Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on Today at 06:41:52 PM

Quote from: babo on Today at 12:25:56 PM

I understand what you say and I agree, but how do you do it?
if you put rules and boundaries we become a police state, so how can we prevent these people from cheating?
easy we use a passive method i.e. we don't give him credit

Things aren't nearly as black and white as 'there's either some rules or it's a police state'. I'm hoping you don't view the world that way, because even the country with the most freedom (I've no idea which that is, I'm just saying) has laws. Every single country does, and speaking now of this forum, the rules that are unofficially written down are rarely enforced except for major infractions; usually when someone is way out of line, the community is responsible for using the trust system as a corrective measure. Is it a perfect system? Oh hell no. The trust system is so broken that it'd have to be scrapped entirely and rebuilt from scratch just to make it comprehensible.

But none of us here own the forum, so we have to work within the constraints of the systems in place, right?

Quote from: babo on Today at 12:25:56 PM

I personally put people on the ignore list so I remember that I don't have to give them credit.

I've been doing that for years, but those shitposters....they just keep registering in droves, and I don't know about you but if I used that as my only tool to block out the noise I'd be spending several hours a day just hitting that ignore button. It's better to put the assholes on blast, especially if you enjoy a little drama from time to time.

no, I don't see the world in black and white, I always think that there are at least 256 degrees of grey
It's no coincidence that I don't define myself as a black or white hat, I define myself as a gray hat since both black hats and white hats are part of the shades of gray
obviously referring to the ethical hacking environment

and among other things I hate schemes, with them you preach to the choir

I'm just saying that it's not easy to check the merits given, it's a system based on personal judgment

a bit like humanities teachers, it's not like math, 1+1 equals 2 and it's easy for a teacher to verify
but when it comes to subjective things, like art, a teacher can say "I don't like it" and give you a bad grade, I don't know if you know what I mean
so to establish whether I want to give credit to you or someone else, there is no verifiable law
the only law, right, is that you can't give more than 50 merits per month

other laws would be dangerous