Welcome to the 2017 State of the Sub address from /r/DarkNetMarkets!
This is long in coming. I had written up this draft a couple of weeks ago then it sort of lingered in our mod sub while I updated. This got a bit long, so there will be a second SoS coming up so that this doesn't become too much of a novel.
Being the forward looking visionaries we mods are, we are looking at implementing new things and concepts. As many have succinctly put it - there are too many shit posts on the sub. Well, let's do something about it! We want the community to be vibrant, informative, and fun. Really, we are trying to redirect the mission of this sub
A subreddit for the discussion of safe and responsible use of .onion marketplaces with a focus on harm reduction.
Using that as inspiration, we identified some key areas of where we'd like to see some momentum.
- Harm reduction
- OPSEC
- Increase in the professionalism of the community
- A new look!
- A new Market Super List
- Keeping it fun while minimizing the shitposts.
We all share a common goal - building a community around what we do and having some fun along the way.
There have been some requests for publishing the mod log matrix. We have discussed this as a team and decided that we will not be releasing the mod log matrix publicly. We feel these stats are an internal matter to the current mod team. As a team, we try to be self-policing in terms of workload, commitment and balance. I (Econ) will be the first to admit that my stats suck. They have for a while. Its probably embarassingly low.
A New Look
We are currently hosting a CSS contest to reskin our sub. We are looking at establishing a more polished presence, cleaning up things, and just making the sub look more professional and mature. I know there are some that call for Bailey Jay but more than likely it won't make the final cut. There might be special occassions where we play around but beyond that, we are really looking for a more professional presence here.
OPSEC, Harm Reduction, and Useful Information
In maintaining the spirit of having the sub become a place of useful information, we do want to highlight key components to our activities. OPSEC obviously plays a very large part in what we do. We all want to be safe. We would like this sub to be a bit more focused on the useful things that keeps this community safe. Please, contribute in these areas if you have expertise!
Shitposting and Such
The new look transitions nicely into what we are hoping to accomplish next - improve the content and community participation in the sub. I joined the community right before it really skyrocketed in growth. The community had a much different feel and vibe than it does now. Now we aren't saying that its necessarily a bad thing - what we are experiencing are growing pains. As the community grows in size, the small-town feel sort of disappears. Its how it is and we embrace it. However, we would like to guide things in a better direction. We'd like to clean up content, reduce the shit posting, and provide a friendlier, less troll-ish environment. This means that we'll become a bit more aggressive in moderating content and not tolerating abusive behavior. We can debate one another without resorting to name calling and the like.
It also means that we will police the content more aggressively. Shitposts will be removed. Rule Y is alive and well. We will be more aggressive in directly noob questions to the noob sub, pointless questions will be removed. Again, we want the sub to become a repository of useful discussion and information.
Review Standards
For templates: /r/DarkNetMarkets/wiki/vendorreviewtemplates
Review Quality
Guys, come on, let's up our game on the reviewing. First, note that the review templates have been updated to include a question on whether you received compensation or some incentive for the review. We will allow incentivized reviews as long as the review is well written and most importantly, discloses that there was an incentive for the review. At our discretion, we may remove reviews if it appears the temperature drops to shilly and it looks like the sub is being flooded with these sorts of reviews. But also, take pride in your work. Come on, I know if a vendor fucked you over, you'd write an essay on it. If a vendor does a good job, then give the vendor some credit and show appreciation to the vendor (and the community) by writing a well thought out, sober, and composed review.
Grade Inflation
Fuck, not every experience is going to be 150 out of 100. Our expectations have dropped so low that if we get a pack, we give it perfect marks. Unfortunately this is a tougher problem to tackle b/c if only a few people give honest marks, which for me say an 8/10 should represent a very solid vendor, those vendors will look like shit b/c every other review will rate a vendor at 11/10. There is no good answer to this unless everybody complies. But this is why describing the experience is important - that way I can get past the inherent inflation and cut to the meat.
Another Way
Another recommendation (personal) is to use a simply trinary grading system. Instead of a 5 or 10 point scale, each criteria would have three possible scores:
- Did not meet expectations
- Met Expectations
- Exceeded Expectations
To me, this helps avoid grade inflation problems. The scoring should default to "Met Expectations" and any deviation should have an explanation. So if you want to grant an "Exceeds" to a particular criteria, you have to justify it. Likewise, a "Did not meet expectations" would require justification as well. To me, its simpler and a bit less subjective than a useless 1-10 system where the scores are distributed on an upside bell curve. Think about it - every review using this scale will either be a 10/10 or a 1/10. Its rare to see deviations from this. Basically, while we think we have finer instrumentation and ranking, what we truly end up with is a binary scoring system at the end of the day - with all reviews gravitating towards the extremes. Hence, why I tend to like the trinary scoring system. Its simple and any deviation requires an explanation or justification (except for the default "Met Expectations"). Just my opinion. The scoring is less important than publishing a well thought out review. Just take your time guys in writing them, think about it. I'm not asking for fucking Billy Shakesphere, but this isn't twitter either. Reviews are for the community at the end of the day - that's the primary function of the review. The nice thing is you can take any of the current templates, pick one you like, and instead of using the 5 or 10 scale point system, use the trinary. Can add them up using numeric values such as -1, 0, and 1 for Did not meet, met, and exceeded expectations. An example template is shown for your convenience.
As such, we will remove low quality and shilly reviews with great vigor now.
Community Responsibility
Remember, this is our community. Its all of our job to help police it and keep it clean. Report, report, report violations. Also, be aware that if someone responds to a sourcing question, they may be subject to a ban as well. Don't feed the animals! Please, report sourcing violations. But for G-d's sake, don't contribute!
The Daily Stickies
We are currently in progress in updating the daily stickies for the sub. We are going to keep some but some will go so that they go more with the direction we'd like to see the sub go in. Stay tuned for this and we'll probably just implement it and you'll get to see for yourself when its finalized.
~Econ and Crew
This is one of my favorite subs, thanks for being awesome mods