I'm sick and tired of people abusing the trust system to make themselves look more legit and to destroy others reputation for stupid reasons.
I have seen a lot of people claim the trust system is being abused, but very few actual abuses. In my experience, in the few times the trust system is actually abused the abuser is removed from default trust list.
I am unbiased because I am neither green or red I am simply a user that wants to see a more effective method put in place.
I personally doubt this. Just because this particular account does not have any trust does not mean you are not an alt and/or a friend of someone who has been effected.
To put it plainly a lot of the people in the default trust list abuse their power and have a monopoly on trust.
Not true. Any one has the ability to exclude any one's trust reports, including those who they think do not make accurate trust reports.
I suggest a combination of things to take the place of the trust system. For one scammer tags should be brought back.
I was not around when scammer tags were around, however I am fairly certain that you are an alt of someone else because I am fairly sure that scammer tags were done away with by the time you joined in February 2014. Also from what I have read scammer tags make the trust system even more centralized as only moderators (or administrators?) could add a scammer tag, as opposed to many more people on the default trust list, and if someone is given negative trust from someone on default trust they can also earn positive trust from someone else on default trust if they really are trustworthy
Another idea I had is to show the amount of bitcoins a user has given away or donated to the forum under there name and the price of the bitcoins at the time they were donated. So let's say someone gave away $1,000 and they wanted to do a $10 trade with you it is extremely unlikely they would scam you for $10 and wreck their $1,000 donation by getting a scammer tag.
Donators and VIPs keep their donator/VIP stats even if they are a scammer. Since you were around prior to February 2014, just remember what happened with inputs/CL when TF lost 4k+ BTC in a hack. He was a VIP, got an insane amount of negative trust and still retains his VIP status. Also very few people have actually donated to the forum when compared to the total number of users, so the vast majority of people would show "zero" for this metric.
Users don't have to just donate to the forum they could donate to verified causes and charities and have it linked to their account.
Again this does not prove anything. See above example.
Accolades could also be shown by users names like bitcoin core contributor, counterparty developer etc. I'm aware something like this is done for gmaxwell but it should be done on a larger basis. With all these contributing factors it would be easier for someone to decide on who they can trust.
Just because someone is smart enough and contributes to the Bitcoin protocol doesn't mean they are trustworthy. Just look at TBF (the bitcoin foundation).
If you insist on the trust system then I give you this idea a full member gets +1 trust power a senior member gets +2 trust power a hero +3 and a legendary +4. Or every member above say full or senior member gets +3 trust power to keep it equal.
Nope. Bad idea. Someone could buy up a bunch of higher level scammer accounts and make their own account(s) look trustworthy. Just because someone has been around a long time does not mean they are trustworthy.
This ensures that there is no monopoly on trust.
There is not a monopoly on trust. Like I said above you have the ability to exclude whose trust reports you see. If someone makes a lot of bad trust reports then a lot of people will exclude them from their default view
Or if you want trust to have a payment barrier you can require something like 0.1 btc to be part of a special group that has the ability to give out trust. Though it would probably be smart to have a requirement of being a full member to get in to this group.
The going price for accounts on default trust list is actually a lot higher then .1
BTC. If the price were that low then a scammer (at this point, I am thinking, likely like yourself) will be able to make a bunch of accounts then "pay" the very small fee to be able to leave default trust to manipulate others' trust ratings. Just because someone pays a small fee does not mean that their trust reports are accurate