Re: The most IMPORTANT post you will read this week. Let's get off this path now...
sorry i can't reply to everything, but i do not understand what do you mean by other people being afraid to speak up? afraid of what? being tagged by DT members? i assume that non of the DT members is stupid to enough to abuse that system in such an obvious way that everyone and their grandmother can see, if 10 people commented on your topic now and said the same things you are saying about the "gang" who will have the balls to abuse the system to that extent by tagging everyone who says anything about them?
one negative trust and you started a whole topic and the DT member had no choice but to take it away, imagine he gives 10 negatives and the whole Meta board turns to a serial of topics against him. i bet the horse he will be in deep in shit.
now the only thing anyone can do including the "gang" is to try and fight you back without using the "power" at their disposal. by maybe finding a plagiarism or a scam accusation against you, and that is their legal right to defend themselves and all the tools at their disposal are nothing special, you will get the same sort of a fight-back from anyone or any "gang" regardless of their rank or merit for that matter. unless they start giving you negatives, or accusing you for being a scam or something, then i see nothing wrong with anyone trying to defend themselves. and to be honest I think they are not that much into each other, but by fighting them all together at the same time , they might turn into a real "gang" this time for real
.Neutral is neutral. I use it as a post-it note to mark exceptional users such as merit-beggars and others who don't deserve a "+" or a "-" but I need to remember whom I dealing with when I encounter them later on. If anybody else finds it useful - great, but that's not the main purpose.
It's not about trust or distrust (otherwise it would be "+" or "-"), does not affect the trust score, so as long as the message itself clearly indicates what it's for I don't see how it could be a problem.
we can debate all night on this topic, but really neutral does not mean tagging someone thet you don't like. an example of trust feedback is:
1- positive > you had a successful trade/trades with this guy, you send them money first, they kept their end of the deal and sent the goods > trustful.
2- negative > this person scammed you , by either not sending you the money/goods he promised to, or they arrived in bad shape > can't be trusted
3- neutral > they sent you the money first , you sent them the goods > ( they had no chance to scam you ) but this does not mean they are "trustful" thus a neutral represent that the person has done a successful trade without being in a position of gaining trust hence " ability to scam".
I am sure Theymos can confirm that this is the initial propose of the trust system. you see people with negative trust " Warning: Trade with extreme caution! ". it does not say "Warning: Interact with extreme caution!
if the trust system was meant to be the way the you think, then why theymos doesn't have it show across all parts of the forum? it is a pretty plain simple answer.
however,since people started to use the trust system as another way of measuring other members it started to sound normal for something tagging someone else for their ugly avatar.
as long as there are no clear rules on how MUST the trust system be used for, then everybody will have their own "way" of using it.