Not sure how, but I somehow managed to make V Kodoff's trust go from -10 to -1263. Either way, well deserved.
When someone gets a lot of negative trust at one time the weight to additional negative trust ratings is increased.
Oh, now nice. A mob mentality pile-on effect. Exactly like the angry bee pheromone.
http://www.nzbees.net/forum/threads/can-you-smell-the-angry-bee-pheromone.1967/Can we please be more accurate and change the name from Trust Rating to Popularity?
The reason for this is to warn others when one person scams several people all at once and to prevent others from being scammed in the near future. For example if someone who is trusted were to scam 5 people all at once then they would potentially still have a net positive trust feedback if all negatives were weighed equally, on the other hand under the current system scamming 5 people all at roughly the same time will result in a score of roughly 600 less then their previous trust score (pre scam).
Is there evidence the Popularity Rating System prevents scams?
OTOH, I can see how it could easily be (ab)used to aid them.
I don't have any specific examples, however any time you leave negative feedback for someone you are essentially putting your reputation the line that your feedback is correct (yes you can remove it later and apologize however if you have to do this enough then people will not trust you in the first place).
I don't think it can be used to aid scams. Negative feedbacks are weighed more heavily then positive feedbacks.