The only part of "old club boys" that describe me is "old". I think I've tried to buck received opinion too much to be a part of the elite. - see my posts about REDUCING blocksize, and shortening transaction generation time for example. Despite this, I seem to have picked up 5 merit points for mouthing off about the "system".

I'm coming round to the new system. The old system just required volume regardless of quality, and that was part of the spamming problem. The new system involves ( in part ) voting on post quality by the posters peers. If this is not abused, then it could be a great way to improve quality. Part of this is as a result of a type of feedback on posts. If I make a post that is seen to be helpful, and thus gains some merit points, then that appreciation encourages me to make further constructive posts. If a series of posts don't receive any merit points, then I know that I am on the wrong tack.

I'm not sure that I understand your post. It was an attack on trading merit points to speed up the entry into air drops. What has that got to do with Bitcoin Cash - which I intend to add as a payment option at some time in the future.

Lets have a Merit Cash system for those who see Bitcoin Talk as a recruitment service for ponzis, air drops and other schemes.

and a true merit system for those who see Bitcoin talk as a venue for the exchange of information and help about Bitcoin and crypto-currencies.

The biggest problem with the merit system is that it spawns a load of new threads.

Now I wonder who that can be?

What I am seeing is that people still seems to consider Bitcoin as a form of employment, and Bitcoin Talk as an employment bureau and a recruitment medium. It would be great if we could go back to discussing the Bitcoin system, and the way we can use, optimise and expand it. For example it would be really useful if the escrow possibilities were explored, and gained public acceptance.

OK, I'm starting to understand this system. It looks as if I got 83 sMerit credits somehow, and I have just given 5 to Theymos. ( I'm a grovelling pig ). Actually it was for a WiFi thread in the Ivory Tower, and it was  a really helpful set of suggestions for me. I suspect that this use of the system may be part of the planned improvements. Giving merits to posters making generalised replies in the spam threads will not help to improve quality. Giving away sMerits hasn't affected my personal holding, so I can see it is a way for those of us with specialist interests to reward helpful and informative replies in our threads.

Danny Hamilton is a great source of information, and a helpful and knowledgeable guy. I think his talents would be wasted as a forum policeman.

I'm starting to see that the primary importance of merit points is to allow members to take part in air drops. So why not forget the merit points, and ban the air drops. It seems that will improve post quality.

I'll probably ignore it. It's nice to receive some sort of feedback on a post, and other boards use like and thanks buttons.

Here is my record on one such board.



I know, I spend too much time on the boards.

I've only had a quick read of the new system, and I'm not sure how it will improve things a great deal. If I consider my situation and motivation, then comments about it may help to clarify things in my mind.

The first thing is that I am not a part of any signature campaign, and I don't plan on joining one, so ranking is possibly of less importance to me than to many other members. As a Hero member, I already have a large enough allowance for me to post text messages in my signature. Now to the merit system as it affects me.

I'm a hero member on the edge of the minimum activity requirement for legendary. I've been awarded 500 merit points, but I need 1,000 to acieve legendary. This is not an incentive to me to submit more posts, and it may even have the reverse effect. My interests are in certain fairly specific areas of Bitcoin use and investment - Running a node over public WiFi for example, and very often I don't even get a reply to my posts, let alone earning merit points. Now you may think that WiFi discussions are not important, and they probably aren't to most members, but they are to travelling businessmen, and it would be nice if we could attract more people from the business community. Discussions similar to "Is Bitcoin a safer investment than Rockin Horse poo?" generate thousands of replies,and are likely to gain far more merit points than discussions about ETFs.

I see that I can award merit points, and I read that half of my 500 point award is spendable. Does that mean that if I give a point to a poster, that I drop to 499? That isn't much of an incentive for me to police the forum. At the moment, merit points seem to me to be similar to those forum dollars that some boards give out, but don't provide a shop for purchases using them.

It's not really the creation, but the reason for the creation. If the main purpose of the registration was to attempt to sell the name to a trademark owner, then that can be considered as a "bad faith" registration, and you could have the name taken away from you.

There are some interesting anomalies though. Allowing a name to expire and drop is considered as showing a lack of interest in the name, and can be a defence in a bad faith case. Of course the normal commercial laws still apply, and misuse of the name could be considered as "passing off".

When a name drops and is re-registered, then the age of the name starts at the time of the registration. However, if the name is purchased in an expired auction, and it isn't allowed to drop, then it retains its age. For example, last December I bought TissueNews.com in an expired auction, and that name had been in continuous use since 1999. When the name was transferred to me, then the age came with it. This can be helpful if one is defending a trademark action.

Well the mods must be doing something right. Bitcointalk isn't even on the first page of Google for "shitposting".

This seems to be another bit of false reporting and nonsense. If I owned a bank, I wouldn't want staff speculationg in Bitcoin through currency exchanges, especially in these times of extreme volatility. They don't seem to be banning the holding of Bitcoin, but just the speculation in it, and that is reasonable, as heavy losses could temp staff into theft.

I understand what you want to do, and the answer is "no". However there is a simple workaround that I use. Just open Bitcointalk in two browser windows, and leave you reference post in one window, whilst you cruise the thread in the other window, You can even cut and paste between windows.

Obviously the answer is no, if this weren't true, then there wouldn't be other language boards.

Is French required to participate on the French board? If you consider the answer to be yes, then that answers your question about the English boards.

Cybersquatting is registering a trademarked or business use name with the intention of selling it for profit to the rightful owner of the mark. Wikipedia defines it here -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

Parking is the hosting of a domain, and placing a lander page on the site pending sale or development. Here is one of my parking pages -

Bitcoin Knife

A parking page may ( and usually has) got paid advertising links and banners, and a domain for sale link.

It looks as if we are having a "correction" in the crypto domain name world. I'm finding what I consider to be reasonable in the mud at the bottom of the expiry cycle. Some examples of these are -

XBTkiosk.com - XBT is the ticker code for Bitcoin
NewCoinWeek.com - Coin Week is a site for traditional coin collectors - nothing about crypto
BlockError.com - Could be a tech site, or maybe just a blog
RippleCreation.com - I don't know anything about Ripple, but it seemed to be worth reg fee
EasyBitcoinMining.com - Does such a things still exist?

Bitcoin is moving into its mature phase as a store of wealth. But it is difficult to discuss that here. The easy solution is to ban all account sales. Stop discussing all those micro-payment earners like faucets, and don't advertise them. If you want to earn money from posting, then there are plenty of forums to advise you about it. Don't allow the promotion of ponzi schemes or the selling of stolen goods.

How much would that impact advertising revenue?

Here is a tip that could prevent others from getting into trouble when asking questions that are answere fairly frequently.

Run a site specific Google search - for example - site:bitcointalk.org "account sales"

This throws up all the historic information.