"Mastering Blockchain" is today's free eBook from Packt, but you need to be quick, you've only got 6 hours from this post to claim a copy.

https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning

The checker I tend to use is Search Engine Reports-
https://searchenginereports.net/plagiarism-checker/

Oh dear, that will teach me to jump to conclusions without doing enough research. I only checked the post I merited.

[Post update]
Unfortunately it has been discovered that this member created his post by translating part of a Russian article published by someone else.
[/ end update]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2154797;sa=showPosts

I've looked through his post history, and I'm surprised that he has made 80 posts, and not received a single merit until I awarded them. I'm tempted to go through his posts and give him a load more, but I still feel that one should spread merits around rather than dumping them on one person.

The real reason for starting this thread is to highlight the fact that his post had been lost in the swamp, and I think that we should do something to avoid losing these members. Maybe we should have a rising stars list.

I'm quite pleased with the political board promotion so far. I've managed to find a few posts to merit, and I'm running the promo through until Saturday now.

I think it is sad that there is such an obsession with electric cars at the moment. They are more environmentally damaging than modern diesel vehicles, especially now that horizontally opposed two stroke diesels are being developed. They are a wasteful use of lithium, and there isn't enough for all the cars anyway. All they do is to export pollution out of the cities. It is even worse when they cut down trees to burn to generate the electricity.

A much better solution is the use of fuel cells. You can extract the hydrogen from sea water, and generate the electricity directly to drive the motors in the cars. Refuelling only takes a few minutes, as opposed to the hour or so that it can take to recharge the batteries in the current cars.

Other countries used cattle. However, this proved to be a bit tricky, as the wallets tended to be rather large.

I don't think that being a merit source helps one to gain merits. In fact, I think the reverse is true. People tend to assume that merit sources have so many merits that they don't need any more. I base this opinion on a couple of posts that I have seen stating this, and saying that awarding sMeits to a source is a waste of merits. Many members still don't realise that source meits are not the same as spendable merits, although both are effectively the same once they have been awarded.

The precipitous drop in the value of the Bolivar means that you can fill your tank for virtually nothing. This has led to some people "smuggling" tanker loads of petrol across the border to sell at international prices. Maduro is about to ration low cost petrol to stop this loss to their economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsB1uOOVGrw

Can you explain a bit more about the background politics for the candidates please?

Thanks for that suggestion. My original idea was fairly basic, and i intended to vary the board on a daily basis. I thought that I would just be looking for single posts. However, your post raised the thought of awarding extra to the starters of good discussion topics. As you poiny out, that can require more effort if a thread starter is going to very facts. As a result of this, I decided to extend the time for featuring a board, and therefore I will check the Politics and society board daily until next Saturday, and will look at threads in detail.

I wont check threads with titles that are all capitals, as I assume that such posters don't have a decent point to make, and posts with full quotes of the original post will be ignored as well.

Don't forget that it won't just be me who will be looking for meritable posts. History shows that these featured thread receive merits from several other awarding members as well. If you aren't sure of your English, then you can run your post or thread past the language helpers at Fit to Talk English, and you will still get full credit for your posts.

A very good morning to all my readers, and thank you for the rerplies.

To those who don't know about PackT Publising - they publish a free eBook every day, and they cycle through their library to find the offers. there is quite a range from the fairly useful to the quite obscure. For example, today's offer is "Mastering Bloclchain".

Several members have stated in private conversations with me that BT is getting boring. I must admit that I sometimes have trouble stimulating interest, or finding topics where I can contribute. The world is in economic turmoil with various economies on the brink of failure. Alongside this, established and new crypto-currencies and digital banking methods are gaining in popularity and strength. One would expect Bitcoin Talk to be humming at the centre of this revolution. How can we stimulate informed discussions, and help BT to grow away from its current emphasis on the crypto underworld, and gain a place in the respectable financial world?

I've started an initiative to award merits on a different board each day for a week or so, and I'm starting with the political board. Is there a better use for my sMerit awarding time?

Over the next few days I'm going to focus on specific boards in my hunt for meritable posts and threads. I'll spend at least half an hour looking for suitable quality material. Merits will be awarded to any rank, it is the content and presentation that matters. Later today I will focus on the political board. To be considered, your post will have to comply with the standards applied by Flying Hellfish as well as mine. You may think that ignoring threads with all caps titles, and post with useless images, or full quotes of previous posts, is trivial, but with limited time I have to speed up thread scanning. I've found that members using bad posting practices usually have little to offer to the topic, so it is easier to skip over them.

So if you want to try for some merits today, then go political.

Get in quickly - today's free PackT eBook is about Python machine learning. You have only got a few hours to grab it though.

Over moderation actually creates spam. It drives members asking reasonable questions awaay from the forum to find answers. I've had to go elsewhere to find answers to questions I've asked after they were deleted or moved. So why does this create spam? Well if decent posters have to go elsewhere for discussions, then that drops the quality of the boards, and if they have to post on the unmoderated boards like beginners or off topic, then their threads tend to get swamped with spam.

It would appear that the mods don't know the difference between an s9 and an s9 hydro

So it seems that Python could be good choice if one wants to ad a bit of surfer interaction to a site.

Is spam becoming the new topic to replace the merit ones?

How long before newbies start to ask " What is spam?", and "how do I earn spam?"

Spam clogs the boards, and makes it difficult for merit awarders to find posts to merit. This creates desperation in the spammers, and they seem to increase their spamming in an attempt to scratch a merit or two. They don't seem to realise that if you render land infertile, then spreading your seed won't result in a crop.