Quote from: Lauda on February 03, 2018, 01:40:32 PM

Quote from: Husires on February 03, 2018, 01:38:06 PM

I'm not talking about dumb answers but misinformation.

What exactly do you think is the difference between a "dumb answer" and "misinformation"? Please indulge me.

I am inclined to disagree with the idea of technical trust. I dont see how it could be made to work, without the cure becoming worse than the disease. But OP highlights a real problem.

As a regular on Development & Technical Discussion, I certainly see difference between what OP calls dumb answers versus misinformation. The section is infested by trolls who regularly and repeatedly post wrong information at high volume.

There is a very deliberate quality to much of the misinformation (and disinformation; there is an old and subtle distinction between the two words). It derails threads, and poisons sincere discussion. I dislike incorrectness anywhere; but if somebody speaks in ignorance, that can be corrected, whereas spreaders of misinformation are incorrigible and ineducable. Worst of all, they present a real danger of misleading newbies who earnestly seek to learn.

A few recent examples of misinformation trolls:

In the thread I started on Bitcoins Public-Key Security Level (OP currently +18), Anti-Cen #1423316 posted so much gibberish about using Microsoft Windows RSACryptoServiceProvider(512) for Bitcoin keys (!) that I myself had difficulty wading through it to pick out the real replies so I could respond to them. That has a real impact on readers. Anti-Cens post history includes claims of his own extraordinary expertise to support grossly wrong technical statements about Bitcoin, extreme hostility toward Core, a persistent suggestion that fees be capped at 1.5 (without specifying a unit), etc., etc.... At some point, I gathered a representative selection of quotes from Anti-Cens posts. As I have not hereto revealed publicly, Anti-Cen has also tried to bait me by PM. I think that Anti-Cen is probably the most odious troll in Dev & Tech right now.
In a thread ChiBitCTy started on Important Lighting Network reading- for everyone! (OP currently +9, including +1 from me), dinofelis #376659 derailed the thread into discussion of his attack on nodes: Nodes are vote by IP number, which is what Satoshi wanted to nullify by vote by PoW, The only reason why they talk Joes into running nodes in their basement, is because bitcoin needs a story, and decentralization sounds like a good selling argument, nobody will give a shit that 10 000 Joes find their nodes switching off because they don't find the right block chain any more, etc., etc., plus a sprinkle of crazy: People very knowledgeable of that system cannot ignore the basic design principles of that system, can they ? So there must be a deceptive reason for telling this [that the system is decentralized Ed.], given that it is objectively wrong. I tried to cut the discussion offI mean itso as to set the thread back on track. Any thread which catches dinofelis attention is liable to go in a similar direction. I see that Wind_FURY seems to be trying to draw fire, I presume to unclog other threads. Id expect that all the technically competent regulars must be sick of dinofelis.
My first exposure to the troll problem there came when I made a long reply to abominably incorrect information by bitfools #1152876. DannyHamilton clued me in that IHBT.

There are a few others. But for the sake of examples, Ive necessarily already brought too much attention to people who are evidently seeking it for whatever reason (or unreason).

Thus, I appreciate OPs concerns. Unfortunately, I dont see any easy solution to this, nor how a benign technical trust system would not be redundant. Setting a system to be the arbiter of true and false is alwaysproblematic. Is this proposal supposed to function as some sort of peer review? The merit system already does that: Good, correct technical posts there tend to get showered with merit, whereas false and stupid posts of all kinds usually get none.

Id like to find a better solution to this problem. I doubt this be it. Am I missing anything?