Bitcoin Forum

On January 24, 2018, the merit system was introduced (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522) on the forum.

The first merit was sent by theymos (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=35) to AdolfinWolf (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=877396) at 10:12:21 PM
for the post in the thread What is the function of the "Merit" score? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818066.msg28853325#msg28853325)

This is a merit transfer transaction:

In my opinion, the merit system was a salvation for the forum. At this time many account farmers were posting garbage in order to increase activity and rank up their alt accounts. The administrator found an excellent solution.

Undoubtedly, the merit system has reached its goal. Nowadays only members who make useful posts, create interesting threads and contribute to the forum successfully rank up to higher positions. Since all merit transfer transactions are public and transparent, a lot of account farmers and merit sellers were spotted and red tagged by trusted members.

Thank you @theymos, and happy birthday, the merit system! :)

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSUzm2sx3aLiE3Ai2dnxF19UFT-icUwvZxDbbHSsCP0JPebix3f

It was nice being part of this system, and proved to myself that this isn't a hindrance for me to rank up :)

Cheers Happy Birthday!

Happy 1 year of merit ruin my life >:(

Happy birthday merits - I didn't realise that the genesis merit was laid so long ago.  Since then we have seen to introduction of the HalfWit blocks - the half witted sig spammers are finding that the lack of merit is blocking their promotion. We've also seen a couple of halvings as the initial merit shower is being reduced. There have also been some new wallets as the merit sources increase. The mempool for the merit beggars listing their posts in the donation threads seems to have reduced dramatically, and I think this is good. The addition of the extra merit sources, especially in the local boards, has improved the decentralisation.

The creation of merit whales with over 1,000 earned merits, has given the legendaries with IMO merits a target to help them to improve their posting.

While I would disagree that it has already reached it's goal, happy birthday nonetheless.

Happy Birthday "Merit"

And maybe Happy Birthday for the first Merit Sources too , dont know if they was born on this day also !

Nice, for this one year I manged to rank up twice  ;D
It was controversial in the begging but it seems that it does this for what it was designed for, to stop the new spammers from ranking up.

It was a good move, hope to see more good moves from theymos.

Happy birthday :)

Then I beat you buddy :)
Because I rank up thrice in a year.

Happy Merit anniversary.

PS: user like you always role model for me and community, just kidding.

we both did it... but I've even thought three times... think we got the most out of it ;D
but it was already connected with a lot of effort compared to users who have been there a little longer.

and all the best to the system that gave me some sleepless nights ;D

//edit: hey r1s2g3 you three times buddy 8) ;D

Happy birthday to merit,
Especially thanks to theymos implement merit system. Its was a good step to reduce spam from forum. Although we are not yet achieve the goal but very near of the goal. I have joined forum after the merit system and achieved up to Sr. Member and I believe I can reach the next rank. I believe community got few good things from merit system.
1. Reduce spam from forum.
2. Motivate user to make quality post.
3. Reduce account farming.
4. Got lot of useful topics due merit system. Merit encourage to make useful and suggestional topic.
5. Merit determine user standard.

I believe we will achieve merit goal once a day.

While much of this place might still seem to be a spam/scamfest in many ways, I shudder to think of what it would be without the Merit system.

I've given you a red tag for making a post that was just a quote of the opening post, and not adding any comment at all.
If you feel that this is unreasonable, and you have stopped doing it, then please appeal against it through my ticket system.
Block Error - the Jet Cash support site (https://blockerror.com/help/)

I can't say I was paying much attention to this anniversary.

Its been a nice improvement overall.  I agree one of the best side benefits i hadn't thought of before us how easily it tipped people off to alt accounts and account farmers, trying to game the system.

Ill never forget the day it took its first stood up from a crawl and wiped out an impressive amount if shitposters with the 1 merit requirement. Now if we could bump that up it would be great.

The introduction of the merit system and The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032314.0) had a positive impact on the forum. Let the changed trust system change bitcointalk for the better.

Happy 1 Birthday Merit System !!!

I think that the demotion option might be a good one.
It's hard to accept for them but why not implementing demotions?

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I am not sure who is the first merit source, but Lutpin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=520313) is the one I saw his merits increased significantly during early days after the merit system born.
The first one commented after merit system ANN published.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856606#msg28856606
He is a good candidate of the first merit source.

January 24th 2018 - the day when thousands of lifes were ruined :D
Maybe it's time to remove all airdropped Merits? There are thousands of Full, Senior or Hero members who haven't managed to earn even 1 Merit. But they still can use all privilleges of their rank and continue spamming without thinking about quality of their posts
I don't think that decreasing number of posts made are caused only by Merit system. It's also directly related to Bitcoin price. I remember someone even made chart where we can see relation between Bitcoin price and number of posts made on Bitcointalk.

Sure, when bitcoin rises and hits its new all time high next years, they will come back, and a new massive wave of spambies will occur.

I think that's the next step. Upping it from 1 to 3-5 as a minimum would be the fatal blow to many dunderhead dreams. That's achievable but takes out the fluke factor completely. You'll actually have to be vaguely useful.

Happy 1st Anniversary Merit!!

Wishing you many more  :-*

I've been advocating for this for a while, but 3-5 is still too low in my opinion. I think a 10 merit minimum is the way to go. 1 (and probably 3) is too easy to beg, buy or trade for, and with the number of airdropped sMerits still waiting to be used, we will be seeing plenty of 1 merit spammers for a long time yet.

I also think changing it from 10 total merit to 10 earned merit would also be a good step. There are plenty of spammers in more senior ranks too. If you haven't been able to earn 10 merit in the space of a year, then you are almost certainly a spammer.

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure if the introduction of the merit system was essential in reducing spam. I believe that it has had a much greater influence by encouraging a more elaborate production of good topics and good responses. Many users began to care more about what they were writing in the expectation of receiving merits as a reward.

The reduction in spam may only have actually occurred with the introduction of 1 merit to turn Jr. And perhaps, as suggested, increase the number of merits required to climb the ranks at the lowest levels could be great for the forum.

Price may have been a much more influential factor in reducing spam. With the constant drop in prices, the incentive to produce spam has decreased.

coinmarketcap snap 1 year ago.

https://i.imgur.com/TOZLuYP.jpg

Not that big of a difference on a macro scale. 5k newbies (IIRC) have been able to rank up since the 1-merit requirement introduction, which sounds like a lot but now it has slowed down to a trickle, just a few hundred a month.

Make it 3 merits and the 5k will drop to maybe 1k total, and 100 a month (I'm sure someone can pull more accurate numbers on that). How much more do we want to reduce it? 1k could be relatively easily managed, e.g. reported to mods when appropriate etc.

Ideally the number wouldn't be reduced in the slightest. It would hopefully encourage posters to up their game accordingly. I can't imagine many will of course.

Gotta say I'm slightly shocked at how piddling the numbers are of people who've ranked up from any level.

Here’s a quick look at the amount of forum members that have managed to rank-up by means of the Merit System so far (to be really thorough, I should update this image on the week-end, after I integrate tomorrow’s merit.txt file):

https://i.imgur.com/ONCvPal.png

Edit: List to all the above forum members that have ranked-up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Qu0_AAwwU9TyiFp7DhwgpySkdFMAssRiCmeQ62mHg8/edit?usp=sharing

Lols...
So we would have 3 days of mourning?
The first one was a serious blow, then came the 1 merit requirement which destroyed a few more lives and now you're supporting a total purge?

Thumbs up! Bring it on!!!! Although I'll end u as a senior member, f**** it, by the next bull run I'll be legendary!


Or the decline in real ICO and the fact that 99% of them are scams?
I would bet on the later.

I rarely browse the altcoin section but all I see there are bounty hunters asking each other if it's still worth to "do bounty".

This would be a pretty radical move but it does make sense. A year has been more than enough time for everyone's merit to reflect who they actually are.

I see a few sig campaigns have merit requirements separate to airdropped levels such as 50 earned or 10 in the last two months. Either make that mandatory or drop the hammer.

sadly i was not there to witness the birth of the merit system, strangely i am nearly in top 100 merit receivers( been active on the forum for only the last 3 months) ironically many old members are still jr members without airdropped merit.

This has been suggested multiple times, restrictions on signature for members who have failed to earn a single merit should be extended to those who had merits airdropped. Theymos has talked about how anyone who can not earn the minimum is not needed on the forum, this should be all inclusive

I'm fine with removing airdropped merits, but in that case we should recalculate the merit limits for ranking up.
It can happen based on the observation of the amount of the merits gathered in 1 year time.
Rank   Required activity   Required merit
Brand new   0   0
Newbie   1   0
Jr Member   30   1
Member   60   10
Full Member   120   100
Sr. Member   240   250
Hero Member   480   500
Legendary   Random in the range 775-1030   1000

For the newbies, juniors and members, you can see that the merits needed for the rank up are low, compared to the activity. (required merit/activity ratio is way below 100%)
From Full member rank, you have to get nearly as many merits  as the required activity. (required merit/activity ratio is 83.3%)
For Sr. members, Heroes more merit is required than activity. (required merit/activity ratio is 104.16%)
Legendaries are a bit different, based on the luck, it varies from 97% to 129%

Based on my observations (and that can be wrong of course), (for the normal average users) 50% required merit/activity ratio would be still hard enough to achieve, so this would still slow down the ranking up process significantly, compared to the 'no merit' times.
This would motivate the normal users a bit more to post quality and wouls still stop spammers.

Anyway, happy birthday Merit :)
 

And that is what it should be like, a Legendary rank really meaning something!!
Besides, is there real purpose of becoming Legendary other than getting into better paying campaigns?

If you want to show off how long you have been on the forum, there is activity, if how much trust people have in you there is the trust system, merit shows how much people care about your ideas...
The rank...is kind of useless.


And that's what we all want, right?


Another proof airdrop merit should at least enter a decay phase...

Fine for me, Legendary could remain 1000 merits, that's really a kind of thing that's hard to achieve, no problem with that. (even if we just withdraw the airdropped merits)
In this case, is this rank thing necessary at all?

---

Just wondering, I'm fine with the current situation as well, because based on my last 1 year progress (100 merit earned per year :D ), I have 4 years unless I become legendary, but it's not a problem for me, I can manage the situation. This is the highest rank, this should be really hard to achieve, unless it will lose it's special feeling...

But the Full member rank is just the 3rd rank, not the last one, and if people will struggle to reach even the 3rd rank, that would make them disappointed (just my opinion, and I'm talking about the 'normal' users, not the spammers or the farmed accounts). If I understand DdmrDdmr's chart right, there were 82 members, who managed to become Full member (from Member) since the introduction of the merit system, this is less than 10 members per month, for the entire forum. Taking into consideration that we have thousands of active accounts, it's not really much (even if only minor part of the active accounts post meaningful things...)

To become a Full member from Member, there's a 90 merit gap to fill, which means you have to get nearly 1 merit per post (120 activity compared to 100 merit), which is really hard. If you only post the necessary 14 posts per activity period (to avoid spamming the whole forum, fishing for merit everywhere and make the forum unreadable), it's a really really hard task. People would give up sooner than we expect

Or, if we want to give prestige to ranks, Senior member could be the first of the perstigious ranks, and we should not touch the merit requirements of Senior and above, and only lessen the merit requirement of the 3rd rank a bit, to help people rank up at least to Full member, to feel that they are already fully accepted members of the community :)

I know that rank doesn't matter for a lot of people, but for a lot of other people it does (and not only because of the signature campaigns, it's only for the signature spammers), and it won't ruin the success of the current merit system if we could adjust the requirement a bit of the 3rd rank...

But it's just an idea (and a wall of text I know :D) and I don't want to harm anyone with it, just wanted to help those members who really deserves it (and I know that they're the minority nowdays...)

I think maybe not...
Apart from signatures, I don't think there is any other thing of some importance where rank matters.
As far as I know, pm limits are based on activity (!?) so.....

And just the other day I saw a topic about what we should have after Legendary, it's quite clear that without a merit decay or nuking the airdrop merit the ranks will become a bit confusing...
After all, what do they prove?



Those thousands of active accounts what maybe doesn't give a damn about what they post as long as they have done their quota. Whenever I venture in the alt section I see hundreds of members I've never encountered on the forum before.
It would be interesting to know how many of them have never left the alt and bounty section ....uhhfff....

.... yeah @Loycev if you read this (or the AI does) ;D ;D ;D I still have the data you dumped on me a month ago and I haven't forgotten and I haven't yet!!!! gave up, but I can't parse that unless I break it into pieces so small it will be a pain to glue the results after.
I tried two scripts and they all ended hanging even with 1/8 of the file.

So I might have the answer to my own question right here, but unable to see it  :P

I think it won't be good action from me to open new thread with different title, so OP what about to change title? Forum before and after merit <--- 1 year has passed and now is a good time say something actually on changes, what's improved, what's declined, was this the solution?
Merit really changed overall situation on this forum but seems merit didn't touch to altcoin discussion section lol

Let’s put this way: I recently ranked up to full member. I registered little less than a year ago ,but I have been active since June.
I briefly ventured on alt section tbh, but I noticed that I got so much merits given to me or I sent so many to others (where merits means knowledge exchanged with the board basically) when I deduced to leave that section forever.

Little self celebratory post about me becoming a self made Full Member and where I explain what merits are to me
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5098333.msg49397868#msg49397868

Congrats, you are the exception, to show that ranking up is possible (but still hard enough for the rest, I guess :) )
Anyway, nice job, and keep up the good posting :)

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I'd couldn't believe can be ranked up to Hero Member :D
I thought it was impossible rank-up from Full Member to Hero Member


https://i.ibb.co/zn45ydf/999999.png (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Qu0_AAwwU9TyiFp7DhwgpySkdFMAssRiCmeQ62mHg8/edit?usp=sharing)

It is obviously a reachable target.
For me, I have gone one-fifth of my journey to Senior position.
Strongly believe that till the end of this year, I will hit the finish line.

Just a quick word cloud will all the 312 usernames that have managed to earn at least 150 merits as of today (value chosen arbitrarily to allow for names to be readable). Name size is proportional to the number of earned merits.

https://i.imgur.com/puKtAlp.png

Well, congratulations on the merit system and to those implemented it. For sure the forum was being saved from shit posting and it was actually minimized in addition to the new merit requirement for the newbie to rank up in jr. member rank. Now, it seems that the forum has gone quite without those shit posters around. The challenge now is to gather more bitcoin users and to be able to participated in this forum discussion to let bitcoin go hype again.

Happy birthday, Merit!

This is the Stats of my Japanese local board.（Source is Merit Dashboard (https://public.tableau.com/profile/ddmrddmr#!/vizhome/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/GlobalSummary)）
Merited User Ranking                  

Rank	Merit	User Name
1	120	hakka
2	72	tactac
3	62	sncc
4	44	nanna
5	28	zaq130
6	24	Anon11073
7	23	kazuki.t
8	14	segare
9	12	imshon
10	10	kinopi
11	10	redtag070
12	8	Choco99
13	7	Leteravian
14	7	machamizu
15	6	saitoutakasi
16	6	Tamak
17	6	popomaru
18	6	Ken-san
19	6	mktkm
20	5	CosplayToken
21	5	kenart.dd514
22	5	miswo
23	5	mmrism
24	5	Satosi Nakyamoto
25	4	Amane
26	4	danmaril
27	4	imtaamo
28	4	solt
29	3	Furgon Chino
30	3	hojojon
31	3	makotosan
32	2	Takeshi9953
33	2	masayan777
34	2	treattreat
35	2	Buff88
36	2	gumi_daisuki
37	2	compota
38	2	bittab
39	2	HBV
40	1	yamaguchi008
41	1	wlhdxloli
42	1	takainfo77
43	1	SpreadWinner
44	1	serpenti111
45	1	sameji919
46	1	pappy0157
47	1	newken321
48	1	narghat
49	1	nara1892
50	1	machimoto45
51	1	kikunoshin
52	1	ken_hatoyama
53	1	jappitoniboshitonekoto
54	1	isamuaamc
55	1	Im japanese owesome
56	1	idenfy3
57	1	drybull
58	1	dosukoi72
59	1	Donkatsu
60	1	Ccsndr
61	1	bombomtarou2082
62	1	bitlawyer
63	1	akisue2
64	1	airdropwwani
total amount	562

                  

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Meriter User Ranking                  

Rank	Merit	From User Name
1	254	Anon11073
2	91	nanna
3	64	sncc
4	46	hakka
5	36	tactac
6	14	zaq130
7	8	3x2
8	5	Imaha486
9	5	imshon
10	4	redtag070
11	3	machamizu
12	3	seedone1122
13	2	Satosi Nakyamoto
14	2	UltraPlay
15	2	Tamak
16	2	segare
17	2	kazuki.t
18	2	hojojon
19	2	DarkStar_
20	2	kenart.dd514
21	1	thew3apon
22	1	TheKingInYellow
23	1	pokemoso
24	1	pokayoke
25	1	newken321
26	1	nasutaro
27	1	mmrism
28	1	mktkm
29	1	kazu3
30	1	jappitoniboshitonekoto
31	1	gogo5050
32	1	dosukoi72
33	1	BitCryptex

      

64 users received Merit and the user who received the most received 120 Merit.
Also, 33 users sent Merit, and the user who sent the most sent 254 Merit.
Thank you Merit system! I'm happy that Merit circulates more actively in the next year :)

All of them are good posters and contributors to the forum. The merit system clearly reflects such decent members.

I see that many people want to change the merit system. Some of users suggest interesting ideas. I'm sure that the still young merit system will grow up and be improved until its second anniversary. :)

^
nicely made, happy Bday from the HATcommunity as well  ::)  ::)

A tiny little thing: It looks like you’ve duplicated row entry number 45 on the first list (sameji919) over to row number 46, and therefore there is one more user on the list than exists really. I should be updating the Dashboard today, so today’s data will reflect the information as of this morning, making it the real 1 year data set.

Anyhow, nice to see that local boards trace the merit activity. Numbers are pretty low on your local board, but it really requires some inner knowledge of your local board to tell whether it is aligned with the quality and quantity of posts being made there.

An interesting exercise to perform is to list all local board merited profiles, and indicate what percentage of each profile comes from the local board. I did that some while ago for my local board.
My personal local board merit ratio as of last week was of 10,87% (we can see it on the Merit Dashboard using the Merit User Summary Tab – Item Received Subsections, but it’s a one by one task; much quicker straight from the database). On my local board, there is only one 100% local board created Full Member (many are cross-boarders). That is extremely difficult to achieve.

Do you have any idea how much you affected productivity worldwide?  ;D ;D
With thousands of people having their eyes glued to the screen to see if/where their names are?

I spent (based on browser history) 6 minutes to find my name, and I even double check to see if I am even supposed to be there.
Damn, I need glasses!!!!!

It took me two minutes roughly to find yours, but my eyesight has got way worse this year, and is now on the verge of needing some aid. I really do hope that all 312 names are on the list, and that the chart didn’t chop-off some names to make them fit (I counted names on an area and extrapolated, and it seemed to have them all accounted for). My initial idea was to include all merited usernames, but obviously the word cloud comes out pretty crap with over 26K users …

@DdmrDdmr, I meant it as a joke as probably whenever I come close to it I saw a name..hey that's x..went the other direction..oh hey here is a pack of CM campaign, let's see how many are side by side...
Even after I found my name I spent some more time just checking who is where.

As for the eyesight I try to take breaks as the doctor said because I was experiencing blurring vision, after 30 mins of watching the screen I go on the balcony (if it's not a damn winter like now) or at least the window and try to relax my eyes for around 5 mins watching what's happening in real life.


Don't!!!! I'll have to take a day off  ;D

Took me about 0.5 seconds to find mine, haha. It's your own fault for signing up with a normal username containing only letters. You should have picked something ugly, with symbols, and a nightmare to type out like mine, then you stand out a mile away. ;D

Yeah, right!  ;D
It's because of the username not because you have earned 6 or 7 times more merit than me  ;D
How nice of you to put it that way !!! :D

Thank you for pointing out my mistakes and updating the dashboard!
On my mistake, lines 45 and 46 were duplicated. Users who received Merit on Japanese local board was correctly 64 people. I fixed the post.

Yes, it is said that there are three Merit sources, but Merit distribution on our local board is very small, only 0.6% of the number circulating throughout the local board. (562/93, 073)
It may be because our local board has few posts and is not very active. I hope that this year will be more active and that good postings will increase :)

Nice figure, DdmrDdmr.  I found most usernames are familiar to me.  The merit system does work, makes it easier to recognize high quality posters and enhances the number of such posters.