Sure, your milage may vary, yet I have concluded that I am being more than fair to the drama queen dweeb, aka nutildah... at least in regards to the way that he has been ongoingly proclaiming (or at least strongly suggesting) that I have not been engaging in enough due diligence (or whatever he might be prescribing in terms of how he diagnoses that merit sources like me are the problem)..   It seems to me that he does not come even close to having enough information to be coming to those conclusions absence his seeming ongoing purposeful choices to spin matters in disingenuine ways to suggest that it should obvious how merit sources should be spending their source smerits or engaging in due diligence, etc etc etc.. which are not rule nor current standards of the forum.


Sure. I don't have any problem conceding that Nutildah seems to have some good characteristics, and likely he has contributed positively to the forum in a variety of ways, yet his good contributions do not take away from his various devolving into the pettiness of a out-of-touch control freakishness, who seems to be conniving the merit system into something other than what it actually is.

So, yeah, all fine and dandy that you have been watching that dweeb twat (potentially his good behavior angles) for 2-ish years, and maybe you don't even recall several years ago when he went whining off and rage quit because admins did not agree with his pumping some scam bullshit related to ICOs or JPEGs or whatever (or maybe he was merely whining because his thread got moved?), I cannot recall the exact details, but Nutildah was ongoingly whining about it like a little princesa baby for a decent amount of time,. but then later (perhaps less than a year of whining and mostly abstinence) he decided to come back and tolerate us lesser beings.


I am not necessarily denying that there is NOT legitimacy to his concerns about account farmers and several of their tactics to generate income with the use of fake accounts.


Do you think that I have some obligation to rebutt him in some kind of a substantive way to win the battle?  I have no such obligation to get the argument exactly right when the ramifications of what he is proclaiming is that I have some obligations that I do not have... I do not have to report how or why I am sending smerits and I do not have to explain the extent to which I may or may not be engaging in any due diligence prior to sending smerits, as he seems to ongoingly imply such obligations exists with me and/or with other merit sources.

Do you also believe that there is a reporting obligation for merit sources or that I need to explain myself?

I think that currently, as the forum rules stand, anyone concerned about the merit sending of source members, they have a burden to show that accused merit source member is either purposeful in violating some quid pro quo rule, or grossly negligent in the ways that they are sending smerits that may be amounting to something like quid pro quo..  and perhaps they might even have to show that there is some quid pro quo going on or some other forum rule is being broken in the ways that they are sending their source merits.  

I should not even have to argue these points.. yet Nutildah, and perhaps several of his sympathizers who have been attracted to his ideas about smerit sending standards that do not exist have been lulled into the idea that there are forum smerit sending standards for source members that currently do not exist.  

So perhaps part of his problem (and perhaps yours too?), is that you would like some reporting or some proclamation from me that I will try harder to be a better forum member or a better merit source member or blah blah blah.. and I am not going to say those things to make guys who are expecting such to get their way to suggest that there is some additional standards (such as reporting standards or declarations that I am a good guy, blah blah blah) that actually do not exist.

Sure maybe I am being a bit repetitive and perhaps I am being a bit contradictory sometimes in terms of sometimes agreeing to characterize some of the efforts that I might have had made historically in some cases to identify some non-humans or whatever might be some of the qualifications that I might consider that the posters need to have for me to decide to send them or to not send them an smerit or two for whatever post that I had determined to be worthy of an smerit or two.


He can proclaim that there is a merit sending standard for source members that goes beyond quid pro quo, but there is not.

He can proclaim that "sucker-uppers" get more smerits from some source members like me, and so fucking what?  I am supposed to declare that I am going to try harder to not be sucked up to?  or what?  What does he (or you?) expect me to declare?

By the way, I will suggest that I am not purposefully sending smerits to "sucker-uppers," even if there might appear to be a pattern in which "sucker-uppers" are receiving more rewards than the non sucker-uppers, and maybe I end up sending some smerits, from time to time to members I agree with rather than ones that I don't agree with.  Again?  So what? You and Nutildah and perhaps some others believe that I have some duty to screen out the sucker-uppers moar better?

It seems to me that sometimes I will send smerits to members I don't agree with if they made their points well and/or they brought up some angle that I find interesting or merit worthy.. or maybe they supported their position well.. yet at the same time, sure, I will admit that I tend to be more sympathetic to posts that I believe are making good points that I agree with rather than the ones that are making points that I find disagreeable to my own views.

I am not claiming to being immured to suck ups, even though I am not going to admit to meriting them merely for sucking up to me, which Nutildah implies to be happening whether I am conscious of it or not .. and still from my perspective that is a big so fucking what point.  I don't have to justify the extent to which I am engaging in the kinds of steps that he (or you?) would like to see me perform prior to sending any smerits.

Does Nutildah (or you?) want me to argue that my sending of smerits is not a form of quid pro quo or that I am not otherwise in breach of some other forum rules or perhaps that I am not in breach of the preferences of theymos?   I don't have any such reporting obligation or need to argue my innocence, and sure, if there might be evidence or reasonable inference (or other reasons) then maybe he (or you, or some other forum member) should report me to admins... so that my merit source can be considered for removal and/or reduction or rotated to some other members who would do it better, or whatever other actions (punishments) might be deemed to be fitting to the situation or my unwillingness to cooperate and to proclaim that I will try to follow some rules that I consider to not exist... but hey, maybe I am blind?  Perhaps?

I am not proclaiming to know the solution in regards to the various identified problems (to the extent to which there might be possibilities that the problems are separate from my own sending of smerits on a mostly every day basis), yet at the same time, I am not going to proclaim that I will try harder or to assert that maybe I had gotten "sucked up" to too much by this account or that account or that some fakety forum members (who are not really people or who are farm account) had gotten me to send them a bunch of smerits and to give them credibility that they otherwise would have had not been able to get (so easy-peasy) in one case versus another case that Nutildah (or you or some other "concerned" forum member) might want to point out to show how I am "ruining the whole forum" with through my own efforts (and setting a bad example too.. hahahahaha.. yeah.. no one should be like me.. I am ruining the forum).

Yeah, I recognize that there are a lot of shitty accounts that are posting shitty information, and sometimes I end up sending some of them smerits, yet I doubt that I am purposefully sending smerits to bots, fake people or whatever, yet surely sometimes I will notice and then stop sending merits to certain accounts based on my suspicions about them, and yeah, I might not even remember that I had some account on my no smerits list (to the extent I have a list) and so I might forget too, or I might accidentally send smerits to certain accounts that I might not have had sent smerits under other circumstances.

I am not saying that I need to change anything that I do, even though I have my own circumstances and sometimes my circumstances change, even though I do spend quite a bit of time reading various posts - mostly on a daily basis and writing too, as you likely have noticed.


Sure.  Fair enough.  These kinds of annoying behaviors surely exist and they are not merit worthy, yet they can get by anyone, either consciously or sub-consciously.


I will try to take a look at that later... It looks like it has a lot of good points, and of course, you tend to back up your points fairly well, so many of us can learn from your topics and your posts... .. even though so far it is appearing that I don't agree with a lot of your points, so far in this particular post.. hahahahaha


Yep.. I tend to send merits to those other submission of "art" threads, even some of the submissions are not very good..


That sounds complicated.  Even overly complicated in terms of potentially creating other unintended consequences.


The underlying idea is not bad, which seems to be the rewarding of meaningful and substantive posts, yet I doubt that theymos wants to get in the business of centralizing the determination of what is substantive and/or meaningful.. so perhaps in that sense we are still left with substantive and/or meaningful being determined by the crowds, which has a lot of messiness in it and some shitty posters (and perhaps shitty people and/or bots) might make it through to the other end of the process and appear to be people when they are really some fake ass shit that merely figured out an algorithm to get merited or otherwise determined as human, when it is not..


We likely realize that signature campaign managers have some responsibilities too, but yeah, they might be fooled within the same criteria that they may or may not have in place.  These overall forum policies and practices are not necessarily something in my area of interest, even though sure, my own forum participation is affected by these kinds of matters and surely sometimes I do end up chiming in and/or participating in threads (or posts or threads of ideas within other threads) that touch upon such topics.

In other word, I try to spend more of my time participating in bitcoin-related topics rather than forum administration and/or meta topics. My own personal preference, even though I get dragged into and sometimes even might become part of the topic of some potential administrative and/or meta matters.


It could be annoying for theymos to be witnessing himself quoted so much, since I think that sometimes he might end up being read too literally and he may well not want to necessarily be pinned down in certain ways.. but yeah, he likely realizes that he cannot really escape being quoted in a variety of ways. I have quoted him and even channeled him a fair number of times, whether he appreciates it or not.. hahahahaha

By the way, some of his words are the best sources of authority in regards to the forum's policy and/or stance on various topics, so he does tend to be a pretty damned good source, to the extent any of us might be trying to figure out the general forum's tendencies or rules on any given topic, whether concerning policies around merit source member merit sending practices or other forum rules, to the extent that there are any rules or any preferences in regards to rules that may or may not exist.. Who else you going to cite in terms of final authority in terms of something may or may not be done in regards to some concern that members might have regarding some system that is in place, whether referring to the merit system or otherwise?


There may be attempts for the forum to be decentralized, yet it still exists in a centralized world.. so balances likely are made and sometimes have to be made in order to attempt to account for our real world, even if there might be aspirations for hands off.


Sure.  You are correct that my signature is a bit confusing.. since I am mostly protesting the rhetoric - and at the same time, I understand that it could end up being misread... For years, I had also been thinking about whether I should change it.. to be less ambiguous.