for a lack of evidence.
It means that whatever you do could be wrong,cause its based on ?
-snip-
There is always room for error.
Opinion is commonly used when evidence is absent. I think it was already established in this thread that its difficult to find the line between someone selling legit cards at a discount and someone not. Is it 50% discount or 48.7548%?
Opinions should not be used when deciding to leave negative trust, as for the majority of people a single negative rating can essentially torpedo one's ability to conduct business around here. If you can't cite specific facts and if you cannot speak to why you left a negative rating then it is probably not a good idea to leave such negative rating in the first place.
See Vods crusade against MS keys. If anything it makes those wondering whether they should buy think. Which is the whole reason the ratings are left, to make the possible buyers think "can this be legit?".
I would argue Vod leaving negative ratings for MSDN key sellers will have the opposite effect. Potential MSDN key sellers know that
all MSDN key sellers will have negative trust so they do not bother checking their trust profile and ignore their trust score. This has allowed multiple people to continue to scam even after having negative trust by selling MSDN keys that do not exist. There have been a number of scam accusations opened against people who received payment for MSDN keys and sent nothing in return and who previously had multiple trust reports saying they had scammed previously at the time payment was received. Normally, when someone starts a business they will initially have difficulty conducting business because they have no reputation, however as they have been in business longer, they will build up a reputation of trading honestly and if they want to maintain that reputation then they will need to not (try to) scam the people they do business with, however when everyone has negative trust ratings this is not possible.
So the solution is to just accept the fact that illegal goods are traded here and be done with it? I know I argued that MS keys are legal to sell in some circumstances/juristictions and that the seller should not be flagged without a closer look. In the end though, even the "legit" (following your definition of "not scamming a user here") ones are breaking the law (at least in some countries). Same goes for gift cards[1]:
Your Amazon.com Balance cannot be used to purchase other gift cards. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold...
The question is how liberal this forum wants to be and there are different views. That is why this topic is discussed here. Im perfectly fine with that. What I find troubling is the "abuse!" crys and the attacks against those newly added to DT. What am to think of this other than someone sees their business in danger and not someone that has good arguments and can defend with them, but someone that needs to use every possibily venue. I know that amazon gift cards or often the only way very poor people can earn. They do mechanical turk work, earn amazon points, trade them for gift cards and sell them at a discount for money that lets them buy food. Those will hardly sell them here directly.
I would say a possible way to prevent money laundering via Gift Cards on this forum would be to apply (and enforce)
this rule to sellers of gift cards.
If prior reputation is required before someone can start selling Gift Cards then gift card sellers will have an incentive to not sell laundered/stolen gift cards because doing so would damage their reputation.
This may be a good solution and it might be the first compromise I have read in this regard. With account trades it would at the very least give gift card sellers the incentive to work honestly until they have paid off the account needed to conduct the sales in the first place. Its one rule that is rarely enforced by staff though and just because of that its probably not a solution at all. It would require staff to interfere with trades.
[1]
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeId=3122091Your critique seems to be the lack of evidence. Why is it a problem here, but not when ponzis are tagged? There is lack of evidence as well. Why are the two a problem, but I am not?
A ponzi is essentially a promise which is mathematically impossible to be kept. A ponzi is essentially a promise that if you give me $1 today, then I will give you $2 tomorrow with no limits as to how much total money I will accept. If I claim to somehow use this $1 and "invest" it for a day that somehow gives me >$1 in returns in that one day, then it is your responsibility to ask questions to debunk my claims if you wish to leave me a negative rating. Take these two threads for example (
one,
two), they were claiming to "invest" in altcoins/ect. so they were initially given the benefit of the doubt, however after questions were asked and research was done, it was determined they were in fact lying about not being a ponzi and were left negative trust.
Another good example is
this in which the OP of this thread was offering ponzi-like returns, however was claiming that he was "investing" money sent to him by "investors" and when he was questioned about how he makes the money that he uses to pay the returns, he provided
evidence (not proof) of legitimacy, and without significant evidence that would prove otherwise a negative rating is inappropriate in this case.
I didnt know about "Delta Investment", they have a negative rating though.