Bitcoin Forum

First of all it's not another April Fools post/thread, this is just my own opinion about actual Merit System.
Yes, I'm the same person - 'wojteks102' on this forum and on biggest polish forum about cryptocurrency.

Here is my opinion:
System is about in 65% bad and 35% good.

Good:
-You need to post very very informative and meaningful posts/threads here
-Merit is right now something like a 'prize' for a very good post/thread from your person
-If you're new and you're spamming = you can forgot about higher level of your btct account

Bad:
-If you're an account farmer with many account Full Member and higher level you can just boost your farm to a higher and higher and higher level. When everybody is just 'fighting' for a higher level of an account or in straight words they're staying on the same level even with activity requirement meet.
-If you're in a group of people that have got accounts Full Member and higher you can just help each other by giving out merit to each other.
-What I noticed is that people want to give merits accounts with a higher rank more that that with lower. That cutting the wings especially for new ones here on the forum. And why I understand people psychology, sorry but I can't understand when you see informative posts and only giving merits to that with higher ranks.

My advice:
When you see an informative posts (not just random bull*hit or spam) and you have got some merit's to spend, don't hesitate and do it. Just don't look at the account rank/nickname or anything else.

Possible solution for the whole account level system:
Activity should be the most important thing here but for me only posts 120-130+ (may be higher) characters should be counted for activity. Also, posts in some boards should not be considered in activity calculation. Which one? I think that bitcointalk forum stuff know which ones.
Merit? I think merit should be something like a motivation?/boost? to get higher rank faster but not with unjust advantage for account farmers and 'group of accounts'. Example: Sr. Member: required activity: 240 or required activity: 220 if Required merit is meet (250)


I'm open for a possible discussion here in the thread.

I do believe that we all know pros and cons about the merit system but I'd have to disaggree with a few "bad" things. Those who have alts and are spaming one account with merit, they usually get caught and get neg trust, so it's a high risk to do something like that.

Also, abiut higher members getting more merit, that kind of makes sense, because lower ranks tend to post in some spammy topics where higher ranks don't tend to even enter, "bitcoin discussion".

Possible solution:

Activity is activity, how active the account is, no matter where they post. Merit is there to reward those who aren't spamming.. That's, pretty much, all there is to it. And if you look at it as simple as that, it's a good system. Someone can post as much as they want but if the quality isn't there, then that means that they should work on that and think about what they're writing.

Also, writing better posts comes with time you've invested. I've beeen writing shit posts, but over time and slowing down on posting, not writing in topics I don't know about, etc... My posts have improved since, unleast I believe that ;D

Bad idea. Do you think it is not possible to game this? People can add a couple of meaningless sentences to boost character count. They can also restrict posting to boards which count for activity. This would have absolutely no effect on spammers.

The problems you mentioned with merit are teething problems. They will reduce as merit percolates the system and more and more people are given merits (and get smerits to give away).

That's a lot quicker and easier to read and should save everyone the bother of reading the OP.

I created a topic like this before here's the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3058545.0

Our topic has a small similarities, I posted that topic because that time I dont know what to do because I know that it will be too hard for me to earn merits as a newbie.

Back to the topic, I can see that your suggestion can cause a block of words without meaning in that
120-130+ (characters) to gain your activity, in short it will just cause spam.

I agree to you with this one, we need to prioritize those users who needs it the most and contributing good things to the community of course.

In addition Im contented with the merit system now, though it is really too hard to get but as I said on this topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3239369.msg33735155#msg33735155) I created, "Lets make our weakness to be our Strenght"

And why do you think that the people who are farming Merits to rank up would not be able to write posts having more than 130 characters?  ::)
That doesn't really sound like a solution, but it sounds more like a better way for those account farmers or spammers to reach higher ranks and continue their business, because you are suggesting to just keep the Merit system as a motivation and use only Activity system for ranking up once again.
Merit system is what stopping the useless accounts from ranking up, and if you remove that, you open the market for public again, and we really don't like that crowd.  ::)

That's true, though I don't think tagging of merit abusers has happened enough--I would gladly do so if there wasn't so much subjectivity AND if Theymos condoned it.

Also as far as the negatives go, I would say that these people are eventually going to run out of sMerits.  Hopefully.  I'm also hoping that merit sources are prudent and won't start giving them out to just anyone.  We'll see.  There's always going to be abuse, but it's still better to have the merit system intact than to go back to what we had, which was a spammers' breeding ground.  Let's not toss aside the good because it isn't perfect.

Some members are trying to report such abuse cases but I see that these days the action on such profiles is delayed. Also , one cannot be sure with merit abuse cases involving small number of merits. There should be strict monitoring for this for some days and action should be taken on time. This will set an example for other members so that they do not dare to repeat the same act.

i think theres another option in here

by user activity maintaning user activity to maintain rank


example JR member must have accumulate a total of 24hrs for a whole month and 50post to maintain JR rank or risk being degraded ?

1 day a month? Not everyone has time for that and I don't think we should be punishing those who go on holidays or simply have time off. Many well respected and good quality posters have had triple that time off the forum. If you earn it then it shouldn't be taken away as there's just too much room for abuse in all the suggestions I've seen about this.

I don't think it's because those with lower ranks posts in spammy topics that's making them not to get merits. Most of this lower rank members have quality posts on some cool topics and yet don't get merits for their efforts. It's just natural to gift people we know and because this high ranks have been actively involved in the forum and have become somewhat popular, makes their posts to be merited.

Please be careful Sherlock Holmes is here! And I not force anybody to read this thread and my posts here.



If you read my whooole OP you should take the note that in my opinion there will be bigger disproportion made by merit system. If you're an account farmer you have a bigger possibility to move your account/accounts to a higher level when everyone is just spending their time to make very informative posts to gain merits.
If you want to push cryptocurrency into main adoption for every human beeing in the world you have to at least 'like that crowd'. Sorry that is just reality, not everyone have enough knowledge of how cryptocurrencies work to (at least at the bottom of their journey).

That is the ideal case scenario but that is not going to happen in my opinion. This is because majority of people act based on emotions instead of logic. But this problem is limited only to merits given by members here. I do not think that merit sources are also doing this. Also, some of the senior members did gave merits to new members (in fact some organised exclusive giveaways for low ranked members). So we cannot make a general opinion.

Also, I see admin is helpless in this case, he can only request members to use their merits wisely.

I underlined the word "trying" because those people that tried to report account farmers are those who have influential and veteran in the forum. But in overall, account farming is just ignore by newbies in the forum.
For the OP:
Expect that regulations are imperfect. Regulations can bring a positive and negative effects in anyone. Sometimes, people make it is an advantage to be powerful and brings unequality.
Your viewpoint for merit system is good but I do not think that posting a lengthy one can be a quality post. In my opinion, there are simple and short posts made by users here that are sharp and directed on what they talked about.
What about decreasing of merit points in order to rank up? And adding up the required numbers in activity. Just like this:
Rank                     Activity                     Merit
Jr. Member            50                               0
Member                 100                           10
Full member          200                           50
Sr. Member            400                          100
Hero Member        800                          250
Legendary           1000+                         500

This is just my opinion, I don't hate merit system but it seems many Jr. Members are stuck up in their rank. And I think, it will be better if some threads here will not be counted as an activity specially, bounty. Spammers can find in bounty threads.

Hey wojteks. I agree with most of the points you made, even though I think that account farmers don't have it as easy as your initial post may have made it out to be. I think abuse of the system is very real, but it also carries considerable risks for the abusers which should help to curb it, at least a little bit.


I wholeheartedly agree with this point. It's crazy how much merit these high-ranking accounts accumulate. Very understandable in a way, as they are more often than not very knowledgeable and simply make valuable contributions to the community. On the other hand, so do many low-ranking users who get rewarded less, simply because they don't have the same kind of exposure, which might discourage them. Funnily enough, I just started some kind of contest to reward lower-ranking members who merit other lower-ranking members. We'll see how it turns out.

Posts with 120+ characters before being considered as an activity is not a good solution. It is not about the length of the posts, it's what the content is. Yes, sometimes long posts are catchy but if in the first few sentences and the reader can distinguish how the posts will go and suddenly lose interest by just reading it, will only be a waste for the poster. Just focus on making an informative and direct posts that will sure pique the interest of the reader.

Agree! Quality is not depends on the length of threads.

If there are merit-give-away contests for those who write longest threads, or as long as possible threads, which will result in serious, massive abusement in terms of threads' length. Never should be like this.

Sharp and simple. Like what I've said in my previous reply here. Other replies are just elaborating the reply of anyone before him and make a wide suggestion in order to say it is unique and amazing. With matching quotation ;D

The merit system is completely flawed in my opinion it risks creating merit mafias on bitcoin talk and also turn some people to merit beggars, even the subject of quality and informative posts is subjective as not everybody reasons or thinks alike. And you could just see a quality post and your not obligated by anything on bitcoin talk to give out merits I think the up vote system used in most forums is better and time trusted, you could even have a system where you must have up voted a certain number of comments before you can comment It creates a healthy system

The system is quite young for the forum, 3 months is not enough to people have learned not to forget to put merit. The brain needs to get used to not forgetting to do something. Although research shows that it is enough of the week "to conduct experiments - people wore glasses that turned the world upside down. Three days people were confused, and like a fool waving hands in front of him. For about the fifth or fourth day, the subjects are already well-oriented. The brain was rebuilt under the new conditions of the image. " and we probably need more time to get used to the system of merits required months not a couple of days ;D, time will pass and everything will be normal.
What about the Bad:
I agree with you on this issue we must look for the solution.
One option is to remove the rank (and number of merit) from the visible fields in the message. So would the message have not been assessed from the owner rank.(I understand that you can determine the rank of the avatar and the signature but it will not be so noticeable as newbie jr.member member sr.member hero and legendary)
Rank and merit can only be seen in the profile
This technical change is simple and easy to check for a week how to change the  system merit
To prohibit the distribution of merit in some of the topics Marketplace (Altcoins), Politics & Society

I've also observed that people just don't want to give merits to low rank users, but some Hero/Legendary Members posts get tons of merit, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to do. Also lots of users just hold merit and don't give it to anyone, so maybe we need some incentive - what happened to sMerit decaying?

What do you mean by the bold part? Do you mean the forum must give all members the power to milk this forum so they can adopt the cryptocurrency? People can adopt to crypto wihout the rank matters, rank only matters if you want the money then you adopt the cryptocurrency.

And i agree with TheQuin,  because you have stated somethin in “my advice” ; dont look into rank / account name ( this two i agree) or anything else (this one makes me just think like TheQuin because you invite people not to look into anythhing else which can be post history of someone. I’d rather give 1 to a consistent normal poster rather than who just doing a contribution for merits)

the real solution would have been that ALL were starting from scratch as Merit points. I keep saying it but I understand that many are against this idea.

I'm of the same opinion with you. The MODs should be the ones checking posts and awarding people merit. People just go about sharing their merits with their friends or themselves. But if the posts are checked by the admins, a posts will pass many criteria and if found eligible, will be merited.

I guess you are the one who does not understand about your suggestion. Let me explain it to you. First, giving merit is based on subjectivity of a person to others, it can be biased by such things such as, friends, family, interest, relation, and popularity (just some example that can make a bias decision towards a person). So lets say, all member starts from 0, and all higher ranked members here who are famous do too, and we have some airdrop merit from admin, or there are merit sources. Dont you think people will most likely gives them merits? Because not only they have a vast knowledge, they are popular too. Understand?