Quote from: Bitsky on March 16, 2013, 09:37:51 AM

Quote from: psy on March 15, 2013, 11:01:46 PM

I was one of the persons who gave Pirate a +10 rating, along with a sarcastic comment, after the scheme collapsed. Just to show how useless the system was. Because the ratings were the main reason I trusted in him... ...the ratings and how everybody around here touted the BTC-otc ratings as something to be taken into account when dealing with other users.

Quote from: Herodes on March 16, 2013, 01:23:57 AM

Pirate had a large mouth, so did a lot of other scammers. They brag, boast, and flap their feather wings, because of their big egos. This is a very large big red sign. Everybody should learn that. Not saying that the attention-seeking loud talkers are all scammers, but it seems like they very frequently is. At the same time, a lot of people get duped by all that hoopla. I hope it serves as an education for those who got fooled, and that they're more careful in the future.

The bitcoin-otc system is not foolproof, and I would not trust it blindly, I would do my own investigations before dealing with somebody, and I have turned down trades with users that have good ratings, simply because they could not provide some reasonable amount of information that I was asking for. I don't care whether they think I was just too paranoid, or whether they were scammers and were afraid of getting caught with their pants down. Either way, the end result was that I wasn't scammed.

No matter how much of a great trust rating Pirate had, I would've never done any deals with him, because I do not trust people that are jumping up and down, and handwaiving with excitement constantly.

Flamboyant egomaniacs are to be avoided at all costs.

I stayed away from Pirate for a long time, but at some point I decided to jump on too. Why? Mainly because of his #otc ratings and how this was supposed to help to protect one from scammers. Then many reported that they got paid, so whatever he did appeared to work to some degree. Of course there were warnings that it was probably a scam, but most of those ran similar projects so it wasn't easy to determine if those warnings were just part of a mud-fight. Also don't forget that Pirate met with a few of his investors face to face. Also I'm not sure if I was scammed by Pirate or paybtc.
Some might say that the promises were too good to be true; but look at the btc price development: from less than cents to around $45 now in 2+ years. People laughed at bitcoin at the beginning and said it's just a scam; but look at it right now.

The current scammer tag doesn't protect against long cons either. I think a WoT system is still better in the end. There may be fake ratings, but there are still signs usually pointing to that. A bunch of ratings on a new account from new accounts isn't gonna mean much, and they will have to use new accounts since accounts that rate a lot of people who turn out to be scammers won't be as trusted as others.