I think the trust system does way more harm to the community than good
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It's a noble idea but
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more people complain about getting their trust fucked with
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than they do about scams here
I have to agree.
The trust system does not do much in preventing scams, but it does lead to a lot of infighting.
Trust scores are mostly meaningless, it's closer to a popularity contest than a true measure of someone's trustworthiness.
That's where I'm at least a little uncertain.
It's true that most trust ratings are meaningless, but established traders who've done a number of trades in a trustworthy manner seem to be easily identified by substantial trust scores.
If that really justifies all the hassle with the trust system, is another question.
But the trust system is very good at one thing:
warning about accounts that might superficially seem trustworthy because of their long existence and e.g. "Legendary" status which either fall into the hands of account buyers or ruin their reputation by doing something fishy.
So, its really a glass half full half empty situation.
One real function of the trust system and a lot of bile, bickering and bitching.
Instead of teaching new users to blindly trust ratings that could be on a hacked account, or that scam busters will always protect them, perhaps we should be teaching them to use the numbers as a quick reference and to do due diligence before trading. The bitching and bickering tends to happen when you take years of work some one did to build a reputation in an extremely hostile environment full of con artists and scams, and turn it in to a toy for children with modest amounts of authority to lord over you with fake internet points. It is like taking a mans prosthetic leg off of him and beating him with it. It is an insult by its mere existence as the status quo.