Ha! Imagine spending a month in jail because you used the Swiss coat of arms in a way that "might offend Swiss national sentiment". How would you even reliably determine that? Another one I like from that article (though I haven't checked if it was properly sourced; these days, most of what I read online often turns out, after recursive investigation, to be incorrect) is the ban on taking a bath with a donkey after seven in the evening... I mean, remind me never to move to Oklahoma, because that ban would really cramp my style (typically, I like to be
in the tub with my donkey when I'm shampooing it, sometimes late into the night).
Wow, I didn't expect the Swiss to have thinner skin than us yanks. Anyway....
The thing is, while that observation of yours does give me pause, I still can't shake the feeling that DT, in practice, produces far too many negative consequences in exchange for its benefits. Ask yourself this: What problem is DT (as a concept) meant to solve? All I can come up with is: It's meant to solve the problem of new users having nothing to go on, and mitigate the observed problem of too many established users not bothering to curate their own trust lists. If that really is the problem it's intending to solve/mitigate, then I think it's doing so at hideous expense. I mean, there are other ways to get there that wouldn't have nearly as many knock-on negative effects.
DT is primarily meant to stop people from getting scammed. But clearly, it's not helping since the scam accusations is always getting filled with new topics. It would be much better if the forum administration took the action of banning the scammer after they are tagged.
DTs cannot ban scammers, so since people still get scammed, it's not useful. That's why I think mods should have the liberty to ban scammers at will. Otherwise DT is seen as just an "old boys club", something that is just used to block account monetization (i.e. signature campaigns).
Scamming should be forbidden under the forum rules, but we all know that's never going to happen. But if it did, then DT could tag scammers as a report (
real scammers, not jumping-the-gun preemptive action against probable scammers), and they'd be removed from here.