I'm reluctant to give merits to posts in the "known alts" thread anymore, since I'd have to verify the accuracy of the report--which I don't have a lot of time to do, nor am I a blockchain detective.  I've also given out negs for posts in that thread which later turned out to be wrong, because I put too much trust in other people's detective work.

As for the fake ICO threads, those usually do get enough merit if I'm not mistaken, and the Elisia scam accusation by ICOEthics is only a couple of days old (and I just gave him a couple merits). 

I do agree to some extent with you, OP.  Some members do put in a lot of work finding scams, and they ought to be rewarded for it.  I don't think most of the valid scam accusations go severely under-merited, though.  As I've been having trouble finding merit-worthy posts lately, I'll keep your point in mind.

Um, yeah.  That shows how little you understand about how the forum works and if you tried to insult him, it's only highlighting your ignorance.

Indeed. 

There's no statute of limitations on plagiarism here, and it's not like it was all that long ago anyway.  Some of the arguments I hear in ban appeal threads make me think a lot of these bounty spammers are young and have very little life experience.

You didn't want to plagiarize, but since all your friends on the shitposting bounty farm are doing it I suppose there was tremendous peer pressure and you felt you had to. 

You must have read a few of these types of threads in Meta before and you've got to realize how ineffective apologies like this are.  Your career is over, dude.

Which they would be sure to do.  They mutate and adapt faster than any virus known to man.

I don't know how anyone who's not a bounty spammer can find threads actually worthy of discussion without having the following sections on ignore:

Altcoin Discussion
Announcements (Altcoins)
Tokens (Altcoins)
Mining (Altcoins)
Pools (Altcoins)
Marketplace (Altcoins)
Service Announcements (Altcoins)
Service Discussion (Altcoins)
Bounties (Altcoins)
Speculation (Altcoins)

If I didn't block those, my unread posts feed would be clogged with all of the moronic BS that the above sections spit out on a second-by-second basis.  These sections IMO represent the worst of the worst here on bitcointalk, and sadly there are quite a few runner ups for that ignominious crown.

Edit:
OK, maybe I was a little over-broad in my statement about who finds that stuff interesting, but even if you just want legit discussions about altcoins, you have to sift through the morass of spam topics to find one worthy of posting in.

The funny thing about discussions like this is that these corporations don't want bitcoin.  They want fiat, and even when businesses accept bitcoin, the payment processor converts the bitcoin to fiat before the merchant ever receives it. 

Why should Apple care one iota about taking bitcoin as payment for their products & services?  It might be a convenience to a fraction of their customer base, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to affect Apple's business to any appreciable extent.  Sure, I'd like to see it happen--but only because I'd like to see bitcoin be more widely adopted.

Apple computers got me through college, but I switched to other PCs for home computing and Samsung for smartphoning quite a while ago.  What Apple does or doesn't do doesn't concern me in the least.

Oh. In my defense, I just woke up from a nap and haven't yet consumed the cold cup of coffee that was sitting there next to me whilst napping.  That's the best excuse I can come up with, and it will have to do.

It's not intimidation so much as manipulation, and I doubt he's got anyone "off-guard".  Mods themselves don't catch all the forum violations--they rely on the community to report them, and instances of plagiarism (for example) can go unnoticed for a long time before someone finally realizes what happened.

The time between offense and punishment is irrelevant.  First thing that came to mind was the John List case, a guy who got arrested like 18 years after he killed his whole family and then went on the run.  Do you think he used the excuse in trial that "Gee, this happened years ago.  Where were all the cops in all that time?"?  No, I don't think so.

The Independent writes things because they're in the business of scribbling--and that doesn't mean anything they write is true or verified, or even reasonable. 

I figured bitcoin would break out of the narrow range it was trading in eventually; I just didn't know which way it would break.  I had my hopes up that it would take off in a more vertical direction, but hey--markets surprise me all the time.  This is probably just a temporary shake out of weak-handed investors, and we'll see a recovery in a month or so. 

It's a 10% movement.  This is bitcoin.  Get used to shit like this happening.  If you don't have the stomach for this kind of volatility, maybe you should collect stamps or something.

I have a feeling I know what you're talking about, OP, but it would be best if you could explain your question/opinion in greater detail.

And yeah, this forum is like no other.  On other forums, people usually respond to other members' posts in a sort of dialogue.  Here, there are just a lot of statements being made, and they're more often than not incoherent, unhelpful, zero-value garbage.  If you don't know what a signature campaign is yet, educate yourself about them, because they're responsible for the way the forum is.

I'm no economist, but I don't believe that statement is true.  Yes, bitcoin is limited in number, but that's no guarantee whatsoever that it's going to keep increasing in price.  Hell, the purchasing power of the bitcoin I own has decreased by about 10% since last week, and I think altcoins have suffered even more.

The comparison of bitcoin with gold has been discussed to death already.  They're two very different things, and their markets behave very differently.  At this point gold is a commodity, not a currency (though it used to be one), whereas bitcoin is a weird hybrid of a currency and an investment--and it's that investment aspect of it that keeps it from being stable like a true currency should be.

Yes indeed it would be cool if that was true.  I agree fiat will keep losing value, but I don't agree that bitcoin will keep gaining value.

Well DarkStar_'s explanation was that this is a matter for the mods to take care of and not DT--and in fact DarkStar_ was one of the members who reported Rambotnic's post to begin with and I assume he thought it was plagiarism.  As I said, while still respecting DarkStar_, I have to disagree with his actions here.  I agree that moderators should have dealt with the report differently than the way they did, but sometimes mods fail to act or make mistakes.

Aside from the plagiarism issue, I can't get past my feeling that Rambotnic is a member who contributes nothing.  He think's he's helpful, but I see his posts as giant walls of nonsense.  Not slinging any mud here, but I'm also wondering why cryptohunter is defending Rambotnic so vigorously.  The neg I left him was appropriately given and the forum would be a much better place without members like him.  DarkStar_ already left a counter positive, so I don't know why this is still being discussed.

All those accounts have been tagged, though I tagged one that Lauda had and that I didn't. 

Point taken, but in this case I believe the evidence presented.

I'm not one of the bolded ones, so I guess I won't get the special treatment from Thule.  If said treatment included informing my coworkers that I did something naughty or out of line on the internet, well...let me just tell you I work in a place where no one got their job by being an angel.  They may hang up on you or may listen for a few seconds (or as long as it takes the amusement to become old) before hanging up on you. Either way you'll discover that my coworkers, and my boss, won't give two shits about some random internet person spouting nonsense about a fellow employee.   

I couldn't care less if I got doxxed here, as long as my SS# wasn't included, or banking info or the like.  It wouldn't be hard to do anyway, but everything I've heard so far is a bunch of empty threats by a bloated gas bag with a grudge against scam-busters.

He's a piece of excrement, as is 4x4et.  Eventually they'll give up and go away.

OMG, looking through the original account's (macartem) posts, it's obvious he was a chronic and blatant shitposter who contributed nothing to bitcointalk except wasting the time of anyone who actually read any of his posts.  Now I don't know if this is a ban for plagiarism or not, but I'm hoping it's permanent.  The forum needs to be purged of members like this.

Yeah well, we'll see what happens when a mod shows up or someone else with evidence of that.  Seems like every plagiarizer makes a similar statement about how they never copy/pasted anything and don't understand how they could have been banned.

Aside from the atrocious grammar, your emotional appeal isn't going to do you any favors--and since I did look through your posts I'm coming to a very different conclusion about how useful you tried to be.  Perhaps for yourself though bounties, but certainly not useful to anyone else here.

What stock market crash are you talking about?  Certainly the US markets haven't crashed--the Dow is still above 25,000 and the NASDAQ is at 7259 as I write this.  Those levels are as high as I've seen them since I started my career as a stock market junkie in 1998.  Yes, there has been a bit of a dip, but there's hardly been a crash.

I agree with both of those thoughts.  If you think this is just a temporary dip, it could be a very good buying opportunity.  But you're absolutely right, it is certainly possible that bitcoin (and altcoins) could go even lower.  Nobody knows.  On the other hand, I don't think this is anything to worry much about.  Bitcoin has a long history of being extremely volatile and of 10% (or more) drops in very short periods of time.  There hasn't been any bad news that's come out which would suggest that bitcoin is going to fall even further, so I'm of the opinion that this represents a better price to get into bitcoin at. 

Oh come on.  I don't think many bitcoin investors actually want the price to be stable.  The more stable it gets, the harder it gets to make money from it. 

Also, you say you're alarmed, which makes me think you haven't been around crypto all that long.  This sort of crap happens a lot--it just hasn't happened in a few months. 

And as for the "guilty" parties, they'll never be known and shouldn't be blamed anyway.  This is how the free market works.

So you've had an account registered here in 2013 and you're not familiar with the difference between forum rules and the trust system?  Are you the original owner of this account?

In any case, the only good way to link bounty/campaign abusers is with blockchain evidence.  People claim all sorts of things in situations like this--that there are groups of (as you call them) "crypto enthusiasts" working together, that they're friends, relatives, you name it.  The problem is that this forum is being overrun with members who think bitcointalk is a place of employment and many of them aren't content to participate in just one bounty and have figured out that if you create dozens/hundreds/thousands of accounts, you can make a hell of a lot more money.  Such members are the metastatic cancer of bitcointalk, and you've been identified as a malignant tumor by a DT member.

That's what I was trying to get across, just a little less abrasively.  Spot-on, though.

Seems like a member who's been here since 2013 would know the difference.  It really doesn't take that long to figure it out.

In general I think you're correct, but I have a feeling that some people just getting interested in crypto right now may not have the knowledge/experience to tell the difference between the two, as silly as that sounds.  But whether that's true or not, I don't think it has anything to do with the bitcoin price drop that just happened.  I tend to think it's just normal volatility and that looking for explanations is a waste of mental energy.

The "average" crypto speculator not understanding the difference between BTC and BCH?  No, I don't think so.  As I wrote above, this might be a problem for complete noobs in the market, but not anyone who's been in the crypto space for more than a few months at most.

See, that's the smart attitude to have and the best thing to do when bitcoin drops something like 10% in a day.  Unless there was some seriously bad news accompanying the drop, it's usually a good buying opportunity.

I don't know if you missed this thread, but there's a kerfuffle about some negative feedback I'd left him for plagiarism.  So great was the controversy that DarkStar_, who I respect greatly, even left Rambotnic a positive to counter my negative.  But hey, that's not the first time I've disagreed with members I respect, and I'm sure it won't be the last.  

I'm not sure why cryptohunter is defending Rambotnic so strenuously, because even if it could be argued that what Rambotnic did wasn't plagiarism, he's still a complete garbage shitposter.  I don't know cryptohunter very well, but I respect that he has his own opinion too.  

This is a perfect example of why I think Rambotnic is just a shitposter aside from the plagiarism issue.  

Edit:
That's a bit of a straw man argument.  I consider you to be a shitposter--and you can feel as sorry for me as you like.  Makes no difference to me.

Ummm....no.  This wouldn't work for several reasons I can think of and probably many more that I can't think of.  "Trusted members" are sometimes not the best posters, and some aren't even active anymore.  DT members aren't an organized group and some of them don't even get along with each other, much less have the same opinions on what good posts are--and some DT members don't even write interesting posts themselves. 

Neither merit sources nor DT members get paid for being either one of those things.  Frankly as a merit source and a DT member, I'm not willing to do any more work to help the forum improve when Theymos won't implement some of the really good suggestions that wouldn't require more work for people like the above who don't get paid, nor for staff members who do get paid.

In my brutally honest opinion, OP hasn't been around here long enough to realize how unrealistic his proposal sounds.

IMO, it's not unreasonable at all and I do this myself--especially if the post I'm about to give merit to was written by a low-ranked account.  sMerits aren't exactly scarce, but I don't want to waste what I have on plagiarized posts.  I've been saved from giving merits to plagiarists simply because I took about 30 seconds to google-check the post I was about to give a merit to--and that's happened not once, but several times.

I think those suggestions are a bit too extreme, and I highly doubt Theymos would go for them.  The real solution should come in the form of rules laid out for bounty managers and those who participate in them.  It's been discussed to death, but Theymos is slow with implementing forum changes and I think he wants to see how the merit system and the new changes he's made to it work before trying other things.  That's just my guess, however.