Bitcoin Forum

I was advised by o_e_l_e_o to start a thread on suspecting a Default Trust member abusing his/her position.

The DERO community was shocked to suddenly see this big RED warning banner at the top of our project thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2525508.0

Checking on what was driving this, we came to find that the owner of the thread got a negative vote by a Default Trusted member.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1378974 (click through the Trust link).

We think that this single negative vote from TMAN, apparently being a default trust member, is at cause of our project being marked unrightfully as potential scam.

The arguments in TMAN's negative vote is the following :
DO NOT TRUST THIS PROJECT
REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS
3 devs with 10 years plus blockchain experience each?
really? fucking really? Satoshi and theymos got together, bought Hal back from the dead and developed a shitcoin with a whitepaper written by a 4 year old.
DO NOT INVEST
DO NOT INVEST
DO NOT INVEST

I'm part of the community board of this project and we don't have the slightest idea what the origin of this negative post may be, apart from mocking with the 10yrs and mentioning there is refusal to answer questions, there is nothing factual or anything we can help this person with. This person can ask questions on our community channels anytime.

We do not intend to start a mud fight but detect a sensitive and fragile weakness in the DefaultTrusted status. From this member's profile it seems he/she is linked to a tradingbot type of business which makes us assume that the intent of the negative vote is mainly focussed at damaging the reputation of the project and in turn taking benefit of things. We are happy to invite this person to go into a dialogue with us on the reasons for his negative vote on the project but first want to have this negative warning sign removed from our project.

If we look at TMAN's trust overview https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=98986 (go to trust link) it's obvious this member has quite an active but also questionable reputation, I refer to a very very long list of both negative and positive comments.

Can someone please advise how to go about, we would like to know how we can avoid this type of practices and abuse of the Default Trusted status.

Why didn't you PM me? it seems this is an old tag from last year and I made an error not giving a direct reference, give me 24 hours and i will look into this and if it turns out I was incorrect or cannot find the relevant information I will remove your tag, but will ask for assistance looking into the project.

anyone else who has a single tag from me (IE - not tagged by 2+ members of DT) please PM me if you disagree with my rating.

Hi TMAN - as mentioned, we really don't want to go into a MUD fight and you're welcome to ask questions anytime. We just want to understand how such a situation can be avoided from the forum perspective. You can contact me on DM if there's anything that caused you to post that negative vote with such a big impact.

Err- why not PM me?

Right i have removed the tag as on initial glance the project has active developers and updates, I will need some time to look into the project and I may PM you with questions

Thanks, your swift action is much appreciated !

The warning message is still there it seems but guess that should go away soon.

EDIT > it's gone :D

I'd like to clarify that I said to start a thread if you think a DT member is abusing their position (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5096445.msg50996178#msg50996178), not if you disagree with a single left feedback. This could obviously be solved more appropriately over PMs.

Your website does contain the following quote:
I obviously have no way of knowing if the content of your website changed since TMAN's rating last year, but "over a decade" of experience in blockchain development is not possible.

Think we're on the same page, I did start the thread because of suspected abuse of the Default Trusted level.

Apart from that 'collective' 10yrs of experience there's nothing in the negative vote to question, there isn't much there really.

In the same spirit that things don't need unnecessary escalation I offered TMAN to reach out to us with questions, over PM instead of negative vote with quite a big impact

Apart from the vote and content an origin etc, I still believe it's a weak spot in the Default Trusted model for someone to think about, for us/me this is a closed case for now but others may be facing the same problem.

Disagreeing over a single feedback != abuse.

A collective 10 years of experience in blockchain development between three people would be fine. That's not what your website says. It says the three people "each have over a decade of experience". This is impossible.

I'm glad you have reached an amicable conclusion, and I'm all for removing red trust where it is not warranted, but I would suggest you should review the wording on your website.

OK, really appreciate the swift/positive feedback and suggestions and we'll look into clarifying that 10yrs part.

I launched this thread with an example but it was still launched with the question "how do you prevent potential abuse from a Default Trusted member", from here I will leave matter experts to decide if that is a valid question or not and what is the answer to it.

The main thing to do is to determine whether it's a case of abuse or just a misunderstanding or being too harsh, and try to be reasonable instead of leave fake retaliation feedback and attack the user who left the trust you disagree with.
You failed completely on this.

Some steps I'd recommend to handle DT abuse:

• First, read the left feedback and the reference (if any) and try to understand the reason.
• If you don't understand it or find it unfair then PM that user to ask for more information and explain your side of the story.
• Avoid reaching wrong conclusions like the one you reached. "It must be to kill competition because I can't find any other reason considering it's impossible I'm wrong. " is usually wrong.
• Avoid leaving fake retaliation feedback. You can leave negative feedback if you know for a fact it's abuse after gathering some proof. (I see you haven't fixed this error of yours until now)
• If it's not possible to solve it via PM and you still disagree with the trust then create a thread on Reputation explaining everything, without attacking anyone. If most users agree with you then almost certainly the DT user will remove the negative trust. If the community reaches the conclusion it's really abuse (or unfairly harsh) then you can be sure the DT user will be removed from DT by other DT1 users.

Again, truly impressed by the level of attention this is receiving, never expected such responsiveness, which is a good thing !

Allow me to add the steps that should happen BEFORE the ones per your guidance Ecuamobi:

- if a DT member believes there is reason to do a negative vote, he reaches out in PM to the project team
- if he doesn't get feedback in an acceptable timeframe, he checks with other channels to reach the team or checks with the community
- if he feels ignored or obtains feedback that leaves him with no other option than to do a negative vote, he first reflects about the impact of the negative vote (ref the red warning visible to entire community and new users)
- if he concludes the facts are leaving no doubt that things are pointing at a potential scam and a red warning is valid, he lists the facts clearly

And from there we roll into your guidance for the project team receiving a negative vote, to which I agree entirely and now understanding how DT voting works, will be applied in the future.

Again, pls read the initial thread question at the end and consider if it is something to be looked at further, to be clear I launched this thread questioning how you/we can limit the impact if the above steps are not respected by a DT member.

If I were to read the whitepaper of this DAG coin and if were even remotely similar to IOTA I'd have to tag it, so take EcuaMobi's advice; close this thread as it's resolved.

This makes me want to tag it even more.

I agree. Any user (and especially DT members) must investigate and directly ask the user before leaving negative trust, unless it's obvious the user deserves negative trust.

But the user who receives the negative trust can't really do anything about these previous steps so I keep my answer to your question, regardless of whether the DT user followed the correct guidelines.

OK all good and I'll close the thread (if I figure out how to  ;D, as you can tell I'm noob at this, sorry)