ATTN: Theymos - Your forum is turning into a playground

[actisstupidname]

WTF?!?!?!?!? This forum is turning bat-shit crazy. Are you going to repeat the incessant civil wars in the Reddit Bitcoin community here in Bitcointalk?!?! Where's the leadership!

Look at this! This idiot should have been banned long ago. -498! Holy shit! That's stupidity at it's worst.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=358020

This is an obvious symptom there's something wrong with the leadership and the community here.

Look at the trust summary: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=358020 What the hell is going in there?!?!?
Looks to me there are two camps in this forum: The nazi red painters vs some OGs.

You need to pick a side. IMO no one is innocent. Demote or ban them all.

[1714952220]

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[1714952220]

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[mprep]

From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0:

Q: What is Trust and how does it work?
A: Trust is Bitcointalk's feedback based on trust (hence the name). The Trust system is made of 2 components: the Trust list and left feedback.

The Trust list is where you select the users whose feedback on other users you trust and how deep is this trust. You can either trust just their feedback (select the Trust depth as 0), theirs and their trusted users feedback (Trust depth 1), and so on (up until Trust depth 3). Trusted feedback will be counted when displayed as numbers to the left of a users post in trade boards such as Marketplace or Goods.

The feedback page is where you can leave feedback on other users or see a detailed view of a users feedback. Trusted feedback will be shown first and untrusted feedback will be hidden by default. You can view it by clicking the link "Show ratings". Last of all, you can see all the feedback the user has left on others.

This covers the basics of the Trust system. If you want a more in depth description of the Trust system and details I probably missed, go here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=211858.0.

Q: Why haven't you banned <insert scammer username here> who is an obvious scammer?
A: Possible (or real, not for me to decide) scams are not moderated to prevent moderator abuse. If we start picking out which ones we call "scammers" and ban, we would make a lot of decisions based on biased opinions.

While DefaultTrust does exist (and is thus considered the standard by quite a few), users are free to substitute or complement their list with other users they trust. That -498 for you is a -2 for me simply due the way I configured my Trust settings as compared to you. Please learn at least a bit of Bitcointalk's history (e.g. now deprecated scammer tags) before passing your uninformed opinion on how the forum should be run.

Then again, you're probably too busy trolling Meta threads to care

[actisstupidname]

DefaultTrust is default. No one bothers to customize their trust settings.

So when you see "Warning: Trade with extreme caution!" on their profiles, you automatically think this is a scammer. But when you look at the reasons, you see words like: shitposter, spammer, etc which I don't think means the person is dangerous to trade with!

How would you like if I label you a murderer but all you did was a traffic altercation? Totally unjust and broken is the trust system.

Because I know the politics behind the scene here. Those trust feedbacks against Quickseller is basically biased and subjective. But to a newbie, it's totally misleading. If you hate him so much, ban him.

[LeGaulois]

I don't know much about Quickseller's history but I prefer to read Quickseller and his crazy drama topics than the majority of people here.
And members are smart enough to visit the trust page and see what's going on. Everyone takes it(or at least should) with a grain of salt

[SaltySpitoon]

DefaultTrust is default. No one bothers to customize their trust settings.

So when you see "Warning: Trade with extreme caution!" on their profiles, you automatically think this is a scammer. But when you look at the reasons, you see words like: shitposter, spammer, etc which I don't think means the person is dangerous to trade with!

How would you like if I label you a murderer but all you did was a traffic altercation? Totally unjust and broken is the trust system.

Because I know the politics behind the scene here. Those trust feedbacks against Quickseller is basically biased and subjective. But to a newbie, it's totally misleading. If you hate him so much, ban him.

That is their problem. the trust system has absolutely no bearing on anything outside of the marketplace sections. Who cares if a guy who is posting about the political climate in Tibet and its relation to Bitcoin's price is untrustworthy to trade with. This is a forum, as long as you aren't disruptive to discussion, you aren't banned.

How would you like if I label you a murderer but all you did was a traffic altercation? Totally unjust and broken is the trust system.

Just like with feedback, you'd have to back up your claim. If you left someone feedback that said they scammed you for 100 BTC without any reference link, proof, etc, people would just disregard what you say, the same is true for Quickseller's feedback. If you don't believe whatever their feedback says, or you don't care, you are free to trade with them. I've done successful deals with scammers before, I just made sure to use escrow.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

No one bothers to customize their trust settings.

That isn't true--I customized mine long ago.  Though I was briefly on DT, I find that system to be extremely flawed, especially when I was excluded by two members I've never badmouthed or even had contact with.  And my opinion on this is that it happened because I did choose a side, and it was that of Lauda, actmyname, Vod, TMAN, and some others.  If you could even call that a side.  I just happen to share their opinion on a few forum issues, including shitposters and account sales and I respectfully disagree on other matters.  And also that I think Quickseller is a total troll and scammer. 

Scams aren't moderated here, but people tag them.  Same thing with account sales.  Same thing with shitposters.  If you're appealing to Theymos for assistance, good luck with that one.  He excluded actmyname from his trust list because actmyname was too harsh?  Actmyname was trying to clean up your fucking mess of a forum, Theymos, which is only a mess because you benefit from shitposters and scams in the form of increased traffic. 

I'd advise everyone to modify their trust list, but I'd also argue that it serves a purpose in so far as red trust affects shitposters' ability to join campaigns, and thus I'd say actmyname, Lauda, and the other bullshit-fighters should be kept on it.

[Lauda]

The trust system has been being played with heavily for a very long time. Theymos is very reluctant when it comes to removing someone who is obviously abusing it; sometimes he won't even respond to your PM if he doesn't feel like it. The staff members are just pawns, i.e. useless and without any power when it comes to the above.

This is an obvious symptom there's something wrong with the leadership and the community here.

There are a lot of things that are very wrong here, but using Quickscammer as a proof of a broken community is backwards. You can easily see who is siding with who by following the trust and merit system.

[actisstupidname]

I don't have an opinion on this particular issue (Lauda has many good ratings, but also several that seem too trigger-happy), but I have been getting very annoyed about how centralized the trust system is. The reason that I made it a complicated trust network instead of a centralized list/database is so that it'd be decentralized and subjective.

I've been seriously thinking about reopening the idea of enforcing user-defined trust lists via suggestions, etc., deprecating DefaultTrust.

Thank you Theymos for listening. I agree decentralizing the trust system in this forum is the best in the spirit of Bitcoin. You can't trust human overlords to make decisions for you. The next best thing would be the judgement of the whole community. ANd then maybe making harder to make new accounts by verifying identities by phone (like Telegram) or by BTC holds (proving you hold enough BTC) would ensure less alt accounts.

The following quote is a first impression of this forum from a newbie:

I've seen many weird trust ratings while bored waiting for the post timer to conclude when I want to post something right after having posted something a second ago.

Some people have negative trust, but the amount of BTC involved is literally 0. And the negative trust message is somewhat odd, something like: "POTENTIAL SCAMMER! ASKS FOR NO COLLATERAL LOAN"

This is odd to me. If he never scammed anyone yet, then why does he get negative trust that reflects oh so poorly on his main profile when posting? That's unfair to the maximum.

I've seen another weird one, where someone is selling subscription services to crypto investment groups. The negative trust given is merely a speculation on why the price is so low: "Warning scammer trying to sell subscription services for half the price of regular." <-- again, no BTC involved. It's just people ranting.

It's almost like leaving a restaurant review without actually eating at the restaurant.

But then again, the environment of crypto where no transactions can be reversed... I'd say these negative trust messages are natural. Have to prevent a scam before it happens, right?

But giving someone negative trust for their political/religious opinions is just fucked. That has nothing to do with business. Trust is about business. Being a radical Christian has nothing to do with scamming someone.

Frankly, this cleaning up of the DT members or deprecating DefaultTrust would help the merit system since it's the next best thing for a community vote.