[Choose 1]Trade Forum accounts, or DT neg trust for trading accounts - banned

[Quickseller]

As it stands now, forum account sales are explicitly allowed, but many people on DT are giving negative trust to those who either have attempted (successfully or otherwise) to buy or sell forum accounts, sometimes many months or years after the fact. To make matters worse, certain forum members are doing this in the open without consequence.

The above two facts are in conflict, and the existence of both are harming many forum members. I have seen countless forum members have their reputations ruined after they reviewed the forum rules, and possibly the recent activity of prominent forum members who show up as having high trust/merit stats, try to engage in transaction consistent with what is reasonably based on their above observations, and end up with their reputations destroyed without a warning to amend their behavior.

The above two facts are harming countless forum members who I believe are acting in good faith, for no reason, and has the same effect as excluding these forum members from the community for no reason.

As a result of the above, one of the two below rule changes needs to be implemented:
*Forum account sales are banned, effective x date in the near future. If it is determined ownership of an account transferred after x date, the account will be permanently locked, and all people involved in the transaction (buyer seller) will be considered for a ban
*Leaving (DT) negative trust for engaging in a forum account sale transaction is prohibited, which will be applied retroactively. If this rule is implemented, forum members should remove these ratings on their own, however if they do not, the ratings should be removed by the administration (which will include ratings left after the rule is effective), and if someone leaves ratings for this reason (or closely related enough to reasonably conclude the root cause is a forum account transaction), they will be considered for a ban.

Whichever of the above is implemented, the rule needs to be actually enforced by the administration.

In either case, some freedoms will be infringed upon, however this is superior to the alternative of many people being harmed by the above referenced conflict. The current implementation of both above facts arguably infringes on a greater amount of freedoms.

I have no financial stake in the outcome of the above, current or anticipated. However I do have an opinion as to which option would be less intrusive, but I will not state it. There are arguments for and against both of the above rule changes.

I have added a poll for forum members to voice an opinion.

edit:

for those that say "scamming is allowed" I would respond by saying it is not explicitly allowed per forum rules. The forum will not moderate scams, while forum account sales are explicitly allowed per forum rules. The administration has previously tagged alt accounts of scammers when the evidence was clear they are a scammer.

I am interested to see the opinions of certain forum members.

[TMAN]

controversial but I don't believe you actually trade accounts any more, your general presence has changed over the last couple of years..

anyway yes I agree, there needs to be a consensus and it should be that every account seller/trader/buyer is tagged for trying to cheat campaigns as that is what this comes down to - stealing.  a uniform approach from all of DT starting today is the best way to deal with this, cant have people bringing stuff up from 4 years ago though as I think that will be counter productive here.

[Jet Cash]

I don't think accounts should be bought or sold.

I believe that for project continuity, joint accounts should be allowed, and accounts could be transferred within an organisation. In both cases, the status and use should be declared publicly.

[yogg]

I don't think accounts should be bought or sold.

I believe that for project continuity, joint accounts should be allowed, and accounts could be transferred within an organisation. In both cases, the status and use should be declared publicly.

I agree that accounts shouldn't be bought or sold, but how to prevent that from happening ?
I must remind that, DT resort to leave neg feedbacks for account traders because such events aren't (and probably won't be) monitored by the staff in the near future.
Same goes with scams ; they aren't moderated.

It this were to be established (banning for account trade), I believe this opens the door for numerous different attacks towards staff.

As I understand it, accounts trades are frowned upon but not explicitly forbidden because it would be nearly impossible to enforce whatever consequences efficiently.  

[o_e_l_e_o]

As I understand it, accounts trades are frowned upon but not explicitly forbidden because it would be nearly impossible to enforce whatever consequences efficiently.

Even if they were banned, they wouldn't stop; they would simply move off forum.

I would be most in favor of changing the rules regarding account trading to be in line with scams. That is to say, remove the line in the "Unofficial rules" saying they are allowed, but replace it with a line saying they are not moderated. Buying an account is buying a reputation/rank/trust which you did not earn. That is inherently untrustworthy in my opinion, and generally speaking I would be against removing negative tags from these users.

[AverageGlabella]

The age old debate. This is something which needs to be taken on a case by case basis. To give an example I'll present a number of scenarios and would be interested in what people would do if they were on DefaultTrust. These are just examples and not based on real members of the forum.

User 1
Traded forum accounts back in 2011 but has since displayed above average posts and displayed levels of trust that are considered to be good within the community and has been placed on DefaultTrust.

User 2
Traded forum accounts back in 2015 but has since displayed exceptional posting level and is considered trustworthy by most of the community and is on depth 2 of DefaultTrust.

User 3
Has traded one account but has a average posting level and isn't considered either trustworthy or untrustworthy.

User 4
Has escrowed for forum account sales in the past but hasn't traded forum accounts. This user has exceptional trust level and is on DefaultTrust.

User 5
A hero member now but sold accounts back in 2009 when they were a newbie. No current trust level and doesn't post anything but marketplace listings for various goods relating to men watches.

The idea behind these dilemmas is that people make mistakes and sometimes don't understand the consequences of their actions especially because prior to early 2016 account sales and the ethnics behind it wasn't very well documented and nativity could come into play. As well as it wasn't that frowned upon back then anyway.  Thus the reason I'm only displaying users which have traded forum accounts prior to 2016. Late 2015 and early 2016 the majority mentality towards account sales changed during this time period and resulted in a big crackdown of account sales and resulting in a mass amount of negative feedback being left. Although the intention is good this might have been a little unfair on those that have been trading forum accounts for a number of years and then suddenly get marked red especially considering forum account sales was considered OK during the years they were trading. During a mentality shift there should always be a grace period and past dealings not considered if they accept the mentality shift and change their ways. Remember there are several laws that have been changed in your country are you a criminal because you did something back in 1920 that would have been considered legal at the time but is now considered illegal?

Prior to 2016 some people didn't have a problem with it and some had a slight problem but wouldn't go as far as calling them unethical practices. What I think resulted in the shift of mentality was the increasing problem of signature campaign spammers. Account sales were on the rise due to the fact that signature campaigns were becoming very popular during this time which resulted in people buying accounts to cheat the system and enroll multiple accounts.This is unethical obviously because this was against the rules of the majority of signature campaigns. There were concerns about scamming users because the account is higher ranked but at that time there was no merit system included and the trust system existed which meant that ranking up accounts was easy and shouldn't have had no bearing on trust as well as the fact that an escrow should always be used when dealing with strangers anyway. Of course when a newbie joins the forum and sees a high ranking member they automatically assume they're more trustworthy than a complete newbie which I think a lot of people had concerns about with account sales. Although from my stand point I believe that the trust system should have made that clear and just like selling carving knives its not your responsibility of what they do with those knives and its not your responsibility with the account. Although its not as black and white as that. Now that its quite clearly against the moral stand point of the forum because of the increasing problems it brings it should be the responsibility of the seller too because its quite clear what the standpoint from forum members is on account sales but again this shouldn't really be applied to those when it was an acceptable practice.

 Although its now well documented that account sales is definitely going to get you marked red and almost all account sales are to cheat a signature campaign and possibly scam then rules and regulations should come into play whether thats from a forum point of view or via defaulttrust making some guidelines to account sales.

My opinion is that account sales should not be allowed per the forum rules. However if theymos is not going to do that then DefaultTrust need to start making a guideline. A universal guideline with no exceptions. For example for the users in my example who are trusted I would give the benefit of the doubt when trading forum accounts because it was acceptable at the time but if they continue to do so once this universal guideline has been approved by the majority then their reputation no longer comes into play.

Regarding the shift in mentality if we were to establish a start date to applying universal guidelines of leaving feedback are we going to do the start date from today or january 1 2016 or earlier? If we establish a start date then all past dealings in forum accounts have to be erased don't they?

There's a number of problems with establishing a start date because there has already been 1000s of feedback left and I don't think everyone is going to agree on this controversial subject which would result in inconsistent feedback across the forum. Potentially establishing a start date and then changing all previously left feedback to neutral could be an option. At the moment we've got some self admitted legendary members who have traded accounts but have been left off the hook because of their reputation and I'm fine with that because of the case by case situation this presents but we then have less established members getting marked for the same thing. At the moment the feedback being left is rather inconsistent.  

[eaLiTy]

cant have people bringing stuff up from 4 years ago though as I think that will be counter productive here.

Some of the prominent members have traded accounts in the past and they have accepted that in due course and refrained from that practice and the users who get tagged now cry about the double standards which is being shown, the solution for this is to have a transparent system (can open an sub forum with a moderator to monitor that) where every traded account is published here when they are changing hands and those who are not revealing those trade must be tagged.

The accounts that are traded are for two reason, either to enter campaigns or to scam people .
With the current merit system you cannot farm accounts like they did in the past without  making a valid effort and people who farmed accounts in the past had the nerve and time to do those activities and there is nothing that can be done and so is the reason i am suggesting this .

[YOSHIE]

In fact everyone is confused in buying and selling accounts between yes or no, what needs to be changed in my opinion is the forum rules below need to be confirmed.
Meaning: people consider buying and selling accounts allowed, but on the other hand

18. Having multiple accounts and account sales are allowed,

Connection, not recommended.

but account sales are discouraged.

So people think what is right and wrong, is allowed or not,
Well, if this is confirmed, maybe people think 10X times in buying and selling accounts.

As you mentioned above, choose one.
For example:
Having multiple accounts and selling accounts will be given red trust.

Here people will assess the risk of buying and selling account transactions.
Of course the rules apply in the Forum. I think that's what needs to be changed and emphasized the trading account risk....

[AverageGlabella]

Some of the prominent members have traded accounts in the past and they have accepted that in due course and refrained from that practice and the users who get tagged now cry about the double standards which is being shown, the solution for this is to have a transparent system (can open an sub forum with a moderator to monitor that) where every traded account is published here when they are changing hands and those who are not revealing those trade must be tagged.

The accounts that are traded are for two reason, either to enter campaigns or to scam people .
With the current merit system you cannot farm accounts like they did in the past without  making a valid effort and people who farmed accounts in the past had the nerve and time to do those activities and there is nothing that can be done and so is the reason i am suggesting this .

They have although time period and the viewpoint of the forum has to be considered. If it was an acceptable thing to do back a few years ago you shouldn't really be able to tag them. I give the analogy of breaking national laws:

1. You download pirated videos which is not illegal at the time

2. The government bring in a law which makes pirating videos illegal

3. You stop downloading pirated videos

This scenario above is a little similar to the prominent members. I can bet 90% that most prominent members are no longer selling or buying accounts and that they only did it in the time period of it being acceptable.

Although having said this I disagree with the sub forum suggestion I don't think forum accounts should be allowed to be sold first of all by forum rules however if this isn't going to change I still think we should be against forum account sales. However to remain fair and taking the government law change analogy into consideration establishing a date where it was no longer acceptable behavior is the point in which we should be negative tagging everyone. What we do with previous left feedback is a tricky one and we have to consider that not everyone is going to be behind this including those on DefaultTrust. At the moment we know that anyone selling accounts today will be marked red but the grey area is how many years ago did account sales become negative worthy and do we consider the reputation and the latest actions of the members that have previously sold forum accounts years ago.

[The Cryptovator]

When rules were written, merit system wasn't implemented. So that time there was many account farmers since account sells was allowed by forum. That forum was created based on community discussion, not for earning purpose. Selling the accounts were not considered an offense if the forum was limited to discussion only. But I believe, unfortunately no one trading accounts for discussion purposes. Do you believe?

Question is who is the account buyers?
1. Newbies who want to earn more money by ranked account.
2. Red tagged users who want to continue earning with fresh account.
3. Scammers who want earn by scam other people's.

So we can see all of point involved with earn. If a newbie could gain a ranked account means he/don't know about forum lifestyle and don't like to contribute except spam. Others two point is clear.

Nothing wrong with earning but we are spending years here to build a account, contribute ourself and helping forums. But if someone come suddenly and bought account just because he have money, that's really not acceptable behaviour in my opinions.

May be people's will trade account outside of forum if its officially ban by admin. Let them do, at least someone will be punished if they cought and people's can't make multiple thread against DT's.

I am agree with OP, there should be clear rules. If admin want to allow users for account sells then give instructions to DT avoid tagging them. Although I am against of account sells, but question is why people's should punish for trade account if admin allow it. We can see that question already raised. Otherwise account sells should be ban and ban them who is involved with it. So no one will waste time on this matter.

Allow account trade & allow DT's to tag them at the time is conflicting rules each others.  

[suchmoon]

Trust ratings are used where forum rules fall short. Trust ratings are not moderated and that's how it should stay. There is a perfectly working tool to deal with ratings you dislike: your trust list.

I'd rather see the trolling rule being actually enforced so that users wouldn't feel compelled to use trust ratings to fight that.

[hacker1001101001]

18. Having multiple accounts and account sales are allowed, but account sales are discouraged.

Twisted words in the above rule is the only cause of the confusion regarding the account trading.

If a practice is allowed than why should it be discouraged?

On the other hand, if a practice is discouraged than why should it be allowed ?

This question rolls in the minds of most of the forum members here and also new once, as there is not a clearly explained rule for it.

I too think there should be some sort of strict rule about this years old issue. A more straightforward rule would be an better opinion for sure.

[TheNewAnon135246]

The main question is: Why would anyone buy a forum account?

Answer: Most likely is to monetize the account by joining a signature/bounty campaign, thus poluting the forum with unlogical word spaghetti. Less likely is to scam people but it still happens. I personally only tag (bought) accounts which are proven to attempt a scam/succesfully scam other users. I do get why some DT users tag all of them to try and keep the forum quality at a certain level.

[suchmoon]

If a practice is allowed than why should it be discouraged?

It it wasn't allowed then staff would have to get involved. I would imagine there is a number of reasons why that is not desirable, such as additional workload, overlap with scams (which are not moderated), needing access to private information (IP addresses and whatnot), and the sheer impossibility of the task (smart farmers/traders can avoid any detection).

If theymos wants to take any action in the matter I'd rather see one of hilarious' suggestions implemented - e.g. sell higher-ranked accounts "officially" (silver/gold in addition to copper).

[EcuaMobi]

Being realistic, I don't think admins will ever explicitly forbid trading accounts and ban everyone who tries to sell or buy an account, for the same reasons scammers are not banned.
If I'm wrong then correct me and in that case I'd ask them to begin with banning known scammers.

for those that say "scamming is allowed" I would respond by saying it is not explicitly allowed per forum rules. The forum will not moderate scams, while forum account sales are explicitly allowed per forum rules.

The fact something is "allowed" on the forum just means a user will not be banned because of that. It doesn't mean it's OK to do it.
I don't see much difference between not mentioning something and "explicitly allowing" something else. What's not on the rules is generally allowed, unless it's so obvious it's forbidden that it's not worth mentioning.
Anyway, if admins won't ban scammers then it wouldn't make sense to ask them to ban account traders. If they change their minds about that then please do ban known scammers.


That being said, I don't think trying to trade an account automatically deserves negative trust, and even less so being escrow for account trades. It deserves negative trust if the seller is helping scammer, either explicitly or by not doing something he could do.

For example if an old account with positive trust is being sold then that account could easily be used for an exit scam. If another Sr. account with neutral trust is sold then it would be much more difficult it's used to scam.
If a DT account is sold then there's a big chance it's used to abuse the DT system.

I would propose something less extreme: neutralizing sold accounts.
By that I mean accounts on DT should be removed from DT before being sold. Accounts with positive trust should lose that positive trust.
That could be done by informing of the sale to those who added that account to their trust list or left positive trust.
Those same users who were notified could then monitor the sold account for fishy behavior.
I want to say the seller should also check for the buyer trustworthiness, but that would probably be impractical as any untrustworthy user would just create a brand new account to buy another one.

The problem I see now with tagging every single user who tries to sell an account, or even ask a question on a sale thread, is that those ratings can dilute. I've seen sellers write "don't worry about my negative trust, it's just for selling accounts".

I don't think tagging everyone involved on account sales reduce the number of scams happening on the forum, and that should be the main (probably even only) objective of the trust system.

I agree with OP the rule regarding account sales is not clear enough. If we reach an agreement here then we can ask mprep to reflect that on the list of rules. If not then he could add something like "if you try to sell or buy an account you won't be banned but may get negative trust".

[Lauda]

Traded accounts will be used to manipulate this poll, thus the results are irrelevant. Tagging is how it should countinue to be handled.

[bones261]

   I think that a good solution would be to just not allow threads for account sales. Bitcointalk already doesn't allow sales thread for illegal items. Although account sales will still go on, offsite, the inability to advertise on this forum will hamper the marketing efforts even further. After all, the target market is people who already use this forum or wish to use this forum. (Most probably to participate in a signature campaign.)
   I'm not certain that this forum should take the extra step of banning accounts suspected of being bought/sold. If it did, I would expect the level of certainty that the account is indeed bought/sold be rather high. I would hate to see an account banned erroneously.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I agree that accounts shouldn't be bought or sold, but how to prevent that from happening ?

I don't think it can be prevented, but that doesn't mean account sales should be tolerated.  Thus I voted for banning account sales, even if it's not entirely enforceable.  The reasons why people shouldn't trade accounts has been written innumerable times, and I don't feel like making the argument again here.  Ultimately it enables people to scam or to earn more money by shitposting in campaigns, and there's really nothing good that comes from it.

[Lauda]

I agree that accounts shouldn't be bought or sold, but how to prevent that from happening ?

I don't think it can be prevented, but that doesn't mean account sales should be tolerated.  Thus I voted for banning account sales, even if it's not entirely enforceable.  The reasons why people shouldn't trade accounts has been written innumerable times, and I don't feel like making the argument again here.  Ultimately it enables people to scam or to earn more money by shitposting in campaigns, and there's really nothing good that comes from it.

Not a single forum rule is really preventing anything, just enforcing stuff.

[DdmrDdmr]

I’m not a fan of ambiguity. From that perspective, allowing account sales on the one hand, and red tagging them on the other seems to me like an unnecessary contradiction. It would be conceptually much clearer if those two elements were aligned: Either allow sells and don’t red tag them until some wrongdoing has been performed with the accounts at hand, or don’t allow them and give red-tagging all the legitimacy when it becomes highly suspected (with prove that, ultimately, should/could lead to the accounts being banned).

Currently, it seems like a baited situation, which brings no benefit to anyone.