Can we regulate the trust system ?

[khaled0111]

If it is going to be "regulated" (which I doubt it is going to happen any time soon), any tag without a reference should be concidered as neutral even if it comes from a DT member or simply any tag must come with reference..

[1714887745]

1714887745

[stompix]

I'm more concern with green trust that with red trust.

Red trust means people might be avoiding a person just because of a person doesn't think somebody is trustable.
Green trust (even if it's years old) might trick persons into believing the owner of that account is trustable or their business is.
And while avoiding somebody doesn't lead to financial loses, trusting somebody might do and we all know how some trustable members of the community ended.

Right now the owner of an exchange still has a green tag while he has been arrested and his exchange is frozen solid with all the money locked there just because of a successful trade two years ago...just saying

[mdayonliner]

Funny how people whine hard about the trust system and what they see as unfair trust by DT members who likely are doing their best to keep the forum clean, and yet they don't whine about the simple fact that Theymos allows scammers to use this forum however they like.  It's not against the rules to scam someone here, in case anyone here hasn't noticed.  If there wasn't a system whereby some trust feedbacks counted for more than others, how could anyone get a reliable warning about a scammer?

I don't think anyone is denying the fact that DTs are not necessary. DTs ARE the asset of the forum who are responsible to keep the forum clean from the scammers. It's a voluntary job they are doing and the community should be grateful to them. Mods are responsible to keep the forum clean from the spammer but the difference is - they are paid (I guess).

My question was, if I have never scammed a single penny from anyone then:

- How is the display of my trust rating is relevant?

"Warning: Trade with extreme caution!"

- Why people get scared and bullied me when I wanted to trade only £111 paypal? I have lost 100 times larger amount in this forum when I had my lending topic.

...a shady trade.

- Why some member think red tagged members like me should not rank up hence they usually skip meriting my posts.

- Yes I made a mistake offering an escrow of over $100k (I did not even know what is a 2/3 multi-sig, I was noob) and for that reason DT tagged me saying a ponzi promoter can not be trusted who offers $100k escrow? DT could have left me a neutral feedback without destroying my account. This should serve as a warning. DT could give me a chance for a mistake which did not harm anyone. Did I harm anyone by my noob offer?

- I got tagged for promoting ponzi (Even though I never promoted a ponzi in the forum).

DTs basically sometimes forget that one red could ruin everything for a member. DTs need to be careful when they make a decision to tag someone, no matter it's a negative, positive or neutral because your rating reflates the weight of an account.

Don't just leave a negative feedback based on your¹ personal believe, if you brought up in a slam and other guy bought up in an elite family then life experience between you and other guy will be very different. Leave a neg once the crime is proven else leave a neutral which should serves as first time warning, may be 2nd and third too. Then go for a red.

¹ _{means in general.}

[The Sceptical Chymist]

It's a voluntary job they are doing and the community should be grateful to them. Mods are responsible to keep the forum clean from the spammer but the difference is - they are paid (I guess).

DT isn't even a voluntary "service".  There are just some DT members who actively tag untrustworthy members.  You'll notice a lot of DT2 members don't.  They're just members that either Theymos trusts (DT1) or that members of DT1 trust (DT2).

My question was, if I have never scammed a single penny from anyone then:

There are a lot of members who've been tagged just for making scammy offers.  Vod, for example, tags a lot of people who ask for loans with no collateral.  I tag account sellers primarily.  Neither of us have been directly scammed by the members we've tagged; it's a warning to others that the tagged member might not be trustworthy.  That's what happened in your case when you offered to escrow that insane amount and got tagged by hilariousandco, and it's not much different than what some DT members have been doing all along.  If you're going to be honest with yourself, you never complained about the trust system before you got tagged.  

In fact, IIRC you reported a lot of abuse/wrongdoings by other members that never affected you directly but which led to members getting red trust.

Why people get scared and bullied me when I wanted to trade only £111 paypal?

So given what I just pointed out, how is it you're now being "bullied"?

- Why some member think red tagged members like me should not rank up hence they usually skip meriting my posts.

That's demonstrably untrue--look at how many merits you've gotten.  Hell, even though I don't agree with most of what you said in your post here, I gave you 2 merits for it since you obviously put some effort into it and wrote it clearly enough to understand.  And the fact is that I haven't seen you a lot around Meta lately, so if you're making fewer posts you're going to earn fewer merits (don't know if you're posting in any other section I might not visit).

[Vod]

- I got tagged for promoting ponzi (Even though I never promoted a ponzi in the forum).

Ponzis are designed to screw over gullible people. 

Do you think it's any less wrong if posted outside this forum?

[Anduck]

Other DT members have been removed for scamming as well.

This is one of the reasons why DT should be removed completely. Scammers will and have found their way on to the list. The fact that there have been scammers on DT proves that DT isn't to be trusted, and the perceived trust is largely an illusion. DT list should only be a "people unlikely to scam others" list, and being on the list should signal nothing else.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

This is one of the reasons why DT should be removed completely. Scammers will and have found their way on to the list. The fact that there have been scammers on DT proves that DT isn't to be trusted, and the perceived trust is largely an illusion. DT list should only be a "people unlikely to scam others" list, and being on the list should signal nothing else.

Anduck, that makes zero sense at all--not surprising since you think bidding on your own auctions is OK.  We've just agreed that DT members get removed if they prove to have bad judgement.  What you're arguing is basically like saying "there have been some dirty cops (and they've been fired); let's get rid of the entire police force because obviously it isn't working".

[mikeywith]

I do not understand why some people are now talking about an alternative method to the trust system? this is not the main point of my topic, the  forum is differently better with it "despite it's weakness" than without it.

what I am proposing here is a clear definition about the use case of the trust system.

as long as there is not a single rule that says  for an example " you can not tag someone because their username is funny" then if someone tags someone else for their funny username , then honestly they are not breaking any rules since non is stated in the first place !.

i also might have screwed up when i used the word "regulate" , excuse my mandarin   . i am not saying the trust system should be controlled by the mods as this will most likely make it worse, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

* this only applies to DT members as their feedback appears on the profile.

I do not think that any DT member is  abusing the the trust system on purpose, and that most of them are actually trying to "help" the forum but sometimes they go to extremes where they tag people for silly reasons that are far from fair. so regardless of the good intention there still some type of harm.

[mersal]

, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

* this only applies to DT members as their feedback appears on the profile.

We currently have something similar to this but not working at all,since we have DT1 and DT2 level members,if the DT2 members are abusing the system means they can eliminate the person who abused the system from DT1 trust list.But the problem is not enough active DT1 members to analyse about the people in their trust list.

[mikeywith]

, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

* this only applies to DT members as their feedback appears on the profile.

We currently have something similar to this but not working at all,since we have DT1 and DT2 level members,if the DT2 members are abusing the system means they can eliminate the person who abused the system from DT1 trust list.But the problem is not enough active DT1 members to analyse about the people in their trust list.

this mainly because the DT1 members have no rules to based their judgment on, they will have to do a lot of reading and waste a lot of time to verify if it should be treated as abuse or not.

but if we have a list of rules, the complaint will be easy to read.

DT member XYZ broke rule 15 by giving me a negative trust after i posted a picture of my naked ass.

rules no 15 : you can not tag a person just for showing their ass on the forum.


DT memeber get's warned or unlisted or whatever the rules state.

but if we have to count on each person's own logic. do you think posting an image of someone's ass is offensive and requires a tag ? well AFAIK they could get a positive feedback  for that and it will still be valid as long as the rules don't say the opposite.

now of course that is just an example, rules don't have to carry that much of details  .

[Anduck]

This is one of the reasons why DT should be removed completely. Scammers will and have found their way on to the list. The fact that there have been scammers on DT proves that DT isn't to be trusted, and the perceived trust is largely an illusion. DT list should only be a "people unlikely to scam others" list, and being on the list should signal nothing else.

Anduck, that makes zero sense at all--not surprising since you think bidding on your own auctions is OK.  We've just agreed that DT members get removed if they prove to have bad judgement.  What you're arguing is basically like saying "there have been some dirty cops (and they've been fired); let's get rid of the entire police force because obviously it isn't working".

What I say makes sense. DT members do not get removed for all of their bad judgement, because there can't be universal "bad judgement", and DT is not decentralized control-wise. That's the problem of top-down authority.
Top-down authority is fine for moderation -- it's pretty much the only way. And that works exactly like that: "police department" doesn't cease to exist because of dirty cops.
DT list on the other hand is not meant to be any kind of moderation tool. Trust networks should not have any sort of central point whatsoever.

Btw Google up "vendor bidding" and educate yourself instead of staying incompetent regarding auctions.

The Pharmacist: I did the googling for you, as you won't do it as you haven't earlier. It's about time for you to learn about these vendor bids before talking about them more. So google up it yourself or see e.g. this or this or this.

[suchmoon]

i also might have screwed up when i used the word "regulate" , excuse my mandarin   . i am not saying the trust system should be controlled by the mods as this will most likely make it worse, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

Rules work only as far as you can enforce them. So who's gonna enforce the rules? Who's going to have the power to remove ratings or remove people from DT?

[KingZee]

Rules work only as far as you can enforce them. So who's gonna enforce the rules? Who's going to have the power to remove ratings or remove people from DT?

Honestly default trust imo is just a very outdated judge of a completely different forum. More than half the people on it are dead accounts, or people who rised to the DT status by the amount of time they spent on the forums.

But if there's one thing that doesn't make sense it's completely biased judgements that are in no way related to an exchange of goods.
Like, sure, I get that someone trusts another person and tags him accordingly, or that someone else doesn't trust another. But isn't trust supposed to show the financial honesty of a person? If someone can be charismatic enough to convince 5 other members to trust him that's great, but if another person with questionable opinions had over thousands of dollars in trades is less trusted than this charismatic person... It really skews the meaning of "Trust" on the forums.

[mikeywith]

i also might have screwed up when i used the word "regulate" , excuse my mandarin   . i am not saying the trust system should be controlled by the mods as this will most likely make it worse, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

Rules work only as far as you can enforce them. So who's gonna enforce the rules? Who's going to have the power to remove ratings or remove people from DT?

who is enforcing all the other rules on the forum now ? who does the ban/unban any other types of things? rules will be enforced by the same people/person.  

if someone can get you banned then you shouldn't worry if they will abuse this one set of rules, for all we know theymos can ban the whole forum and he is not obligated to even explain why. so there has to be some sort of authority to handle the rules.

once those rules are set, DT members will have to follow the rules, and once they don't which will be rare then even theyoms can attend to that. it will not be an every minute job as we only have a handful of feedbacks that could be considered as a break of rules.

[suchmoon]

Rules work only as far as you can enforce them. So who's gonna enforce the rules? Who's going to have the power to remove ratings or remove people from DT?

Honestly default trust imo is just a very outdated judge of a completely different forum. More than half the people on it are dead accounts, or people who rised to the DT status by the amount of time they spent on the forums.

But if there's one thing that doesn't make sense it's completely biased judgements that are in no way related to an exchange of goods.
Like, sure, I get that someone trusts another person and tags him accordingly, or that someone else doesn't trust another. But isn't trust supposed to show the financial honesty of a person? If someone can be charismatic enough to convince 5 other members to trust him that's great, but if another person with questionable opinions had over thousands of dollars in trades is less trusted than this charismatic person... It really skews the meaning of "Trust" on the forums.

That's why you need to read the ratings and/or use custom trust lists.

i also might have screwed up when i used the word "regulate" , excuse my mandarin  . i am not saying the trust system should be controlled by the mods as this will most likely make it worse, i am saying we need a set of rules, so when someone is not satisfied with the tag he gets, he can then complain or appeal based on an existing rule. it will be much easier to judge the case if we have such rules.

Rules work only as far as you can enforce them. So who's gonna enforce the rules? Who's going to have the power to remove ratings or remove people from DT?

who is enforcing all the other rules on the forum now ? who does the ban/unban any other types of things? rules will be enforced by the same people/person. 

if someone can get you banned then you shouldn't worry if they will abuse this one set of rules, for all we know theymos can ban the whole forum and he is not obligated to even explain why. so there has to be some sort of authority to handle the rules.

once those rules are set, DT members will have to follow the rules, and once they don't which will be rare then even theyoms can attend to that. it will not be an every minute job as we only have a handful of feedbacks that could be considered as a break of rules.

So this would put the control in moderators' hands. I don't think that's an improvement at all.

Even assuming the enforcement can be super fair, it's still not a benefit to have the trust system conform to a rigid set of rules. The variety of opinions is part of what makes it usable. For example when The Pharmacist started tagging account traders I added him to my trust list because I wanted to see which users are account traders. That was before he was in DT. It looks like your suggestion would take away that flexibility if everyone is allowed to tag only for trades. It would also remove the ability to warn about ICO scams etc.

[cryptohunter]

Of course you can not have a control system that is subjective.

That is exactly how abuse takes place.

Take away subjectivity and enforce object set of rules for everyone they bye bye abuse. At least abuse that is reported.

Anyone requesting subjectivity inside a control system is asking for the ability to apply different rules to different people. That is called unfair.

NO way.

DT trust needs strict set of guidelines.

So does merit.

Any system of control needs strict criteria or it is wide open for abuse. How can you you appeal in a subjective system unless there is such unreasonable behaviour that most people recognise it is unreasonable enough to speak out about and the person who was unfairly treated has enough energy to go through reporting it and presenting his case to convince others who will subjectively evaluate the situation. A total gauntlet. Or you just demonstrate how the red trust was outside of the criteria and that is reversed and DT member remove after x bad red trusts given.

Even worse when the people in the control system are of the same pool as the users competing for all the same things. Not to mention disagreements and personality clashes and well just bad moods whatever.

Subjectivity = no comeback for messing up or abusing

The excuse I want to add a new reason for giving red trust because I feel it is a good idea is not the point. It is not for lower level controls to decide to operate under different mandates. The central point of authority develops new rules and hands them down to the lower levels of control to enact upon everyone fairly.

If someone gets a red trust they need to know it is a fair decision, they have clear right of appeal if there is abuse and that anyone else who had done the same thing would have got red trust in the same context.  There will always be grey areas but they should be small and more details to broad rules can be drilled down as you go and as grey areas arise. These can be taken care of by moderators if needed.

 



 

[mikeywith]

So this would put the control in moderators' hands. I don't think that's an improvement at all.

the control is already in the moderators hand, if someone can ban accounts then it's not the best argument to say that putting them in control is not an improvement. since we can not have voting , elections or anything of that kind then moderators must have control. in fact someone with the power to ban accounts can ban a DT member right now for no reason so we are not actually giving the mods any sort of extra power. and even if we were to assume so, i personally rather see a moderated trust system than a random trust system, at that point the majority of the feedback will make sense to the majority of people.

Even assuming the enforcement can be super fair, it's still not a benefit to have the trust system conform to a rigid set of rules. The variety of opinions is part of what makes it usable. For example when The Pharmacist started tagging account traders I added him to my trust list because I wanted to see which users are account traders. That was before he was in DT. It looks like your suggestion would take away that flexibility if everyone is allowed to tag only for trades. It would also remove the ability to warn about ICO scams etc.

"The variety of opinions" is the root of the problem. you can not have a "The variety of opinions" in a trust system. especially that DT member's tag is the THIN LINE between a usable account and a non-usable account[1].

[1] -almost every signature campaign states that if you have a negative trust  you can't join.
      -the majority of people  will not be willing to trade with someone who has negative trust from a DT member

I mean look at the contradiction of DT feedbacks on the same members, this would have not happen if the rules are there.
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DT trust needs strict set of guidelines.
So does merit.

I do not agree with the merit part, it will be impossible to monitor , plus i totally disagree with your theory of that the top merited people got their merits from each other "at least this is what i understood" even if that was to be true, this can simply be due to the fact they actually deserved it? also if you look at most DT members merit score, is just an average, except for a few like suchmoon  whom i am totally against his/her way of describing the use of the trust system, i honestly think he/she deserves all the merit it due to the quality of his/her posts.

so please don't take this off-topic. merits are a whole different thing. we are talking only about trust system only here.

[suchmoon]

So this would put the control in moderators' hands. I don't think that's an improvement at all.

the control is already in the moderators hand, if someone can ban accounts then it's not the best argument to say that putting them in control is not an improvement. since we can not have voting , elections or anything of that kind then moderators must have control. in fact someone with the power to ban accounts can ban a DT member right now for no reason so we are not actually giving the mods any sort of extra power. and even if we were to assume so, i personally rather see a moderated trust system than a random trust system, at that point the majority of the feedback will make sense to the majority of people.

Here is what you can do: add moderators to your trust list. You have a moderated trust system, and I get to keep mine too.

Trusting moderators with enforcing rules on spam etc is not the same as trusting them on evaluating nuances of every scam. I would prefer those systems to stay separate.

Even assuming the enforcement can be super fair, it's still not a benefit to have the trust system conform to a rigid set of rules. The variety of opinions is part of what makes it usable. For example when The Pharmacist started tagging account traders I added him to my trust list because I wanted to see which users are account traders. That was before he was in DT. It looks like your suggestion would take away that flexibility if everyone is allowed to tag only for trades. It would also remove the ability to warn about ICO scams etc.

"The variety of opinions" is the root of the problem. you can not have a "The variety of opinions" in a trust system. especially that DT member's tag is the THIN LINE between a usable account and a non-usable account[1].

[1] -almost every signature campaign states that if you have a negative trust  you can't join.
      -the majority of people  will not be willing to trade with someone who has negative trust from a DT member

I mean look at the contradiction of DT feedbacks on the same members, this would have not happen if the rules are there.
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I certainly don't subscribe to this hive mind thing so we'll have to disagree on this. Not everything is black and white. I prefer to have an occasional counter-rating or some other dispute than make the whole system rigid.

[mikeywith]

Here is what you can do: add moderators to your trust list. You have a moderated trust system, and I get to keep mine too.

that does not solve the problem of how other members see my profile  "the main point of discussion".

assuming just to "explain my point" you were now going to give me a negative trust say for " The way i am debating with you", and then the signature campaign i am in " am not in any just assuming still" kick me out of that campaign. what will be the use of my OWN trust list?

the fact that you are by default on EVERYBODY's trust list is the reason why you need to have a few rules to follow, as your opinion reflects on everybody else eyes and not only yours.


* i am referring to "you" just for the simplicity of speech, but what i mean is DT members is general and not related to you as a person.















 

[suchmoon]

Here is what you can do: add moderators to your trust list. You have a moderated trust system, and I get to keep mine too.

that does not solve the problem of how other members see my profile  "the main point of discussion".

assuming just to "explain my point" you were now going to give me a negative trust say for " The way i am debating with you", and then the signature campaign i am in " am not in any just assuming still" kick me out of that campaign. what will be the use of my OWN trust list?

the fact that you are by default on EVERYBODY's trust list is the reason why you need to have a few rules to follow, as your opinion reflects on everybody else eyes and not only yours.


* i am referring to "you" just for the simplicity of speech, but what i mean is DT members is general and not related to you as a person.

That's a problem with signature campaigns, not with the trust system.

You seem to be (and your thread title definitely is) confusing trust system with DT, which is just one pseudo-user in the trust system that is put into users' trust lists by default. So if that's your problem you should try to change that instead of messing with the whole system. Petition theymos to remove DT altogether and/or make some sort of push towards widespread use of custom trust lists. Petition to remove DT members who you think abuse the system. Petition signature campaigns to have a different approach to trust ratings.