IMHO everybody participating in the practice of leaving negative Trust in retaliation should cease this immediately. This is not what the Trust system is for, and doing so only diminishes the value of our ratings. Also we should go back and audit our Trust ratings periodically so that only those who are legitimately untrustworthy (ie. they've been proven to be scammers or walk/talk like a scammer and want you to send first without escrow, etc) remain with negative Trust. Finally, Trust ratings should not be set in stone. If someone gets lit red because of a loan default, but then eventually pays it back, I feel that the negative rating should be removed. Gotta keep in mind that everybody has their own life and their own life issues to deal with, and sometimes shit happens. And yes, I realize I should probably do a better job of heeding my own advice.
While I don't agree with the practice of self proclaimed "scambusters" running around telling people to respect their authoritah, or the practice in general, because IMO it is minimally effective and often counter productive (scammers return in minutes, honest users caught in it probably never return), out of all the people engaging in a proactive attempt to stop scammers you would seem to be the only one that really honors the standards they claim to keep. IMO you are quite responsible about how you leave trust in the vast majority of cases.
It was only a matter of time before something like this ended up happening, especially with the fact on this forum we conduct real deals, I hope that the moderators will have the sense not to give in to this bullshit and drastically change the rules or ban anyone for that matter just because a few morons are screaming the loudest. The people bitching about Vod even if they are correct are counting on you to overreact and start banning people left and right, then slowly, they'll get support to try and take over the forum or try and get a good portion of the community to leave.
I've seen this kind of crap before and it's always something completely pointless that starts it.
Can't please everybody, and if you try you'll just end up pleasing nobody.
What I don't think staff realize is that their iron fisted punishments for the general public, and their general silence when someone in their clique breaks the rules, sews a lot of malcontent and erodes their own authority. When those in charge do not follow rule of law, no one respects rule of law any more, and what has been happening around here lately is a symptom of that.
