Trust
Trust for our purposes can be divided into found trust, built trust and grown trust. It can be measured as "social capital" but not very reliably, as usually a faction gets involved in what behaviour is seen as admirable or reliable or even predictable, and is certainly required to create reputation.
Trolls tend to challenge prevailing ideas about trust - on large public wikis they very often succeed in reversing people's beliefs about reputation and trustworthiness, by using a sort of scientific method of baiting sysops. This works quite reliably and may bring about regime change.
A legal trust like a patent pool is a different question entirely.
See w:trust for a more general discussion of both ideas of trust.