Bitcoin Forum

So I've found something interesting to me, the user Rugosa (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=815168) has some back and forth meriting.

First he received 21 merit:

Then merited back 11 merit:

Essentially he's meriting the amount of sMerit he received from that merit he got. Couple of minutes of interval on the different topic.

---

Then the same thing again with the second user:



Meriting back with the amount of sMerit he received from that user. Different thread, a little bigger time interval.

---

Third time it's the other way around. He sent merit and received half of what he sent (sMerit other user gained).



Same thing just reversed. Half of the amount (sMerit), couple of minutes interval on a different thread.

His merit history. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=815168)


 



Anyone? Thoughts? Not accusing him of anything, just found it rather interesting.

Looking up to his/her merit story, and the post that gained merits, i would think the same way as you man. It is too obvious but what can we do, admin already stated that tagging a merit trader between friends is kinda not right and he stated that the abuser will run out of their merit soon.

Lets hear about other members' opinion, especially dt's.

What first occurred to me was that this might be the "returning the favor" situation, since he's returning was he got (sMerit he got). Which is not ok as well. But the only thing that's telling me otherwise is the timing between meriting, like he was waiting for it. At least I'm not refreshing my profile to see if I got merited.

No surprise to me. In my  merit abuser investigation topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3168616.0) (18 cases so far) I have seen this kind of activities a lot. Now a days I feel bore seeing these abusive activities. I prefer tagging them with red tag no matter if you are not even a DT member.

If someone is receiving merit then immediately giving half of it back to the same person then it's pretty obvious what's going on. Merit giving should ultimately be pretty random and there will be few instances where two completely random users manage to  award it to each other unplanned but when you spot patterns like this where half of it is returned or it's a one for one thing over multiple instances I'm reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah typically I like to give the benefit of the doubt... In this case I can't though, definitely is obvious what is going on here. Is there a way to report them for abusing the Merit system? It would be nice in instances like this to have a system in place where when they are reported, the sMerit they can send gets restricted. Or even locked for a period of time (e.g You get 1 sMerit but can only send it after one month).

These transactions are far too localized to be considered accidental or a lack of knowledge of the merit system. The user is clearly either trading/selling merits or sending merit to their alts. I won't say anything about the other users since they don't have multiple instances of the abuse but I am tagging Rugosa.

I don't want to act like the devil's advocate, they've deserved the red tag.
On the other hand, I sometimes also do something similar (not the same, but similar). If I (rarely) receive a merit, I always check who was the user who have given me that merit and if he/she is not a Legendary, I usually chech the post history of him/her and if I find something that deserves a merit I usually give a merit too.
I'm doing this because I know how hard is to create such a quality content that will catch the attention of those members who still have some merits. I also still have some smerits because I have little time to read and write here daily, so my way of working in connection with the merit is that if I receive some, I'll check if I can also give it or not.
Please let me know if it's not a good practice but I think it's understandable and acceptable (I hope so).

I usually don't have a problem with people doing things like this as long as:
1. The post is of high quality
2. The merit sent is an appropriate amount for the quality of post.

Obviously, making a habit of this would likely seem a little suspicious, and one could perceive it as trading merits. Plus, if people know you do this they will likely give you more merits expecting some sort of return. So it's probably best not to do this, although for a one off I don't think it's a problem.

Here, the case should be very clear. The merit that is being sent (second transaction) is half of the amount received. This is very clearly trading/selling. Moreover, the posts that are being merited are being done so within minutes (for two instances) and are for relatively low-quality posts. They don't deserve merit. Especially this one:

Glad you tagged this guy, because it is pretty obvious what he's doing.  Those posts are pretty lousy, and even if they were something you agreed with, they wouldn't be worth meriting--UNLESS you were getting paid for it, or it was an alt account or friend.

I'm never sure what DT members are doing with merit abusers, given the inherent uncertainty of most cases.  Good to see at least the obvious ones are facing consequences.

I'll reserve tags for explicit/blatant cases. As it currently stands, we're heading towards the plateau of merit abuse and so we can let the discreet instances fly by without an issue.

With things like this where the users send back and forth (especially on trashy posts) I don't think many people would complain about tagging the users in question.

The key point is whether the user deserves a merit. I would say that reading a user's posts to see if any of the posts deserve a merit is fine.
The problem comes if these are the only merits you hand out and there is a pattern.