The changes haven't stopped merit hunters from starting threads with many duplicated topics.

That would pose a lot of problems. Especially if some of the founding members returned to the forum, and that is something that I hope swe can encourage.

I believe that Theymos is aware of the problem, and he has some changes under consideration. One is a rank above legendary, and that would require earned merits. Another is the removal of merits from deleted posts and sold accounts. That would effectively de-rank a sold account, and could reduce merit abuse.

Another consideration is that some bounty managers are requiring earned merits from applicants to their better programmes.

Do merit awarders still read these threads?

The Fit to Talk English translation project is still running, and that has a guaranteed 5 merit minimum award. Maybe I should increase that to 10. You have to work to start a well written interesting thread though if you want the award.

I've just set up an image hosting site, and that might make things a bit easier for non-English speakers.

This is getting to be an urgent requirement. Alternatively, should we just report all the threads for deletion by mods?

The UK is not a typical western country. You need to realised that the old British Empire morphed into what is now known as the Banking Deep State. This controls most of the world economy. The European Union is just a creation to channel the assets of member states into the control of this elite. This is why the Brexit situation is so complex, and much of it appears to be counter-intuitive.

Can the UK slap bans on Russia? They probably could if they were sensible about it. But now that world opinion seems to believe that Skripal was poisoned via Porton Down, and the fake chemical attacks in Syria were the action of the British funded White Helmets, they may start to have problems.

The main question is whether the Eton/Oxford created elite can use it to further their own ends, and change the world economy.

Well if you are creating characters for a card deck, then I am traditionally the Knave ( Page ) of Batons.

I've just gone through the JetAid thread on the beginners board, and I've awarded a few merits. Nowis the time to ask those questions about Bitcoin Talk, and let the experienced members answer them.

You had better get in quickly, because I'm going to scrap another van that I've been using as a shed, and the last one took me away for 2 days.

Actually moderation is also part of the problem. I've had some posts deleted or moved, and they were ones that I thought would help in the improvement of post quality. As a result of these deletions, I decided to use off forum domains to build the help pages. There is quite a bit of work involved in building the pages, and deleting them, or allowing them to sink into the spam mire is a massive disincentive. Of course, one result of the move offsite is that members can't comment or add to pages to help the forum.

Sorry I have been off the forum for a couple of days. I decided to scrap one of my vans that was full of rubbish, and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

I'll go through this thread, and make reply to posts if neccessary. It looks as if some other members have done this for me, and I'm grateful for this - thanks guys, and I'll sort out some merits.

Please continue to ask questions if you have any.

I have around three quarters of the boards on ignore, and Bitcoin Talk seems to load much faster, and be more manageable. I've got the local boards on ignore because I don't speak the languages, and I've just un-ignored beginners. Other than that I have all of the announcements and gambling boards on ignore, and also all of the mining ones - they seem to be reserved for elite top end miners only. There are a few more that are of negligible value to me.

The ability to ignore boards is a great tool if you want to scan the forum efficiently for topics that are of interest to you.

ps. I've just had a database error as I tried to make this post. Maybe this is the worst consequence of the rain of bot spamming.

More merit sources will meant that more merit is chasing the existing meritable posters. The zero-posters will still be zero-posters,unless they work to imprve their posting of course.

I think that any changes have to be considered quite carefully. In my perception, there are a couple of things that could be done immediately, but I don't have an informed overview of the boards, and I don't know the secondary objectives of the forum. The multi-account spamming and bot signups don't seem to have any perceived advantages, but they do create massive amounts of traffic, and also discussions in Meta. I think this is probably of low value, and the unused ad spots would seem to confirm this.

This is the reason we don't need more merit sources. I often look at the purpose behind a post, and it may stop me awarding merits.

We should always look at the posts, and use our opinion of the post to judge its quality.

I still have trouble finding posters to merit. Maybe I need to review my standards. The reason that I created my chatroom was to do this in private discussions, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside, so I'm on my own with my decision making.

I've just checked my wallet, and I've got 191 source and sMerits to award. I really like to give them to people who initiate good discussions, or who make helpful and well informed replies. I'll have a look at the JetAid thread tomorrow, and see if I can give any away in that.

I might be guilty of this. I'm having a major sort out in my personal life, and I'm gettng rid of some of the shackles from the past. I spent yesterday scrapping one of my vans. It should have been an easy job, but anything that could go wrong did. I got up at 5am today to finish it off, and it's gone now, but I feel a bit tired. I didn't use the computer at all yesterday.  Hopefully I'll be back to normal tomorrow with loads of sMerits to give away.

YouTube seems to be on the skids at the moment, they are demonetising, de-indexing, and even banning some of the interesting content providers who don't toe the globlist line, I looked at  Steemit as an alternative, but I'm still not convinced that that isn't a sophisticated ponzi. It seems you have to  pay to get your posts ranked there. Dtube was starting to get some traction,but I haven't looked at that for a few months.

I'm another one who thinks that it would be better to sanitise the forum before trying to attract more members.

I don't have the time to hunt for them. Men invented Unicorns to round up the wild horses, but I don't want to make them slaves. Thankfully we have a few benign Unicorns here in Bitcoin Talk.

Unfortunately the popular Jair Bolsonaro may not be fit enough to stand in the next elections. Do you think he should be allowed to use a proxy until he is fit enough to become active again. Without this option, the failed assassin will have achieved a victory.

The latest twist in this case - an interview with the alleged perpetrators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGNaHZmzMm8