Bitcoin Forum

Couple of days ago, I have seen someone sharing such kind of idea. I'm sharing it here just for having some discussion.
I'm not affiliated with this campaign.

Link to the campaign- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2159012.0
Here are some texts from the campaign.

It's true that there will be less participants as it requires having 10+ merits.
If most campaign managers follow this strategy, will it be efficient for forum or increase merit abusing in the long run?

I have a better question:  Why did all those people give semux that many merits?  It almost seems to me like people are trying to bribe him or something.

As far as requiring a certain number of merits for a campaign, this isn't the first one to do it.  I think it's a good idea, because campaigns should generally strive for the best posters and merits are one way to judge that.  Managers should still look at an applicant's posts, IMO, but if you haven't earned at least 10 merits by this point and you've been here since January...there's probably an issue with your post quality.

Would it encourage merit abuse in the form of buying & selling it?  Maybe, but that's already going on.

Even with that 10 merit requirement, it's almost a given that that thread will be flooded with people who haven't read the requirements and are applying with less than that minimum.  It's sad.
Good.  Fuck 'em.
I assume it's 10 earned merits, else that sort of requirement is stupid.

May be trying to bribe, I guess some of them are affiliated or those all are bought. People who sell merit, own a lot of account, of course.

Now I'm little confused, is it requiring to earn 10 merits after merit system was introduced or no problem with by default. If so, it make no sense, IMO.

I believe this is the future of this forum. Managers will make minimum merits as a requirement for participants to join the signature or bounty campaign and it will surely decreases the number of the participants as not all participants have the quality to get a lot of merits. Good poster will get their time paid off while bad one will be fucked up.

Like TP said, merit abusing is already going on, but i think the number is already decreased because the airdrop merits is already diminished a lot since the time merit was introduced. I remember someone is tracking the number of merits spent form month to month and it shows that the number of merits spent is decreasing over the month. So yeah, i hope the decreasing number comes from those who got no merit to abuse.

Just checked the list of participants and got lots of people have been accepted in semux's list. Here is the list of participants (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2159012.msg41331470#msg41331470) listed by semux where people with airdropped merits accepted.

Let me check (http://loycevsbasement.privatedns.org/Merit/all_users_who_earned_Merit_2018-06-29_Fri_07.40h.txt) the first 5:
Now let's check their Merit history in details:
liotmaan (#689832) (http://loycevsbasement.privatedns.org/Merit/history/689832.html)
2 Merit for a link that redirects to a referal link > Reported to moderator.
9 Merit from the same user for saying "Where's the github".
crimealone (#206556) (http://loycevsbasement.privatedns.org/Merit/history/206556.html)
1 Merit for a post in Chinese
investgarant (#1108727) (http://loycevsbasement.privatedns.org/Merit/history/1108727.html)
3 times 1 Merit for 3 posts in Russian.

I think it's safe to conclude requiring merit is NOT a solutation against spam, if it's an automated system that accepts anybody.

I also think that the idea about the minimum number of merit to participate in signature companies is very good. It is not clear why they wrote such rules. If they themselves violate their.

Did you take note of the date of the original post? September 17, 2017. Then, merit system has not been introduced. So were all the merits given in retrospect?

When anyone who can convince a team to hire them can become a manager the system will fail. Likely it will lead to more abuse down the road... where does the "bribe" taker drop the Merits off?

I have been in a few of Yahoo's campaigns and while not requiring merit for everyone, if you had a certain amount it netted you better payment. There are countless ways to try and improve the system but without there being any enforcement behind it they won't matter. It would be nice to require a certain amount of received Merit to carry a paid SIG, but again that would require further moderation, which genrally isn't going to happen.

Whats wrong with merit in Russian or Chinese ?

Also they ask 10+ merit, it would be easiest to say they don't accept people under Member rank, as many BMs already does...

As far as I know, there's a lot of Merit sales in the Chinese section. But my conclusion wasn't based on the merit given to those sectors, I can't read the posts.

A Newbie who really earned his Merit can be a valuable asset for advertising, although he'd need to buy a Copper Membership to be able to wear a bigger signature.

It's better than no merits at all. However, my personal opinion would be that requiring users to earn a certain amount of merits per payment period would be better. Requiring a flat out requirement before accepting them means in the past they have made good quality posts, however that doesn't mean that they'll continue in this pattern once they have been accepted. A combination of the two would likely be the best approach. It doesn't need to be too strict due to the limited merit being distributed currently, but it's certainly something that should be considered. Perhaps not for every single payment period, but every other.

I think the idea is nonsense. Merits will be just another reason to spam threads, make shit posts and make repeated threads just to complete a quota. I would not like merits to be wasted and it is JUST to make merits hard to earn so that less people abuse opportunities given If they prove themselves worth the merits then they will surely be noticed and efforts will be credited. Patience is also the key.

To be honest, merit shouldn't be a requirement for anything other than ranking up. There are good posters that haven't received a reasonable amount of merits or merits at all, and they exist, but just aren't visible to the active merit givers.

And a wise man once said, "Judge a person by his post quality and not by his merits".

I don't know who that guy is tho.

OK I didn't know that. Apparently Chinese's and Japaneses cheat a lot.

I'm not sure to understand this point :

It's 500 min or merit+50 if more than 500 merit ?

It kind of makes sense from an advertiser point of view though. Especially, if some sort of filter for only displaying posts that have been merited gets implemented. Advertisers want as much exposure as possible, and accepting someone who posts a lot of posts, but also posts good posts from time to time should[/]appeal to them. I've put that in italic just because I know that they only care about quantity rather than quality. But, we are seeing certain managers trying to fight against the quality>quality epidemic.

I don't think merit should be a determinant to joining a bounty campaign, irrespective of how time consuming  it might be to the bounty managers, taking a good look at an applicants post history says more than judging by their merit count. There are people who got merit for saying non reasonable things and those who paid for it and those whom their friends merited their posts irrespective of its low quality. Post quality should be checked not merit count. My opinion though.

I'm pretty sure they will have a group on telegram which mandatory requires their participants to give some merit to the ANN thread. This shows merit isn't a right metric to prove a good quality poster. People are stupid, meriting such services is useless as they are only here for the project and don't really care of their account's rank. Those merits could have utilised in a better way to rank some newbie up who actually puts efforts in writing something descent.

Merits are reasons to spam the forum, really? I don't think so, mate.
Spamming, and showing your shits via shitty threads will never help you earning merits, regardless of abusing the merit system by merit exchanges.
Real users will definitely not give their sMerits away for shitshows.
I don't really understand what you meant, honestly.

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Personally, it should be. Signature campaigns should have pre-requisites for participants to apply, including merit points.
There are many campaigns which are managed by good, prestigious managers have such strict pre-requisite related to earned merits.
Agree with you, mate.
As @The Pharmacist wrote in previous thread, it should be earned merits, not automatically allocated merits at the launch day of merit system.
Earned merits mostly show that accounts which got merits are constructive users, but managers of campaigns should check all cases carefully to avoid acceptance for merit abusers.
Further careful screening procedure through post history of applicants is next essential step after looking at their merit points.

The requirements is just too much, they ought to consider lower members

Why is all this necessary ?
How about the BMs just do their jobs, check the posts like they're supposed to and ban the spammers from their campaign ? They're pretty easy to spot.
I don't know how much they're paid but I'm sure it's enough for them to do that simple effort.
You see a guy posting useless stuff in megathreads, you remove him, you see someone saying "great project" or anything similar, you remove him etc...
Why create a rule that will lead to more cheating obviously ?

Indeed !!

And check guys who are red trust by DT. Most don't. (rules say they do it, but you know how it is..)

About twitter ? they don't care, nothing else, 90% twitters posts are made from bots. (yes I know it's not bitcointalk).

And yes... what's about translation ? How many times did I report automated translations..

Reality is that most BM don't have the time to really do their job.

I like how the poster received over 143+ merits from that post alone.

The bounty managers are paid anyway. Their payment doesn't depend on the quality of the posts of the participants.
If they are lazy enough, they won't care about the post quality...
If those who advertise with the signature campaign would differentiate the payment of the manager based on the post quality, that would be a motivation for the bounty manager to care about quality too.
But, unfortunately those who advertise with the bounty managers, also don't care about quality, just quantity....

Wouldn't this require the advertiser to check post quality too, though? Kind of defeating the point of having a campaign manager "manage" the campaign. Well, I guess they still send out payments, but I'm sure if the advertiser is willing to check every single post then they would be willing to send out the payments too, and save themselves some money in hiring a campaign manager.

this is as clearly as it should be, it simply means they don't want Jr members on their signature campaign, they only need member rank and above, to get member rank you must have up to 10 merits

A fake use of merit as I said and Kenzawak have explain.


Those who advertise with the signature campaign pay the most well knows, nothing else.

Open your eyes guys, merits are only under test and need adjustment -theymos said.

I think this idea could be a great help for those who are in the lower rank that is striving hard to earn merit.
But, does it seems like selling merit indirectly? All I am hoping is for the greater good and not opposing the idea.