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This topic isn't relevant to merit sources, so move along, conservatively giving away your monthly merit allowance elsewhere :P

I've decided I'm against "hodling" smerit. Whenever I receive merit, I usually have posts in my mind to merit in return, therefore don't find any purpose, value or reasoning for "stocking up" on smerit, or even "holding" it for more than 24 hours. Arguably, this is also against the ethos of merit in itself (no quote soz).

It's not that I'm against those who hodl their smert, in order to "have enough in reserve" to merit a post worthy of considerable merit, instead I give away merit in single amounts whenever I receive it. Call it Member mentality and not relevant to higher-ranking members (it's probably not), but it's about giving as much as to you receive is it not?

For reference (https://bpip.org/profile.aspx?p=dragonvslinux) sake, this is how I like to see my Merit distribution:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/miLZm.png

I have given away 101% of my smerit (41/81*200), not 100% due to a glitch in the system ;D

Does anyone else imply the smerit anti-hodling scheme?

This is what we see in the merit page (of each user)
We don't have any more merit by holding our sMerits and the only thing we can do to accumulate more merits is making good and merit-deserving posts.

The most common complaining thing is giving sMerits away to which posts is a subjective thing to do with each user. One user can think this post is merit-deserving and merit it, while the others don't think so and don't merit it. Fortunately, it is not a thing to complain and start serious arguments because meriting is subjective. Sometimes, an simple answer is helpful for the one who raised a question, or for the one who accidentally find and read the answer that is helpful for his/her-self.

A newbie can start a question like "Where to see the forum rules? Please help". I already know it so I can think the answer is unhelpful for me but the others (who don't know it) think it is helpful and give sMerits to that answer. It is totally fair and very well usage of sMerits.

For holding sMerits, there is nothing wrong with it. If one does not see posts that subjectively thought as merit-deserving, that one will hold their sMerits. To be fair, users don't have to spend their time to scan posts in the forum to give their sMerits away. They can do this naturally and occasionally when they see good posts. In other words, it is not a kind of responsibility.

No, there are quite a lot of good and useful posts on forums that are spread across various boards and in my opinion that is where the last sMerit can be spent. But I feel confident that some people will not spend more time searching and searching for such writing for various reasons.
I am not used to hold sMerit for a long time, depending on the posting habits. The more actively interacting in some interesting discussions, the greater the opportunity to spend sMerit.

In my local board Indonesia, there was an attempt by most of the members there to distribute sMerit in the post reported after review on a special thread and in my opinion it was quite helpful for local merit sources to distribute the existing sMerit.

Thanking for pandukelana2712 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1304130) and other merit source that have contributed a lot there. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2840438.0

i started doing this a while back but i kept spending the merit elsewhere and when i remembered the post i wanted to give merit to, i was already out so i gave up trying to remember :P

it depends on how active you are on bitcointalk. sometimes you may receive more merits that you can spend and not being active means they accumulate for longer than 24 hours specially since most people don't visit bitcointlk on daily basis.

I always try to keep at least 5 smerits in reserve and the most number I've held was 20+ if I'm not mistaken. I don't see anything wrong with hodling them for more than 24 hours or more than a week because I always have the intention of distributing them. It's just a matter of finding that special, helpful or interesting post/comment. I believe that's also the same case with some non-merit source here.

I try to give merit away, but my main problem is that 99% of the posts i come across are either:

• Newbie ramblings, asking questions that have been answered hundreds of times before, spamming,bounty hunting, reflinks, wrong subforum,...
• Posts that were clearly designed to beg for merit
• Good posts by people that don't need any more merit cause their rank is more or less in balance with their merit total

It's very rare for me to see a post and think: "this guy/girl is actually making coherent posts that aren't created for the sole purpose of getting merit, and on top of this, this guy/girl actually needs merit... So i'll send him/her some".

So, the end result is that i'm still sitting on a bunch of smerit, not because i'm trying to be a hoarder, but because the newbie/junior/member/full member post quality is so low i can't in good conscience give them merit.

You can try holding merit giveaway threads so you could potentially spot helpful ones that went unnoticed.

I'll hold one once I've reached 100 Merits.

Yeah, i've spotted those threads aswell. However, when reading trough those threads, i always get the gut feeling people posting in those threads are essentially still begging for merits, so i'm inclined not to give them any... I realize this might be an unpopular opinion, but it's just the way i'm programmed to react i guess :)

I don't believe that this should be a consideration. The forum needs good posts to be merited, and replying to posts and awarding merit is a way to build an interesting and vibrant forum. We need to encourage new members, and help them on their Bitcoin journey, but we also need to encourage long term and senior members to continue posting on the boards. Activity is the ranking tool, not merits.Merits were created to reduce the activities of the spammers, and to improve the quality of the threads.

Regardless of your rank, if one doesn't see one's merit count increasing, then one tends to feel that one is out of touch with the current forum attitudes. This can have three results. The member can change his posting topics to stay with the forum, or he can try to generate interest in more traditional topics or the new trends. The third alternative is to find another forum, and regrettably this seems to be happening at the moment. You can prevent this by spending time in the quality threads, rather than dumping sMerit on posters just to enable them to get a bigger signature.

Even merit sources are encouraged to exhaust their source merit by the admin by giving our max number of merit if they can't find good number of deserving posts to merit.But we can't say all the persons were trying to give out what they have for obvious reasons.If you are good at spending then its good for the community but don't miss the deserving posts in the chase of spending. :

Fair point. In the end, it's up to each one on how to spend their own merits :)

I personally don't send smerits in a planned way. I have never planned for it in fact. I only spend smerit when I read a thread & its replies. If I get something interesting or high quality which I think deserve merit, I put one or two on that post. I guess that's how merit system works.
Merit sources are somewhat subjective to be different & they are spending merit in a planned way. I guess each of the merit source try to spend all of their available smerits.

I feel exactly the same and nearly merited you for that, but didn't want to add to your problem...  ;)

Spot-on observation, as if you read my mind.  Then again, I have relatively high standards when it comes to handing out merits and there are probably a lot of posts that are "good" but not exceptional but which probably deserve one merit or so.  Lately I've been trying to be more generous, especially to members who need merits to rank up.

I disagree.  If I only gave merits to exceptional posts, the majority of them would probably be handed out to Legendary members and I wouldn't be helping members rank up, which is an important thing to a lot of people.  The merit system was intended to make it difficult for shitposters to climb the ranks, but it's become clear to me that there aren't a lot of members ranking up in general--and I don't think Theymos wanted it to be that hard for "good" (but not excellent) posters to rank up.  I was tempted to write "average posters" but average around here means garbage shitpost quality. 

And I still end up meriting a lot of Legendary members anyway, since they seem to make the best posts by far.  And the lower-ranked members making exceptional posts are probably going to be the only ones ranking up that far within the next 2.5 years or whatever--and there aren't all that many of them.

I’ve always sent out all of my source allowance during each month I’ve been a Merit Source. There are a couple of threads that show who HODL’s them & either doesn’t have time to or can’t be arsed to share them around.

I can’t be bothered to search for the thread that shows who the selfish cunts are but you know who you are.
Anybody who doesn’t send maybe over 75% of their source allowance to others for maybe 3-4 consecutive months should have their allowance reduced or even be removed as a source.

Now reached 103% smerit given away  8)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mijJl.png

Personally I do not keep my sMertis. The main interest of this system is to create a system of "trust" between users ( Although not linked to the real trust system of the forum ). Not using this system is for me a lack of "good forum behavior".

Of course, what I say is only mine.

With my sMerits, I favor the messages from local section ( French (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=13.0) ).
I always try to merit posts which bring a real value to the discussion ( Even if it is sometimes difficult to judge ).
Also as some do here, I try to distribute to accounts that have not necessarily received many merits ( Even if it does not happen much ).

Same goes for me. I'd be the world's worst merit source.

There are no doubt some good posts in places that could use much more merit giving like the altcoin sections. No freaking way can I be bothered to unearth them. I have plenty more than I should have as a result of that.

I can't imagine anyone hoards them for fun. It has no purpose or benefit whatsoever.

Last time I perused one of those merit highlighting threads it was almost all the same old shit. I'll try harder.

We dont have to make plans when we have to distribute the existing sMerit, maybe that also applies to appropriate sources.
Everyone has their own criteria where sMerit can be distributed, but with involvement in interesting discussions, sMerit can be spent faster and this applies to me because the number of sMerit I get is very minimal.

I don't think JC was saying we should only be meriting exceptional posts, but rather saying we should be meriting good posts regardless of whether they were made by a newbie or a legendary, which is a stance I tend to agree with. Until the recent merit source allocation redistribution, I skipped over a lot of posts by hero/legendary members because I wanted to keep the few remaining sMerits I had to help rank up newbies, so it's a point of view I can completely empathize with. Now that my source has been increased however, I am starting to pay much less attention to who made the post, and just meriting it if it was good or helpful. I do still go on a hunt for newbie posts now and then though, and have a lower threshold for newbies as to what I would classify as "good".

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In response to OP, I don't think there is one "best way" to spend your sMerits. Some users like to hand them out immediately, some like to keep them for exceptional posts, some make lists of good posts and come back to them whenever they have some sMerits to spend. I think all are valid. I don't like that people uselessly hoard sMerits endlessly, but if we introduced sMerit decay it would hurt genuine users more I think. The people who never spend their sMerits anyway wouldn't care or even notice that they had decayed, and the people who do spend their sMerits but hold on to few for exceptional posts would find themselves more often out of sMerit when they wanted to send some.

The merit system is not confined to the awarding  of single merits - Exceptional posts can receive awards of up to 50 sMerit. Of course I don't know what Theymos intended to be the primary motivation in implementing the merit system, so I have to guess, and that means that I introduce a bit of personal bias. My impression is that the merit system has two functions. One is to deprive low value noise posters of the rewards that are available to higher ranked members. The other function is to improve the quality and variety of the thread topics in the forum. Without the quality topics and posts, then there is no value in trying to achieve higher ranks, and the forum will start to lose the members that make it the valuable resource that it is at the moment.

We are entering into to period of unprecedented economic change, and I hope that Bitcoin Talk will remain a leading discussion forum for the shift from fiat currencies to cryptos over the next few years. To enable this, we will have to retain and recruit some of the leading players.

I judge the quality of a post according to rank. Newbies can be rewarded for curiosity, like asking a technical question about a topic that shows a willingness to learn. This could earn them merit but is less likely to earn a Hero or Legendary member any. The quality of a user's post is expected to improve with an increase in rank. So the longer a person stays on the forum, the more activity they get and the more knowledge they acquire, and finally, this is reflected in their merit count.

i merited him as his post is very good.

i merited you as your post gave me a smile 😊