Bitcoin Forum

I gone a long journey from Newbie to Full Member, then come very close to Senior Member.
Honestly, I gone faster than what I envisioned at the start of 2019.
I have been rewarded around 100 sMerits since the start of 2019, it's amazing.

Today, I thought that it might be great if the forum launch a new collection of badges for self-made users.
The collection will be totally different the current badges.
It might help forum users easily to distinguish between self-made users, and airdropped users.
Of course, for some users, there are overlaps between airdropped and self-made between ranks.

1) Self-made Full Members:
https://i.imgur.com/c3sMb9B.png

2) Self-made Senior Members:
https://i.imgur.com/yWg2wAy.png

3) Self-made Heroes:
https://i.imgur.com/Rw6tbVa.png

4) Self-made Ledgendaries:
https://i.imgur.com/v8WnH5W.png

Fully displayed badge:
https://i.imgur.com/vBWwJkK.png

I hope that theymos will accept the collection on April 1st this year.

You we're here since 2017 and you are one of the most improve poster IMO, you can be a Sr.Member if you just actively post since you started but no doubt you can still do it even with the merit system.

How about those forum members that was already a Legendary rank right before the merit system implemented and still receiving smerits, how can they get this badge. I see it like a bragging rights and I'm not against for as long as someone deserves it.

nice idea, but if this should become an april fool, then a PM would be better to not disclose in before

The idea is good, but I think that Bitcoin Talk has moved into the crypto market, although Bitcoin is still important of course.

Anyway - I want 5 golden cats just like the aristocratic Egyptian ones. :)

What do you mean by still receiving sMerits? Apart from Merit source nobody is getting sMerits now. (forget the airdrop sMerits or sMerits earned by virtue of earned Merits).
Old user also wear the badge according to the Merits earned by them after introduction of merit system. Only the handful of legendary will be able to wear the badge according to their rank.

Assuming the merit system is permanent, and the forum survives for another 10+ years, there will come a point where the airdropped merits are insignificant to all "real" users, and only useful for chronic spammers who are completely unable to earn merit on their own. Everyone will have your new badges except for the worst of the shitposters. I think a neater solution therefore would simply be to either remove the airdropped merits, or have them start to decay slowly over time.

That's exactly what I expected other demotions that aim at higher rank members.
By now, the forum has only one demotion wave after merit system's beginning, aim at Junior Members in September last year.
If other demotions aim at Full Members, Senior Members, Heroes, and Ledgendaries implemented, I am sure that we will witness others sudden rises of merit circulations, like what happened in Sep. 2018 or in Jan. 2019 with Default Trust Change.

Like this idea. Something should be like that for self made members. It's really very hard to become self made Sr/Hero members now a days. For a sign of self made member this idea is appreciated. Also appreciation for them who already ranked up by earned merit. Also those are previously was Legendary but they earned more than 1000 merit they also deserve this kind of badge. It would be appropriated for all earned members. So I think users will more motivate to make constructive post.

Now, that's a whole 'nother question.

Although I think airdropped merit should eventually be removed (either in a "lump-sum" or a slow decay"), I'm less decided on demotions. I'm not sure it's fair to demote legendary members who have been here since 2010/2011 based on a system which was only introduced a year ago. That feels a bit too ex postfacto to me. I appreciate, however, that removing airdropped merit but not ranks would leave some legendary users going about with single-figure merits, which also seems strange. Also, if we removed all airdropped merit and demoted users accordingly, then based on DdmrDdmr's data here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wl9a_Drl5LWPN3uG6pT3YPIYtkvRkZiGneukzHvVPoA) there would only be 7 legendaries and 28 hero members in the entire forum, which seem equally strange.

Simply requires additional merits beside airdropped ones to maintain ranks.
For example:

Full Members: 110 merits: 100 airdropped merits + 10 earned merits.
Senior Members: 270 merits: 250 airdropped merits + 20 earned merits.
Hero Members: 550 merits: 500 airdropped merits + 50 earned merits.
Ledgendary Members: 1100 merits: 1000 airdropped merits + 100 earned merits.

For service providers, I think they don't care about their ranks in the forum.
Having rights to show images is enough for them.
Additionally, what they care about probably Green Trust, not rank.

So, if complains occur, they will mainly come from others, who can not earn even single merits more than one year after merit system born.

The idea is simple. Instead of deleting those *airdropped merits*, it is better to replace the gold coins/badges with the account to silver coins, and then turn them into gold when you get the number assigned to each rank.

I do not think the new shapes that @tranthidung introduced is attractive but the idea is wonderful. There are similar badges for reporting that may appear after April fools.

This is a good idea but I was thinking that instead of overlaps with the member's badge it would be better that even airdropped users could still earn the silver coins as a "self-made user" by earning merits in the future. So for example a member who is a long time Legendary now has earned 100 merits from his post two of his five gold coins would be converted to two silver ones equal to the rank of a Full member. So still all members have the chance to be self-made even the ones who have high ranks before the merit system.

Self-made Hero here so yeah I do like this idea.
And maybe there could also be a badge for Legendaries who have earned more than 1000 merits.

The idea could be interesting but.. silver?! Bitcoin and Bitcointalk are gold, so I am not convinced by the silver badges.
Also it depends on how much of theymos' time would this take, since I'd rather prefer to see that new forum live someday...

As a self-made Full member and potential self-made snr  member, I also don't get why you would give silver (inferior precious metal) to Self-made members and gold to airdrop receivers. Also what will happen to those already with the legendary rank since this can only work out for Jnr - Hero member. Beside that silver looks like we're promoting Litecoin lol :D

If a change of badge was to be implemented then I suggest, it should be change of badges based on merit received instead of ranks, that way a legendary member only gets the badge when user received 1000merit. It can still be seen as a self made (ranked up member)

Forgive me for my ignorance, "airdropped" member status? What? I worked my ass off for my hero status and being a trustworthy member. All I know about besides earning it like I did is buying an account... what's an airdropped member? Hmmm... Also, looking forward to getting my LEGENDARY status! Also sorry OP... the silver badges don't look that great compared to the gold IMHO.

You now need 1000 merit to rank up to legendary, on top of the activity pts.  You were airdropped 500 merit as part being a hero member. Did you miss the introduction of merits to clean up the forum?

Not too long ago, there was some discussion about some sort of "rank up" signifier in the form of a special title or a tweak in the look of the gold coins or whatever, and there was a lot of interest if I recall correctly.  What happened to all those ideas?  My guess is that they were ultimately discarded by Theymos, that he's not likely to start making the distinction between "self-made" and older Legendaries. 

The last thing we need is identity politics linked to forum rank, but if something had to be done based on this thread I'd say hugeblack has a decent suggestion.

I was wondering where I got these 500 merits from lol! Thanks for the clarification. Man. Now I am going to have to work that much harder for my Legendary status. Sweet baby Bitcorn. The honey badger strikes again. At least it helps clean up the forum and promotes solid posting and not shitposting. I am thankful for that.

The idea is good indeed.
Certainly there should be some way to identify earned merit and Airdropped merits.

However users who ranked up without merit were somehow contributing to bitcoin adoption and for the forum, while I wasn't. The idea to

Why did I make silver badges?
Simply because we currently have badges with gold color.
As you can see that the badges are tiny, so how did we can differentiate between new and old badges if they all have yellow color?
Of course, silver maybe not a perfect color for new badges, but for now I don't have idea to choose other colors.

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Sounds great!
It is a kind of demotion, but demotions on badges, not ranks.

Users who earn more than 1000 merits are oustanding ones.
They obviously deserve to have special badge for their great initiatives and massive consecutive contributions to the forum.
I known that there are topics discussed about this issue.
One more thing, if the one got acceptance by theymos, the requirements for the outstanding guys should subtract automatically allocated merits to merit soures.
Only self-earned merits should taken into account as criteria to give them the outstanding badge.

I thought it was strange that you did not know about Merit. But I saw you've been out of the forum for a year. That is, during the period of introduction of the Merit system. Good to know you got into a signature campaign, from Stake, right after you get back to Btalk... ::) ::) ::)

This is a wonderful thought. Self-made users should be reorganized in some way for their efforts in acquiring merits genuinely to rank up by being actively involved in the community. Without creating conflicts within the forum between older members and self-made users. I think huge black's suggestion is the best

It funny seeing a "legenday" or "Hero" member account without even a single earned merit but is yet very active in the forum.

Hmph. I'm not going to sit here helping other people earn new shiny badges and see myself get left out. :P >:( From my perspective, this new badge would make me feel so used.  :D

Even when two types of badges for self-made and airdroped users implemented by theymos (but I doubt that the suggestion will be applied), old users/ airdroped users who can highly constructive will have special badges for their excellent, outstanding works with special badge.
Don't worry about that, bones261.  :D

JetCash proposed a new rank for TEMPs, but I think a special badge is enough.

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It will not a funny scenario, I belief.
We might see another intensive battle like what happened with Default Trust Change.

What does self-made mean?

Isn't every profile self - made?

To be honest, I don't know the origin of self-made term in the forum.
For me, I inspired by LoyceV (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=459836) and his personal texts.
I started to use the term and also setup my personal texts with 'self-made' Full Member, then Senior Member.

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You raised a big question, Vod.
How about the idea to add the term 'self-made' into bitcointalk dictionary?
or the topic Terminology (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126798.0) (by yogi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=42027))

Another funny term, such as 'merit-made' should be taken into consideration as well.
 ;D

There are many sold and hacked accounts which changed owners. These profiles cannot be called "self-made", in my opinion.

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A definition from the Cambridge Dictionary:

What a salty post from a user who has 7 sent feed backs for the past year which consist of participating in a signature campaign (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=194811). Excuse me for trying to create quality content while earning Bitcoin in the process. Oh wait, that makes up a large majority of this forum. Bitcoin, altcoins, and transactions and information regarding that. As well as busting scammers, warning people against people trying to scam, and helping out newbies. I have been completing transactions, participating in adding substantial content, and being a productive member of "Btalk" off and on for years. No need to be rude, dude. I dislike shitposters just as much as the next person. Also, FYI, I did not join the sig campaign right after a return to the forum. I lurked for a while as I always do. Then I made some posts. Conducted a transaction with Sampey (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=130152). All while monitoring the services subforum to see if there were any campaigns worth my while. I didn't even join the campaign until I did my research and realized it was for one of Stunna (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=81292)'s sites, whom has a lot of respect and rep on the forum and I have seen around for a long time. But go ahead, roll your eyes some more and drop your little whims of inspiration where ever you may please. As far as I am concerned, I earned my Hero status and 500 merit airdrop just as much as the next user. And I will wear my status with pride.

Having two sets of rank badges with different colours coexisting, with different semantics that depend on the set of rules that were in state at the time would seem a bit weird in my opinion, and dealing with the overlaps in non-trivial. Take for example a Legendary who happened to earn enough merits to become a so called self-made Hero. Which of the two sets of forum rank badges should he be wearing?

I would favour though displaying the number of earned merits alongside the merit counter (i.e. 120/ 620 -> 120 earned merits out of a total of 620 merits).
A simplified version of rank badge change would be to add a trailing (or leading) icon with an enclosed number, equivalent to target earned merit values (i.e. 100, 250, 500, 1k, 2k).

Instead of having so many different coins under the name isn't it better just to add the earned merit to the airdropped like :

Merit: 10+256

Or total merit/earned merit - this will save more space ;)

Merit: 266/256

I think this type of self-made account to old accounts will give a gap on both sides in the forum because it will just bring inferiority/superiority which will sprout problem.

You've missed a big point in Vod's post.
Your endeavor emphasizes user contribution in the last year and forgets about everything the user has done in the other many years.
While some users are still active and earn merits, some not. Should those be demoted or seen somewhat as "inferior"?

I also think this is a neater solution for this issue.

As I said before, I don't think it's fair to think about deranking older members who reached their status before the introduction of the merit system - it puts too much weight on the last 12 months, and it essentially punishes users for being most active during the early years of bitcoin, which is completely backwards when you think about. I'm also not a huge fan of another distinction being made between "good" users and "bad" users. We already have the ranking system and the trust system. As Crypto-DesignService says, it just seems like these badges would introduce another "us v them" or superiority/inferiority dynamic which is counter-productive to a cohesive community and good newbies getting involved in discussions.

I would like to be able to see earned merit vs total merit as in the examples above, or have the airdropped merits slowly start to decay, but I don't think anything more than that is really needed.

Oh' I haven't seen DdmrDdmr's post before mine :D, seems like i suggested something he already mentioned.

Another suggestion is for we to forget totally about earned or airdrop merit badges, gold or silver badge and we concentrate more on improving forum and quality we contribute. If anyone is that interested  in finding out if someone is a self-made rank up member, he can checkout his profile on BPIP (https://bpip.org) although the merit stats there aren't that always correct but it can give you an idea of the users earned merit. Theymos would only be interested in implementing new features that will have a positive effect on the forum and I don't think displaying Self-made rank up member badge will add anything than a bragging right to the users benefiting.

You're 10 Merit away from being Self-made Legendary too.
I think I'm the one who came up with this term. The oldest reference I can find is this:

I later added this:

In a way, yes. But it's also nice to show the difference between an account farmer and a user who earned his Merit. I think a Newbie with 20 earned Merit is much more impressive than a Legendary with 0 earned Merit.

Yeah fuck that shit, I’ve only got 482 earned Merit. My account would look shit compared to loads of people then.

Merit 1000+482

At least wait until I get 1000 earned Merit :D :D

So I didn't earn my merit?   Or am I an account farmer?

;D 482 is not bad thou. It shows you really contributed and earned it without any motive of ranking up further. I know there are legendaries who don't care anymore because they already at the top

Currently, you have had exactly 2000 merits in total, 1000 from allocated merits, and the rest 1000 merits earned over more than one year.
Congratulations, you are self-made Ledgendary, for now.

@OP, you will stop paying attention after you reach a certain amount of merits. So, I think these badges are not necessary.

Old undeserved high-rank members will be banned or red-tagged sooner or later anyway.

I can not disagre with LoyceV at this point.

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I don't think so.
Bans or red tags need reasons to occur, so if they don't violate forum rules, they won't be banned or get red tags from DT members.
Even they are shitposters, and repeatedly posting shit, they won't get bans or red tags if they won't violate forum rules.

You guys also need to understand that "Merit" was never "a thing" back in the day, so a lot of us just don't care like we should - We never had to before so why take extra time now, we are all just as busy as before Merit occurred.... :P

Well, from my limited observations, these members would make mistakes sooner or later, e.g., plagiarism, shitpost, pyramid quotes, etc. It's difficult to change habits, that's why many members got rekt and complain in Meta.

If you want to brag about "self-made," you could put it in your "Personal Text" field.

The reporter badge is more important IMO.

Self made Full/senior/hero members after merit system implementation, are no less than super humans to me. Good job bud!

I want a badge for 1,000 merit "self-made Legendary without topic spamming"   :-\

How about this one?

https://i.imgur.com/ZbOf5As.png

Can we get a recogntion and an Amen for a self-made Member as well? I know that getting Member account only require few merits for some but for us that who do diligence rather than those who only get from their alts it will be encouraging for use if we will be recognised too. Hoping OP might update the thread.

No, I was in no way pointing at you :)
Welcome to Self-made Legendary status!

I think this is the main reason why the thread is created but the problem is the implementation. We can't use different badges for self-made to old accounts because it gives a gap.

I like the idea of DdmrDdmr (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1582324) and iasenko (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1291828).

Though I'm leaning more on this option than the other one.
This idea is very simple, you show airdropped merit for old accounts(in black) and merits received for both old and created account where merit is introduced(in green). No way of having different badges to one another, it provides a very understandable detail that no one will think of why this one has a different badge to this one.

I guess changing the colour from silver to platanium will solve the badge problem of badges color.

But badge will make things too much difficult to understand. For a same rank of ranked up Senior Member  ,badges should be different if somebody ranked from  Member to Senior Member, Newbie to Senior Member or Full Member to Senior Member. For a same rank you have to create so many badges that it will  not look practical and easy to remember.

Platinum is exclusive only for satoshi's account.

From the maker of reporter badge, I give you Bitcointalk Order of Merit (BOoM) Badge:
https://i.imgur.com/j7sMyRH.png

When hover:
https://i.imgur.com/MjJQKQm.png

You can PM me theymos for April 01,2019 Badge.

You might care in the future if theymos adds a new rank for e.g. -

Activity: 2000
Merit: 2000

I know I would any way, I want to hold the top rank :)

Honestly? Nah, I wouldn't care. I have a life outside this place. :P

Oh yeah obviously, I totally get that :)

That's going to take me another 1.5 years, you'll probably beat me to it.

Congratulations for your new milestone, LoyceV!
3000 merits, 2000 merits earned.
Those ones make you are one of outstandings in the forum.
I think that it is right time to give your account a name-calling, something like post-Ledgendary.
How about this term?

Deity, Ancient or Myth maybe.   :)

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

_____

In my opinion, administrators could let members with 3000 merit to edit a Custom Title in the profile.

Global moderators: mprep (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=51173), hilariousandco (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=164822) and Mr. Big (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=553678) - have this opportunity.

"Myth" rank is a nice idea but the custom title "Global Moderator", IMO, is not very appropriate. Correct me if I'm wrong, Global Moderator is some one who has duty to help moderate the forum. I propose "G.O.A.T" custom title for him.

No matter kind of the title is, welcome all top merited users to my clubs.
[CLUBS] Top Merited-Users Classified into 4 Clubs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115154.0)

I'm not a myth, maybe AI (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4826180.msg48268705#msg48268705), but if there's going to be a new rank, I would like it to be just "Legend".

My (x2) counter isn't really true, I don't have enough Activity.

Perhaps, admins will set a special icon for you.  https://i.imgur.com/NNcTaq7.png

https://i.imgur.com/0357v5L.png
Source (https://pngtree.com/free-icon/technology-robot_839247)


Maybe I'm wrong, but after the 'Merit' was implemented, 'Activity' seems had become an unnecessary restriction.

Merit and activity is a two different thing.

Activity count defines potential rank if you are active around the forum for a couple years.
Merit is the ticket to get that potential rank.

It is like taking a higher degree, you take up bachelors to masters and study for years but you need to pass certain exams to achieve the higher title.

Let's imagine that they are something like two criteria:
1) Activity count: plays as count of the absence in classes.
2) Merit point: plays as your points you got in examinations, which used to judge your qualify to rank up next grade or failed.

If I were the person to decide the badge for the self-made legendary I would choose a "CROWN" displayed under the name or username which IMOO would be cool to look at the badge you have. I'll go with a crown badge to be put as badge under your username.