The root of the newbie's problem lies in the fact that there aren't many newbies. We have a massive invasion of economic migrants attempting to leech off the forum, and they don't want to learn much beyond how to cut and paste.

Nothing I do ever seems to be normal or standard. I wasn't one of the merit sources in the initial appointments. I received an airdrop of 80 sMerits, and I was lucky enough to 'earn' quite a few more. I allocated these in ones and twos to post that I thought were interesting, and I haven't flown a spammers sig. I think these facts resulted in me being made a merit source in the secondary allocation. At that time there was a known flaw in the awarding software, and when I awarded merits, they were taken from both my source merits and sMerits. However, I think this may have been retrospective, and I had a constant source balance of 0. I wrote to Theymos, and he doubled my allocation, and this seems to be being replaced normally, but I suspect that I may still be on half rations. This isn't a problem, as I still have merits to award.

I opened a private invitation only chat room for merit sources and DTs, as I wasn't sure if my fairly severe policy towards awarding meits was beneficial to the forum. The discussions there were very helpful for me. If any merit sources feel that a private discussion about possible changes in the policy of awarding merits, they are welcome to join the room and open discussions. For obvious reasons, this offer has to be restricted to merit sources, DTs, staff and admins.

I added an Italian section to the Fit to Talk English project. This was intended to help Italian speakers to translate posts into English, so that they could gain merits on the english boards. So far I have had no takers.

It's why a lot of us have got all the ANN boards on ignore.

If you want to go to the supermarket, you need to use a pedal cycle. Using an excercise bike involves a lot of activity, but it doesn't get the shopping into the cupboard.

All the frezied activity for merit is counter-productive. Not only does it give the poster with an over active mouseoid a bad reputation, but it clogs up the boards, and hides the meritable posts. Stop being selfish, and give the good posts a chance to see the light and germinate.

That includes our right to try to keep sMerits away from the Twitbook bounty hunters.

I've got a url shortening site, but I think it's use is banned in this forum.

I had to do something, my merits are still wet.

I've become radical. I've awarded a few posts with 2 merits recently.

On the rewarding of 'normal' posts - If I have time, and I see that a guy has made a sensible post ( what I would call a useful one), I have a look at his activity. If 50% or so of his first page on the recent post list are 'useful', then I will award merits for the block.

I always wondered how Hilarious got his name.

This seems to be a good point to list the contents of the block header, or maybe not, it looks terrible if I copy and paste.

You can find it on this page.

https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#block-headers

I wonder how he is picking it up then. I've just made a post, and deleted it.

I hate that, and I put a lot of posters who insert non-essential images on ignore. It's hard enough wading through all the threads to look for gems, without having to scroll down a long thread with quoted images. I usually don't bother to read the comment associated with the image either. The other advantage of putting the poster on ignore if he is the opening poster, is that the thread title gets greyed out in the index, so I don't have to keep looking at the picture.  It also saves my bandwidth if I am on the mobile.

If we do this, can we include blockchains on mesh networks? I've just started to read about Sky coin ( within the last hour ), and this may be another future direction for blockchain technology.

Was it when you hit the 'post' button or the 'reply' button. Reply works for me, but I didn't try to post a comment.

I've got 74 sMerit which doesn't get touched until I've awarded all my current source merits. I'm not sure how you can factor that into your calculation. Also, I don't know what my source merit allotment is, it just seems to get topped up by a few merits every day.

Bailout are trheft from the taxpayers, bail-ins are theft from the bank's customers. What annoys me is that the money goes to buying £300million yachts for the banking elite, or to military aid for international terrorists. I closed my dollar account, and used the money to buy domain names, I've been selling those slowly and taking the proceeds in Bitcoin. I keep enough in fiat for my weekly needs, and the odd emergency. I'm also converting a van into an off-grid camper. I like to keep my options open.

I've just watched a video about sky coin, and I might explore that. It seems to be a crypto that is independant of the Internet, but relies on a worldwide mesh system. I'm not sure how practical that is, but it seemed to be worth a bit of research.

I'm still finding it hard to award merits. I'm back at about a hundred again, and I've started several threads to try to award them, but it is still difficult. Maybe I've got too many people on ignore for begging, merit abuse, and over-quoting. or maybe I set my standards too high. Also, I quit some boards if they are full of Twitface and bounty threads. Maybe I put too much emphasis on looking for newbies and juniors as well.

It's really up to the members who want merits. Post some construcvtive and useful posts, and think about them before you hit the post button.

If some of you senior members want to try for some merits, I've opened up my discussion threads on the beginners board to all members ( even Satoshi ). I could do with some cleanup posts, as there is a fair bit of misinformation in the threads. I'm trying to avoid doing it myself as the threads are supposed to be merit generators.

You need to be careful with this. There are many senior members ( including me ) who consider that this is an abuse of the merit system. You may find yourself penalised if you do implement this policy. Certainly I will put you on ignore.  Merit is designed to promote the posting of good content, not for help in board moderation.

Thanks, but it won't be until next year. I've got a lot to learn.