Validate PM Quotes

[OgNasty]

I am seeing more and more people using fake quotes from myself to try and lure buyers into sending BTC to fake escrow addresses.

It would be awesome if there were some sort of validation script that didn't allow someone to change your quote and forward it on to others.  I could see where snipping parts of a quote would be useful, but inserting or changing text should not be allowed.

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[Joel_Jantsen]

As far as I have tried Epochtalk I think there is no away to quote a message ,only a simple Reply option is available at the moment while replying from your Inbox unlike SMF. Maybe it will a part of future developments.

[Your Point Is Invalid]

As far as I have tried Epochtalk I think there is no away to quote a message ,only a simple Reply option is available at the moment while replying from your Inbox unlike SMF. Maybe it will a part of future developments.

Check again. i'm pretty sure i quoted a few posts there

[taesup]

There is a quoting feature on the top right of each post. But we're trying out something soon so that when you click on a quote, it'll take you to the original post. We find that being able to show the original with as little friction as possible is the easier solution compared with quoting without modifications.

The downside is that this might take a bit of time before it goes into the beta build... 

[Cxinbolen]

There is a quoting feature on the top right of each post. But we're trying out something soon so that when you click on a quote, it'll take you to the original post. We find that being able to show the original with as little friction as possible is the easier solution compared with quoting without modifications.

The downside is that this might take a bit of time before it goes into the beta build... 

But that is already a feature in this forum; OgNasty is talking about some sort of quote feature where you can't change the quote contents. I myself would find something like that pretty useful.


Anyways, no problem and take your time.

[taesup]

So I guess I should have explained it a bit better. We're thinking about loading the referenced quote right into the same place as the quote. So the user can tell if the "quoter" changed something when he quoted. Again we're playing around with idea so not sure how it's going to look or work just yet.

So just a quick mockup in my head would be, the user would see that a post has a quote. But in bright colors be alerted that the quote doesn't match the original in some way and given a button to load the original quote. The user can click the button and the quote is removed and replaced with the original full text. (We could even make that section resizeable so it doesn't take up the entire screen) That's sort of the idea I had in mind. My biggest concern is to avoid inspecting the quote text for differences since that CPU power could be used for other things. Character count is the first thing that pops into my head but isn't the most accurate signal of modified text. We'll figure something out though.

Also, this is good feedback so don't be afraid to point out something you don't like.

[taesup]

Hmm I missed the part that this was in reference to PMs.

So in that case, we could actually build a modification where an "imposter" role could be created and people like 0gNasty could be thrown into those roles. When a user is given this role, any interact with that use would come with a big warning label that says something to the affect of "This user is a known imposter. Do not give him your BTC."

This label would show up on his posts, his PM, his profile page, etc. That would be even easier to do and is far more destructive to the imposter and would take less work than trying to figure out if he maliciously edited a quote.

What do you guys think of that idea instead?

[OgNasty]

Hmm I missed the part that this was in reference to PMs.

So in that case, we could actually build a modification where an "imposter" role could be created and people like 0gNasty could be thrown into those roles. When a user is given this role, any interact with that use would come with a big warning label that says something to the affect of "This user is a known imposter. Do not give him your BTC."

This label would show up on his posts, his PM, his profile page, etc. That would be even easier to do and is far more destructive to the imposter and would take less work than trying to figure out if he maliciously edited a quote.

What do you guys think of that idea instead?

I think that idea is largely reactive as opposed to proactive. There are going to be fresh new imposters every day.  I think a good solution wouldn't require manual intervention (tagging someone as an imposter).

[taesup]

I hear you. I would like a more proactive system too. But I think the biggest hurdle is the BBCode system in general. After thinking about this more, there's nothing to stop a user from making up their own quote and putting anyone's name on it by just using the quote tag. Although it's possible to modify the parser in the new forum to reject quotes that aren't attached to existing posts, this might break all the older quotes being imported when we switch over. I'll think about this more though. This is a valid concern.

[thesame12]

What if there was something that linked back to the original quote? Like an arrow(this is from sythe.org) or something?

[taesup]

So that's what I was originally thinking of but because of the nature of BBCode, you can write a quote without specifying an author, message, or timestamp. And although I could write something that'll checks and ensures that a quote has some link back to the original quote, that's not how it was built to work (my estimate, not a known fact). Adding that additional check may also break our importing tool since all the quotes in SMF does not support this feature right now.

And that's the fun part about working with legacy data and systems.

I think the best way to think about this problem is to break it down to the fundamentals, it's first principles. The core problem is one user is trying to impersonate another user. The issue with quoting is more a symptom of the disease rather than the root cause. So finding a way for users to be unique looking throughout the system would cure the disease but also ensure that the same thing won't happen through another form like forum posts or such.

Again, any help is appreciated but till then I'll keep thinking about this.

[Vod]

I am seeing more and more people using fake quotes from myself to try and lure buyers into sending BTC to fake escrow addresses.

It would be awesome if there were some sort of validation script that didn't allow someone to change your quote and forward it on to others.  I could see where snipping parts of a quote would be useful, but inserting or changing text should not be allowed.

Tecshare likes to quote me and others and make up words in the quotes.  Validating quotes would put an end to his game.  I'm all for it.