That's what I suspected. I think I'll wait until I'm using Linux again before any more investigation.

First off I am a 75 year old "him"

Now to cover some of your points.

I don't feel that I've been screwed out of legendary status. I invented the term LAMP to differentiate between Legendaries who obtained rank by shitposting and promoting their sig bounties, and legendaries who make valuable contributions to this forum.

I have suggested a lot of ideas because I remember the forum as it was when I first joined. At that time the forum was well moderated and very valuable as an educational source. Right now it is an omelette, and it is very difficult to find some topics as they can be buried in a variety of boards. The merit system is clearly being abused, and I don't think the soup kitchens and food banks are a good way to overcome the problems of moderation in the current forum.

I give out my points as I see fit, and I can't remember the post in question, but obvously I considered it to have some merit at the time. Actually I think I did post a justification somewhere.

I don't promote any sig campaigns. I have looked at a number of them, but I have decided to use my signature to promote sites that I believe in, and not those that pay the highest bonuses. These are unlikely to be any of the over-saturated campaigns advertised here, Because of this, there is no advantage in my being promoted to Legendary. The sig limits are the same for Heroes and Legendaries.

I think your posts are far more targetted towards the acquisition of merits than any of my posts, and I'm sure that the promotion to Legendary is of much greater importance to you than it is to me. I would be grateful if you could stop attempting to trash me so that, in my own small way, I can continue to help Bitcoin Talk to return to the valuable training resource that it was a few years ago.

I was about to start a thread about this, as I've got a similar problem.

I've got a node running under Windows 10. The node is v,0.15.1 and it is uncustomised. I run it over a variety of connections - public WiFi, tethered to a mobile, and over broadband in a private house. All give much the same result. I can only make outbound connections, and I often have trouble finding peers. Those that are found can have ping rates varying between low nn ms and high nn,nnn ms , and often I have to sync using just 2 or 3 peers. When I look at the traffic activity I notice that I have long gaps with no activity.

I've been wondering if the problem was caused by a recent Windows upgrade which seems to have messed around with its firewall. I'm thinking of reviving my old Linux node, and moving to that. Do you think that will make much difference?

To which of us are you addressing that comment. Neither of us is in a bounty programme.

I agree with your classification of the thread.

I don't look at rank when I am reading a post. The important things are the format, the content, the presentation and the placement.

I get a bit fed up with new members assuming that they will be dis'd because they are new.

Well it doesn't highlight it if people don't read it. If you can't say it without shouting, then please don't say it, that's my attitude.

There are many of us who are trying to use the merit system to encourage good posting habits amongst all ranks.. I'm trying to do this, but I'm having problems because I can't find many posts that I want to award with points. There are several reasons for this, and I've mentioned them elsewhere. I've still got over 50 points, but I'm not going to spend time hunting for posts any more.

Well that was fun - I put together a quick gallery here.
http://cryptobounty.com/bitcointalk-beggars/

I'll tidy it up a bit later.

You make some good points, but I have noticed a few reasons for creating self-moderating threads.

- Changing the terms of the offer - it is handy to place this in the first post if there are a number of replies
- Closing the thread if the offer is no longer availble.
- Removing spam and thread hijacking posts.

I think you need to step bck and look at the structure, evolution and limits in Bitcoin.

It was postulated as an anti-banking system, and released into a community that was likely to seize on this, and to expand on the possibilities of freedom from the established banking system. This gives the bankers an insight into the possible problems in the future.

It was capped at 21million coins, and whilst this my seem to be a lot, it is insignificant it the context of world economies.

It has a reasonable degree of anonymity, This means that coins retained or acquired by banks and governments can be concealed

The block generation interval of 10 minutes, and the need for additional confirmations means that the system can never rival banking transfer systems as a volume service.

The password restrictions and wallet storage methods mean that coins will be lost forever durng the lifetime of Bitcoin.

Recent method of price manipulation means that central bankers and other can increase their holdings at minimal cost.

These and various other factors lead me to believe that Bitcoin is an experimental project created by a central banker as a precursor to the release of a major new digital currency.

I was going to give you a merit until I read the bit about bounty managers. I don't think bounty managers should give merits to their sig flyers, it leads them into temptation.

I read an enormous number of posts on various forums every day, and I manage this by speed reading. Oversized text and difficult colours make this harder. Often this means that I have to skip the post, or maybe close the thread if it is the first post. Capitalistion is another killer, you can't pick up phrases to speed read if the post is capitalised.

I think it is good that you are spending time reading the forum posts, and I see that the fist one that I clicked had received a merit from me ( and nobody else ), so I guess I agree with your judgement.

I think it is sad that posts now have to find sponsors in order to gain merits. It would be much better if they could earn merits without this, but it seems that the spamming and obfuscation is still preventing this.

If good posts are not receiving merit points because they are obscured by spamming, then that is a failure of the moderation system, and not the merit system.  Providing merit food banks doesn't clean out the spamming, or make the good posts more visible.

I started a thread suggesting that merits could be used in a BitcoinTalk shop, but there was no interest, so I closed the thread. If this were enabled, members could purchase smaller and less intrusive button images to promoter sponsors. Disabling banners or othe functions could be other items that could be purchased.

As  Hero member, merits don't have a great deal of value for me, except as a means of helping me to direct my posting in directions encouraged by other members. The other use is to award sMerit of course, but I am still finding it difficult to discover new posts that I want to award with points. Making them exchangeable in a forum shop would increase their usefulness.

This suggestion is about having a Bitcoin Talk shop that accept merit points. Exchanged points would be removed by an admin, and would be cancelled. No other trading or selling of points would be possible or allowed, One product that could be sold would be the right to use a non-intrusive banner in your sig. The width could be based on the number of points exchanged. This addresses two problems. One is the use of promotional banners by members who no longer contribute to the forum. The other result would be to allow members to decide between sig promotion and rank improvement if they are marginally active in creating merit worthy posts.

The use of a remotely hosted image would allow promotions managers to monitor the impression received by a poster's activities

Note - this would have no impact on sMerit.

There seems to be too much political in fighting here. Am I the only one who uses the ignore button.

It's a good move. Too many people lost money they didn't have by speculating on Bitcoin in the last gold rush.

 what happens if he goes on holiday, or just gets fed up with the deluge of low value newbie posts everywhere. Whatever happened to "read the boards before you start posting and repeating the same old questions"?