Owlcatz, based on evidence and testimony I have reviewed, played a minor role in the extortion scheme. Even though in a conspiracy, the crimes of one are the crimes of all, I believe it is appropriate to remove his name from the thread. If you disagree, or if you disagree with removing the tag against Lauda, you are free to add one yourself.
I don’t think moving to a flag system exclusively would solve the trust system problems. The flag system, and the smaller impact of negative ratings make it so an individual cannot unilaterally ruin a persons reputation.
There is still the problem of mob justice and the lack of accountability in the trust system. The excuse of many has frequently been that xx is a net benefit to the trust system and this is why a controversial rating can be overlooked. I don’t think this should be an acceptable answer, especially if the controversial rating in question is actually many ratings regarding many distinct situations. Over time people have been tagged, and when they had no realistic chance of defending themselves nor remediating their reputation after a mistake, they would rage quit, sometimes with a scam attempt that was either not serious or had no reasonable chance of succeeding. There are many guilty of doing this and more that defended this.
Many people have made mistakes in the past, and I would not suggest a permanent scarlet letter for most people that engaged in the above, especially if they are trying to be a benefit to the trust system. I have seen some people improve their behavior on a limited basis, even if I still disagree with their past behavior and some of their current ratings.
If you are willing to play a minor role in trying to extort another member of the forum, and then for years support those that played a major role in that extortion, and one that performed a very dirty looking escrow. Then it is quite foolish to say that it increases the safety of other members to remove those warnings. This is nonsense.
What you had previously done was nothing near as bad as trying to ruthlessly extort a member. I had always thought with the self escrowing that the person duped lost nothing compared to using any other escrow and you could do so placing him at no greater risk because you knew you would uphold your end. It was sneaky but nothing like threatening people and attempting to extort large amounts of money from them.
This deal you have cut is obscene and anyone can see how it went down.
Leaving this aside since specific examples are not of prime interest to me.
Let me say that your post makes no sense to anyone who has been here for years and know things really work.
I will present some inviolable truths.
* the vast majority want to earn with sigs
* red tags can jeopardize or prevent earning with a sig and trading
* red tags or threat thereof can prevent people from enjoying freedom of speech and create echo chambers
* lack of freedom of speech prevents powerful scammers being outed and taken down
* If you do not have objective evidence to present of scamming and no strong objective corroborating evidence that clearly demonstrates attempting to scam or setting up a scam. There is no reason to damage their account
* allowing people to leave red tags on others without requiring objective. evidence leaves it dude open to abuse and manipulation which again leads to crushing of free speech, powerful scammers getting a free pass, innocent members incorrectly tagged and a general devaluing of the ratings and increase risk.
Those are insoluble problems without moving to the flagging system. People will only be able to ruin your account if it deserves to be ruined.
The only persons wishing to retain tagging are those that either can not grasp those inviolable truths or wish to keep abusing the trust system for their own ends.
Move to an objective standards based trust system that only targets scammers that are clearly a direct financial threat, and cut back on the individual swuabbles. This would be optimal in terms of retaining free speech and providing a sensible and accurate warning system for those posing a financial threat.
Your points for retaining the tagging system are invalid. That is not an opinion, the net benefit of removal is crystal clear.
When can we see tagging removed. This subjective damaging nonsense has surely had it's time. All the problems that existed with it have been increased since reducing the threshold to anything goes. Could you design something to crush free
speech with greater efficiency. You can for any reason you like take away a persons sig and trading potential. What a stupid design.
What a coincidence, lauda decided QS deal was a go, owlcatz and tman are right there like with the extortion. Not that you'd know that now because QS has redacted his name. I guess that correlation being hidden from view makes everyone far more safe. Thanks QS.
Imagine the probability of after years with people adamant each other were scammers. Then all in a small space in time with no deals cut and using only their idividual ' good judgement ' poof it's all gone and was all just one big mistskr. Rather than red trust they should have positive trust. They shot through neutral and are certainly to be trusted. This is a very useful trust system.
I had all my BTC in polo lending and just bought that Cas (was illiquid) but wanted to make some trades so took a small loan.. Killed it on UNB of all things, lol.. IIRC I about tripled that loan and paid it back early.. 
