Mark,

One other facet to this... would you feel the same if the putm was taken away from the sysops? i.e. would you pay to carry out your sysop duties?

FWIW, I don't think that only the MVPs and sysops deserve free putm. I think that anyone that has a high enough post rate of correct answers to other's questions ought to have a free flag. It benefits the UT far more than it costs.

>The SysOps have been privately discussing the current state of affairs regarding MVPs, PUTM, Blue Envelopes, etc., that have been overly [IMHO] consuming bandwidth here lately. Some things are confidential, but other points can be summarized, and hopefully, put this to rest.