No. It was only counting the 10,000 most recent topics, which is a very stupid and arbitrary way of limiting the data to be looked at. And it's not a very slow query anyway, so I just made it look at all posts.

SMF bug. I fixed it.

I added an option in your profile settings to enable post counts.

Confirmed.

From the moderation guidelines:

Yeah, you're not supposed to be able to create new topics there (which is the same as moving a topic there).

Alt accounts are useful in some cases, and they can't be effectively banned anyway. People can always use Tor to evade detection. So banning alt accounts outright would hurt good people more than bad people.

If I happen to see someone abusing alt accounts to break forum rules or scam, I will do something about it. BCB and others know that I am often helpful in these matters. But it's impossible to catch even a majority of abusive alt accounts (especially since very few people have access to IP logs for privacy reasons), so it's best for people to stay on their guard and assume that scammers using alt accounts won't be caught.

It's also a felony to resist the government's violent thugs, and the US is fine with bombing innocent people, so I don't put much stock in the US's view on ethics.

Garr255 is not a trustee of the forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155002.0

I only have a mild interest in Garr255's particular case. But I am very annoyed by the incredibly stupid ideas about justice and ethics that many people in this thread seem to have. Garr255's actions were definitely unethical, but it's nothing like a real scam.

Pirate promised to pay back people's money plus interest. Matthew promised to pay people who bet him if he lost. Garr255 promised nothing. I do not recognize any sort of implicit contract. Something isn't a binding auction just because it's in the Auctions section. (I realize that some libertarian philosophers do recognize many types of implicit contract, but I strongly disagree with this notion.)

If you mistrust Garr255, use the trust system. I'm not going to remove anyone from the default trust network for rating Garr255 negatively. But scammer tags require a more severe crime than just going against the expectations of bidders.

About 30 hours. Were you starting to go grey from waiting? The situation was successfully resolved in less than two days, partly due to my work behind the scenes. Immediately publishing the alt account info would not have been wise, though I would have published it eventually (as John alluded to earlier in the thread).

IP address logs are confidential, but I reserve the right to release alt account info when someone is abusing alt accounts as Garr255 and svbeon were doing.

To be clear: I barely know Garr255. I've sent him less than 30 PMs in total, almost all of which were related to forum administration. I chose him as a treasurer because he seemed to have more to lose than any of the other candidates if he ran away with the money.

Yes, it is.

Forum policy: No matter how many times you do this, you will never get a scammer tag unless you have an explicit agreement which says otherwise. Auctions are only devices to assist in price negotiations.

Personally: I might forgive someone if they do this kind of thing once, but probably not twice.


You can accidentally betray someone's trust if you misunderstand what their expectations are. If Garr255 thought that people generally had no problem with bidding via alts, the betrayal of trust would be accidental. This isn't the case here, but it's possible.

Notice that I called it a bit shady. I wouldn't do it, and my trust in people will be reduced if I see them doing it. But it's not the end of the world.

It's not ethical to do this sort of thing because the participants in the auction expect you not to do it. By secretly acting contrary to their expectations, you're betraying their trust. But while it should happen very rarely, sometimes you get into situations like this accidentally or due to insufficient ethical consideration. It's something I can forgive fairly easily if it doesn't become a habit.

The preceding ethical analysis is irrelevant to forum administration, though. Scammer tags are given, in general, to people who break explicit agreements.

It's not per action.

Did Gar255 put a gun to his head? No one forced the bidders to do anything.

Having an alt that artificially raises the bid price is similar to a secret reserve price in an auction. There's nothing inherently wrong with it except that Garr255 should have warned bidders that he might do it. I rank his actions there as "a bit shady," though he handled the fallout badly (due to inexperience, I suppose).

In any case, alts aren't against forum rules, and scammer tags are typically only given when an explicit agreement is broken. Garr255 never promised not to bid on his own auctions. He never even promised to honor the results of the auctions. Without contracts that say otherwise, auctions are only devices to assist in price negotiations.

It'll be yellow if his trust score ("Trust: 0") is 0. This is calculated based on the number and type of trusted ratings (from your perspective) as well as time.

General suspicion the proper attitude if you don't want to get scammed.

No. People who haven't done any trades (as far as the trust system knows) are dangerous.

That seems somewhat time-consuming. Someone else could write that patch. Activity is stored in an activity column in members. Keep in mind that the forum runs SMF 1.1.18.