Mars Market Reference Plain descriptions of what each step involves, what you will experience, and where it can go wrong

Mars Market addresses

Three published addresses for the same market. Copy rather than retype, and check the signature once you are through.

Address 1 marsautkudspgk6j23cxdtrk36ae4fpis2eoe7izu5y2rsksvmfji2ad.onion
Address 2 marshjhtog245vzjzcicnmv2ci6yljibvdm4pngq5kmkfvcutppboxad.onion
Address 3 marsiujka6lrsaqpnxiwvknthhzsrlmq77mnl2fi62guc4lwxif65syd.onion

This list is published, not monitored. An address that opens is not an address that is genuine, and the check that settles it takes under a minute.

Reference › Procedures

Leaving feedback

A small step that most people do badly, in a system that is more trustworthy than open reviews and skewed in predictable ways.

What this step is
Recording an outcome against a completed order, visible on the vendor profile afterwards.
How to prepare
Nothing, beyond having actually received and assessed what you ordered.
What you will see
A rating and a free text field. The free text is the part that carries information.
How it works
Feedback attaches to a completed order, so producing a hundred false entries costs a hundred transactions. That single property makes it far more reliable than any open review system.
How long it takes
A minute, and it is worth spending two.
What you will experience
A pull toward being generous, because a rating affects somebody you dealt with and the encounter is fresh.
What can go wrong
Nothing to you. The failure is systemic, in that the whole corpus leans optimistic for the reasons below.
Benefits and limits
It measures whether something arrived. It is read as measuring whether a vendor is good, which is a different question.

The four biases

BiasEffect on what everyone reads
TimingUsually left on arrival, before anything is known about quality. It measures delivery more than the thing delivered.
SilenceUnhappy buyers frequently open a dispute instead of leaving feedback, so the worst outcomes are under-represented.
PressureBoth sides know a rating affects future trade, which pushes ambiguous experiences upward.
AveragingA headline number hides the shape, and the shape is what a reader wanted.

Writing something useful

  • Say what actually happened, including timings. Somebody reading later wants the specifics far more than the adjective.
  • Separate delivery from the item. They are different judgements and merging them is why so much feedback is uninformative.
  • Note communication. How a vendor behaved when something was unclear is the most predictive thing you can record.
  • Avoid identifying detail. Nothing about location, timing patterns or anything that ties this order to you.
  • Be honest about a middling experience. The corpus is skewed optimistic precisely because people round up out of politeness.
It is permanentFeedback is a public record that persists. Write it assuming it will be read by people who are not the vendor, including in circumstances you did not anticipate.