I should also add that these creatures abuse the trust network as a team and so they utilize attacks like this "self scratching" nonsense because they know it cannot be used against them, since they are all working together to manipulate the trust network. Actually not a bad approach. Attack people for acting as honest individuals while giving yourself immunity for abusing the network as a team. I will say as far as attacks go, this is one of the smarter approaches these creatures utilize. Users like myself an philipma1957 were even fooled previously by it.
You are totally correct in this analysis. What fascinated me most about this forum was what initially seemed to be outrageous claims by CryptoHunter / bonesjones / laudanum on the surface turned out to be 99% accurate, 1 by 1 he identified and dismantled the cultist signature abusers;
there are so many threads now documenting the hypocrisy and shameless double standards of the DT1 cult that it's not even interesting to talk about anymore, most people have voted with their feet and abandoned the forum, unless they were long standing members of a lucrative signature, in which case they are merely tolerating the broken forum to get the monthly income...
For me the only remaining question on this issue is: where does staff and @theymos fit in to all of this ? Surely this must be far from the vision for DT that admin first envisioned:
This is inspired partly by something that David Friedman said once (though I can't find the quote), that one of the requirements for a peaceful society is the credible threat of retaliation in case you are harmed. As DT was organized previously, one or both sides of a dispute was usually unable to effectively retaliate to a rating, at least via the trust system itself. Now your ability to effectively retaliate will tend to increase as you become more established in the community, which should discourage abuse generally. (Or that's the idea, at least.)
There is no credible threat of retaliation, if an independent member discloses and proves the corrupt nature of any cultist from DT1, he will immediately be excluded en-masse and get a few frivolous red ratings for good measure so that the signature revenue abusers will continue to have artificially green trust sheets under all circumstances. They are getting paid a few k / month to continue colluding and masquerading, there is very low chance of such deep-rooted and incentivized collusion to be overthrown independently unless theymos pays a few k out of his own pockets to motivate the honest members to political activism
, either that or he has to step in...It subtracts greatly from the prestige and future potential of Bitcointalk that admin seems to have abandoned all efforts of fixing the broken systems of this forum for a long time now...