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Regarding an optional, additional level of identify verification at IAP

  • YES - I'm in favor and would verify

    Votes: 73 97.3%

  • YES - I'm in favor, but I wouldn't participate

    Votes: 2 2.7%

  • NO - I'm opposed to this being offered at all

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    75
1080Wayne said:
I assume Jeff removes anyone he knows to be a troll .
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I try. However, a determined troll can be a real burr under one's saddle. You would not believe the lengths (technical and social engineering) that some people will go to annoy a community they feel has wronged them. And modern privacy technology has made it relatively easy to hide behind a fake identity. There are tools to combat this behavior, but they're about a half step behind the technology.
 
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jeff said:
There are tools to combat this behavior, but they're about a half step behind the technology.
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I've used the "Ignore" option three times - it improves my experience here not to see posts from those people, they are genuine but irritate me. It also improves everyone else's experience not to see any posts I'd be tempted to make in reply to some of what they posted.

And while I have been on the receiving end of a scam seller, it hasn't put me off trading with other folks here (most of whom I've had no previous connection with.)

Overall I agree the "blue check mark" is a good idea, but since no verification method is perfect I expect to continue using a "trust but with caution" approach even when the new system is in place.

Thanks for all your efforts to keep IAP a troll-free zone!
 
1080Wayne said:
Sorry to be a bit late to get into this discussion , but Jeff`s original post references a couple of individuals who did not deliver on orders they had been paid for . I dealt with those , and had developed trust with each through at least two well fulfilled orders . In doing so , I had learned a bit about the circumstances each was living with , so it didn`t bother me greatly that I lost about $100 of wood and $200 of blanks . Life happens . It has to me .

If you were to purchase something from me , I would expect to get it to the post office 20 miles away and you would be expecting shipment confirmation , but I might accidentally pick up a moose as a front seat passenger on the way , destroying both me and the package . You would be unable to contact me , and there would be no one at my end contacting you or the forum , so you would be out of pocket , and wondering how you could have so misjudged someone who has been on the forum so long .

I assume Jeff removes anyone he knows to be a troll . But as NGLJ undoubtedly knows , some people never grow up . Basically , it is just a different style of bullying .
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Unfortunately you are correct about some people when it comes to bullying. They either have always been bullies to somehow prop up their fragile egos or were perhaps bullied themselves. They now see a way to get payback on a life that hasn't either worked out the way they had hoped or they feel has somehow dealt them unfairly. Today's online world makes it all too easy! As someone who knows what being bullied feels like in my youth and also has had a far from an easy life, and still doesn't', you have two choices. You either become bitter about it or you decide to rise above it and try and do some good in the world. I chose the latter!
 
I am late to the game in responding...this is a happening thing. That said, very happy to see this. I was ripped off long ago by a member here and never got it resolved. In contrast, I have sold a fair amount of pen materials here, and always had satisfied buyers. That is obviously a good thing...
 
I noticed this discussion a bit late. A consensus had already developed, so I sat back and watched. I would have been the lone "No" vote, I suppose. Why no? Because @jeff and his team are taking on an extra burden for something that does not give me added value.

Jeff and his team have set themselves up as the "trusted authorities" for identity verifications here at Penturners. They proposed a set of objective criteria for approving or rejecting "Verified Identity" status. Having simple, objective criteria is good. What won't be as easy is dealing with the rare rejection scenarios - especially the difficult judgement calls where they must choose between approving a questionable submission or angering the member. They may also have to deal with situations where "verified identity" members do bad things. It seems like a lot of "downside" potential for arguably low "upside" benefit to the site. I hope that they do not encounter many "corner cases" to deal with.

Speaking for myself, such a "verified identity" isn't worth the pixels it uses on the screen. My buying and selling practices here at Penturners will not change. Having a "verified identity" would not matter to me. I will continue to do my own careful validation of the other member before engaging in commerce with them. I look at when they joined, how often they posted and the pattern of when they posted. I look at the content of their posts - their photos and writings and whether anyone else said something about them or complained, etc. Most important is what they actually posted - seeing and reading their content gives me a sense of the person behind the member "handle."

In summary, I think Jeff and his team are taking on additional work and complexity for little gain. I am not convinced that verified identities will add significant value to the website or have a significant impact in deterring fraud or trolls. It may do the opposite. I predict that two or three years from now, it will be considered a vestigial feature of the site - to be ignored.

I apologize for upsetting the applecart here, but it may help to see an alternate point of view. Since this feature is a near certainty, I wish Jeff and his team good luck and a successful deployment. I hope they prove me wrong.
 
penicillin said:
I apologize for upsetting the applecart here, but it may help to see an alternate point of view. Since this feature is a near certainty, I wish Jeff and his team good luck and a successful deployment. I hope they prove me wrong.
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I welcome alternative points of view, and I appreciate yours. You may be correct that it will be more trouble than it's worth. My concern is that it will be looked at as an endorsement of someone's trustworthiness instead of merely the confirmation of their identity that it should be.

Years ago we had something called a "Most Valued Vendor" program. Vendors were invited to receive that status when they had a good selling history and were well-known by members. That program WAS intended to indicate that any business done with an MVV would go smoothly. One long time vendor was selling a product that a good deal of people felt was junk, and he would not make good on it. I revoked his MVV status, made good to his buyers out of my pocket, and he stormed off in a huff, never to be seen again. I terminated the MVV program shortly after that. The point of the story is that I intend make it crystal clear that being verified is simply confirmation of one's identity, not an endorsement of anything beyond that. I think that there may be some value in that for some people.

I'm still testing the addon. As I'm doing so, I am encountering use cases that cause me to wonder if it's as valuable as I think it is. I do believe we'll try it. If it turns out to be a bust, it's easy to remove.
 
Looking at things from 2 sides is always good. But in this case if Jeff is willing to take on such a task we should at least let him give it a try. I believe he is trying to as always improve the overall theme and aspect of what we do here and to do it in a safe manner that has as little consequences as it possibly can have. By that I mean hardship or financial impact from enjoying our hobby deriving from this site. Not putting words in Jeff's mouth but I think he feels some responsibility of any such hardship that may occur under his watch from a forum which he is a cofounder of. I believe we all are adults and we should be responsible for our own actions to which I think this adage is being disregarded more and more these days in many aspects of life and I am sure you all know what I am talking about. We all need to do our due diligence when it comes to not only representing ourselves on an open forum such as this but also when it comes to interacting with the commerce side of it. Weather buying or selling we want to take as much caution as to being able to serve this community well. The older the member you are here you may remember some of the past things that happened here and the stories that went with them. Some made the threads here and some remained behind closed doors so will not go into them. Some have already been mentioned here.

With todays world constantly changing and the scams and scammers and trolls showing up on all forms of media and platforms wherever a $$$ can be made we at least need to try to stave off such an attack. Weather the plan Jeff wants to implement works or not should be tested. If more layers of security can be added now or in the future should be welcomed here. I stated some of my concerns an thoughts in this thread and in past threads in years gone by because of what took place. Now if this deters new members from joining then we did not want them anyway. But they should look at it as a better place to be because of such actions. If other members want to leave then again same reasons apply. If you have better suggestions I am sure Jeff is all ears and would love to read them. I believe we need to up the security game here. Thanks Jeff.
 
This effort is still alive. I ponder some things for a long time, and this has turned out to be one of those things. Plus I got a little sidetracked with the In-Memoriam project.

My first rule when I make changes is to "do no harm". Rule #2 is "don't spend time on low value things". So I'm trying to decide if this would be harmful to the community in some way, or if it brings so little value that it's really a waste of time. I'm still leaning toward giving it a shot, but I'll cogitate on it for a couple more days.
 
I know that I am about a month late on this, but I still want to put in my $0.02 on this:

I like the idea of some sort of verification for sellers. I understand the concern with members seeing the check mark as a guarantee of character and not merely a verification of identity. I understand the concern with providing some more personal information to some guy on the internet, not knowing them or what happens to said information after the verification process. I also understand the concern with extra responsibility on Jeff/whoever else moderates the program.

I have an idea that might be a little different while still achieving a similar result, but with less human oversight required. We could implement a buyer/seller rating system. The buyer would give a rating after any transaction, similar to ebay or amazon. Then there could be something next to the sellers handle that says something like, '4.9 stars, 138 ratings'.

This would require less work and sharing of personal information, while still giving buyers some piece of mind. It would also encourage extra communication to ensure both the buyer and the seller are satisfied. I think the only real human oversight would be if there is a dispute over a poor rating.

Just a thought,
Danger
 
Danger the down side to your rating system is it hinges on vendors selling regularly on the forum. It doesn't factor in the person occasionally selling a tool or a few blanks every year or two. They would have a non-existent rating or extremely low. It also doesn't cover buyers in any way. Someone that buys some things and then either doesn't pay, claims the goods are damaged or defective, faulty or never arrived. With the verification as outlined by Jeff a buyer would have a good indication the seller can be counted on and a seller would know the buyer is honest too. At least that is how I see things.
 
Good points, Curly.

My thought is that by including the rating count along with the average rating it will help people determine how comfortable they are sending money to someone on here. If someone sees 'Average rating: 0, Ratings: 0' next to someone selling a handful of blanks for $20, they might be fine on taking that chance, while if that same person came on trying to sell a Shopsmith for $1500, they might have second thoughts. This would merely provide another piece of information for people to look at along with the sellers join date, post history, content of posts, etc..

The same process can be applied to buyers and sellers. This will help hold everyone accountable and will give sellers some piece of mind. It might require some sort of form between the buyer and seller that will send a prompt to both individuals to leave a rating. This would help settle any disputes of poor ratings. Buyer leaves 1 star rating, the seller can share the conversations and shipping info with Jeff or whoever has the responsibility, and they can easily negate said rating.

Again, just my $0.02. I see that Jeff has mentioned they already started to implement some sort of verification process and I will keep an eye on that.

-Danger
 
jeff said:
Some user communities, large (think Twitter) and small, offer an additional level of user verification beyond just getting an account. This is said to encourage and maintain trust between users. On Twitter for example, the little blue checkmark next to the username indicates that the account has been verified as authentic. Twitter only offers this to "notable" accounts because with >300 million accounts, they can offer verification to only a small fraction of the community. The verification requirements are not trivial.

As many of you know, we have had some trolls and dishonest behavior from users over the years. With very few exceptions, the true identity of these people is unknown to us. In a couple cases, we've been ripped off by people we knew, but that's rare. I know many of us have purchased things from forum members we didn't know much about, and sometimes there's some uncertainty that things will go as planned.

I've been considering implementing a system to indicate (probably with a Twitter-like blue check mark next to the username) that an additional level of verification has been completed. I don't know what that verification would include, but enough for me or a moderator to confidently say that the user is who they purport to be.

I understand that many people like the anonymity of the internet, and there are many legitimate reasons why someone doesn't want to expose their identity. However, it's also not unreasonable that others many not want to transact with or believe the claims of an anonymous voice from the ether. There are people who are uncomfortable dealing with others they don't know and that's just as valid a position as those who like to be anonymous.

I don't want to create a division between the non-verified and verified people, but I am thinking that this might be a positive change for our community. We would continue to welcome everyone, but there would be an additional piece of information that some people might find valuable before entering into a transaction or a PITH, etc. I'm also not proposing that we expose personally identifiable information to the community. That would only be provided to complete the verification, so you'd have to at least trust me :)

I'd appreciate your vote, comments, and questions. THANKS!

TLDR; I'm considering an optional, additional level of user identity verification. What do you think?
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Hiya Jeff, has this been implemented yet??
 
Unless we are all part of some massive simulation, as some have suggested, I think that I am real and have no issue proving that I am.
 
garypeck said:
Hiya Jeff, has this been implemented yet??
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If you look under the heading Members and scroll over to verified members you will notice that this was started but believe it has not been updated or followed through. Not sure the reason but am sure Jeff will be able to answer those questions. There are no check marks for indication so not sure if this program really took off.
 
rixstix said:
Something may have gotten lost in an update because at one point there were checkmarks or indicators for verified members.
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I'll have to look into that. I think it's a display problem with the checkmarks. I see the verified statuses in the database.
 
jeff said:
I'll have to look into that. I think it's a display problem with the checkmarks. I see the verified statuses in the database.
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Is this something you going to promote again? Looks like you stepped away from it for a couple years. If so then we need to do some advertising to try to get this back on track.
 
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