Silk Road forums

Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: ninjaman on April 05, 2012, 11:00 am

Title: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: ninjaman on April 05, 2012, 11:00 am
We see it all the time, especially from vendors trying to set up a big finalize early 'sale' scam before they split.

I'll use eBay as a rough example: They have different colors of stars to denote the experience (i.e. trustworthiness) of a user.

I would like to see something like this implemented in the vendor feedback so that we can tell which feedback is from established buyers and which feedback is made by a new dummy account.

Date joined, number of purchases and bitcoins spent are all possible metrics to be factored in to the leveling system.

Obviously, I'm not asking for individual buyer's names to be identified in the feedback, only their respective level.

What say you, SR?
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: Joeyjojojr on April 05, 2012, 11:16 am
Cool man good to hear it! Look forward to doing business with you.

-Peace
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: cache on April 05, 2012, 11:22 am
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, it would give more of an idea as to how reliable the feedback is.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: Mister Dank on April 05, 2012, 07:07 pm
This is way low on the priority totem pole. Mainly because to create a bunch of dummy accounts and buy from yourself is extremely costly - you'd still pay all those commissions to SR.

I'm more concerned with having real buyer feedback. So if there is a fake LE buyer it can be noted by the vendor for all to see.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: ninjaman on April 05, 2012, 09:07 pm
This is way low on the priority totem pole. Mainly because to create a bunch of dummy accounts and buy from yourself is extremely costly - you'd still pay all those commissions to SR.

I'm more concerned with having real buyer feedback. So if there is a fake LE buyer it can be noted by the vendor for all to see.

Is it costly when the listing being bought is $0.00? Is there a commission on that? I can't imagine that there would be.

I'm not an expert on scamming techniques, but I thought that was how they did it.

I just want reliable feedback. What we have now is slightly better than worthless.  :-\
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: Mister Dank on April 05, 2012, 09:32 pm
This is way low on the priority totem pole. Mainly because to create a bunch of dummy accounts and buy from yourself is extremely costly - you'd still pay all those commissions to SR.

I'm more concerned with having real buyer feedback. So if there is a fake LE buyer it can be noted by the vendor for all to see.

Is it costly when the listing being bought is $0.00? Is there a commission on that? I can't imagine that there would be.

I'm not an expert on scamming techniques, but I thought that was how they did it.

I just want reliable feedback. What we have now is slightly better than worthless.  :-\

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't vendor feedback weighted by the size of the sale. If you made sales for $0, I don't think that would pad your score much.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: ninjaman on April 05, 2012, 09:56 pm
If people see a bunch of "Finalizing early for trusted seller!", especially during some type of special sale, then I think they are much more likely to FE (for extra product, or whatever).

Toyotaman is a perfect example by what he pulled over the last 10 days.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: Joeyjojojr on April 06, 2012, 06:33 am
I think when someone orders an item from a vendor a random number should be generated and would show up next to their feedback. This number would be saved to that account and show up everytime that account was used to make a purchase from said vendor.

Because it would be a random number for each vendor it would still remain completely anonymous.

This would allow buyers who read through the vendors feed back to see how many times the same buyer purchased an item and hopefully prevent a lot of scams.

Additionally, I think showing the date the buyer account was created might help as well, but might affect anonymity. 
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: nedthehead on April 11, 2012, 01:50 pm

I'll use eBay as a rough example: They have different colors of stars to denote the experience (i.e. trustworthiness) of a user.

Date joined, number of purchases and bitcoins spent are all possible metrics to be factored in to the leveling system.

Obviously, I'm not asking for individual buyer's names to be identified in the feedback, only their respective level.

Good idea!

Might be good to weight the criteria something like this:
   1) amt. of bitcoin actually paid (not just in escrow)
   2) date joined
   3) number of purchases

Would also make a smear campaign less effective, really any fake feedback could be revealed
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: ProudCannabian on April 11, 2012, 02:29 pm
Awesome idea with the coloured stars.

Don't like the idea of seeing if any particular buyer bought any item multiple times though... this is info LE wants and could help pinpoint frequent or volume buyers.
I would personally like to be able to see it, but it's too big a security risk.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: ingvar on April 13, 2012, 05:10 am
We see it all the time, especially from vendors trying to set up a big finalize early 'sale' scam before they split.

I'll use eBay as a rough example: They have different colors of stars to denote the experience (i.e. trustworthiness) of a user.

I would like to see something like this implemented in the vendor feedback so that we can tell which feedback is from established buyers and which feedback is made by a new dummy account.

Date joined, number of purchases and bitcoins spent are all possible metrics to be factored in to the leveling system.

Obviously, I'm not asking for individual buyer's names to be identified in the feedback, only their respective level.

What say you, SR?

I completely agree, in fact the reason I clicked on this forum was to suggest an idea like this.  It can be very hard to tell if a new vendors reviews are legit or not.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: cindylove on April 13, 2012, 06:55 am
I think it is a good idea. +1
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: bwompah on April 22, 2012, 01:20 am
Great idea! I'd love to see this implemented.
Title: Re: A way to eliminate vendor produced fake feedback.
Post by: PokerLotto on April 23, 2012, 01:54 am
Here's another idea.

As long as creating a new account on the Silk Road is free, shills and vendor produced fake feedback will always be a problem. It's quick and easy to create a new buy account. Yes they still pay commissions, but they could offset all of those when they pull their big scam.

What's not as easy, is making, say, 100 posts in the forums. So maybe public/private key cryptography can be used to show that a buyer is unique, or that a buyer has 100 posts in the forums.

A forum user with 100 posts or more could post their public key in the forums. Then on the Silk Road, when creating a new buy account or on an existing account, they can submit a signed message (perhaps containing text chosen by the Silk Road) and then that buy account will be "verified" by admins or mods (or even the system) as belonging to someone with over 100 forum posts. It could be as simple as sending a message and a link to their PGP key in the forums to support. The buyer could then be labeled as someone verified as having at least 100 forum posts. There could also be different levels. 100, 500, 1000, etc. Perhaps feedback could also be weigted more heavily to buyers with more forum posts. The more forum posts, the greater the chance they are a unique person. And maybe it's less likely they are LE.

It's possible that someone could create more than one forum account with 100 posts each, but it would still take more time than the current situation, where one can create a new Silk Road account in seconds.

Just a thought.