I don't really consider rank when awarding merits, and I find that I often award to seniors and higher, although I haven't been as active as I should be recently. The more senior members tend to be committed to the forum, and their posts seem to rise to the top. I want to try to encourage the newer members, and perhaps save them from giving up their memberships if they become discouraged.

I hope that other merit awarders can adopt a similar approach, as I seem to be interested in the political and economic uses of Bitcoin and crypto-currencies, rather than the more technical aspects.

It's been blurred deliberately by the photographer. It's a bit like looking at posts through the opacity of the bounty spammers here.

Here are a couple of newbies -

https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Wildlife/WildlifeSpecies/BaldEagles/PublishingImages/Bald_Eagle_Nesting4.jpg

Designing the site is a nice diversion. I know I should be doing some other stuff, but I like finding good uses for some of my unused domain names.

I've found some great images by a photographer blogging as "birds as art", and I need to email him to see if I can use some of his pictures if I give him a credit. This is one of them.
http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/wp-content/gallery/alaska/dynamic/bald-eagle-take-off-blur-in-snow-bpn-_y9c7047-homer-ak.jpg-nggid041638-ngg0dyn-800x800x100-00f0w010c010r110f110r010t010.jpg

It differs because they will be posters that fit my standards, and these aren't the same as those of many other members. For example, I won't be including posters who use full quotes redundantly, especially when the quote is of the opening post. Also, I will be checking the posts made by the Snow Eagles on a regular basis for meritability, and I hope this will discourage the "one shot wonders" who just want their single upranking merit, and reward the quality discussion builders. They may be caught in the frozen wastelands of the new member snow fields, but let us help the eagles soar up into the sunshine here.

I don't seem to have the same standards as many other merit awarders, so I'll only add posters that I find in my travels. I'll also ignore any suggestions or recommendation to try to cut down on spamming. The list will be off-site as well, as this avoids spamming and begging.

I'll probably make Sweetstar78 the first member, this is based on today's posting trawl.

I hope it won't take any more time to find good posters than it takes to find ones to ignore. I thought I had lost the domain name SnowEagle.com , but I see it is still in my portfolio, and unused. I'm going to call my selected members "Snow Eagles", and you have to be a newbie, junior or member to get on it. This is just for the initial membership, if you get promoted, I'll probably still leave the entry on the site.

I've set up the hosting for the name, and now I will have to find a template for the site. I like the name as so many newer members complain that they are left out in the cold here, and there are certainly some eagles amongst them. Hopefull I can bring them some sunshine.

Thanks for your thoughts, and here is a comment that I hope you will find helpful.

It is not necessary,and fairly annoying, to quote the opening post when you are the second reply in the thread.

I'm fed up with ignore lists, reporting, blocked boards and all those negative technique that we seem to be forced into using here. They are necessary if one want to stay sane when looking for meritable posts.

I'm going to build a list of favourite posters with a rank of member or lower, and I'll check their latest posts on a regular basis, and award merits if they are deserved. Don't spam me, or request to be added to the list, as that is tantamount to begging.

Do any other merit sources do this? I might make the list public to encourage some of the new members. After all, ignore lists can be made public, so why not list the good members.

I am guilty of that as well. The problem comes from rewarding posters in the Bitcoin Talk underworld. Merits generate sMerits, and I try to keep them away from their potential abuse in the spamming underworld. Also, keeping merits away from active spammers may encourage them to leave, as you have pointed out, and I believe this is why the merit system was introduced.

Well virus writers seem to be able to brick machines, but I suspect it would take some time to clear everything. You might be better off using a physical device rather than software. An electrostatic discharge could mess up your hard disk, but you would have to make sure the kids don't get hold of your machine.

I didn't read all of your post, but I would point out that there is one outstanding application for what has come to be known as "blockchain technology", it is called Bitcoin.

You are both living in the ANN underworld, so it isn't surprising that you stay as newbies without any merit.

If you want to improve your ranking here, then I would suggest that you become an active member of the forum, and read the rules and guidelines associated with that.

I don't see this as being better than the use of PMs. Perhaps it would be useful if there was a recovery account, and selected admins and staff could access the messages.

I checked this opening post in my usual checker, and it only detected a small percentage.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5049904.0

I then used a site that I haven't tried before - http://plagiarisma.net/
and I switched to checking with Google ( it provides a Bing alternative ), I removed the tick in the exact match box as well. It gave hits on almost 100% of the content, and it highlighted the extracted phrases.

School is a place for students to study propaganda. Early indoctrination prevents them from falling victims to truth, historical facts, and real scientific research.

Well the answer is fairly obvious. The US had to use Chinese microchips and circuits in their latest fighter plane, so I guess they will need to use Chinese chips to develop AI.

I am in complete agreement with this. Just imagine what this forum would turn into if posters could just copy some text, and post it into a thread without understanding the thread or the posted text. It isn't difficult to post a link to an article, and add a personal comment to open up a discussion. In my opinion, failure to do this indicates volume spamming with no interest in the welfare of the forum.

It is one of the regrettable consequences of allowing sig spamming on the English boards, when the spammer has little or no understanding of English.

The unauthorised use of images is far more of a problem for content producers and users. The Internet is awash with images, and many of them are provided by their producers for use without restriction. For example, Jazz Pics - Kuffy's free image galleries contains pictures taken by me, and offered to posters and website developers with few restrictions. I just ask that the watermark is left on the image. I know that even this minor request is abused by many people. Google provides massive galleries of images, and the links are often to secondard user sites, and it can be almost imosible to track down the originator, especially if the EXIF data has been removed.

I buy dropped and expired domain names, and I sell them for Bitcoin. It requires a bit of work and some investment, and not all names are guaranteed to sell quickly, if at all.

So much misinformation and misunderstanding in this thread.

The referendum asked a fairly simple question - should we leave the EU? The country said that it wanted out, and the two year transition period wass to create new trading rules, not to try to make everything as bad as possible to weaken the country as a punishment for disobeying the Elite.

Democracy doesn't work when your choice is between two Prime Ministers, both of whom are part of the Eton/Oxford puppet masters group. It is even harder to implement when the senior civil servants are also sworn membersof the same coven. It has taken Donald Trump two years of very careful planning and action to start to pull America out of the same pit. We need a Donald Trump in the UK.

Uncontrolled immigration has been a massive economic and social disaster for Britain. Just visit some of the cities to see the results, and that includes London.

Thanks for all the concern about my possibly wasting my efforts. As I have said before, I don't have the same ambitions and economic needs as most members here. The only really important considerations are whether my efforts are of benefit to the forum, and to it's members.

I believe that the free exchange of political and social information between the world populations is important. Bitcoin Talk is a great forum for such interaction. I'd be grateful for any help and/or advice in achieving this goal in these difficult times.