I think that's unfair JJG...

Maybe it's a reading comprehension thing, or a personality thing, but I've never thought of nutildah in the way that you've described above (and I've kept track of this dispute for ~two years).

I think he's just genuinely annoyed by how the forum has many "soft spots" that account farmers seem to rely on. As in, he has no real interest in being a "merit czar" or in trying to control anyone (which is the angle that you always seem to focus on), and it's more the case that he's trying to caution against the long-term effects of certain merit-sending habits that he's noticed. I think it especially annoys him when there are working merit-acquisition strategies that rely on ingratiation. (Lol, that link leads to what just might be the "best" Bitcointalk ranking-up cheat sheet that I've ever seen.)

I still think that the ideas I left in this topic are worth very careful consideration. A lot of this stuff would become less of an issue if the merit earned by formulaically hitting up all of the forum's "soft spots" (as in, carving pumpkins, and making pizzas, and baking pies, and sucking up to merit sources, and so on) was automatically "undone" by the routine shitposting that most accounts seem to engage in after they've achieved their desired rank. For example, it would be less abusable that NotATether is willing to give accounts 14 merits for running (or pretending to run) a node for 14 days, because 140 posts later (ignoring my refinements to the whole "carry" idea, and assuming some things for the sake of example) those 14 merits would no longer have any rank-wise effect (and if someone participated with the additional goal of being able to send 7 merits to an alt account, then in 70 posts by that account that merit would be "undone", and so on). It would be as if the forum is saying, "It's fine if some amount of your merit is earned in ways that have nothing to do with you writing posts that are worth reading, but, if you're going to post a lot and you also care about keeping or growing your rank, then you'll need to step out of the kiddies pool at some point and actually start making interesting/meaningful/compelling/earnest contributions semi-regularly." (And I really struggle to appreciate the opposing view, which, in my mind at least, goes something like, "No. It's completely fine for people to achieve their rank non-organically and then join a signature campaign and crank out thousands of unappreciated posts. If you throw a wrench into the works of that machinery, you'll ruin Bitcointalk.")

Haha. I mean, you kid, but, if I were theymos, I'd honestly be annoyed by people quoting me all the time and (effectively) using my previous thinking to encourage others not to re-evaluate things and arrive at independent conclusions expressed in original ways. Much better than being agreed with is to be understood (and an indication that an idea has properly taken root and can survive on its own value is when expressions of that idea start popping up and being defended without reference to any person).

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This is neither here nor there, but, while I'm writing to you I may as well point out something that's been bugging me. Your personal text reads: 'Self-Custody is a right. Say no to "non-custodial"'. That sounds odd to my ear. To me, a non-custodial wallet is one that gives total custody/control of the private key(s) to the user (whereas one that either has taken or is able to take custody of a user's BTC would be a "custodial" wallet). So, at least according to my interpretation of your personal text, you should be saying yes to "non-custodial". (I mean, I'm guessing that your rationale has something to do with resisting the terminology, but I'm not sure at the wisdom of potentially confusing newbies into thinking that a "non-custodial" wallet is something to be avoided.)