*cough* speaking on something they know nothing about. Read Badbear's posts, they pretty much sum it up. If more spam is being added than good information, then the spam dilutes the thread making good information harder to find, making the thread less useful for its intended purpose. I dont know why anyone would think the staff here would protect BFL, I'd be willing to bet a few of them got scammed by BFL, and if they didn't, then they were heavily annoyed by the 2013/2014 BFL drama. I find it hard to believe that there would be any good will towards BFL. No Staff are afraid of BFL, and we aren't going to get sued by them. If Theymos recieved the DCMA notice, that probably would have been public knowledge. And thats if he decided not to fight it. Pretty much all of the Bitcoins that the forums are left holding after the new forum software is for emergency necessities. Legal fund falls into that description. I dont think anyone is getting bullied by whats remaining of BFL, and I'm pretty sure we have no reason to protect them. If thats the case maybe what was said in the first place is right? Nah keep making theories up, the first answer can never be the real one right?

Depends on where you are at. In my state, you can be fired at any time and for any reason. I could be fired because my boss doesn't like my ethnicity/religion/etc, and they could just walk up to me, say I'm fired and I'd be gone. They can also skip the 1-2 week notice by continuing to pay you for that time.

I've got an elaborate scavenger hunt set up in case something happens to me, so a buddy can get access to my coins, but only if I'm out of the picture, be that dead/jail/etc. I also have it specified that my BTC go to my sister, however he gets a commision for helping her get the BTC since shes not very techsavvy.

What?

No, we dont have to check IPs as its really not that big of a deal.We dont have to monitor users, its on the individuals involved if they get caught doing something they shouldn't be. I'm pretty sure 99% of the time, something can be illegal in your country, but not illegal to discuss (as mprep said) the only time its really an issue are in sales threads, and even then its on the individual. If you buy some psychodelic blowfish that's illegal in your country, its not our responsibility to make sure that you did your due diligence. This is a global forum, rules and standards are different from country to country. Its not our job to enforce the thousand ridiculous rules of countries around the world.

Your email address is publicly displayed on your profile, maybe they got it off of there if they saw you had posted on a similar topic? You may want to hide your email address from the public.

The rule is you are allowed to post topics as long as they are legal in your own country. If you can distill and sell liquor in your country, you are welcome to make a post about it.

The one exception I think I've seen, is someone was selling nsfw photos of themself (or so they claim) but they were 16 or 17. In their country that was legal, but we still deleted it as thats sort of something that we wanted to stay away from.

This is a forum, we dont have capitalistic motives either.


We will see, wont we? 

Because all donations (and advertising revenue which was the majority of what was used) was raised for the sole purpose of getting new forum software. I'd assume Theymos talked to Slickage and decided that they had the ability to get it done right.

They are following my example. Just saying, the people you are talking about would feel more at home over there *points at wieney hut jr.*

The point is, that newbie's feedback (and everyone's for that matter) is pretty much disregarded unless you include a reference link, and an accurate description of what the negative is for. I haven't seen a single case since the trust system was implemented where trust spam has been any sort of issue. I've seen people annoyed that they recieved a negative, but I haven't seen a single case where a false negative from trust spammers has inhibited anyone in any way. I dont see why we need to propose fixes for something that isn't a problem. If it becomes a problem, we should fix it.

I'm not sure why people care so much about a missed guestimate from 8 months ago. Its done when its done. Why does it matter? This probably isn't one of those things that you want rushed, so theres no point in getting butthurt over a missed expected finish date. Or would you rather we use a shoddy not complete forum software full of bugs and security holes.


What makes you think that? Have you been beta testing it and seen the progress being made? What are you basing your guess on?

Orrrr, you give scammers 42 days of immunity before the newbie they just got scammed or almost scammed can speak out against them. Can anyone show a single example of where trust spam by newbies has caused any effect on anyone in the slightest? Maybe point out a thread where someone refused to deal with someone because they had 50 negatives from untrusted newbies?

It is also worth noting here, that although a user can delete all of their posts/pms, Theymos can restore said PMs/posts if there is a reason to. Scammers in the past have tried deleting all of their posts to hide evidence, of which Theymos restored.

He did have a money transmitter license. He owned Bitinstant which was legally registered in New York. You were only legally allowed to purchase $1k in BTC per day, however he found out that a user with connections to the silk road was bypassing the $1k/day limit. He then got nailed for his relationship to the Silk Road through that intermediary.

There are additional details in the case, but that is the gist. I dont know, I am personally a fan of Charlie Shrem, I am of the opinion that if this was a standard USD business and not a BTC business in question, he would have got a slap on the wrist and a warning that what he was doing could be considered illegal. People are quick to defend him, because this was one of the first cases of pretty openly biass of law enforcement targeting a Bitcoin business to send a message.

Your best course of action is to change your password to something very secure and forget about the account. As others have mentioned accounts are not deleted. (not even admins can delete their own accounts)

I've seen people that posted 50+ times per day for weeks and they didn't get banned. Its not about quantity, its about quality. Its quite easy for moderators to see whether someone's post history is entirely spam, or if they just made a couple of insubstantial posts. On the flip side, someone could get banned for posting once per day. An Admin can remove a ban, however it is very infrequently done.

30 minutes of writing results in a wall of text, read the TLDR if you would like, if you must skip anything, skip the first paragraph as the later sections are the solutions more than the reasoning.

TLDR: Theymos has no real motivation for running a corrupt trust system, much easier ways he could achieve any nefarious goals, people use the system wrong, new system needed acknowledged by all. Your best solution and the one that would make us all happiest would be to take some time and propose a new feasible system.

Vod gets his position on default trust from Tomatocage. Tomatocage is solely in charge of whether or not Vod stays on. Theymos could send Tomatocage a PM saying, hey I think Vod is getting out of line, and Tomatocage could say, hey get bent buddy, without any rammifications. Only if Tomatocage made very flawed judgement would Theymos consider removing Tomatocage from default trust depth 1. Staff make up less than half of default trust's 1st depth. It isn't shocking that staff/admins are on the default trust system, as if we had non neutral rational judgement, we wouldn't be staff in the first place. Others are people who have really proven themselves responsible to give accurate feedback. Tomatocage/OgNasty/Badbear/Myself/Theymos/etc are all on the same playing field, we are different branches of the 1st depth. Theymos has the ability to pick who goes on the first level of default trust, but his personal trustlist also carries the same weight as everyone else's. If Tomatocage/OgNasty/Dooglus all added you to their trust lists, it would override Theymos and Badbear's exclusion of you. Selective enforcement of the rules is impossible, since there are no rules, just accepted community made guidelines. Its like a handshake, there aren't rules to a handshake, but there are generally accepted practises. Don't leave people negatives for frivilous reasons, since people are relying more heavily on your feedback, don't spit in someone's hand when they offer to shake your hand. If you get 10 people representing members of default trust, and you spit in their hands during a handshake, some will be confused, some might walk away, some might punch you, they don't all act the same, but it is generally unacceptable to spit in their hand, so they will react how they see fit. If they pull a knife on you, thats an example of when Theymos would remove them from the default trust list. How someone reacts really comes down to the extension of reputation. If Vod acts unreasonably, it reflects poorly on Tomatocage, for that reason it is in Tomatocage's self interest to only keep Vod on if he is being more helpful than harmful. If Tomatocage doesn't respond and Vod goes unchecked, then Tomatocage looses his credibility, and if it reaches the point where Theymos' pick in Tomatocage is reflecting poorly on himself, thats when someone from the 1st depth of default trust would be removed, not as retaliation. Self interest is one of the best assurances that feedback means anything. Everyone operates as independantly as possible, hopefully the trust network can branch out enough to where it nears decentralization, and all disputes are handled between the 3rd/4th/5th depths, and the mandatory people up top aren't involved at all. That is if a better fix isn't made.

I don't know Theymos that well, but I know he isn't so petty that he would make any sort of action if people disagreed with him and all of default trust added you to their list and overrode his exclusion. I'm also quite sure that he would be thrilled to not be involved in default trust at all if a new system could be designed that would allow it. If he wanted to abuse people, there are far better ways he could have done it without the trust system. Theymos isn't active in the marketplace, and he doesn't run any services, why would he need to control the forum's trust? How is being in the center of the trust system benefiting him, and how much of his time is he wasting being involved? Why put in the effort if you have nothing to gain? You were around during the Scammer tag era, he was unhappy dealing with people's issues when he had absolute power. Then you were here when the idealistic trust system was developed, where people would make their own trust lists, and default trust would be just that, a list that was there until people customized there's to suit their needs. Honestly, who uses a default setting for anything long term? Was there any sort of manipulation there, or did people just latch on to default trust and refuse to make their own trust lists? Whenever I see people fighting against the trust system, they angrily say, Remove default trust! Make your own trust list! That'll show them right? Sure... yeah stick it to the man, help us use the trust system as designed. The man has better things to do than deal with petty squabbles over people's behavior, petty fights they get in, scam attempts, etc.

To be clear, I'm not shilling for the trust system, nor am I trying to maintain my position. I don't need to lick Theymos' boots, and I could honestly give a damn whether I stayed on or not. My proposals have been public for months, I'd be happy without a trust system at all, but that isn't a feasible solution either. If I didn't think the system as it was the best that anyone has thought of thus far, I'd be one of the first people to speak out for change. Your proposals for how to fix the issues with "Staff/Admin corruption and hypocrisy" aren't feasible any more than people who want to appoint moderators to the trust system. I dont think there is any staff/admin corruption going on, but if you can figure out a viable way to get the Staff/Admins out of the tangle in a responsible matter, I'm pretty sure thats what most would want, although I can't speak for everyone, but Theymos and myself for sure.

If you want to make a difference and further your cause at the same time, help to develop a new system that

1) Protects newbies
2) Helps to detect scams
3) Doesn't put any governing authority in place
4) Is resistant to trust spamming
5) Allows everyone to leave feedback for others
6) Is not moderated
7) all of the other features I can't think of off of the top of my head.

At this point, I don't especially care what you think is going on behind the scenes. Take a minute to think about who is involved in whatever corruption you percieve. Do they have motivation for it? Could it be more easily achieved in a less public way, or in a more effective way? What is it whoever involved in these scandals has to gain. Does Tomatocage owe Vod a life debt? Does Theymos have a secret business that he is using default trust to shill for? Who is the root of the problem, and why. If you stop and think rationally for a moment, and realize that no one has anything to gain here, perhaps you will realize that you aren't being singled out, your own actions are to blame. Each case is handled differently based on the individuals involved and the circumstances, and there isn't some elaborate scheme. If Theymos hated you, couldn't he have just found some bullshit excuse to ban you rather than just excluding you from a trust system? Would you be allowed to continue to post on a private forum about issues in its managment if it was true, and we were worried people would realize it? Think about the whole situation and whether it makes sense to you. Rationally, not while you are pissed off about something.

The "don't necro post" rule is more in place for general common sense reasons. Use your best judgement, you can post in old threads without it being against the rules as long as your post is still relevant. What we don't want people doing is going into 3 year old sales threads, or GPU mining discussions and posting, "Hey do you still have this?" Or, "Why would you bother mining with your GPU, ASICs have made them obsolete" etc. The warning is there to let you know that the topic is old and any information might be outdate or that the thread may have been concluded long ago. If its a jokes thread, there probably isn't an issue with necro posting in it.

BTC-E is the only exchange that I'll ever use. Their exchange is probably the most illegal, but its the only one that has been around as long as it has been. I was actually in the BTC-E chat the first and only time they got hacked, and they refunded everyone within a few hours. It was a pretty sizeable hack too, something like $40k USD, and BTC was around $10/coin at the time. About a year's worth of their service fees.

They even made me a custom chat gif for my birthday 

I dont especially care that they aren't transparent as long as they work, I dont have enough fingers to count the "legit" exchanges that have popped up and run with people's money. I dont know if they are doing things legally in Russia, but by staying anonymous they have pretty successfully dodged US regulators.