Quote from: jhansen858 on June 21, 2013, 08:40:53 AM

Quote from: Rampion on June 21, 2013, 08:33:50 AM

Quote from: jhansen858 on June 21, 2013, 08:06:21 AM

So if matthew pays his bet he wouldn't deserve to get his tag at least "reviewed"? Or do tags stick for now until the end of time? If you get someone doing something shady to come clean, make the people whole, isn't that a good example to set? If there is nothing to gain by coming clean and fixing the problem, then why even bother. He might as well just go big and go out with a bang.

So your logic is: you get caught stealing, you give back the money, no harm done and thus no punishment.

That's a joke. If Werner was his sock puppet account, applying a scammer tag on Garr is the only way to protect users in future auctions created by Garr, or in any business transaction with him. If he gives back the money to starsoccer9 and that's it, what stops him to create more sockpuppets and continue to bid shill more auctions? If no tag is applied, he will still be seen by all users as the trustworthy member that holds money for the forum, etc. In fact, giving the type of character he is depicting of himself, one ready to publicly humiliate himself and give up basic principles to get his miners, while subtly implying he is being forced and blackmailed when the Skype logs contradict this, I would fear that in case he goes unpunished because of paying back, he would find a way to scam more so he can make up for his" loss".

In any case, I think Garr created a big problem for himself. He has a company (cognitive) that will probably be shaken by the outcome of this.

If Werner was indeed his sockpuppet, I guess Garr will end up learning a very real and important lesson: you cannot be" a little bit" scammer, you are either a scammer or you are not, full stop. And shill bidding is being a scammer.

In these forums we conduct quite a lot of business transactions. There is a thriving economy. And mods have limited power, because a scammer could create many sockpuppets and connect through proxies or Tor and that is difficult to catch. Thus, we all have to take our own decisions about who we are going to trust, and if that trust is broken by someone everybody needs to see it straight away.

No,

My logic is, reward those who are honest and punish those who are not. The difference between a scammer and someone who makes a mistake is the scammer when confronted by the situation, runs, leaving the victim holding the bag. The person who makes the mistake lives up to it and fixes it. I only hope that person really learned the lesson that earning honest money is always the best policy. The important thing is that people who were wronged are righted. If that means Garr needs to take a credibility hit as well, thats up to the mods. I don't set policy around here. If not a tag, maybe at least something like a credit report. The incident is recorded and then so is the resolution of the incident. people would know that it happened but also that you fixed it. Then they can make their own judgement.

i support this stance as well. Garr has shown that other than these few instances of shill bidding to be a competent addition to the forum and a pretty honest individual. 9/10 people would have lied there ass off. I respect him for admitting it and promising to make it right. I'm sure his two victtims in the shill bid will respect him for making it right and apologizing as well.