Marketplace trust

[Chuck]

As long as untrusted feedback is hidden (requiring a click or even captcha to see), and the feedback giver's own trust is shown next to their name, I'm OK with the current system.

yelp has you enter a captcha to see their untrusted feedback, I used to be annoyed with this, but I can see why they do it now.

(maybe defaulttrust could be generated by an algorithm some day!)

[NoBit]

What is the difference between trusted and untrusted feedback? Can trusted feedback be faked that easily? I don't think so.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

What is the difference between trusted and untrusted feedback? Can trusted feedback be faked that easily? I don't think so.

Trusted feedback is feedback from people in your trust network.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Why do you think leaving negative feedback for those cases is bad? It's like calling out "That guy is a thief!" when you're waiting for the police to get there.

http://news.sky.com/story/1080260/boston-bombings-wrong-suspect-reveals-fears

Are you really this naive?

Irrelevant, we already know who the person/forum account is.

It's absolutely relevant. Innocent until proven guilty. Account hacked? Someone lying about what they saw? Misinterpreting someone's poor judgement (like uploading their own customized bitcoinQT binary and not letting anyone see the source) for scamming? Humans and our opinions are flawed, this is why the legal system has a court to try and examine it before making a ruling. Allowing non-connected people to make their own rulings is silly and disingenuous and only leads to libel and slander. Your argument has been invalidated, you'd be wasting your time to repeat it.

Related:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=11905

Theymos called some one a scammer when he was not involved in the transaction. Seems okay to call anyone a scammer for any reason.

Also it seems okay to leave scammer feedback if you are just doing it to extort people for money to clean up the rep.

Hell I have 3 scammer reports in my feedback cuz the system had a bug  :/

Anyway it does not really matter as the default trust setting make this more or less useless anyway.

With inline-rebuttals, it would allow you to leave your side of the story for anyone seeing the negative feedback to see and judge on their own. By requiring it to be connected to a specific transaction, all but the most obvious attempts of libel would be outright prevented.

What is the difference between trusted and untrusted feedback? Can trusted feedback be faked that easily? I don't think so.

Trusted feedback is feedback from people in your trust network.

Even trusted people make bad decisions sometimes on poor information, jump to conclusions, etc. In the very least, a form of rebuttal allowed inline would help to counteract this, and there is no logical reason not to allow it.

The current system is broken, everyone knows it, even Theymos, and anyone defending it is hoping it won't change so that they can continue to abuse it.

Fix it, Theymos.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

It's absolutely relevant. Innocent until proven guilty. Account hacked? Someone lying about what they saw? Misinterpreting someone's poor judgement (like uploading their own customized bitcoinQT binary and not letting anyone see the source) for scamming? Humans and our opinions are flawed, this is why the legal system has a court to try and examine it before making a ruling. Allowing non-connected people to make their own rulings is silly and disingenuous and only leads to libel and slander. Your argument has been invalidated, you'd be wasting your time to repeat it.

Let me go through each of your case for you:

"Innocent until proven guilty": Which is why people generally leave feedback when anyone who sees the evidence will go "guilty". Does this apply in this case?
"Account hacked": Wouldn't it be a good idea to prevent the hacker from scamming more people? Does this apply in this case?
"Someone lying about what they saw": That can be true. Does this apply in this case?
"Poor judgement": Sure. When you have a file named "Bitcoin Stealer.exe" and is flagged by VirusTotal, I'd say that's damn well guilty. Does this apply in this case?

Your point of view is that people could leave incorrect feedback, which is obviously true and undeniable. The argument that because it involves humans, it's broken and needs to be reworked, etc, isn't valid.

Even trusted people make bad decisions, jump to conclusions sometimes, and are ill-informed. In the very least, a form of rebuttal allowed inline would help to counteract this.

+1.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

✓ Yes. Feedback can be incorrect. This can affect people in a negative way, especially if the feedback is "trusted".

There is already a solution to this.. [you or whoever manages the list] removing people who leave incorrect feedback from your trusted list.

[Matthew N. Wright]

It's absolutely relevant. Innocent until proven guilty. Account hacked? Someone lying about what they saw? Misinterpreting someone's poor judgement (like uploading their own customized bitcoinQT binary and not letting anyone see the source) for scamming? Humans and our opinions are flawed, this is why the legal system has a court to try and examine it before making a ruling. Allowing non-connected people to make their own rulings is silly and disingenuous and only leads to libel and slander. Your argument has been invalidated, you'd be wasting your time to repeat it.

Let me go through each of your case for you:

"Innocent until proven guilty": Which is why people generally leave feedback when anyone who sees the evidence will go "guilty".

You deciding they are guilty is not the same thing as them actually being guilty. There are people who think I am 'guilty' of many things that I know I am not. Should these personal opinions of people completely unrelated and biased to me be printed in bright red on my trust page as if they had legitimacy? Shouldn't they be comments on the same page instead, that don't give positive or negative ratings, and allow responses from me for clarification and correction to anyone reading? You sound like the kind of person who thinks that all people in prison must be criminals and that you're free from being mistakenly convicted too, something typical with people until it happens to them.

"Account hacked": Wouldn't it be a good idea to prevent the hacker from scamming more people?

The account has been reclaimed, and the feedback is not removed, and cannot be petitioned for removal, so now this person has feedback intended for the hacker permanently stuck to their account? Rebuttals and petition for removal are elementary for ratings/feedback systems. This system is broken for that reason alone.

"Someone lying about what they saw": That can be true. That's why I only left neg feedback after seeing forum posts by Canadian.

It has already been proven to be true on numerous occasions, you are disingenuous to pretend that it is not already an epidemic. There are people blackmailing as a business now for removal of admittedly false negative ratings. Forum posts from CanadianGuy himself don't make him guilty. It is not your place to decide, a moderator should have that responsibility, as a moderator has the responsibility of giving a scammer tag too. Either all or nothing here.

"Poor judgement": Sure. When you have a file named "Bitcoin Stealer.exe" and is flagged by VirusTotal, I'd say that's damn well guilty.

Strawman. I said BitcoinQT without source code. You have yet to respond to that example, and instead used an extreme example to pretend that it's okay to make judgement to those of whom you have no evidence of their wrongdoing. Shame on you.

Your point of view is that people could leave incorrect feedback, which is obviously true and undeniable.

Thank you. Fix it Theymos.

The argument that because it involves humans, it's broken and needs to be reworked, isn't valid.

That's not my argument. My argument is that decisions on whom is a scammer, should be made by moderators, not disconnected third parties who love to jump to conclusions. Comments are fine, and rebuttals are ELEMENTARY TO ANY FEEDBACK SYSTEM. That is the point here, and that is why it's broken. Theymos, FIX IT.

Even trusted people make bad decisions, jump to conclusions sometimes, and are ill-informed. In the very least, a form of rebuttal allowed inline would help to counteract this.

✓ Yes. Feedback can be incorrect. This can affect people in a negative way, especially if the feedback is "trusted".

There is already a solution to this.. [you or whoever manages the list] removing people who leave incorrect feedback from your trusted list.

That does not remove the negative feedback, allow them to leave a rebuttal for fraudulent feedback, nor allow them to petition it for removal. Stop defending and arguing the basics of why people get feedback; no one is confused about that. We're wondering why Theymos (and those who continue to defend his current implementation) seem to not care at all about how to do it properly.

[Matthew N. Wright]

✓ Yes. Feedback can be incorrect. This can affect people in a negative way, especially if the feedback is "trusted".

There is already a solution to this.. [you or whoever manages the list] removing people who leave incorrect feedback from your trusted list.

Why not just set the default to no one and let everyone pick who they trust? Seems like that would solve 95% of the problems.

It doesn't solve the problem, because even I may be wrong in calling someone out as a scammer. Shouldn't that accused scammer have the right to leave a rebuttal in-line with my accusation, and even petition for its removal if it's absolute obvious spam like "YOU'RE A STUPID FAGGOT"? That is the only real issue here, and it's so goddamn elementary I'm actually quite stunned as to why anyone is still considering it a legit system without it.

Right now this "trust" system is a political astroturfing tool, nothing more. It enables people to libel with more speed and accuracy, and affect business more than ever before, all with the added benefit of being completely unmoderated. Wow. What a nightmare. Anyone doing serious business here should boycott these forums immediately until it's fixed, lest they lead Theymos to think that pro-libel anti-transparency is the future we want here on these forums.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

That's not my argument. My argument is that decisions on whom is a scammer, should be made by moderators, not disconnected third parties who love to jump to conclusions. Comments are fine, and rebuttals are ELEMENTARY TO ANY FEEDBACK SYSTEM. That is the point here, and that is why it's broken. Theymos, FIX IT.

Wait what? So why did you post paragraphs about how humans can be flawed, etc. Are moderators infallible and always right? Does the moderator tag make you a judge?

Giving someone a moderator tag does not mean everything you said (innocent until proven guilty, poor judgement, whatever) doesn't apply to them.

So let's say we have two people, who all give feedback that is valid. Both of them has the powers to give trusted feedback. A has a moderator tag. B does not have a moderator tag. Difference being beyond something cosmetic?

If your argument is that people who are not moderators have poor judgement, then that's another matter. Please elaborate and give examples for the following users who are not moderators and are on the defaultrust list: OgNasty, Tomatocage and TradeFortress.

Saying that they *could* have poor judgement but not actually giving any examples of feedback that you think is invalid (and instead pointing out a feedback for a user that you think should be banned) makes it look like you are really influenced by personal reasons.

Understand the difference between could and something actually occurring?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Oh, and I don't disagree with you on that there needs to be a way to respond to feedback, and a removal process.

[Matthew N. Wright]

That's not my argument. My argument is that decisions on whom is a scammer, should be made by moderators, not disconnected third parties who love to jump to conclusions. Comments are fine, and rebuttals are ELEMENTARY TO ANY FEEDBACK SYSTEM. That is the point here, and that is why it's broken. Theymos, FIX IT.

Wait what? So why did you post paragraphs about how humans can be flawed, etc. Are moderators infallible and always right? Does the moderator tag make you a judge?

Moderators are judges. They judge what posts should and shouldn't be allowed for example. Theymos decides who should have a scammer tag, and is wrong sometimes too. Theymos's opinion is not to be trusted as law, he has already shown he is wrong many many times in principle and practice. That said, a moderator's job is to look at evidence and make a call for the good of the community. I would prefer a moderator with a reputation to lose to make that decision rather than someone who has a vendetta against me personally for example. The moderator has something to lose (all those juice advertising auction funds) whereas the person with the vendetta has nothing to lose, because they just created that account that very evening to make the baseless accusation.

So let's say we have two people, who all give feedback that is valid. Both of them has the powers to give trusted feedback. A has a moderator tag. B does not have a moderator tag. Difference being beyond something cosmetic?

You either have votes from the community or you have rule of law. This forum has proven time and time again that it is a rule of law community. Whatever Theymos says, goes, despite being dead wrong sometimes. My comments are relative to the status quo. If you want to argue that this forum should be moderated by individuals instead or change the way power is given and used, that's for a different thread (although I'd be happy to investigate the possibilities with you, although I doubt Theymos would ever relinquish his abilities fully knowing that the community would stomp on BFL ad revenue).

If your argument is that people who are not moderators have poor judgement, then that's another matter.

People who are not moderators have less to lose by telling lies about others.

Please elaborate and give examples for the following users who are not moderators and are on the defaultrust list: OgNasty, Tomatocage and TradeFortress.

Tomatocage has been wrong occasionally on who is a scammer or not, and has been more careful to not make absolute statements. I enjoy his warnings to the community because he is not a libelous hound who seeks to slam everyone, but rather keeps everyone on "pending" whom acts suspicious. There is nothing wrong with this, and this could be done by anyone directly on someone's account page by leaving comments (not numerical, rated feedback that is unconnected to any transactions of any kind).

I don't know anything about OgNasty.

TradeFortress has run smear campaigns against companies for his personal opinion, and gone as far as paying others to express his opinion as theirs. I wouldn't trust a public opinion of TradeFortress for anything. That doesn't mean I wouldn't trust coding, funds handling, etc, and that's another point. Negative feedback is all inclusive and needs to be done with finesse. Just because BFL invested in ASICs and was late doesn't mean they won't eventually deliver, and feedback should not say "THEY ARE A SCAM", but "They accepted preorders and delivered only partially 9 months later". Libel is just too much fun in this community for anyone to resist though apparently. "THEY INTENDED TO SCAM AND I CAN SEE INTO THEIR MINDS". (No, I do not support BFL, I support honesty).

Understand the difference between could and something actually occurring?

What *is* occurring right now is an abusable and thus broken implantation of feedback system. It needs fixing and it should be boycotted until it is, as it pretends to lend credibility to reputations when it clearly is not fit to do so.

Oh, and I don't disagree with you on that there needs to be a way to respond to feedback, and a removal process.

Then for the sake of clarity, let's keep this on that particular topic so that Theymos will wake up and fix it. Despite having hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoins donated to him for the purpose of making the forums better, he finds too many excuses for not doing the right thing development-wise and it's time to put it to an end and see this through. Either fix it or don't pretend to offer it.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

TradeFortress has run smear campaigns against companies for his personal opinion, and gone as far as paying others to express his opinion as theirs. I wouldn't trust a public opinion of TradeFortress for anything.

Tomatocage has been wrong occasionally on who is a scammer or not, and has been more careful to not make absolute statements.

This is what is relevant to the person, but not their use of the feedback system.

That said, a moderator's job is to look at evidence and make a call for the good of the community. I would prefer a moderator with a reputation to lose to make that decision rather than someone who has a vendetta against me personally for example.

First of all, that's completely different from what you were talking about earlier - that people should not leave feedback for things that are not transactions and that they are not personally involved in.

Secondly, a default truster's job is not evaluate evidence and reputation? Would there be any difference if say, theymos made the 3 non-mods on DefaultTrust a moderator? I disagree on that you need to have a cosmetic title for god's sakes in order to "make a call for the good of the community".


There is an actual issue with how untrusted feedback is completely unmoderated at the moment, without any way to easily respond (unless you leave feedback on their profile, or make a forum post, which most people won't see), and there is "I don't like people giving non transaction, non involved feedback", or arguing over a moderator boolean.

[malevolent]

Theymos, stop trying to pretend to be managing reputations, but not following through the defensive measures as well.

All feedback should be able to be contested, in-line, and petitioned for removal to mods.

All feedback should be transaction related, and those uninvolved in the transaction should only be able to "comment", not give feedback numbered scores.

I don't really care what anyone's excuses are as to why "this is not necessary", because I know this is the right thing to do and anything else is disingenuous and setting people up for political astroturfing. If you can't see it, it's your problem. Fix it!

I think the trust feature was introduced to make it easier for the Mods (less time spending on debating whether someone needs a scammer tag or whether other users should be warned etc.) and make it easier for the users to perform their own due diligence while engaging with business with someone.
If the feedback is to be moderated this is defeating the purpose it was introduced for..

[TomUnderSea]

I would like this a lot more if Default settings were
Trust list == satoshi
Trust depth == 0

Anything else implements a bias from the board administration.  If the board moderators and who they trust deserve the level of trust that Default would give them, it should be obvious to the user, not forced on them.

If you MUST put a real person on the default trust list why not use someone who is truly trusted by the community like John (John K.)?

[Raize]

Related:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=11905

Theymos called some one a scammer when he was not involved in the transaction. Seems okay to call anyone a scammer for any reason.

Also it seems okay to leave scammer feedback if you are just doing it to extort people for money to clean up the rep.

There's a bit more to this than that. Theymos removed the scammer tag already on bulanula. I'm not sure why this was done. It seems to have completely ruined any possible chance that bulanula will pay back the 22.5 BTC. And, of course, now he's posting semi-regularly on this account again and will likely start posting just like he used to instead of on his alternate account which has a shorter post history.

[Maged]

Then why have scammer tags at all? It seems it's as simple as just removing people from a trust list. Wow.

This system is a replacement for the scammer tag system. It allows people to trust someone other than theymos for deciding who to tag as a scammer.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

This is the second time where I've banned someone (r3wt who admitted to being extortion) and they abuse the feedback system. theymos, please hide untrusted feedback by default.

This teenager also thinks that it affects me when they sign me up for services that require a confirmation email.. yeah.

[maco]

This is a great feature to have. I am glad you got around to adding it.

I think another feature to add when leaving a trust comment is the 'thread' that the transaction took place in. It seems as this is open to loopholes where people could have their friends trust each-other, which defeats the entire purpose. If it "REQUIRES" a thread, it might just be another level of security, we don't have others 'gaming' the system. I doubt it does happen here, but you can never be to sure.

Thanks for this feature, it's looking great so far.

I added a trust system to the marketplace sections. When you're logged in, you'll now see something like this next to Marketplace posts:

Trust: 1: -0 / +12(3)

The first number is the user's trust score calculated based on how consistently they've received positive feedback. Probably no one will get a score above 0 until the system has been around for at least a month. The second number is the number of reported scams. The third number increases with the number of positive reports, as does the fourth number in parenthesis, though the fourth number is more resistant to abuse. This text changes color depending on the score. Users with a negative score (attainable through scamming) get a red warning attached to their posts.

These scores are taken from your trust network. They are not global scores. You can edit your trust network here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust
If your trust depth is set to 2 (the default), you will trust feedback by people you trust, people they trust, and people they trust. I might change the default in the future; we'll see how this works. Your trust list is public.

On feedback pages, you can leave trade feedback. There are no rules for this, but here are some guidelines:
- List all of the trades that you do with people (or at least the major ones). This is not like #bitcoin-otc where you give people just one score.
- Do not rate people based on the quality of their posts.
- Older ratings count for more, so don't delete old ratings if you can avoid it.
- "Risked BTC" is how much money you could have lost if the person you're rating had turned out to be a scammer. Or, if they are a scammer, it's how much you lost. Use the BTC value at the time of reporting.
- It's OK to post a rating about the person in general, not tied to a specific trade.
- If you want to make a rating stronger, increase "Risked BTC". 50 extra risked BTC is equivalent to an additional rating.

If your trust list is totally empty, you trust "DefaultTrust", which includes some trustworthy people that I'll select. But if you add anyone to your trust list, even if they don't trust anyone, DefaultTrust will no longer be considered part of your trust list.

In the near future I'll add these same ratings to PMs.

Tell me if you see any bugs. I didn't test this much yet.

[theymos]

I think I'll hide untrusted feedback by default using Javascript. It'll be like:

Trusted feedback

...

Untrusted feedback

Click here to show Untrusted feedback

If I do it this way, I'll add an option to always show untrusted feedback in your profile settings.

Done.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Theymos, you do not have a fair and complete trust system until rebuttal comments are allowed from users -in-thread- (at least 1 comment deep) to explain things. All you have so far is a spammable system where people can create 1000 sockpuppets (as you allow here) and lie to paint a negative picture of someone for their own personal gain.