Quote from: Justin00 on April 14, 2014, 03:08:20 PM

+8000
you forgot scammers can scam, run free, come back and repeat. I understand the forum isnt responsible to track them down, nor should they... but jesus christ, ban them or something... do something..... You can't just wipe hands clean because you have a disclaimer.
i used to enjoy coming here and reading some of the stuff back in 2012 and early-mid 2013.
but the fact the scammers are allowed to do what ever the hell they wont without being banned is beyond any logic and makes me sick.
fark half the time its staff members who are running the scams.

Then you should remember that even when it was easier to keep track of all the scams, unless they were repeatedly disrupting discussion (MNW), scammers' accounts were only scammer tagged, because there is always a slim possibility for the scammer to repent and make some (sometimes successful) efforts to repay their victims (e.g. terrytibbs). With their accounts banned, it's even less likely the victims will get anything back. TF could have been banned as soon as he announced he was "hacked" but how would that help his victims? At least some of them got 20-30% their BTC back.

Even if we had a rule that scamming ends up in a ban... we would never be able to catch up with even a quarter of the scams. Someone would have to hire a dozen people to work full time, those people would need read access to peoples' PMs, there should be a rule against GPG or otherwise encrypting of PMs (to see what you're up to), and a rule against off-site communication, but even then not all scams could be prevented (especially long cons). The solution is not restricting freedom in the name of security, but education. I know some people are suffering from an overabundance of bitcoins in their wallets, so they're eager to part with them, but then they shouldn't cry if they failed to do their due diligence. Trust no one, assume everyone's out to scam you, and you'll be much less likely to get scammed.

Quote from: Justin00 on April 14, 2014, 03:08:20 PM

It seems like every forum rule change is to enable more people to scam.. i.e no scammer tag, trust system which allowed mods, and people on default trust list to scam, no newbie restrictions....

Which mods have turned out to be scammers? I can only recall one, maybe two, mods that have scammed someone, and neither of them had their scamming facilitated due to how the Trust system and DefaultTrust works.
I'll agree that relaxing the newbie restrictions for the 2nd time might not have been the best decision, though I can see how it could have served as a deterrent both to spammers and valuable contributors.

Quote from: Justin00 on April 14, 2014, 03:08:20 PM

and the disclaimer under advertisements prooves the forum had a think about how the ads there running is assisting in helping people to get scammed.. but they thought... fuck it, we make money off this!!! lets just put a disclaimer in!

Again, if you assume everyone's out to scam you, you won't send them any BTC unless you're really certain of their trustworthiness.

Quote

They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.

[emphasis mine]

Quote from: tysat on April 14, 2014, 04:08:48 PM

I agree with you on pretty much all points, this place has gone downhill a lot since 2011/2012. Changes need to be made, but theymos either ignores suggestions/changes or just doesn't want to implement them. The old hands off attitude used to work a lot better when there weren't tons of people around, but times have changed.

Do you mean in regards to newbie spam, or in regards to scamming?
The former would be easier to deal with (e.g increase waiting time between posts to half an hour for newbies and jr. members, or autoban or auto-tempban accounts if they have more than a dozen posts deleted in a 24 hour period), but I don't really see a solution to the latter without us having much more work, getting more mods, and severely limiting other users' freedom.