Silk Road forums

Not sure where to begin here...

First off, if you haven't read the Ratings & Reviews wiki page, do so now.  I don't want to see people commenting in this thread if you haven't read that.  (https://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion.to/wiki/index.php?title=Ratings_%26_Reviews)

There were a few changes over the last 24 hours and if you just read through the commentary on the forum, you'll probably be confused.  Here is where we stand at the moment:

All past ratings and reviews have been imported into the new layout.  However, reviews from before the update do not display the user's alias or their buyer stats, so no new information is being displayed that wasn't before.  Reviews that are left from now on will have buyer stats displayed next to them.

Also, for a short time, viewing your past feedback was removed.  It is now back with extra info under a "recent orders" link on your account page.  Reviews have been removed from item pages temporarily and will be returned in the new format.

I'll address some common complaints:

The new format reveals too much info.
The old format revealed too little, allowing fake reviews to go unnoticed.  We've given you the option to review and discuss under an alias and we'll look into further obscuring the information revealed in reviews/discussions, but for now if you don't want that info shown, just don't leave a review.

I liked how I could see every rating and every review for a vendor.
So did LE.  This has been a problem since the beginning, allowing LE to know EXACT sales volume and quantity on every vendor on SR.  Correcting this was the primary motivation for overhauling the review system.

The new layout is too complicated.
We've added new information, yes, but it is up to you whether you want to pay attention to it.  All vendors are still given a single average rating if that's all you want to look at.  You can still sort by freshness and look at the most recent 10 reviews.  If you don't like seeing the rating broken down by 1 - 5 or you don't like the new review page, or you don't like seeing the transaction and buyer stats, then ignore that stuff and just look at what you've always had access to.

I don't like it, let's just go back to the old way.
No.  Not until we've given this a chance.  No one likes change, but there were serious problems with the old way of doing things even if you never noticed them, and we have to try to find a better way.  I'm not willing to settle for a system that is easily gamed by scammers and gives LE complete sales data on every vendor on the site.

I don't like how ratings/reviews are permanent.
I'm still open to discussing a better way, but the more I think about it the more it seems like it is only an issue if you are asking customers to finalize early.  If they have a problem, they take it to the resolution center where you work all of that out.  The only problem I see with permanent ratings is with vendors not using the system as it was designed and asking customers to do things that put their money at risk.  Am I missing something?


I'd like to acknowledge that this hasn't gone as smoothly as it could have.  I am sorry for this and will do my best to learn from this experience and do better in the future.  I just ask that everyone be patient, try not to get so emotional and remember to have fun.  I'm doing my best to hear everyone's concerns and design things to accommodate them.  If you are going to criticize, please do so constructively by offering a solution.  This is a process.  We are in the middle of it, and I promise that where we end up will be better than where we started and certainly not worse.

This is the last I am going to say on the matter for a few days, and unless there are any major problems that I hadn't noticed before, there won't be any new changes until then.

I see there is no view feedback option any more on account page? Is there a way of accessing that old feedback we used to get or is discuss function now there to change written feedback completely?

psi

we're going to bring that back in a slightly different form.  Sorry this rollout hasn't been as smooth as it could have been.  right now I am leaning toward giving people the option to display their stats or not next to their reviews.

Quote from: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 26, 2013, 01:14 am

And as a buyer, you can opt-out of leaving a review and even a rating and stay 100% private.

Yes, that's a nice change. There should be an option after you finalize, on the page where you click a rating and leave feedback, to "skip feedback" or "leave no feedback".

there is, you'll see it on your next purchase.  this is also explained on the ratings and reviews wiki article.

I can't view my own feedback?! This is an outrage and I'm very disappointed. I've come to terms with not being able to change my feedback but not even being able to see it is a completely different thing.

Quote from: livestr0ng on August 23, 2013, 07:23 am

Also, I think one should be able to see all the feedback one ever left of vendors. I understand if I don't have the ability to edit it (maybe after [1-2] weeks) but I'd like to see it. That way, if I know I've done business with a vendor before, I can look at my feedback and see what I had to say about him/her/them. This would especially be useful to get an ETA of the package. Additionally, when I do reviews for vendors on the forums, I provide a link in the feedback on SR. If I ever wanted to look at past reviews, I could easily just go to my feedback page and have all the links right there.

I can see how some people might want no record of their purchasing history available anywhere. To this I say make it an option for the user to enable/disable like the incognito feature. For bonus points, give the user options like "never keep any feedback", "keep feedback for 3 months", "keep feedback for 1 year", and "keep feedback forever".

I'm open to this, but why would you need to see the feedback you've left if you can't change it?

mrouid, top 1% seller on the road asked to post this since he doesn't have 50 posts in the forums:

Quote from: Mr Ouid on August 26, 2013, 12:07 am

I can't post this in the main discussion because I haven't posted enough on the forums before but this is worth posting about.

I'm very concerned about this new feedback system and consider this a gross violation of buyer / seller privacy. 

Wayyyy too much information is shown about transactions and buyer information.  With precise information given about every feedback's buyer stats, transaction amounts, etc it's easy for an outside observer to correlate every transaction that a buyer (as well as seller) has ever made, deduce the scope of business being done by buyers and sellers and provide nice evidence to be used in court against them.

This is even the case for "private" transactions that I'm sure neither buyers nor sellers want details of published.   To make matters worse the largest private transactions are given the highest weight and published at the very top of the feedback page.  I'm sure these buyers DON'T want the precise date and amount they spent on $20,000+ orders published for the world to see along with every other order they have ever placed with every seller they have bought from.  There is a reason we do private listings.  They are meant to be PRIVATE!!

The publishing of this information was incredibly wreckless and inconsiderate on the part of DPR and leads me to question if we can continue doing business on his site.  This is after-all a site where highly illegal activity is engaged in and there is an expectation that user data will be used responsibly.    Even Amazon / eBay are more conscientious about protecting the privacy of their users.

Please can anyone re-post this on the main page so that these major security concerns can be addresses by those in charge.

displaying stealthed items was indeed a mistake and has been corrected.  regarding the info being displayed, I have to disagree unless someone can demonstrate how it can be used against anyone.  Reviewers can use an alias and are instructed to do so which decouples their account from their reveiws.  All old reviews are given an "alias removed" title for just this reason.

Is it just me or would the Thread DPR posted regarding Vendor collusion not open? Sorry if anything i posted was encouraging anything against the rules DPR

try again

well, what do you think?  find any bugs?

If the locked in feedback becomes a major problem, maybe we'll allow buyers to increase it later, but not decrease.

Quote from: dellboy on August 25, 2013, 07:59 pm

Quote from: Dread Pirate Roberts on August 25, 2013, 07:51 pm

Quote from: Trappy on August 25, 2013, 07:42 pm

Ouch, so buyers who had poor experiences but were refunded won't even be allowed to change their ratings? Will see see potential options to edit reviews from the Resolution center? Could you manufacture another resolution center, but for past grievances?

you should only leave feedback once you are completely through with the transaction.  If it is in resolution, you won't even have the option to leave feedback.

Many substances I buy can't be tested until the next weekend at the earliest. This will force buyers to hold escrow much longer than necessary. I typically released funds upon receipt of goods that looked correct, knowing I could always pop back later and 1/5 if a problem was discovered.

What exact improvement was this change intended to bring for buyers?

The improvement is that a scammer with several legitimate purchases can no longer change the rating on previous purchases for a cascade of lowered rating. They can only use that one singular purchase to fuck with you. I'm OK with that, that is a good change.

But it doesn't allow for grievances to be salved. During my tenure with BudCentral, I have made sure that we doled out refunds when necessary. However, since this change, after the review, everything is final. This is a net decrease in benefit to the customer in exchange for a net benefit to the vendor, and I would beseech DPR to amend it.

all you have to do is attempt to resolve your grievances BEFORE leaving a review/rating.  If they can't be resolved, then leave a low rating.