I notice there are a few issues that appear to be arising. Trust farming and political feuds appear to be the main current issues.
Personally I was quite satisfied with the previous system of DTs. There were a number of them that were obliging tagging scammers and from what I saw it was as much a curse as a privilege to be on the list. (Each DT has their own "fan club".
One of the things I think is important is to create a list of community values. Values that deserve negative trust. Values that deserve trust list inclusion. Values that deserve positive trust.
I've included a couple of posts I made that have already covered some of that already in other threads. (Quoted below)
Unacceptable behavior that will result in a red tag:
Attempted or successful fraud or theft.
Business activity that resulted in the loss of funds by others.
Account sales
Merit sales / swapping
Harassing a DT
Offering escrow without a track record
Asking for a no collateral loan
Shilling / advertising MLM or ponzi
Escrowing for themselves
Late loan repayments / loan defaults.
I'd like to make a comprehensive list of unacceptable behavior and discuss some of the subjective issues. This will provide an indication of community values and direction for people wanting to avoid getting into trouble.
A major goal of this is to allow retaliatory distrusts and ratings to actually have some chance of mattering so that contentious ratings have an actual cost. If someone is obviously scamming, then any retaliatory rating should not last long due to the DT1 "voting", but if you negative-rate someone for generally disliking them, then their retaliation against you may stick. In borderline cases, it should result in something of a political battle.
This is inspired partly by something that David Friedman said once (though I can't find the quote), that one of the requirements for a peaceful society is the credible threat of retaliation in case you are harmed. As DT was organized previously, one or both sides of a dispute was usually unable to effectively retaliate to a rating, at least via the trust system itself. Now your ability to effectively retaliate will tend to increase as you become more established in the community, which should discourage abuse generally. (Or that's the idea, at least.)
All that being said, I still discourage retaliatory ratings, and with these changes I encourage people to try to "bury the hatchet" and de-escalate rather than trying to use any increased retaliatory power you now have. Also, it's best to make your own custom list, and you must do this if you want to be on DT1.
I am never completely tied to anything, but let's try this for at least a few months and see how it works.
I feel that we are all part of Theymos "ant-farm " experiment.
The unfortunate part of the trust system is that it holds political and potential scam power.
For this reason I think it would be good to create a list of values that the majority on the DT list would like to maintain.
It is interesting that while the list was created as a trust list it appears that distrust is more important.
One of the things that I would like to alert people to is the danger of removing some of the old DTs from the list.
For instance when Lauda was removed from the old list there were numerous scammers that suddenly were untagged. This worried me.
Having a charter of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable will bring both discussion and some agreement.
I feel the idea of the new DT system is to have more eyes and ears out there fighting scams.
Before giving RED TRUST to anyone i think DT members obviously investigate properly.but my question is isn't it alarming when we see someone have 1000 merits but got red trust. This kind of profile spoils our forum fame.
Not really. For a start a lot of legendary accounts already have 1000 merit automatically from the merit that was provided to them automatically when the merit system was introduced. Merit is for post quality and not for trust.
I have merited some users with negative trust because their post was good - sometimes their post was brilliant and very useful.
Trust is based on opinion - so the person placing it feels there is a reason to warn others.
I use a modified trust list to include people I know and trust and exclude people I don't trust.
Negative trust does not necessarily mean that the person is a "written off" in all aspects. This is why it is really important to place a reference link and clear explanation why the rating has been given. (Same applies for positive trust)
Anyone can provide trust or negative trust and people on the DT list is not directly controlled by the forum. They are "independent agents".
Some scams are clearly defined while others are more subjective. For instance - if a business fails due to no illegal activity of the member. Is it a scam because people lost funds - or is it not a scam because no illegal activity was involved ?
Things that can get people negative trust from a DT are:
Attempted or successful fraud or theft.
Business activity that resulted in the loss of funds by others.
Account sales
Merit sales / swapping
Harassing a DT
Offering escrow without a track record
Asking for a no collateral loan
Shilling / advertising MLM or ponzi
Escrowing for themselves
Late loan repayments / loan defaults.
Any other untrustworthy or illegal behavior.
Saying "I don't trust you" is subjective. It doesn't mean there has been a judicial process that has found the person to be guilty of a crime.
Sometimes minor dishonesty is a sign of more less obvious stuff. Like Al Capone who was convicted on tax evasion.
Also just because a person has done something in the past (history is something that we rely on to identify patterns of behavior) it doesn't mean that they will repeat their mistake or haven't reformed.
Some historical scams and failures have also been very good learning processes for the Crypto community.
Some of it resulted in Terms like:
"To get Goxed"
Definition: To suffer from mt. gox’s technical glitches; to get screwed over by mt. gox; to lose all your money in a speculative investment ."To take a Big Vern holiday" Definition: To disappear like Paul Vernon - the owner and CEO of the now defunct Cryptsy who "vanished" like the exchange funds. (Also referred to as an "exit scam".
"To receive a (Butterfly Labs) BFL upgrade" Definition: To receive something substandard much later than promised.
"To buy a Yesminer" Definition: To pay for something and never receive it.
There was a thread about why scams are not moderated and it has good reasons:
What is a scam and who decides it is a scam ?
Some scams are obvious but others are not. Once you start moderating scams it can quickly become extremely complex.
Some people call bitcoin a scam. Some people call bcash a scam - some people call it bitcoin cash.
Some people call Ripple a scam. Where do you draw the line ?
Cloud-mining contracts ? Short term mining contracts ? HYIP ? Pump and dump groups ? Crypto exchanges ? Tax collectors ?
The trust system - while not perfect - works fine in identifying and warning people of potential issues and scams.
The reality is that people need to educate themselves on how to spot scams, keep their crypto safe, use escrow and do their own research.
If Theymos wanted to, he could come up with a list of things that are and aren't acceptable. It might not be easy, and it might not please everyone, but he could do it instead of doing nothing. I mean, that's what laws are--they're written rules describing behavior that isn't acceptable. Lawmakers don't throw up their hands at the complexity of the legal system and decide to not prohibit certain things as a result.
Once you start censorship it opens up a whole new can of worms.
If you censor some scams but not others it can provide a false sense of security.
Banning copy-pasting is not censoring because they have nothing
unique to say.
It is also a matter of "proof" and "liability". Copy-pasting when caught is fairly clear cut.
Once you start censoring scams you are accepting some sort of responsibility for the safety of the users.
The whole bitcoin thing came from the Cypherpunk movement - which tends to have a free speech and libertarian viewpoint on life.
Once you start censoring it very quickly turns into over-reach.
The reality is that most users that get banned probably re-incarnate as another account anyway.
A known & tagged scammer is better than an unknown & untagged scammer.
Lawmakers often over-reach. The powers they give their "henchmen" often affect ordinary citizens. (I'm not only talking of developed democratic countries)
To make something illegal - lawmakers only have to declare it to be illegal. Lawmakers only pursue "crime" if it is in their self interest.
The average CEO salary is more than 531 times that of the average hourly worker.
Politicians get a regular pay rise -but for other Government workers it is "not affordable".
Some wealthy executives pay less tax than a laborer.
Some drugs with minimal risk are illegal - while other drugs with high risks can be prescribed by your doctor.
Euthanasia, and suicide are illegal in most countries - but the death penalty or "shooting by police" is not illegal in some of those countries.
Some large corporations pay no taxes without breaking the law.
Some legal action can leave an innocent person broke.
Theymos views on trust. I shortened them to what I believe to be the relevant quotes but please click on the links to view the whole context.
The ratings did all end up being removed, which I'm happy with, and I appreciate the willingness to de-escalate and forgive from the people involved in this case. The fact that this issue came up at all indicates that the trust system isn't working perfectly (and I am considering future system changes), but it's still a good outcome.
And the trust system is only going to work if there's some level of forgiveness and de-escalation.
Some people were talking about neg-trusting spammers for spamming. This is not appropriate; report the posts, and if that doesn't seem to be working well, come to Meta with specific examples and suggestions.
Logged-out users will now see a warning in trust-enabled sections if more DT members neg-trust the topic starter than positive-trust him.
This increases the responsibility of DT members not to give negative trust for stupid reasons, but only for things that cause you to believe that the person is a scammer.
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.
I do not view it as appropriate for trust ratings to relate primarily to non-trust matters. By giving someone negative trust, you're basically attaching a note to all of their posts telling people "warning: do not trade with this person!". If we can get DT working well enough, in the future I'd like to prevent guests from even viewing topics by negative-trust users in trust-enabled sections, so you have to ask yourself whether your negative trust would warrant this sort of significant effect.
In particular, in my view:
- Giving negative trust for being an annoying poster is inappropriate, since this has nothing to do with their trustworthiness. If they're disrupting discussion or never adding anything, then that's something for moderators to deal with, and you should report their posts and/or complain in Meta about it.
- Giving negative trust for merit trading and
deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.
- You should be willing to forgive past mistakes if the person seems unlikely to do it again.
- It is absolutely not appropriate to give someone negative trust because you disagree with them. I'm disappointed in the reaction to
this post. Although H8bussesNbicycles is perhaps not particularly trustworthy for other reasons, the reasons many people gave for neg-trusting him are inappropriate. You can argue that what he's advocating is bad on a utilitarian level, but he would disagree, and his advocacy of a certain Trust philosophy doesn't by itself mean that he's an
untrustworthy person. DT selection is
meant to be affected by user lists, and it is totally legitimate to try to honestly convince other (real) people to use a list more in-line with your views.
I'm not going to blacklist people from DT selection due to not following my views, since a big point of this new system is to get me less involved, but if a culture
somewhat compatible with my views does not eventually develop, then I will consider this more freeform DT selection to be a failure, and I'll probably get rid of it in favor of enforcing custom trust lists.
We have so many threads like this nowadays, people twerking for merits.
There are a lot of pointless "summarize something obvious" posts, but IMO btcsmlcmnr's summary added something.
Forgiveness and de-escalation are key to getting Trust working smoothly:
-
Forgiveness: Often people make fairly small mistakes, but then they seemingly get red-trusted for life. This isn't really fair, and it discourages participation due to paranoia: if you think that you have a 1% chance of running afoul of some unwritten rule and getting red-trusted for life, you might just avoid the marketplace altogether. Red trust should mostly be based on an evaluation of what the person is likely to do in the
future moreso than a punishment/mark-of-shame.
-
De-escalation: If some people end up locked in a feud where they're only really giving negative trust to each other in retaliation for negative trust, then one of them should propose burying the hatchet and removing the negative trust. Otherwise it never gets resolved, and everyone is worse-off for it.
How are the existing ratings converted into the new flags?
They're not. I decided that too many negative ratings aren't flag-worthy, and there's no way to automatically determine it. If you believe that a past negative rating is flag-worthy, you'll need to create a flag.
