Again, the trust system is not a definitive proof of trustworthiness, its just a feedback system. As far as standards, there aren't enforced standards by a central forum authority, there are enforced standards by the community, the system is what you make of it. If someone leaves or recieves unfair feedback, it is up to the parties involved to resolve it. The loose interpretation of what is allowed on the feedback system is what gives it flexibility, however also brings the issues that anyone that has read meta in the last week has come to be familiar with. If feedback was only allowed for confirmed scammers, it would be completely useless in preventing scammers. If feedback is allowed for confirmed scammer and suspected scammers, that excludes a lot of shady indicators. So the system is moderated how the community moderates it themselves, Staff don't have an influence on trust. So if you decide to give someone negative feedback for wearing bunny slippers you are welcome to do so. However, the thought behind that, is if you give people false or frivilous feedback, then your input begins to mean less and less. If a legendary member with 1000 trades under their belt and years spent here spams negative feedback for everyone on the forum, their feedback means absolutely nothing to anyone. If you aren't on default trust but have a history of leaving accurate feedback, your feedback can mean more than that of someone on the default trust list, and eventually someone should take notice and add them to Default trust. Default Trust is not supposed to be the governing trust body of this forum, its the default, people are meant to create their own trust lines and move away from default by the time they are no longer newbies and have individuals that they trust. That however has not been the case, as people are either too lazy to change it or they just don't care.

I'm going to mention it very briefly as an example, but I don't want to derail your thread. Obviously you are talking about Vod's feedback for you. Default Trust means that you are trusted in some form of line to leave accurate feedback for others, not necessarily that you are trustworthy yourself. The first branch of Default Trust are those added directly by Theymos, the people that Default trust add to their list then become the next level (1) and so on. Vod is not on the first level of default trust created by Theymos, he is under three members (as of last time I checked) that are on the first level, effectively putting him on the 2nd level of trust, and people he adds to his trust list would be on 3rd etc. Vod isn't on my trust list, so I have no say in his actions nor will I judge, because I chose not to take responsibility for his trust actions by not having him on my list. What I will say is that he has been a huge community scam buster for a long time now, if he abuses what the community sets as the standards for the feedback system, no one will take his opinions seriously, and the people on default trust who have him on their lists should consider removing him. It would be a loss in that case since the hundreds of scammers that he has positively marked would then have their feedback diluted as well. Perhaps thats why people are fighting for Vod. The entire system is intentionally a gray area. If you remove options, people will exploit it, if you leave it completely open and allow the community to decide what is acceptable and not acceptable, then they can adapt to new threats rather than having to rework the system. That is what would cause inconsistencies.

If you want to leave people feedback saying you don't like them because they use the word "the" too often, you are welcome to do so, just know that your feedback will be diluted and worthless when it actually matters. The only difference between being on default trust and not being on default trust, is that others are staking their reputations on your feedback as well. If Vod goes off the deep end (I don't want to get into a debate here about it, as I said I'm not involved so I don't care, let the parties involved handle it) it reflects poorly on the people who added Vod to their trust lines. Its a self interest system, a forum member isn't going to give trust to someone who is going to hurt their reputation.

Unrelated: If your posts in meta are being deleted, report them. Moderators are supposed to take extreme caution when touching meta issues. That said if they are undoubtably spam, they will be deleted.

Never heard back from them. I'm not too interested in the gold anymore though, turning my attention towards buying BTC instead.

*edit* reading over my last few posts leading up, and I noticed I said, "I've never used escrow" I meant I've never used nonhuman escrow heh. I didn't want to edit the original post. -completely nonrelated to this post

Right, but dont make it red, just feedback, and it will force them to read it.

This has really gone on too long, the staff conspiracy nonsense is getting old, the only reason the staff had any involvement in your removal from default trust, is because you were on my trust list before being removed. If you want to have Vod removed, just like how the system works, you need to contact Tomatocage and anyone else who has Vod on their trust list. But it is the individual's who added him who are the ones that need to take action if they think your claim is valid. It is such hypocracy to be calling the system unfair because of Staff influence, and then trying to get the staff to change it, dispite that not being how the system works. Tec I still consider us buddies, but you were removed because you are far too rash and hotheaded when you feel someone is attacking you. Canaryinthemine and I no longer trusted you to give accurate feedback to others after you blew up.

After the whole Armis fiasco, I recieved 6 pms from different people just asking me to look at the thread about it and asking that I remove you, Theymos' "forcing" us to remove you comprised of the related links, asking me to read them, and "I recommend removing him from your trust list". I took the recommendation, but if I still had faith in you to not blow up when annoyed I wouldn't have removed you. I'd still trust you with my money, but not to react unproportionally to minor annoyances and have that reflect poorly on myself.

Putting in a system that can be gamed is worse than no system at all. A lot of the anti feedback sentiment is coming from hardend BCT members. Just because the 5% of people that have been around here 2+ years know how not to get scammed, doesn't mean that the 50,000 newbies aren't going to be lending their money to the people who's dogs need operations offering a 50% return per day compounded continuously for a week. I'm all for self responsibility, which I'd say all in all the userbase here does by % pretty well, but there is still a massive population that would get ripped off at every given turn. There are some scam busters that are 100% necessary, I can't think of a single time where Tomatocage has had a thread opened against him, Vod on the other hand is just a more aggressive scam buster and makes more enemies. We need people to take responsibilty for themselves, but we can't forsake the newbies either.

I still support my no trust lists, no numbers, just a straight feedback system where people can leave their thoughts/opinions. If people create an alt army to spam someone's trust, it will be very apparent and people will value those 30 identical reviews much less than a single -1 showing up next to someones name. If someone has a valid feedback claim, it will be typed in a legible matter, it will be accurate in the amount of BTC risked, and there will be a reference link where a reasonable person could read through the evidence and make an informed judgement call over whether that person is trustworthy. Having to search someone's name in scam accusations is not the way to go, but an unmoderated, unweighted, spreadsheet/list of a person's feedback with the day, btc risked, reference link, and comment is the most hands off yet stilll useful approach. If I see a review by Tomatocage on someone's profile that says they are scammy, I'm going to think for myself how much I value tomatocage's feedback, rather than relying on a big red negative number to do it for me.

 

I'd just make it simpler, and remove all scores and numbers and trust lists, and just have it as a feedback system. Before you deal with someone, you check what people have to say, be it that they are a jerk, or that they aren't trustworthy with money. A huge problem is that people don't read what people were left feedback for. If I have a -1 for scamming someone and a -1 for being an unpleasant businessperson those two things shouldn't hold equal weight. With the numeric system, people see that -1 that someone recieved for a personality issue, and internalize that they are a scammer. If its just a list of feedback with trusted/untrusted gone, people will have to read through the list, see what feedback they find important to their situation, and judge based on the person leaving the feedback.

Or perhaps have a default trust system until members have X activity so newbies can be somewhat protected, but people will be forced to get off of the default trust system by the time they know how things work around here. I am pretty indifferent about the trust system as it is, because I use it entirely differently than most people. But, it has been pretty effective for its original intentions thusfar in helping out new members and allow early warning of scammy behavior for those that might not see the signs themselves. The majority of issues that have arose are with lists, how large/small they should be, how often they should be updated, who should do the updating, etc. Get rid of all trusted lists, and its not a problem.

I dont think feedback either way is necessary. We would have had to have seen his actions if the account was not recovered, and the loan was not paid. I was an escrow agent for a long while and luckily never had an issue, but if the escrow agent messes up, and something goes wrong, it is on them. If the account had not been recovered, and the loan not paid, redsn0w would have had to repay the loan. Thats why escrow agents charge fees and ask for tips, its to cover their liability. Since that is not the case, theres no reason to leave feedback either way. It would be positive feedback if he paid the loan as per his escrow agent obligation if the lendee ran off and the account was no longer secure, it could be neutral now I suppose if you wish, and it would be negative if redsn0w had not paid the loan if the account was lost and the lendee ran off.

Honestly, probably the most valuable information that could have come out of this, is to see how redsn0w handled something going wrong. Not really a big deal as far as how it turned out.

*Edit* I'm not going to change my wording around in my original post, but I will mention here, that feedback is fine, but I don't think there is enough info for a Trust call.

Well, I can answer a few of those for you, others I don't know.

A. You are right, BFL has spent a substantial amount of advertising on BCT, not in the last 6+ months, but you are correct. Back when they were advertising and this came up very frequently, mainly about corruption of Theymos, I did a calculation. BFL's ad purchases equaled an additional $1.17 per month paid to a moderator. So pretty good indicator that no moderators were into BFL for the money.

B. No idea if GMaxwell has any connections to Bitpay, I wouldn't necessarily call that a very plausible thought, but its not outside of the realm of reality I suppose.

C. Lawyerdude intentionally derailing the thread, doesn't that give reason to delete his posts?

D. Moderators do not remove Dox. The thinking behind this is that Dox tend to be public information. If you can obtain it without breaking into somewhere to get the information, its public info, ie phone numbers, name, addresses, etc all stuff you can find with a google search or in a phone book if those still exist.

E. I'm not sure what his motivations are, but I've seen it more than a few times. A thread will start out with a controvesial topic, proponents and opponents clash, people that are bored get involved for giggles, a web of spam and insults occurs, it gets exponentially worse to the point where the only way to handle it is a clean sweep through the entire thread.

That said, besides being a moderator GMaxwell is a Bitcoin core developer, BFL hasn't been the best shining example of why people should get involved in Bitcoin, so as far as I can still tell there isn't any reason for Gmaxwell to want to help BFL. That is unless he has some connection to Bitpay as you said as a possible option, which I don't think he does, but I do give you points for writing out feasible reasons, rather than that GMaxwell is actually an alien that probed Josh once, and liked what he found, so he now has a foundness for BFL or something like that.

I dont know, when I create a theory, I try to look for a reasonable explanation before I start making claims. What would GMaxwell's motivation be for trying to benefit BFL in any way? First off, no one likes BFL, they are the butt of so many jokes in the crypto scene, but aside from the small amounts of enjoyment people get from that, I really haven't seen anyone support BFL since the FPGA days, not counting people with preorders being hopeful. Does GMaxwell have any pending orders with BFL? Could they possibly pay him off enough to sell out?

If you can answer the underlined question with an at least plausible thought, then you have somewhere to start from.

My thoughts at this moment, unless anyone can prove otherwise, which I'd be happy to listen to if you can.
People are harrassing and poking fun at BFL, I've seen the thread its a complete mess. It was removed by Gmaxwell as spam, and the first thing people throw is the corrupt mod/censorship flag. It literally happens every day. Find some sort of motivation for Gmaxwell deleting posts, anything that would serve him or his interests, and you have a case to review. Could a post that had some substance get removed in a complete thread sweep? Yep, but that isn't what is being claimed here.

Oh sorry, I forgot about this thread. I didn't recieve any pms so I thought no one was interested. International shipping is incredibly expensive. I mean its your money, so you are welcome to pay for shipping, but honestly it would be cheaper to buy it locally. Shipping is only $10-20 to the US. To South Africa it was $70ish, the shipping cost might be reasonable to Canada/Mexico however I'm not sure. I'd much prefer to ship it to the US, however like I said if you are international, I can get you a quote.

Tradefortress is the big one, Pirateat40 and Nefario would have had a lot of positive trust, if the trust system was around back then. Possibly MtGox (MagicalTux) depending on how you view that.

I suppose, but I'd ask that you cover the shipping costs, and I'd imagine that shipping costs would make it prohibitive. I can get you a shipping quote if you would like.
I take that back, shipping would be about $60-$80. I'd recommend buying one locally.

And bump in general, will be listing it on Ebay if no one is interested in it today.

Its not possible to remove the self moderation, but I unlocked the thread. That said, they can still delete any post you put in their thread, so its recommended that you gather evidence/support in this thread.

That is all correct, there is a lot of Dogie spam, but what half of the people in this thread fail to mention, is that a large majority of it is in reply to off topic questions that they ask him and vice versa. People (in Bitmain's threads) say something to Dogie, he responds, then another person responds, etc etc and then every party involved reports each other's posts. This has happened one time before, I know how to clean the spam, but I will need Bitmain's permission first and everyone involved should expect an unbiassed total wipe of all offtopic spam. I dont have a bias towards or against Dogie. I do however feel bad for Bitmain and their customers that are looking for an uncluttered thread for information regarding their purchases.

@Everyone involved take it to PM or make a thread in off topic to argue in.

No disrespect to you Gavin, but I was under the impression that the business owners around the world were the ones doing all of that, with the exception of funding development for the Core team. I'm a huge opponent of the Bitcoin foundation, so take my response as a tongue in cheek stab at it if you want. I just don't like the idea of some "official" people representing Bitcoin. I think you do a great job, and if the Bitcoin foundation was just the core developers, I'd be perfectly content with that. Sadly, the "CEO of Bitcoin to go to jail for two years" articles tend to pop up around percieved central authorities in Bitcoin. Obviously, I can't say that all of the Bitcoin foundation is bad, I respect a few people involved, but sadly I see most of the structure as a liability.

Hailo, I've got a new Xbox one Assassin's Creed Unity Bundle, completely unopened that I'm looking to sell for $330 in BTC, with free shipping to the US.

What comes included in the bundle:
XBox One 500 GB
XBox One Wireless controller
Headset
HDMI Cable
Assassin's Creed Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Unity.

If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me.

If no one is interested within a few days, to fleabay it will go!

Hi peeps, I purchased an Xbox One from Newegg, and it included a 1 year XBox Live membership ($60 Retail) that I don't need. Looking for $45 in BTC for it, pm me if interested. It is a digital code.

I nominate myself! Just kidding, every time I think of the Bitcoin foundation, I imagine a bunch of kids playing in a tree house. I still can't wrap my head around what it is the Bitcoin foundation does. Sure it has some good people that do stuff, but wouldn't those people be doing the same things with or without the foundation? Just feels kind of wierd having people "represent" you, without knowing what it is they do or who they are.

This topic has been moved to Trashcan.
Giveaway thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=907602.0

Right Buffet owns IBM, however that is the exception and sort of an intermediary to investing in Tech. Buffet is investing because IBM has a proven track record of making a profit through their products in services. He isn't investing in what IBM does, he is investing in the well managed company structure that he understands. Does he understand what it is IBM is making? Probably to a small extent. Does he explicitly know their company structure and understand why it is that they keep making him money? Yessir.

My point being, the fact that warren buffet doesn't recommend investing in Bitcoin doesn't change anything. The traditional investors that listen to him weren't going to invest in BTC anyway, and frankly, I'm glad they aren't. Bitcoin doesn't need the publicity that Warren Buffet sunk $100M into BTC, only to be hacked 10 minutes later and anonymously robbed. He is going to make his money, and with any luck those of us in BTC now will make our money sooner or later.