Update with theymosisms on Trust system and 'Trust Appeals'
There are aspects of the trust system that are clearly less than ideal, some of which are probably solvable (and some probably not). But caucusing with people who have very clear and serious questionable behavior isn't going to help you convince people of anything. Anduck had a good case for the trust system being broken. You (cryptohunter) might've had some case for the trust system being broken if you had handled your initial trust issues with rationality and patience instead of absolutely losing your mind and throwing lies around, and even now I could imagine your red trust eventually being cleared if you were able to attain a stable mindset. olcaytu2005 on the other hand hasn't even attempted to defend himself against the accusations (from several independent widely-trusted members, based on publicly-available data) of knowingly assisting scams, so he does not have a good case for the trust system being broken.
There are a lot of pointless "summarize something obvious" posts, but IMO btcsmlcmnr's summary added something.
Forgiveness and de-escalation are key to getting Trust working smoothly:
- Forgiveness: Often people make fairly small mistakes, but then they seemingly get red-trusted for life. This isn't really fair, and it discourages participation due to paranoia: if you think that you have a 1% chance of running afoul of some unwritten rule and getting red-trusted for life, you might just avoid the marketplace altogether. Red trust should mostly be based on an evaluation of what the person is likely to do in the future moreso than a punishment/mark-of-shame.
- De-escalation: If some people end up locked in a feud where they're only really giving negative trust to each other in retaliation for negative trust, then one of them should propose burying the hatchet and removing the negative trust. Otherwise it never gets resolved, and everyone is worse-off for it.
After reading this post, I created my guide here: