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I've long struggled with this myself but, when I've sold something physical in the collectibles section and the buyer left me positive trust I've often done the same. Although I'm the seller and I didn't have to trust the other party with anything besides sending me money I think that a neutral would be more suitable.

I just had a thought that if someone has a tarnished rep here (Like 2-3-4 negatives) and decided to go on over to goods/collectibles and make a few trades they could basically buy trust to restore some sort of reputation to their account which is quite bad. I don't think this has happened yet and there's nothing saying it ever will but I was just going over it in my head and if I were put in such a position it would seem like a "cheap" out.

Now, to my question. Can a neutral trust rating be considered fair when someone bought something from me? I more often than not receive a PM saying "Hey, I bought this thing from you and left you positive trust, would appreciate it if you left me some too.", it always feels weird if I don't do it but lately I've been trying to move away from it but it's hard.

/Discuss?

If they sent you the funds first and you waited for the appropriate confirmations, then it really didn't require any trust on your part. A neutral is more appropriate. If you provided the goods and services first, and then they paid you upon receipt or completion, a positive would be appropriate. IMHO

That's what I'm thinking too. I've not sent anything first for 2 years so I'm never really put in a position where I have to trust the other party.

You may want to also leave positive trust if they paid you by reversible means such as paypal or wire transfer. Not right away, however...

Some years ago I made a trade with Neotox and I've sent first. He paid, I've left him positive feedback. I felt back then pretty disappointed he didn't "return the favor".
Since then I've learned a lot and I agree that there are many positive feedbacks that clearly could be neutral.

On the other hand, @Hhampuz, don't feel bad. I think that the lending section is the more obvious one for "buying" positive trust feedback, not the actual trading.

Good point, and I agree with you on that one. However I never do deals that include reversible payment options, but others in the collectibles space do.

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That's true, although within the collectibles section you get something that probably won't lose value (you could sell it as soon as you've received it), so there's no loss on your end besides giving out some sort of shipping info, to receive the positive trust ratings from more lenient people.

Just my point of view.
If the guy didn't show any shady behaviour, then should be no problem to leave a positive feedback.
But you can make your own policy depending of the risked amount from the other side, like positive for risking over 100$ for example.
If I take 20$ loan or 500$ one, there should be difference in my trust rating. It's almost the same in the Collectables.

Anyway we have examples like TF and MagicalTux which from very trustworthy members turned to a large scale scammers.

Nowadays feedback are used in many different occasions, not only trust related so green is not always money related.

Another thing to consider can be the value of the accounts and the risked amount. Green trust accounts are more valuable and have a less chance to be scammed for small amounts under the "price" of the accounts.

By this same logic then it would not be valid to rate people positively for anything else that did not directly relate to trusting them with value either. This is the constant conflict I am talking about. Theymos in a what I think is a misguided effort to keep this place free of oppressive regulation has simply fostered an environment of oppressive regulation that is completely unwritten and arbitrary. At least when there are written rules everyone is mostly on the same page regarding the goal of the system.

We are probably on the same page on this one. I can't, after going through my trust ratings, see any positive trust I've left that did not include in me at least somewhat trusting them with value. Now this could be me misunderstanding or forming my own opinion about how it should work. Either way I'm always up for the discussion.

This kind of PM indicates trust buying (IMO), people who have the intention to have green trust would PM someone just to gain trust feedbacks. Trust is earned along the way when you have more transactions. I think neutral feedback will do if someone PM you like this, it is like your confirmation to his/her positive feedback that you have done a transaction with that particular user at that time.

I am agree with bones261, We should not leave positive feedback's just single transaction if we were not on risk. You can leave a neutral feedback for future reference. If same person trade with you multiple time and all trade ended smoothly then it will not wrong to leave positive feedback in my opinions. But if you sent first that means you were on risk, so positive feedback appropriate in this case.  

Whoever will ask like this, really he do not deserve positive feedback. Because when someone leave feedback we are aware about it even that is untrusted. Especially I visit occasionally my untrusted feedback's. So I don't think they need to ask for it, because it will consider feedback's trade.

As far as I can tell, this doesn't have anything to do with Theymos or the forum's rules--it has to do with not giving DT-weighted positive trust to people who might be doing deals with DT members solely to get that feedback.  Everyone is still free to leave feedback however they see fit, but a member might not stay on DT for long if they consistently give positives for small deals where they have no money at risk.

Hhampuz, just be careful who you hand out positives to, and that's solid advice in general for any DT member.  I've left neutrals for members I've had transactions with if they sent cash or bitcoin first, and nobody has had a problem with that so far.  Green trust can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, so DT members should be very conservative with the positive trust.  Props for seeking advice on the issue.

The neutral tag is been massively ignored so I don't see any thing bad in you trying to use it. The way I understand the trust system, your feedbacks are meant to show you trust someone, not someone trust you. In your case it's more appropriate if the buyer leaves a positive feedback on your account and you aren't meant to do the same since you didn't have to trust him, he was the one trusting you by paying you first. You can just use the neutral feedback as a way of appreciation.

PS: Anyone sending you PM just to gain reputation after successful trade is just trying to take advantage of your DTship and if I was in your shoes I won't leave feedback for such users.

Yeah, I've been told I should be more wary with the trust I leave once I'm on DT. It may be that it started spiraling out of control before I even got to DT2 and then I may have been too stubborn to change my behaviour. I've been meaning to just completely change most of the positives I've left but the way the whole delete/add trust system works I'd have to commit a few hours at least.

Figured this could be the best place to get peoples opinion. I personally despise trust begging (I don't always think that is the intention when I've sold something), and perhaps I should try and educate the ones asking me for positive while also giving them neutral.

I am of the opinion that a positive or negative rating should be based on a direct interaction with a user. If some one purchases an item from me for example I will usually leave them a positive rating with some kind of description of what the trade involved so people reviewing ratings can weigh it appropriately. A regular history of being able to afford purchases and complete exchanges without incident has value too. Now if you see a user with tons of tiny trades well then you can see that the number of ratings themselves mean less than at first glance. This all comes back to teaching users to do due diligence, not just trust red and green numbers blindly.

However, if you want people to do their due diligence, then a neutral rating will let them know the same thing without making it appear at first blush that the person is more trusted than God.

Many people in collectibles do the same (including adding them to their trust network)...  That's a big part of the reason why the old DT system was getting more and more inaccurate (any why Vod called Blazed the biggest trust abuser (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5095156.msg50037397#msg50037397)), but if you weren't in the old DT, it was likely never an issue you were faced with.  Now that DT is opening up to more users, I look forward to people beginning to understand my prior actions (for example, my refusal to give out trust in many trading situations) and catching up to speed with the right way to move forward here to restore credibility to the trust system.

Yeah, it is a learning curve and I never thought about it back when I wasn't on DT. Even when I first got added to DT2 my focus was more on the negative trust I gave out, the thought never crossed my mind that positives would weigh more heavy as well.

I don't see any problems with rating people whom you have exchanged with. It allows trusted users to interact with people with no reputation giving the trusted user and opportunity to give them a once over while giving the new user the ability to build their own reputation without requiring huge risks. The point is the system is able to be gamed to one extent or another no matter what, and the focus should be one teaching people to review ratings. Individuals attempting to make many small trades with very trusted people in order to farm trust ratings make themselves obvious pretty fast, and that is a good thing. This rating farming either way can be solved with some very superficial review of all ratings.

This is the big issue that separates me from Lauda I think as far as our idealism with trust ratings...  Giving out positive trust to those who don't deserve it is potentially much more damaging than not labeling a newbie as a scammer in my opinion.  No trust doesn't mean trusted by default as some people seem to think.  Trust is earned.  If trust is given to those who haven't earned it, the entire system breaks down.  I have been trying to be more lenient in my ratings lately (the change is clearly seen in February of 2018 in my sent ratings), as I've come to understand that many people don't feel the same way I do and as mentioned above, people get salty when trust isn't reciprocated.  It would be great if everyone got on the same page and had the same understanding though.  I know it would have saved me a lot of headaches in the past.

BTW Hhampuz, I glanced at your trust ratings and I also think it is OK to leave positive trust for someone who won an auction and paid promptly. After all, their bid is a pledge and prompt payment shows that they honor their pledge to you.

I understand your dilemma but you have to know that the user is also trusting you with his money or bitcoins. So he is still taking a risk even though you are trusted here. If the deal goes the way you agreed I think he should also receive a positive feedback. Same way it works on ebay and other similar sites where both the buyer and seller rate each other.

Positive / Neutral trust in Consumers, in my opinion, can be interpreted, that consumers understand about something that you provide, (Positive / Neutral), and its benefits,

But all the definitions you mention, generally behave as an evaluation of someone's Individual Differences in Your Consumer Attitudes.

So, you should have a characteristic attitude in yourself to determine.

1. Positive, Negative and Neutral
A consumer may be interested in buying and selling with you, it is not a problem as long as it is clear and responsible, at the time of the transaction and you are sure you are good for you.
situation factors often cause inconsistencies between you and the consumer.

2. You must be consistent when giving your attitude and attitude,

3. Your resistance is how confident someone is about you.

4. Your beliefs and beliefs about the truth of consumers.

That is, in this case one conclusion can be taken is:

"Potential consumers always buy your collection, if they are satisfied, they will continue to use your product, based on the trust you give and vice versa".

As one of the earlier active members of this forum this has always been something very clear to me. I was the first (and only) reliable Steam game seller here for some time. I made it a point to help get people started and single handedly drew in hundreds of users from outside the forum to it.

New users are required to take risks to start out, it is just part of how it works. People who are known to be well trusted can and should serve as gateways into the forum and its systems of exchange. People who are trying to abuse this as I stated earlier make themselves obvious fairly quickly to any one taking the time to do at least 30 seconds of due diligence reviewing trust ratings. New users get a trusted start into the system, and the forum gets another contributing member instead of just a lurker. The benefit outweighs the risk in my opinion.

The fact that the buyer trusts the seller doesn't necessarily mean that the buyer is trustworthy and deserves a green rating.

I think trust rating, was solely designed by theymos to be mostly used in the Marketplace (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=5.0) section. You could trace back the announcement by theymos as Marketplace trust (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=211858). As its main purpose was about how a person is while dealing with funds, and if a person has any successful trade and other person pays promptly, both of them should positive trust each other, as its a sign of both letting others know we had a successful trade.

Trust should be more intense in the  Marketplace (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=5.0) section of the forum, and its is the same now, so I think it's nothing wrong in positive trusting a person who risked some money in a deal even if it's not too much it still like risking a sum.

Trust ratings should be given based on your opinion while doing trading with that person it doesn't necessarily mean you have ti leave feedback after every person you are trading with.Use positive trust for people who you did multiple trades without any issues,for single trade just neutral or nothing will be enough.

Not only Lauda,but all of his sockpuppets are doing the same.I am sure that you are one of the most honest and fait DT member here.Lauda is just an extortionist whom obsessed to this forum.

Collectibles is filled with members on DT, and I believe I'm the only somewhat active DT member in Lending. I don't think anyone uses Lending for 'buying' trust.

This was different a few years prior, which I think most of us still remember.

Trust should have a weighting based on the risked amount.
We have an equivalent value of trust for amounts from 0 BTC to 100 BTC.^{(arbitrary numbers)}
Though I don't exactly love this, I'm not sure about the best way to rectify the issue.^.
If there are weights attached to the trust values dependent on the risked amounts, would it take too long to load up trust pages? ^.
Additionally, should the negative case be the same, or different? Especially in instances where the risked amount is unclear... what happens then? ^.

I have some opinions on some things being discussed that are off topic in this thread.

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Four negative ratings will be difficult to overcome based on the formula on how trust ratings are calculated (positive ratings after the first negative are weighed less than other positive ratings). This isn’t an important point.

In general, I would advise not giving a positive rating if you cannot articulate the benefit this person has by trading with you. If someone suddenly is specifically trading with someone in DT and not those not in DT for things they had no previous interest in, it is probably not appropriate to leave a rating. If someone is paying above market prices for something when lower priced similar items are available from others with a history of successful trades, it is probably best to not leave a positive rating.

It might be more appropriate to leave a positive rating for a repeat customer than for someone who buys the lowest priced item a single time.

This is a very good point. Maybe DT feedback and personal feedback should be somehow made 2 different things in a possible future.



I've read not long ago the start of a drama about a loan that was somewhat strange and may have been done for having a reason to give trust to an alt account. I don't know if it was true or not.

Unless I misunderstood your post, we are on the same page on this. I'm as conservative with positive ratings as it gets (percentage wise). I find green trust very dangerous, and we've had many cases of light/dark green users scamming others (this includes only the portion of threads that I have personally read, there are likely more).

But there are lenders that provide loans to buy trust. ::)

You would think by now people like you would stop placing the blame on red and green numbers and instead admit the fact that ultimately it is all meaningless if the account changes hands. We should be teaching people to do due diligence, not setting the entire forest on fire to kill a few invasive weeds. You have fun with that flame thrower, that is until it is pointed the other direction. Then I am sure it will be a tragedy.

I must say I like seeing the conversations around how to use neutral trust more effectively. Hopefully if more people begin to use it we can see a change where it is as visible as other feedback where displayed.

I think that either are fine and the recipient should be happy with either, especially as this is an actual trade/sale or transaction taking place. I am all for leaving a neutral feedback with a "positive message" for marking an account after a trade. This is good in an instance with minimal communication, minor amounts that required little trust or effort. If in the future you have more transactions with the member or notice through other dealings that they deserve the green then you can update it.

Now maybe your first time dealing with someone there is more of an exchange maybe even some transfer of personal information, it's a higher value item, or just something that required more than dropping it in the post and giving them a payment address. You might find a reason to go straight to a green trust. I believe that you should be fluid in what deserves and doesn't deserve a certain type of feedback, and treat each one on a case by case basis.

Whatever you chose to do it's really the information behind the feedback that matters. Use a good reference so it's clear what the feedback is in relation to. Descriptive feedback , who sent first, was it a small trade; anything that paints a picture of what took place. This way a user who actually looks into the feedback can decide if it's relevant to their situation.

The part about the PM's is kinda annoying but depends on where it is coming from. I know in one of my first deals I did ask the user to leave feedback; as I wanted our deal documented on the forum. If I'm not mistaken they were not on DT and I really had no concept of the system at the time. I have no problem with someone casually reminding me to send feedback, as I like the idea of documenting all of my dealings. I wouldn't necessarily just provide positive feedback because they did.


I couldn't agree more with this statement.

Yeah I don't mind someone sending me a reminder about leaving feedback since I made a transaction and the buyer deserves as much. But when I get a PM where the buyer clearly states "Please give me positive trust for this transaction", that's where the issue starts for me. I do agree with what you are saying though, all transactions should be public and a neutral trust with the feedback stating what it entailed should be worth it's weight too, even though I didn't have to necessarily trust them with anything.

Then why spend all your time focusing on low value negative trust ratings for insignificant newbies and abusive negative ratings for well esftablished trusted accounts like mine and rmcdermott927 instead of focusing on using high value positive trust ratings to uplift those who have earned it and truly separate the trusted from untrusted? It’s hard to take anything you do seriously knowing that after the tens of millions of dollars I’ve safely protected for users here over nearly a decade with 100% transparency, you still think I deserve to be distrusted. It invalidates any idea that your ratings are a net positive or that you have decent judgement.

Please refrain from personal arguments in this thread, we don't need that shit here since I honestly wanted a discussion regarding the neutral/positive question.

I think that in your situation, giving positive feedback is not a good idea... Neutral feedback is a good solution. I think that leaving a positive review and adding a user to the trust list if he asks is not the best option for these systems.

So this trust here is being miss used if I got this correctly. From my understanding trust is earn for some job or something that you have participate here of forum with possible good outcome for positive trust. If thing gone bad then you will probably receive bad review or negative trust, like I have seen many here with red marks, trade with extreme caution. I dont know if this is right question but can this be resolved with council, for example most respected member here or member that are longest here to create something like this and that this can be settled like this. Maybe its huge change, but many say this is abused, can say that something here is right or not but im not here long enough to know, and I dont want to point fingers like kids he did it first.

Apparently this system have flaws like any system and can be miss used or abused from time to time. Maybe this council or something that will be with 3-5 member that will be informed on every trade here can be good but think that then that council would do nothing then just read all that. This is not a solution only observation for possible solution for this problem.

Spaghetti text.

The "council" is the Reputation... or Scam Accusation board. Focusing the power to "respected" members is vague and creates centralization. Any member is able to counter a rating.

1) To verify trades, this requires effort and disclosure of personal details.
2) This proposal can be made inconsequential through spam.

Or we could all just agree on a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws being maintained and publicly posted BEFORE negative rating some one, not after. There is no need for a council. We are already all the council. We examine evidence of scams daily in scam accusations and make a collective determination. We just need better standards by which to organize so that the most abusive and duplicitous individuals don't always run everything.

While i wouldn't go to as far as sending a pm to everyone i trade with to get a positive feedback, everyone who trades here want to have those green points.

 this does not indicate trust buying or any sketchy behavior,  i speak from personal experience, i have traded  hundreds of thousands of dollars here( yes no typos )i  bought and sold thousands of bitmain coupons last year from a large number of members here, i was just a random newbie and sadly non of them was a DT, but there is 1000 times more reasons why i should have my profile painted in green more than a person who happen to buy a 500$ item from a DT member and ended up with a few positive feedback, but i sure won't demand a feedback for every trade, and this is the way it has to go.

This is one of flaws about this DT thing we have, i am very well known and trusted in many FB crypto groups, and just about every large Telegram group that has to do with mining gears, but i chose not to buy something i don't need from a  DT member only to get positive trust, so by looking at my profile you would hardly trust me , and you would be naive if you do to be honest, so if i had to go to the extent of pming everyone i trade with to get a positive feedback, i would probably have to excuse myself, tho i sure as hell won't do that.

So people wanting feedback can be for the purpose of making business easier and not having to deal with who would go first or wait for an escrow agent to respond, while i am very certain that many members want those feedback to scam people,  so i think one should think 10 times before giving someone the privilege of being trusted by default, even if they had to be unfair to another 10 users by not leaving them a positive.

Well, I've spent some time going over previous trust I've left. I changed a bunch of positives to neutral and intend to take a second round tomorrow and do the same. I also removed some negatives completely or revised to neutral as I felt some of them were a heat of the moment thing (although arguably justified). I think we all learn little by little and I'm hoping that I'll be able to look at it more objectively as time passes but it's always hard when you interact with a lot of people while also being very emotional (working on the latter).

Also just wanted to put it out there that if you find any trust rating of mine that can be considered either trust abuse or just bad, I invite you to let me know and I'll look over it and perhaps revise it.

EDIT; spelling errors.