Bitcoin Forum

Introduction

The new Merit system was introduced in the forums to try and improve the quality of discussion. Users need both Activity and Merit to reach the next levels on the forum. Merit is earned based on quality of posts, while Activity is earned based on quantity of posts.

Discoverability

The Merit system can function as a really good discoverability mechanism if done right. This is a data point for the forum. Forum posts, unlike say Reddit posts, don't have an upvote/downvote feature. However, now they do have the +Merit feature. This means each post has a 'score' associated with it, which can simply be the sum total of all the Merit received by a post.

This can really help surface good content. This is because the default content today is sorted chronologically. Some of the older posts that may have been really good are lost. There are great threads with 100+ or even 1000+ pages of content. If you're new, it is very hard to wade through all of them. Merit is a great way for you to find good content.

Say there is a price discussion thread. It has tens of thousands of pages. However, a few of the posts with some evergreen content, for example a valuation model or mental models to think through what gives Bitcoin value, are valuable to the community, and likely Merited if they deserve it. New forum members can see these posts more easily.

Suggested Implementation

I would suggest the following -

• For every thread, have a button that says 'Show only Merited Posts', which would only show the posts that have received Merit

From a discoverability standpoint, I see this working as something similar to Reddit Gold. Sometimes, there are hidden gems that get downvoted due to groupthink (think about Greg Maxwell posting on r/btc, for instance). Someone gives a Gold to a really good post and it stands out. But more importantly, I can see all the gilded posts of a subreddit.

We can implement a similar type of discoverability on the forum. For example, in the entire thread discussing Merit right now, it's 50+ pages. It's hard to go through the whole thing. I'd like to see the Merited posts, because it is a filtering mechanism. This should help the forum moderators filter through suggestions as well.

Benefits

• Discoverability
• Easy to Catch Merit Abusers - if everyone can see bad posts getting a 50 Merit, you know something may be off (selling Merit, multiple accounts, etc.)

Reserved

However, there is a possibility that not all good quality posts get merited. So by having filters, we cannot guarantee if the posts with merit is a quality post and we might miss good post just because it does not have merit.

This is really a nice suggestion but there is a downside to this. After sorting through posts merit wise, new comments will get ignored. Those posts with merits will get more visibility and may be more merits.

And to take it one step further, the new or existing posts on that thread that are being ignored are less likely to get merit, no matter how great they are.

Indeed! It's impossible to have a proper discussion or to learn much more than what OP says there. I've posted 2 suggestions there but it seems to be in the oblivion now (one of those does have merits).

And that would be the bad side of OP's suggestion. If a lot of people uses this proposed feature, it would be extremely difficult to see good new posts. But I'd guess not everyone would use it and a single merit+ would be enough to increase the post's visibility.


Another think I'd like to see is following someone's merits. I mean, if you think someone has a good criteria to grant merits (good or at least similar as yours), then you can follow them and then having a link showing the posts merited by those users.

Have you seen how the merits are given? For nothing, you can say "Hi" you will see people giving 50 LOL. So I am not sure a filtering mechanism will be really efficient


Something similar could be better? A RSS system of a list of the members you would like to follow or "add as friend/connection" "follow" button or something similar

This is legitimate, except it wouldn't be the default view. The default view will still be whatever we have right now. So when you land on a thread, you'll see all the new posts on the last page, etc. However, if you'd like, then you can only show the Merited posts.

New comments shouldn't get ignored, since only a selected few will even bother to show all the Merited posts only. Besides, you cannot have a discussion based only on the Merited posts, so you need to see the default all posts anyway to extend the thread.

The Merited view will have a select function, e.g. if you're new to a thread and want to quickly get a 'gist' of what's going on.


Indeed, that was my experience in that thread too. Made a few suggestions, one or two got Merited, but got drowned out in the new flurry. One of the reasons I decided to start a new thread.