It is quite possible that I don't see the entire picture here.  But from what I can tell, the forum moderators are wanting to grrow some sort of organic network of trust where they don't have to moderate it, it basically self regulates based on participation of many people and their activities.  However, I think that one thing that's getting in the way of that is that not many people actually participate, ie, they just see a trust warning on some people and take that as ground truth.  Then we have a lot of drama because others are working to be trust-rangers, jumping through all kinds of hoops and loops in order to be known as scam-busters who keep the boards safe from the bad guys.  But a small collection of trust-rangers isn't the same thing as that large, organic, unmoderated trust system that saltyspittoon mentioned upthread.

Several folks have said that if trust were opt-in rather than opt-out that that would be dangerous---it would remove using trust system as a crutch certainly, but they say that even the crutch is better than nothing before you know how to walk.

However, there seems to be near universal agreement that the actual text of the warning could be changed to both a) be more informative about the actual state of affairs and b) be more inviting to learn how to use the trust system for yourself.

Theymos, lets have "negative trust" warning changed to: "This person has received negative feedback from someone in your trust network."   That message is far more reflective of the actual situation and provides an invitation to figure out exactly who is in your trust network and why.