If you are in the DefaultTrust network and you give out trust feedback for microtrades then you will be targeted by trust farmers and you are just as guilty for trust farming as the person who is targeting DT members to trade with of trust farming.
I agree with blazed that you should be held to a higher standard if you are in the DefaultTrust network. If someone has a bunch of positive trust for microtrades and you have a high trust score then it will be difficult to tell that you should not be trusted with large amounts of money, especially considering that the comments attached to trust ratings are often vague and as a result many people will not look at them.
You actually make some valid points here. Especially about DT or high trust individuals being guilty of trust farming. Canary being the most obvious example.
Perhaps something should be implemented that actually discourages this behavior. Maybe something like adding an additional variable into the trust calculation.
For example:
Current Trust Score * Farmer Rating
The farmer rating could be a number between 0.25-1.25 and would be determined by where you fall in the farmer rating scale. You could give farmer ratings to users by using a formula something like the below once you had all the data and could set reasonable points:
# of positive feedbacks received / # of positive feedbacks left
This of course being a very crude formula and example, but you get the point.
I would defiantly support some kind of additional calculation in trust ratings that punishes trust farming. Maybe your formula could be applied to the sent ratings of those who give out much more positive ratings then what they receive. This would discourage trust farmers from targeting members in the Default Trust network who too easily give out positive trust because these DefaultTrust members' sent trust will be worth decreasing amounts as more trust farmers target them.
CITM was a unique case because he was able to abuse his position on Level 1 Default Trust. I agree that he was farming trust by adding those who left him and his business partners positive trust to his trust list (and in turn to the Default Trust network). In addition to the issues that his trust farming caused, it also resulted in many people in the Default Trust Network that had no business being there which would result in accounts being sold to scammers who left positive trust to their sockpuppets in order to give additional credibility to their scams (
here is an example of this), among many other abuses of their position in the Default Trust network.
Those who are in level 1 of Default Trust are the seeds of the seeds of the trust network, and they also need to be held to a higher standard for not only their trust ratings but also the trust ratings of those in their trust list. When there are problems with someone's trust ratings (be it trust farming, giving positive trust that later cause others to get scammed, or otherwise) then questions should really be asked if the trust farming (and the scams that result as a result of positive ratings) was
really something that was inadvertent, or if the trust was being sold, indirectly or directly. Even ignoring CITM's trust farming of his own trust, there was far too many problems that resulted from his (those in his trust list) trust ratings.
