philipma1957 has very quickly done their part towards locking down the account until we can figure out what is going on. I am not sure what other proof might be necessary, especially when we have heard nothing from the account and seen multiple red-flags that it has been hacked. You have provided proof of ownership over the staked address.

Thanks to philipma1957 we have gotten the account tagged with negative feedback for trust and removed from the Default Trust list. This will at least stop almost all abuse of the accounts in the meantime, until we can get it figured out.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just saying your criteria may have been carelessly worded. I know Lauda presents a clear benefit to the community, but I also can see why people are concerned for them to remain in a position of responsibility. They give people multiple chances and operate fairly from what I can tell; some are offended by their callousness, but this is not something I am concerned about.

I don't have enough information about Lauda specifically to have a stance, but I was simply saying that your criteria was weak and unsatisfying, in the manner it was presented/explained.

I'm not going to be the only person that's disappointed by this being the voiced criteria and reasoning for this. I don't disagree with the statement, but I disagree that this should be the criteria for keeping them on your list.

There are plenty of people that do more good than harm that still do a tremendous amount of harm, so much so that it would be very dangerous to use this reasoning.

You should keep them on your trust if you feel that they are very unlikely to do any meaningful damage to the forum in a way that violates or abuses the responsibility that comes along with DT; plus there should be significant benefit for their addition.

This reminds me of Dave Chapelle's bit about Bill Cosby; "He saves more than he rapes!"  

If I'm not mistaken Lauda has been bouncing between on and off DT all-day.
 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust

I think once their number is <0 (one more exception, as of right now) their ratings will not be actively counted as DT ratings.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;full

The exceptions/additions can be found here, where users with strike-through text have been excluded from that particular user's trust settings and where their name is present are the additions.

I think as of right now HostFat, OGNasty and Tomatocage are excluding Lauda from DT; While SaltySpitoon, Blazed and hilariousandco have added Lauda to their trust settings

Pretty sure a user's number is just +1 for an addition and -1 for an exclusion.


You only have 1-negative DT rating counting against you currently; each negative rating will only count towards your total if it is unique. It is determined by the amount of unique users have given you negatives, so your 2nd negative from OG does no harm if I'm not mistaken.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust

Default depth is 2, everyone not crossed out (I think?) is on DT.
The user that removed their rating was a DT member that had left positive feedback for the account; I asked them to leave it a negative, but they said they are not yet compelled by your case/evidence so they simply removed their positive trust until they are more convinced.

Tag = Rate from DT, yes


I think MoreBloodWine is on DT now that I am looking at it, because of an addition from phillipma1957. I have sent then a PM to get involved.

You should private message some DT members and ask them to take a look at this thread. It might help get the account tagged in the meantime; I PM'd the 2 members of DT that had previously given the account a rating, one of them removed their rating but the other has not been online in quite some time. I am not sure how to proceed, but we've got a good foundation going for your case in my opinion.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make; are you saying that quality posts cannot be made in the Meta section? Many forum changing ideas have been formulated there.


Yes. Bashing here and there is a good quality when the situation calls for it. If you are unable to lay down the law, who will take your expectations seriously? Being able to stand up for principals and calling out blatant disregard for expectations or common sense is, in fact, a good quality.


You're probably looking at it wrong. It's more likely the case that the "cool powerful guy" does not care who merits them and gives no favors or allows no entry into any "powerpuff group" for doing so. So, at best this is flawed thinking on the part of the person sending the merit. People with competence naturally will garner more respect, merit and "power". If you can see any examples of people doing unsavory favors for merit then I'm all ears and would love to call it out with you.

You don't understand how spending your time promoting and advertising something you claim to be useless is silly, irrational or inconsistent?

You are proud to be getting paid for something you seem to know is worthless, not contributory and you admit that you should not be getting paid as much?

You're right, you don't have to believe a signature is a good advertisement to wear it, but it proves how easily you will sell-out and promote something you don't agree with, are actively campaigning against and believe to be worthless. This is like a smoker talking about how disgusting cigarettes are while they are smoking; you're a hypocrite or at least inconsistently manifesting your behavior in accordance to your voiced principals/opinion.

If you do not understand how your actions and your words are contradictory to one another then there isn't much left for us to discuss. I was just saying you should probably reevaluate your position on signature campaigns in rhetoric or reevaluate your actions by promoting them.

Blazed should not be held responsible for the actions of "Lauda, ThePharmacist, actmyname, TMAN and some other of their group". The people you mentioned are the only people responsible for their own actions. Blazed has made it pretty clear he doesn't enjoy the spamming around the boards for pay, which is probably why he added certain people to their Trust list; he believed these people were serving a specific purpose that was beneficial and he was not wrong in that regard. Blazed cannot know the intentions, long-term goals or micro manage every rating or action these people perform.

All I'm saying is you should try to hold those responsible that performed the actions you feel justice is deserve for. If you are upset about "Lauda, ThePharmacist, actmyname, TMAN and some other of their group" then go after each one of them individually, explaining why they are not fit for their position and if you can negotiate or convince DT members they will no longer have the effect you are worried about. As far as I know, none of these people are on DT anymore anyways. I might be wrong, and please correct me if I am.

The reason there are people being added to DT at all is because the workload is ever-increasing and must be distributed to more members that can be trusted with this responsibility; obviously there will be bumps and problems (due to the subjective nature of trust and the loose guidelines surrounding it) that we will iron out along the way, but it does not make sense to blame someone for the actions of another which they were not involved in whatsoever.

Your account is a month old, today; I'm curious what is your definition of "long term"? Unless you have multiple accounts that are older than this you can't possibly have been earning crypto long term with signature campaigns, because 1-month is not long term.

You should not need to be paid in order to find motivation to learn about Bitcoin. You should either be interested in Bitcoin without being paid to post or you aren't really interested in Bitcoin, you are interested in being paid.

You have a signature campaign running on your profile, right now.
At the same time you are calling them useless. The hypocrisy or at least inconsistency is entertaining.

You claim they are useless, but I bet you can name almost every company that runs a signature campaign around here (assuming you spend any significant amount of time here). They are not useless, because anybody that has the time will probably do some research on the company, organization or project to see what is up. At least this is what I do, and if it is something I believe in then I will start using, investing or playing (if it's a casino). Hard to say that they're useless, when they're doing exactly as they are intended to.

There are plenty of people that have done better, and it was just regular posting; I am not technically literate on the subject of Bitcoin, and I don't even have a full grasp of Bitcoin's history even though I've been here for 90% of the time. I'm always trying to learn, but I only post if there's something I can contribute to the thread. I have had a lot of free time recently so I've been reading the forums for an absurd amount of hours. I would expect within the next couple weeks for merit to start to rain freely again as sources refresh their merit; people went crazy when it first came out, but once it refreshes there will be plenty to go around.


Some of the most merited users are not high ranking or established; but it should be expected of a user that wishes to rank up to higher levels to contribute a higher level of posts and thus achieve more merit:activity. It does suggest that higher ranks are expected to contribute to a greater extent than lower ranking members; which is perfectly fair, wouldn't you agree?


Yeah, I assumed as much; just keep it casual, regular and keep doing what you do. I'm enjoying the experiment and there are many others keeping watch as well.


Yes, the lower ranks will still probably be easily attainable, but the higher ranks as you've pointed out will begin to be more exclusive. Big improvement, in my book.

The part of your response that I put in bold texts is where subjectivity, opinion and the contradictions in criteria that are bound to happen is taking place. It would be very reasonable to argue that he has/is crossing a line, because this is a Bitcoin forum; not a political organization. There has been nothing that defines what "Crossing the line" is, and theymos saying it is acceptable to rate a user in general would seem particularly fitting in this case.


I know you just provided this as a particular example because it is something close to you and I'm not saying there isn't a systematic problem, but as we seem to agree there is minimal to no harm done in this case so I wouldn't pick this hill to die on. I like to tackle specific problems, and if this is a systematic problem we can surely find more egregious examples of DT ratings based on opinion stopping a user's day-to-day operations on here. I would be more willing to stand by you and call out the problems if we had an example where harm has been done and can be agreed upon communally.

If he were doing business here, then it might have more of an impact, but if he were doing business here he probably would have less time to spread his own ideology in the toxic Politics and Off-topic sections. He has made a name for himself by having a strong-will and strong(unpopular)-opinions and this is bound to manifest itself in their trust score. Anyone thinking to do business should look into the ratings themselves and judge if they are in agreement to their standing on trust. I know this is uncommon for newbies, but this is not the responsibility of DT members, in my opinion.


If you got the right people, not even mods as far as I know, to agree that Vod is being unreasonable, breaking guidelines, acting maliciously or thwarting users from using the forum based solely on their opinions (opinions which don't affect their actions on the forum) then they would remove him from their trust networks and his ratings would all become irrelevant in the context of our discussion.

EDIT : I can certainly agree that there is too much opinion and not enough substance in the trust system, but I do not know how to adequately modify that without losing much more value overall.

Again, I would simply point out that BADecker is unaffected by this trust; if you could provide some or even one example of someone being unable to operate on the forum as they normally would if not for a trust rating about their opinion, then I would 100% be on your side. I just feel like this has no negative affects on BADecker's experience on the forum, nor is it stopping them from using the forum as they do.



I don't think, and we may disagree, that Vod is giving out ratings too easily. I know you said that this is a systematic problem, but we can not target an abstract system, we must target individuals and individual acts one at a time.

According to theymos, it is ok to rate a person "in general", not tied to a trade at all. As long as you are not rating them on the quality of their posts. I would say this is different from rating them in the way Vod has.

I had the same thought, but then I was thinking if something like copper-member exists at all then there might as well be some interesting perks to see how it is used and if it is still abused by the lower-ranking members who decide to buy it. I was thinking most newbies that come here won't want or need to embed pictures within their posts, and if they do it would most likely be extremely low-quality or even off-topic altogether. My point is that, this logic could be used to refute any of the perks that copper membership offers; they would probably all be better off being earned, rather than bought because of potential abuse. It would be interesting to see how it would play out, but obviously if it would do more harm than good, like making scams easier, then keep it restricted outside of Copper.

I honestly don't know if Self-moderation or Pictures by newbies (when it was available) gets abused/misused more often; Copper Membership and removal of this privilege for newbies has gone a long way towards thwarting the abuse and it might do the same for Self-moderation.

I don't have a dog in this fight. While I have always seen both of these users bumping heads with many around the forum, for standing up for what they believe in respectively, it is not surprising that they've had a run in with one another at some point. If I had to guess, BADecker probably is unaffected by DT ratings; they only spend their time (as far as I can tell) in the off-topic and Politics section (off-topic 2).

I don't think their ratings are affecting their ability to operate around the forum as they normally would. I would agree that rating someone based on their personal beliefs isn't appropriate, but everything has it's limitations and someone's belief very easily could begin to infringe upon the experiences of others in a way that would be communally agreed upon as malicious. Not saying this is the case, though it could be reasonable for Vod to see it this way, just giving some criteria for where that reasoning has its limitations.

If it were the case that DTs rating stopped this user from sharing their opinion, or using the forum in a meaningful/productive way then this would be troublesome to sanction a particular viewpoint or set of ideas that are irrelevant to Bitcoin (according to most). They're still freely doing as they do, without any consequence from what I can tell. What exactly is broken about this?

If you feel you cannot trust somebody because of what you perceive to be cognitive dissonance, refusal of logic or contemptible thinking then you should be able to express that in their trust ratings without recourse. It would be imperative for anybody making any decisions based upon BADecker's trust to investigate the context and claims being made, rather than the plain number that is being presented. If I'm incorrect about any of this I'm open to change my mind and negotiation, this is just how I'm seeing things at first glance.


Trust is based on subjective opinions, everyone is going to have their criteria and it is bound to contradict another members principals or criteria at some point. This does not make it useless or merit its removal, it simply means it is not an objective system and should be applied as such.

I had to go surf through about 10-pages of information about the copper membership to figure out if this would be a fair proposal. I've concluded that I have no problem with this, but I would've if the Copper Membership was cheap. It seems like the copper membership was about $40, which is a fair price to pay for something that gives you so many privileges. For example, if it was only $10 for copper membership it would seem too susceptible to abuse.


This would seem to be a good argument to remove self-moderation from those with negative trust from Default Trust members. I think that may be a good addition to this, because there are higher ranking members that abuse self-moderation and our DT users could handle them.

I think the only thing we are disagreeing on is how difficult/rewarding it should be for a member to rank up, especially at the higher ranks. I do not think it is meant to be easy or even a guarantee to rank up. I think you are supposed to prove yourself and this allows the community to elect who is most deserving of a rank up. I'm sure if not enough users are able to rank up there will be tweak, either to the amount required to rank up, the amount of merit sources or even how much merit sources can generate.



Nullius is certainly an exceptional case. I have no clue whether or not they are a more established member using an alt as an experiment too, but I know I am impressed by their accumulation of merit. Almost all of his merit was gained by +1 or +2 merits at a time, there is only one notable exception to this. I also noticed that almost all of their merit comes from an accumulation of posts, not just a couple, which also shows how dynamic the distribution of merit truly is.

Apparently not even people doing research into your account check your post history. So, that is definitely a benefit while doing this experiment. You're somewhat undercover and so it is mostly natural. I certainly don't think anybody is giving you extra merits, because of your experiment or they know you may have another account.


Yes, you could have even done the various threads that hand out merit for your post submissions; TMAN levels people up that deserve it as well; I haven't seen you even attempt at any of these merit-boosting opportunities. I have gather like 150-Merit is the past couple weeks, so it is definitely feasible to acquire enough merit to rank up. If I want to become legendary I have a long way to go, but at least now becoming legendary will mean something.

Ahh, this definitely is a more clarified version of your idea. I would suggest looking at them completely separate from each-other, as an exclusive determining factor for specifically aimed purposes and goals. The ratio for merit is higher for higher rankings, because in order to obtain those ranks it has been determined that it would be best if that user was informed and being a high-quality contribution to the community; this is determined by merit. Even though they are both a piece of ranking up, you should not look at them as supposed to increase at equal pace.


Merit sources are constantly being added and reviewed to make sure there is a solid amount of merit in every sub-section and local board on the forum. We're working towards equality of opportunity, but this does not mean that we should cheapen the opportunity or the outcome.

Lowering activity requirements would not accomplish anything beneficial for the forum, so this is not a feasible option. If merit starts being given out too easily, this will also not be of any benefit to the forum. Both of these need to be considered, but I disagree that the current parameters should be changed significantly, if at all.