Quote from: hilariousetc on March 21, 2018, 04:18:29 PM

But people do put a lot of weight on it. Feedback = trustability to a lot of people (though it obviously shouldn't). I've seen people offering their services here and calling themselves a 'trusted user' just because they did a few deals with the right people. It's like a badge of honour to a lot of people and I suppose it gives them the edge over someone who has zero feedback so that's why it's worth something. Some campaigns have even started offering higher payments if you've got it which is ludicrous and just encourages more abuse.

This the problem with any form of trust system, any "visible" signs are taken at face value by people so your average joe would see a green trust and not check why the green trust was left and would blindly trust them irrespective of whether they are really worth the trust given. Things I personally check and recommend others to do is when you want to check someone's trust first open their trust page and check the following:

Check who sent the trust, if a very responsible user leaves a rating then I'd weigh rating with much greater importance than a rating by a random user (the DT system reduces the issue but I'd still recommend adding reasonable people who leave ratings accurately to your trust list since a lot people arent in DT due to politics, not being well known, etc)
Check the details of the trust - In bold because this one is important. Being cooperative with an escrow where the risked BTC is 0 absolutely worthless in my eyes. I've seen some DT Escrows leave neutral feedbacks which is better IMO since it gives the details while not tampering with the trust system. There are DTs who seem to leave positive feedback for using them as an escrow but I feel that's abusive in a way similar to how people accused The Butter Zone for his email forwarding related trusts. People are more likely to pick you for the cheap and quick trust from using you as an escrow (again not taking names but just something I noticed)
References, see this always if it's present. A lot of the retaliatory feedback is for what I feel are just dumb misunderstandings between some users or ego clashes or whatever and all resulting feedbacks can be safely disregarded

Quote from: philipma1957 on March 21, 2018, 04:38:21 PM

~snip~

It's pretty refreshing for a DT1 to quickly respond with appropriate action since I've seen most DT1s seem to be quiet in the shadows and just lurking and rarely posting unless forced to.

Quote from: SaltySpitoon on March 21, 2018, 04:51:30 PM

I feel that is their problem more than anyone else's. Feedback should be taken exactly for what it is, not some algorithm created green numbers. If someone has 100 positive feedback for 0.001 BTC trades, that wouldn't mean I'd trust them with 1 BTC even if their score is higher than someone I would trust with 1 BTC. If someone does a trade, I believe they deserve accurate feedback for it. I really don't like the green/red numbers. They are a cop out for people who don't feel they need to read a person's feedback and judge its validity for themselves. I've added a few people to my trust list in the past that asked me to remove them because they didn't want to have to change any of their feedback habits because of cases like this, and I really think its a shame. I added them specifically for their feedback habits, and those are exactly the type of people that I think needed to be on DT.

The entire problem as I mentioned above is the average user (who are the ones the trust system is supposed to protect) never sees anything beyond the trust number. The only ones I ever see who do check the ratings thoroughly are the ones who are smart enough to not need really need the trust system.

For example you're a veteran user, pretty sure you have a fair idea of the list of people you can place a decent amount of trust in without seeing the ratings, but the average user? They just see a green + beside the name and think that the user is probably a good guy and assume the opposite for anyone with red trust.

As an example of the strong colour based mentality, anyone remember Alia and her search for dark green trust members?