More than anything, I really think it comes down to whether or not its typically acceptable to tag owners of multiple accounts with negative trust, just because they own multiple accounts. Second comes whether or not trading/selling merit is generally acceptable, and to what extents.
The general consensus between the remaining active DT members that do attempt to *improve* the forum (not the DT members that are active and don't really do anything in that regard) is yes.
Any hidden alt is shady in my book and warrants some type of feedback for awareness, negative or neutral may depend on the situation. My issue has been how much proof is required to reasonably match someone as an alt. I try to conform myself to a community standard that I thought was in play but others seem to cross that line unchallenged, so I'm not sure why I'm holding back. I do not want to dampen any progress that may be getting made but I see a lot of these unusual merit links as hunches because they aren't really based on any hard proof, unless there are other links between the accounts that can be found in addition to the unusual merit activity.
I've been led to believe that it is
not safe to conclude someone is an alt based solely on potential shared wallets... which I would think is a more decent link than sending merits to another account, but again, my impression is that this isn't enough to reasonably link accounts. That being said, it is hard for me to ever conclude that it would be ok to accept someone as an alt because they sent X amount of merits to someone... even though my gut feeling says otherwise in some of the cases.
blockchain evidence is fairly strong evidence that two accounts are controlled by the same person, provided you can rule out that the relevant addresses belonging to a business/website (eg, a deposit address). You can potentially rule out an account being sold (which to some people may be a separate reason to warn others) by looking at the security log and checking for password changes/resets. There may be some instances in which a close group of friends share a wallet, especially for low value transactions like signature campaigns, however I am not entirely sure how to rule that out.
It would probably be a bad idea to use received merit as a basis to corroborate linked accounts because it is fairly trivial to make someone look like a scammer if this is used.
others seem to cross that line unchallenged, so I'm not sure why I'm holding back
I believe a big reason this is not being challenged is because many see these people as giving out negative trust for not-transparent reasons, and fear retribution.
I also believe these people have a high percentage of false positives in leaving negative trust against the innocent.
Any trust that you leave (and trust left by those directly on your trust list) is ultimately a reflection on your reputation. Leaving negative trust against an innocent person can have negative consequences for said person (many of these consequences may not ever be apparent to you), and is especially troubling if negative trust is left with flimsy evidence and/or when reasonable explanations (explaining innocence) cannot be ruled out.
