I was going through my post history trying to find some information and I came across a few posts that really reminded me exactly how long these supposedly new issues with the trust system and the ambiguity of rules have been a problem around here, and how long ago I detailed exactly how this would turn out... and here we are...
Yet you have it both ways, picking and choosing who does and does not get to have influence in the trust system. It has basically now come to a point where people who have dedicated enough time here to be really trusted now are SO TRUSTED that it is unacceptable for them to even defend themselves, and you expect them to sit by idly and be harassed. You sure aren't doing anything about it when it is reported, but again you "have the right to interpret the rules" now don't you. Why would you care if I am being harassed, no skin off of your back.
I never really thought the trust system was a good idea because it gives people a false sense of security, but I never really had a problem with it because what I was told is that the system was UNMODERATED, but clearly that is not the truth. Some one dictating from a central position who is and who is not to be trusted is not a trust NETWORK, it is a trust DICTATORSHIP. Solution: stop dictating to people who they should and should not trust. Of course this all happens behind closed doors so no one ever really gets to witness this coercive process, so how would anyone know unless they experienced it themselves?
I never asked to be on the default trust list, not once. I harp on the subject because the rules are unwritten and selectively enforced. It is a corrupt system. I don't want to be on it, I want it to end. I left my negative rating because I was told over and over again that trust ratings are not moderated, yet Theymos and other staff members had no problem coercing me into changing my rating by personally seeing to it that I was not only removed from the default trust, but then a new feature was added, so that I could be excluded from it 2x so that others on the default trust list could not re-add me.
That does not sound like an unmoderated trust system, this is a trust dictatorship where Theymos and only Theymos chose who stays and who goes. Furthermore they can't be bothered to post rules, or even uniformly enforce their unwritten rules. Armis was the perpetrator, and Theymos was happy to have an excuse to get personally involved and make sure I was removed and then excluded for the unforgivable crime of not following his orders to change my rating.
All you are doing is feeding into trolls and fueling their desire to continue to bait and make such complaints after users react. You the mods and staff are now ripping the community apart yourselves by insisting on enforcing this failed policy. You can characterize me as disgruntled or paranoid all you like. The fact is this is causing harm to the community, and either you will come to terms with it now, or after it causes a lot more damage that can't be repaired. Clearly the egos of the staff take precedence currently.
There is no sensible way to moderate people's trust. What you are demanding is impossible to be delivered without there being other tremendous pitfalls being created by dictating to other people how to use their trust. You might think it is for the wrong reasons, clearly he thinks it was for the right reasons. Uninterested 3rd parties have no stake in making sure justice is done, only in making the drama go away as quickly as possible. Because of this strategy, all a troll has to do is kick ans scream and the mods and staff will come running in an endless self fueling cycle of troll-baiting of trusted members followed by claims of abuse. Trusted members operate IN THE OPEN. Trolls use endless disposable accounts. There is a cost to operating out in the open so that people know you can be trusted, and people who are reputable should be supported, because they are what makes this community work, not the trust system.
Being in the default trust is not an elected position. No one on it signed up to be a servant of the community even when it costs them personally. We got on that list for demonstrating we follow through on our agreements and operate in an open an honest manner. A long history of operating in a reputable way does not some how create an obligation on the part of the trusted party to serve you as if they had some kind of capacity of a public officer. Basically what you are saying is you were joking with this user on a professional thread of his, he did not find it amusing and left you a negative trust. Now that you are faced with the consequences of your actions you demand that he uphold the good name of this forum at his expense, but you yourself hold no liability in this circumstance.
Complete ambiguity of unwritten rules. Apparently the staff don't like to write any rules down, because, you know some one might hold them to it. Apparently people are supposed to just GUESS what the rules are, and if they break one well there isn't usually a warning, just punishment metered out without discussion. Apparently because the staff know what the rules are, the rest of us should know, like via osmosis or something.
... the trust system is broken, staff have absurdly ambiguous standards which they selectively enforce and refuse to clarify, along with their disconcerting eagerness to toss out and slander trusted members who have worked very hard to build trust over years for infractions that they refuse to enforce uniformly for all users. In stead of confronting their broken system they would rather rip apart the community starting with the MOST TRUSTED members (except for them and their special pals of course).
I have never been a big fan of the default trust, but until I was removed I had no way to know that trust was actually moderated, default trust users has unwritten and unspoken responsibilities, or that it was so insanely simple for trolls, scammers, and extortionists to have some one removed from the default trust. In short, I had no way of knowing these abuses existed until they were perpetrated upon me personally.
The simple fact is moderation of the trust list from any central authority is a disaster and these types of things will become more common. If the staff/moderators don't admit the flaw in their reasoning here they will simply end up tearing the Bitcoin talk community apart with their own hands.
Trust exclusions are just a back door way for you and the highest ranking in the trust to take quiet retribution upon contributing members who have worked to build their reputations while not taking responsibility for it because no one really sees it, unlike a trust rating where you have to explain yourself and everyone can see it.
There need not be some master conspiracy plot for this to happen, just plain old nepotism which happens everywhere every day. The word conspiracy is bandied about by people who disagree with me and wish to marginalize my valid points about the inconsistent application of rules regarding the default trust system, and the trust system in general.
IMHO I think that members of the Default Trust and Depth 2 Trust should be extra diligent about handing out negative ratings. I also feel that the ratings should never be set in stone and are subject to reevaluation if the subject has demonstrated that he has changed. That's why I'm always willing to take a second look at a rating that I've given out and see if it's still applicable. If not, it gets removed, simple as that.
I agree 100% with what you said here. The key in your statement is that from start to finish it is YOUR CHOICE, not some one else telling you what to do with your own ratings. I agree due diligence is important as as far as making sure there is good reason for the ratings, which is why I have left so few. I don't go around looking for people to negative. Everyone I left a rating for had some kind of interaction with me, usually trade related.
When I left the negative for Armis I expected he would delete his posts and stop harassing me and I could simply delete it and we could both be restored to our former states and go our own ways. As you said if the person can demonstrate a willingness to change their behavior it can always be reconsidered. This was exactly my thinking, yet never at any point did Armis admit to any wrongdoing, let alone back down his trolling, insults, rhetoric, or slander. His unwillingness to take actions to restore us BOTH to our previous states by deleting his slanderous posts from several of my marketplace ops demonstrated to me he was unrepentant, and was under the impression that the moderators would some how "fix" his rating by making me look abusive as possible. Because of this he went as far as he possibly could to try to harm my reputation in a bid to make it look as if his rating was undeserved and unprovoked.
The moderators then emboldened him in this logic by attacking me for my actions, so in his mind he had no reason to compromise because he was going to get what he wanted anyway. Now he is stuck with a permanent negative rating and I was removed from the default trust list as a result rather than him having the rating removed and me having my marketplace OPs free of his slander and trolling. This is what happens when uninterested 3rd parties get involved in moderating trust ratings. Even EBAY doesn't touch feedback ratings, and they are one of the most corrupt companies on the planet. They don't do this because they understand what a mistake it is to try to moderate feedback as a 3rd party. So rather than a logical moderated action on my part to limit the actions of trolls in my marketplace OPs, this was then cast as some kind of abuse of authority for using my trust ratings as leverage against him (even though lots of people on the default trust use it this way, including VOD).
Actually it very much is the case that the trust list is one big boys club, and how I was dealt with is proof of it. Yet some people here make a part time job out of leaving negative feedback for the most flimsy of reasons and they are allowed to stay on the default trust. I EARNED my position on the default trust by trading honestly for YEARS. Additionally I was removed not because I was untrustworthy (the entire point of the trust system), but because staff DICTATED that I be removed under threat of removal of the trusting party. If he chose on his own to remove me that would be fine, but he didn't, he was directed to remove me "or else".
What you call abuse, I call a justified use. Supposedly the trust system is unmoderated, but here you are specifying the right and wrong kinds of trust based on your own interests and completely disregarding my own concerns. How was I supposed to be aware that the staff/mods operate like this if it is all done behind closed doors? I guess I should just know it because you know it, like via osmosis or something.
...the staff clearly did attempt to extort me into changing my trust by threatening removal of the party that trusted me from the trust list himself if he did not comply. He didn't remove me because I was untrustworthy, he removed me because he was DIRECTED TO by the forum staff.
People have left me negatives before, and I haven't complained about it because people have enough sense to judge feedback for themselves. You insist on treating everyone like children you have some right to dictate to because you have buttons to play with. You can pretend you know what I would do all day to cast me in whatever light suits you, but it does not make it true. This is a nice way of using circular logic and fantasy to justify your stance as opposed to WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
The default trust has ZERO INTEGRITY, not because of people "abusing" it, but because it is selectively moderated ONLY WHEN IT SERVES THE INTERESTS OF STAFF, MODERATORS, AND THEIR BUDDIES. You guys handed me down a maximum punishment because I DEFIED YOU not because of the reason I left the trust. STAFF use the default trust as a form of EXTORTION over honest traders by threatening to remove something they did not create, THE HONEST TRADERS DID, over a period of YEARS. Because of this the default trust is nothing more than a sham designed to give staff complete control over all high level traders here by dangling years of their work in front of them and saying "obey or else".
...I wonder what kind of governments have laws which are unwritten and must be constantly guessed about by the population.... doesn't sound like a very reliable place. Making the rules unwritten may make things A LOT easier for you, but if it makes no difference and some one will complain anyway, why is it you insist on subjecting everyone to unwritten, non uniform, unpredictable enforcement for rules they don't even know exist?
...Default trust isn't perfect and incorruptible, but a trust list run by someone else (and let's be real here, if default trust didn't exist, someone would make a "default" that everyone would end up using anyway) would be much more corruptible...
This is quite an assumption to make. The forum itself is earning income and interacting with users of the forum. The moderators are paid, and that income comes from ads sold. There is a DIRECT FINANCIAL INTEREST in keeping this trust list under control of the people who are the primary beneficiaries of this (mods, any paid staff).
Even assuming that you are all 100% honest at your word, that alone is enough to influence your actions drastically regarding how you moderate the default trust. This is why a distributed solution to this is the only solution. Will it ever be exploited? Yes probably, but so is the current system. At least a distributed system has the ability to react and shift reputation to individuals who deserve it and remove it from those who don't THEMSELVES, not from a central position of a small group of otherwise disinterested financial beneficiaries.
When I look at the Hierarchical view of the default trust network, I see that he is roughly in the middle of his trust list, that appears to otherwise be in roughly the order that people were added in.
That list is ordered by user ID, not added time.
I think the main problem is that the trust system has given members that haven't proven themselves responsible enough the ability to mark someone's account with negative trust, and essentially ruin the account.
Any inaccuracies will eventually be fixed. I'm not going to allow the default trust network to contain inaccurate ratings for long.
You can have all the moral dogmas you want, unless you also have a fair, accurate, and impartial system of enforcing that, then it is nothing more than a destructive blind ideology. If people are abusing the feedback system, others within that same system have the ability to call it out. We don't need a disinterested trust cartel dictating what should be done with their only concern being their own revenue stream from the forum.
...Involving disinterested 3rd parties in trust moderation is a failed policy.
Centralized policing of the trust system is a failed policy.
Until Theymos wises up an realizes this he is going to personally participate in shredding this community from the inside out with his own hands. Threads like this will come up more and more until they are just like the good old "centralized communist system" days, only with a nice pretend veneer of a distributed system to make it look like legitimate community consensus. People are free to point out trust abuse, and in many cases extreme abusers are themselves tagged with negatives from other respected community members. You guys CLAIM you don't want to have to deal with disputes, but you are CONSTANTLY INJECTING YOURSELVES INTO THEM.
Let the trust system moderate itself. Going around telling people who to remove from their trust under threat of themselves being removed is little more than a loophole to let Theymos personally dictate who gets to join his special little club, and anyone who doesn't obey his directive gets removed. That is not a community based distributed trust system, that is a centralized trust dictatorship, in many ways even worse than the old "scammer tag" days, because now everyone thinks it is distributed. This strategy of trying to moderate trust in any way is a failed one and will only lead to this community destroying itself from the inside out as trolls and scammers leverage it as a wedge against the core of the community.
What is the recurring theme here? Unwritten rules and ambiguous selective enforcement. We need an objective standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws as a standard for leaving negative ratings. Or we can just keep letting the forum eat its own face...
And we are officially here. This is the tyranny of ambiguity, selective enforcement, and avoidance of responsibility you carefully fostered here Theymos. People's real lives and freedoms are being threatened because you refuse to make hard choices in favor of utopian fantasies. Enjoy the fruits.
