1. Loan without collateral: Newbies who ask for loans mention that they won't offer any collateral. Their account is a newbie one and hence it can't fetch any money. Secondly, why will any sensible person offer a loan to a newbie without a collateral? They are just trolling and hence they deserve a negative feedback.
2. Member is a newbie with only a few posts, and advertising some shady websites or asking for bitcoins: Advertising a ponzi website or posting a malicious link is a way to scam the community. There is no reason why a newbie should ask a person to invest in a scam ponzi website or post suspicious links to hack an account. Also begging for bitcoins is considered wrong but they shouldn't get a negative feedback for the same.
I think this negative trust rating system is a little too harsh, and a little abused at the same time too. Chances should be given, and not negative trusts when such things happens. Negative trusts should only be used when the member repeatedly annoys, or does the same things again despite being told not to do so. They should be given a warning first, and not get spammed by many other users giving the member negative trust rating for the same reason.
3. Since trust isn't moderated here, the trust ratings are often abused but some Default Trust members who are the ones that leave such ratings are responsible, they do remove their ratings once they have a valid reason from the user. Giving a warning is done with a neutral rating and they do so at times when they find it necessary. One is free to PM the respected member and defend themselves when they receive a rating.
The negative trust rating system should also have a few options for the person giving the neg. trust, like some simple reasons why they do so. Some of the reasons there are now out there might be invalid, for all you know, and the member might have changed, so the neg. trust should not be valid anymore. Perhaps there could be a certain span for the neg. trust, depending on the situation. Otherwise, it would be unfair to those who got neg. trusts for not reading the threads carefully, and have a neg. trust rating with them for life.
4. Negative ratings aren't permanent and can be removed by the respected DT member when they are given a valid reason to do so. There are many reason for giving a user a negative ratings and it is different for each DT member. The ratings are revised when the dT member feels so and they are also inturn monitored by the admin. There are many members who have been removed from the DT list when their ratings left were inaccurate.
@bold: I haven't seen such ratings given by DT members. Other negative trusts given do not matter as those members aren't in the DT list. If they spam the trust ratings, they are banned.
There should be an option to 'second' the neg. trust, to prevent users from giving neg. trust to the same user for the same reason. This will prevent spam and make it clearer to everyone as well. The members who give neg. trusts also should not spam too, to make the forum better. I know this have a lot of flaws in it, but this is merely a suggestion. I sincerely hope this would be made possible, to give chances to all as well.
5. DT members do leave the same ratings on a particular user as the DT list isn't fixed. For eg: If X and Y are in the Default Trust list and both leave a negative rating on Z, and if by chance X is removed from the DT list, Y's rating only would be affected. Hence many a times, more than 1 DT member leaves a negative rating so the user is termed as a scammer and their ratings do remain and are seen by newbies.
Overall, the trust system has many flaws but DT members are doing their best to help the community. IF anyone has an issue with the rating, they can come to Meta and defend themselves. The community isn't that bad as one may perceive it to be
