Well, is there a better way to regulate this?
I don't have any good ideas on how to regulate something like this so that's why I opened the thread - also to give a heads up to loaners that they should be more wary with their trust distribution.
Gotcha.
One of the things I find attractive about bitcoin is that I don't need a bank and the gov't doesn't issue it. A lot of people think like that. But one of the consequences of this, obviously, is that there's little recourse when something goes wrong and one's trading partner needs to be vetted with much more diligence than would be necessary with a credit card, for instance. And at bitcointalk, I guess it's always been the tradition that members police for scammers and I'm cool with that for the most part.
But two things bother me: Nothing is done by admins about scammers. I think there should be rules in place for this. And the second is the trust system, which is just broken. There's a reason why Ebay makes you complete a verifiable transaction before leaving someone feedback. People have way too easy a time on this forum building up positive trust, and on the flip side there are idiots who spam negative trust feedback when no transaction took place (take a look at my trust feedback).
If those two things could be improved, I think there would be a solution to the question you posed in this thread.