What people deserve is a useless metric. What is relevant is what is enforceable and logistically possible. I would remind you that ATTEMPTING a crime is still a crime, and if you can produce solid evidence of this attempt I have no issues with that.
Absolutely. Someone who tries to scam deserves negative trust and even (real) legal punishment.
However I do take issue with the 4 lane highway of a subjective loophole that is just based on opinions and beliefs allowing for abuse of this system.
I would agree to that too.
Something people always ignore is that too many frivolous ratings creates signal noise and allows actual fraud to be buried in the din. Not only that, no one ever addresses the security threat of users having the ability to extort trusted users with false ratings in order to force compliance and silence.
Again. I agree. I'm not sure if this is addressed to me. Read
my previous post. I don't see how you'd think I disagree with this.
In the end if you are saying we are going to prevent scamming with negative ratings, that is just horse shit.
No, it's not. Just because I try and use negative trust to reduce scamming and you think it should be used to punish it only doesn't mean what I'm saying is horse shit. The fact someone disagrees with you doesn't make that opinion shit.
Negative ratings are simply a reaction AFTER THE FACT, and any attempt to leave preventative negative ratings without evidence is not only a fools errand, it creates tons of signal noise allowing real cons to blend in, opens numerous avenues for other abuses, and creates endless conflict that is destructive to the overall community cohesiveness here.
If it's abuse, then yes. If there are clear signals a user is trying to scam but not definitely proof then that negative trust can reduce scam.
Any preventative warnings can be solved with warning threads and neutral ratings.
Not always. For example, a lot of non-registered users have been scammed by new accounts creating locked and/or self-moderated threads with links to auto-buy sites. Of course, they didn't deliver anything after being paid.
Those non-registered users didn't see any warning threads or neutral ratings. That situation was improved a lot after the warning theymos added to threads created by users with negative trust. But of course that warning is shown only if those brand new users have negative trust.
Clear scamming signals are there: they are brand new accounts, they lock and self-moderate their threads, they post links to auto-buy links, most of the times (but not always) they get feedback from other brand new accounts (posted on a locked thread). But there's no absolute proof they are trying to scam. Leaving negative trust to them did prevent a lot of scams. Before, more than half of
threads on that section were of that kind and there were a lot of "
I wish I read this warning thread sooner" posts
here, posted by newbies after registering.
Now only a few threads of that kind are posted, a scammer who used that method (with brand new accounts)
has said he's leaving the site and no more "
I wish I read this warning thread sooner" posts have been seen.
So it's absurd to deny leaving preventing negative trust is usefull.
The problem is trust should not be abused under that excuse.
The trust system can either be a warning or a penalty, not both at the same time, and there is no denying it is detrimental to a user's ability to trade when they receive negative ratings.
Yes, it can be both. And yes, it's more difficult to trade for someone with negative trust. That's exactly why scamming can be reduced with preventive negative trust.
My statements were generalized and not necessarily directed at you personally. The concept that preventative negative ratings will stop scamming is horse shit because it doesn't work, and is furthermore counterproductive as I explained not just because it is an opinion I don't agree with. You agree that over utilization of negative ratings is an issue. Your solution to this issue boils down to: "The problem is trust should not be abused under that excuse." This is not a solution, this is kind of like just asking and hoping people will do the right thing. That is not good enough. There needs to be a simple form of due process here such as requiring a standard of evidence of theft, violation of contractual agreement, or violation of applicable laws before negative rating.
You gave an example of when a negative rating could serve as a warning to "prevent" a scam. There are a couple problems with your logic here. First of all when I say the rating needs to be used as either a penalty or a warning but not both, this is not just my opinion, it is a logistical fact, one that you already ceded. If there are TOO MANY negative ratings, people begin to ignore them totally and then they ALL become worthless. In this scenario you don't get your cake or get to eat it too, you get nothing but conflict, confusion, and more fraud. This is why I say it must be one or the other, but not both, because there is no limiting factor on leaving false or frivolous ratings, and as a result that signal noise will dominate.
The second problem with your logic of negative ratings preventing fraud before it happens is that fraud is like a flow of water. You never really stop it, you can only put up barriers to entry. Much like hacking, there is no such thing as an "unhackable" system, but only such high barriers to entry that it is not worth trying. This in mind all you are doing is redirecting that fraud to other methodologies, which is great, but you are totally ignoring the side effects of this specific strategy which are counterproductive. The cost of creating the barrier to entry needs to be a factor in the equation as well.
Furthermore is the real issue that people can abuse this one little feature by locking/using self moderated threads, or that people are not spending the time to do their own due diligence before trading? Do you really think that people who don't even bother reading trust ratings (neutral ratings) can be protected from their own lax attitudes? Again, at what cost are you attempting to save these fools from themselves? New users need to be taught to review a users trust history before trading, and training them to rely only on green and red numbers is literally just feeding them into a wood chipper of fraud by building false confidence in a flawed system. If they are not taught this then that flow of fraud will just redirect to another vector to fleece people with lax attitudes making your preventative ratings totally useless in the end anyway.
I am using logic and reason, much of which you agree with to demonstrate that preventative negative ratings are overall counter productive. Your argument largely consists of, "but no it does prevent scams, trust me". Again, even if this was correct, the counterproductive effects of this are far more detrimental than the benefits.