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Ok, so that's mainly an IRC rating type thing? Does the trust system in this forum work similar or different than WoT?
The 'rating' and 'authenticating' is done via IRC, yes. The trust system works almost anywhere that would require trust.
The trust system in this forum is not the same, no. Anybody can create an account, and there is no 'authentication,' so the same guy could, in theory, create 50 accounts to give his main account 50 positive reviews. He could buy 'aged' accounts from others (a common practice) to make this look legitimate.
The beauty of WoT is the fact that you can, through PGP, be sure that the person you dealing with is actually the person they are claiming to be. Now, you only know that they hold the private key to their registration within the WoT, that is it. The rest is up to you in terms of trusting them, just like if you were talking to someone in real life. You know that the person is who they are because they are standing in front of you. The trust flows from your, and your trusted peer's interactions with this person, not the system itself.
To quote from one of my earlier links:
The Web of Trust is merely the infrastructure upon which trust is built, by you, for your own use, within yourself. The same objective set of relations can result in drastically different trust in the eyes of drastically different third parties. The point of the WoT is not to make these judgements for you.