early afternoon, EST

deekayen says:

RoUS: I appreciate the fact that you certified me. In fact, I think I had certified you at one point. ... However, just because you certified me doesn't mean I'm going to certify you. ... I don't know you, you're a master already, so you will have to excuse me if I don't ever certify you... not even for apprentice. I should hope that the others listed don't certify you just because you finger pointed either.

Um, I wasn't pointing any fingers, and I too hope none of the people I named certify me simply because I named them. Certainly it's not a uniformly symmetrical arrangement, and I don't expect people to certify me 'just because' I certified them. I suspect you're overlooking one of the derivative effects, too: I'm sure I'm not the only one who checks out the distance+n relationships. That is, if I know Heather, and Heather certifies me, if I notice that Heather has also certified Chris I'll have some little inclination to check out Chris' contributions (possibly resulting in a certification of Chris) because I respect Heather's judgement.

Am I monumentally insane to feel a compulsion to find out more about people in an n-way trust network who have expressed trust in me?

For example, I don't expect Alan to ever certify me; he doesn't know me nor my work from Chthulu. However, it seems to me that there should be some degree of reciprocity in closer relationships (like co-developers). A symmetrical network won't grow, but a collection of solely one-way paths can't be trusted.