Just a random thought. Leave the trust system as it is, but remove the trust scores shown on the profile etc. To evaluate someones trustworthiness, users should open their trust page, review the feedback and evaluate the users trustworthiness for themselves.
So no more red warnings. What do you guys think? good idea/bad idea? will it stop "abuse" of the trust system? will people take the time to manually review trust before trading?
I proposed that a long while ago. I agree, people rely way too heavily on the green or red numbers, when they should really be reading feedback on a case by case basis.
Remove all levels of trust or default trust.
Everyone same level.
Free for all let the market determine the value of red marks not just a few people hand picked.
I would be all for this as well, if you could figure out a way to prevent trust spam by people with hundreds of alts. Absolutely no weight would make the trust system as useful as forum polls.
I'd actually be for seeing what would happen if default trust was removed, and people were forced to create their own trust lists right now. The system has been around long enough that people should know how to make it work best, but I feel that not much would change, people would still rely on a trust system built by a couple of well known members.
About the bolded, me too! A softer alternative might be to keep the default trust list around, but make it an opt-in. So, a new user has a blank trust list, but when you got to your trust settings you see some info about how to add "DefaultTrust" if you want a starter list and don't want to make your own.
@OP, a similar idea, which I proposed in another thread, was to not remove the "scores" or the warning, but to change the text to something more descriptive. Right now, it's the inflammatory "Warning...Extreme Caution". But what if it said "This person has received negative feedback from someone in your trust list. If the latter was implemented, people who don't know how the system works might react "huh, my trust list?" and then figure out that they have a trust list that they can edit and investigate. As things stand, "Warning..." it looks like a message from God or something, not like something that has to do with your own settings.
