Nope, didn't say that either. Me warning you that it isn't a good idea doesnt equal an administrative ban on selling trust. If your friend gave you the trust that you then sell to people, your friend would then be removed most likely. It's not a rule, it's just how people tend to respond.

Again, your lack of understanding of how trust works leads me to believe that you are making a statement rather than actually selling trust.

mprep's forum guidelines reflect his personal opinion as well, hense the "unofficial" in the title. Account sales aren't discouraged by forum administration, because they don't care. If someone sells a trusted account, the chances of that account losing its trust are equally high.

If selling accounts was frowned upon or discouraged, more people would leave account sellers negative feedback. People are welcome to if they wish. And I did answer your question, in response, I said, "I didn't say that" in regards to selling trusted accounts being less shady than selling trust. People are welcome to do what they will with their own opinions.

I didn't say that. You could be kicked from default trust for saying "hello" too much. Its completely up to whoever trusted you in the first place. As you have said, there is no rule saying you can't sell trust, there is also no rule saying you can't give inaccurate feedback. There are no rules to the trust system at all, the community makes up the guidelines, and selling trust is generally frowned upon. The chances of you being removed from default trust by whoever added you in the first place when they find out you are selling trust is incredibly high. And if they don't, whoever added that person to default trust may re evaluate based on that person's inaction.

That said, I do believe this is all a hypothetical situation, because anyone actually on default trust understands how it works better than what you are displaying. Not to say that this hypothetical question isn't worth addressing.

Thats for whoever gave you your trust to decide. If you earn trust and then scam somebody, well you earned your trust previously, why should you lose it? Trust is a dynamic thing, if the person who added you to default trust no longer trusts you because you are doing something shady (selling trust is considered shady) then they are completely within their rights to remove you from default trust. If the person who trusted you doesn't take action, then the person who trusted them can take action, etc etc.

I'm not sure why it is always a black vs white issue, but the Baltimore cops are bastards in general sometimes. It isn't just black people who are effected by Police brutality in Baltimore, its everyone. When I was a kid, I used to babysit for a Baltimore cop. He would come home a couple hours late, "Yeah sorry I'm late, there were these gang members that were cutting the tattoos off of some ex gang member, and then there was a shootout, shot a couple people, meh same thing happened yesterday" (that example about 25% exaggerated for makign a point)

My point being, I support what the police do on a case by case basis. There are a lot of police officers so you can't judge them all together. Some get an itchy trigger finger and abuse their power, some get beaten half to death before shooting someone. Those guys have a really tough job. They definitely learn some prejudices based on their experiences there, and I'm not excusing that, but thats what happens. I'd like to see better accountability for the individual officers who break the law. Its not fair to condemn them all.

Who in the hell attacks firemen though? The riots were a disgrace.

I don't see why someone shouldn't leave feedback for loans that they complete. If someone borrows 0.01 BTC and pays back 0.015 BTC, make sure you leave that in your feedback. If someone has proven themselves trustworthy with 0.01 BTC, that doesn't mean they are trustworthy with any larger sums.

500 positive feedback from the most trusted members of the forum for 0.01 BTC each, doesn't make that person trustworthy with 5 BTC, maybe with 0.05.

the first post in this thread:


everyone's warning are true though.

That is such a cool idea, I'll look into that method and similar methods. I really appreciate the ideas everyone. Assuming best case senario, I could have prototypes finished in two weeks or so, although I doubt that nothing will go wrong, so I expect it will take longer. I'm not going to set any firm expected release date, as Id rather finish when complete, rather than when I need to meet expectations.

Can do, I don't have any special persuasive power, but I can make sure Theymos sees the idea.

Agreed. The police have had this coming, plain and simple. If they give out violence, they deserve violence back, had it just been people throwing rocks in the street, I might not have the same opinion that this specific riot has very little to do with fighting back against police brutality. The stores that were burnt and robbed were not owned by the police, Baltimore isn't the most white collar area, the people that worked at those stores are seriously hurting right now. The riots gave the police and media honest propaganda to discredit the actual movement.

Interesting note, In very recent history, not sure how things have changed in recent years, but Baltimore public schools had a 66% graduation rate, meaning 1 in 3 students didn't finish high school. I'm not trying to disparage or get into the whole coorelation between education, employment, and crime rates. But my point is that the people who are out of their retail jobs aren't necessarily kids. When you start burning and looting completely unrelated businesses, you threaten people's livelihoods. It's hard to justify that your cause (ending police brutality/discrimination) is right when you are hurting unrelated parties.

On an interesting unrelated note, the local news station's reporter's just said something that caught my attention. "For a city with a lot of guns on the street, it's surprising that there was no gun activity"

They are now showing an elderly women complaining about the mess in the street, and sweeping it out of the streets, because she is having enough car troubles and can't drive over that on her way to work. Definitely trying to get the audience to empathize, but again it is honest biassed reporting.

15 officers injured at the moment, two hospitalized.

The rioters actually hurt the cause. People are pretty rightfully siding with the police today. The meaning of the protests are now watered down by forced association with a group of criminals. Robbing two liquor stores, a mall, a cell phone store, a CVS, and the small shops on Main Streets doesn't further people's disgust with police brutality. The rioters just gave the police a good press day, and justification of their presence.

Im really close to Baltimore, so watching the local news. Watching the massive fires and apparently reports of groups of masked gunman outside Johns Hopkins. Taking everything with a grain of salt of course, but you can't alter the footage of people looting, beating others, and the quarter square mile fires ( apparently it's a bunch of Apartment complexes)

Baltimore has been a repressed tinderbox shithole since mayor Rawlings Blake took over. Before she was the mayor Baltimore was named the murder capitol of the world. She cleaned up the streets substantially but that involved a major increase in the police force and a blind eye to some really shady stuff (apparently Baltimore has the 2nd largest police force in the states). I've never had a problem with Baltimore police, as they are always too busy busting people for crack dealing to bother with petty crimes, but apparently their methods are controversial at best.

That said, not everyone in Baltimore is bad, not all of the cops are either, it's a reallllll tough job. But this is about 6 years overdue.

If people can make a passive income for their regular discussion, that is such a cool thing. It's an incentive to come and chat, why not earn a few bits? Just because some people are doing it wrong and spamming, doesn't mean we should also punish those who are using their paid advertising signature responsibly. We are taking a stab at limiting what those people spamming can do, while still allowing those responsible enough to not spam.

Yeah I was sort of referencing gun control but not in the crontroversial pro vs against manner, but instead in the sense that publicly and openly trading a neutral object that could be used for good of bad is best done in a safe and open place. I compare the account selling issue to selling guns in a gun store, vs in a parking lot. We can't stop account sales from happening in the parking lot, so why not allow people to do it in the shop.

You are right once again, the forums doesn't gain money by allowing advertising signatures, but we aren't really about profits here. The general policy here is to only ban the things that cause issues that can't be fixed, rather than banning paid advertising signatures, we would rather to help fix the issues they cause and continue allowing them, because from the user's point of view, its pretty cool to be able to post regularly and make some bitcoins. The problem is the spam created when it goes beyond just posting regularly.. We all acknowledge that paid advertising signatures promote spam, and we have been discussing ways to limit this for a while now. Freedom of speech includes freedom to promote whoever you want, for financial motivations or not. We are trying to figure out ways not to limit/censor the users here, but put tighter restrictions that hold campaign managers more responsible to reduce spam.

*edit*
The only way I see to remove the incentives for things we don't want to happen, would be to remove the marketplace section all together. There would probably still be paid advertising signatures, and also account trading for that reason.

Personally, I see paid advertising signatures as a reason to legitimize account selling. What could only be useful for scamming before, can now be used to make an honest buck with paid advertising signatures. The spam created is another issue, and thats where we will start.

The bitcoin scene has always been a shark tank, I don't think that there are more bad people than anywhere else, or that the bad guys are figuring out new ways to be shady. If you give a good guy an opportunity to act in a bad manner without getting caught, they might not actually be quite so good. Bitcoin sort of caters to that behavior, hence why I only trust financial motivation like I explained in my last post. Maybe the vibe is just being projected more as of late, but in general I believe that the amount of scams that go on has been decreasing, and by that I mean the petty scams, I have no comment on the long cons, IE Pirateat40, Tradefortress, Tradehill, The GAW stuff etc. For every good thing, there is also a downside. Bitcoin gives people financial freedoms that you can't have anywhere else. The trade off is some of the protections, and sadly one of those tradeoffs is you have to learn how to protect yourself from scams, something that doesn't always come natural to a society guarenteed by buyers protection programs. If you learn how to protect yourself though, you quickly find that without the 10% fees, you start saving a lot of money, and its a great system.

I feel the same way that the feel of the forums is changing, but rather than from a trading/trust point of view, I see it as changing due to spam.




What you are talking about here is the long con. You are right, I have no solution for preventing those. I mentioned them in my last paragraph. What do you have to guarentee that Walmart isn't going to take your payment and run off and scam you? Law enforcement and their own financial self interest. We haven't had the best luck with law enforcement in the bitcoin scene, and thats one of those things that comes along with the financial freedom. Ebay calculated how much they need to take off the top to guarentee against scams. Of their 10%, Id imagine the majority goes to paying salaries and profits. If we learn as individuals how to do the same calculations, that 10% on top that we pay minus the salaries and profits can go just to the cost of doing business.

You have to keep in mind the technology involved here. Trust is non existant on its base level when you are dealing with anonymous people and a non reversable currency. In my opinion, no one can earn trust, its just a matter of what you can trust someone with statistically based on self interest. For example, why do we trust escrow agents? They could just run off with your money just as well as anyone else. Well, self interest is the answer. If they make enough money in fees, there is financial motivation not to scam. If someone gives me 1 BTC to hold in escrow, I could A) Steal the money or B) Not steal the money, complete the transaction, and get myself maybe a .01 BTC fee. Why would I want 1/100th of what I could scam? Because that party that is happy with my service will then recommend me to someone else, and I'll collect more fees. Generally, I trust people who have less to gain by screwing me over than they have to gain by being fair.

The trust system is not an exact science. Its a feedback system. I've traded with confirmed scammers on a regular basis, and I've traded with accused scammers. If I gauge that there is a risk to my Bitcoins, whether it be an unknown trader, or a scammer, I'm going to take appropriate measures. Thats not to say that someone couldn't buy a trusted account. But someone with an account worth 5 BTC, I might only trust them with 1 BTC. Theres no point in scamming me for 1 BTC and losing 4 BTC. If an escrow agent hasn't scammed someone for 100 BTC, because they figure they can make more than 100 BTC by operating legitimately, would I trust them with 100 BTC? Not necessarily. What if someone bought that person's account? Well, if the escrow agent values their name/reputation/service at over 100 BTC, a scammer is going to have to fork up more than 100 BTC to buy that account.

See what I mean? If you want a safer trading experience, use a website created for trading. The forum is first and foremost about discussion. We aren't going to inact any rules that benefit trading, if they could negatively impact the forum's primary objective.

The quote above is just your responses, didn't want to clutter the thread reposting stuff. Just want to say I'm glad that we are actually discussing this now, I've got not problem discussing the topic thoroughly, perhaps misunderstandings happened early on.

I mentioned a while ago, that account selling in a way discourages scamming. It isn't a 100% thing, but in some situations, if you can sell your account for 2 BTC, and you are in need of money with no hope, selling your account is a valid option, or using your account as collateral for a loan anyway. Forum accounts gain their sometimes obscene value due to paid advertising signatures, if you can get 0.4 BTC per month just by posting as a hero member, your account becomes more valuable, making scamming a more expensive activity.

You are correct again, Ebay sucks, but trust is irrelevant because of their "buyers" or "sellers" protection, although they still mess that up relatively often. They can use their 10% that they take off the top to pay off people that get scammed The forums is not Ebay, we don't collect any money from account sales, we don't have a team of people to monitor sales and such, and that has never been our intention. As far as marketplace activity, think about sites like Ebay where their sole purpose is selling things, and they collect fees. Craigslist, which is primarily for selling things, but they don't collect fees, and then there is the forum that is not primarily for sales, nor do we collect fees. Staff involvement in the marketplace is very minimal.

As far as your concern about buying trusted accounts to lend trust to others, that is a valid claim too, but you still only have one shot at it, if that. If you buy that trusted legendary account for 5 BTC, and you start trusting a bunch of sleezy people, that trusted legendary account you just paid 5 BTC is no longer trusted. If someone could pull it off so that they give some trust to some other scamming accounts and try to get multiple scams going, there is still an incredibly high chance that some of the forum's resident scambusters, or just regular people will pick up on it, making that 5 BTC investment null. Financial disuasion is the name of the game. Frankly, a scammer is far better off trying their luck with a dicing site, than purchasing an account and trying to abuse people with it or scamming with it.

I will say, how account selling/buying, scamming, and paid signature ads all tie into each other was not something done by design, it just sort of ended up like that.

I dont know if you are Supa or not, he but some of your behavior matched to a tee, and you said something he had said to me quite a while ago exactly. If you were just frustrated because I was misunderstanding you, tis all water under the bridge, lets keep on going with a rational discussion.


See, I don't especially care how it looks, but how it works. We have seen time and time again, that if we just ignore an issue and push it under the rug, it can become way more harmful than it is out in the open. Sure it may not look pretty from the outside, but I'm more against people being scammed, than people thinking something looks scammy. Account selling/buying is a relatively new thing, I think it came around the same time as paid advertising signatures, because paid advertising signatures gave forum accounts a steady income and therefor a value. The thought process is, if we banned it, we couldn't stop people from doing it anyway. If we tried to stop it, people would just evolve better ways to sell undetected. If you are buying a gun or something like that and they are illegal, you can't go have a safe transaction in a bank or at a federal firearms dealer, you have to do it in some parking lot or shady area where the transaction might not go the same way. Same principals applies here, account sales are a lot safer if done in the public, and when people know that its going on, they can prepare themselves more readily.

Thank you, you are actually expressing why you think its embarrassing. I now understand what you mean. First off, the Bitcoin forum is not the bitcoin community. It is a forum managed by a single person, not by the bitcoin community as a collective. The larger problem is that people judging the Bitcoin community don't know what they are judging. When Charlie Shrem was arrested, news articles read "CEO OF BITCOIN ARRESTED" my point being, you can't change people's perceptions. If you mean that by officially banning account selling so that people looking in will have a better impression, you might be right. But, as far as the internals, we have explained why it causes issues. It is unenforcable in a fair way. Your argument has been, just because its hard to enforce doesn't mean you shouldn't try, if I'm now understanding you correctly. That just isn't the case in this situation. Officially banning accounts couldn't discourage account sellers in any way. If we ban their accounts, they would just make another. They aren't motivated by a single account that we could ban, they are motivated by a collection of accounts that they own.

Funny enough, in your trolling you did manage to touch on another topic that is a valid concern. I know you don't care to think about things in a way that isn't completely ignorant of common sense, but a hero account sells for over 1 BTC. No idea what a staff account would sell for, but trusted accounts would hypothetically cost more. You mentioned you could buy an account that outranks hilariousandco for the price of a decent dinner. Correct me if I'm wrong but Legendary Accounts sell for over 2 BTC. I'd say $500 is a pretty decent dissuasion. What keeps people from buying trusted accounts is the cost. Accounts are worth more than their reputation, their value is also derived from the months/years put into them. So say I could buy a mildly trusted Legendary account for 5 BTC, I might find someone who would trust me with a couple BTC. If I scammed them or used the account to commit trust abuse, I'd be out some money. That said, if you still believe that scammers aren't financially motivated, and they scam just for giggles, I guess that logic wont make sense to you. But most people would agree that scammers aren't about losing money on a scam.

*edit* Still on topic, something else you mentioned was that if you could sell Ebay accounts, then Ebay's feedback system would be worthless. Again you are correct. Check the digital goods section. I took a quick peak and I saw more than a few Ebay accounts for sale. The 10% sellers fees are what make up for Ebay being a scammers haven. Ebay will just pay you back sometimes because that is their business model.

I posted here because you are right though, the thread is going off topic. Everyone please try to return to the topic in the OP. As long as TerminatorXL wants to debate account selling, they should be allowed to. Before you say I'm trying to save face or something, I just think the thread is pointless, and will die itself since you don't actually have anything to say rather than insults and off topic arguments.