Bitcoin Forum

I was checking merit stats and found that there are now 49 merit sources:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources

Merit sources
There are 49 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 9025 sMerit per 30 days

Initially there were 35 announced and I noticed 1 or 2 people nominating. How come we have an additional 14 in one day ?

Simple, 14 other merit sources are come from local sections

maybe they make a 10 good quality post and thats make them an instant source.


really? so it does mean local boards can also have a merit source? cool.  i want to try it :)

Don't they have to apply in meta for that ?

I added more. :)

By no means is the set of merit sources or their sMerit/month static. I will be adjusting it a lot as needed, especially in the beginning. I wouldn't be surprised if there are 100-200 sources in a year from now.

Is there a function to the merit sources being hidden?

Members will start begging from them. With time, when the current members ( non merit sources) have expired all their Smerits, the it will be quite easy to spot merit sources. It would be interesting to see if some more changes are done in future to keep their identities hidden. More like given some additional Smerits to regular members based on their activitiy. The new system is still in its initial stages and thus it is very hard to predict the future. The admin has already stated in the official thread that necessary changes (like demerits)can be easily implemented along with merits.

If there was some canonical list, then people would be posting:

If you pay attention, you'll get a pretty clear idea of who the active sources are. Forum staff also have access to the list.

If they will start begging Merit points from them, I think they can get negative trust. In my opinion, there are no reasons to hide who are the merit sources, like we know who is DT members, same should be with Merit sources. But soon it will be clear enough which users are Merit sources as we will see who gave out most Merit to users.

This is really great news, can you give any indication as to how you expect progression of ranks to be, do you aim to have an environment where people who post well thought out responses and do not spam will be able to gain more merit than activity and thus level up as before or do you foresee that leveling will be slower than before?

I assume you have statistics on how many of each rank there are and how many rank up as well as how Merit is being spread around?

I doubt it sources will give it without contributing good quality posts

It still would be an annoyance for the sources.
Given that there is no direct reward for being a source, they shouldn't be further punished with spam related to this.

Where can we see a list of all the users who are Merit Sources?

This list should be kept hidden. If people know who the sources are they will follow them around the forum begging and harassing these sources.

Just my opinion.

It has and will continue to be easy to identify merit sources just by looking at the volume of merit sent compared to the amount they have received. If you look at the merit statistic pages it's quite obvious who's the merit sources there.

I agree that a list shouldn't be made but it's not going to stop people identifying merit sources and harassing them. But if they are harassing them maybe the merit sources could report this to the moderators if it's breaking the rules?