The trusted system has, as a whole, become almost obsolete within the board's veterans since about the time that I joined the site.  I was able to see first hand how the trusted system was abused by getting the first 4/10 points I received legitimately, the other six being for as follows:  2 random gifts and 1 correct quiz answer.  At that time, I did not feel that the abuse was bad, because I was new to the forum an didn't seem to care how I got trusted.  I just wanted to feel welcomed to the site.

As I began my career as a site staff member though, I began to realize that the system was a little annoying, with users that I didn't like becoming trusted.  At that point in time, though, I knew that people didn't like who I liked, and liked who I didn't like.  As I went through my career as a staff member, I began to become more and more irked at the trusted system, but kept my mouth shut since I was just a staff member.

And then, I became a moderator on this site.  Moderating a site like this was a dream job for me, and I figured it would make me love the board even more, and believe that I could stay around for as long as I wanted.  However, this was only half true.  The part that irks me most about this job (besides constant summons of people telling me what to do in my forums) is the amount of trust point abuse that went on during the old trust point system, and the NEW trust point system as well.

At this point, you may be wondering how abuse could possibly be happening with the new system.  The fact of the matter is, becoming trusted was not made harder than it used to be, which was one of the things that was attempted to be addressed in this new system.  However, there are users who are now becoming trusted like CRAZY because of one simple thing that was absolutely GREAT on the drawin board:  The ability for only staff + to take trust points.

Now, most of you should be thinking- how is only staff + being able to take tp away a bad thing?  That prevents the new trusteds from becoming untrusted, right?  And my answer to the second question is:  YES, new trusteds are now hard to make untrusted.  I believe it to be virtually impossible to be able to take away trust points from users to demote them tote normal rank.  But, the problem of abuse doesn't lie within the taking of tp at all in my opinion.  It lies within the excess of users who abuse their TP privlidges to GIVE people trusted.  I'm going to say something unpopular among most users, but I know I am not the only person thinking this:  THERE ARE SOME TRUSTEDS THAT DO NOT DESERVE TO BE TRUSTED.  How is this so?  Under this new system, it is supposed to be harder to gain trusted status, as well as lose it, correct?  That is why THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH HOW THE OWNER TRIED TO FIX THIS PROBLEM.  He did it in the most logical way he could have, in my opinion, and this is in no way his fault (note how I say this even though I disagree with only staff + being able to take trust points).  The real problem lies within us.  Not just the trusted members, not just the site staff, but the user base as a whole (this answers the above set of parentheses, in case you can not make sense of why I said all of that).  As a result of this abuse by us, also known as the userbase, regulation is, once again in my opinion, required to make the trusted system work.

Now, how can regulation be created?  The way I see it, at least elites should be able to take away trust points.  In my opinion, it is either put in that regulation (or perhaps expand upon that as well), or obliterate the system entirely and start some other role above member but under elite all over again.

I am going to end this post with a quote you may feel is related or unrelated to the topic.

"Two thing are infinite:  the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about th'universe!"  (Credited to Albert Einstein, quote may or may not have been said by him.

tl;dr:  The new trusted system is great in theory, ba in userbase execution.

/Potentially contravertial post.  If anything must be clarified, please let me know.  I am typing this on my iPod, so errors may have been made commonly throughout this post.

This might have ben expressed before, but I did think of a way the system could possibly be abused.  I would think staff members would be above this, but just in case....

Also, you may already have thought of this and put preventative measures in place.

Basically, a staff member can rate someone to 0 or above, and then rate them negatively so that other people experience the 'backsplash'. They could do this repetitively, so that backsplash gets applied repetitively.

In case I'm not clear:
Megan doesn't like Susie, so Megan decides to punish everyone who gives Susie a trust point.
She rates Susie down, then later rates Susie back up to 0 trust points.
She waits a few days and rates Susie negatively again, so that anyone else who gave Susie trust points gets penalized again.
Megan repeats until Megan feels satisfied.