I have to ~ disagree some with you here. Only call it a scam if it is a scam. (edit: took away "wholly", insert "some")
If you don't know, then you are the scammer by saying that it is.
You're not soft on crime because you base your judgement on the evidence available. It doesn't mean that you can't warn others about a persons history of abuses. Of course you can, but there's a difference between that and jumping to assumptions about that which you do not know.
That's too time consuming attitude. Most people don't have enough time to waste on researching potential scams. That's why it's easiest just to assume that if something looks like a scam, it is.
And of course real businesses don't need to use any scam marketing techniques. So they have very little risk to be false identified as a scam.
Even when you "assume" that it's a scam, you shouldn't actually tell others that "it is" unless you know. Saying "this looks like a scam" is quite enough and adding "this person even has a reputation of being a scammer" should make even the dumbest person vigilant enough not to do unprotected business with the particular entity in question.
It's not anymore time consuming than that.
Yeah, you are right that it's good to think a little bit what kind of words should be used to describe the situation.
My point was mostly towards people like @thejohalfiles, @onceuponatime and @stan who thought we should have given a chance for @matttrainer to show what he has to offer. It's more harmful than useful to let cases like that to go on until we can be 100 % sure whether or not it's a scam. Because usually it is and that will lead to defrauding of many users.
Right. Well what @mattrainer should have done was to give up the payout of the post first of all.
Then if he actually had a game going on, let him explain it in full before it's upvoted. If he says things that don't check out, then he has lied and it's a scam.
But even if this had not been a scam, there would have been nothing wrong with pointing out previous incidents.
I'm disappointed that Stan got involved in this and I've asked him to make a statement about it, but I can see and empathize with why he might have first thought it was a positive thing for the platform (since he had successfully worked with the guy) and then dug his heels in even as things started to look bad.
I see a lot of trust issues in the anarchist/anarcho/crypto community overall. Some people trust anyone, some trust the wrong people time and time again (genuinly trust) and some people imidiately distrust anyone who has a vision or comes out with a new product/marketing idea.
I just don't want us to swing to either side and I instead think that we should notice that there probably is too much emphazis put on "trust" as such most of the time. On a positive note, at least this is where the blockchain and open source can come in to fill the gap to certain extent.
Anyways, I think your intent is good and as you said, it's a matter of wording it.
if there is no money in the background, like the promised gold or 10 mio, its pretty much a scam ^^
easy like that
It's never "pretty much". It either is or it isn't.
By the way, professional mythomaniacs and entitled people love leaping to judgement based on "pretty much".
oh ok sorry :-) ok without money it is a scam... forget "pretty much"
If money is promised and there's no way to secure it, yes. But that's a hard call to make.
This latest example of Mogul was more obvious than that.