Defining of some Terms

I think its easier to understand if we use a slightly different terminology, so I'll be doing so in my explanation here. I'll start off by defining a few things. The system as a whole I will continue to call the Trust System. I will refer to comments left by someone through the Trust System as Feedback. There are two parts to the Trust System. There is Feedback and Trust. Feedback as I just defined, is the comments you leave on someone else's trust page. Trust, is when you decide you value someone's opinion as an extension of your own, and add them to your trust list.

Feedback is what most people are talking about when talking about the Trust System. It is exactly as many people have said, it is your personal opinion. Default trust starts at branch 0, these are people who Theymos have personally added to start the branches of the trust system. They were picked based on years of showing good judgement on related matters. When one of those people sees another user who's opinion they trust; someone they believe will leave accurate feedback for others, they are added to that user's Trust List. That is the difference between Trust and Feedback. Trusting someone is in a sense giving another user an extension to speak for you when they give someone feedback.

Trust is more strictly watched over by members of the Default Trust group. If I Trust someone who is making bad calls when leaving feedback, that means I am giving them license to poorly represent me. On the other hand, the feedback they leave for others is representative of their own personal beliefs. If I don't agree with their personal beliefs, I wouldn't trust them.


Now that that wall of text explanation defining the difference between Trust and Feedback is done, I'll move onto responding to your post quoted above. I bolded the points that I'm addressing.

Response to quote

1) As I just mentioned, your "Trust Rating" - Feedback should always be your opinion. Whether or not people agree with your opinion decides whether or not people choose to take your rating seriously, or disregard it as worthless. If you gave someone negative feedback for being German, anyone who disagreed would disregard your feedback. If someone on Default Trust was leaving feedback because someone was German, they most likely wouldn't stay on the list long, because that is generally viewed as a poor indicator of trustworthiness. To expand, if I Trusted someone who left Feedback because someone was German, I would stop Trusting them, as that isn't my personal view.

2) Staff members have no real impact on trust. Trust isn't moderated, and staff member feedback isn't more heavily weighted than anyone else's.

The reason the Trust System is set up like it is, is because its far more flexible to have all of the rules set by the community. What is acceptable to leave positive/negative feedback for is constantly being discussed, and changed as situations change. For example, at the start of the trust system, it wasn't necessarily common that people involved in Ponzis would get negative trust. As the community opinion has changed, that has become a more prominent thing. Morals are constantly changing. What is acceptable and not in a community changes very quickly with an evolving technology at its center. In a week, there might be a new thing that no one had ever heard of that needs a judgement. A few years ago, if you said mining to someone, they wouldn't know what you are talking about. A few years later, cloud mining became an entirely different thing. Next we are going to have atmosphere mining, and a new trust ruling will need to be made for that.

The Trust System is without rules, so that eventually the system can branch out into something that approaches decentralization (for a lack of a better term, though decentralization isn't quite right). Right now Default Trust layer 0, 1, 2, and 3 are most prominent. In time, branches 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 etc will be far more widespread, and to the point where the people on layer 0, 1, 2 etc can relax and let branches 6, 7, and 8 regulate themselves. Lets say there are 5 people on layer 0. Each picks 5 people to represent them. 25 people on layer 1, they each pick 5 people to represent them, so on and so on. By layer 5, we have 15625 people enforcing the community set rules. If someone on layer 5 abuses the system, the person on layer 4 deals with it. So instead of having 5 people setting the rules, we have thousands who can represent Bitcointalk's community.


Sorry that was such a long read: TLDR;

1) Feedback is not the same as trust, feedback is one's own opinion, trust is an extension of one person trusting the feedback of another user and allowing them to speak for that person.

2) "Trust ratings" - Feedback is always opinions, if you don't like someone's opinions, disregard it.

3) Trust and Feedback aren't moderated by the Staff here, Staff opinion's are exactly the same weight as other users.

4) The "rules" of the Trust System are set by community opinion. There are no official rules set by Theymos so its easier to adapt to new things. Theymos' personal opinions also mean less this way.

5) The trust system branches out so those at the center at Default Trust depth 0,1,2, etc become less important. They just need to find people that they would like to represent their opinions. Then the thousands of members at branch 5, 6, 7, 8 will be more in charge of distributing feedback that people can use as a baseline of trustworthiness.