Quote from: actmyname on Today at 08:22:41 PM

Risk is perfectly fine, as long as the willing participants are given awareness.

I was under the impression that a welcome message - an introduction to the trust system + scammer indifference - could bring about that awareness and could be a very simple and non-restrictive measure. I don't think your liberty is going to be compromised with a few extra hand movements as a guest. It is not unreasonable to request a landing page for guest users.

I have nothing against a welcome message, nor a guest landing page. As I've said before; I think it's a good idea. I don't expect it to solve the scammer problem on this forum (I don't believe you do either,) but sure, it could prevent a few scams here and there, and it couldn't hurt either way.

And no, it would have no affect on my liberty. I only brought that up because I've gotten the impression that you would be supportive of more extreme measures to prevent scams. Perhaps I misinterpreted something you wrote in the past to get that impression.

Quote from: actmyname on Today at 08:22:41 PM

Are you able to leverage people's comments in accordance to their actual content via research, or do you place some bias on their site-based reputation? Similarly to as if someone were to trust a member based on rank, the expectation of some local reputation system is perfectly reasonable. Yet, who do you actually trust? Sure, staff can be trusted to some degree, but apparently even DefaultTrust is a bad measure of trust due to the legacy of past exit scams: I would even grant that someone new, having read through enough of the forum, would rather trade (and post) elsewhere unless they wanted to scam others.

I don't claim to be Joe Sixpack as I tend to believe I'm more skeptical than most (raising three daughters will do that to a man.) I've been using and visiting forums for a long time, many that focus on subjects in which I'm well versed and experienced, such as BMW motorcycles, Ford trucks, and American rifles. I've seen so many posts by users who claim to be experts only to find them spreading the most preposterous bullshit as if it's fact. I don't pay attention to site specific reputation or reviews. I assume everyone is full of shit until proven otherwise.

Quote from: actmyname on Today at 08:22:41 PM

Which other forums do you visit to where the rules are inaccessible unless you go to their forum discussion board located at the bottom of the front page, view an "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules" buried within SIX sticky threads, and go all the way to rule 19 to find out that scams are not moderated? This is an excessive scavenger hunt. In fact, unless you count an warning to use escrow as a direct "scams aren't going to be removed and we're not going to do anything about them" message, then there's almost nothing said about forum policy.

I'm not arguing with you about that, I think we're closer aligned on this issues than not. My argument is that there are plenty of warning signs in existence already to help newbies and guests avoid scams. There's nothing wrong with adding one more. Just don't get your hopes up, because odds are it'll be as ineffective as the current "Red Flags."

Quote from: actmyname on Today at 08:22:41 PM

Was it a programming issue, integrating a DefaultTrust rating as a guest view of trust (preferably with some description/links to explanations)? DefaultTrust is good enough for registered users, after all, and the only difference is a few minutes!

Or, is it instead a fundamental problem?

I can't say for sure, I'm not an alt of theymos (or satoshi for that matter.) I always figured it had more to do members' privacy than anything else.