Hello excellent DNM peoples,
So, the Superlist. Right. "BitBay" made it on there, it was a total scam site, somewhat obvious, epic modfail, etc. etc. That was a few weeks ago. We're still super sorry about it and have been talking about what to do next. That is, aside from making the warning that we do NOT vouch for any of the sites on the Superlist even more obvious than it was before, which has been done.
There's currently two new markets waiting for addition to the list (Minerva and Zocalo), and we haven't really been sure what to tell them - things are kind of just on hold. Not a bad thing, sure, but we've gotta break the moratorium at some point, and hopefully soon.
Here's some of the ideas that have been floated in our own discussions about how to move forward (please note that these are not the ONLY options, they're just ideas that have come up. They're also not exclusive of one another):
Get rid of the Superlist altogether, because no matter how hard we've tried to make it clear otherwise, folks seem to think that every entry on the list is 100% awesomeness made of flying ponycorns (those are unicorn-ponies, FYI). We don't make enough from our DEA salaries or even in bribes to put up with the heckling (kidding!). Anyway, this idea doesn't have a lot of support, but it's a possibility. Dealing with the bullcrap and shit-talk just ain't worth it, in a lot of ways, but we also know how important a resource the Superlist is, so there's definitely reasons to fight for it.
Increase the "review" period for new Superlist entries after their announcement post to thirty days instead of the current seven. I think all the mods are in agreement on this one, at the least.
Actively encourage the community to check out new markets when they're announced. Just plain good sense, obviously. And potentially even leave new market announcements stickied for a while, to further encourage people to check them out and vet them.
Require that any new markets for to the Superlist are multisig-only, or perhaps at the least offer some kind of genuine multisig (e.g., the multisig address can be generated by the user with their own software). This also raises the barrier of entry a bit, in a good way, so that fly-by-night yahoos can't throw together a BitWasp site on their Windows ME laptop and announce themselves as a DNM. Some reservations about multisig-only markets have been raised, because multisig transactions are theoretically much more traceable than conventional escrow pools (credit to /u/Vendor_BBMC as the first source of that clever insight).
Get rid of the part that says "This is a list of all currently known, operating markets and tumblers," because it's not true and it never has been (duh).
As for the Active Warnings list, there's a strong inclination to drop it completely. We just get too much flak for what's on there or isn't, and it's so difficult to discern if a problem with a site or service is legit because of the prevalence of shills and the ease of faking screenshots, etc. No matter how we approach the Active Warnings, somebody's gonna be mad at us (and they won't hesitate to let us know, or accuse us of being bought off). It's a source of a lot of extra stress and work that we don't need. If we do decide to keep it, we'll probably make it closer to the top of the sidebar and maybe pretty it up a little, with some colors like red/yellow/green for different warning states, etc. But the stress of it is pretty annoying.
So what say you, my fine friends? What do you think makes sense for the Superlist and Active Warnings?
Why not just call it a "list of commonly used sites by users" because that's a better description of what it's for. Also I think the Mods should stand up for themselves and put more ALL CAPS WARNING WE DO NOT ENDORSE shit like that to get people's attention.