I've just been looking through the Index there, and all is see is bounty, merit, bounty, air drop, merit and bounty.
I'd like to award some merit to Bitcoin newbies, but I don't know where to find them.
It is slightly messy in there, to put it mildly. It's almost worth considering a dedicated bounty subforum where activity isn't accumulated and the +Merit button is disabled outright. Really send the message that such talk isn't considered valuable to the overall health of the forum, it shouldn't be the primary reason people are looking to register an account here and, most of all, get the newbie forum back on track with its intended purpose. Bounty is currently listed as part of the "Project Development" board, but I'd rather see it as a separate thing.
Airdrop topics can simply be moved to altcoins, that's not much of an issue.
Not sure what to do about all the merit discussion. It's clearly getting tedious for anyone who's been on the board for more than a week. It seems excessive to prevent discussion with a rule, but it would also make a mess to move every pointless merit thread into Meta. I think all we can really do is dissuade merit discussion rather than disallow it completely. Perhaps Lauda could update their
guide with a tip strongly encouraging newbies to look at existing threads where someone has almost certainly already asked the same question, rather than starting yet another new thread about merit.