Oh boy! I gave you a merit for that Lauda.

Runs to hide in the Ivory Tower,

I gave this guy a merit  for a nice introductory thread -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2891967

What a shame that it has sunk to page 3. There was a time when new members were  welcomed, and their intro threads we not sucked into the swamp.

Welcome to Bitcoin Talk, and I gave you your first merit for a good introductory post.

I wish the sponging immigrant shitposters would clear off and give us back Bitcoin Talk.

I use the word "immigrant" with its new meaning of "economic migrant".

Don't worry, I've been in trouble all my life for speaking my mind, and for being politically incorrect.

@tatnM

I added you to my Bitcoin beggars gallery, and I've put you on ignore.

Merits and sMerits are intended to be awarded for quality posts, not to enable people to take part in bounty campaigns.

50 merits for the OP !!! In my opinion that is a pretty obvious indication that it isn't working. There are many far better guides than that.

I agree that it should be a matter of choice. Posting a link to a large infographic, or including an alert in the thread title, gives the reader a choice. Embedding an over-sized image only gives the reader one choice if he doesn't want to see it - ignore the poster.

Banning may be a bit extreme, except in the case of major abuses. 30 day suspension could mess up the sig spammers, and would give them a chance to behave in the future.

In my opinion, the biggest improvement that could be made by the mods would come from cleaning the boards. There are several ways to improve board hygene -

- Merge duplicated threads,
- Close the rubbish long tail spam fests ( You need to be pretty immature to even talk about Bitcoin replacing banks for example)
- Delete garbled nonsense posts.
- Move threads onto the correct boards to avoid having allboards as general crypto discussions.

I think you got me into trouble for awarding that point, but then what's new? I seem to be at variance with a lot of people about merits. In fact I'm starting to wonder if there should be an opt out choice. It would mean that you couldn't increase rank, but it would free you from all the bad feeling and abuse that is creeping into the merit system.

Because people posting full page images are really annoying, and break up the flow of the thread. There are obvious exceptions. Cartoons and product images are a couple, but a double screen sized picture of a bunch of text lines doesn't help viewers in my opinion. I read text, and not pictures of oversized text.

However, it is no longer a problem for me. I've started to ignore members embedding infographics images, so that has solved the problem. It's now the choice of the poster to decide on the embedding.

Thanks for posting that - I need to have a look at all of the sub-forums.

I thought the merit system was created to help mods to reduce low value spam posting.

The merit system was dumped on me, and it wasn't part of my original agreement for using BitcoinTalk. I happen to think the merit system has the potential to be good, but only if people use it to award meritorious posts. If someone can't see a post that they see as having value, then they should keep their sMerit until they do. The ones who are "not fulfilling their side of the transaction" are the ones who award merit to members who have abandoned the forum - Satoshi and the HODLer for example, this blocks the creation of new sMerit. The others are the ones who are too lazy to look for posts, and just give their sMerit to the merit soup kitchens and food banks. I won't even start to discuss the 50 merit awards to promote sig spammers.

Please leave the responsible awarders of sMerit alone, and focus on the abusers who are spraying sMerit like confetti.

I seem to be at odds over so many things - I like the current setup. How difficult is it to close the window by clicking on the "X"? Also, when I'm on the merit page, I can look at a few other things associated with the award.

Reducing the allowed character count would do a lot to clean up the board. Currently I am allowed 4,000 characters, and that is enough to create all those pseudo-banners. Reducing the count so that simple text signatures were used would improve the forum in my opinion.

Also I suggested that a BitcoinTalk shop allowed merits to be exchanged for products like buttons in signatures. I think that could clean up the boards.

Of course it is, the other boards are too cluttered to get noticed. Don't despair though, I suspect someone is working on a blockchain for merit points, and, if they implement segwit, then signatures will be on a separate sub-chain.

OK, I've solved the problem. If I get hit by a giant infographic or image, then I just ignore the poster, and reload the thread.

So no sMerits from me I'm afraid.

The more interesting question is - How did he find the posts to award so much merit?

It could be a problem if post are being deleted to conceal the abuse of the merit system.

I spend far too much time on the boards, and anything that increases this without adding value tends to be annoying for me. Other members may not find it a problem, but I think it is inconsiderate, and it doesn't really add value to the thread. If someone creates an infographic, and warns readers in the title, then that is fine, but embedding it in an otherwise useful thread is just selfish and destructive in my opinion.