New DT algo - why 100 earned merits?? and not objective metric Activity or Rank?

[cryptohunter]

@qwk

I had another read of our interaction on this thread yesterday.

Looked at Intersubjectivity. I was not familiar with the term (thanks) however I am not sure why that would be considered when  it is possible to set some strict criteria to start with. why go through all that subjective interaction to eventually (if you don't even allow for malicious  abuse, ) arrive at a group generated and broadly accepted common sense approach.
 
I think that is why most trust systems seek to extract and remove all subjectivity. That seems the common approach. There are many complex ways of dealing with subjectivity that is not easy to extract. So adding any additional subjectivity into a system that need not be there would seem strange when there is no advantage and possibly many disadvantages.

I'm not sure if we jumped to talking about the trust system as a whole perhaps than just why bring merit into a trust system rather than use an objective score such as activity. Rank was objective I guess in now subjective.

The new trust system looks much better in many ways. I just feel linking it to merit could open it up to subjectivity/abuse you do not want and centralise it quite seriously.  250 earned merits? aside from totally discounting legends work for perhaps 8yrs or more (certainly to me that post history counts for more than some subjective merits if i am talking trust)

250 earned merits? does that place the trust system in the hands of  0.065% of the active posters here? based on their own subjective opinions of their own posts? because once you take their own subjective scores of their own posts away then...... how many people have 250 earned merits? and even then what is that to do with trust? how can people trust them more because they believe they make posts that should get merits they themselves give out?

Is that correct or not?




 

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[The Sceptical Chymist]

Honestly you think that earn merit is too easy ? I don't think so. Theymos already change criteria, instead of 100 earned merit  he have required 250 merit. Its really not decent than 1500 activity ?

No, it's definitely not easy to earn merit, especially if you're a newcomer who doesn't make good posts or doesn't contribute something to the forum, like scam-busting or that kind of thing.  I'm not so sure it's a yardstick of trust by any means, but activity?  That just takes time.  That's it, and that's how a lot of Legendary members ranked up, including myself.  I ranked up to Legendary something like a week or two before the merit system was rolled out last January. 

I'm conflicted about a merit requirement here, but I can understand why it's considered important--oddly enough it seems like scammers and other undesirables don't earn a lot of merits unless there's shenanigans involved (and that definitely does happen).  But some of the most trusted members do have a ton of merits to their name.  You wouldn't think there would be a correlation, but there just might be.  I also don't really like to see lower-ranked, unproven members on DT2 and getting a certain amount of merits can be an effective barrier to that.

On the other hand, if we're talking about DT selection then a person's trust score should rule over everything else.

[cryptohunter]

Honestly you think that earn merit is too easy ? I don't think so. Theymos already change criteria, instead of 100 earned merit  he have required 250 merit. Its really not decent than 1500 activity ?

No, it's definitely not easy to earn merit, especially if you're a newcomer who doesn't make good posts or doesn't contribute something to the forum, like scam-busting or that kind of thing.  I'm not so sure it's a yardstick of trust by any means, but activity?  That just takes time.  That's it, and that's how a lot of Legendary members ranked up, including myself.  I ranked up to Legendary something like a week or two before the merit system was rolled out last January.  

I'm conflicted about a merit requirement here, but I can understand why it's considered important--oddly enough it seems like scammers and other undesirables don't earn a lot of merits unless there's shenanigans involved (and that definitely does happen).  But some of the most trusted members do have a ton of merits to their name.  You wouldn't think there would be a correlation, but there just might be.  I also don't really like to see lower-ranked, unproven members on DT2 and getting a certain amount of merits can be an effective barrier to that.

On the other hand, if we're talking about DT selection then a person's trust score should rule over everything else.

Earned Merit is subjective, it is abused, it is not related to trust. You will exclude a lot of the eldest and some of the most trustworthy devs/legends and some of the smartest people on the board who have hardly any merit compared to some. Some of these excluded with have held 10000's or more dollars for their communities over the years.

Activity 1500 is a minimum of 4 years I think possibly a bit less of consistent posting.  You will have 4 years of posting/trades to make a determination of whether you trust them. They can not game or abuse the system. Other than making shit posts/ bots etc but then you will see that when you review and I do not think anyone will get from now to 1500 activity from now using bots or pure shit posts.

Current TRUST scores (if we mean dt as of now) are pehaps the reason we are trying to change DT system. So better if you want to gage via trust examine the entire history of their trust and check the fine print.

[qwk]

Looked at Intersubjectivity. I was not familiar with the term (thanks) however I am not sure why that would be considered when it is possible to set some strict criteria to start with.

If you do that, inter-subjectivity is what you get.
"Strict criteria" is just another word for "arbitrary definitions".
Any group selected based solely on a set of arbitrary definitions is random in all other aspects.

Which is what you want in the first place, btw.
A random group of people.

So, why have "criteria" in the first place?
1. to reduce the number of people / your sample size.
2. to reduce the possibility of abuse.

Whatever your random sample of people votes for is inter-subjective, but definitely not objective.

I think that is why most trust systems seek to extract and remove all subjectivity.

And I think you're utterly mistaken.
I can't think of a single example of a trust system, be it tripadvisor, ebay-ratings, yelp, PGP WOT, whatever, where subjectivity is even discouraged.

There's a simple reason for that: it's simply considered impossible.
Game Theory tells us that basically any game will have a set (in some cases it may be an empty set) of Nash equilibria and those can be considered the potential endpoints of any web of trust.
None of these equilibria are objectively "right" in any meaningful way.

I'm not sure if we jumped to talking about the trust system as a whole perhaps than just why bring merit into a trust system rather than use an objective score such as activity.

I guess we jumped a little.

Activity is obviously objective, but it's easily gamed.
Any system relying on such a metric will be highly prone to Sybil attacks.
I could simply create a ton of sock puppets and post random crap to create an army of accounts which matches any threshold of Activity.
All it'll take is some time and very little computational power.

Merit is much less easily gamed, though.*
Of course, merit may not be "fair", but that's not the point.
It's a good arbitrary criterion for reducing our sample size in the first place.
And that's the only thing we need. See above.

* sure enough, it's conceivable that merit could be gamed as well, but obviously not to the same extent.

The new trust system looks much better in many ways. I just feel linking it to merit could open it up to subjectivity/abuse

You can't open it to subjectivity, because it's subjective by definition, anyway

Abuse is a problem, and I personally believe that merit is the best option for a criterion to counter that.
Activity is certainly another option, albeit an inferior one, if you ask me.

you do not want and centralise it quite seriously.  250 earned merits?

10 merits.
That's all you need.

Of course, 250 merit will be needed by two proponents for any person on DT1, but those two will not be too hard to come by.

aside from totally discounting legends work for perhaps 8yrs or more

How are they discounted?
They can still be voted onto DT1.
They can still vote for DT1, if only they ever make a measly 10 merits.

I simply fail to see the issue.

Granted, the required 2 250-merit-voters for you to be on DT1 will in some cases be hard to come by.
Then again, I would guess that there'd be a reason for that.

250 earned merits? does that place the trust system in the hands of  0.065% of the active posters here?

You're simply mistaken about what the 250-merit-requirement means.
The votes of 250ers don't count any more than the votes of 10ers.


In simple words:
Users with less than 10 earned merit are excluded from voting for DT1.
That's all.

[cryptohunter]

Thanks for the great reply.

I want to jump down to the specific part about merit vs activity.  I would like later after we get that part debated a little more then to go back to the start of your message and see if we can examine those parts - - I think there are some  things that you may not have considered or maybe I believe they should be considered -- you may then demonstrate then need not be.

First though I really would like to do the merit vs activity thing.

"Activity is obviously objective, but it's easily gamed.
Any system relying on such a metric will be highly prone to Sybil attacks.
I could simply create a ton of sock puppets and post random crap to create an army of accounts which matches any threshold of Activity.
All it'll take is some time and very little computational power."

I agree this is true but perhaps maybe we need to realise it will take some time and effort.

4 years and some very sneaky bots to not be detected in that time. However I accept your point it can be abused if we use activity alone.

Could we prevent this by requiring chunks of reasonable merit as years go by.


So then we can compare merit.

Merit - seems a very unfair system with huge variance and one can easily abused or traded amongst a tight group resulting in score that is of a very low value in terms of meaning . It has been useful in that it  can prevent bots and account farmers ranking their accounts up. It was obviously designed for that reason.

I don't understand your point that reducing the sample size is  useful? I would have though that is only in cases where the resulting group are provably or even reasonably more suitable for the position. The criteria is surely the most important part.

I mean you can reduce the sample size to concentrate individuals with negative attributes with regard the intended purpose if the criteria is not well thought out.


Also surely since there are only around 100 persons with 250 earned merits who seem to have derived perhaps 70-80% of their 250 merits from their own pool of the same 100 (whatever the reason for that) then to me that actually suggests this could be a dangerous thing to do.

Requiring 2 from 100  seems to be placing VERY high value on those members that I can see no reason for at all and especially in the context of being trustworthy.

I had suggested previously the 2 systems of control are kept separate since that would seem to seem sensible. However this seems to do the exact opposite and ties the merit source system controllers to high value requirements of the DT systems of control.

I'm not sure why earned merit seems to be coming up so much. It seems to suggest that members who made posts before merit system were of zero merit worth. A lot of legends who I like reading have consistently made excellent posts for years.

The new DT algo looks very good except for that one minor point ( i mean i say minor in that it would be easy to change... if left as it is I would probably say it could be a major weakness until a far greater number of people have 250 ....earned merits)

The above are just my current opinions. Not something I have a huge