The latest change in the trust system has a flaw making it abusable

[alani123]

Recently theymos changed the trust system so that when someone receives positive ratings they can be canceled out by a single negative one. But this single rating can be canceled by a more recent positive rating.

But it gets confusing. The example of tspacepilot shopwcases that.

I'll put events in a timeline.

1. tspacepilot has a neutral rating of 0: -0 / +3
2. Wardrick leaves negative making it ? ??: -1 / +3
3. jonald_fyookball cancels Wardrick making it 0: -1 / +4
4. Wardrick deletes and reposts his rating making it ? ??: -1 / +4

I guess theymos didn't have this in mind when he was making that change.

[jonald_fyookball]

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

[tarsua]

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

yes, yours did come after his, the record should show that

[Vod]

If you delete and re-post feedback to trick the feedback system, that is unethical behavior as you are probably on the default trust list.

[Quickseller]

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

You do realize that tspacepilot pretty clearly indicated that he had no interest in repaying any amount of money that he received that he should not have right? His responses were nowhere along the lines of "the amounts you are telling me to repay are too high, I want to figure out how much I actually owe you and will pay you back". His response was much closer to "it does not matter if I scammed, no transaction took place in the currency exchange section of bitcointalk.org therefore the trust rating was unjust, and BTW I dispute the amount".

[Vod]

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

Yes, if you want.  Your feedback came after his, and nullified his feedback.  I saw it.

Then you deleted your feedback.   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1171059.msg12357041#msg12357041

You can re-add it without anyone questioning ethics.

[alani123]

I think that the current system should be changed to prevent such battles. IMO the latest comment canceling out previous ones is stupid on it's own. I won't go into explaining why I believe that but it's just made worse by the fact that there are no condtitions. As we saw, two people could keep deleting and reposting their comments to cancel out each other up to infinity.

[jonald_fyookball]

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

Yes, if you want.  Your feedback came after his, and nullified his feedback.  I saw it.

Then you deleted your feedback.   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1171059.msg12357041#msg12357041

You can re-add it without anyone questioning ethics.

Just to be clear, I added mine AFTER Wardricks, then removed it, because Quickseller
persuaded me to.  After further reviewing including communicating with tspacepilot
by PM and hearing his explanation, I readded it.  Both of my feedbacks came after
Wardrick. 

At that point, Warddrick deleted and re-added.

[Panthers52]

If you delete and re-post feedback to trick the feedback system, that is unethical behavior as you are probably on the default trust list.

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

You can re-add it without anyone questioning ethics.

Unless I disagree with you

[Vod]

At that point, Warddrick deleted and re-added.

This is unethical.  

[theymos]

No, that's intentional.

- If a person has mostly negatives, then they should clearly have a negative score.
- If a person has only positives, then they should clearly have a non-negative score.
- If someone who previously had lots of positives gets a negative, this is interpreted by the system as "This person could very well be a con man! I can't be sure, though, since it's just one rating. Better show ??? just in case".
- If they then get several more negatives after the first negative, the ??? will turn into a negative score, as it should.
- If they get positives after the first negative, then this is interpreted as "Oh, it looks like that negative is probably wrong. I guess I can now mostly ignore it."

See the full algorithm here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1066857.0

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating. (In this case you should explicitly respond to the negative rating you're negating.) It is not legitimate to keep deleting and reposting negative ratings to put the system back into "this guy just turned scammer!" mode. People who do that shouldn't be trusted.

[Vod]

If you delete and re-post feedback to trick the feedback system, that is unethical behavior as you are probably on the default trust list.

should I repost mine since Wardricks really came first?

You can re-add it without anyone questioning ethics.

Quickseller, in this case, re-adding the same feedback is fine because no one had added feedback since.  He wouldn't be tricking the system.

[achow101]

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating. (In this case you should explicitly respond to the negative rating you're negating.) It is not legitimate to keep deleting and reposting negative ratings to put the system back into "this guy just turned scammer!" mode. People who do that shouldn't be trusted.

So if jonald_fyookball reposts his rating and then Wardrick reposts his negative to cancel out the positive, Wardrick should be removed from Default Trust for trust abuse.

[alani123]

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating.

Agree.

It is not legitimate to keep deleting and reposting negative ratings to put the system back into "this guy just turned scammer!" mode.

All I'm saying in the above posts is that a simple change could prevent such illegitimate use.

[jonald_fyookball]

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating. (In this case you should explicitly respond to the negative rating you're negating.)

I just did this just now for tspacepilot, negating Wardrick's feedback.

[theymos]

In summary, for people who previously had many positives and no negatives:
- The first negative rating defines a border between pre-controversy and post-controversy.
- Don't move this border unless you have a really good reason. If you must add more info, leave another negative or neutral rating.
- If you agree with the border-negative, leave a negative rating.
- If you disagree with the border-negative, leave a positive rating responding to the negative, even if you already have a positive rating for that person. Don't delete your old rating. You should also consider excluding the inaccurate-rater from your trust list.

All I'm saying in the above posts is that a simple change could prevent such illegitimate use.

It's not really simple... For performance reasons, I need to keep the trust algorithm fairly limited. It's computed ~20 times per topic page (and hundreds of times if you go to ;all), and this web-of-trust stuff is pretty slow already.

[alani123]

Simple to think about but hard to implement as it seems. Thanks for your insight theymos.

[Blazed]

So people now leave feedback to offset other feedback? How is that legit exactly?

[jonald_fyookball]

So people now leave feedback to offset other feedback? How is that legit exactly?

They shouldn't have to.  A normal trustworthy person shouldn't be getting default trust negative unless something is awry.

[BadBear]

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating. (In this case you should explicitly respond to the negative rating you're negating.) It is not legitimate to keep deleting and reposting negative ratings to put the system back into "this guy just turned scammer!" mode. People who do that shouldn't be trusted.

So if jonald_fyookball reposts his rating and then Wardrick reposts his negative to cancel out the positive, Wardrick should be removed from Default Trust for trust abuse.

Could always try talking it out first. He probably wasn't aware.

So people now leave feedback to offset other feedback? How is that legit exactly?

They shouldn't have to.  A normal trustworthy person shouldn't be getting default trust negative unless something is awry.

Different people have different opinions.