The neat thing about Trust is that not everybody understands what it really is, or how it really works.

Let's take my trust page, for example. There are several red negative reviews of me under the "untrusted feedback" section. Ostensibly, this would be a Bad Thing, because Trust is a points-based system and more points equals more trust, right? Wrong.

In fact, Trust is not a points-based system, but a way of linking reputations across a network of people. Thusly, people can see the negative reviews that have been left for me, check the reference links, see the trust of the users who left those reviews, check THEIR reference links, etc. This is very powerful, because it allows you to view the broad behavioural strokes of everyone involved in the situation.

I am, in fact, not affected in any fashion by the negative reviews left on my profile, because any user who views them is able to uncover a vast amount of information surrounding the reviews in question, as well as a vast amount of information surrounding my own behaviour on this forum, right back to the start, and come to their own conclusions.

Those who have received negative ratings from me should, if they understand the Trust system and its use, be wholly unconcerned if my accusations are baseless, and vocally critical if they are true.

Finally -- and I do not presume to speak on behalf of CITM -- but his rating of me is based on past dealings between the two of us and it would be an abuse of the trust system for him to remove it because he feels I am abusing the trust system