I'm a bit surprised about the headline because unjustified
positive trust seems to be the bigger issue these days (nice guy feedbacks should be neutral, not positive trust), so "Should we hand out positive trusts like candy?" is a nice additional question.
Regarding the initial question (and as I'm listed as well in your list):
While there might be some controversial cases, I'm not in favor of DT being more lenient. Most of the cases presented in the OP are justified trusts.
I just want to outline 2 of it:
My topic about Timelord2067's lies against me: I've created the topic because my topic in Meta is not intended for off-topic reputation discussions. Timelord2067 has littered my topic in Meta and that's just not necessary.
I've addressed Timelord2067's lies in my topic. I don't know where I should be at fault for addressing these claims.
Everything is explained in my topic in Reputation.
The topic about deadsea33 and the allegedly inappropriate feedback from hugeblack: after reviewing the topic, hugeblack's neutral trust served as a warning and from what hugeblack stated in the neutral trust, it's pretty valid.
The feedback from hugeblack is a good use of neutral trust in my opinion. DT did the rest and is in the process of exposing the bought account.
It's also nice to see that many members of this forum are doing a good research and dedicating time for that.
That's very important for DT to be vital.
There have been many cases where DT did a good job and acting too lenient is never a good idea because it's emboldening abusers. Here's a similar case,
where I've presented evidence and together with DT, we exposed an account buyer in 2019. (bought account in question was
St4yInTh3D4rk)
After being called out, the account buyer still tried to get away with it, although in one of his earlier (shit)posts, he was well aware that buying accounts will lead to negative trust:
I believe you that you might not have the intention to scam anyone here and you look more trustworthy than the original owner (more due to the fact that the original owner pulled an exit-scam). But honestly I can't do much here. You know well that involvements in account sales are discouraged and accounts involved in it risk to get a red tag:
Actually selling the bitcointalk account are allowed but not encouraged so the sold account and the buyer and seller will get red tag if they get caught,so the moderators have nothing to do with that,if you want to stay away from scam then you need to stay away from account selling.
http://archive.is/OEDOK#selection-925.0-925.13LOL, he wrote it earlier himself...
Still he tried to get away with it.
And there are far more accounts, where I didn't had enough time to compile the evidence and therefore did not tag yet. Most likely, jrrsparkles is a bought account as well, likely owned by the same person, St4yInTh3D4rk account was owned.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50353545https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50399294https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50390330https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50388489jrrsparkles is still active today. Maybe it's time to finish off these accounts. They have been making a shit ton of money by spamming the forum from stolen accounts for far too long. While new members need to earn Merit, these abusers are just lazy to buy an existing account with 500+ Merit. That's extremely unfair for new members who are required to make good posts to rank up.
Therefore I'm a bit confused, that while reading OP I'm more getting the impression that
abusers are getting defended and
abuser hunters are getting criticized, while there's not really anything to criticize in how DT is exposing abusers. Quite the opposite: I'm very grateful for acive members exposing shady activities. It's always very time consuming to research and compile the evidence. We also need to spend more Merit on these researches.
DT is giving out trusts only if there's really a reason to leave it. And shitposters complaining about neutral trust are just ridiculous. Most times, complaining will even earn them more accusations, when DT starts digging. Why are these shitposter accounts always involved in so much shady stuff?
You can almost bet on it that when a shitposter complains about a neutral trust, he will end up getting even more neutral trusts or even a negative trust.
Finally, DT is a decentralized network where different views are welcome but in my opinion, DT has worked very well so far to keep scammers, account sellers and other abusers at bay. DT getting more lenient these days is somehow concerning and not a good idea in my opinion. Tagging scammers, acting against abuses and bought accounts has worked very well over the past 10+ years.