Default Trust Visualisation [Picture Heavy!!!] [14th Sept]

[Vod]

^
What?
You expect me to explain to you why my questions should be respected? They're questions, they want answers, fuck respect.
And you're also telling me I do not respect those words myself? WTF does that even mean?

It means, if you respected your own words, you would stand behind them.

The fact you created a throw away account instead of posting on your main account means you don't stand behind your words.   

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[TECSHARE]

^
What?
You expect me to explain to you why my questions should be respected? They're questions, they want answers, fuck respect.
And you're also telling me I do not respect those words myself? WTF does that even mean?

It means, if you respected your own words, you would stand behind them.

The fact you created a throw away account instead of posting on your main account means you don't stand behind your words.   

Or it could just mean that there are too many mongoloids like you running around negative rating people because they don't agree with statements made in threads, and people do not want to risk years of hard work building up their reputation to point out the systematic abusive behavior exhibited from those occupying the default trust.

[koshgel]

^
What?
You expect me to explain to you why my questions should be respected? They're questions, they want answers, fuck respect.
And you're also telling me I do not respect those words myself? WTF does that even mean?

It means, if you respected your own words, you would stand behind them.

The fact you created a throw away account instead of posting on your main account means you don't stand behind your words.   

Or it could just mean that there are too many mongoloids like you running around negative rating people because they don't agree with statements made in threads, and people do not want to risk years of hard work building up their reputation to point out the systematic abusive behavior exhibited from those occupying the default trust.

I'm not trying to be a dick but do you really feel like honest people have their reputation ruined over negative feedback? Does it really hinder forum experience to have a red mark? The worst that will happen is that users will want to use escrow when dealing with you (which should happen anyway).

[TECSHARE]

I'm not trying to be a dick but do you really feel like honest people have their reputation ruined over negative feedback? Does it really hinder forum experience to have a red mark? The worst that will happen is that users will want to use escrow when dealing with you (which should happen anyway).

Yes. New users almost always use the default trust. Often they don't even bother clicking it to see why the rating was left or from whom, they just move on because there are so many scams they are hyper-paranoid and unwilling to take any risk. Furthermore new users are trying to seek to build a reputation, therefore they seek the highest rated users to trade with.

I have been entrusted with thousands of dollars of other people's money and met all of my agreements every time, but because of negative ratings on my account I still get newbs asking me to use escrow over $10 transactions now. It most definitely DOES effect trading, and every user demanding escrow is no small thing, it is a pain in the ass and takes up lots of time, creates additional legal liabilities, and in addition it is a risk to the seller trusting a 3rd party that was a completely unnecessary step previously.

Frankly if you don't trade here regularly, you wouldn't have the slightest clue about any of this. I have been trading here for over 3 years, have been trusted with thousands of dollars, met all of my agreements, and have received over 100 positive trust ratings, yet according to the default trust rating at level 2, I am +19/-1/+9. Does that sound like it has an effect to you? The difference is quite distinct when from a user on the default trust.

[koshgel]

I'm not trying to be a dick but do you really feel like honest people have their reputation ruined over negative feedback? Does it really hinder forum experience to have a red mark? The worst that will happen is that users will want to use escrow when dealing with you (which should happen anyway).

Yes. New users almost always use the default trust. Often they don't even bother clicking it to see why the rating was left or from whom, they just move on because there are so many scams they are hyper-paranoid and unwilling to take any risk. Furthermore new users are trying to seek to build a reputation, therefore they seek the highest rated users to trade with.

I have been entrusted with thousands of dollars of other people's money and met all of my agreements every time, but because of negative ratings on my account I still get newbs asking me to use escrow over $10 transactions now. It most definitely DOES effect trading, and every user demanding escrow is no small thing, it is a pain in the ass and takes up lots of time, creates additional legal liabilities, and in addition it is a risk to the seller trusting a 3rd party that was a completely unnecessary step previously.

Frankly if you don't trade here regularly, you wouldn't have the slightest clue about any of this. I have been trading here for over 3 years, have been trusted with thousands of dollars, met all of my agreements, and have received over 100 positive trust ratings, yet according to the default trust rating at level 2, I am +19/-1/+9. Does that sound like it has an effect to you? The difference is quite distinct when from a user on the default trust.

I don't deal with newbies often but even with my green trust and also thousands of $ in trades I often get requests to send first or use an escrow with people I haven't traded with before.

I know you feel passionately about the Trust system and its participants but are you looking at it completely objectively? I feel like a a certain situation or two involving a DefaultTrust dispute has left you jaded. If you really deal with a large volume of newbie traders daily, then I understand why it stresses you out. But if a newbie is asking you to escrow like once a week or month, is it a big stress?

I see you as 64: -1 / +28(28) - There is one negative (from a non-trade), yes, but there are also 20+ confirmed positives (from trades) that would signal to any logical person that this guy is most likely honest! I can see why newbies might get confused but most other non-newbies will have their own trust list as well and will still see you as reputable member of this community.

I would focus more on finding ways to help newbies understand the trust system/make their own trust list than trying to destroy the trust system and shaming anyone who uses or adheres to it.

[TheButterZone]

Seems like the trust system, without any burden of proof required to be attached to each rating for peer review under common law rules of evidence which everyone can understand (and then thrash insufficient proofs, citing the rules), is more of an indicator of "is this person involved in any drama?" rather than "is this person fucking trustworthy or not? here are the proofs."

[Bicknellski]

^
What?
You expect me to explain to you why my questions should be respected? They're questions, they want answers, fuck respect.
And you're also telling me I do not respect those words myself? WTF does that even mean?

It means, if you respected your own words, you would stand behind them.

The fact you created a throw away account instead of posting on your main account means you don't stand behind your words.   

Really? You just made 3 or 4 throw away accounts did you not yesterday. Awareness please.

[Bicknellski]

Seems like the trust system, without any burden of proof required to be attached to each rating for peer review under common law rules of evidence which everyone can understand (and then thrash insufficient proofs, citing the rules), is more of an indicator of "is this person involved in any drama?" rather than "is this person fucking trustworthy or not? here are the proofs."

What members should do is simply work on that basis and build within the current trust system.

Given what I know about say Vod and Techshare they should be in agreement and when you look at the merits of what is and isn't evidence you can pretty much determine a value that most of the shit that gets thrown around is either real evidence or made up bullshit. The degree to which doesn't vary much there is a definite line between those trying to scam or lie about say charging VAT or setting up a mining hardware long con vs. selling a million dollars worth of miners to the community with little or no trust issues.

[Vod]

^
What?
You expect me to explain to you why my questions should be respected? They're questions, they want answers, fuck respect.
And you're also telling me I do not respect those words myself? WTF does that even mean?

It means, if you respected your own words, you would stand behind them.

The fact you created a throw away account instead of posting on your main account means you don't stand behind your words.   

Or it could just mean that there are too many mongoloids like you running around negative rating people because they don't agree with statements made in threads, and people do not want to risk years of hard work building up their reputation to point out the systematic abusive behavior exhibited from those occupying the default trust.

Maybe, but chances are he just doesn't stand behind his words. 

[TECSHARE]

I don't deal with newbies often but even with my green trust and also thousands of $ in trades I often get requests to send first or use an escrow with people I haven't traded with before.

I know you feel passionately about the Trust system and its participants but are you looking at it completely objectively? I feel like a a certain situation or two involving a DefaultTrust dispute has left you jaded. If you really deal with a large volume of newbie traders daily, then I understand why it stresses you out. But if a newbie is asking you to escrow like once a week or month, is it a big stress?

I see you as 64: -1 / +28(28) - There is one negative (from a non-trade), yes, but there are also 20+ confirmed positives (from trades) that would signal to any logical person that this guy is most likely honest! I can see why newbies might get confused but most other non-newbies will have their own trust list as well and will still see you as reputable member of this community.

I would focus more on finding ways to help newbies understand the trust system/make their own trust list than trying to destroy the trust system and shaming anyone who uses or adheres to it.

 My customer base was almost ENTIRELY newbies, because I often make contacts outside the forum and direct them here to my reputation. There was a clear drop off of people wanting to trade immediately. I really don't care if you believe it or if you experience the same thing because frankly it doesn't effect you, so why would you give a shit. No one cares until it happens to them. If you use the default trust at level 2 I am rated +19/-1/9, you clearly are using a different list. Additionally, tell me exactly when I shamed anyone for using the trust system, now you are just making shit up. If I am shaming anyone it is for their behavior, not because they use the trust system.

 As far as the default trust, it is broken and corrupted and DESERVES to be destroyed because it causes more harm than good. What you would do is great for you, maybe you should do that. I am not you, and I didn't request advice, and I really don't care if people don't like what I say, or even understand why I do what I do. Before we can improve this forum we need to get the people who are actively destroying it out of positions of authority, or at the very least reform their behavior, otherwise it is just a treadmill and we go nowhere.

[dogie]

Added the entire trust network version to the OP.

Notes:

• Full images are 40-50MB, click at your peril! These may or may not load depending on your browser. I recommend you right click and "save link as" to download.
• This trust network is constructed from all trust ratings rather than filtered down from DefaultTrust. This corresponds to ~Depth 11.
• Approximately 1600 users (could be a sender or recipient) and 400 trusts are excluded because they can't be linked back to the rest of the network by any route. They would appear as unconnected nodes, or nodes joined to other free floating nodes.
  
• Arrows representing users trusting DefaultTrust are removed, as they come from 99% of users and fills the entire network with lines.
• No negative ratings are taken into account as they are impossible to represent in this type of diagram. So users appearing in Depth 3 may actually be excluded.
• Node sizes are based on how many people trust them. It does not filter or weight ANY ratings, nor take into account if the rater is in DefaultTrust. Consider it entirely a popularity contest and not greatly useful.
• DefaultTrust is manually set as the largest node.
• If you can't find yourself, I can give you directions to your location. I'll need to know which graph you want though.
• Node colors correspond roughly to different trust levels according to the following scale. Depths 4-11 are on a spectrum scale.
  
  Depth 0 = pink (Only the DefaultTrust account)
  Depth 1 = purple
  Depth 2 = dark blue
  Depth 3 = light blue
  Depth 4 = green
  Depth 5 = ~
  Depth 6 = ~
  Depth 7 = ~ yellow
  Depth 8 = ~ yellow
  Depth 9 = ~
  Depth 10 = ~
  Depth 11 = red

If you want this to be updated in the future, you'll have to poke Theymos to provide a fresh dump, I can only manually do up to depth 4.

[Blazed]

Can you build a ranking of most trusted to least trusted using only default trust depth 2?

[theymos]

Those images are pretty cool-looking. Does anyone see anything in them that would suggest specific changes to the default trust list? I was trying to look for "islands" of not-default-trusted people that aren't just created by one person, but nothing stood out. I wonder if it'd be good to increase the default depth to 3 -- a lot of the graph isn't trusted by default.

[BadBear]

Has it's upsides and downsides. It is more inaccurate, and does open it up more to abuse due to t2 inclusions, but that would be mitigated somewhat by t2 exclusions being more effective as well. More users do need to be included though. Inclusion shouldn't be the default, but it should be a bit more open.

Though with a larger userbase, I do foresee more threads being opened about trust issues, and that's okay but I'm not sure they really belongs in meta. Besides, most people don't read meta and only staff and a few regular posters would be aware of any issues brought up.

[Lauda]

• Full images are 40-50MB, click at your peril! These may or may not load depending on your browser.
• This trust network is constructed from all trust ratings rather than filtered down from DefaultTrust. This corresponds to ~Depth 11.
  
• Approximately 1600 users (could be a sender or recipient) and 400 trusts are excluded because they can't be linked back to the rest of the network by any route. They would appear as unconnected nodes, or nodes joined to other free floating nodes.
  -snip-
  If you want this to be updated in the future, you'll have to poke Theymos to provide a fresh dump, I can only manually do up to depth 4.

The pictures are quite excellent, great work! It has taken me a while to find myself on depth 3 especially on the layered one. I did notice however that it does not display special characters such as the one that Mitchełł uses.
Now I'm interested to what members are on depth 9 or 10? However opening that image is going to take a while.

Those images are pretty cool-looking. Does anyone see anything in them that would suggest specific changes to the default trust list? I was trying to look for "islands" of not-default-trusted people that aren't just created by one person, but nothing stood out. I wonder if it'd be good to increase the default depth to 3 -- a lot of the graph isn't trusted by default.

It looks okay at the moment.
*pokes theymos*

[dogie]

Those images are pretty cool-looking. Does anyone see anything in them that would suggest specific changes to the default trust list? I was trying to look for "islands" of not-default-trusted people that aren't just created by one person, but nothing stood out. I wonder if it'd be good to increase the default depth to 3 -- a lot of the graph isn't trusted by default.

With default Depth 3, pink, purple, dark and light blue are all in DefaultTrust. Ratings from the darkest green people would count towards trust scores. I don't think arbitrarily including another rung of ratings is a good idea because if we think there are problems now, we'll have 20x the problems. No one's trust lists are geared towards that and ratings left in that tier probably weren't left or have been vetted with the intention of being rate altering. From the obscene Depth 11 graph, there are some conclusions we can make and exceptions which would need to be removed.

The pattern you really want to see is like OgNasty or Blazedout419 - its just a shitstorm of lines without its own downstream cloud. They're also centrally located which suggests increased crosslinking. Unique lists (downstream clouds) shouldn't exist because it means they're the only person trusting those users, which by virtue of being trusted would be expected to have multiple vouches. Its not an inherently evil situation but its a bad flag and is a precursor for abuse. SilentSonicBoom has that excessively large cloud of unique followers, as does PsychoticBoy, Sampy, Maidak, Fakhoury, Mars78 and Cryptology. Some of these users are already in DefaultTrust and so the same negative affect is happening to providing others trust score affecting ability. CanaryInTheMine (who sold trust ratings) and Bicknellski (who is circlejerking trust) both have obscenely large trust lists which don't correlate with anyone else. They'd both require their own threads to consider exclusion by a higher tier if not already.

Swapping back to the Depth3 graphs is more useful as we can solely look at those being added to DefaultTrust rather than also those who's trust ratings would also be included. Yifan Hu is the most useful. This highlights the cloud island problem more. There are several members with 20+ unique members behind their trust lists which isn't a great indicator that those trusts are useful. Those individual islands are then going to compound down another tier and be SO easy to abuse / sell accounts into DefaultTrust.

Everyone wants DefaultTrust to expand, but arbitrarily including another rung is not a good idea. The forums struggle to mediate Depth 1-3 rating disputes, nevermind Depth 1-4. There would also be significantly more lobbying as if the guy who trusts the rating won't remove the rating leaver, they'll go up another rung and try again and again. As we've seen over the last few months, not everyone is resilient to lobbying by potentially malicious people and will remove people from their trust rating to stop the posting. I believe the solution is to promote some of those larger names up a tier if they're willing to maintain their lists, and others to fill their places. That means we're self vetting additions rather than adding everyone and hoping we can retrospectively fix those additions.

The depth 11 graph would appear to suggest a promotion of the following promotions, although this is entirely based on a popularity contest from all tiers of users so will need additional checking. It also doesn't include the quality of their trust lists although generally placement can speak to that.

Depth 2 up to 1 (dark blue up to purple):

John (John K.)	- I'm not sure low activity is a reason to kick him off. It made sense when he was inactive, but not any more now he is about.
Vod	- He's trusted by a hell of a lot of people anyway.
DannyHamilton
Mitchel	- He has a symbol in his name and it ruined my graph so maybe not.
Dabs	- Small downstream cloud but doesn't seem excessive
Sirius
BCB
casascius
gmaxwell
Gavin Andresen
Thick as Thieves
DeathAndTaxes
nanotube
Blazedout419
phanastisch
SebastianJu
-ck
dogie
Luke-Jr	- Although IIRC he has quite a unique trust list taste
allinvain
Blazr
Stunna

Depth 3 up to 2 (light blue up to dark blue):
Shouldn't have to add anyone manually, they'll get promoted inherently.

[dogie]

Can you build a ranking of most trusted to least trusted using only default trust depth 2?

If you mean using node size based on number of users trusting that person, then yes. Its a popularity contest though and doesn't give any weight to anyones ratings. It also gets a bit weird because Depth 2 people could trust people in Depth 1 which wouldn't have any affect 'IRL'. [It also wouldn't have any exclusions counted but nothing we can do]. If there is another variation I'm missing then let me know.

• Full images are 40-50MB, click at your peril! These may or may not load depending on your browser.
• This trust network is constructed from all trust ratings rather than filtered down from DefaultTrust. This corresponds to ~Depth 11.
  
• Approximately 1600 users (could be a sender or recipient) and 400 trusts are excluded because they can't be linked back to the rest of the network by any route. They would appear as unconnected nodes, or nodes joined to other free floating nodes.
  -snip-
  If you want this to be updated in the future, you'll have to poke Theymos to provide a fresh dump, I can only manually do up to depth 4.

The pictures are quite excellent, great work! It has taken me a while to find myself on depth 3 especially on the layered one. I did notice however that it does not display special characters such as the one that Mitchełł uses.
Now I'm interested to what members are on depth 9 or 10? However opening that image is going to take a while.

If anyone is desperate then I can find their nodes on each of the graphs and I'll give you directions. Yes it won't show special characters properly and thankfully they're quite rare. I could manually replace them but I don't think its worth it. Your best off downloading the larger graphs as most likely they'll fill your browser cache or just refuse to display (right click -> save link as).

Those images are pretty cool-looking. Does anyone see anything in them that would suggest specific changes to the default trust list? I was trying to look for "islands" of not-default-trusted people that aren't just created by one person, but nothing stood out. I wonder if it'd be good to increase the default depth to 3 -- a lot of the graph isn't trusted by default.

It looks okay at the moment. *pokes theymos*

Hey, this wasn't a honk if you like graphs incitation to poke, there was meant to be a reason .

[Blazed]

Nice work on these graphs Dogie. Do not bother with the trust ranking system as it really does not matter. I am not sure moving us to depth 3 by default will really help anything around here, but it is up to Theymos.

[Taras]

I spent a few minutes trying to find my name in the big chart

[qwk]

Those images are pretty cool-looking. Does anyone see anything in them that would suggest specific changes to the default trust list? I was trying to look for "islands" of not-default-trusted people that aren't just created by one person, but nothing stood out. I wonder if it'd be good to increase the default depth to 3 -- a lot of the graph isn't trusted by default.

IDK, level 3 may be a little too much.
I'd rather include some more people into DefaultTrust.
Maybe you could just take the person with the highest trustrating by DefaultTrust-Level1 once a week and include him/her into DefaultTrust?
Or, even more fun:
Every week, include the two people with highest score and remove the one with lowest
That would grow DefaultTrust over time, and also keep it clean of inactive or "fallen to darkness" members.