Not necessarily.  There are a lot of members on DT who do nothing to actively stop scams.  Take a good look at who's on DT1 & DT2, and you'll see a lot of them aren't even here all that much.  There really aren't that many members tagging scammers, and it's not our job to do that.  I do it because I think it's a good use of the weight of trust that a DT member can leave, and if DT members weren't tagging them we'd have total anarchy on bitcointalk.

Having said that, I got put on DT2 because I was tagging shitposters (I don't do this anymore) and account-selling scammy folks (I still do this).  But I think a lot of DT members are made simply because someone higher in the hierarchy trusts them--and that's completely valid IMO.

I'd be interested to know who you're talking about here.  I don't dispute that this has happened, because in my time on the forum I've seen members kicked off DT for all sorts of shenanigans.  Quickseller, Master-P, and TECSHARE are two that immediately come to mind, but there are more.  aTriz wasn't on DT, but he was probably close to getting on it and he was a good campaign manager who ruined his reputation by not calling out a scam soon enough.  I'm curious as to who you are referring to, however.

I have too.  Mdayonliner is one member who comes to mind, although his negative trust was recently acquired because he offered to escrow a huge sum of money.  It isn't obvious that he was trying to scam, but I certainly see how it could be suspicious.  Can't bring myself to merit people like QS, though.  Even though his posts are very well written and can be helpful, it drives me bonkers to read them because I know they're rooted in total hypocrisy.  Also I have a custom trust list and I'm sure I've merited some folks whose trust would be negative on a lot of other member's trust display.

Huh.  Well, that just shows you how unfortunate that situation was.  He obviously could be trusted with money, since he held the funds for his sig campaigns, and he always paid on time.  It's too bad, but I hope he continues paying people back--not sure where he stands on that right now, but it did look like he was trying to recently.

And yeah...escrow.ms.  I was trying to think of that name and couldn't recall it.  That just goes to show you how fragile DT membership is.  You screw up and you're gone.  TECSHARE didn't even scam anyone.  He was booted off DT for misusing the trust system if I recall correctly.  I think he's a total asshole, but I'd still do business with him because by all accounts he's a trustworthy businessman.  Not going to happen, because he has the same opinion of me, but I'm just sayin'.