One day we're going to wake up and the forum will be 99% bot accounts and copy and pasters. Anything else can just be considered for development on the new forum if it hasn't already.
We aren't too far from that stage. I literally have to search for non-spammy topics and boards in order to join some relevant discussions. I don't even remember the last time I posted in the Bitcoin Discussion section.
I know. It gets worse every time I go in that board. Even threads that are created about something worthwhile quickly get spammed by Junior Members writing their generic one/two liners often just replying to whatever question is asked in the title. Even worse is that when you see a constructive comment written it's often a copy and paste from somewhere else online or some other user in that thread.
How about we remove the default merits completely and everyone starts from ground zero? That would really sort the wheat from the chaff and stop all the whingers about it not being fair.
That's one way to go about it but after being on the forum for all these years and finally hitting the legendary is some sort of achievement. And if asked to start from the scratch again, I don't think I'll have the time or energy to do so. I mean it would be demotivating for people like me who have worked their way up starting from the base.
People could go back and merit all the posts that are deserving. I know there will be hundreds of my posts that deserved merit that were made before the introduction of the merit system. I think we should concentrate on the newer users that are signing up here just to claim bounties and sig spam etc though.
The safest bet is to make a totally proprietary one. The more obscure, the better. But not text or numbers. Use pictures.
I've suggest that some of the potential money brought in from something like more donator ranks or ad slots could be used to fund the development of new projects such as a decentralised forum and a better captcha service. Do you have any suggestions for a more efficient one? If a foolproof one could be created wouldn't it have been by now?