As someone who frequently watching scam accusations and complaints raised between a platform and their users, I have to admit --a known fact, perhaps-- that I resort to utilizing neutral and negative trust at times to attract the involved parties back to the unfinished discussion. But that is not without reason and not easily, i.e. not like handing candies on halloween. The occasion I put tag on those accounts, if my memory serves me right, can probably be counted by one hand post frost-bite incident, and immediately retracted once the addressee returned to the topic and clarify the situation. The tag were also --IMO-- justified by the development of the case at that time. For example, platform X went radio silent in the middle of several unresolved disputes with unforeseeable chance of them returning, which --again, IMO-- entitled to be seen as suspicious, thus the tag.
If I was asked with a question whether neutral or negative [or positive, even] tag should be given out like candies? For neutral, I think
that is the purpose of neutral as per Loyce's guide and as he'd stated several post above me; To leave something that's not necessarily good or bad and to de-escalate a situation. So yeah, as long as the neutral is not a disguised negative [marked as neutral but said something that goes with "this bitch slept with my Dad"] it's fine. But I am agreeing with what
nutildah said too, if a user was planning [regardless they openly admitted it or not] to use it for personal note, it'll be better to keep it private.
Other than when I use the neutral to mark some accounts back when I investigated clusters of spammers alt-accounts one year ago, I don't recall I've use them as my digital assistant. I relied on my good old-fashioned notebook and sticky notes to write things I found on this forum or cases I am currently overseeing when I am not sure of something instead of relying on making neutral as my stick notes.
While for negative, I'll say, no. There should be a strong motive and evidences behind it, signs that point to a justification to leave the tag. I'd like to see myself as someone who's quite conservative on tags too, that I'm not that interested on painting someone's account red or neutral,
without educated reason. And when someone pointing it out to me and prove me wrong to tag someone with red, I am not reluctant to revise them immediately.
Of course, I might be biased when I see myself and my justification against me from my very own perspective and my memories might served me wrong. But that's what I thought regarding candies and trust feedback.
Those things said, I'd like to venture to a topic that perhaps several will consider as out of topic. I separate it with a line, so in case anyone are not interested to read a thought about something outside the justification of distributing neg/neu like candies, you can stop here.
Text below can be considered out of topic
So, I took this topic to bed last night, after reading the whole thread, with Gazeta's
post [suup, by the way] as the one ignites it. I was thinking, and these text below can be perceived as me thinking out loud, that perhaps its time for the forum to get better acquainted with the third sister of the trust system. The community were too absorbed and focused on the older two sisters --the Trust List, a.k.a. Tilde, and Trust Feedback, a.k.a. PosNeuNeg-- that the younger one is underutilized and overlooked, or perhaps misused under misconception: Trust Flag.
I have to say that the concept of flag probably pose as a quite uncharted territory for many, and can be quite threatening due to its semi-permanent nature [can't be deleted once raised, can only be retracted], and I might propose them wrongly on this occasion --though as per theymos' own
explanation, I don't think I am. But --as per last night, and it's still a working in progress on the back of my mind-- I think it served the very purpose of decentalized trust and DT system intended by
theymos, given that the current trust system [Trust Feedback] we use were intended for marketplace. What theymos said about flag's purpose,
I think that several of the problems with Trust were because three different goals were being jammed into one system:
1. Getting a general idea of someone's trade history and trustworthiness in one convenient location, sort of like reviews on sites like EBay.
2. Warning newbies/guests who don't know how to research properly about high-risk people.
3. Deterring scams by creating a cost to scamming (ie. you'll "lose" a veteran account).
To improve this, I've split up these use-cases:
Use-case #1 is the old trust system, but I made the descriptions on the rating types a bit more general and removed the concept of a trust score. The numbers are now "distinct positive raters / distinct neutral raters / distinct negative raters". You should give these ratings for anything which you think would impact someone's willingness to trade with the person, but you should not use trust ratings to attack a person's opinions or otherwise talk about things which would not be relevant to reasonable prospective traders.
Use-cases 2 and 3 will be handled by a new system of flags. You can create a flag using a link on a person's trust page.
With flag, even non-DT can raise their case and ask for support or opposition from DT to activate it. It offers equality instead of exclusivity on feedback system where only DTs's scores are visible. Whereas the DT can exercise their judgment [and the trust vested into them by elected into DT] in a way that's non-centralizedly affecting the subject in question as the number of DT who supports or opposes the flag directly affect the outcome of the account being "marked".
One case can be perceived differently by DTs, this is not a secret. One DT might inclined to support a case [flag] against certain member due to their personal reason and/or past history with said member [read: re-tal-i-a-to-ry] while other DT disagree with the flag. And so the "war" begin where the biased support will be drowned by the opposition [vice versa] and the account will or will not get the banner activated.
This is a much more decentralized system than the trust feedback where one DT's opinion against other will instantly reflect on the said member's account.
And, in a way, the nature of unremovable flag might pose as a learning medium for everybody to exercise research and strong basis prior to escalating anything instead of distributing them like a dentist on Halloween.
