Well that is oh so magnanimous of you to decide for me and everyone else what is a waste of our time. Very gracious of you. It is not just feedback but the patterns of intimidation and punitive behavior engaged against anyone who challenges them forcing people to divide and form cliques. I warned about this result years ago and as usual you, and the rest of the peanut gallery poo pooed my warnings just as you are now. Using an escrow proves nothing as far as your reputability as you have no opportunity to steal anything. This is one reason why I personally refuse escrow in most cases because it shows people I am worthy of trust, not just reliable to put something in a box as promised. Additionally using an escrow itself is a risk as countless examples have shown us.
"I feel like the argument against my opinion is that every user here is a robot unable to read feedback, detect bias, and the weight for feedback from known shaky characters for being a "liar" or whatever else, is the same as someone claiming that you scammed them. "
Tell me Salty, what is the purported purpose of the trust system? Is it not supposed to be a tool for the newest most new and uninformed users to be able to wade trough the marketplace and pick the most reputable traders to engage with? Is this not because they are new and unable to make informed decisions on their own to a large degree not knowing how things work here? If your premise is was correct then the trust system serves ZERO purpose. The fact is even if they do know what to do most people are just going to look at the red and green numbers and move along because people are lazy. This translates to loss of sales or inability to participate in projects as a direct result of false abusive ratings, among other things like selective inclusions/exclusions.
You you have managed to avoid harassment because you are a jellyfish that flows with the tide. Also you are a mod, and to pretend like that offers you no protection from this is just a lie.
The grand standing is appreciated as always. You can waste your time worrying about 1 in a trillion scenarios if you want, but most people are happy to live their lives without worrying that someone from the forum is going to hire someone to come get them or stage some sort of IRS conspiracy. My response is that you are giving these people power over you. That doesn't excuse their action, I'm just saying you are taking the absolute least effective course of action. The DT bullies you are spending your time fighting, and the hours you are spending trying to reform a system is to fight someone with the authority of a hall monitor. If we aren't willing to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll read feedback before judging its validity, then its all a moot point anyway. If a negative rating about you being a space alien can effect your business in any way, then this is not a hospitable business environment.
The trust system is indeed a tool for the newest most new and uniformed users to help them wade through the marketplace. I'm not seeing any new uniformed users here. The fact that you have already formulated your own idea of who is trustworthy and not means that you aren't relying on the default trust system. New users will do the same in a couple of months. I don't think it plays a major role here, no. Its a nice handy guideline for new users, not some all powerful list that decides the fate of anything besides a general suggestion for new users. What we are talking about is personal problems between users. I'm against creating a billion sets of rules that restrict users because 10 forum members can't get along. Then we add more rules when someone finds a new way around them. As we've had this discussion before, I don't agree with your rule proposals. We've already established that everyone here has different definitions of untrustworthy behavior, why suppress the feedback from people that are in the wrong? Let individuals judge who is wrong and who is right. If you are saying, yeah but we can't trust the users, they won't make informed decisions! Thats not a problem with the system, thats a problem with individuals once again.
We keep talking about how the trust system needs to be decentralized yet specific rules can be bullied into vote by either Extortion Group or Anti Extortion Group? Both groups are in effect looking to accomplish the same thing. You want accountability and by doing so making the trust system useless. They want to keep abusing trust, but my point is that people abusing trust doesn't break the system, it just makes their flaws more obvious. Let them make their own flaws obvious and trust users to make their own decisions.
Also, I haven't been a moderator for a few months, didn't have time to continue. The ignore button works pretty well when it comes to harassment.
