7 members have now been completed I will post them as one post though to prevent spamming the board up. I'm not necessarily picking the best posts of these members but ones that I randomly come across and like. So that I don't have to go through 20k posts as that would be too time consuming for me.

Been working on this for a week now on and off. The final update should be available this weekend with no images no blank spaces.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3097811.msg32026584#msg32026584

KYC. Although there was merit discussion on that thread because theymos didn't quote anyone I assume that it was directed towards the OP.

I will see what I can cook up!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone I have decided to scrap the images idea and condense the infographic down so that its not so long. That should make it easier to view but this does mean I have to remake the infographic so expect a little delay in the completed version.

Any improvement suggestions on the infographic would be appreciated. BPIP as a lot of information that could be placed on the infographic so if you have any suggestions on what I should include that would be appreciated.

The infographic above of theymos is suppose to be an example.

WIP:
LoyceV
Satoshi

I am thinking of using Vod's BPIP statistics and making some infographics for members that are requested. I still need to finalize some design details as I'm still getting used to making infographics. I'm using the MTAR of BPIP to have the little indicators and estimating where to put it depending on the rank of the member. Currently going to have different markers for certain values so the markers are consistent. So if you are above 100 in most trusted I would put you very close to the end of the right in the second position. If you are first it will be like above and if you are between 500-600 you will be put at the 50% mark etc. I have implemented "MP" as "most posts" too.

When requesting members
Please only request members who have significant history on the forum. I will be looking at every post made and choosing my favorites but if you guys suggest some important quotes made my the member that would be great. History tab will probably be hard to fill for most requests so I will priorities those that are easier to identify.

Imgur does not seem to like my .gif file any other image hosting services which are accepted by the forum? Theres a slight quality loss which can make the writing difficult to read. I will try changing the font and hosting somewhere else. Maybe its the forum reducing the quality?


I am working on making this possible and hopefully without losing too much quality. To have it visible in the OP would be the best option and not linking to a external site.


Thank you for spotting these! I have fixed all of these spelling issues a long with some others that I had spotted. I will be releasing the final non image version as soon as I find a way to convert to gif without quality loss. There are probably more spelling mistakes in this final version so I would appreciate anyone pointing them out to me.

Thanks for this thread. I will be combining all my sources into one file and this fills in some blanks in a number of places.

Most spelling errors should now be fixed. I will be going through it multiple times to change the font and add any grammar. I am thinking of removing all instances of "." at the end of each sentence for presentation.

Can we just stop allowing TECSHARE to continue his personal attacks on Flying Hellfish and just let them sort it out privately? This thread is not going to achieve anything and the only thing it will do is create drama here on the forum which I think we have had about enough this year.

This is how the system should work:

1. User registration
2. User posts to whatever sub forum they would like too
3. The users post isn't displayed publicly
4. The post enters a queue which can be accepted or rejected

The idea behind this suggestion is to prevent people abusing how easy it is to register on this forum and spam their advertisement, viruses or whatever their malicious purposes are for registering. We recently had spambots register and were spreading their links to advertise their service this could have been avoided with this suggestion.

When the post is posted it appears publicly to the member who posted it but not to the rest of the forum. The post will then enter a queue which staff members get to accept or reject. Rejecting the post will in turn delete it and send a notification to the member to notify them that their post was deleted. This message should not mention that each post has to be approved before being submitted but I guess this will become public knowledge sooner rather than later.

In addition to staff members handling these posts I think we should open up the possibility of merit sources dealing with them too. Merit sources are not required to do it but they can volunteer their services if they would like too. After all merit sources are suppose to be on the look out for good posts and this would in turn allow them to merit good first posts and reject posts they think is spam.

I think this approval system should be in place until the member has either been whitelisted by a member of staff or received at least 1 merit. What do you guys think of this?

What if the hypothetical situation happened where the physical copies of the wallets were damaged? A security oriented person would take this into consideration and protect against any outcome that they can think of. That is what you are taught to do in cyber security. What you are describing is getting complacent and opening the potential to get burned.

Simplicity. Ease of use. That is the only long term problem I see with Bitcoin that cannot easily be fixed. Fundamentally Bitcoin is a highly complex system which requires technical skills which may seem intimidating to those that are new to cryptocurrency. I also think seasoned vets within the computing industry don't fully understand the system and how the Blockchain is the most inspiring and promising part about Bitcoin.

Despite its existing problems such as the size of the Blockchain, transaction fees, stability, and other things such as a reputation for criminals using the cryptocurrency. All of these problems can be either fixed over time or fixed immediately.

 The size of the blockchain and the cost of hosting a node will continue to rise and become an expense that most people will not be willing to do. But he fact that Bitcoin keeps rising and that nodes are required to keep the system operational and more secure there will be a good enough reason to do so. Also with emerging technologies we should see storage systems get cheaper and bigger over time. Potentially looking at ways of reducing the size of the blockchain could also be looked at and I'm confident in the future this will be a problem of the past.

Transaction fees are expensive and because of the way the price falls and rises over time and how often it does it can seem like a waste to pay expensive transaction fees. We see less and less transactions when the price of Bitcoin rises and thus the transaction fees rise however this is a problem for Bitcoins stability because for the value to remain high we need people holding, transacting, and selling/buying. This is what drives the market of supply and demand. Despite this issue transaction fees can be scaled and Bitcoin could be scaled in the future so that transaction fees are lower. There is also the option of using Segwit2x which has proved to be a worthwhile investment for those that send micro or regular transactions.

Currently people are automatically suspicious of Bitcoin because of all the news articles out there that point out the bad bits about Bitcoin and to be honest this is going to have an effect if our goal is using Bitcoin in every day life. However as times goes on and we have more reputable companies accepting Bitcoin and more reputable celebrities endorsing Bitcoin we should see an increase in its reputation and hopefully ditch this "criminals use Bitcoin" view point that much of the western world has.

Despite all of this there is a fundamental problem with Bitcoin if we are aiming to become a mainstream currency and that's simply simplicity. In its current state the Blockchain, exchanges, transaction fees, and mining is too complex for your every day grandma at the superstore. Which in turn could prevent us from becoming a main stream currency and in fact I think this is the biggest reason why we don't see more people buying into Bitcoin. Anyone who hasn't heard of Bitcoin will probably ask you "how do you buy Bitcoin" or "how do you sell bitcoin" or "how do you store Bitcoin". These are questions that can seem complex to an ordinary person who doesn't know anything about Bitcoin and wants to get into it. The complex answer which follows these questions will likely put off most people interested in it which is a massive problem if we are to ever become a mainstream currency.

So my question to the Bitcointalk community is how would we go about simplifying Bitcoin for an every day consumer?

I have an idea which will operate in similar terms to the current trust system possibly implementing flags for making things easier. This being a Bitcoin forum I think we should encouraging decentralized approaches as much as we possibly can. The current trust system has its flaws but I think at heart it has a good foundation and isn't bias. How would we feel about introducing a similar system to determining who is merit sources? At the moment we are relying on theymos who has a million other responsibilities to review and appoint merit sources. The primary concern here is members who have showed that they are a valuable asset to the forum and are both good posters and good at rewarding others for good posts are not being appointed merit sources or are being appointed long after they have made an application.

Just a few examples:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158075.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5156799.0

Both of these members I would say fit the criteria for a merit source but at the moment we are waiting for the approval of theymos which could take a long time. To counter this I would suggest implementing a system similar to the trust system. Basically members can put people who they deem good quality posters into their list. The more people who have you on their list the more weighting you have. Anyone in the top 5%/10% or whatever we deem suitable for the size of the forum would then become a merit source. We could have several tiers like depth 1/2/3 which members in the higher tiers give their custom lists more weighting and thus anyone on their list more weighting to becoming a merit source. To avoid abuse we could implement this right away by allowing current merit sources to have more weighting and prevent account farmers from having an impact by reducing their weighting to almost nothing. I know that this is a semi decentralized way of implementing the system but I think this would be the most effective. This way we can have a continuous flow of merit sources and remove inactive merit sources quite easily without waiting for review from theymos and a more community driven effort. I understand with the current system there isn't much room for abuse when appointing merit sources and this new solution might introduce some sort of abuse but by allowing merit sources to have more weighting hopefully this abuse would be minimal because after all the first generation of merit sources would have already been appointed by theymos.

My response is not meant to be a personal attack to you but a chance to weigh on the growing trend of these types of threads. From my personal view they are not needed and the very least we could do is concentrate our efforts on existing threads instead of creating new ones.

I'm not accusing you of asking for merits and my response should be considered as talking generally. The psychology behind these threads is that people will see this as a charitable cause and get behind it by distributing merits this can be evidenced by the pre existing threads out there. Almost all threads of this nature have received merit. I'm not saying that these threads aren't effective because I'm sure they are to those that have sMerit that they want to give out but simply don't have the time to scour the whole forum. However this is where pre existing threads come into play and concentrating our efforts instead.

1. The admins have better things to do

2. Its so easy to hide your IP address

My concern is not alts as I don't think this would be a very effective way of distributing merits. If posts are good then they probably warrant merits anyway if they are not then it'll be easy to identify alt accounts. My main concern is that these threads generate unnecessary bumping hiding content that others might want to read. Especially when these types of topics are looking for said material. Not everyone likes to link their content because it just feels wrong to do so. I wouldn't link any of my posts to receive merit. If someone thinks that I deserve merit than they can come to that conclusion without me ramming it down their throats.

The thing is this is like exchanging merit. The OP creates a new thread hoping that they'll receive merit and further inflate their merit then they'll topics that they could of merited anyway especially since they already have the sMerit to do so. Especially when these topics exist everywhere there are currently a few being run all over the forum and recieving submissions. Why can't existing members stop creating new threads and just contribute to the existing ones that are still active?

There is a thread over in the reputation sub forum which is being run by a default trust member for the exact same end goal. Meriting those that deserve it. Wouldn't it be better to contribute to a active already existing thread than creating a new one?

The topic over at reputation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0

Before I answer your question what in particular are you concerned about? Why do you think that the lightning network will make Monero useless? The lightening network isn't necessarily a better protocol to use and has its disadvantages. Monero specializing in privacy is its selling point. Why would the lightening network showing IDs make Monero useless when the primary goal of Monero is to keep things private? Personally I don't think either one of the technologies related to each other and Monero doesn't really compete with other projects that are using the lightening network.

I know that encouraging others to post on the forum is a good idea and a movement I can get behind. However a few points on your list I have something to pitch in with.



Contributing and participating in discussion will probably not have any more impact than just reading. Sure you might learn a few things if you come up with unique questions and problems however that is a rarity these days because most of things relating to Bitcoin has already been discussed unless you are going to get technical. Something which a newbie will probably not be able to do.



This is something that I partly agree with. Yes participating in discussions will actually make you start to get a name for yourself. Although that doesn't mean its necessarily going to be a good reputation if you're not presenting facts and spamming then you are doing the opposite. Posting for the sake of increasing reputation will not work as you need to think through your replies and actually bring something new to the discussion for this to increase your reputation. Lets also make it clear that reputation is different to trust here. You can have a reputation for being knowledgeable but may not be trustworthy.



I doubt that participating in quality discussions has any bearing on bans. If you are breaking the rules one way or another I doubt that your contributions to a discussion will be considered. What will be considered is your history on breaking rules and what rules you have broken. I don't think its a good idea to tell people that participating in quality discussion is going to make them immune or give them less of a chance of being banned. There's no favoritism here and a lot of quality members have been banned for double posting and other things.

I agree with the others. Merit giveaways are likely a disguise to be merited themselves because people see this as a good act. Whatever your intentions were by opening this thread I suggest closing it. There are plenty of high quality posts around the forum and there are many threads on page 1 of each sub forum that deserve merit. I'm sure you can find some without having a flock of newbies come to you and post their links which aren't likely to be the pick of the bunch anyway.

If revealing your IP was such a big deal the majority of the internet would be screwed. Every website that you're visiting on the internet is logging your IP address and anyone can run a website. The only thing that they can do is find the approximate location of where this IP address is coming from and it doesn't have any bearing on your identity or security matters. As pointed out the majority of people are sitting behind a NAT that their ISP has given them protecting them from any ill doing. IP addresses can be used in conjunction with other information to be used to identify a person however on their own they are harmless.