How could you not understand that you're being sucked up to for merits by now by people who have never actually bought bitcoin and never intend on it. You've been doing it for years. Others see you meriting suck-up shitposts, and that encourages them to also suck up to you. Its a vicious cycle. You're basically enabling the next generation of beggars,
encouraging them to perfect the art of ass kissing instead of learn anything else whatsoever. Do you have zero introspective ability?
This is the entire reason they are here, is because you merited this post, which was a response to you:
You brought up a great point and I agree...
...I also liked how you mentioned the importance of flexibility in making decisions....
The other stuff they write is just a regurgitation of what you've already written a hundred times. They write it because they know its in alignment with your own beliefs, not because they actually believe it.
I can conclude that JJG likes to being ass-kissed. Who would have thought that our gay dancer avatar is into that stuff...

We have been married all of these years, and that is how you feel about me?
Don't try to get me kiss your ass, too

No problem. Let's play hardball, then.
But seriously, I think all your points are valid. While JJG is free to spend his merits as he likes, he also gives a lot to beggars and by that is breeding an ever new generation of merit farmers who only write to please him.
Maybe the merit source needs to rotate, then? Theymos?
I cannot imagine that he hasn't understood that yet. I think he is rather working on increasing the number of active users on this forum, whose design, to be honest, is not too appealing to newcomers... I have actually friends who wouldn't read the WO because of the old design that doesn't work well on smartphones...
I write quite a bit too.., and I don't merely send smerits to members who agree with me.. but it is helpful if they back up their points.. but yeah there are likely some members who are not writing with their own brain and maybe some of them have programmed bots to help them... I probably need a bot to help me to read through so many post to attempt to figure out if they are really people behind the accounts or not.
Cmon JJG, I'm sure you know better which accounts are only fishing for merits than you want to make us believe.
You want to second guess my smerit sending too? Do you think it is just one slick little package of smerits, and easy peasy to send them out in the way that I do as well as other things that I do in relation to the forum, with postings and interactions?
I have no need to defend my position or my behaviors, even if you (and nutildah and perhaps some other merit whiners) believe that you could send out smerits better or that you (and nutildah) believe that you could judge merit worthiness better than me... remember there are subjective and objective standards to smerit sending, yet the forum does not outline such standards as in the imagination of you, nutildah and other merit whiners.
In some sense, you are suggesting that I might be acting in bad faith in the way that I am, have been, and intend to send smerits, to the extent that my source does not dry up, and if that is the case, then you can report my behavior since if you believe that I am somehow being abusive of the smerit system and other related matters on the forum (like
quid pro quo) in regards to smerits then that would be a violation of the rules..
Actually, neither you nor nutildah (and perhaps some other members who want to whine about how some members, including yours truly send smerits) seem to accept that I can do whatever the fuck I want in regards to the sending smerits, as long as I am not breaking forum rules in regards to getting paid or some other potentially unwritten rule that might relate to some kind of way that I might be acting in bad faith. In other words, you, nutildah and any of the other whiners about smerits are trying to create rules that do not exist.. your own standards to reform the smerit system, and perhaps you should solicit theymos about that. Surely, you also seem to want to proclaim that I am in breach of some kind of an imaginary bullshit standard that you (or nutildah) imagines to be in existence, as if you have all the solutions to balance out the ways that smerits are currently spent on the forum. Cry harder.
And even if you didn't knew better which accounts are farming than why not just wait a little longer before you throw your merits towards them...
Oh? Maybe you are suggesting that my smerit sending system (to the extent that any system exists) should be better employed within certain hours of work and guidelines? and you want me to keep track of newbie members in a better way so that I can filter out the ones who do not deserve smerits in accordance with some vision that you expect me to share with you, nutildah and the other merit whiners? Will I start making a list of posts or members "to get back to" at a later date? and what system do you expect that I should follow to come to better judgement about the deserving and the undeserving?
Apparently, you have some clues about what I am doing and/or not doing.. and how it should produce better results, right?" and how do you know these kinds of things? You look at the posts and you imagine something out of your asses, and since the posts that I merited are not seeming up to standard, and/or there is something about the member that needs to be sorted out at the smerit sending level, and then you see that I have given merits to some folks who you believe to be engaged in questionable activities, supposedly merit farming. Maybe each time before I hit the send button on smerits, I should ask myself "what would nutildah
** do?"
**or substitute Gachapin or some other merit whiner in here.By the way, an overwhelming majority of members who receive merits from me get their 1 smerit at a time, and rarely do I give more than 1 smerit to newbies, and then maybe some of these undeserving merit receivers are able to kiss my ass all day long so then by the end of the day, they might get 3-5 smerits in a whole day. I doubt that there are very many forum members (newbies or otherwise) who I am consistently giving 3-5 smerits a day or even coming close to the 30 day smerit cap of 50 smerits. Actually I am pretty sure that there has only been a couple of forum members (who I can remember) in which I hit the 30 day smerit limit cap of 50 smerits in a 30 day period. . and they weren't newbie members.
Let them make a few quality post before giving them merits or so.
Your little fantasy sounds good in theory... but in real world practice, I am not asking for suggestions as to when to first send any members smerits .. or how to screen them in better ways.. There might be some instances from time to time that I will see other forum members comment negatively about a newbie or that I will recognize some questionable pattern of posts, but I am not going to concede that there is any need for me, whatsoever, to have to follow some kind of pie in the sky standard that you (or nutildah or some other merit whiner) consider(s) to be a "more acceptable" way of going about sending smerits.. blah blah blah.
Basically your call for Theymos makes more sense with regard to the merit system in general, the forum design and the financing of it (the 5k BTC surely haven't been used for that)
I mentioned theymos since he seems to be the one making calls about who is a merit source and how many smerits they have in their source and those kinds of calls, even though surely it is possible to report members too.
I have no idea if there are any merit system changes pending, even though within the past month or two, I saw some threads that were describing some recent changes that had taken place with some source members being added and some other source members being removed... so I am not sure if theymos has any plans to make changes to my situation, and surely if some members report me and/or my situation, then theymos could take those reports of other members into account in regards to if he might be considering making some changes to my current situation in regards to how many source merits I have and/or even if I remain a source member... Surely, if he was concerned about the matter he could either reduce my smerits or he could remove me from such status.
I am not well versed in the technical side of things, yet, I am sure there are some projects which holds promise.
Maybe I am wrong, enlighten me.
You don't need technicality to distinguish shit... from real (BTC).
If you need somewhere to shill shit, use their forum.
That is a reasonable framework.
In essence, consider all shitcoins to be scams that have a burden to show evidence and logic that they are worthy of any attention, and the fact of the matter, if they were to take market share from bitcoin, they would need to be at least 10x better than bitcoin... so it is a bit of a difficult standard to meet, even though many folks want to get sucked into fucking around with shitcoins as if they had some kind of meaning, beyond merely being pump and dumps ways for insiders to print money to their benefit and off the backs of the gullible folks buying into their various nonsensical talking points..
Sorry JJG, but I have no time right now to read your long text. Probably later. Just saw you posing many questions.
If you were to want to get more active users to the Forum you are probably doing the right job with regard to your merits spending!!
However: I personally think there are better ways than to attract farmers who are not here for Bitcoin talk.
But that's Theymos' problem and a question about the merit system in general, nothing you can solve. So I think you are doing what you can to increase active users ... if that'd be your objective.
If you think in hindsight that you merited some bad accounts, my proposal was to wait and watch a bit longer before you send merits to newer account. It might increase the chance that you merit quality accounts only.
I had the feeling that you are able to differentiate between good and bad accounts even more than you admitted