In the forum we can see several cases of neutral tag in terms of color, but that are negative in terms of written feeback.
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What do you think about this?
Well, I think:
The account receiving the neutral Trust should be lucky, that it's not a negative Trust.
![Cheesy](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
Why?
At first we should get an understanding about Trust:
A positive
(green) Trust is adding a
+1 to your trust score.
A neutral (black) Trust is adding a
=1 to your trust score.
A negative
(red) Trust is adding a
-1 to your trust score.
It's mostly about the score to be considered a Trust abuse but neutral Trust is = (no change).
If someone adds a positive feedback, which is not enough to be a positive feedback, it might be considered Trust abuse.
If someone adds a negative feedback, which is not enough to be a negative feedback, it might be considered Trust abuse.
A neutral feedback can hardly be a Trust abuse, because neutral Trust is mainly considered as other people's opinions about the account in question.
The only possibility, where a neutral Trust is a Trust abuse is if the provided comment is an outright lie and the accused account can prove that it's an outright lie.
=> you can write everything as a neutral feedback as long as it's not an outright lie (reference link could be useful).
Neutral Trust was also described as a very undervalued tool for de-escalation:
Neutral (shown as =1)
- I think Neutral Feedback is currently undervalued on Bitcointalk. It's a great tool to de-escalate without drastic consequences. Please use it when appropriate.
So, if your feedback might be not enough to be negative, maybe a neutral trust is better. You should consider it.
Neutral trust should cover a very wide range from "very nice guy" feedbacks to "extremely disgusting troll". At least most cases, where no real money is involved.
Yes, in some cases, trolls can also receive a negative Trust and nice guys can also receive a postitve Trust but you need a very good reason for it. Trust is mainly about being trustworthy proven by risked amount of money.
Once, there has been a separate entry of how much
BTC was at risk. It got removed and that's a little bit sad.
Especially, I've seen way too many "nice guy" feedbacks recently. Being a nice guy is clearly a neutral trust because no money is involved and "nice guy" feedbacks are inflating Trust scores and if everyone starts giving out "nice guy" feedbacks, we are at a high risk, that at least some of these "nice guys" turn out to be scammers.
tl;dr
The comment of the neutral Trust doesn't make it a negative Trust, it's still a neutral Trust, no mater what's written in the comment.
You can call someone a disgusting liar, a troll or whatever, it's still a neutral Trust.
A neutral Trust, no matter what's written in it, is much, much less offensive than a negative Trust. Neutral Trust is a very good approach of de-escalation.