I'm personally for something of a middle ground, I don't think people need to be earning $50 trillion dollars per hour at the expense of their workers, but at the same time, I feel there needs to be a reward for those who innovate, take risks, and run businesses.

I follow the sentiment, but your example is a little misleading. Moving a business to another country is sometimes profitable if the labor costs are sufficiently large as a part of the business, if the local workforce is sufficiently skilled, and you can get around the legal red tape of having to import/export goods. The machinery still costs what it does, the electricity still costs what it does, R&D as well. The difference in labor costs are something like a spread across exchanges to put it in common Bitcoin user terms. Do I think that GM should take its 6% (a guess) margin increase at the expense of messing up a bunch of people's lives? It probably wouldn't if the management ever interacted with its workforce, and the CEO's main responsibility wasn't to make money for the shareholders.

I think the evil parts of capitalism come out when businesses gets too large and starts seeing their people as numbers. I mean sure there are a lot of shitty people out there fit to be heartless CEOs, but its a lot harder to screw over you at least see as an acquaintance, not a 0.000005% cost savings.

On the global labor market, things aren't globalized yet to the point where its fair to say that everyone's labor is worth the same amount of money. Just as there are different cost of living and standards of living wherever you live, the shifts can be even more dramatic moving to other countries. If your middle class is earning $500/month, there are few differences versus another middle class earning $1000 per month elsewhere. Put it in reverse, what if you suddenly started earning $500/month when you had been earning $5000 per month. If you have $50k in student loans and a $2k/month mortgage, that might put a damper on things.

1 isn't "really" a number. Its a standard basis for numbers. When you say that three is a prime number, you are saying that 3 * the unit (1) = 3. Three cannot be divided by any integer besides the unit. Saying the unit * the unit = 1 isn't interesting, useful, and is up for debate.

I can find you a proof that explains that 1 * 1 is not the original value of 1, but there are a handful of assumptions there that I'm not sure you are making.

Just something to consider, "proven" untrustworthy isn't possible. Each person has their own interpretation of what untrustworthy behavior is. We can probably agree on a few criteria, but there is plenty of middle ground and gray area. We can take a very clear cut scam, and completely alter our interpretation of it with one or two words. This is just a thought, not a point that I'm trying to make or argue, no real need to discuss it directly, just something I wanted to keep in mind.

Back to the point, does the employer know that the person is untrustworthy? If they don't know, its not their fault in my opinion, of course if the employer isn't negligent.

Does that untrustworthy person need to be trusted in order to fulfill their work? If the untrustworthy person's role isn't anything that requires trust, not a problem.
- relate this statement to hiring convicted felons. You probably wont get a job in a bank, but plenty you can be trusted to do.

Does the person promoting a scam know that its a scam? Should we go after pyramid scheme victims for dragging others in after them. Not without malicious intent imo.


To your main point, I go back to, does the untrustworthy person need to be trusted by the customers. If there is a project and someone hires someone untrustworthy and they know it, if they are willing to assume liability for any further untrustworthy actions that lead to damages toward the customer, its not a problem in my opinion. Its certainly a risk factor, but it should be a risk that the employer shoulders, not a customer. I don't think you need to call an ASIC company that hires a jerk a scammer because the jerk is, but I'd certainly hope that they realize that the jerk now represents them to an extent, and they are liable for that jerk when doing business as.

I don't really think there is a way to define any of these things one way or another definitively. We as humans examine each individual case on a case by case basis, and then make our own inferences based on our past personal experiences.

Lets take business activity that resulted in the loss of funds for example. We would think this one is a pretty easy case, but every little detail effects the outcome. Who was responsible for the loss, why, what did they do after the funds were lost, etc. We are more quick to forgive incompetence over malice, but sometimes incompetence is even more dangerous. We are accepting of bad luck if its reasonably outside of our control (reasonably is again subjective). A sincere person after the fact can make the difference. Attempting to rectify a situation is always better than not accepting responsibility.

Whats more forgivable, a person who made an accident that can't rectify their mistake, or a person who maliciously lost the funds and made an attempt to rectify the situation?


In the general most broad sense of the definitions with the choices given,
Harassment - Yes
Business activity that results in loss - Yes
Asking for a no collateral loan - Yes
ANN bumping - No, thats kind of in a moderator's wheelhouse, I can't establish a reasonable link between breaking forum anti clutter rules and trustworthiness. Maybe you can.
Loan defaults - Yes
Colluding - Too vague even for the most vague answer I can give
Fake negative ratings - Also very vague, I'll go with Yes, but we set a scenario with two or three words that'd change my answer to no.

I can easily create single sentence realistic scenarios for each example of what I answered above to flip my answer though.

While I do have the gut feeling that JFY is the original owner, based on their speaking patterns, I do believe that qwk's actions are within reason. The only thing that is bothering me right now, is that JFY actually cares about the negative feedback from qwk, even though it was very clearly laid out to be a temporary and precautionary thing. Its not like there is a scam accusation, its a case of, let me know when you happen across something to prove your identity and I'll remove it. As the account owner, I'd imagine you'd have two thoughts. The first being, hey don't tag me jerk, and the second being, thanks for looking out for the best interest of my account. Rather than firing off against qwk, I'd imagine that "thanks for having my interest in mind" part would cause one to spend a few extra minutes trying to confirm their identity rather than getting very upset over it.

Regardless, I don't see this as something that really needs much discussion, its kind of just a matter of time until either its proven not to be the original owner, or it is. When you've been here this long, you'll remember an interaction you had with someone that isn't recorded. Something like that can clear doubts.

It absolutely isn't definitive, but I'm going to go with this is the original owner of the account. You have some very unique writing patterns that you'd have to be a genius to pick up on as an impostor.

This isn't a slight at your grammar or anything, I'm the last that needs to be casting stones, but check out old and new post's use of capitalization in places where it shouldn't be. You have a habit of capitalizing words around proper nouns, but not necessarily the proper nouns themselves. In addition, both old and new posts have very strangely capitalized words.

Old post:


New post:


There are a lot of examples, its a fairly uncommon trait and its pretty consistent throughout the past 6 years.


You also seem to always get the exact capitalization of each user you are responding to right, even when their username is Sw3EtbItCOiNUZr69Xd

Our main difference in opinion is our perceived amount of signal to noise. You believe the marketplace section provides the majority of feedback, it is accurate, and based on trades. I however believe that the majority of feedback is related to non trade related matters. Thats not to say that someone who gets a negative for being a jerk isn't less trustworthy in a trade because of their behavior and how that could relate to dealing with another person during a transaction, but I believe that factors other than, This guy and I traded and he came through, need additional information to be properly weighted.

I have no issue with us having a difference of opinion. At the end of the day we don't need to convince each other, what matters is that both of our opinions are aired to aid others to come to their own decisions.


I absolutely agree with you there, but as a registered member you have access to the reputation board and can actually read 50% of the links left in valid feedback. I'm not sure if we are crossing two issues currently. The first issue in this thread was whether all trust information should be displayed. The issue that I believe we are on now, is whether or not just the number score should be displayed.



I can go through my PMs from the past year (12 months) and easily point out 30-50 people who wanted to do minuscule trades with me, most likely in order to get + green feedback. Their purposes for establishing a trade history could certainly be honest, but it isn't that uncommon of an issue. I got dragged into trust farming complaints where people on DT had left feedback for people over microtransactions, and it was debated whether it was OK to give them feedback over a 30 cent transaction, when it meant giving them a +5 green number on their feedback. The general consensus was that its fine, because the numbers are meaningless, and you should always read the individual transaction details rather than relying on numbers. If you make that +5 no longer meaningless by displaying it to guests, it becomes a problem.

Trust farming isn't a worthwhile endeavor at the moment, but it could easily be made into one. Its not done, because its not profitable as members here can weigh the value of feedback. You don't trust someone with $100 because they handled $1 in the past. But, show only the +1 from a trade and not the rest, and that is no longer the case.



On a side note, since we seem to be talking about the digital goods section where this is the greatest issue, there is a warning stickied post from our very own EcuaMobi. So the excuse of not knowing better when coming here as a guest kind of goes flying out the window.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3035620.0


As an exercise, be honest with yourself and pick a few people. View their trusted/untrusted feedback, and see how much of it you'd value personally if deciding to trade with that person. There is plenty of helpful info in there, but you have to be able to sort it.

That isn't what we are talking about here. We are talking about whether they see someones +1, +10, -5 trade with caution, or nothing at all. A +1 for "helping me with my homework" is worth less than a +1 for "completed successful deal for 1 BTC" but when going in blind, they are the same.

my whimsical example:

A fella walks into your hardware store and says, I've never done any sort of work in fabrication, and can't handle any tools, but I've decided to build a house. What tool would you recommend? You hand him a saw. He may be able to cut the timbers and pound nails in with the handle, it might keep him out of the rain for a bit, but when the house falls down, it'd sure be better to be in the rain than under a collapsed house.

I'm not against helping guests, I am however not for making it worse by giving them half of the required tools to help or hurt themselves with. I'd rather they hurt themselves all on their own and learn from it if they are so determined to do so, or realize that they don't have a full set of tools, so do some research into what they need.

To evaluate feedback left, you need to be a member here. Without evaluating feedback, its useless and potentially harmful. The solution is to become a member here. If you don't want to become a member here, my argument is that you are better off without potentially misleading information, and we begin around the circle again.


If we really must come to some solution, as I said, I'd be in support of a custom trust list with no separation between Trusted and Untrusted feedback, no Red/Green or numbers involved. Just a list of feedback that would still require someone to investigate reference links, determine credibility of sources, etc.

I would agree with that. I've been critical of the calculated "trustworthiness" score since the beginning, but because there was plenty of information about it posted, people here were free to interpret it as they liked, so it didn't hit my radar to the same extent as showing this score to people who are blind going into it.


As a newbie, if you see a green number that was earned because you had someones back in a fight in Meta, does that not have the same weight as a green number earned from a valid trade of a related item? Or how about a green number earned from a 0.005 BTC sale, and now you are doing a 0.1 BTC trade? Your first instinct as a person who has been around on the internet during the era of Craigslist scams and all sorts of others, is to not trade someone unless you have that gut feeling that tells you that you will be safe.

By forum community consensus, it is fine to give someone negative feedback for account selling. Thats fine, as a member of this forum, I understand and accept the rationale, but does that apply to someone who is not a member of the forum? People give each other positive feedback for being helpful at scambusting, again in the context of the forums thats fine, but at least to me, that doesn't register as anything noteworthy when deciding if someone is trustworthy with money I'm about to send them. The best most trustworthy account seller, someone that a guest user might be here looking for, might have far more negative trust than the guy who hasn't been caught yet. Outside of the contexts of the forum feedback system rules, a lot of things are at the very best misleading. By not giving people the crutch of misleading numbers, they trade with people using the same rules they learned to avoid internet scams. If you give people a number that says, yeah this guy is safe to trade with, its like giving them a stick with notches in it and no further explanation. Why do I trust a guy who is always friendly and answered my mining questions with my BTC?


I have zero faith in the trust system if you have no other information available. I've been active in the marketplace here since 2012, and involved in the trust system since its creation. I'm not being a jerk about it because I have something against the systems in place, I just don't think its the right tool for the job. We are trying to drive a nail with a wrench. The number of people's feedback that I'd trust here at face value I could count with one hand. Thats not to say I don't value a lot of member's opinions, its just that I'd have to read why trust is given and what support is given before considering it.


A $10 life lesson isn't a very expensive one. I hate to say that people deserve to be scammed, but sometimes a small mistake like that is worth far more than you'd think when a similar situation comes up with higher stakes.


And why are those threads not moderated and removed? One reason is because the most dangerous thing is telling people that scams don't happen, and then they get scammed when they let their guards down by the ones that slip through the cracks. Give guest users a half functional tool, and there is more potential for damage. See a green +1, and maybe the $10 that they are willing to gamble with despite alarm bells going off becomes $100.



Again, I disagree, as long as feedback that isn't solely related to trading its value as a trading tool is not definitive, you need to read each case and judge for yourself.

The system where people fend for themselves is in place here. I'd hope that no one fully relies on the numerical scored of the feedback system. Its a tool to help you make your own informed decision, which relies on your own ability to wade through noise, and validate the legitimacy of any positive or negative claims someone makes against another. Seeing a number is not useful in the slightest, and I'd argue incredibly misleading and dangerous to someone who makes any assumptions about the feedback system.

The act of tagging scammers is an act by members to leave notes to other members that a user is potentially untrustworthy. It is then up for the member who originally wished to do business with the alleged scammer to read through any relevant proof and claims, and make their own informed decision whether to trade with that person. If you see a red -1 and don't look any further, you could be missing out on a trade because of a difference of political view between two members, or a petty fight. In reverse, you see someone with a green +1 and immediately they are vetted by the site, and you have no qualms with throwing money at them.

In this case, I feel that showing guests feedback scores is irresponsible and more harmful than not. If they don't want to take the time to register, I hope they get a valuable lesson for the $10 they lose, and hopefully its just that. Everyone born in the last 60 years knows what a shady internet deal is. Leave it to their intuition rather than interfering with that.

I agree that guests should not do business with people on this site. If they choose to, its on them. I find it weird to be requesting features to benefit people who aren't members of this site. If you can't put in the effort to make an account, you take the risk of being scammed. Ah, I don't have an Ebay account, so I'll just contact the seller by email and try to take it off site. Also, I'll pay with Western Union, it'll be fine.

A half baked understanding of the feedback system is more harmful than no understanding of the feedback system. Its a tool that I believe could be more easily misunderstood than used properly if you don't have any prior knowledge about Bitcointalk or the ecosystem around here.

I don't know, I personally don't care one way or another. I'd hope the people that do link accounts together have enough brains to look for obvious patterns of merit selling, and leave the coincidences alone. To this point I haven't seen much meta/reputation bellyaching about being falsely neg rated for merit selling, so I'd assume its not all that common.

I have untrusted feedback on. I trust untrusted feedback with the same weight as trusted feedback. The colors and numbers don't really do much for me, I'd rather see feedback from someone I've traded with previously or that I know holds a good deal of respect or dedication to the board, than from anyone else.

Its fine as it is, people can choose to what extent they are willing to mitigate risk for themselves. No one is forced to use the trust system at all. Do as much or as little research as you'd like before trading with someone.

If I'm not mistaken, merit sources aren't allowed to sell merit. Individuals can sell merit, but again you run the same risk of having all accounts involved marked with negative feedback.

Meta used to just be a section where users would ask moderators and veteran members for help finding a feature, or to ask questions regarding something directly related to forum accessibility. People didn't really read through it, because most of the time the threads didn't involve much discussion, it was, "What does this rule mean?" or "How do I block PMs" or the occasional, "Hey you guys suck, this forum is run by dictators, why can't I spam?"

Its been an interesting transition towards the free for all that it is now. The noise to signal ratio has increased dramatically, but at the same time its kind of cool to know that at the very least someone gives a damn about whatever problem you are having. If people just utilized the ignore button 500% more, most problems now would be solved. But at least there are still good threads about people asking questions that don't devolve into infighting.

Merit and DT related questions belong in Meta, but I think people are taking too many liberties with tying individual DT or Merit complaints to the system as a whole to reach a broader audience with their grievances.

Fair, I'll concede the point at least partially. If I'm not mistaken, you need to be logged in to view anything from the Reputation section. I don't believe google searches discover posts from the reputation board, but I could be wrong about that. That doesn't help against threads elsewhere though.


This is kind of what I was talking about. Any user who has been here for a week knows that there are users with feedback about them being pedos/pill abusers/ etc, and I dare to say that 99.9% of that feedback is false. Thats not to say that someone on Bitcointalk couldn't be fired or not hired in the first place because of claims like that. But I suppose if the information is out their regardless, allowing guests a consolidated place to view all claims probably isn't worse than having to scour the board looking for them.

It really just seems like a personal problem to me. Would you trust someone on Reddit because they have good Karma, which is also a good thing? I kind of just live by the philosophy not to send money to strangers online, maybe I'm crazy.


Its potentially important for members of the site, I agree. Say I wanted to use the name SaltySpitoon as an artists pseudonym as well as my handle here, and I was an active scam buster, and I was painted with all kinds of negative feedback from people I had picked fights with, I wouldn't want it viewable by anyone who didn't have a complete picture as a member here. If you don't have a complete picture of how the trust system works, I don't think you should have access to it one way or another.

On another note, aren't false positives just as likely as false negatives? If you aren't a member here, I could argue that you might not be aware of the practice of sock puppets leaving fake feedback. What if a new member sees positive trust from all of the scammers aliases?  

My main point is that having it not visible at all, is less harmful than having it visible and misleading.

*edit* Points to your own trust, Sandy, would you be fine with your relatives or potential employer reading the negative troll feedback left on your account if they did a google search for you? If they don't have any context about the Bitcoin forum, its probably far more negative from their perspective than the people who know to ignore it here.

Are the people who find an unfamiliar site, and then buy things using a non refundable payment method from a stranger not also the same people who would already be broke due to Nigerian prince email scams?

I'm sort of neutral on the subject matter so I don't have a strong opinion one way or another, but it seems like if someone is, we'll say gullible, to the point where they are willing to trade with someone here before signing up and learning how things work. Is there really anything you can do for them? I'm totally not against putting in safety nets for people who may be able to benefit from using them, but at a certain extent, I argue that its not worth putting in the effort, because its either going to be the Hot Russian Model that needs a plane ticket to come visit you, or the sketchy guy with autobuy links.

I don't know why, but I was under the impression that the decision to disallow guests from viewing feedback had something to do with cases where an employer or something is doing a google search on a potential employee, and ends up here, "Biggest Shitboi on forum, Skemmd my Grandmum for 5,000 BTC", "Guy sucks, l0l" etc feedback.

Again, I don't know if thats correct but something is telling me that was a consideration, though I don't have a source. The obvious hole that sticks out in my mind, is that there are only a handful of people here who used their real names, or have published their real names. I can't shake the suspicion that trust was only meant to be a factor in sections where it might possibly matter, and between members who are at risk of doing some sort of trade, at least partially for that reason. I don't think that conducting business with guest users was a consideration. How would you exchange PMs arranging a trade without an account?

Please don't misunderstand this as me having a debate with you, because neither of us have any say in the matter one way or the other. I just posted to tell you about the rules and why they apply. I don't care about your opinion. I'm not stating my opinion on the matter, I'm letting you know that you are breaking the rule #26 and why.

I couldn't care less if you disagree, decide to listen to me, or if you object. I posted to let you know and thats all.