I don't think I neg-trusted anyone, just excluded you all from my trust list. It's a logical step considering that the flag is bullshit, I oppose it, and I don't trust the judgement of users who support it for reasons incompatible with the flag system (i.e. opinions vs facts).
Let's be completely honest, we are talking about flag type 1 against "high risk" people, not contractual violations or scams; therefore it's not a case of opinion vs fact, but really subjective opinion vs subjective opinion,
if the global community's majority opinion outweighs ours that timelord is not a high risk candidate, then the flag will be inactive, and system is working as intended, no need for you to interfere aggressively, unless you want your opinion dictated as the authoritative "fact"
which brings us to your other point:
What am I retaliating for? The flag is not against me. I'm excluding Timelord as well and I'm opposing his flag too. Whom am I blackmailing? There is no secret information to reveal.
you are retaliating against losing your oligarchic authority in the trust system. You don't want strangers that you are not comfortable with having any power in the forum, you want to consolidate it amongst a few friends of yours with whom you share the same subjective life views and value systems apparently.
So you play these power games, abusing the little authority given to you by theymos' legal experiments to manipulate the innocent and not so experienced local forum participants... Not ethical at all suchmoon, but who is going to stop you, this is not a courtroom, and your friends are not incentivized enough to break their camaraderie with you over minor moral details, even though all of the intellectual ones would probably secretly agree with everything I've just said.
All the Best