Should the Trusted Review status be abolished?

[handles]

To many TR's writing fake reviews. Fact.
The hole review system has been turned into a joke and the badge is worthless. Fact.

[samlad]

Well, to be honest I always thought that there should be some nice aknoledgment for the people we trust as reviewers. It may be very well for you here that you don’t trust the badge but the username … but what about that other bigger category of clients that don’t use the boards and have no idea who are the usernames here ? What about the people registered on the boards that don’t always have the time to interact with others, to post / PM and go into the chat room to know who is a sure bet to trust and who not?

Yes the system is open to abuse. But what system isn’t ? Does that mean that instead of working to improve it we just give up on it? Corruption is a potential danger in most life aspects: politics, economic, social interactions etc? Did you ever see someone saying, “no, we won’t have a president, what if he will become corrupt” and “no, we won’t have managers in our company as they might be corrupted”.

I am actually surprised at Sam who after reading a lot of requests for improving the TR system makes a poll with just 2 options: keep the system or scratch it ! Sam if you are trying to take a decision based on democratic input, why would you ignore the 3rd option that was also discussed, the one to improve the system?

How to improve it, there have been some ideas already and I don’t think here is the right place to go again trough a lengthy suggestion posting. But I can list quickly the more obvious and simpler improvement ideas that would take care of most things the current system suffers:

- Get more people established as TRs. This would reduce the potential corruptibility issue, as TRs would become a more common thing. Also it would improve the TR demographics and would give escorts a more fair chance to get TR badges on their profiles even if they are based in a smaller area and don’t travel a lot.

- Do not expect the TR status to be requested, think of system that you give it away to the deserving ones. Here is one of the weakest points in your current system. Some clients, even genuine will never ask for this out of modesty and even if they asked they did it because lots of people encourage them to do it. A client suffering of too much ego will not have a problem to ask for it and of course those are also the people that may later try to abuse their badges.
(The idea of deserving ones can be different. James was more for an automated system, where any client after a certain time on the board and a certain numbers of unrated reviews will receive a badge. I was more of the idea that maybe yes, the potential TRs may be selected by an automated process but to become in fact a TR you also have to pass a public vote, in a special TR forum. I won’t bore you now with the details, but I can go in more details later if you wish).

- Any escort that encounters a TR that wants more benefits because of his badge – simply report him ! If you are aware he is a TR, then you are aware of the boards and reviews moderators, so it should be quite easy.

So yes, I would vote for a new TR system that would listen to all decent improvement suggestions. In case you won’t bother with that, I do agree with scrapping the TR system, as I hate the abuse as well. But this is like me saying I want to be very healthy but if I need to be sick, I prefer flu to cancer … Still wishing for the healthy part though

I'm not sure why it's such a surprise to you Amy. If the TR status is decided to be kept, we will look at tweaking it, but Nicole and I recieve so many messages regarding the removal of the TR system, I thought it would make sense to start with the basics; do you guys want it or not? I'm not, what's the point in investing in all this time looking for a solution if nobody wants it anyway? There are also many people on here that have commented that they trust the reputation of particular reviewers, not the gold badge. I know there are mixed feelings about this, but there are people out there that spoil this for eveyone.

RicFlair, I think rather than having a public rant about this, it would be better to talk one of us about the process of your Escort of the Month competition and we can find an alternative solution, rather than having a public rant about it. I'm sure TR status isn't the only factor involved in this.

[samlad]

I assume a similar poll in escort forum, tbh if so the results of that would be more important, its escorts that are at times being put under pressure for "perks" extra time etc and its the true indy's being put at a disadvantage by any possible pimp with a badge.

I did consider this and thought, "What's the point?". It's an open poll, we can see who has voted, and as it's a mixture of clients and escorts that have concerns about the system, I think it's only fair not to exclude one from the other or give a particular group anymore credibility than the other.

[erosphotography]

I'd say most can distinguish with experience. Also if genuine reviews are there and contradict the trusted reviewer you don't have to be einstein to have reservations. Also the moderators can keep an eye on this and respond to punter and escort suspicions.

[Forrest]

I don't have the time, or patience, for including the quotes from the various posts already on this thread, so I will mention the names and make some comments.

Samlad - You said the various suggestions have not been ignored, as they have been discussed. That's fair enough, but what conclusions and decisions have been made following those discussions. You say that you & Nicole are constantly receiving pm's requesting the removal of the TR system. I would assume the people doing this have given their reasons why, so let's hear them.

Amy Alison - An excellent post, as expected. You have made some very good suggestions and I hope your ideas are taken on board.

Anon361 - You make a very valid point - who are the TR's that are abusing the 'badge'. I know you have a view on a few TR's yourself, but it's the ladies that are at the 'coalface' so to speak, so they are the ones that know who is abusing the system.
Let them report the abusers and weed them out, so the system can be more 'trusted'.

Would it not be better to have a poll with all the TR's listed and get all members and escorts to vote on whether they 'trust' them or not? It may be a public humiliation for some TR's, but if they are abusing the system then they should be 'outed'

I don't like being tarred with the same brush as those that abuse the system, so I would rather be removed as a TR, whatever the result of the poll.

[samlad]

I don't have the time, or patience, for including the quotes from the various posts already on this thread, so I will mention the names and make some comments.

Samlad - You said the various suggestions have not been ignored, as they have been discussed. That's fair enough, but what conclusions and decisions have been made following those discussions. You say that you & Nicole are constantly receiving pm's requesting the removal of the TR system. I would assume the people doing this have given their reasons why, so let's hear them.

Amy Alison - An excellent post, as expected. You have made some very good suggestions and I hope your ideas are taken on board.

Anon361 - You make a very valid point - who are the TR's that are abusing the 'badge'. I know you have a view on a few TR's yourself, but it's the ladies that are at the 'coalface' so to speak, so they are the ones that know who is abusing the system.
Let them report the abusers and weed them out, so the system can be more 'trusted'.

Would it not be better to have a poll with all the TR's listed and get all members and escorts to vote on whether they 'trust' them or not?
It may be a public humiliation for some TR's, but if they are abusing the system then they should be 'outed'

I've already outlined the comments people have made in the original post, and as I've explained, there's no point fixing something people don't want. Let's find out if that's the case first.

[Rayden]

Having read through this thread, I will say that if the TR system is kept then there has to be major "tweaks" made to it. I thought that James' thread was a great idea and totally agreed with it.

However, I still do hope that the TR system is done away with as it isnt working in its current form and I dont believe that any changes made will be significant enough.

[Monkeynut]

I think that the TR system should be retained but in a different form. A lot of good ideas have been put out on the forum and some or all of these should be looked at.
As for 'outing' TR's who abuse the system .... No I think this would be dangerous. What should be done is that all TR's should be re -issued with 'the badge' carefully leaving out those that are abusing the system. If a TR who doesn't get re-issued then he has the right to know why assumnig he doesnt know already!

[Marko1980]

For a long time I thought I wanted to be a trusted reviewer, then I stood back and thought about it and wondered why?
I'm going to blow my own trumpet here and say that every time I have seen a girl here I have been a perfect client, one girl told me that she had no hesitation in seeing me as she looked at my reviews and was able to gauge roughly what type of client I was by the girls I saw, so I have a decent rep anyway.

If ppl are using the badge as a power symbol in an appointment (not saying everyone does), its very wrong, its also wrong that an escort feels under pressure to go above and beyond her normal service because of this, like a restaurant when a food critic dines there.

So the question I think is, what purpose does the badge serve?
That should be the basis of whether scrapping it is a good idea or not.

Sounds like it would create more work for Ric but there's a way around everything, the escort of the month assessment could be the area that is looked at to change.

[carlos marvado]

I was against the trusted reviewer status from the start and even though I was given one of those badges, I'm still against the idea. It is far too easy for somebody such as a trafficker or pimp to review a few escorts that they control (and maybe a few others to get their review numbers up) and then get those escorts to write references for them to be awarded the badge. In addition, there have been reports of badge holders abusing the badge to get freebies or reduced prices in return for positive reviews.

Leave it up to members to decide who they trust themselves.