Theymos clearly raises his opinion on Trust ratings there:
I do not view it as appropriate for trust ratings to relate primarily to non-trust matters. By giving someone negative trust, you're basically attaching a note to all of their posts telling people "warning: do not trade with this person!".
In particular, in my view:
- Giving negative trust for being an annoying poster is inappropriate, since this has nothing to do with their trustworthiness. If they're disrupting discussion or never adding anything, then that's something for moderators to deal with, and you should report their posts and/or complain in Meta about it.
- Giving negative trust for merit trading and
deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.
- You should be willing to forgive past mistakes if the person seems unlikely to do it again.
- It is absolutely not appropriate to give someone negative trust because you disagree with them. I'm disappointed in the reaction to
this post. Although H8bussesNbicycles is perhaps not particularly trustworthy for other reasons, the reasons many people gave for neg-trusting him are inappropriate. You can argue that what he's advocating is bad on a utilitarian level, but he would disagree, and his advocacy of a certain Trust philosophy doesn't by itself mean that he's an
untrustworthy person. DT selection is
meant to be affected by user lists, and it is totally legitimate to try to honestly convince other (real) people to use a list more in-line with your views.
All that being said, I still discourage retaliatory ratings, and with these changes I encourage people to try to "bury the hatchet" and de-escalate rather than trying to use any increased retaliatory power you now have.
Or LoyceV's:
When someone gives you negative trust without valid reason then what does that mean you are a scammer?
No, it means someone just disqualified himself from ever deserving a position on DT. If you don't value someone's sent feedback, you can exclude him from your
Trust list.
I recently got
red trust from someone. I left him
neutral trust explaining it, and mentioned it
in my reputation thread because I was curious why he left it. I'll never know, because
he was banned the same day.
I kinda want to leave red trust in response, but it doesn't feel right to (ab)use DT-powers to do so. On the other hand, I obviously don't trust someone who leaves me random red trust without any reference link.
So, I'll leave this question for the community: what to do? This question has been answered ("do nothing"), thanks!