it was not advisable to send that much BTC to him first as he really did not have a solid trading history and his trades appeared to be small.
Stupidity on my part. I just quickly looked and saw
Trust 23 and thought "Okay great!"
I still don't understand how trust is calculated, I'm sure there's a post somewhere that explains it.
For example: I've sold 8.69 BTC to TheKoziTwo, he has a Legendary account yet for me his trust appears lower than Fullbuster (before the negative ratings, that is)
The trust system is flawed in that every rating is valued the same way, regardless of how much (if anything) was risked with that person. It would probably be advisable to look at the comments, and the amounts risked of the person you are trading with to get a feeling as to how trustworthy they are. You should also take any "
untrusted" trust ratings (e.g. those that do not show up by default) with a grain of salt, as scammers will often send trust ratings with their alts in order to make it appear as if they have more trading activity then they really do. You also want to make sure that you are only adding people to your trust list who you trust enough to give accurate ratings and to maintain a good trust list with people with accurate ratings, because if a scammer gets into your trust network then the trust scores that you see will be manipulated and inaccurate.
A person's trust score is based on who is in your trust network, as these people will only have an effect on other's ratings (how you see them). Each positive trust report from someone in your trust network will cause the number on the very right to increase by one, with a limit of one trust report being counted per person (so if I were to give you three positive trust reports, it would only count one time). A user's trust score (the number on the very left) will increase by one point for every month since a trust report was given (only counting the oldest report from each member in your trust network), up to a maximum of 10 point per report (so if I gave you a positive trust report 13 months ago, it would only count for 10 points).