Considering that it's a heuristic detection (a.k.a. well informed guessing), the threat was marked as "BitMiner" and you were trying to post in the Mining board, my guess it's a false positive. It even says that it's "not-a-virus" and a "RiskTool", which many cryptocurrency miners get marked as since they are often embedded into actual malware that intends to profit off of the victim computer's processing power by mining crypto at a low intensity and / or when the computer is left idle for a while. Windows 10 already ships with a pretty decent antivirus solution nowadays (case in point: link 1, link 2 and link 3) that's not only able to use OS features off-limits to external developers but can leverage the massive install-base (a.k.a. pretty much anyone that installed Windows 10 with the automatic sample submission turned on) to detect threats much more quickly. The "automatic sample submission" feature is obviously pretty detrimental to privacy but it's pretty easy to turn off and (I assume) equivalent functionality exists in pretty much every modern external antivirus suite. Add in the fact that modern browsers sandbox the environment a website's JavaScript runs in (yes, there have been vulnerabilities that allowed said code to escape the sandbox but I highly doubt your antivirus software would be able to detect sophisticated sandbox escape 0days) and nowadays for anyone even a bit more experienced with computers (as in who understands that downloading and running random executables is a bad idea) external antivirus suites provide very little security benefit at best and are a snake-oil-ish mix of bloatware and spyware-lite at worst. Antivirus software in general provides very limited protection from any attacker with even the smallest amount of sophistication and its main benefit comes as one layer of a "defense in depth" strategy for larger businesses (especially ones that employ a lot of non-tech savvy people). To compensate, a lot of these companies started including more redundant or useless functionality (e.g. VPNs, registry cleaners) to their offerings and / or started getting more paranoid (like I suspect in this case) by scanning all browser traffic (by, I assume, installing a custom plugin / add-on to your browser) and flagging "threats" that can't even be seriously considered as malware (and that's putting aside the really spyware-y behavior of a proprietary piece of software that often phones home (potentially with data you wouldn't particularly like sharing if they actually asked you for it) injecting plugins into your browser to intercept and scan every little bit of browser traffic). |
|
|
|
As someone who occasionally goes on niche topic research binges during which I (on the regular) stumble upon numerous forums who have clearly undergone lackluster migrations (broken post markup, broken links, etc.), I'm gonna go with option 1. Adding any sort of complexity to a migration process (e.g. multiple markup languages, one way conversions on edit, etc.) is bound to break something as well as increase the ongoing cost of maintenance. And for what? A subjectively "easier" markup language (with potentially less features)? Most people that use the forum either don't use any BBCode, use light styling touches (bold, italic, etc.) or know BBCode in and out and style their threads to the maximum extent the system allows. Those that either don't use BBCode or only do light styling aren't suddenly going to change their behavior and go all out with their posts / topics just cause they can use Markdown. And the users who put in massive amounts of effort into their content (which BTW includes complex signatures that often heavily rely on mountains of parser implementation quirks) will not only (potentially) have their old content mangled but have to learn the ins and outs of a new language as well as any specific implementation tricks of the Markdown parser to achieve anything even close to what they were able to previously.
First, no hybrid please. Meaning the same post should have only one type of formatting applied to it. The current system tries to do bbcode and markdown at the same time and it ends up doing stuff like disappearing comments from code boxes.
Second, bbcode needs to be migrated 1:1. No matter how ugly the code is, run php in the backend if you must, it just needs to work. With all the quirks, like the squished first column in tables. Same styling/colors too. There's too much good old content dependent on all those bbcode quirks - it would be a shame to have it mangled.
<...>
And there should be shortcut buttons for everything - from bold text to tables. We can't expect everyone to remember all codes, be it bbcode or markdown.
Completely agree. |
|
|
|
If yes, which section is suitable for this thread?
The trashcan (moved it there already). See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=434310.0 as to why (yes, this isn't the regular "post to get X coin" but as per the specific wording in the linked sticky, the restriction still applies to your giveaway / contest as well). Ok. Can I run it in Bounties (Altcoins) section? Many other services are rewarding alts for various tasks. I believe, this will fit well into that segment, as we are rewarding LTC (an alt) for wagering (a task). This specific one? No. See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3953664.0. If you accept entries off-site (e.g. via Google Forms) or via PM, sure. |
|
|
|
IMO NVMe SSDs are overkill for any sort of casual use. Why do you think they are overkill? When adding it to an old PC? AFAIK: 1. May require the board to have a PCIe 3.0 slot on the motherboard to leverage its full speed. Older (especially budget) motherboards might only have a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot for the GPU with the rest of the slots being 2.0. Since (theoretical maximum speed) =/= (actual IRL speed), the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot may bottleneck the SSD, especially if it's a higher end one (anecdotally, this has been confirmed by a bunch of random geeks across various tech forums ( link 1, link 2, link 3) with one of 'em even running some benchmarks). 2. Takes up a PCIe x4 slot, which a user may want to use for some sort of adapter later in the future. Some (at least older budget) motherboards even disable the x1 slots if you use the x4 one. 3. Requires NVMe support. Again, much less common in older (especially budget) motherboards. 4. Casual PC users (browsing, watching videos) users won't really feel the speed up. Your PC booting up 4 times faster ( theoretically; in reality any speed up is usually smaller) doesn't matter as much when it's already doing so in 15-20 seconds with a SATA SSD. 5. While not as pointless for those who enjoy some high-end gaming, the loading times (as with the PC boot up times) are usually small enough with a SATA SSD for the perceptible speedup to be negligible. With certain games, you might even get bottlenecked by the CPU processing the data (decompression, deserialization, anti-cheat checks, etc.) rather than by loading it to memory from an SSD. Here's some more anecdotal evidence (hey, it's better than no evidence) from a variety of tech geeks: link 1 and link 2. 6. They may be slightly more expensive (varies by region, obviously). If you're building a new PC and willing to shell out 10-20$ dollars more per TB (or even find prices that match the SATA SSDs), yeah, why not. Unless your motherboard has free slots for it (and if you're already considering rebuilding / substantially upgrading your PC, it might not) Well, that could be a problem for some old motherboards. That is, if you were talking about free PCI Express slots. Regarding M.2 slots, these are always free, unless you already have a SSD plugged into the M.2. And these ports were launched in 2012. What I'm trying to say is that many recent motherboards are equipped with such slot for a SSD. And you can use it for both NVMe SSDs and SATA III SSDs (although SATA III SSDs with M.2 form factor are rare). Date when the standard was released =/= date when motherboard manufacturers started adapting all (or even the majority) of their boards for it. As for the SSDs' limited lifetime, well, HDDs aren't immortal either. Take my research with a grain of salt but AFAIK consumer HDDs and SSDs seem to have a similar lifespan (given both the SSD and HDD models are of similar quality). Uhm... that's debatable. I mean yes, HDDs are not immortal. I was talking about the lifespan now. I guess you can say both that the allegation is true and not true, depending from which point of view you say it. In my case, knowing for sure that my SSD has XXX writing cycles (although this number is the order of thousands) scares me in part. Because I know that when that number is reached, the SSD is gone. Each of its cells was (re)written that XXX number of times and all are dead now. On the other hand, HDDs are more sensible as they having moving parts inside them. You have to be careful when you transport them, try to avoid shocks and so on, indeed. And if you give them a bad treatment they're gone too. I understand that. But at least I know I'm not limited from the very beginning of using it to a fixed number of writing cycles. So, regarding that, I'd say (as an old rabbi, lol) that I assume we are both right. Knowing how many write / read cycles you're limited to is much better than having an ever shifting hidden pseudo-counter that wipes your data when it reaches number X. When you know how close your SSD is to dying, you know when you have to replace it with a new one. With an HDD, it's a perpetual data loss lottery. Obviously, SSDs aren't impervious to random breakage but at least you can measure and monitor one potential point of failure. |
|
|
|
Thanks all, wanted to get a experienced take on all this. I will stick to futures trading and forget this bitcoin. Thanks again.
While I'd personally (in the extremely wide majority of cases) advise against day trading in general (case in point no. 1, no. 2 and no.3; see this post for one example on what to do instead), there's plenty of massive legit cryptocurrency exchanges (e.g. Bitstamp, Binance, Kraken, etc.; haven't heard about major ongoing issues in any of these, but obviously DYOR (do your own research), buyer beware and all that jazz) where you can buy / sell a variety of cryptocurrencies and be relatively safe in knowing that you'll be able to withdraw them without any advance fees. |
|
|
|
<...> I was told it was a rich mans game and she would help me along and things were going smooth at first, some profit. But then withdrawals started to get more difficult.<...>
Promise of massive profits... check. Leading in with a little bit of money.... check. Issues with later cash withdrawals... check. <...> this BTCto Cash, wants money for me to get my money.<...>
"Pay me to totally get more cash later"... check. <...>get a mining machine, alien ware area 51r2, programs and back up programs, and activate this withdrawal, and all that money would be sent through a link, and into my bank account. <...>
An over complicated Rube Goldberg machine-like tech mumbo-jumbo as an explanation for how to get your cash... check. <...> the header contact was going to do all this for me but had a massive stroke, and wasnt able to complete it <...>
Awfully convenient health issues just as your about to get your cash... check. <...> so this BTCtoCASH outfit told me for 1100 bucks they would do it for me and after i got all these funds, they would teach me how to do it myself.
Circling back to the "Pay me to totally get more cash later"... check.
If it walks like a scam and it talks like a scam... Just for fun: ask them if you could pay those 1100 bucks after you receive your money. Or if a trusted unbiased 3rd party could escrow the 1100 bucks until you receive the cash (obviously, don't agree to them picking the escrow). |
|
|
|
If you're buying a PC for school / uni, I don't think waiting is really an option if you don't have a backup device (unless your school / uni year somehow hasn't started yet). At that point, as many users have already pointed out, your old machine will probably be good enough to browse and watch videos for years (if not decades) to come.
A good SSD is one which has NVME technology (Non Volatile Memory Express), which uses the speed of your PCI Express. There are two types: M2 format factor and those which plug directly into a PCI Express slot. The lattest reach speeds of at least 2 GB/s for both reading and writing.
There are also other SSDs which use the SATA III's speed, but these ones are way slower. SATA III supports a maximum speed of 600 MB/s but most of SATA III SSDs will reach a 450-500 MB/s speed for reading/writing (the writing speed is always lower than reading speed).
That being said, not all SSDs are a "must have". Indeed, even a SATA III SSD can revive an old PC, but if you really want to feel the benefits of a good SSD, you should buy a NVME SSD.
excepting this, HDDs should not be fully excluded from PCs. They are cheap now, even large ones (4-6 TB), as the price per GB dropped to a few cents, and they are a good way for storing your rarely used data (photos, old movies etc.). There is no difference in watching a photo/movie stored on the HDD compared with doing the same operation with such file stored on a SSD.
The problem with SSDs is that they have a limited life time. They can be fully filled with data for a certain number of cycles. That's why you should avoid over-using a SSD. Use a HDD each time when it's not necessary to use the SSD. Indeed, the OS should be placed on SSDs. And so too should the games. But avoid using the SSD for movies, photos, audio files or other archived files used rarely, in order to extend its life.
Also, for the same reason, a SSD should never be defragmented. There is no need to, as it is very fast. But also, when you defragment a disk, it moves your data in order to better arrange it. Doing that on a SSD implies that the defragment program will erase some data placed on a specific part of the drive in order to move it somewhere else, thus all data will be arranged. But this operation would also lower the (limited) writing cycles of the SSD.
IMO NVMe SSDs are overkill for any sort of casual use. Hell, even if you're doing high-end gaming, it still might be overkill (IIRC it's nowhere close to the performance jump from HDDs to SATA SSDs). Unless your motherboard has free slots for it (and if you're already considering rebuilding / substantially upgrading your PC, it might not) and the price is very close to SATA SSDs of similar quality, I don't think it's worth worrying about it too much. As for the SSDs' limited lifetime, well, HDDs aren't immortal either. Take my research with a grain of salt but AFAIK consumer HDDs and SSDs seem to have a similar lifespan (given both the SSD and HDD models are of similar quality).
It isn't always true that you save money by building your own. Many retail outlets offer Windows based machines with a load of trial software pre-installed. The retailer gets paid for that, and this extra money can allow him to sell the machine at below the cost of the components. If you reformat the HDD, and install Linux, you can get an efficient machine at a bargain price.
Just make sure that the bloatware is located just on the HDD and isn't embedded deep enough to persist OS reinstalls. Then again, it might not be set up to run on Linux so you'd dodge that bullet as long as you don't decide to install Windows. If that were the case, I'd still steer clear of such a device, just to be safe. |
|
|
|
Yes. If yes, which section is suitable for this thread?
The trashcan (moved it there already). See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=434310.0 as to why (yes, this isn't the regular "post to get X coin" but as per the specific wording in the linked sticky, the restriction still applies to your giveaway / contest as well). I've also moved your website's ANN to Service Announcements (Altcoins) since you're no longer accepting BTC. Unless there's an explicit exception written down somewhere, pretty much all altcoin discussion belongs in one of the Alternate cryptocurrencies boards. |
|
|
|
-quote snip-
Thanks for your time to explain detailly. But I still have some concerns. As you explain there are unofficial efforts to compile these rules but How do I know these unofficial rules as a new member of the forum? At least mods should have warned us about that and we modify our thread. This is not nice we are waking up to a surprise.
If you aren't aware of how Bitcointalk and its community functions before joining, AFAIK lurking is pretty much the only effective way to acquaint yourself with the forum's rules. In the context of an online forum, lurking is the practice of spending some time (e.g. several months or at least several weeks) casually (on and off) reading through a variety of topics and posts all around the forum. As you do so, whenever you encounter something unfamiliar (e.g. terminology, references to community culture, rules, etc.), you can familiarize with it through a bit of research (either via the forum's integrated search feature or via your preferred search engine). Rinse and repeat until you feel like you have a strong grasp on the community's rules and culture. In terms of user friendliness, I can definitely agree that it's very much sub-optimal. However, to quote an older post of mine: <...> a lot of informational / educational work is being done by the community, instead of the head administrator, theymos. This is both intentional (lack of a concrete list of rules) and unintentional (lack of newbie-friendly info on how the forum functions), in different regards. theymos has mentioned a bunch of ideas on how to ease new users into the forum though AFAIK he hasn't rolled out anything major in that regard. Maybe he's working on it right now or maybe he's saving the effort for the new forum software - don't really know.
So if you want anything done in regards to newbie-friendly info on how the forum functions, you're going to have to petition the head admin, theymos. Even if you manage to convince him that your changes are necessary and in line with the aforementioned ideals, you might have to wait till the new forum software (the currently in development forum software suite) replaces the heavily modified SMF 1.x the forum currently runs on. |
|
|
|
I read you but still don't understand. There is no rule on gambling section. There are only 2 rules
One thread per site ONLY
Giveaways/promos/etc do not belong in this forum!
As you see only 2 rules. Moderators don't have rights to move my thread to another section. JustBet is a gambling platform.
What you've quoted are stickied threads. Stickied threads may denote certain rules (especially those that are often overlooked), but they don't list out all the rules. If, for a thought exercise, we were to be incredibly pedantic / de jure about it, AFAIK there is no single official definitive source of rules written down anywhere. This is intentional but doesn't mean that there are no rules. To quote a post from Bitcointalk's head admin, theymos: <...>
But I don't believe in having a set of hard rules which is to be applied to all cases. Whenever an argument starts looking like it was written by a lawyer, or relying overmuch on precedent, you've stopped thinking about the real case and have started using rules to retreat into moral and intellectual laziness, divorcing yourself from the decision you're about to make. If you're making a decision about a case, then you're responsible for that case, and you can't say, "I don't agree with it, but I was just enforcing the rules." Every case needs to be handled individually.
So if a moderator decided to move your thread and the head admin, theymos, doesn't oppose it (or even supports that decision), the moderator in question very much has the "rights to move" your thread wherever. In reality though, there are certain rules and common practices to which all moderators adhere to (with some wiggle room for autonomous interpretation from the moderator's side as well as for exceptions to be made when theymos feels like it's warranted). While I did previously mention that there is "no single official definitive source of rules written down anywhere", there are unofficial efforts to compile these (often unwritten) rules and common practices into a single source. One of these projects is the "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ", which is a personal project of mine. The rule I've quoted in my previous post is from this thread. Links and translations of the thread are stickied across quite a few Bitcointalk boards so while it might contain inaccuracies, quite a few moderators have felt that it's accurate enough to be highlighted to new users that stumble upon the boards they moderate. However, if you still feel like your topic was unfairly moved to a different board and that it does, indeed, belong in Gambling (either according to the often unwritten rules and common practices or due to this thread warranting an exception), you're free to appeal that decision by PMing Bitcointalk's head admin, theymos. |
|
|
|
As some users have already pointed out, the main boards (that being any board not in the "Alternate cryptocurrencies" section) are meant for Bitcoin-related discussions. You yourself already mentioned that your service doesn't accept Bitcoin + promotes a service-specific altcoin token: <...> gambling service includes a token <...>
<...> it is on Tron chain.
Which is the reason why it was moved to Tokens (Altcoins).
Second, there is no rule that accepting bitcoin is mandatory.
You say that but have you actually read them? From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0: 14. All altcoin related discussion belongs in the Alternate cryptocurrencies and it's child boards. [3][4][e]
|
|
|
|
Judging by your post history and TryNinja's archive, it seems like you've posted a thread about your multipool in the Mining > Pools board. If that's the case, my guess is that one of the Mining board mods deleted your thread since a pool that automatically switches between coins being mined (most of which aren't bitcoin) could technically be considered off-topic for the board. |
|
|
|
Following the latest "ratimov's case" may I propose the extra clause to the rules "Text copied from Web page/s must be taken inside the quote tags linked to the source/s and total not more than X * percentages of the whole post content counted in characters." *-X is subject to discuss. Regarding X, I would suggest 30%. If you want to propose changes to the rules or how certain rules are to be interpreted, message theymos about it since he's the only one with the authority to make substantial policy changes. I don't make the rules nor do I decide on how they should be enforced (at least not for all moderators or to such a large degree; there's a reason why rule 23 exists). I've merely documented them as well as some common ways in how they're interpreted. That lack of authority should be apparent if you take into consideration the topic's name: Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ This is echoed in both the top and bottom notices: NOTE: This is meant to serve as a reference/educational/informational thread, NOT a rock solid list of rules. Legal note: this forum post is a collection of personal observations on how Bitcointalk.org moderation functions at this point in time. It is not a codified set of rules or policies and may be partially or wholly inaccurate. I did not decide upon these policies and have no legal power to change or remove them. All legal queries, requests and demands regarding actual forum policy should be directed at the owner of Bitcointalk.org. |
|
|
|
is it now an offence to be courteous in our own self-moderated threads?
Help me understand please, these were all deleted from my self-mod thread....
-img snip-
See rule 1: 1. No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads. [1][e] 1. Such posts as "SELL SELL SELL", "I agree", "+1", "Support", "Watching", "Interesting", "LOL", "SCAM", "LEGIT", "FAKE", other one word posts, posts consisting mostly of swearing, quote pyramids, useless introduction threads, threads about a topic already recently discussed in several other threads. You're free to be polite and thank other people in addition to providing something else of substance that would take the post out of the territory of "low value". Not sure why you mentioned the thread being self-moderated since that doesn't change the dynamic here. Self-moderation doesn't override or substitute the rules and standards according to which the forum is moderated by its staff - it's another layer of moderation where the user can also decide which posts can stay and which should be deleted (though he isn't bound by any rules or standards the forum staff are). |
|
|
|
You've hit the nail on the head with pretty much every point of critcism. The software this forum runs on is indeed old, patchy and probably wasn't intended for Bitcointalk's scale. The inconveniences and annoyances that come with these qualities are more or less inevitable. Hopefully this gets remedied to a degree when the currently in-development new forum software replaces the heavily modified piece of SMF 1.x this forum runs on. The aforementioned issues are compounded by the fact that a lot of informational / educational work is being done by the community, instead of the head administrator, theymos. This is both intentional (lack of a concrete list of rules) and unintentional (lack of newbie-friendly info on how the forum functions), in different regards. theymos has mentioned a bunch of ideas on how to ease new users into the forum though AFAIK he hasn't rolled out anything major in that regard. Maybe he's working on it right now or maybe he's saving the effort for the new forum software - don't really know. As for how to overcome a lot of these issues, one old-school forum option is to, well, lurk. Spend a few months just browsing and reading through discussions on different boards. If you encounter something you don't understand, try to research and clear it up. Rinse and repeat till you are comfortable and feel like you know your way around the forum and its community. Since you've started this thread, it's clear that you're not hesitant in expressing your grievances so I doubt you'll be afraid of asking questions about the forum. So if something's unclear and you can't find any info on it, just ask. There's plenty of helpful users who will happily share their knowledge if you ask in the right place (be it by starting a topic in the right board or posting in the right topic). As for the lack of a concrete list of rules, to quote an older post of mine: <...> There's a reason why the stickied thread of mine still has the word "unofficial" in the title - it isn't officially recognized nor do I expect it to be in the foreseeable future. Just like it was back in the summer of 2014, the "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ" thread is a personal project of mine, with the only sorta semi-official support being the fact that former global moderator SaltySpitoon stickied it (IIRC) and that some moderators have stickied translations or links to the thread in the boards they've been assigned to moderate (myself included). theymos has stated (on multiple occasions) that he does not believe in definitive rule lists: <...>
But I don't believe in having a set of hard rules which is to be applied to all cases. Whenever an argument starts looking like it was written by a lawyer, or relying overmuch on precedent, you've stopped thinking about the real case and have started using rules to retreat into moral and intellectual laziness, divorcing yourself from the decision you're about to make. If you're making a decision about a case, then you're responsible for that case, and you can't say, "I don't agree with it, but I was just enforcing the rules." Every case needs to be handled individually.
- I don't believe in creating definitive rule lists.
So don't expect him to officially link to a page with a list of rules, let alone when said page is a thread maintained by a single moderator. |
|
|
|
|
Putting my and the community's opinion on whether account sales are OK / good for the forum / ethical aside, I feel like this boils down to 2 questions:
1. Do you want to legitimize (at least to a degree) and / or encourage Bitcointalk account sales?
2. Do you want to associate with Bitcointalk account sellers?
If you've answered "no" to at least one of these questions, avoid getting involved in the space (especially if you've answered "no" to question 1). When you have a reputation (good or bad) and you associate yourself with something (doesn't matter how many disclaimers you stick to it), both your reputation will rub off on that something as well as that something's reputation will rub off on you. If you're still not sure about it, weigh the positives of preventing account sale scams against the negatives of promoting an industry that's detrimental to the forum (if you believe it is) + the potential scams and spam that will inevitably come from these bought accounts.
If you're worried about the buyers, do note that these buyers (AFAIK) are:
1) Either:
a) ignorant to the fact that account sales are frowned upon (putting in enough effort to understand that the forum can net them some cash yet not bothering to actually do their due diligence in understanding if purchasing an account is worth it)
b) just don't care about said attitude
2) Either:
a) gullible / ignorant / stupid / misguided enough to transact with an anonymous entity with no reputation using a non reversible currency on a forum that doesn't police potential commercial misconduct
b) are aware of the dangers, yet still willing to go through with it
If you want to help these buyers out, educating them on the dangers (and, honestly, basics) of pseudo-anonymous e-commerce on the crypto frontier is probably where you should focus your energy. If with all that knowledge they still want to proceed with the deed, it's their gamble.
Bit OT but I sorta find it ironic that the Bitcointalk community finds account sales (which involves the sale of perceived trust / reputation, which sometimes leads to scams) deplorable yet social media bounty campaigns (which usually involves the crowdsourced purchase of perceived trust / reputation through artificially inflated social media metrics (followers, likes, retweets, etc.), which sometimes leads to scams) are all a-OK.
|
|
|
|
|
When a person is "red tagged", he's only red tagged from your perspective (as well as from perspectives of people with similar Trust lists). The Trust system is relative - someone who's marked as a scammer from one user's perspective may be overflowing in positive Trust feedback from someone else's. In practice, most people just use the default Trust list (represented by having only DefaultTrust in your list), which is what users usually mean when they say they don't deal with anyone that has red trust. However, even then, the list of users in the default list varies month by month so some feedback may disappear or reappear based on who's currently in the list.
As for why there isn't an official this-is-the-truth judgement on (potential) scammers, there are a number of reasons:
1) Workload. Bitcointalk is large and filled with commercial activity. Having enough mods to cover all bases would require immense resources.
2) Potential biases. Following up point no. 1, each of those moderators (or official scam hunters) would have their own biases that'd have to be kept in check. That would not only require even more additional resources but also a complex system that ensures both effective and fair judgement on disputed cases of something or someone being marked as a scam.
3) Lack of legal jurisdiction. Screenshots, videos and most other publicly displayable evidence can be (and in certain cases is being) reliably and convincingly faked and done so by slightly tech-savvy people with an access to a regular computer and free software. The only way we could verify someone's claims with reasonable accuracy is by being able to access data that governmental institutions do when they have a search warrant. Even then, after all that work, all we'd be able to do is ban an anonymous account.
4) Lack of a robust definition for scams. People have different opinions on what counts as fraudulent behavior. There's always blatant cases (e.g. we agreed and I paid for goods, yet didn't get those goods), however, as with all large communities, there's always difficult-to-pin-down cases where either the moderator / scam hunter handling the case would have to decide (potentially making such judgments arbitrary) or there would have to be a comprehensive collection of pseudo-laws defining scammy behavior (which, as it grows, would become more and more similar to actual laws, bringing all the real-world issues alongside them; e.g. a requirement to have a paid "Bitcointalk lawyer" to even have a chance at successfully defending a potentially questionable case).
With these limitations in place, any official scam hunting effort would at best be mostly ineffective and at worst become a witch hunt. An official scam hunting effort would be us trying to replicate a governmental court system without the jurisdiction or the resources of one.
Obviously, there are cases where something is blatantly a scam, however, to both not waste resources and have a consistent policy (one that hinges on caveat emptor) that doesn't create a false sense of security, theymos (the head admin) has decided to let the community decide on what's a scam and what's not. It's far from perfect, but at least you're both informed about potential scams, know the system is community driven (potentially unreliable) and can tweak it to your preference.
Whether the choice of not even trying to moderate blatant scams is the right one is for you to decide, I guess.
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
