EDIT - since making the above post it looks like the user VOD has given me additional red trust? I think this demonstrates clearly more attempts at silencing anyone that mentions observable events this group of untrustworthy individuals wants to remain hidden. This is a fantastic trust system. Works brilliantly for scammers and liars.
Well, if the purpose is to silence people with red trust, the strategy is obviously
not working. It seems making a red trust comment against many people makes the recipients more vocal than ever.
A limited mind could see it that way.
Perhaps they hope it will serve as a lesson to others not to replicate the mistake of mentioning observable events from their past? and discourage further incidents of speaking the truth.
Vod seems to have been accused of many terrible things , by several members. We will investigate those for him shortly in his own thread, and if they appear untrue under scrutiny, we will be glad to see him cleared of such nasty accusations.
The strategy has a success rate that can only be speculated on, but unless you view red trust as a reward, or endorsement, then you are perhaps capable of understanding that red trust has serious implications for free speech.
Actually, upon doing some research, theymos implemented the scammer tag system to ensure free speech.
edit: who determines this?
Administrators.
It would be awesome to make the scammer mark invisible to the scammer so they keep on longer than optimal with the same account.
The idea is to give them an opportunity to defend themselves or make things right. I have removed the status a couple of times after the users paid back their victims.
I instituted this system because people were pressuring me a lot to ban scammers, which I was unwilling to do. I do not want to be the final arbiter in these matters. So I created this status to warn potential victims without preventing the scammer from defending himself.
People marked as scammers are also unable to delete/edit any of their posts or modify their profiles, and their IP addresses are banned from creating new accounts.
You should be grateful that the trust system morphed from the old scammer tag system. You can now have a bazillion negative trust comments and not only be allowed to continue to post, but now the red trust recipient is free to create as many alt accounts as they like, modify their profiles and edit/delete posts.
That detracts from nothing that I have just posted. Your post is also strange. Most people wearing tags now would not need wear them under the old system.
The trust and merit systems crush free speech and create an echo chamber. Merit is the carrot, Red trust is the stick. It is foolish to dispute the implications.