I disagree, however, that the system is working as intended. It's evident that he expected too much from the community -- a system where the majority of members would participate, and thus the end result of the DT status would reflect what the majority of people want.
Anyone (aside from those too new to qualify) can participate in the system. The majority of people who care about DT are indeed participating. Those that don't care, don't participate. There will always be people who don't vote and then complain about the outcome of an election, and that has never made sense.
However, after all these years, it seems like only 1% of the forum members participated in the system.
Only 1% of forum members are active on a monthly basis (probably less TBH).
This resulted in a small minority of people obtaining the DT status, turning it into more of a privilege than a responsibility. It's the "cool guys club." Eventually, some people started abusing it, and because only that small minority of people engage in the voting, it became close to impossible to stop anyone from abusing the system. Hence, we have all these complaints. Of course, I wouldn't say it's completely useless, the trust system itself is a great tool. I just think the DT list shouldn't be there, and everyone must create their own list.
For most of your time on the forum, you've only known the new system. You don't have a sufficient frame of reference to understand that things are actually much better now than they used to be.
TBH the "new" trust system didn't really start to come into its own until after Lauda was finally voted off DT. After that happened, it became apparent more than ever that the new trust system was "working" and better than the old. But if you don't participate in it, your complaints won't be taken seriously.
Obviously, Theymos doesn't think that the current level of abuse is significant enough for him to change the rules. But eventually, as more people start complaining about the unjust use of the trust system, he will likely come up with a different plan, or at least, that's what he usually does, fix things.
But they won't, because things aren't actually that bad, and nobody will offer a better solution that everybody can agree upon.