Bitcoin Forum

I've noticed that i now all of a sudden have a "Merit" score of 500. What is this going to be for?

Does this have anything to do with the new proposals to combat spam?

EDIT: SEE https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0



Edit: I also discovered that there is now a "Patrol" link which you can choose to enable under Forum Profile Information.

I have just discovered the same myself and I was about to put  the same question. Did anyone find a post where this new feature is explained?

i don't think there's a thread explaining it yet. not sure if it's fully implemented either. it seems like our current merit rankings correspond with our activity rankings (legendary, hero, and so on).

this is the only explanation i've seen:


this could be related:

This is going to be interesting. But I see it as complicated and I doubt it will address the issues this forum has.

lauda has 1000 merit ::) ::) ::)
Thaymos  1000 merit

why satoshi has only 250 merit?

Partrol isnt new, I have been using it for ages.

363 activity, thus senior member.
Motion to give satoshi 21M merit.

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So far, it seems all legendaries have 1000 merit, all heros have 500 merit, senior members 250, full members 100, members are at 10, newbies at 0.

OP, your post is:

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It will be interesting to see how these points will be awarded, not that I'm too fond of the idea.

Does this mean now that merits are being used in attaining new rank level, there's a possibility of someone loosing or falling from a rank if they get demerits?

and I am now wondering why my account rankings dropped due to the presence of merit, some explain why this?

Correct you are in having JR Member ranks ending.  Any reason or publication to this?  Definitely don't agree with this but I will just keep posting and reading.  It will screw up the airdrop I was apart of as I had to be a JR Member on here.

This idea isn't so bad after all, if losing merit points can lead to losing a rank, that's going to, pretty much, make bought accounts obsolete. Basically if someone was to buy a Hero member or even legendary rank account, he might not be able to maintain the merit score and therefore lose the high rank, am I right?

btw who can give out these merits? Only mods or maybe even higher ranks as well?


That would make buying high rank accounts useless in the longer run.


EDIT: I've just noticed the "+ merit" option on the right side.

There is a new +Merit button besides the quote button.
Leading to a new page that reads:

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(Merited Lauda for testing.)

I think it is similar to likes /claps/feedback  by other members who think the post is useful to other members  
and may be merit points are transferred between the members (and i guess they can be used sort of currency on forum )

https://i.imgur.com/IpUkkyg.png


Edit: NVM ,I have understood

Yeh i was Jr Member and with 56 activity just needed 4 more and now im back to a newbie :(
I Got demoted so how do I get Merit Now?

Seems like Jr member got removed completely as well.

Oh I see now you have to make quality post so people can gift you Merit.
Thats a nice system tbh, do you only recieve merit when u are a member+ as well?

Hmmm Junior member is back now it seems  ;D

My next question is: Who are all the sources of merit?

Seems to give the option to merit my own posts
strange?

That's true, but the way I see it, it can create a black market of 'merit trading' lie in many other forums where your rank is determined by the amounts of likes you get. Hopefully there will be a smart engine that will prevent abusing it, but I'm a bit skeptical about that.

If you try, you will get the following:

The OP now has 506 merit points. Tyrantt has given him an extra 5 while testing the new system out.

https://i.imgur.com/6s6Ng3J.png

I just sent the OP one merit point. Unfortunately it says I only have one merit point to send, so I've run out now. Members must only get one spendable merit point for each 30 days.

I would like to know whether this system of merit can further influence campaigns beyond classification is it necessary a certain amount of merit? Does anyone have this information?

I've just been merited by a Full member, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=926641, i'm guessing anyone that currently has merits is some sort of source, which presumably is going to be able to give less merit the less his total merit score is?

Edit: see OP, members can give merit aswell.



So, normal members have 1 sMerit?

363 activity, thus senior member.
Motion to give satoshi 21M merit.
[/quote]

I'll back you up on that one. I give you a +Merit.

Of course it can. Instead of ranks, use *minimum merit* campaigns. You can make *very elite* campaigns by asking for extremely high merit counts.

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It would be nice to see someone chart this into a ranking and some graphical data (quantiles or something).

i didn't yet all understood about this new merit system but if there are vote who can bring reward then it will draw more multi accounters than usual for grab reward

Possibly related to my copper membership, or maybe DT?
We could figure this out, are you a source as well?

I think this was the initial idea:
There was a long discussion regarding the changes here >
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2605767.0

I was looking for some answers on the merit functionality recently added to the forum and stumbled up on here. I have also noticed that a "+merit" button has been added which will allow other members to add merit to anyone.

That's a good step to eliminate or reduce spammers from the forum, but it can open up a whole new can of worm. I fear a market for "merit" will open up soon where new accounts will buy merit points from high rank members in order to rank up. If it happens, the entire idea will fail. Any precaution has been taken for that?

Edit- I see that I have 200 sMerit points that I can donate to other members. So there is a cap and it will make merit points extremely costly in the black market. Personally, I am getting a very good feeling about this new change.

No. I do have over 200 sMerit.

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I wonder if *merit trading* will be bannable. I can totally see people trying to buy/sell their sMerit.

I've just noticed one thing. I've tested out the system and gave 5 pts to OP, then aTriz gave me 5pts and my spendable amount is at 82 now.

So does that mean that we receive 40-50% from the merit points we received to our spendable merit points? If that's so, I have a follow up question that is: What's stopping some users to make a deal and just spam each other with merit points on every other post?

Rank system changing.. They will announce soon.

Wow just saw the merit thingy, And then I find out this thread. It looks a good change and it can be a like a fresh air for the forum. I also liked the idea of removing junior members rank, but I can still see them using signatures, Honestly most newbies and juniors spammed alot in the forum and it looks a neat idea of removing junior rank but is not it better to remove thr signatures so that they wont participate in the signature campaigns?

thanks. you are a braver man than me

I sent aTriz 20 to test this, and his sMerit increased by 10.

Very good question. :-\ There's this:

I'm not sure how effective it is going to be though.

Maybe new website will pop up where it will allow others to "merit" others and get merit as a return. Yeah this market will surley be existent. Tho it's strange that I see even trusted people here who don't acctually know what is this feature for. Hopefully somebody else will explain a bit more in detail, it is good however to see that forum is trying to fight spam.

Wait, so everyone can now rank up by getting merits? What about the old acitivity counts?


Thanks. I see the new requirements are already posted now.

But do you have this text:

I have plenty of sMerit but it seems the first 100 merit won't come "from my source rather than my sMerit balance"

I'm sure that will happen and they will get negative trust if discovered


I would guess both merit points and activity are require to rank up. Let's wait until theymos posts the full information

Seems like merit function for me is just like you liked or thanked someone post. Like what OP merited

Your post is an example.

i got 100 merit myself  ... still cant figure out whats the function and how to use it

I'm assuming that this is yet another tactic to combat time registered and number of posts. Now, maybe merit "likes" will be taken into consideration for leveling up. This idea is genius, actually. As long as merits aren't sold...

Will this not be abused by those who have a lot of accounts?

Or is this a good way to trace them and have an idea which are their alts?
-Prevention for many accounts in one service.

Where did you find that?

All legendary members got 200 sMerit. All Heros got 88 sMerit, dont know the numbers for lower ranks.
(edit: 6 sMerit for full members, 19 sMerit for Senior Members)

It seems whenever you get Merit for your posts, you also get some sMerit with them (I assume it is the same amount, though not 100% sure).
That way, the people that write good posts and get many merit for them also get a lot sMerit to reward other people with good posts.

Pretty clever system, theymos.

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It's on the page when you send merit.
I didn't have to spend sMerit, as I had 100 free Merit to send due to being a source.

Nice new thing this Merit.  There are lots of new multi accounts of users for bounties. This option will  regulate most thing in forum. Good job ADMIN  ;D

And also we want to know how many merits we will need for next ranks

Sr.Members may have 19 sMerit and you can not hoard sMerit.If you don't use them,it will be decayed

I sent you one merit point. Is it now in your main balance or at spendable merits?

BINGO.

Scammers like Quickseller will soon have the highest Merit on the forum.

I don't see this as any kind of solution to anything as long as farming, multiple accounts and signature campaigns are still allowed.

I'm not going to whore myself out there with BS posts to gain merit.  :/

You understand it..

I got 85 sMerit, spent 5, received 5merit+2sMerit.


50% as much as I've got it figured out.


Yeah, but since it's a new system, it may take some time for people to remember that it's there. But still someone can trade with tho people for quite some merit points. Trades with one for max of 50, receives 25sMerit and then with another person for 25merit, receives 12sMerit,etc,etc...

Is this a new sort of ranking system to help determine which users are valid? How will it affect us?

Shouldnt be too hard with that profile picture  ;)
Are you a source?

I'm sure there will be a few adjustments and tweaks as the system comes along and gets used.

Full members got like 6sMerit, at least this is what I have now.

Thats what I thought.
 :-[

Well done guys! As a new member on this forum I was astounded by the amount of fluff people wrote. Mostly in bad English. I really like this change. Clever, intriguing and never seen before?

Now I wish for the amount of shitposts to go down - in my opinion the damn signature field should be disabled all together.

I want to read good and interesting conversations between experts and even get feedback sometimes! That would be grand

Now that is funny  ;D
So, merit points are to build up rank or something?
I hope there will be explanation.

I don't see how, every time you send points to someone you lose yours.

The same way there were no escrow scamming services by Quickseller. :-\

But abusing merit system with multiple accounts will be fast uncovered, because you see, who spent whom merits.

MAYBE have the amount of Merit points applied to an account "diluted" if fraud is detected:

- If the account receiving the points has ever used a proxy/tor - reduce by 50%
- If the account receiving the points has ever posted using the same IP ever used by the sending account - reduce by 100%

The amount of points being deducted off the sending account stays the same - just the amount received is diluted.

Then it will be easy to us to suspected that account to be his alt account. Maybe this is one of the reason why admins implemented this. Thoughts?

Does this new Merit system affect the ranking system at all or is it just a way to crack down on garbage posts around here?

While unlikely, that both the sender and receiver are *coincidentally* on the same VPN and the same node what about them?

It's in my main balance, but not in my spendable balance.

It seems one spendable merit is all a member gets for the each 30 day period.

Malicious user could know this and be aware of this, if he has like multiple accounts he doesn't need to give all his merit to his main. If he is cleaver one he will simply diverstify by giving merit to some random people including to one of his main accounts thus it makes harder to spot those people.

Announcement thread by theymos:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

Interesting. Curious to see how people can de-rank through demerit points.

I have 186 to start off.

I don't think anyone knows, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we are still waiting for an official update from theymos. Update (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0)

I would like to be able to REDUCE merit for accounts like this who just quote everything - it's a form of shitposting.

Clean up your message if you use the Quote feature!  Quote only what you are replying to!

It is going to be interesting to see how this system plays out now that it has been implemented (at least temporarily, although I don't know theymos to take back features). I'm not excited at the idea of ranks being "volatile", but this could be very solid incentive to not risk your rank by posting thoughtless nonsense.

From what I can tell the lower ranks have next to nothing to send in terms of merit, so account farming is only going to be significant to the degree that the account farmer has higher ranking accounts. This would seemingly be a very good tool for drawing out alts to some extent. I imagine people with many alts would be hesitant on the trigger when sending merit to themselves, and when they do it would probably not last long. It is obviously something we frown upon, there are people that act as "watchdogs" and it will presumably just not be worth "farming" merit.

I'd like to know how activity and merit play into one another, because if Merit determines your rank now then is activity simply used to determine initial merit? Apologies if I'm being naive or illiterate.

So how will this work out? Does merit replace the activity and will there be any reductions in merit for spam?

See the link Lutpin posted above: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

Merit will not replace activity, it is another factor that will determine your rank on the forum.
And as theymos said, there is currently no demerit system (answering my own comments above)

This!

They will just create a shitload of users and award 1-2 point from each, it will turn into another whack-a-mole game just with fewer holes for them to hide.

Some free crap VPNs only share a few IPs between all users, so it's not unlikely people using the same service will often use the same IP. The free VPNs usually tempt you to use them with a crap free service, then offer a better paid service.

I have to give my kudos, this is one of the most well-thought out and needed systems to ever appear on Bitcointalk. This really gives a new meaning to ranking on these forums.

Once the system takes hold for months and years, the true effects and stigma's behind people's accounts will be realized. This essentially gives some new dominance for active, and trustful members on these forums.

I'd like to add one suggestion, one last problem Bitcointalk faces, and that's with purchasing/selling Bitcointalk accounts. It's been a long time since i've actually commented anything meaningful to these forums, but someone should definitely start a new thread about individuals who are found to have a "non-legitimate account." (if it hasn't already been done).


I've been waiting for something like this merit system for a long time, i just didn't really have the foresight that it would be this good. Will be awaiting for more details.

So even with your activity soaring (from now on) you will require to be merited with all your posts to rank up.

How about those who will pay just for 1 merit? Could happen right?
Okay this could be a good sign to avoid more accounts to be created also from one user.
Because as long as there is no quality with their posts they will stay with a lower rank.

But again there could be some bad sides on it.
I just hope it doesnt happen.


Edit: How about those who will target one account merit-ing over and over to look like he was one of his alts and for the pleasure of getting him banned?
Specially those who have a lot of accounts now.
Can that happen?

If detected by the DT network, they would probably get negative trust.  :/

That's my thought too. I think the users who are going to exploit the system will not give themselves a merit.
But I think that you can not exploit the system so easily, because everyone can see who gave whom a merit. It just takes a bit of time for everyone to understand.

Edit: Is there a maximum of merits?

You only have a finite amount of sMerit to spend. Also there are limits to how many merit you can send someone (Seems 50 per month/30 days right now).
You shouldnt attempt to spend your limited sMerit on trying to make someone look bad (youd only make yourself look bad as the merit points being sent for a specific post are public).

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We'll see how the system works out during the next day/weeks, I think.
All in all an interesting change. Merit points reward quality over quantity (as activity does in a way). That's a good step forward.

Agree with the option to reduce merit.
On the other hand I get used to quote everything I'm replying to (both good or bad posts) because multipletimes happend OP edited his post turning my reply into nonsense.

I also don't think getting merit for being quoted is good idea because sometimes quoting stupid posts just for reference.
Which brings me to question If I remove the author name from the quote (in case of bad posts) and leave only the link and date will this work?

I like the idea of such a system. In addition to improving the quality of communication on the forum, you can see the associated accounts used for multiaccount cheating in campaigns. Let's see how the system will work.

If everyone has 100 Merit points, then the person presses the + Merit button on someone's post. Is the Merit of that person reduced to 99 or fixed 100?

I think some have not yet realized that there is an extra thread about it. All important questions about "merit" will be answered there.

Link:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

Yes, this thread should be locked and all conversation directed to that official thread.

so, why is my merit -1. I don't violate the rules. is it because i post too many in some time ??

That was me testing a bug that allowed granting negative merits:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2817582.msg28855381#msg28855381
(I chose your post because it's very poor quality)

But don't worry. That was a bug that was fixed.
Now it's showing -1 because of the cache. It should go back to 0 tomorrow.

And at that point his merit score will be still be way too high.

(Avogadro's #)*(-1) would be more appropriate.

If it could somehow become a currency or a token or an asset in the future, that would be even more awesome.

These are the times I miss the -Merit button (even though it was only used against me and was only available for like 5 minutes).
Merit is your reputation, the quality of your posts, your post history, that's not an asset/token, and certainly not a currency.

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That was my assumption before the thread was released. I've since read up on that.

There's more to it than that. For example, I only have 46 sMerit:



It looks like the merit system is being added on top of the activity/rank system. So there are now additional requirements before you can attain a new rank. It seems like an account that reaches 60 activity will no longer automatically rank up to Member. They'll now need 10 merit as well.

Regarding reductions:

I know you are trying your best to prevent spam posts and fighting multi account farming that most of the campaigns full with this days . And I truly hope that this new system will not became a source of drama in the future . We will see how things will go , Hope it will work .

One question when I press +merit it looks like I can give merit to myself ( Did not really try it ) !! That would be really bad !

No, you can't. Ther will be a error saying you cannot send to yourself.
Already mentioned a few times in this thread, test it.

It would be fine if this new adition of Merit score system would increase posts quality and improve communication betwen members with objective posts.

I just noticed this meta score. I wonder how it will turn out. If people are going to find a way to abuse them.

Oh, apparently he has not been participating enough in the forum I guess. Yes, I know, this is not a great comment and I don´t expect "merit" for it.

So I can "merit" comments that I think are relevant. And apparently there is a limit on the merit I can send to others. I am going to read the post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0)  with the detailed rules of this new spam prevention tool? Which by the way, was kind of needed.

yes, they are try to kick spammer by merit point.

i ever thought about 'how difficult to get merit point' you know, not all people read my post. but here we must give the best to make good post, and im sure moderator always see our post and they can send you merit point (if your post useful).

be careful with people that have many account, they can send their merit to their self.

I think this is a decent Idea... Although it is prone to abuse by the Multi-Account farming/3rd World Traders/Quickscammer..

also Groups that socialize off forum!

although I guess that type of shit will be evident pretty easily..

and I guess this is easier to understand than the previous ranking system.. Nice effort Theymos

I think, this "merit trading" (like you said) should be banned. The sense of this MERIT thing will be useless.

Agree with you bro. I hope that this move by the administrator can combat spamming very well. My fear of this system is when someone get biased. He/she will give merits to someone he knew and his friend. What will happen to the others who don't have connections and friends. The drama will come in, many will cry.

I hope that it does not happened. Merits should be given to someone who deserves it.

You can check the update here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

Seems like a pretty weird system that could become abused and corruputed by people that are running multiple accounts that are high up (hero+) Then again, I guess I'll give it a try and see what happens, the worst thing that occurs is that the community doesn't support it and the whole thing is scrapped.

I guess anything (as of right now) is better than the current spam infested system.

This Merit system sounds interesting to me but it just made bitcointalk a whole more complicated to me than it already is :)

Iv been actually trying to fully understand it since the last 2 hours and I am still confused about many many issues!

Anyways am glad because that shows bitcointalk is growing and expanding and we are still one of the elites by being here first :)

Yeah, this is just going to turn into Twitter v2. Instead of follow-back it's going to be merit back. Community coins will love it at first, then they will see some tyranny. People will demand merit for airdrops. Merit for tokens, merit for btc.

I understand they want to separate the good posters from the spammers, but this could go very wrong.

You can ban those people. Good riddance.

I will use my alt to send to this account

My alt is judypug1956

Merit is the promotion of people's outstanding posts! Optimize BBS for spam!
This mechanism is very good, effectively prevents some member's malicious irrigation behavior!
I want to know whether the merit system will be given to users randomly, because not everyone can be thumb up!

How come none of the newbies have merit points?  Are newbies not entitled to any merits?  Someone once posted "newbies are the new VIPs", and if so, why not treat them like so???

A fairly good system to help out on the ranking system. But not too sure if it is a good one because I personally think that the one where activities are slowly accumulated through time and not by the amount of post will encourage the community here to see long term.

Is there an official post to fully explain how the whole 'Merit' system works? Hope the 'Merit' system is full proof to prevent spams of merit scores on bitcointalk account just to achieve a higher rank. Much worse is that I foresee people are selling their Merit votes for some benefits or so.

Most importantly we should try to achieve genuine growth of ranks in the forum and encourage good quality post for the forum to blossom.

*And I tried pressing the "merit" button and we can actually merit our own post?  ??? I wouldn't dare to merit myself incase I get demerit instead  ::)

I think this will be the forever of my rank.As far as i understand that you reach some merit requirements to be promoted like for example for full member that only have 100 merit need to have another 150 merit in order to become senior member.Which is very hard to get because of course all of us are also saving our merit for our promotion.I hope there will be a broad explanation for this new system.

No, you dont have to spend merit when giving them to others. You spend sMerit, a balance solely given to you for the purpose to spend it again.
Thus there is no "saving our merit". People should use their sMerit and reward good posts.

sMerit and Merit are 2 different things fella.. read up on it properly.. see its shitposts like this that provide 0 value and will get you 0 Merit.. reading the System and understanding it will put you in a better position..

Edit - Just re read the thread myself... what a dick!
it does lead to a question though... with Legendary coming at a Random point.. is the required Merit to hit Legendary random - or just the minimum to hit the rank?

What is the purpose of merit-system? just to kick-off the fake multi-accounts who just pump and sale them? or  it's kinda 'Like' system? Sorry for my noob question

Merits and sendable merits are different. When you press + merit, sendable merits are deducted by that amount, merit will remain same.

This is a good way to prevent ranking up just by shitposting and prevent shitposters to earn a great amount of money on what they are doing. It is better to have a post that have few replies with good post rather than the post that has many replies but all are shitpost. Instead of the good post are being read, the shitpost are the ones that is being read. The signature campaigns should be strict on the post being made by their participants since they could be blamed for the toxicity of the forum. The consequence is that we are going to have a hard time ranking up. We, members of the forum should adjust on the new system since we have nothing to do. If we want change then we need to change ourselves first and this is the time to adapt the new system. And about the Merit, it is just like the like button on other social media sites. So, in order to increase it we need to make quality post for the readers to like it. It is a good way to determine good posters in the forum.

Will it be visible who gives merits to who?
Atleast for moderators and DT?
That way it would be easy to spot people who gives merits to shitposters and people who pays for merits and people with multiple accounts that gives merits to themselves

Will be added with the next update.

It is already being shown in the official thread about merits.

It is shown right on the post that got the merit, no more and no less. If the post is deleted, the display vanishes, but the merit stays.
With the update, you will have a full list of sMerit sent and Merit received for each user (similar to how you have trust sent/received right now).
This will make it easy to track the movement of merit, and should also allow to discover and stop big abuse cases.

Unless some people question someone's merits and so mods take a look at their account to see if there's any abuse going on, giving merits to someone is not going to be moderated. So you really don't have to write "quality" posts. Most people are going to end up treating it like "likes". They like what you posted, they might give you some merit. I've got 1 now. For a 1 line post that I would in no way consider "quality". I caught someone ban evading and called them out and apparently someone liked that (they probably don't like the guy) and gave me merit.

You can see your own stuff via https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit

I do hope that with this new "Merit" system, spamming and garbage posting will be eliminated.
This should have been implemented years ago. My greatest worry here is how a Jr member like me will rank-up.
They said that in order to rank-up you should give "quality post". But what are the attributes of a "quality post" that deserves a merit?
If it depends on how someone would rate it then "drama" would occur. But i do hope this won't happen.

Looking forward with this new merit system.

We are waiting for the official publication of the new term

I also saw this "merit" term today in my profile. I thought that was an old thing but now i know that is recent and waits for dev´s forum explanation.
If bitcointalk was a crypto this feature could improve price today..... ::::))))))

I finally understand how to gain merits, but I doubt that I will win best posts since I usually just ask questions here. xD

gave you a merit for asking questions.. not just posting total nonsense..

the quest for knowledge is a positive effect on the community!

to quote a great man. "when you talk, you are only repeating what you already know, when you listen you might just learn something new"

TMAN - 2018, stolen from the Dalai Lama...

Also don't know how it works atm but will figure out anyway.
But.. it seems you don't gain holding on to the sMerits... or something like that.
So.. you have to earn Merit, and handout sMerit?

what is the point of that? I'd say focus on banning scammers and maybe introducing limitations to new accounts from shit-scamposting in the market section..
That's more important in my view.

Ok, so.... as a result on this post I clicked the +merit next to it and received this :

You have received a total of 100 merit. This is what determines your forum rank. You typically cannot lose this merit. You have 5 sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future.

In short.. sMerit = sendable merit.. which you can sent to other users...
Merit= the ones you receive from other members...

The new merit system is interesting, so just to make sure i understood it clearly - By posting in threads with good quality messages instead of "one liners" will earn you merit.

Ok, it sounds pretty much like a type of bounty...but what i still don't understand is, what is the merit used for?  does it have any use? how does the user benefit from merit?

Someone already proved you wrong. Use search functions before asking questions so that you do not repeat the same query.

that is the bottom line  if you want to earn merit you just make good quality post so that anyone who see your post you got a potential to earn merit from them , meaning people should had a quality of a good reader so that he may also be a good poster here .

What I frankly couldn't get is that it seems to be a specific amount of Merit that can actually be spent, high ranks should post in places where merit 'givers' read, otherwise regardless of they being active on the forum their accounts will rank down.

I can foresee people buying 'Merit' shortly... I don't know if this idea can span during time and actually make the forum a better place.

Aww man, so close before I reached Sr. Member. Now I have to catch up on 150 Merit or so  :-[

I think it doesn't really have a use, it's not meant to be traded or anything like that. The purpose of Merit system is simply to tackle the problem of account farming and huge increase of low quality posts in the last couple of months. Account farmers were able to rank up their accounts to Member rank in few weeks with very little effort (one liner posts) and then they either sold the account or joined a signature campaign and continue spamming the forum in order to collect enough posts per week.
Now they won't be able to reach Member and higher ranks this way so we can expect that they will give up and the forum will not be spammed that much and it will be easier to find useful threads and posts.
One possible use of Merit system is for signature campaigns. Some campaign managers will probably start using merits instead of account ranks for bounty distribution.

I do not think merit sources will be located in certain categories , They will be spread out in all forums . There is no ranking down , No demerit system yet , It might be in future .
I do not think after this system anyone will risk get his high rank account painted red for some money .

That is why the website is called bitcointalk not bitcoinlisten. Sorry for awful joke.

This is a great addition to this new feature. I just discovered it myself when I checked my profile. It's not a bad idea. Let's see how this scales. :)

I also question how the rating was used for all the activities of every individual considering the merit condition, using others response. however I always knew when the community is larger there will be a new way of ranking to improve the quality of participation

Some people would just ignore this. A good new addition of requirement if user would like to have higher rank. However, as you can see, only a few people would care meriting those who are of low rank. I really think that those who are late joining this forum would have a hard time getting merits, because on the first day of the implementation, only those legendary or hero members who already knew each other on this forum are meriting each other, only few random members (who are not well known on this forum) gets merit from posting that makes sense.

Hope that there would be a little modification on this new system because if some people would try hard to improve their posts because of this new system, it would be a waste of time if their posts are just ignored. This would just be more likely a class room where if you are not known by people you will just be a lone loser, and only those who are famous get attention (merit.)

You make a fine point. There is truth in this. 

True to some extent but there is always one newcomer in clasaroom with extraordinary skills that grabs all attention.

it's only been a day, so we should wait and see how the situation develops. hopefully it'll improve.

but yeah, off the bat, merit seems to be following the course of default trust and the cliques that formed around it. there are exceptions, but i'm often not surprised when i see who's giving merit to who. i definitely expect new members to rank up to hero/legendary much more slowly now (if ever). but maybe that's a good thing. i'm guessing merit will be used less to reward high quality posting and more as a social reward for group-forming and group-reinforcing behavior. i'm guessing new members will need to be extremely high quality posters to ever attain the higher rankings. that is, unless they get cozy with a merit source's social group, or engage in merit trading.

I gave my first merit today and you made me look back at the post. I did not know a single thing about the person when I did it. I liked the post and merited it and it turned to be a newbie with 1 post and now 1 merit also. And I think it was a good thing.

A month or two ago I started a thread moaning about the problem of spam, scam and generalised shitposting. I even asked to make ranking up more difficult, even if I had to gave up a rank. This is a sort of solution for that problem. True, I was just about to become Full Member and now it will take a lot more time depending on if people like my posts or not. At the same time, I was amazed that someone with so little knowledge of the cryptoworld (Not my area of expertise) was able to rank up so fast (My account is from October 2017). Yes I have been active but I had my fair share of deleted posts and rightly so.

What I want to say is that it might or might not be fair but it was still needed. People can still join and just lurk or make simple comments (As I often do) they just wont become members so fast.

About the problem with abusing the merit system I am sure that things will be polished as we go.

This is just how I feel about it. Then again I don't participate in signature campaigns that often, people that do so often enough might feel disappointed.

I see a few problems with that in bold. There is nothing wrong with using a proxy/tor. It is even recommended. How do you think Satoshi Nakamoto has remained uncovered? By loging in from google chrome in Windows 10? You will basically deny the founder of Bitcointalk access to the site, if he ever logs in anymore at all.

Some people really need this feature and if I had a significant amount of bitcoin, eth or whatever altcoin I would certainly use it. Whales are being targeted by gobernments, institutions and criminals. Just look at the amount of scamming that goes on here, account farming and what else. The world predators are watching. One day you might have to use it. Although, if I remember well, there was a problem with the cloudflare security service that protects the forum from DDos attacks not allowing people to log in from TOR and that was a bag thing. They want to watch inside...Know users and IP... I'll leave it here for your consideration.

it's been more than a day since the introduction of the new parameter, but there has not yet been any official information, or am I mistaken !? If someone has information from an ojicial source, provide the

Thanks for sharing that. That's helpful information. I'm surprised that an old site like this is shaking things up. But that's the world of crypto for you.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

i noticed merits param in my account and i don't understand what is it ?

read this post from the very beginning carefully! There is almost all information about the new parameter!
Also, I advise you to pay attention to this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

It's really simple according to your rank you'll get merits, this no one can take away from you. The Smerits you should give to deserving posts, and What merits others give a part you can give back. It's a innovative move to fight spam and make this forum great. Let's hope it goes well, all people need to keep on giving merits to deserving posts so it goes smooth.

Also DO NOT BUY OR SELL merits you'll get a negative for indulging in it.

 Some posts here have really valid points . While some will give there merit point to those who really deserve , We all know that there is others that will only +merit those who they know whether they deserving it or not .


I think taking 1% from every bounty rewards that run on this forums and hear admins with good payment salary that can give there time to moderate the quality of posts is also a good , better and more effective idea  .

If merit is the basis for ranking up it will be sad for me because what if no one will merit me? That means my rank will stay this way forever? How sad, even how much hardwork I do I will never be a Member at all. I hope and pray that this “merit” it not what this means. It is not beneficial to the new comers like me. 😢😢😢

You will get Merit if you do good posts, there are Merit sources around the forum so if they found your posts constructive/helpful then they will probably give you Merit. It will surely take some time for new comers should adapt to the new system but we can't really do something about it

I agree with you, that this new rule is only concerned with the old users in this btc forum. how about people who just started in this forum. and just got to know about bitcoin forum. how to make a quality post, what you want to do is confused to comment on a thread that is not understood, because new to know about bitcoin. so this is just a barrier for new users to get more rank. and what's in it if it has a lot of merit? whether it can be cashed or something. I guess that's what needs correction. What benefits of merit?

Tell us why do you (or other low rank users) need to rank up? Think I know the reason but still curious.

I think the obvious answer to that is money.  Newbies cannot make money or participate in most bounties unless they're at least Junior Member.  Signature campaign probably requires higher rank.  Yes there are some people who would post based on the goodness of their heart, but most of the posts have reasons behind it.  More posts means higher rank, the higher the rank, the more money they can't make.  BTW as a newbie I can assure you the threads I read are mostly originated from Google search, not from using the forum archaic's search engine. 

Nope, you're not demoted. You'll attain the Member rank once you reach the 10 merits required. I gave you 2 merits because I like your post here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2824944.msg28938566#msg28938566). Continue making quality posts to receive lots of merit points. So, now you only need 7 more merits to become Member.


It's for everyone regardless of rank. I see lots of Newbies and Jr. Members receiving merit points. The good thing is that you can trace where they got those merits.

Here too. I did get confused anyone knows the actual reason behind it?

People like yourself who cannot easily navigate the forum and read the numerous threads about the same issue...

Lol... who? What? Nobody will care but funny laugh! :D

How do i earn merit ? It's really hard to earn them and people usually don't merit me . What are the odds of people gifting me merit, no matter how good the post is ?

Your odds are quite bad. Most of your posts are useless one-liners. Here's a massive wall-quote with one word added: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2956049.msg36015072#msg36015072

I wouldn't take those odds and I enjoy a good gamble.

Your posts will need to be "good" at least in the eyes of a potential meriter. You will also want to make sure you are on topic in the thread, just because Merit is in the title doesn't mean it is the place to ask about merit.

You need to figure out why you want Merit, is it just to make more money from your signature campaign? If so you will never get there. There are a few threads that try to give you an idea, most of them center around putting in effort to become better than you are. Not meant to be rude but you need to develop enough knowledge to contribute to a conversation or even help someone. You may also try and check out your local board, I know the posts don't count for your Sig but there is a better chance of you posting something meaningful in your native tongue.

You can start here for a guide (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3182178.0)