Quote from: Helena Yu on October 22, 2023, 12:46:41 PM

If theymos not agree with merit selling, I don't think he will agree to legalize it.

Quote from: theymos on October 21, 2018, 02:28:55 PM

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

theymos knows there will be dark markets for merit but he does not feel big problems with merit sales.

It is not good but not like a thing will destroy Bitcointalk and abuse can be handled by demerit or take the merit source position back.

Quote from: theymos topic=link=3377342.msg35493406#msg35493406 date=1524591411

The current status quo seems OK. If you have to pay $20 per merit plus a risk of getting red trust, then that's a situation that doesn't concern me at all. I'm not going to lose sleep over people going to ridiculous lengths to buy merit, since only a small number of people will be willing and able to do that.

As long as merit sales are a black market, I'm happy, since that makes it far more difficult and expensive to buy merit. If that's the case, then the small volume of black-market merit trades don't themselves bother me much, and I think that it does more harm than good to get too witch-hunty about it.

Quote from: theymos on February 05, 2019, 10:46:22 PM

Quote from: suchmoon on February 05, 2019, 07:11:31 PM

Is stingers still a merit source?

Not anymore. That's clear abuse, awarding merit for political reasons rather than any idea of quality. Only because he was a source, I effectively undid those merit sends. If he had not been a merit source, I still would've blacklisted anyone who got into DT1 through that type of shenanigans.

I hadn't read into the thread deeply enough to see that stuff. Those are better arguments against the trustworthiness of H8bussesNbicycles & co., but note that the current negative-trust-ratings were sent long before that. Before February, the thread looks like politics to me.