It's quite a difficult task, and the awarding is very subjective. I try to encourage new members to start good discussion threads, and I've set up a site to help members with English as a second language. If you have some fluency in a language other than English, I would welcome some help.

I understand that, but members are starting to differentiate between "earned" merits, and air dropped merits.

I guess the moral here is - Don't borrow or lend money or Bitcoin.

I started "ask a Legendary" as a project on the JetCash domain.
https://jetcash.com/ask-a-legendary/

It didn't attract much interest, so I've rather neglected it recently.

If you posted in the wrong section, then the most likely result is the moving of your post. There are some exceptions. Posting in the mining section as a newbie to mining is likely to get your post deleted. Posting in a spam thread that gets deleted will result in your post going with the thread. Posting in a self-moderated thread could result in the deletion of the post by the thread starter, this is nothing to do with the moderators.

Extreme breaches of the rules ( such as plagiarism ) can result in your account being banned. As has been mentioned, you should receive a message about the deletion of a post, but this isn't always true. For example, removal as part of a thread deletion doesn't generate a message.

Banned aid should be aid for all banned posters. Why has that got anything to do with islands and walls? Banning is forced emigratrion. An appeal is a request for reentry,and if successful,then the member is returned to the forum.

It's really a fairly simple process.

I haven't worked out how the Legendary lottery works. You need to get a minimum of merit and activity, and then it appears to go into a predefined calculation, and it seems to be a function of activity, post count, and member name.

I'll be interested to see what advantages will be gained if the 1,000 earned merits club is introduced.

I agree with this, and it is why I believe that Bitcoin Talk needs to bifurcate.

Nobody seems to be discussing the disincentive possibilities. In romain times, a traitor had his head cut off, and it was placed on a stake outside the city walls. In the miiddle ages, highwaymen were often left hanging on the gallows. The probability of detection and preceived severe punishment works as a deterrent. A board full of unsuccessful ban appeals could be the forum equivalent of heads on stakes.

The mod overhead wouldn't be much greater than the current overload. Banned aid threads should be started in the sub-board, and if they aren't, then just move them.

Side note - I think heads on stakes should be brought back for some of our politicians.

Just ban the scammy bounty hunter.

I can do a little bit to help by adding Bitcoin Talk banners to some of my domains.

I can also add some selected thread links to a few of the help sites. That can add some link juice to the forum. Adding cooments to my image hosting site would also contribute a fairly small bit to the forum ranking.

Don't forget the cross linking possibilities in Fit to Talk. You can help Bitcoin Talk as well as improving your prospects of getting a few merits.

I can understand the appeal of keeping all Meta topics on a single board. However, we have a major problem with the abuse of posting privileges, and my suggestion is really aimed at trying to reduce those. If new ( and older ) members could view a long list of deleted accounts, and read the reasons for the banning, together with associated discussions, then I would hope that it would bring home to them the severity of the punishment. If this can reduce the load on the mods, and the cost of handling the bad posts, then it would seem to offer a significant benefit in return for a fairly simple change to the forum.

Improvement in the posting habits could even lead to the return of limited signature privileges, and that should be a major incentive for them.

I agree that it is useful for moderators to reply and discuss an individual problem. I don't agree that spambies should be denied the right to reply.This would mean that the appellant couldn't reply to his own thread. It would be useful if newbies and spambies were encouraged to read the threads as well, as I believe that prevention and discouragement is far better than punishment and cutting off a member.

I agree with a lot of the comments, and especially the ones referring to the length.

I think a short punchy message would be enough, and it should include links to a couple of stickies. Follow that with a statement such as
" Read the contents of those stickies carefully, breaking the rules will probably lead to the loss of your account, and a permanent ban from the forum".

Of course Legendaries and Heroes need merit. All the merits they get are merits that aren't available for the spambies.

I do wish people wouldn't keep saying this. Half of the sMerits to be awarded are in the hands of the community, and most of the abuses seem to be as a result of this. If this abuse continues, I can see Theymos blocking the generation of sMerits, and leaving everything up to the merit sources.

The rules on merit awarding are much stricter for merit sources.

I'm coming to the conclusion that Bitcoin Talk needs a bifurcation. I'll reflect on it a bit, and maybe I'll start a thread with a suggestion.

No it isn't, and until you escape from that restrictive thinking, you will be confined to complaining about higher ranks just liking ( meriting ) their friends.

We aren't bashing the real newbies. We are bashing the school kids who made it to become adults, but still have kindergarten abilities.  Calling them school kids when they rejected schooling is a misnomer in my opinion, and it is misleading.