There are many instance where images are beneficial. for example - statistical posts, a travel description, social posts, product descriptions, screen caps, and several others. The considerate poster will post a small image with a link to a larger image if required.

They clutter threads and make it hard to scan text quickly. They are often counter productive, as the fast reader may skip over the associated text, or put the poster on ignore. There is an associated problem, and this relates to members who make full quotes. Including the image in the quote bulks up the thread quite considerably.You should consider this, as I see you have made a completely redundant full quote of my original post, and this is immediately following the actual post. What a waste of readers time, bandwidth, and it shows a lack of consideration for the members reading the thread.

There is a lot of love for quality new members. It's the spambies that are the ones that the rules are intended to control. I suspect a lot of the 150-200 are spambies promoted by their alts and sponsors. I think the good news is that the new rules highlight these members and their puppet masters. If there are too many, then the next stage will have to be sig removal for juniors.

Please could you split the "newbies" into true newbies and the spambies - the deranked ones. There seems to have been a flurry of activity and whingeing by the namby spambies, and it might be interesting to see who has abused their merit awarding ability by encouraging them.

Russia is not the same country now.

Britain has the British Empire, and that has morphed into the Eton/Oxford deep state. Global dynamics see many power shifts and changed associatiins.

Please don't call them newbies - they aren't new at all.

Do you mean a newbie or a spambie?

To help newbies you need to offer training and advice, and that is more work than just giving merits to spambies to get on a list.

Welcome to the club.

I've almost given up hunting for posts that are worthy of merit. I decided that it was better to encourage good members to start good discussions, and use those as a base for meritable posts. I still believe that this is a good approach, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit, especially as many of the potential awardees can't be bothered to join.

I'm also a bit pissed off that the guys awarding merits to the spambies are being lauded as supporters of newbies. Actually the reverse is true, and they make it harder for good new members to find a place here. I think it is time for the bifurcation of Bitcoin Talk, and the spambies can continue in the underworld, and allow the regrowth of the real Bitcoin Talk to begin.

A better solution would be to remove the alt, ANN and TwitBook threads from the discussion board.

The real problem is that spammers and scammers go round the web looking for places to pollute. If you start a forum, you will realise the extent of the problem. They will even find you if you don't post any links to the forum. They dump their spammy links into guest books and forum posts. It is unfortunate, but you have to treat all new members as potential abusers. Once they give an indcation that they may be beneficial members, then you can relax the restrictions.

Can we change the phrase "earn a single merit" into "obtain a single merit". This seems to be more relevant in the new Bitcoin Talk forum.

I think it's getting close to the time Bitcoin Talk allows a bifurcation. Let the underworld go down one fork, and the Bitcoin/Crypto discussions happen on the other.

He posted that he is now a source.

It isn't privacy that is the problem. It's the spammers that I find the biggest annoyance. In fact I've installed a couple of ticket systems to reduce this.

This post by azhar7777 made me reflect on this.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4976339.msg45979485#msg45979485

This will probably be the new trends following sig restrictions.

Please follow you own advice, and read the posting guidelines. One of the major annoyances is the redundant quoting of orignal posts, especially in the second post. Please have some consideration for the merit sources who have to read these threads, and who don't want to wade through a sea of replication. Making these quotes often leads to your post being skipped anyway, so if you are posting for merits, then it is counter productive. It can also mean that you may be considered to be a "spambie" rather than a newbie.

OK - how about this.

I've rated you as a "spambie". Initially because you have a lot of posts, and no merits. So why haven't you got any merits?

The first thing is the use of all caps in the thread title. You may think that it makes your thread look important, but what it really says is " I haven't got much to say that is of use, so I'm going to shout it out". Opening the thread presented me with a great wall of text, and the initial few lines were just gratuitous comments that are similar to the preample to most merit pseudo-begging threads, so I didn't bother to read the rest.

I think this may be the sentiment behind TMAN's comment.

Dammit - I've just noticed that this is my 5,000th post. I could have marked that milestone with something a bit more memorable.

Dammit - I keep trying to think of something that I can claim due to age and imagined frailty.

I've had threads moved, but I'm not sure I consider that as censorship, as they are still on view to the public. I've also had posts deleted because a mod doesn't understand English humour, but I attribute that to mod frailty rather than censorship.

The only place where there does seem to be censorship is in the mining section. New miners aren't allowed to post there it seems, and you have to be an established miner using proven techniques. When I wanted some mining information, I was forced to ask questions on other forums. My threads as a mining newbie were deleted.

I'm having several problems following a recent Windows update. So much so that it's firming my resolve to get rid of it on this machine.

There are now two classes of "newbie" - "spambies" and new members. I'd be interested in seeing if there is a difference in merit awards to these two categories.