The Warning Sidebar

TL;DR - If you don't have evidence to back your claim, it will not make the warning list. That simple. Don't waste time blaming the mods or trying to manipulate the mods to vouch for your claim because that won't change anything. No evidence = No Warning on the sidebar.

Community,

Because this has come up quite frequently the last couple of days, I felt a reminder would be good. This community has several measures to provide warnings on vendors or marketplaces. First and foremost, the posts themselves are nuggets of realtime information. If you want to see what's going on in "real time", the warning sidebar is not really the place for that. The posts themselves are. The posts themselves are the realtime feeds that people can look at to read warnings and such. The nice thing about the posts is that it provides contextual information and it allows the community to see what proof was offered and whether or not the warning has merit.

It has come up - what does it take to get a warning on the sidebar? It takes proof. While the posts in the sub provide all the context that anybody needs to see what's going on (and whether the warning is legit), the warning sidebar, given its small real estate footprint, cannot contain this sort of information. Therefore, the warning sidebar, given that its often a few small words, contains no contextual information, no proof, nothing. It also has an implied meaning that the warning is legit and that the requisite proof was provided and the warning is in fact warranted. Contrary to popular belief, getting a legit warning on the sidebar is not that hard. It requires proof. Bottom line, there has to be something other than the OP's word that something happened. Therefore, we are always cautious on putting something on the sidebar. This has its pros and cons. The obvious drawback is that warning on the sidebar will lag behind what's goign on in real time. However, by taking the "cautious" approach, we are essentially removing the element of "trust" in this.

Now imagine, if we just put warning on the sidebar without proof. What would that say? For one, if this was our policy, this would say that the community implicitly trusts the mods and leaves it to the mods of this sub to decide what is a warning and what isn't. We (the mods) would essentially be telling hte community "trust us on this, this is a warning." I don't want that. I know nobody in the community wants that. This is why we require proof. Proof removes that element of blindly trusting the mods to make decisions on warnings. That's not to say that there is no judgement calls at all on the mods' behalf - we do have to weigh the evidence and decide if its sufficient. However, this isn't a perfect world, but requiring at least proof is a step in the right direction. I don't want the community to have to blindly trust the mods. When a warning goes on that sidebar, I want to be able to say "Look at post XYZ, ABC, etc - this is the backing evidence for the warning." I don't want to say "Oh trust us, we decided that user X is trustworthy and while he provided no evidence, we decided we'd vouch for it and put a warning up."

We understand that some things are very difficult to prove. And I agree, there are many circumstances where allegations will be difficult to prove. There is no way around it unfortunately. Some things are impossible or difficult to verify and thus, we still can't vouch for it and put a warning up with no evidence. But the bottom line, no system is perfect and the most we can do is get the most fair system up. All of us should be in tuned with evidence - fuck, we talk about it all the time. Plausible deniability, LE having to prove their case, etc etc. We are a community that fucking relies on the fact that evidence is absolutely required if any of us were to get busted.

Another thing is that a warning is almost a vouch by the mods. We won't vouch for anyone in the community unless evidence is provided. None of us trust one another and that's the way it should be. We are fully aware that it is not difficult to create shill accounts. It is not difficult to put together a smear campaign here. I sure wish that we didn't have this sort of behavior b/c perhaps then we could talk about trusting what is said. But alas, that is not reality. There are monied interests, this sub is all about drugs and money. We will not enable shills or competitors to smear another. Therefore, when someone demands that "This market needs to be put on the warning list" and provides nothing, it feels like someone is trying to manipulate the mods of this sub. Its attempting to put pressure on us to vouch for what someone says. This isn't going to happen. We will be operating on the basis of evidential procedure and while nothing will ever be 100%, the goal here is to be able to point to evidence for every single item on the warning list. Sorry, pointing to some random user with some unsubstantiated allegation is shit. Our words are fairly worthless here without backing.

When I see these demands of putting something on the warning list with no evidence, I already know that the OP couldn't convince the community. If you can't convince the community, its not any of the mods' job to do so. If the absolute only way to give weight to your allegation is to have the mods vouch for it w/o evidence, then I'm sorry to say you don't have anything and we won't vouch for it. Allegations without proof are worthless. If there is 1 thread or 1000 threads, it doesn't matter. 1 post with evidence is worth more than thousands of posts w/ nothing backing it. You can't blame the mods if you didn't do your homework and present your evidence. If you don't want to provide it, so be it. But it won't get any market on the warning list w/o evidence of wrong doing. I seriously don't get how there can be hundreds of allegations and not a single shred of evidence. Its fucking weird to be honest.

So my suggestion is, if you have a complaint against a market or a vendor, do your homework. Instead of wasting time blaming the mods for your failure to provide evidence, just go do it! I do get that some allegations are hard to prove, but holy hell, some of the ones I see shouldn't be all that difficult. And I'm quite surprised that some seem to actually prefer a system where its completely at the mods discretion to put up a warning w/o evidence. Think it through b/c a system like that can easily lead to corruption and is not transparent.


Comments


[7 Points] None:

in all seriousness the mods have nothing to do with alphabay so chill urselves


[7 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

Well said, Economist1

Groovybrewski is like a one-man carpet bombing, everywhere at once agreeing with himself. But not in a lumpen, obvious xanax, thread way. So much heresay seems like a KIND of proof then you snap out of it and realise nothing is happening.

The only way to know what the truth is, is to see what brewski says then believe the opposite.

He would NEVER waste his time shilling to say the truth. UI quite admitre his singhle-mindedness


[7 Points] octomarvel:

10/10. God forbid if someone actually provides proof and ab gets chucked on the warning sidebar though.

People will start saying that nucleus paid you to do it.

=)


[5 Points] None:

[deleted]


[2 Points] MLP_is_my_OPSEC:

I love how more than a month later, the banner image I made is still relevant. It'll probably always be relevant.


[1 Points] coffeencreme:

Yeah good post. I think you guys are actually doing a good job with the AB complaints. We are all adults at the end of the day and should if you search the sub you can see the complaints and make your own mind up.


[-9 Points] None:

[deleted]