I think QS can be trusted to be a merit source..
I'm pretty sure QS has a
decent stash of coin so it's not like he is going to sell them to try to make a few satoshis, and he has proven that he can accumulate his own merits just fine without the need to cheat the merit system.
I personally would also trust QS to hold loan collateral or trust him in a trade to higher amounts than I would trust many green trusted members but that would be my own money. I do not think QS is trying to scam and even if he was I imagine he would probably be doing it under a different account more suitable for that purpose.
Everyone likes to call QS an "escrow scammer" but that isn't the entire story. He was running an anonymous escrow service at the same time as he was running separate anonymous sales services and would escrow his own trades, from 2 different businesses/accounts, while at the time they were not believed to be under the control of the same person.
I agree that it is a somewhat shady practice but he never blatantly scammed anyone, and others have admitted to self escrowing the same way QS did and still are trusted because they didn't lie about it and stopped when it became unacceptable.
He is not the only one who did it. It was the wild west back then, similar to the account sales situation.
The problem with QS is that he was caught lying about the self escrowing and lying is a good reason to lose your trust around here.
More problems with QS ever sense, and probably continuing to this day, his personal vendettas and fights back and forth with other forum users, mostly over the escrow scandal, where QS has taken fights too far, and came from unreasonable and malicious positions at times.
Where I do not trust QS is, though he is highly intelligent, articulate, and "in the know", he is very biased against certain other users so if he makes a good point it may be exaggerated towards his favor and not the entire story. He knows a lot of stuff but is very onesided at times, so when you read what QS says be sure to do your own research about the entire situation because it may be part of his agenda.
I also think that QS has made some progress in the last year or so towards being good for the community and stopping his fighting. It is a shame that he has made his mistakes and bad decisions because he has the intelligence to have been a great asset to the forum otherwise.
Also I commend QS for continuing under his ruined account, but I would not doubt that he has other unknown accounts, possibly even DT accounts if he wanted, because he is smart enough to pull it off..
If QS is going to scam it will be bigger than what he can pull off from the QS account I would think. If QS is a scammer he is a very dangerous scammer because he has the ability in his knowledge and intelligence.
QS is a great scambuster because he understands the social engineering behind them, and therefore understands how to social engineer a scam.. I saw this post in another thread..
Scammers would most likely choose part two (trading) for their scams because part one (scammer research) takes too much time and effort.
I disagree with that because the person that does the scammer research and the scambusting will have a great education in all the ways to scam, what to do to cover your tracks, avenues and scenarios to set up a big scam, social and trade engineering, and how to get away with it. They would be much less likely to try some petty scam but if they were trying to scam they would be a very dangerous enemy, a mastermind.
I do understand other people's anger toward QS, those who have been in a fued with QS where QS has resorted to unreasonable tactics, and do not blame them if they never forgive him. I doubt he will ever be completely trusted but I do think he is/could come to be a positive asset for the forum.
If anyone can spot a scammer, or a possible scam situation, it is QS..
In conclusion I do not think that we need to worry too much about QS trying to sell merits, it being such a petty scam, where merit is so transparent, and Theymos has the ability to stop it immediately and reverse it at any time.