Quote from: Snagglebone on May 16, 2015, 05:01:30 AM

Quote from: Quickseller on May 16, 2015, 04:52:09 AM

Quote from: Snagglebone on May 16, 2015, 03:55:53 AM

Quote from: Quickseller on May 16, 2015, 03:43:57 AM

Quote from: dserrano5 on May 16, 2015, 12:53:02 AM

Quote from: Snagglebone on May 15, 2015, 11:45:33 PM

So what does Bitcointalk do? Makes a centralized trust network and enforces it by default for anyone signing up through the DefaultTrust network.

"enforces", yeah theymos pointed me with a gun to accept DefaultTrust. Oh wait, I don't trust DefaultTrust

Please do a favour to yourself (and others) and replace the time spent posting nonsense with time spent setting up your trust network.

Personally, I think that it is probably not a bad idea to have DefaultTurst in your trust list as it is a good starting point as to whose ratings you should trust. As you spend time in the various marketplace sections (as well as other parts of the forum), you will be able to determine who is reputable enough to have in your trust list, and add them to your trust list (even if they are already in your trust network), and will see who is leaving trust ratings that you do not believe in (and are in your trust network), and exclude them from your trust list. Over time, you will have a trust list with a lot of exclusions and a good number of people in your trust list. If you have been around long enough then you should be able to develop a trust network that results in fairly accurate trust scores.

And that's fine... you should be able to add that if you want to. What you should not have is a default setting to have it on when, as a newb, you probably don't even know it exists or how to change it. What you do know, though, is you see red and green shit on the left and assume that the forum itself has determined that that person is trustworthy or not... a newb is typically not going to know that those pretty colors are a result of arbitrary bullshit posted by a select few elite on the forum and is used as a weapon to criticize those that disagree.

If you have it off by default, then anyone who adds it is far more likely to understand what they are adding than those that don't understand the system at all, when on by default.

The new users of the forum do need to know who has traded honestly over time in the past. It is not possible for a new user to take appropriate precautions to protect themselves from getting scammed, nor do they have any reliable way to determine who can be trusted enough to rely on their trust ratings without some kind of centralized system/network.

If you are going to argue that who people should trust should be determined in a decentralized way then I would say scammers would manipulate this and exclude who is trustworthy and include fellow scammers. There are a large number of scammers who have excluded me from their trust network while they have added their alts and fellow scammers to their trust network. The fact that scammers outweigh honest people (especially when it comes to the number of accounts) means that any voting system will result in scammers appearing as trustworthy and honest people appearing as scammers.

With a pretty small number of exceptions, anyone with dark green trust next to their name is probably safe to trust a fairly large amount of money with. This is especially true if someone who is new here were to perform a small to moderate amount of due diligence regarding who they are trusting with their money.

Right... so a few elite members get to decide who is trustworthy and who isn't. Woe be unto you if you run afoul of any of those elite crew! Yep, that's exactly what Bitcoin is meant to protect against.

DefaultTrust is no different than a central Government that will do as they please, regardless of the truth or honesty. We see it every day in Governments of the world and we see it every day in the DefaultTrust. The power of trust should not be placed in the hands of a few select men (I doubt any of them are women) in an Ivory Tower of Bitcointalk.

I do notice, however, that only those in the first two tiers of DefaultTrust are usually the ones defending it... IE - those elites are the defenders. Smells very much like our current Governmental system. The 1% say things are fine and everything is operating properly! Fuck everyone else! DefaultTrust works great when you're in it... Fuck everyone else!

You are right that is not what Bitcoin is about. However Bitcoin is also not about determining who is appropriate who can be trusted. The question if a node will accept a Bitcoin transaction is very black and white while if someone is trustworthy is extremely subjective. There is really no criteria that can determine if someone has scammed in the past and good judgement really needs to be used.

I can say that I was a supporter of the default trust system long before I was a part of the default trust network. I can also say that the default trust system was able to protect me from a number of scams when I was a newer user.

Prior to the default trust system there was the scammer tag system which was even more centralized and was reactive instead of the proactive system that is in place today.

What would you propose using instead of the current system in place currently?