Seems kind of dishonest leveraging baseless negative ratings to try to get others to remove theirs doesn't it?
I agree with this statement. If you believe someone deserves negative feed back, and you remove it simply to get them to remove theirs, users in the future will be unaware and more likely to be scammed.
But the act of leaving baseless ratings in the attempt is excusable to you right? Wouldn't want to actually agree with me when you are on a mission to impugn my character in retribution for me harboring political opinions you don't agree with now would you?
It goes both ways.
Including people you've never interacted with simply to try and get yourself on DT, will result in future users will being more likely to be scammed.
Yeah, for the last few weeks he has been putting aside his morals and belief structure to get back on DT. He stopped distrusting everyone and started trusting many others, hoping for retaliatory trust. It was a good example for Theymos to see just how easily idiots can get on DT right now.
This is correct. TECSHARE has been trying to get reciprocal inclusions for a few months now. Its finally paid off. The DT1s that he has nothing in common with except for reciprocal inclusions are:
WhiteManWhite (Russian local board poster)
Kalemder (Turkish local board poster)
bobita (Turkish local board poster)
Matthias9515 (Turkish local board poster) (left a positive trust for TS on 6/29, was added by TS a month later, during the first week that Matthias was on DT1)
mhanbostanci (Turkish local board poster)
He's never interacted with these users as they all post exclusively on their local boards (except when they make the exception to visit Meta or Reputation to address trust-related issues). I'm going to assume that he doesn't speak enough Russian or Turkish to understand the ratings left by these users and (for the most part) they don't speak enough English to understand his, and the only reason he included them was to gain enough votes to be back out of the negatives on DT. Without them, he would be back at -4.
He also included two other Turkish posters soon after they were added to DT1, PHI1618 and by rallier whom he subsequently dropped (I imagine it was for not getting the reciprocal trust he was hoping for)
He's still waiting for Vispilio to reciprocate, probably unaware that he just fell off DT1 for not having the minimum number of inclusions.
Outside of OP's issue with ABitNut, this is exactly the kind of behavior that should be discouraged in the DT system.
In the end, you're both entitled to your opinion and if you both believe that the feed back you've left if valid, neither of you should remove it. imo it would actually be kind of unethical to, unless you believe the other has changed their ways.