Bitcoin Forum

whiskers75 has left me negative feedback from some while ago with no reference.. The user is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=56964
 
Things I can do:

1. Contact him and apologise for what made him mad ???- I have and he doesnt want to remove the trust because he says it is his choice
2. Get BadBear to remove this positive trust for whiskers75 - so that I wont be labelled in the red.
3. Maybe any other mods could help?

The only thing you can do is either contact whiskers75 and convince him to remove it or get BadBear to remove him from his trust list, because mods can't do anything about the trust system. If he refuses a reference (or gives one like that which simply links to Stunna's thread), and refuses to remove the trust, he'll probably just be removed from the trust list.

There is a reference but the post must've been deleted. There's not much you can do unless the person will either remove the post or whoever has him in the trustlist removes them from it. When did you ask him? I noticed whiskers hasn’t been online since April 11.

Ah - that explains why it links back to the OP. Marco, any idea what would've made whiskers leave negative feedback on you? Any posts that made people angry, for instance?

The Trust system isn't moderatable. Neither BadBear, nor the admin or any other mod will remove the feedback. This has been stated by theymos many times already.

What we're implying is that as whiskers75 is under BadBear's trust list it's ultimately up to either whiskers or BadBear to do something about it if marco asks for help with the trust system. It's ultimately their choice, of course.

I'm not 100% sure exactly but I think it was just a comment whiskers deemed to be 'spam'. The admins (possibly mods?) can still see deleted comments though so maybe they could clarify.

I honestly dont know...

Edit: I know: since I was 1 of the first people in the thread, I place an ad saying that the post space could be sold if needed in bright colours (Ive seen others do that in other large threads with reservations and selling that post). It was then removed and whiskers75 took offence?!

Ah, that was it. It was like five lines of THIS SPACE AVAILABLE FOR SALE in rainbow colours haha.


I doubt Badbear will remove him. Try ask Whiskers again nicely and tell him you feel the he negative feedback is quite harsh and makes you look unfairly bad (as negative trust from people on the trust list does).

Bfl has come compition for giving people bad trust on here maybe its related to that

Seems tysat has negbombed whiskers now. It's interesting that whiskers has two trusted positives from people yet tysat's was enough to put him in the red. Do people who are put directly on the trust list hold more weight to their feedback than the second tier trusted members?

No, I don't believe it matters. The negative feedback is fresh, meaning it weighs more I think, and the positive feedbacks are fresh with no risked BTC meaning they weigh less.

Actually just out of reference I'm pretty sure it had a working reference - I do remember looking at it was some months back. Considering that it's missing now (and the thread is not self-moderated) the only logical conclusion would be to assume you deleted it. Would you mind explaining why? Also, if it was an innocent post I don't see why one would delete it or at least raise the issue then (three and a half months ago). I dunno, seems a bit suspicious to me.

I heard that mods can see deleted post and all edit history.
So, maybe we could have a mod taking a look at that post...

It may not be okay to make that post public to us, but at least the mod can tell us what kind of post is that, like scam or personal insult or something else.

Only theymos can do that AFAIK, good luck getting a response!

Bad trust system. Don't rely on it. We've seen how this kind of trust system works. (TradeFortress scams for example)

Too bad, this plan won't work then. This matter won't draw theymos' attention and worth his time. :)

You're best route would probably be to post in the scammer accusations sub-forum (since he's calling you a scammer), and make him provide proof of why he thinks you're a scammer. If he can't then PM a staff member that deals with trust ratings and I'm sure they'd be happy to remove it for you.

Yup, my name appeared in the red for many months because TF took some offence to me and my account on coinchat.org (one of his sites).  He decided that even though we hadn't met or discussed anything on this forum that it was okay to put negative trust on me.  In the end, in my case, he was finally removed from the trust list so I don't have the mark anymore.  But it is certainly a system that can be abused.

I don't know what happened between whiskers and marco but I do know that the trust system here is a bit of a fickle thing.  Lol: don't trust the trust system, decide for yourself.

But whiskers isn't a scammer and never accused marco of being one either. Accusing him of being a scammer probably won't do any good. Hopefully whiskers will just reconsider when he logs back on and sees the feedback from tysat.

I think you misread my post. Whiskers called Macro untrustworthy, or in other words a scammer. So now anyone who goes to Macro's profile will see that. Macro needs to post in the scammers accusation sub-forum (This thread could even be moved there) to make whiskers provide solid PROOF that Macro shouldn't be trusted. If he can't do that (maybe a rule should be made where there's a time limit in which you have to provide proof) then it should be easy for Macro to message a staff member and have it removed. Whiskers should get some kind of punishment for misusing the trust system. If there's no kind of system to stop people from abusing the trust system threads like these are just going to be popping up everywhere in random sub-forums.

I didn't misread it. He said he doesn't trust him, not that he's a scammer. The scam accusations forum is for people who have scammed or attempted to scam you and no such incident took place, so this is still probably the right forum to discuss such matters of the trust system, though it'd be better being trying to be resolved through PM but it looks like he exhausted that option. Even if he did create a thread in the scammers sub what good would that really do? It would probably just make the situation worse. Mods also don't remove feedback either, but it looks like whiskers has got his 'punishment' in the form of a negative feedback from tysat. Does that mean tysat is now abusing the system and whiskers should file a scam accusation against him?

It's not filing a scam accusation against someone, it's addressing a scam accusation [or subliminally calling someone a scammer if you want to put it that way] that's been made. And that seems like the most appropriate place to do it. If mods don't remove false feedback that's given there's no point in even having the trust system.

There's no point in having a trust system if people are just giving negative feedback because they're mad at each other. And if the only punishment someone gets is a retaliation with more negative feedback that doesn't have anything to do with trust or trading.

The point is it's there as a guide. You dont have to trust it and you can read the feedback left by whiskers and make your own mind up whether to trust marco based on that. You can also make up your own mind whether to trust whiskers based on the feedback he has left and now recieved (and now also tysat). If mods got involved then people would complain when feedback they thought was just was removed or that the mods are now abusing the system. It's not perfect or flawless, but I don't think any feedback system would be.

Well it's unfair to Macro to have that on his profile when he hasn't done anything. He will most likely lose trades and have to explain in depth the situation everytime somebody wants to trade him. It's kind of hard to not "trust it" when the system is called Trust Summary. So if someone makes a post demanding evidence of why a user has left on their profile something about being untrusted, do no trust, trade with caution, etc, that user should be able to post proof of why he thinks that. If the user has no proof of why he shouldn't be trusted then it gets removed. If he does have proof, then more than likely the recepient wouldn't even be making a post about it. Then for the people who abuse the system they should just be given a stupid rank by their name for so many days, and if they keep doing it then just ban them from posting trust ratings for awhile. I agree no trust system is flawless, so maybe it should just be labeled "User Feedback" since there's already a reputation sub-forum and it doesn't seem like very many people use the trust system anyway.

The most important thing you have missed is that the trust system is not moderated. There are no rules for leaving feedback. What is important is if whiskers75 should be in the trusted list or not.

This issue has been raised in the past. It is pointless to have a trust system that is moderated - then the trust system wouldn't really reflect the views of all users but rather the opinions of only the moderators and staff which would completely break the system. Not to mention, who is it to say someone isn't trustworthy - it is your opinion to voice and someone else should be able to voice their own but not change or remove the voice of others.

There are limitations in place - spamming trust affects it less and people who are not on DefaultTrust to a trust level of 2 or less are not considered to have their trust as 'Trusted Feedback'. This is to ensure adequate weighting for trust feedback based on an individuals trust level. If you are a completely new account, I personally would trust your judgement less than that of an established member but I would not prevent them from actually placing feedback. Hence they are able to do so - just that it doesn't count to the number next to your name (if you're on DT - if not it depends what you have chosen).

People who believe they have been 'wronged' are always going to claim abuse. It shouldn't be up to them to decide their trust but the person your conducting business to interpret and judge based upon others feedback that they may trust.

But this is exactly what happens very often, I've seen the trust war go down and it's not pretty for the forum or for the users involved.

Light brings up a very good point about the inherent flaws of a trust system that's moderated, how it boils down to trusting in the moderators rather than the community as whole.  The latter is very much more in line with the spirit of open-source, peer-to-peer, etc.

I personally think that one solution would be to simply make the trust system a little less noticeable on people's accounts.  I mean, in the trading forums, people should be able to easily look up the trust record of another individual, but perhaps if putting negative trust didn't generate the 'red mark' on an account in any area of the forum, it would be less used as a weapon of dislike.

Like I mentioned, I suffered from the red mark one time in the past when tradefortress took an issue with me.  Because he was on default trust at the time, I had to wear a 'trade with extreme caution' scarlet letter for a while.  This was despite the fact that 1) I had never traded with TF or anyone else on this forum 2) I wasn't involved in trading. In a sense, the scarlet letter didn't really hurt me since I wasn't a trader, on the other hand, it was an embarrassment.  In my own case, TF turned out to be one of the biggest scammers known to our community, so in that sense, I was justifed.

Well hello there. I'm back, and I have reconsidered that trust, and it's still not getting deleted. (edit: fine, I'll delete it, what does it matter)
(the whole trust thing was why I quit these forums in the first place).

I would also like to point out the fact that I do specify in my profile that I do not get Bitcointalk PMs, so no wonder I didn't reconsider earlier.

I think this seems like an amicable resolution.  I mean if you agree that your issue isn't that important to you and it's obviously important to marco, I think it's good that you decided to delete the negative rating.