Those useds did not start the thread period. They merited it.
In general, theymos does not strongly support ideas to give negative trust on merit issues, if it is not serious merit abusements. If it is reason of such red trust, it was inappropriately used because I don't think that sending 1 to 3 merits to a post should be considered as merit abusements.
- Giving negative trust for merit trading and deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.
If you have to pay $20 per merit plus a risk of getting red trust, then that's a situation that doesn't concern me at all. I'm not going to lose sleep over people going to ridiculous lengths to buy merit, since only a small number of people will be willing and able to do that.
As long as merit sales are a black market, I'm happy, since that makes it far more difficult and expensive to buy merit. If that's the case, then the small volume of black-market merit trades don't themselves bother me much, and I think that it does more harm than good to get too witch-hunty about it.
Aside from that, if people complain about whether things deserve merit at all, then that's something to perhaps think about, but if you conclude that they're wrong, then that's that. You don't need to stress about it or defend yourself constantly. It's conceivable that someday you and I will end up disagreeing too much about this stuff and I'll remove your source status, but it's really not a big deal.
I don't have intention to involve too much with Trust system, so I don't have intention to customize my Trust list. I would prefer to use Default Trust system. And, theymos emphasizes many times that Trust should be used for things relate to trade/ exchange.
Trust is unmoderated.
If you think teeGUMES feedbacks are inaccurate then create your own custom trust list and exclude him.