You had me until here.
I don't care to make this about me when it's so obviously all about you.
LOL.
What the hell is this?
Techy is hypocritical, like Greta.
Oh, now that Vod is here, we have everybody I think TS has named as being part of the Clown Car. However, the definition is still open to including every DT member that potentially pisses off TS at some point.
This whole debate looks very much like the "Pro-Guns vs Anti-Guns" debate...
Guns have legitimate uses
Guns can be used for non-legitimate purposes
Trust Ratings have legitimate uses
Trust Ratings can be used for "non-legitimate" purposes
From where I sit, the issue is NOT the Trust Rating system... The real issue is the way some people are using it... People misuse/abuse things in life all the time, but it doesn't make the thing "bad" per se.
Are there not methods to deal with users who are misusing trust? That is to say, exclusions/DT 'voting' etc? Perhaps it is these methods of "checks and balances" that need to be examined and/or modified if they are not proving effective.
This is a very rational assessment. However, the different of opinion many of us have is when it comes to defining what "misuse" of trust means. Some times its quite clear cut; other times its not. I don't care for the whole randomness factor (the "Theymos Snap" as I call it) that determines who is an entrant into DT1 each month, but other than that, I think the system of "checks and balances" works decently well and is not likely to get much better than it currently is.
Now of course TS and perhaps others are going to say that I like it as is because it "favors" me, but I'd like to think it only does so because my use of the system remains within the general bounds of what is considered to be acceptable.
The whole point of the system remaining open and flexible in its current state is to allow the DT community (which is frequently evolving)
as a whole to decide what acceptable use of the trust system is. Of course, not everybody is going to agree on everything, and there will always exist minority and majority opinions, as should be the case.
I tend to go by what is listed here, which is an outline developed around previously-held discussions, and then modified after ongoing discussions in that thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5099391.msg49306851#msg49306851I am absolutely against setting rigid standards because then we are reliant on a single entity to set and enforce said standards, which is something theymos has been trying to get away from for quite some time.