May I ask your opinion if I counter hilariousandco's opinion for red tag with the one given by theymos, [I stole it from nutildah's on previous page]
- Forgiveness: Often people make fairly small mistakes, but then they seemingly get red-trusted for life. This isn't really fair, and it discourages participation due to paranoia: if you think that you have a 1% chance of running afoul of some unwritten rule and getting red-trusted for life, you might just avoid the marketplace altogether. Red trust should mostly be based on an evaluation of what the person is likely to do in the future moreso than a punishment/mark-of-shame.
if we consider that as it's been five years since both account exchange merits, then it's probably safe to assume that the mistake happened in the past and won't happen in the future. Thus, red tagging them will pose as a mark-of-shame instead of a warning for others.
What's your thought on this?
I'm very much in favor of forgivenness. For example to give people a second chance after they admit their mistake, even for plagiarizing under certain circumstances and that's also why I'm not in favor of our current "ban evasion" rule, because such a rule is exactly the opposite of forgivenness. Everyone needs a fair chance to admit his mistakes and a fair chance to improve.
But I'm also in favor of drawing a clear line to prevent abuse from getting more common. Every member should know that certain practices here are frowned upon and it's important to avoid such abuses, like Haunebu and his Alt did. If these members are really valuable for our comunity, they will admit their mistake, accept the consequences about the involved accounts getting tagged and then, they can start from scratch building a new Account, where such abuses are avoided. That's a fair second chance in my opinion.
As a DT member, consistency is very important for me. When Merit was introduced, the consensus was pretty clear that sending of Merit to our own Alt Accounts will almost certainly lead to red trust.
If Haunebu and his alts are getting out of this untagged, we are at risk, that someone else will come here, setting up a bunch of own Alt Accounts and sending them Merit from his main account. In case he's getting a negative tag (which would be deserved in my opinion) he could point at Haunebu and his Alt, where no negative tag was issued.
And DT would be in trouble to explain it properly because it would be a very inconsistent story.
That's why I'm in favor of tagging the abusers because DT needs to be consistent about our Merit guidelines and issue a fair punishment for the abusing accounts because it's important to prevent abuse in the future.
I took it to my sleep and mulled over it the entire day after, I have to say I'm still inclined more to the idea that as Haunebu did not scam any forum members [at least none proven or being pointed out so far], a negative tag is not warranted [in spite of what hilariousandco said].
In attempt to gain a deeper insight on how to face this matter and what DTs did on such cases, I ventured through the reputation board and from a quick glance that I did, I found that what case of merit abuse warranted is a neutral tag with mention to the said violation, unless there is another violation being involved [account sold, hacked, the merit is being sold/bought, and the likes]. For example,
ltcrstrbrt or the older one,
HunnyFinance.
Nonetheless, I have to agree that there should be a consistency in DT on what warrant a tag and what doesn't [though, if I'm not mistaken, the general consensus is cases should be taken on case-by-case basis], and that if this case is not cleared, one might use this case in the future to argue their negative tag.
Thus, unfortunately, the best way I can see from my position right now is to bow down from this thread until there are more DTs giving their opinion on what to do with Haunebu, and I will adhere to the consensus once it is reached. I will respect whatever tag you're leaving to Haunebu and 3kpk3, though.