Your explaination about your personal bheviours looks decent to me, I don't think you did something wrong in giving merits to the banned users as it is not displayed clearly on the forum. But there is no explanation about smartman being trustworthy in any sense, if you see he has clearly tried to spam the forum by offering this services.
REQUIRED POSTING IN ENGLISH THREADS
1. Contact me if in your accounts at least half of the posts in English.
2. Posts up from 100 signs.
3. Express an opinion about the project, ask questions. Don't write nonsense.
4. English is not Google translate.
5. You have from 5 accounts.
Is this something thats allowed here ?
The ratings did all end up being removed, which I'm happy with, and I appreciate the willingness to de-escalate and forgive from the people involved in this case. The fact that this issue came up at all indicates that the trust system isn't working perfectly (and I am considering future system changes), but it's still a good outcome.
And the trust system is only going to work if there's some level of forgiveness and de-escalation.
Some people were talking about neg-trusting spammers for spamming. This is not appropriate; report the posts, and if that doesn't seem to be working well, come to Meta with specific examples and suggestions.
Logged-out users will now see a warning in trust-enabled sections if more DT members neg-trust the topic starter than positive-trust him.
This increases the responsibility of DT members not to give negative trust for stupid reasons, but only for things that cause you to believe that the person is a scammer.
Perhaps the guidance from Theymos (The forum administrator) answers your question.