Bitcoin Forum

I made three improvements to the Trust system:

Firstly, there is now a neutral rating type. Neutral ratings don't affect a person's trust score at all. On a person's trust page, positive ratings are bold, neutral ratings are italic, and negative ratings are red bold-italic.

Secondly, it is now possible to exclude users in your trust list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust). Prefix a person's name with a tilde character (~) if you want to exclude them. If you exclude someone, then you will never see that person's ratings as trusted, even if the person is trusted by other people in your trust network.

Exclusions also travel through the trust network. If one person in your trust network trusts someone and another person excludes them, then whether or not they're seen as trusted for you is decided using these rules:
1. If someone at a lower depth (ie, closer to your trust list) disagrees with someone at a higher depth, then the person at the lowest depth wins. Due to this, no one can overrule anything you put in your trust list directly.
2. If multiple people at the same depth disagree, then the rating type that is most popular among these people wins. For example, say that you have three people in your trust list. If two of them trust someone and one of them excludes that person, then the person will not be excluded.
3. If an equal number of people at the same depth include and exclude a person, then the person will be included.

Finally, I added an easier-to-understand way of viewing your trust network to the trust settings page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust). The number in parentheses is the number of people in the preceding (lower) depth level who trust the person minus the number of people at the preceding depth level who exclude that person. This view contains slightly less information than the hierarchical view -- there's a link to the old view at the bottom of the trust settings page.

Also, the maximum trust depth is now 4 instead of 3, though it's probably still not a good idea to go above 2.

Thank you for updating the trust system and adding neutral trust. I think that people using neutral for feedback with decrease feedback disputes.

Why doesn't the trust rating show up in this section? Always wondered about it.

Trust is not visible in sections where users are unlikely to be making financial transactions, such as Meta, Off-topic, and Bitcoin Discussion. It makes sense that it only shows in sections like Lending, Auctions, etc. where trust rating is actually relevant to discussions.

I am curious about when a neutral trust rating would be appropriate...

Its because we don't need trust here

Thanks for the update Theymos!

When someone doesn't like someone else, or thinks the actions are incorrect, or feels the other is planning a scam. It was quite incorrect to actually label with a red mark when the trust giver hasn't been scammed yet.

There actually appears to be a fourth improvement: trust you leave no longer will default to 'positive' trust when leaving feedback, a user now must actively choose what kind of trust they want to take. This will prevent someone from accidentally leaving positive feedback when negative was intended while forgetting to check the box that says "negative"

Thank you for adding the improvements, theymos. The trust system is much better now in my opinion.

I agree with you. The neutral trust option is definitely a great improvement, and also now that positive trust is in bold as well.

Thanks for this new feature theymos !

I know it is not needed here, but even then it shows up in a lot of sections where it is not needed. Seems it takes extra effort to turn it off and wondering if there was a better reasoning for it.

Agree with Beastlymac thanks Theymos for the trust adjustments neutral trust should get rid of most of the feedback disputes and the exclusion mechanism keeps a balance, not sure I would ever need trust depth 4 but its a convenient option.
Good change in my opinion as it leads to a more balanced system
Now we just need to see how it works in action and if anything will need to be tinkered
To the Field with it ^_^

(Hmm noticed some of my ancient ratings ended up as positive for scammers aka didn't click the scam button long ago but otherwise smooth transition changed them appropriately)

I often leave negative trust feedback for scammers before they scam anyone, or after they scam others. I don't often get scammed myself.

After these changes, I don't see a way of doing that any more, so what should I do?

When I see someone who is clearly untrustworthy, do I check "I was scammed" even though I wasn't? Or do I just not leave them any feedback, since they didn't personally scam me?

Perhaps the wording next to "negative" should be changed from "I was scammed" to "this person isn't trustworthy".

Finally! Good to see a some improvement after it was so widely requested.

It definitely works better to put a negative trust on a higher risk scam such as members who have just joined the forum and are starting ponzis.

Another would be to put a neutral on a possibly more trusted member who you think is acting suspicious as well, but your allegations are not set in stone yet.

The new wording seems to disallow that kind of rating. "negative" now means "I was scammed", and not things like "runs a scammy Ponzi scheme".

Sounds like a fair suggestion in my opinion since its a good change in wording.
It's possible for people to be suspicious from the start and it doesn't hurt to be proactive in preventing fraud since it's not always "I was scammed" but I am preventing people from scamming / their intentions are suspicious to me.

If you flag them before they scam, potential victims are alerted by the "trade with caution" note next to their posts.

If you wait until after they've run off with all the coins, it's too late. By then they've made a new account and a new scam thread.

Seems daft to me to only allow us to leave negative feedback after the event, and only if we were personally scammed.

I just downgraded all of my "not personally a victim" negrates to neutrals. If I could recode my own forum, I would rename Neutral to Suspect (leave comments why you suspect this user is scamming/has scammed), and have the points display trusted/trust depth # of positives in green | # of neutrals/suspects in black | # of negatives in red. Then below that line, "Warning: Trade with extreme caution!" would show up if any of your trusted users or depth thereof left a neutral/suspect, or negative.

The neutral ratings is something that can be left is someone is acting suspicious but not acting like they are going to outright scam. Prior to trading with someone, you should check their trust rating, and if you share someone else's suspicions then you may want to trade with an elevated level of caution.

Another reason why a neutral rating may want to be used is if you are on default trust, but do not want to leave outright negative trust, for example if someone is requesting a scammy loan however appears to be doing so because they do not know any better. The neutral trust could be used as a "warning" to be used and if similar behavior is used in the future then an outright negative trust may be warranted  

What about the guy who starts yet another Ponzi thread: "guaranteed 200% returns in 24 hours, no limit". He hasn't scammed me, but he's obviously trying to scam. There are noobs in the thread asking questions, and my negative rating could well help them not fall victim to his scam. But he didn't scam me, and won't, because I know it's a scam.

That doesn't seem like a "neutral" case to me.

Definitely a move in the right direction.

Will everyone's 'trust depth' be automatically changed to '2' as it should be (seeing as most people would be default set to '3' and have no idea what this means, and so are unlikely to change it)?

Negative trust would be appropriate in this case, as they are clearly trying to scam.

The descriptions are really only guidelines as to when it is appropriate to leave various ratings. The trust system is still un-moderated and you still have the right to leave whatever trust ratings you feel appropriate. The added feature is to allow people to add in comments without leaving any actual trust. The use of this feature would only be appropriate in "moderate" events

If it's green I trust them white impartial either way (neutral) red I got scammed.  
Old one was bipolar either trust or don't trust so can see why it seems daft to say only if I was personally scammed they get negative feedback.

From that viewpoint and considering the change it may make sense to add a new color
Thinking of a stop light system
Red for proven scams it's trade with caution / avoid
Green for trusted users
Yellow is a caution/warning and could fit in the neutral category
(or perhaps a 4th category making it possible to be ambivalent to them aka truly neutral feedback, alongside a suspicious but with not enough evidence to call it a scam outright category)

The question would be how other people view yellow ratings and if enough people agree it is suspicious how would it impact the related trust levels.

Ruthless and Butter do make a fair point that neutral could be used to label someone suspicious but it just seems ambivalent by default in my opinion without some sort of specification.

That said Theymos called it trust improvements for a reason which is why it makes good discussion.

(as for the ponzi threads would skip to red, the yellow is more for those borderline cases either way where your not really thinking a scammer by default but not necessarily trustworthy either E.G. a new service that hasn't done many sales yet.)

That's one good reason, but usually the red warning was also there for a good reason because of the high potential and likelihood of a scam being committed and served as a good warning but now that warning won't show up. I like the idea of neutral trust and is good if you want to leave a positive comment without issuing trust but I don't think it's going to work very well for several reasons. Dishonest or angry people aren't suddenly going to start leaving neutral trust instead of negative to be 'fairer'. Also, if I or anyone else leaves a neutral feedback on someone voicing their suspicions of a user's behaviour or the high likelihood of them scamming they'll still likely retaliate with negative feedback.

Why not make neutral trust visible? Still could work as trade with caution. It could have an extra info tab as to why there is a neutral there. If multiple people neutral this person, it would say a reason why like something around the terms of suspicious activity and the potential to scam/high risk.

FWIW, I personally would feel that is warranted, and wouldn't attempt to remove one from default for that.

It'd be fine to still leave negative for that. A person doesn't have to have personally scammed you before you can leave feedback. Ponzis should still likely recieve negative as I'm sure most would agree they deserve it, and people who are almost certainly trying to scam should also still recieve a negative as a warning in my opinion.

The default has always been 2.

Great few edits & new additions, thank you!

That's a good idea.

I'm with dooglus here.
The whole point of the trust system should be to warn others before they are scammed.

I am an experienced user of this forum. I know a scam when I see one.
Why should I not be able to point the potential scammer out as what he is?
After all, it's not like I'm accusing him of a crime, all I want to say is:
I don't trust that guy, if you think I'm smart, follow my advice.

It is absolutely necessary not only to allow, but even to encourage negative trust for suspected scammers.

+1 here. Notice that most seasoned users do not or rarely get scammed. I personally try to leave negative trust for users that I deem untrustworthy if I can to prevent other unsuspecting members from falling for them.

OK, so I'm going to continue using the trust system as I did before the wording was changed, and leave negative trust for people I think aren't trustworthy, whether they managed to scam me or not.

I'll assume the "I was scammed" is just an example of when to use negative feedback rather than an exhaustive list, until I hear differently.

There's this cause "You were scammed or you strongly believe that this person is a scammer.", so a negative feedback is certainly sanctioned. :)

OK, so it changed again. Yesterday it just said "You were scammed".

Problem solved then I guess. :)

Almost back to square one, then?! What's the point of having neutrals? Belief is not the same as proof, and should be a lesser rating level (that still displays in black on poster_info).

Nice to see the changes!

I have a question about the trust though - right now it appears that I have 1 trust point, and two more pending. Is there a time frame for when those pending trusts will become trust points? Ex x number of days after the trust has been given? I've tried to figure this out for awhile but can't seem to figure it out.

Thanks for improving the trust system!  Can I change my current trust feedback from one rating to another?  I see delete but not "edit" when I go to revisit my rating.

Thanks!

I don't see why I would ever give anyone a neutral rating. If I have had no dealings with them and haven't seen them acting in an untrustworthy fashion, I'll just not leave any rating.

Currently I see a bunch of dice sites taking "investments". Historically that's been pretty dodgy, with a few sites running off with the invested coins. Does that mean I should leave a "neutral" rating for the sites which are still running successfully saying I suspect that they might run off with the coins even though I have no proof that they have any such intention?

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy right now. Since neutrals (I'd prefer they be called "suspect" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=851380.msg9476031#msg9476031)) don't get reflected in the design scheme to the left (poster_info) in rating display=on subforums, there's no point in leaving any, or having a neutral rating selector, at all.

Yep looks like Theymos read it and fixed it
Neutral will just exist for non-impact ratings I guess where one won't receive positive trust or negative trust.
But agree that a suspect categorization would work better

I don't think dice sites would ever be a very good candidate for neutral feedback (with the exception of maybe holding escrow for the dice site - if you hold escrow for someone it would not necessarily mean that they are trustworthy). I think better examples of instances of when it is appropriate to leave neutral feedback would be found in the (digital) goods, lending and currency exchange sections (as well as auctions)

Or "bought something from this user with escrow".

You can change your current trust feedback by deleting it and re-adding it.

I would like to see a yellow number under the User name with the amount of warnings to entice others to view, but we have a workable fix for now. Thanks Theymos.
Keep in mind: Almost any system implemented will have bugs and abuse at some level.

I don't think a neutral trust rating is actually meant to be a warning, only something that would allow someone who is potentially going to trade with a user to see what people have said (that should be neither negative nor positive). One example would be that a user has used escrow several times to do deals; this would show that a user is willing to use escrow

If a user uses escrow and the escrow goes well, then you rate the user for 0 risked BTC and the escrow agent for x risked BTC, both positively...

Right now escrows are leaving positive trust feedbacks for people just for using their services. So that's probably a great idea.
People can't just get positive feedback because they have done a smooth deal through an escrow, IMO.

If I were an escrow agent, I probably wouldn't ever leave positive trust, only a negative on the scammer's side (the thing I'm escrowing does not meet the terms of contract) - or a neutral/suspect (one side I suspect to be a scammer, but the escrow is completed with merely suspicious behavior over the time elapsed, or suspiciously fails prematurely, like during the pre-delivery phase).

I was recently an escrow, and one of the parties PMed me asking for positive trust.  My response was to deny positive trust because I didn't need to trust them to do my escrow. 

can we have default list updated too? :)

I think the neutrals should be a yellow colour or something and show up in the trusted section if they're from users on the default trust. Just saw one vod left and thought he'd left a positive and been removed from default trust for a minute  :D.

Yellow text will be very hard to read. What about using blue for positive ratings and black for neutral ones?

Or even a green font might work well for positive ratings, and black for neutral.

Good move, but you also need to reset the whole trust ratings. I see a lot of green accounts, and digging deeper it shows that they sent first or used an escrow.

Look at cooldgamer's sent feedbacks. He is on the default trust list so all those he trusts show up as trustworthy, and he didn't take any risk with them.

Yeah, yellow was a bad choice but I think it should be some neutral-ish colour. I don't think they should be green though, that makes them look like positive.


People are free to leave those feedbacks and there's not necessarily anything wrong with it, but you can choose to disregard those feedbacks if you wish. The feedback system is there as a guide and for you to make your own mind up. Having lots of green trust doesn't = they can be trusted. I see lots of people with green trust but once you read it and see it's for several $5's worth of PayPal or whatever I know that feedback is worth very little regardless of whether it is from someone trusted or not. That feedback essentially means they can be trusted with $5 worth of Paypal (or maybe not anything if the chargeback period hasn't ended) or maybe it's worth nothing at all and even the opposite if you suspect he's just trying to cheaply build up feedback/trust.

I'd say red for negative ones, green for positive ones and standard color (black) for neutral ones. That way one could indicate how much feedback a user has quite quickly.

Yeah, positives should be green imo. I don't like the current bold/black. Either black or blue or something for neutral would be good as well.

I think that positive and neutral should def not have the same color. Neutral having the same color as positive implies that neutral is positive but just less "strong"

I was originally thinking a more dark yellow than the bright yellow the forum uses
Perhaps more closer to amber
Couldn't find the right shade of yellow so will just say grey olive or goldenrod look nice
grey
gold
olive
khaki
goldenrod
brown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_yellow

That would work very well.
Also, green is the complementary color of red. So when you mix red (a negative trust) and green pigment (a positive trust), it will appear to be black (a neutral trust). :)

Green is hard to see unless it is bolded.

This makes it hard for colour-blind people to tell them apart.

Some (any?) other combination would be better.

This did not fix the problem of trust disputes. Here is a thread about Butterzone in the EXACT same situation I was, yet this thread some how is ignored by the staff and administrators. The user says he has been PMed by admins. Amazing how they take this consideration for their buddies, but for anyone else they turn it into a big public shit show of shaming and remove them from the default trust tree. I don't expect Butterzone will be untrusted any time soon in spite of him using his trust exactly the way I did.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=858730.0

The problem with the current rating is that upon trading the account the "old" trust becomes irrelevant, as the new user has nothing to do with the old one. This can be abused by scammers who want to invest in buying such trust-positive high status accounts. Here is my proposal on how to further improve this current trust ranking, and bring it a bit closer to significance in such cases. I know that it is impossible to ban trading accounts, but how about adding -50000 to the trust, if there is clear evidence that the account has been traded, e.g., unusual IP address and device and location should trigger a mail to the original email address that the account was registered - upon no response, we may have already solid evidence (if someone is unhappy with this criteria we may discuss how to improve them). That way trading for trust could be significantly reduced.

Many of them here uses email addresses which they don't open frequently. They will miss emails sent to them and also there is a possibility of change in location of the VPN. So it isn't a good idea IMHO.

   -MZ

The other question is that the buying/selling of forum accounts is not moderated, the staff interfere only if the account is stolen/hacked.

Account selling is allowed and it's unfair to suddenly make them look like the biggest scammer on the forum just because an account is suspected of trading hands, plus the way you is describe is unenforceable and can lead to false positives as many people change IPs/computers or use tor/proxies. It's also not the admin's job to investigate such infractions and they certainly don't have the time or desire to investigate every case and that's one of the main reasons why scams, trust and account sales etc are not moderated. Besides, you're still putting too much faith into the trust system as it is far from foolproof and scammers can just as easily abuse it with fake accounts and trades then scam when they've built up enough confidence anyway.

Can there be a rule implemented where members selling their accounts with a green trust made to remove their trust from the account before selling it? The trust is given to the member who sells the account and not the one who buys it but members sell it with the trust as well.

Also, what is the difference between untrusted feedback and trusted feedback? Is the feedback given by newbies considered untrusted here?

the trust system is not moderated. The person receiving trust has zero control over if trust remains on their profile, it is up to the person sending the trust.

Trusted trust is generally people in the default trust network (although it is actually from anyone in your trust network)

There could be but I doubt it will happen because as Quick said the trust system isn't moderated and it is also very hard to enforce or police. Trusted feedback is from those who have been put on the default trust list by someone already on there and therefor their feedback is considered 'trusted' and holds more weight.

@black: Is it that the mods cannot delete any feedback from the user's account? I have seen mods of other forums able to do that and hence I asked.

@green: OK just got the logic now and I added the users who send me feedback in my trusted list. I guess they have sent me neutral trust and hence the trust is shown as 0.

Mods can't, admins can but they do not unless in exceptional circumstances. I think it works best this way though obviously people don't like it when they get unjust feedback, but this is yet another point why the system is just a guide to help others make their own mind up and you can choose to disregard or trust their ratings if you wish


You have three positives but they're from 'untrusted' users. If they ever get added to default trust then those three feedbacks would become trusted.

Additional work for forum admins that is indeed the only weak point of my proposal. I agree it is a substantial one. Although, I think it would limit to writing a proper script to monitor per user: range of IP addresses, devices and locations. that would suffice to filter out most of the false positives you mentioned. There are not many users in this forum moving, e.g., between Germany and China on a permanent basis and changing all three mentioned parameters.

Last but not least, current system that allows for trading of accounts with high status and high trust (that takes a long time to achieve) is already unfair and my proposal wouldn't make it more unfair.

If someone used tor then their location would appear to change every 10 minutes. I imagine many people use VPNs to connect to the forum as well and not only would it be trivial to make it look like an account was not purchased you would get more false positives.

Ok, and now I want to know:
I appear absolutely nowhere on the default-trust page (not even at level 4 depth) but to every member I leave a trust rating (be it positive or negative) the trust is still counted as "default trust" on my account at least.
Is that because I am green? I really don't freaking get it. I made an account (not going to do anything with it: sjefsjaak) to see it from other users perspective and there I see that I have a 4: -0 / +3(3) rating instead of the 3: -0 / +2 (2) I see on myself on my own account. On that new account, all trust I gave is untrusted on those users profiles.

Why can't I see my trust exactly the same as everyone else, this gives me false impressions...

There isn't a universal trust score for people, you are exactly right. On your personal trust list, you trust feedback from Default Trust, and yourself (Assuming you haven't made any modifications to your trust list) however, one can modify their trust list however they like to modify how they see trust. If you remove default trust from your trust settings, you won't see feedback left by default trust members as "Trusted". If you add XScammurzUrMoniesX to your trust list, you will see feedback they leave as "Trusted" feedback, but no one else will.

So you are saying trust given to someone by you will be "trusted' by default? So removing yourself from the "default trust" should solve the problem? Gotta try that then..

Edit: excluding myself from the list doesn't seem to work. I add "~kuusj98" in that text-box, click on the button, page refreshes and nothing changed.
Guess that's something I have to learn live with then, would sure be nice though.

I would really appreciate some constructive criticism, meaning not only saying 'this doesn't work, it's not a good idea', but rather 'this doesn't work, but this and that may be done instead'. That would bring the discussion further, because I believe we agree, that in the current shape due to account trading, the trust rank is not of any help.

I do not agree with that statement as I have indicated above.

The fact that there is value to positive trust means that anyone who buys an account with positive trust is going to pay a premium over an account with neutral trust. This means that anyone who buys a positive trust account with the intention of trying to scam is going to have to risk their initial investment to try to scam. It is not a guarantee that someone is going to be able to be successful in pulling off a scam, especially if their potential trading partners are able to use appropriate precautions (and I am not referring to using escrow)

Well, following your way of thinking we end up with the null significance of the trust ranking, as one who wants to make any business with a 'trusted member' has to use 'appropriate precautions' despite the trust ranking, not knowing whether the 'trusted member' is who he/she actually was in his/her trust history, or someone who just bought this account. Which is also my point, btw. That leaves me with the following final questions:
- what is the trust ranking supposed to mean, other than some random, completely non-significant number?
- what can be the reason for selling a 'trustworthy' account of high level and whether that is ethically fine with the rules of this forum (and whether it is fine to not include such event in that 'trust ranking')?

Only if the trust level depth is 0.


I don't think there any healthy person who don't trust himself!


No, it won't.


AFAIK there is no option to exclude you from your own trust list.

   -MZ

trust list update with current active users would fix everything imo

In DefaultTrust trust list, only Sirius is inactive. All others are active. If you meant something else, please clarify.

The default trust list is the list with all the username that you are seeing (lev. 2). I think that kingscrown wanted to say "only the users in the level 1 of depth".

You did it the wrong way. Trust lists are not a way to say thank you for your green feedback to me; they're to include members whose judgments on others you trust since you value their opinion about other users.