which is no information whatsoever. No whitelisting. No blacklisting.
Every rating system - 10-point, 5 star, pass/fail - requires common sense and is up to interpretation from those who give the rating as well as those who interpret what a rating given means. When there is NO rating of any kind, you have that 'grey' area, I believe.
In this case, we are also not refering to a single source standard. TER has a Whitelist, but TER has no Blacklist.
The National Blacklist is controversial, due to a lack of common sense in how it's used. While everyone agrees that a client who was threatening toward a provider should be "Blacklisted" as a safety warning to others, a client who was simply late is not a sut & dry justification, even though some provider thought so and blacklisted him.
TER's Whitelist "...is a list of providers that have seen and will personally vouch for (a) member. You can see the providers profile by clicking on their names." The WL appears to simply be a referral, like any other, except it is attached to a TER handle and published for all the read. The WL may not be controversial, but there may still be some level of interpretation as to the value, validity, and message that is being conveyed by a single given Whitelisting.
What does a whitelisting mean? I guess that would depend on what anyone (provider or client) means by "vouch."
I could be wrong here, but my interpretation of 'vouching' for a client might go something like "he was clean, a gentleman, respectful of time, honored the fee schedule, and did nothing that would alarm or make give cause of concern."
Along with that, I ASSUME that the provider would see the client again and maybe (I say MAYBE) even liked the client, but I realize that is MY added interpretation.
I don't know what two providers specifically communicate during a referal. I imagine that varies quite a bit depending on many factors. But I believe that the end result is simply a "THUMBS UP", or a "THUMBS DOWNS", or even an more vague "I won't give a thumbs up or down, he's not LE but not my type of client, he did nothing wrong so you make the call" which may be thought of as that 'grey' area, devoid of definitive information.
I don't thing the TER Whitelisting system is rife with abuse like the NBL. I also think that it only takes a moment or two to look over a given clients whitelistings to draw reasonable conclusions of safety and overall behavior. But, again that is one interpretation, and I am not a provider.
I thin the REAL question is: What do providers, individually or as a group, believe a TER WL represents? In the end that is what is important.

HH