Bitcoin Forum

So after not spending any real time in meta I have been poking around here for the last couple of weeks (even made a few posts)
This is just my view on everything going around about trust & the default trust.
[Full disclosure I only have the default set]

Anyway.... I have to ask how much it matters by itself without doing your own research.

Case in point. I am going to pick a random victim sidehack [sorry dude just need a hardware person to make this point]
Looking at his feedback. It's 100% perfect. He has been selling his amazingly excellent hardware for years now. I have bought from him, I have sold to him. If he sent a post saying send me 1BTC and I'll send you a 200th miner that runs @ 1500 Watts I would not even blink, I would just send it. THAT IS HOW MUCH I TRUST HIM.
Now.. He sends me a PM saying "Yo Dave, I took in a beautiful mint 2011 Casascius  I know you like them, I took it in trade for 1BTC I'll sell it to you for the same" I would have to think long and hard about it. Not that I don't trust him, I do 100%. But what does he know about collectibles? Is it really mint? Is it authentic or one of the forgeries that have been seen? Is it vulnerable to the defcon hack from years ago? etc. So what is feedback worth at that point? You know that YES you are going to get what you bought from him. But you don't know if it is what he says it is, because he may not know.

It works the other way also I 1000% trust krogothmanhattan. Would ship him coins & collectibles w/o getting paid 1st, would send him BTC to buy collectibles w/o worrying about escrow. Would I buy a used antminer from him. Yet again, have to think. Can he tell if there are issues with it the way sidehack can? How well can he take it apart and put it back together to clean it....no idea.

This kind of comes from years of seeing this on eBay. A really good quality seller, with 1000s of positive feedbacks selling PC parts has a few "other" items to sell. And poof you just got a "mint condition" cylinder head for a 2007 Honda VFR800 at amazing price. Except for the fact that it's warped and for a 2002. He didn't know, it's how he got it from someone he trusted and is just moving it in good faith. [This may be a real life experience I admit nothing]

So yes, the trust system is important. But, in the state it's in now you really can't rely on it without doing your own research.

Do we need to make this more obvious for newer people?

And a bit of what I said on another post.

Dave's logic behind making this feedback information more public and with more information attached to it. --> Anything we can do to help remove scammers is good. Anything we can do to make scammers lives more difficult is good. If a new person does not know and does not look to find out that's on them.  If they don't know and we do but don't tell them or make it difficult to find out, that's on us.

Counter argument --> We are not your mom. It's not our job.  

So, with this long rambling post coming to an end. Is there a better way? If so what is it?

I have no idea, but I do think it needs to be discussed.

-Dave

I would consider making your own list you seem to have a good grasp of how the system should work for you.
If you do consider making your list, I would add both those names based on your cases for when you trust their opinion. The trust score is not some be all end all, I trust this person on everything every time. It just means that for the most part feedback they leave, is something you see the value in. Arguably they would mostly leave feedback in the areas you trust their opinion so it's valuable for you to see it. The same would go for excluding members who you see very little value in their feedback or disagree with how they choose to leave it.
It really should only act as a bridge for people as they join the community to give the some insight into the risks at play or safer avenues to venture on. People over time should be able to draw conclusions like yourself above about who they trust and when, moving towards their own custom list.
I guess we make our trust lists for ourselves. We leave feedback as a reference for ourselves and to provide others with some insight. Some may not care about preventing someone else from getting scammed, and that's fine for them. There are plenty of people here who do, and ideally that will help shape the DT that newbies will see when they arrive. I don't really see it as a job maybe some do, I just leave feedback where I think it is appropriate as I come across situations.

I consider trust/feedback (here, eBay, or Amazon) to be about how troublesome the person is, not so much about specific items. eBay has a nice feature now where you filter feedback to the specific item you're buying, works well if the seller has sold a lot of that item. Here you just need to read the ratings. And negative feedback, both here and there, is IMO more important than positive, particularly green trust for tiny transactions.

That's not to say green trust doesn't matter. In your example, I'm sure both sidehack and krog would still go out of their way to rectify any problems with the transaction even if it's not their area of expertise.

To answer your question - it's always been DYOR, I don't recall it being any different when I joined the forum so I'm probably the wrong person to judge if the current crop of newbies needs more hand holding. I don't mind extra warnings like the recent red box for unregistered users. Beyond that - you can't cure greed and stupidity, which is the ultimate reason for scams.

After sleeping on it I wonder if having them labeled the way they are and how they are linked is part of the problem.
Should trust & feedback be 2 separate things?
If you look at a profile you see trust. If you click on the link in the profile it brings you to feedback that can about anything.

I can be utterly trustworthy but still an utterly abrasive asshole.

Should it be broken up into 2 separate things?

Trust = If he / she will do what they say they will do, ship what they say they will ship, pay what they say they will pay, etc.
Feedback = Do you really want do deal with this person?

I have had dealings with people with red trust for various reasons. But if they sent me 4 quarters for my dollar as agreed then that's good and worthy of positive trust.
If they at the same time are doxing people and being a jerk on the forum, then they should have some massive negative feedback. Still good trust.

So we could in theory have 3 things.

Merit = Are they good posters. Help out people. Useful to the board.
Trust = Can you trust them with money / items / etc.
Feedback = do you really want to deal with them. Because even if the 1st 2 are good you might still want to avoid.

Now I know most of what I have been saying would be related to sales and other things in terms of trust and feedback. Because I could have massive negatives in both Trust & Feedback but still be useful in the Mining Support board.

But it comes into play in other areas when just dealing with other people. We are all anonymous behind a keyboard the more separate data points about how we behave can only be a good thing in helping how others see with us and deal with us.

As for the people who sell collectibles when they sell hardware and the like, unless we really want to turn this into eBay / Amazon I think the comments you & Steamtyme made are correct. It is really DYOR.

Just bouncing things around my brain.

Enjoy the weekend everyone.

-Dave

IMO, it's the person that can be trusted and not the item he's selling you.  I have 100% positive feedback on eBay, and yet I once sold a vinyl record that was actually a reissue rather than an original pressing--and it was because of my own ignorance.  But once the buyer got in touch with me and pointed out how he knew it was a reissue, I not only refunded him his money but didn't ask him to send the record back, and I apologized for my error profusely and sincerely.

There are some people who wouldn't deal with a situation like that, and I'm not tooting my own horn here, because I screwed that one up royally.  It's true that I might trust a member to do a deal for some PayPal on the forum but not necessarily trust him to sell me an item he's not a specialist in....but that doesn't mean I don't trust him overall.  So that kind of member I would include in my trust list and/or give a positive feedback to upon successful completion of a deal.