personality/character or what he was selling.

I'm sure most new people to this forum would do the same.

I definitely think there should be a separation of business feedback and general trust. But I have a feeling that would undermine both systems, so we're stuck with just the trust system.

I'm not sure what the Default Trust is, but it sounds like that's the more "business" kind of feedback. But I see that gets abused at times as well.

In the real world I couldn't care less if someone is a bigot or an ass. Most successful businessmen have crappy attitudes, just the way life goes. I'm still going to do business with them.

Again, to clarify, I like Vod. I have seen him bust a great many scams, and he has a razor wit. My problem here is that the trust is based solely on disliking the man's opinion. And I would also not have a problem with that if Vod were NOT in the Default Trust listings, because those are people who the forum members have not deemed to be objective or useful.

Default Trust should not be given lightly, and those who have it should not use it to address personal affront.

And to the commenter who said "one or two instances..." That was kind of my point. I considered this an example of something that seems systemic. That it was Vod in this case is regrettable. He's usually level headed, and BADecker is a difficult man.

But it wasn't unique, nor just Vod. It seems pretty common.

Trust, according to the posts regarding it going clear back to when I started lurking (2011-12), IS supposed to be about whether the person has demonstrated some tendency to be a scammer or thief, and also the opposite. It is not solely about business, but that was (at least then) the primary aim. If I'm considering doing business with someone, I definitely look at their trust rating. It's not the sole criteria, and in fact I frequently look to see WHAT the red is. It's very often trivial nonsense, or a poor opinion of someone based on their opinions.

But I'm not a newbie. Not for a very long time. A new guy is LIKELY to put some weight to the trust system, and this makes my point valid.

LOL this is stellar! I'm definitely going to trade with Vod now because of that trust feedback.

In all honesty, it looks a lot like he deserves his trust positive reviews. It looks like he's out there looking out for scammers and outting them 24/7.

But then again, someone can just copycat that, and it would be a classic example of shark eating shark. (Btw, sharks really do eat each other in their mother's wombs and only one shark is born )

So you have one scammer backstabbing the other scammers just to rise to the top of the trust chain and then ultimately scamming someone. I'm sure that's rare though.

I think a scammer wouldn't put that much effort in gaining that much trust. They'd just want to one-off someone big.

But then again, Ponzi's exist in the world because there are those elaborate scammers who take years to pull of a job.

Also there are people who simply by Legendary bitcointalk accounts

Take a look at Vod's trust page. Notice all the +trust left for non-transaction activities...

No, it's not like ebay's feedback system where only people who have done a deal can leave feedback, but that is a heavily flawed system as well and wouldn't work here. People leave feedback for a whole host of reasons but it gives you some guidance on the page itself:

    Positive - You trust this person or had a successful trade.
    Neutral - Comments. Your rating will not affect this person's trust score.
    Negative - You were scammed or you strongly believe that this person is a scammer.

If someone comes here and lists a ponzi or is blatantly trying to scam someone should I have to have done a deal or be scammed by them before I can leave feedback? Nope. You can also leave people feedback for being a helpful member of the community but the feedback system is there as a guide not a definitive this person is trustworthy. You could have hundreds of feedbacks for being helpful or whatever but that doesn't mean you wouldn't scam somebody the first chance you get so people need to read all feedbacks received and make their own mind up about that person before they trade. 

It's not broken, it's what happens when you create something with a purpose, but don't enforce it. It becomes what it becomes. Unless we ARE going to moderate it, or at least flesh out some rules for it's usage (which I doubt will be listened to, with what I could call nothing more than arrogance.), nothing is changing. I just think it's a pain in the ass sometimes alot of the time.

The trust system is exclusive, and I guess a place on DT is coveted. But for the same reason it is unmoderated, it is not the be all and end all. Some people are just taking it literally. Maybe Vod just genuinely distrusts idiots. I like to think I do too.

I guess i miscomprehend the Trust System. I assumed it was a business-only feedback system where two parties converge on a deal then leave each other feedback. If the deal went sour for whatever reason, then negative feedback is left. Opposite is true for positive feedback.

But you've clarified that the Trust System is feedback for any reason. That said, how many users leave positive feedback simply because a forum member is nice, helpful, informative, and seems trustworthy? Seems like the system is still biased. People leave negative feedback for weird beliefs. But when someone has a cool head and solid reasoning, I see no random positive feedback left unless there's a business deal involved.

I stand corrected if you can show me one or two examples where someone left positive feedback without any business transaction or crypto/money exchanged.

The trust system is hardly broken just because of one or two ratings. I wouldn't trust someone who has such opinions but I'm not going to leave feedback for it either but the feedback system is there for users who you feel you trust or distrust for whatever reason and that is of course subjective. BadDecker seems more like a troll to me anyway but either way he has some despicable opinions.


If a stranger knocked on your door and asked you for a loan would you give it to them? People often see random users trying to secure a loan over the internet as pretty shady. I would say probably at least 98% of these people would just disappear and never pay the loan back should they get it and that's why they get the negative feedback. You could argue it's unnecessary as probably nobody is going to give them the loan any way but there's a lot of people who think they deserve the feedback as well.

To my understanding, trust isn't controlled by the moderators, though. It's something anyone can give anyone else for any reason. Hence why the forum code allows for being a radical Christian to be enough for a negative trust rating that shows up red in someone's profile.

You're right about centralized moderation. It only leads to an abuse of power for a small % of instances.

Decentralized forum moderation would be cool. But that's time and resource consuming because you'd have to have about 1000 votes from so many members everyday just to punish or absolve people.

Trust is a bad idea because the moderators are only human. And as humans, they have weaknesses and vices. What's more, these people are not consistently checked so it's not easy to prove when they cross a line and give positive or negative trust based on their personal bias. I've seen it time and time again, when you give a person an ounce of power over another person, this sort of thing will happen if they are left unchecked.

I've seen many weird trust ratings while bored waiting for the post timer to conclude when I want to post something right after having posted something a second ago.

Some people have negative trust, but the amount of BTC involved is literally 0. And the negative trust message is somewhat odd, something like: "POTENTIAL SCAMMER! ASKS FOR NO COLLATERAL LOAN"

This is odd to me. If he never scammed anyone yet, then why does he get negative trust that reflects oh so poorly on his main profile when posting? That's unfair to the maximum.

I've seen another weird one, where someone is selling subscription services to crypto investment groups. The negative trust given is merely a speculation on why the price is so low: "Warning scammer trying to sell subscription services for half the price of regular." <-- again, no BTC involved. It's just people ranting.

It's almost like leaving a restaurant review without actually eating at the restaurant.

But then again, the environment of crypto where no transactions can be reversed... I'd say these negative trust messages are natural. Have to prevent a scam before it happens, right?

But giving someone negative trust for their political/religious opinions is just fucked. That has nothing to do with business. Trust is about business. Being a radical Christian has nothing to do with scamming someone.

Well trust isn't really relevant for me as I don't trade crypto. The only time it might apply is if I sell a domain name, and that will probably be run through the Name Silo escrow service, so my personal trust rating won't be relevant.

However, I would be annoyed if I received negative trust for my political opinions, For example. I'm anti-deep state, and against big Pharma and eugenics, but many people seem to want to oppose these views ( they want to stop Brexit for example). I don't think trust should be used to attempt to force members to change their political or religious views.