Another forum that I have joined shortens quotes, and adds a "click to expand" button at the bottom of the shortened quote.
This works really well, and it cuts out the images.

If over half the merit points are going to the frog pond and invites, then the merit system isn't working.

It looks as if Steemit is replacing YouTube. I'm going to have to start making videos I guess.

Binary Financial will help you, but their minimum order value is $500,000.

Ebay killed my consideration for any trust system. I go by my own impressions of a member by reading his posting history if I need to consider "trust". It might be easier to have a list of apprved escrow members for financial transactions.

Well if it is responsive, then if I'm not on a smartphone, please can I have a skin that looks like a proper forum with easy to read boards.

There are quite a few factors involved in valuing advertising. Impressions are not really all that useful, what you need to know are the clickthrough rates, and the visits that result in sales. Second and third page hits and revisits are probably the most useful of the metrics, but only the advertisers know those stats. Most of the members posting here seem to be short of money, and are unlikely to be of value to advertisers. The bulk of the posts are of very low quality, and therefore are unlikely to stimulate buying actions in visitors to the site.

Improving the quality of the threads, and the addition of good commercial discussions should attract higher value views, and this could lead to an increase in potential revenue.

Yep - there is one procurement company that buys crypto for institutional investors. Their minimum order value is $500,000.

Well trust isn't really relevant for me as I don't trade crypto. The only time it might apply is if I sell a domain name, and that will probably be run through the Name Silo escrow service, so my personal trust rating won't be relevant.

However, I would be annoyed if I received negative trust for my political opinions, For example. I'm anti-deep state, and against big Pharma and eugenics, but many people seem to want to oppose these views ( they want to stop Brexit for example). I don't think trust should be used to attempt to force members to change their political or religious views.

I really don't like that new board. I hope we will have some alternative skins. Maybe there could be one that makes it look like the current board.

I suggested LAMP ( Legendary Awarded Merit Points) - A legendary member who has brought light to the forum, and has been awarded merit points. It would need to be a bit ambitious though - at least 2,000 points and possibly even 5,000. 1,000 would be the initial award, but the rest would have to be earned.

Maybe they could be allowed to include a self-hosted jpeg or png banner in their sig as a reward,

I haven't tested this, but wouldn't your final post cause the thread to be marked as read?

I've just done a quick test, and I had to refresh the window to see it flagged as read.

The useful thing a poster could do would be to reduce the size of the image, but I suspect that is expecting a bit too much from a poster.

It probably comes down to the distance between the image posting and the reply. If it's the next post, then the second image is redundant. If it's on the next page, then it could be useful.

I've just watched this YouTube video about the way a rogue miner can scam an exchange for $10million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cuImsvmSf4

On reading the comments, it would seem that this is not hypothetical, but has already been done.

You need to be careful when considering any statement by Amazon, It is a major globalist organisation, and we know they are accumulating Bitcoin to assist in their future control of the crypto market.

Another example of their duplicity is their move into health foods, and whole foods, and this does not lie comfortably with their support for global eugenics. No doubt they hope to poison the Bitcoin market as well.

If merit abuse becomes prevalent, I can see a time when the awarding of merits will require a short message of justification, and that will slow down the whole process. Maybe this could be introduced for all awards over a small number - say 2.

I've started putting people who post large images of little value on ignore, but if they are quoted later, then the image is included in the quote.
Would it be possible to replace the embedded image with a link in quotes? This would make the thread far easier to read, and the repeated images seem to have little purpose.

I feel such a failure. I haven't even got an ego, let alone an alter to give extra merit.

I think my "a" is worn out, and I've corrected that thanks.

Actually a "bord" is a mining term, and it is a coal face parallel to a natural fissure, so it could well be apposite.

I might try to skip read that thread, as I'm getting quite interested in some of the stats and chartist theories. Now that major investment groups are starting to look at Bitcoin as an investment, I think we are going to need some tools to give us advanced notice of their activities.

The merit system won't work on its own, but combine it with moderation that moves threads to the correct boards, and deletes or archives rubbish threads and boards, and it will revitalise the forum.