I'll look into this multisig idea for reputation, i wanted to be personally involved in transactions as little as possible (because I need to work!) but will research the idea.
Without having enough trading history and good volume of the trade amount, I do not think anyone will entrust you as an escrow. In fact, you may even receive negative feedback as warning from the members of the community if you attempt to do such a deal without showing enough credibility.
That does make sense, a but shitty but understandable. The fastest way I can think of to become trustworthy is to have personal info on file somewhere.
On Telegram's ASIC Hardware market, the admins use a verification process (with government IDs and video, basically standard KYC) to hold sellers accountable and filter ourt scammers.
Does the forum do something similar? I'd be happy to dox myself to a trustworthy 3rd party for earning the forums trust.
The multisig method you suggest would be fine but
1. I would need to re-work the logic on the website (not a massive deal) and
2. the service would need to rely on humans to complete transactions. I guess i COULD generate some sort of "One Time" clickable link hash to send out to all multisig partners that woul trigger payout at the correct time.....
Ideally... I want the Buyer and Seller to be able to open and close an Escrow deal without any other party influence required. So far that is the way the system works.