Favorite Merchants who accept BTC

[adamstgBit]

I beg you Adam to look into a web-of-trust model, perhaps you should spend the weekend playing with PGP/GPG. Most likely your reviewers and thus their reviews are meaningless unless the pathways of trust can be demonstrated. Why shouldn't every merchant create numerous accounts and review themselves positively? What prevents competitors from reviewing negatively. Are larger merchants more trust worthy than small? Who are these people and why should we care?

very interesting !
ill be looking into it...

right now all i can say is, only one review is allowed per listing (based on ip). For a competitor to do allot of damage he would have to change his ip for every review for that listing..

my site is aimed at non-tech people. and so i don't want to have them need to understand techno-bable to write a review. but i would like to be able to establish trusted reviews.

[julz]

I beg you Adam to look into a web-of-trust model, perhaps you should spend the weekend playing with PGP/GPG. Most likely your reviewers and thus their reviews are meaningless unless the pathways of trust can be demonstrated. Why shouldn't every merchant create numerous accounts and review themselves positively? What prevents competitors from reviewing negatively. Are larger merchants more trust worthy than small? Who are these people and why should we care?

very interesting !
ill be looking into it...

right now all i can say is, only one review is allowed per listing (based on ip). For a competitor to do allot of damage he would have to change his ip for every review for that listing..

my site is aimed at non-tech people. and so i don't want to have them need to understand techno-bable to write a review. but i would like to be able to establish trusted reviews.

Nowdays it seems astroturfing is so widespread that dishonest businesses can rent a crowd of online shills from businesses that specialize in helping them 'manage' their PR, so the IP address protection is a start but only a pretty basic protection.
Something like the web-of-trust idea Netrin mentioned does sound like it would be good if you can somehow make it fairly simple.

[netrin]

It could be a mix of identity providers. Identities can be verified in numerous ways (PGP key, posting a code on this forum, linking a facebook account, whatever plurality). You can integrate existing trust models (but just because I have facebook friended Ted Bundy does not mean I trust him).

Each identity may select those they trust, those they do not, and neutral (good, bad, ugly unknown) as a directed graph (just because I trust you does not imply that you trust me). Ignore all trust calculus linked through an untrusted identity (I don't care who an untrusted identity trusts or doesn't trust). You can play with the numbers, but for example: what I directly trust, I trust 100%. Each single link of trust is weighted 10%, each double indirection, 1%.

If my mom trusts a merchant, then I trust it 10%. If two of my mom's coworkers trust it and one does not, then I trust the merchant 12%.

As long as it's boolean (and neutral) and not qualitative (good products, cheap prices, fast delivery, sexy staff) this model works. There is no such thing as "I trust a merchant more than another", the identity has either delivered or not.