Bitmole:-
I offer interest free loan. If you want 1 BTC , I will send you right now. You can pay me back after 1 week or 2 weeks, after you sort out your payment issues.
Believe it or not, I so thoroughly examined BitMole's post history before I even posted that I was willing to offer this same deal to him should he have come here to post his side. That changed once he said that he refused to pay altogether.
Being new to bitcoin (but not new to IRC, forums, flaming, etc), I have been on the end of attacks since my very first post here. This community is NOT a friendly community. It's almost as if everyone is sitting around looking for an excuse to blast someone for not knowing something. Someone could argue that that's the case on all forums, but frankly speaking, I don't see any place for it on a forum that exists to spread the knowledge and love of Bitcoin.
This is completely unacceptable. In fact, that's why we made the Newbie forum. We found that it was significantly more damaging to
newbies to even allow them to post on the normal forum. Unfortunately, if the moderators started deleting personal attacks, people would start crying "CENS0RSH1P!!11!!" and our mods would be overwhelmed. That being said PLEASE report
off-topic personal attacks. ALMOST NOBODY is currently using the "Report to moderator" button, and it's making our job of moderation pretty hard.
My personal respect for bitcoin has only grown stronger since I first signed up here, but my opinion of the community here has only soured. The ridiculous amount of newbies running spreadsheets 'games' and calling them 'services', the 30 second startup sites that were obviously made from freetemplates.com, and the endless onslaught of 'experienced' users, trying to say that bitcoin will not be profitable for exactly the purpose that I am in fact using it for. It's been tough to say the least, and I've seriously considered doing everything I'm doing in bitcoin WITHOUT being in this forum.
We hate it too, but the biggest complaint about Bitcoin right now is the lack of businesses. For the moment, we have to take what we get. I pray for the day that we can actually be afforded to have standards for advertising businesses here.
The ONLY reason I have acted this way is because, as someone new to these forums and basically receiving non-stop bullshit from users here, KeyserSoze basically demonstrated to me a reason to give up.
I agree. KeyserSoze was way out of line. Refusing to PM the person you are publicly accusing when you were explicitly asked to? WHAT?!? KeyserSoze was clearly acting in bad faith.
I had NO idea (and arguably no way of knowing) that any mods were paying attention, and felt that the entire job of A) resolving this issue, B) teaching an impatient seller a lesson, and C) dealing with the repercussions, was completely on my shoulder. Now why would I think that? Because I've spent 10+ years on other forums and IRC where how you act becomes who are you known as, and moderators are seldom involved in anything.
I'm surprised that you got that impression. We have one of the most involved moderation teams that I have ever seen. This should have been obvious as soon as you saw a single thread where a mod nonchalantly posted.
KeyserSoze has had a point from the start. He performed a service for which he was not paid. I am at fault for not paying. There has never been a doubt of that in my mind. The LACK of any presence or communication with any moderators of any sort is what brought me to take things into my own hands and make the claim that I wouldn't be paying.
Any ideas of how this can be improved?
I don't care if KeyserSoze thought I was a life long scammer, or that I am an habitual liar, or whatever else he has fabricated. All I care is that I've done what's right-- and until Maged came in here telling me that he had actually been WATCHING this thread from the beginning and that the scammer tag was not just the whim of some trigger happy mod (which is what I am quite used to where I come from), I had felt that the RIGHT thing to do was to defend myself against what seemed to be a bunch of KeyserSoze whiteknighting and an arrogant, irrational and impatient seller.
And I have the notification emails to prove it.
KeyserSoze: Did anyone message you? DId anyone tell you they were investigating/watching/trying to resolve things?
No, nobody did. We tend to keep a hands-off policy when it comes to conflicts. Everything was posted publicly. The only time that I messaged KeyserSoze was to tell him that I reported you to theymos (the only one who has the ability to add the scammer tag) once you refused to pay. The only reason I didn't say that here is because I don't have the authority to say that you would/wouldn't be marked as a scammer. Looking back, I probably
should have threatened it. (although I don't know how happy theymos would be if I did that)
I think I know what we need to do to fix the core issues you explained. I think we need to post some official policies regarding reporting scams, and we need to setup an official Bitcoin court, much like the IRC channel.
