Bitcoin Forum

Many will wonder after reading the title. Maybe many will blame this idea.

But, in my opinion, ranking up is way too easy now. Why I say that:

- for ranking up to Jr. Member you need just 1 merit; for Member you need only 10. Indeed, it seems so hard for a Newbie to earn 1 merit  but it is not hard actually (explained below).
- activity allows to become Legendary in 2 years or 2 years and a few weeks. Literally speaking, in real world, legends are built in far more time, not just in 2 years.
- many users help those who need a few more merits to rank up by giving them easily the respective merits. I think even if you are 1-10 merits away from the next rank, you should work for them as you did until that point.
- as far as I saw, merits are awarded too easy. Merit sources and members are more or less generous; besides, there are many merit giveaway threads.
- practically, all you need in order to rank up is to be a honorable person and to wait. Honorable person means the following: to not spam, to not scam, to not plagiarize and post what you think is helpful here. To act as a normal person. And users will appreciate your work. They will give you merits if you post useful consideration and if you don't try to cheat the system. So merit barrier is not a real barrier at all if you act with good intentions.

In my opinion, the only real barrier is the time barrier. Because you have to wait for the activity points, but even this barrier has too low standards. Maybe Legendary rank should be possible in 5-10 years, not in 2. What legendary person in the history became a legend in 2 years?!

So I suggest to raise the merit standards because it is way too easy to earn them and also raise the needed activity for higher ranks.

Based on this data provided the other day  by DdmrDdmr, i don't think that ranking up should be more difficult.


So these are the numbers after 2 years of merit introduction. For me they don't seem inflated at all, considering the amount of people that are active on this forum. You have to  find some middle ground in order to prevent spammers and shitposters from ranking up and  in the same time letting good members to keep ranking up in the reasonable time frame.



Isn't this the best case scenario, while most often people wait  much more in order to reach legendary?

I don't think it's that easy to reach legendary as you are framing it, I think you have that view because you got most of your merits from the Bitcointalk Art Compition and it not that easy to earn 1000 merit's anyways. I am sure many would agree.

Although adding a new rank after legendary could be an better option IMO.

Exactly. I agree with you. I think your opinion has represented many users here.  :D

Currently getting merit is already quite difficult. I think the forum rules related to the current ranking are quite difficult (fair), no need to be more difficult.

Considering how difficult it can be for good posters to earn merit, let alone newbies, ranking up is fine. It's difficult as it is seeing as you can be an active member for months with hundreds of activity points and still be a member or Jr. member because your posts don't get recognized due to the sheer size of the forum.


This just isn't true. You can do all these things and still not earn merit if your posts aren't seen. Many members might be hesitant to give newbies merit because giving merit can be seen an endorsement of that member's content. Putting an endorsement on a newbies content is a gamble in itself so they have a tough time as it is to rank up.

You nailed it mate. Gaining 1000 merit is a bit frustrating considering we are not all a thread starter here and many are not good to bring creative idea that will gain merit.

---

@OP, Please consider that this is a forum and not some kind of organization. We are here to share opinions and knowledge and spending here enough time is reasonable to rank up.

If you really think that ranking system is very easy to attain. Why not you request to theymos to X2 your required merit to rank up so that you will find it more challenging. You are thinking base on your personal status and didn't consider the general condition.

Honorable person, nice choice of words.

Actually, you just have to be active in the forum and make some good post so you will earn more merits that would help you rank up.
ranking up from Newbie to jr, member, member or full member is quite easy, the challenge is the rank up to Sr. Member, hero and legendary, however you won't feel it's hard if you are enjoying your life in the forum, instead, once you are ranked up, you might miss yourself when you are still in low rank.

I think more emphasis should be given on the encouragement of discussions about Bitcoin, cryptos and global economics. At the moment, in order to gain merits, it seems that you need to discuss merits, the forum politics, and the trust system, and if you produce stats and images about this, then you get showered with merits.

It almost seems that Bitcoin Talk merits have aspirations to become a global currency. :) I'm waiting for someone to produce a merit mining ASIC.

In history non legend was made in 2years, then we are living in an online society where everything happens faster dude..... so get used to legend being legends faster .... :-*

If you think ranking up is too easy now, just prove it yourself first! Once you have already become legendary in a short time, then you can come back here to suggest changing the merit system.

For now, I think you are better to focus on improving your account, buddy. Look!! We registered in the same year, in the same month, but unfortunately still a Full member till now. How many years we have passed it? It is already 3 years, buddy. Do you feel it is easy to rank up? For me, it is not easy.

5-10 years?? Are you sure??  ???
Some members may have forgotten their accounts during that time.  ::)

We don’t have to take the ranks too seriously, and less of all the name associated to each one. I mean Sr. Member made me feel oldish at the time, and Hero is above my pompous gauge, not to mention Legendary. I get that names like these can be cool for many, and provide a sense of achievement, but ranks may be obtained through many paths, and the Hero and Legendary appellatives are essentially a measure of endurance on the forum (derived from Activity, and even more so now in relation to the obtaining Merits for most). They are not equal to a factual status in real life nor on the forum (with possibly some exceptions).

Honestly, dedicating the time I have dedicated here so far (for better or worse in terms of inputs and outputs) is rather a stretch for me, and the associated Hero rank is irrelevant to me. Nevertheless, it is one of the challenges here, and as such, it is undertaken, knowingly conflicting my personal time limits. One can derive many more challenges here that are knowledge related, that require specific skills and capabilities. Those are harder to obtain and probably more gratifying, albeit subject to more personal time and, dare I say, capabilities.

All in all, I would not enhance the difficulty in ranks per-se, but rather, if at all, device knowledge related features that can build-up a virtual CV (i.e. undertaking courses on such and such aspect of BTC).

Date Registered:   November 06, 2017, 09:35:33 AM

By that logic you should become Legendary any moment now. Early congrats !

Ranking up is not easy. It is not hard either. It is where it should be
I see what you mean, [Legendary] title has a big impact, sort of "the key to the city award" and should be given on some strong premises. That is just a placeholder. Could have been TheDon, Forum GURU, Awesomesauce etc... don't take it literally. Posting over 1000 days stuff that others think it's interesting or witty or revolutionary or just funny is a challenge. I don't see the need for more hurdles along the way. Merit almost solved ranking for spammers, which is good. That was the entire purpose. Not to make it harder for everyone  and at the end (after 7-8 years of being an active member) build a statue for you !

Perhaps there are things that might be better off changing in the forum, but this is not one of them.

Lol, I'm a staunch supporter of the merit system and I'm all for keeping shitposters from ranking up, but even I don't think it ought to be made harder to rank up than it currently is.  In fact, I've been all for Theymos tapping more members to be merit sources because I think it's already way too hard for good posters to rank up.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what's motivating OP to write what he did.  I find it hard to believe that he actually wants to make it harder to rank up when it still taking him a long time to do so.  It's way too early in the year for an April fools joke.

The current ranking system (activity + merit) is working and if it ain't broken, then there is no need to fix it. Maybe you are on a momentum gaining merits after merits from the topics and posts that you are making but don't take them lightly.

If you haven't noticed it yet, there are plenty of users here posting how close they are to ranking up or how happy they are reaching a new rank. Some are good but most of them are clearly crying for merits.

I'm not really sure what you are trying to achieve here @OP. Maybe you also want merits for this post, maybe not. Making it harder to rank up will only cause more drama and we have seen plenty of that already. We don't want a #meritbrokemylife2.0

I would not make ranking up more difficult, but I would make some changes for sure in lowest ranks.
It is easy to become junior member, and most abuses happens in lower ranks.

Thank you. That's exactly what I meant.


Hehe, that was funny indeed. And I understood your point of view.




For Chlotilde, The Pharmacist and Rengga Jati: I registered in late 2017 but I was inactive until October-November 2019. All my merits were earned since October 2019 and January 2020. 200 merits in 3 months didn't mean too much effort for me. I just behaved normally and wrote my thoughts here. Apparently they were appreciated. So I was a Newbie 3 months ago and now I am a Full Member, close to Senior.


Thank you DdmrDdmr for sharing your opinion, it is very precious to me. Your suggestion is great!


To be honest, I would. But I'm sure he won't accept as he doesn't want any discrepancies inside the forum. Another reason for which I would accept is because I don't care that much about the rank. I am just a normal user and a honorable person. I behave here pure normally. I express opinions and sometimes they are good, sometimes they are not good. I don't cheat the system, I don't scam, I don't spam. And I promote crypto-anarchism, the cypherpunks, free speech and liberty for people.

However, if theymos reads this, he can double my barriers in ranking up. I accept this challenge :) Honesty and being a honorable person helps everyone in the society and also inside this forum. If you are not focused on merits and ranking up, if you are focused just on expressing constructive ideas, on helping others and on bringing a plus (generally speaking), on the long term, all these will help you way more than if you are oriented on fast rank-ups, on greed, on earning more and more money. Although you could disagree, life makes a difference between those with good intentions and those with bad intentions. Maybe not fast, but in time the difference is made.


I never posted any "motivational" about how I ranked up, nor I will (at lest in the close future, as ranking up to Full Member is way too easy). Besides, I never even make a subtle approach about earning merits, nor I will. You can check absolutely all my topics / posts here. I understand is quite unusual what I wrote in this thread and I understand is also unusual to see someone acting normally in a world full os scams / spams / greed and so on. But I am 100% honest.

That's pretty much how it's supposed to be. The merit system was designed to prevent spammers from ranking up, not to hinder good users. If you do the things you suggest - don't spam, don't scam, don't plagiarize, only make useful posts, learn, contribute, etc. - then you deserve to rank up without being hindered. The merit barrier, as you call it, rightfully shouldn't exist for these users, although arguable it still does. The merit barrier should only exist for the users who are here to spam, and it (largely) seems to be working in that regard.

And ironically, it is the people who are focused most on constructive contributions who rank up the fastest, while those who focus primarily on trying to earn merit and rank up quickly who do not.

First of all slow clap for you.

What you are trying to say? Whatever you do their is a community of people that can pass any restriction in the terms of "GIVE AND TAKE" so everyone will get/reach to higher rank without any waiting standards you just posted...

Regards

Oeleo, you are a smart man, young padawan :) I am glad you understood my point here, maybe your words are more clever / clear than mine.

I think you are talking about those merit hunters who keep making good posts until they reach the desired number of merits and their posting behavior changes but this not happen with everyone atleast until they need 1000 merits.Simply adding one more rank than legendary may resolve this issue for a while but to be honest, ranking is not easy as how it was 2 years back so merit system is doing its job that preventing spammers and farmers from rank up.

I already accepted a challenge (see up). Up to theymos if he will accept it :)

Dude, getting 1k merits is no easy pie, we must find a middle ground and current system is fine, not too easy and not to harsh.

OP have earned most of big amount merit from Art contest, and that's he is wondering earn merit is very easy task. I know, it is possible even you can achieve Legendary rank by earn merit. But don't forget there might not another art contest. Merit earning isn't hard for good contributors, but it's not very easy for all over forum users. I believe 50% users still didn't earned single merits. That means earning merit is very difficult for them.

For me, current merit system and rank system working fine. Why should ee discourage new users to join this forum by implement something hard. Just let to go as it is.

If you really want to learn about the emerging crypto economy, and you work with other members to improve your own knowledge, and that of others, then merits will trickle in. Most of my merits have arrived in one and twos, and I used to get a bit stressed when I saw people  getting 50 or so merits for posts that weren't really about Bitcoin. I got a few 50d in the early days of merit. but recently it is rare for me to receive an award greater than 2. In theory I don't need any now, but merits are an indication of community approval for some of my ideas. However, constructive replies to posts are better and more useful.

With regards to the OP, I don't think we need to make the structure more difficult, but in my opinion, the board would be improved if merits were awarded more frequently, but in smaller quantities. It would also be useful if we could return to the concept of broadening knowledge about Bitcoin, and get away from the obsession with scratching for free money from crypto. Merits should be used to improve the quality of the forum, and not to help people to avoid having to work for a living.

before the merits were added it was already relatively easy. it was enough to write a few posts and the rest was done by time.
now things are different and it is not as easy as you might think. you got ~60 merits at the art contest. that is almost a third of all merits you got so far.

and the higher the rank the more difficult it is to get them because users feel that they are more likely to fall into lower ranks in the distribution.
i would not make the system more difficult in any case because i think it is very fair at the moment :)

I understand that you think the system is fair now and I respect your opinion.

However, why you (but also others) keep mentioning the art contest, as it would be an airdrop? That art contest consisted in hours of work for realizing art. In case you (or others) didn't take part of the contest, or in case you don't know what efforts are needed to create, then you should think again.

The art contest was no airdrop. The merits awarded there were for effort, for hours of labour, therefore I really don't understand why it matters if someone earned 300 merits there or 10. They were not airdropped; they were given for real work.

Do you think it is easier to create art compared to write a quality posting? If so, let's think about how many good artist are now in the world (no matter the field). Are they millions? Are they hundreds of thousands? I doubt. Now let's compare the total number of artists in the world with the total number of good journalists (who write quality stuff, similar to what is required from the forum's users as well). So how many journalists (good journalists) are there? Probably millions. The same happened here: there are two millions of forum users but only a few were given (more or less) merits during the contest. Writing is a thing, art is another thing. And the effort for creation process is bigger than for writing a quality post. You can write a good post maybe in 1h (or 2h or 3h or 10h), but some art creations realized by the participants took days.

That being said, I would expect more respect for those who created art pieces during the contest, instead of contesting the way they earned their merits.

Most likely, all those who keep mentioning the art contest, think it was an easy, effortless job. But that's wrong. However, OP was not determined by the merits I earned from the art contest, but by the opinion I have about how easy / hard is to earn merits. If you act normally and try to be a good user, the merits will most likely come to you.

it was no attack against you GazetaBitcoin and the work that went into the art contest deserves my highest respect.
but you have to be honest that it's hard to get the merits you want when you're trying so hard to get them.
how it can work is shown by some examples. there are even many instructions with valuable tips.

it is not so easy to rise in rank and therefore the requirements are in my opinion high enough.
the goal should be to be a meaningful member of the board for everyone anyway and then the rest will happen by itself.

you belong to a select circle of users where merit is above activity. this is not the case for everyone and some users have a really hard time delivering good content.
but fortunately with this topic, as with all other topics, there are different meanings and views :)

Thank you for appreciating the efforts of the participants in the contest (including mine), mole0815. It means a lot.
However, this is your opinion. Somehow, based on the upper-written comments, I had (have) the feeling that some suggest that earning merits during that contest was too easy. I ensure them it was not. For example, my drawings took several hours. But ask the guy who created the game how many hours he dedicated for that. Ask Yatsan how many hours he spent for the sublime paintings he made. And so on...

And about belonging to that select circle, what can I say... I am happy of being part of it, I am happy for bringing good contributions here and I thank those who appreciated them. I acted with good faith and I hoped that some of my words / thoughts can bring a plus of value.

IMHO, the current rankup system is fine.

Other forums just rely on post counts, while this one requires Merits along with Activity to rank up. And not every post or thread is Merited so imagine people like me slowly grinding my way through just to reach Full Member, let alone Senior, Hero and beyond.

@GazetaBitcoin
You are suggesting to make something that is for many already a difficult task, even harder. It is not that easy to get to legendary. You make it sound like we have 1000s of legendaries here who earned the rank with merits. Don't forget that many legendaries were airdropped a lot of merits so they, actually we, had that bit of help. But many still earned 500 + merits and it is not easy.

You have been here since day 1 of the merit system, why don't you have 1000 merits? or 500 merits. If that was the case and you earned those merits easily, this topic could have received different responses.
Fair enough, your merit count to activity ratio is great and you don't post that often I assume, but do you really think it is that easy? You said it yourself. You had to devote hours and hours for your artwork. It was difficult to make it. For the effort you put in you were awarded... I don't know how much, I didn't check, but some members says it's a lot so lets say 50 merits altogether. Would you rather that you received 5 or just 2 if everyone was so strict?       

Pmalek, read my previous reply here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220580.msg53698619#msg53698619

I started earning merits in October or November 2019, as I was inactive until then. So I earned 205 merits in 3-4 months.

Not all humans are equal!
Glad it worked out for you. Congrats again! Just enjoy, keep posting useful stuff and good luck on your road to 1k and beyond. If theymos doesn't start posting soon he will drop on second most merited :)) You're on fire dawg!
Now on a serious note, if it ain't broken, don't fix it is the phrase mostly used in coding. Same as some say "not your keys, not your btc". You got your feedback. There is no REAL need to change the ranking system. This forum wants to help people, not create crypto rock stars.
Enough showing off already. Accept it and go on as usual.
Fuck it, it's very easy to become a legendary user here! Use the opportunity then. Be all that you can be!
Saw a thread a while back in Meta asking for more ranks after legendary (I'll add a link if I have time to search).. maybe you can bump that one and at 5k you become "insane in the blockchain" rank... donno... the hard cap is the limit!

This is indeed a very good track record, and all this might be easy for you, but do you think that it is a good idea to base whole ranking system on the above average merit earners? And you fall into that group. As i said before, some middle ground is needed.
When asking to change something that can affect so many different people, you can't just look from your point of view, broader picture is needed. For example, have you checked the amount of people  that earned certain amount of merit ( e.g. 200 ) since the introduction of this system, and then evaluated whether that amount is too big/too small?
What i want to ask is, did you do the  ground work first, or this is purely based on your merit earning ability?



See the similarity there?

@Chlotilde
Here is the link you were looking for: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212330.0.

Btw this is my post in that topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212330.msg53441314#msg53441314.

Besides that, I feel your frustration from your words but there is nothing I can do. I just stated a personal opinion, as anyone else. The difference though, between anyone else (including me) and you is that all the others talked politely and expressed ideas, while you are ironical here.

First you wanted to laugh about me and my opinion, saying why I am not legendary yet, considering I registered in 2017. You wanted to look smart, but you didn't, as I was inactive 2 years. You didn't bother to check my activity, just jumped on irony. You jumped though without looking where you'll land.

Now, seeing you made an embarassing mistake, you continue with irony.

You could just say what you are thinking in a politely manner, you know?

And if we talk about irony, I could tell you that you earned almost a half of your merits from my post. Most likely, from users who also didn't realize I was active here only 3 months. However, ironically speeking, you should be thankful, not ironical :) Without my topic you would have had a half of your merits.

Just felt a bit too much like pure bragging and nothing more. Guess that got me flamed. I am a imature prick most of the times but that doesn't mean I don't have pertinent opinions from time to time (the frequency of that is debatable).
GL & HF

P.S. I have no shame! Just saw that you were not understanding the message and were too focused on the irony (as you are again). Just tried to rephrase, not apologise.
P.S. Looking forward to your next thread so I can become Member  ;)

Careful what you wish for mate. If theymos accept your challenge then it will really be the most challenging moment of your crypto life.

I did agree with you that art contest wasnt an easy task also for gaining merits. I did benefit on that contest too. But gaining there isnt enough to rank up alone on the Legendary rank. Some say it's hard cause literally its really difficult. But I understand your point about getting  to Legendary rank is easy maybe for those active and good poster which showcase improvement.

The good thing is you already realize how hard it is and you want to prove that yourself that you can in spite of every criticisim you being received here. Good luck on ranking up dude. I'll be happy to check what will be your contributions in the coming future and I'll bump into this post of you later on and see how close you are already to becoming a full fledged Legendary rank.

Thank you for sharing your opinion (twice) here, Rikafip. Indeed I did not check the amount of people who earned a certain amount of merits in a given time. But this is not based only on my experience. I wrote in OP a few motives which made me think that. And I saw many reputable members here earning a lot of merits (well deserved) simply by acting with good faith in mind, trying to help the others and the forum. Which is normal, as oeleo stated as well, for example.


Indeed, there are some elitist users here which have a merit vs activity ratio of 2:1, 3:1 or even 4:1. Such as you, Ddmr, Loyce or nullius, for example. I take off my hat in front of you (seriously, not ironic). Such achievement is almost impossible to earn. But I didn't think about this very select circle when I wrote the OP.


That was a nice catch and a good point :) But the second quote was a bit taken out of context. I meant basically that it is harder for an artist to create art than for a journalist to write good topics and that's why the number of journalists writing high quality materials is much bigger than the number of artists. Then I compared that to the forum, where we can find many good contributors, but they are much more than the participants of the art contest. Think about there are over 2.000.000 registered users and only 600 or so participated in the contest. From those 2.000.000 users I'm sure there are much more than 600 good writers or good contributors. And most likely theymos appreciated as well that realizing a piece of art is hard, he decided to give more merits to those who participated in the contest. This is what I meant to say.

In the end, most of the people who replied here stated they don't think it is a good idea to make rank-up more difficult. In my country we have a saying: if you drink and someone tell you that you are drunk, you can argue; if two tell you that you're drunk you should go home and take a nap. Most likely, the majority is right and I am wrong. But remember, it was just a personal opinion, not a decision which would affect the forum. I just considered I can express freely an opinion.


Thank you for the encouragement, cryptoaddictchie, I appreciate it!
And indeed, is hard to swim against the stream, to say so. But criticism is good, as long it is based on rational allegations and expressed in a constructive manner. Not easy to take it, especially when it comes from a majority, but good overall. Makes you wonder if you are wrong.

The percentage is much higher: in the last 3 months, 121,235 (https://bpip.org/) users have been active. Many of those accounts are no doubt owned by the same person. In the past 2 years, 32,570 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3078328.msg53696334#msg53696334) have received at least 1 Merit. It's no surprise that many of those are users can be found in countless (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5217695.440) bounty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5217014.1260) threads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210271.40).

To get Merit, you need 2 things:
1. Decent posts
2. Someone with sMerit to give needs to read your posts
You're not a spammer, so I've merited some of your posts.

It's not a problem that you earned a lot of Merit from the art contest. The problem will be for you to reproduce this amount and turn it into a consistent flow of Merit earnings.

To be very honest. What I have found is that most of the people here just merit users with higher rank and do not prefer users with lower ranks. I do not know why maybe because they thing that they can get something in return? And yes I also believes that merit of newbies are really hard no matter how good they post.

I believe that merit is something that is free for everyone, anyone can have if he or she is posting constructively and helping the community or contributing.

Regards

You got your first merit in your 3rd post on the forum, so it doesn't seem that it's really hard for newbies to get merit if they write decent posts.
There were bunch of merit giveaway threads aimed at the Newbies and Jr Member rank, but barely anyone was applying, to the point that they were locked in the end due low interest.

I will never ever apply in something like merit giveaways thread. I just believe myself that I can help the community and keep it spam free and can earn merit genuinely.

Yes. I got 1 merit on my 3rd post.

Regards

That's not what I've seen. But if you stumble upon new users who make good posts and haven't received Merit yet, please post them in Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0). I'm still looking for a couple hundred good posts to finally empty my sMerit stash :P

Based on my observations, it does happen ;)

But hey, it's their rights to give whoever they please. And there are Merit giveaway threads from time to time so newbies still have a chance.

Bookmarked your link.

Well I will for sure but who will share mine if I had any?


Regards

You can share it by yourself. It isn't needed for someone else to observe your post, to see it is valuable and to post it there. This works too, but you are also allowed to post your own topics / posts.

Balls

Very few will become legendary from scratch. You'll have to be a properly valued member to achieve it. The numbers speak for themselves.

At present I think it's too easy to rank up from the very bottom, I'd like to see the middle rank requirements less demanding, legendary is about right.

I'd also like to see a clear demarcation between earned ranks from merit and those obtained from nothing but lengthy shitposting in the old days. Ideally I'd rather have all airdropped merit scores and legacy ranks executed but that doesn't seem to be a popular view.

You know, I had a thread on this matter as well - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210375.msg53369888#msg53369888

Theymos said though he is not decided about this idea at the moment.

These current requirements are tough enough and they take ages for people to contribute, then will be recognized by the others, and consequently will get promoted after months or ages.

That is for good users, in contrast for bad ones, current requirements are truly barriers to stop them ranking up. If they can not get promoted with current requirements, they will definitely not be able to rank up with stricter ones.

For good users, why do we have to stop them to rank up? If there are stricter requirements on them, will they damage the original purposes of the merit system?

I smell too much bitterness here. Why not share or give 1 merit to a newbie member for him to rank up if he truly deserves it, they are just newbies, please go easy on them, don't expect that they will contribute a lot of knowledgeable things in the beginning, that is why they are called "newbie" or "amateur". Every professionals was once an amateur, remember that.


It is what you called Generosity, since they are too close to their dreams (ranking up), those who can help will help them because of their good posts, that is why they earned merits, hoping you're getting what I am trying to say.


I didn't know that legends should be define by merits.

Yesterday (Feb. 11th, 2020) I received my last merit needed for Senior rank, the 250th. It was given to me by philipma1957, at ~16:54:59. According to LoyceV's tool (http://loyce.club/Merit/history/1285797.html), my first merit was received on Friday, Oct. 25th, 2019, at 11:55:50AM.

Having this data, it appears that it took me 109d 4h 59' 09" in order to reach the threshold for Sr. Member rank. Or, in other words, I obtained this achievement with 56d 8h 45' 41" before the date when my activity would allow the effective promotion (which will be on April 8th, 2020, at 01:40AM (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12saLhlUoqIdairxzuSPu6EYGrt7FN2lOstO1yDjCEbA/edit#gid=1012758442), unless theymos changes the rules for my account).

Unfortunately, LoyceV's site isn't updated yet to see the precise moment when philipma sent me that merit, thus the calculation is approximate (however, the error is of a few minutes - most likely, below 2 minutes). I'll update the precise time amount once that Loyce updates the info on the site as well.

--Edit: as philipma gave me that merit on Feb 12th at 16:55:25 (this is what I see in my Merit section, although LoyceV said he sees 15:55:25), there is only a difference of 25" from my upper statement. Meaning it took me 109d 4h 59' 34" in order to reach the threshold for Sr. Member rank (and, respectively, I obtained this achievement with 56d 8h 45' 15" before the date when my activity would allow).



I hope that meanwhile you lost that sarcasm and you understood that if you act decent and bring some help around, you will earn your merits. I see your number grew from 6 to 13 since Jan 28th, when you graciously expressed your sarcasm here, which means you more than doubled your amount of merits in 2 weeks. Still sarcastic? Still thinking that becoming a Legendary is impossible? :)

Wait... Are you saying you've never clicked "Merit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=1285797):" in your profile (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1285797)? It tells you exactly when you received this Merit, you don't have to wait for the weekly data dump:
(shown as Amsterdam time for me)

Lol... Now I feel stupid :)))

Of course I did... Just that in the moment of writing the reply I had several other things in my head and I forgot c9mpletely about this. Well it feels very embarassing and also funny :) Now I'm laughing at myself.

However, thank you for pointing this, Loyce!

On paper the merit system is fine I think, but in reality it is very biased and I will explain why.

From my own experience I noticed it is much easier to receive merits if you write bullish predictions. I would advise to post in the Speculation section and make bullish predictions everyday, this way you will rank up very quickly.

I myself received 46 merits so far and most of them were after I predicted a bull run, or believe it or not but I also received a merit for simply writing: "Hello, I bought 0.37 BTC today, fingers crossed" (there was nothing else in my post).  
Then we entered a bear market and I thought it was necessary to alert people on it, I posted charts with arguments and facts, barely got any merit for that and all my targets (bullish and bearish) came true eventually.


Bottom line: very biased system but there is nothing to do about it, human nature I guess. It's just like Youtube, make a video with insane bullish prediction and it will get more views than a rational bearish prediction. Merits here are just the same.



PS: I absolutely don't care about merits, I didn't sign up here for that, the above is a totally objective point of view. Hey it's not even a point of view but a plain fact.

but you have even written an instruction guide (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205835.msg53222617#msg53222617) with helpful tips. so the topic is probably not completely uninteresting for you ;)
i don't think the system is bad at the moment and much better than in the beginning. in the meantime it is part of everyday life here.

Oh no, number of current ranks is absolutely the best, at least to my mind.
Higher the rank, higher the signature space, maybe if we shorten the sig space (I mean number of words in sig) for hero members and make it similar of sr, sr - similar of hero and newbie without capability of using sig and then adding another rank higher then legendary may worth but still I think current ranking system is good.

Personally I think merits are easily given on some local boards, this may be support from nation or just really quality post but idk, I can't determine it.

What would anyone add beside current merit system? Merit report? I guess it will be a huge headache whether user's post deserves 15 merit or 10 merit and etc, there isn't any merit measure tool. But maybe there should be limit on merit and be like this:
1-2 merit - helpful post
3-4 merit - post is good and really beneficial
5-6 merit - great post, this user changed my life :D

Guys what's your opinion about this?

As Jet Cash, I've given a few new members merits for their very first posts. I thought they were great starts for the members in the forum.

this cannot be implemented and is therefore not really possible, sorry.
also, everyone rates answers differently and there are no parameters to fix it on.
often a matching link can be more helpful than a post with 1000 words.
but it's also possible that a FAQ solves so many problems and X hours of work means that even 50 merit would be appropriate.
the quantity/amount is in the discretion of the distributor and you really don't have to dictate everything... there are all mature people here.

@kuffy
there's even a separate ranking for it :)
[TOP-200] Members who support newbies - Thanks! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5034141.0)

Imho, not a good idea. This could only cause more complaints and more drama, people reporting each other etc. Better to leave it like it is now, where everyone can give merit based on his own personal opinion, instead imposing more rules and restrictions.
Also, bare in mind that merit sources don't get same merit allocation , so amount of merit they get varies a lot (from what i understood, some get 60 each month and some get  for example 600 and more), and consequently  amount of merit they give to others for each merited post.

On a personal scale, you can set those to be your standards. I currently go in ones and twos, with the occasional three, exceptional four and mythical one time fiver. Obviously every one has a different criteria, sMerit budget, and time (sometimes a pretty important matter) to award merit, so reaching a taxative consensus on a subjective matter is not really feasible.

That lookslike sarcasm to me, making fun of how biased Merit sending can be.

1-2 merit: I only have <20 source sMerit left and the post is not that bad
3-4 merit: I'm loaded in source sMerit and the post is not that bad
6-8+ merit: good post, and I'm still trying to get rid of my load of source sMerit.

I must try harder, I'm 78th in that list. :)

not to give up... stay active and the rest will come naturally :)


yes, i'm pretty sure it was. my post wasn't exactly serious either!
it is of course also a difference if you are a source with xx-xxx merits per month or just have a handful of them.
in the end it is only important that they are distributed continuously to get a certain flow in the board.

This reminded me of something similar I saw in a topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205835.0) about how to earn merits "quickly and guaranteed". The suggestion was for being bullish in the WO thread.


At first sight it sounded funny, but seeing you state a similar thing here makes me wonder.

Edit: I just realized you also wrote that topic. And as far as I see, your merits increased by applying the same strategy. This might have to do overall with human way of thinking - bringing "good news" make people feel better. Sometimes even more generous, I suppose.

Your suggestion might not be too bad to implement but this merit system is not moderated, mate. Someone is only limited to sending 50 sMerit to the same user for 30 days. But you can still implement it as you wish and how you use your rights to send sMerit to other users be like 1-2 sMerit for posts that are considered good quality.

In the last 120 days I am happy to send 1-3 sMerit depending on the quality of posts and we cannot prevent others from sending sMerit more than this amount because everyone has their own judgment on a post and maybe when they are generous maybe we also get 5 -10 or more merit for posts that are considered mediocre by a small number of users.  :D

What you consider bullshit might be the key solution to someone else's problems. Hence, I believe the 50 sMerit limit per month is fine. Some of the users here have had some priceless ideas or found critical bugs in different softwares/wallets which have saved a lot of users' funds.

It's pretty unfair if someone considers my thoughts worth 4 sMerit and meanwhile someone else finds something never discovered before that had laid for years in some software's code and you just can't give that guy as much sMerit as you could for preventing a huge exploit. The chances of receiving 50 sMerit for just some opinions are slight, so nobody would send me that much for a post that didn't deserve that much merit. Makes sense?

I think adding a merit limit for each post is something that the forum should avoid on implements simply because of two reasons. One is it will be harder to catch merit abusers because they can easily allocate their merits on each posts using the limit as a guide. The second one is adding a merit limit for each users will just be unfair for a high quality post made by a member because certainly there are posts out there that is worth more than 10 merits from at least one or two members. The merit system already proves that is already hard enough for any normal members to rank up and I don't think the ranking system needs another major change like what is suggested in the OP.

In addition to my previous post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220580.msg53824442#msg53824442), today at 17.24:21 I just reached the necessary merits for becoming a Hero, while I'm still a Full Member, having a merits vs activity ratio of 2.12.

As my first merit was received on Friday, Oct. 25th, 2019, at 11:55:50AM, it means it took me only 163d 5h 28' 31" to earn the Hero threshold, earlier with 240d 7h 8' 59" than the moment when my activity would allow me (I'm supposed to reach 480 activity on Dec. 2nd, 2020 at 03:33:20).

Given the above mentioned details, I still believe that the rank-up should be a bit more difficult.

Your above mentioned details doesn't effect ranking in anyways as you would still need to wait for your activity to reach 500 to become a Hero. I mean activity and merits together gives desired effect to the ranking system of putting both efforts and time as an criteria, leaving no need for an edit in the ranking system or making it more difficult until.

Interesting concept. The problem is when a new guy comes around and earns merits quickly.  correct?

What you keep forgetting is that an average bitcointalk user doesn't have experience of running crypto portal for a couple of years (I think  you mentioned somewhere that GazetaBitcoin is also Romanian crypto portal) and don't have adequate English level to translate texts to their native language, like you did for Romanian local board.

What might be easy for you, could be very hard for someone else without certain skillset. Just keep that in mind when asking to make something more. demanding.

Btw, congrats on merit achievement, well deserved my fellow cinephile!

This is not entirely true.

You need to be really active. You are a heavy forum user. You spend hours and hours here each day. This is not common, this is not an easy thing to do. Most of the honorable people don't have time to do that.

To become a legendary you need to earn 1000 merits. To earn 1000 merits, unless we had art contests often, you need to make thousands of posts. I don't know a single user who has more than 1000 earned merits and less than 1000 posts.

Writing thousands good posts is a LOT. This demands time, effort, knowledge, patience... We make some money with all that effort here, which gives us some incentive. But that's a hard job to keep our activity here.

I don't think that ranking up is easy. It was very hard for me to earn my 1300 merits. Actually, it is still a great please for me to receive a single merit, even now. it is a recognition of all the effort I put in my contributions.

The thing is, newcomers lack the knowledge of cryptocurrency which basically means the chances of them earning a Merit decrease substantially. Looking back to my first hundreds of posts on this forum will give you a strong idea of the fact that it takes some time until someone finds out what this forum truly is for and why it's much harder than it is thought for a newcomer to share ideas related to Bitcoin that are worth some Merits.

Hence, ranking up already is difficult imo. If someone has enough knowledge about BTC or does enough work for the community to earn the Merits required to be a Sr/Hero Member in a matter of months, that means they truly deserve it imo. No offense to Gazeta (I truly mean no offense) but if this system can easily be gamed and it's unfair to have users "cheating" it, then it means you've played it too and got hundreds of merits in a relatively short time - why would it be fair for a new user not to have the chances you've had to rank up? Someone will have to work more than you've in order to get the same Merit count.

Now imagine you've had this account without knowing a single thing about the way Bitcoin works, about anything related to cryptocurrencies. Consider yourself a complete newbie in this sphere for a minute. Who'd get the merits? You, or would someone who actively corrects your mistakes and teaches you the right things about BTC? Who deserves them more?

The only "fair" thing imo would be the possibility of only sharing merits with people who write things related to BTC. This way, the merit would be 100% deserved as you cannot get it for some off-topic bullshit replies (later edit: did not mean bullshit, as these are more than likely NOT merited) you write or for saying a little "thanks" to BTCTalk @Meta after ranking up. There's, however, probably no way you can create such filters and make only BTC-related posts qualify for Merits.

Think of all the hours you've spent trying NOT to write nonsense and actively participating in as many topics as possible out here. All the hours you've spent translating other users' threads. You're probably one of the lucky ones who've enough free time and are willingly spending it on this forum. Do you really think it's unfair to receive hundreds of merits?

EDIT: It takes me ~15 minutes to usually write a post. I write posts which take me at least 20 minutes almost every day. Now remember I've received ~350 Merits since mid-January. Do I deserve them or not, considering I pretty often happen to write +80 posts/week which account for +18hrs/week spent ONLY on writing my posts? :)

I couldn't agree more. I read your comment after having merit a bunch of posts talking about merit... I felt so idiot.

A good answer talking about bitcoin in the Beginners & Help board will earn 1-3 merits, while making some images about the forum awards 100-300 merits... forum politcs, trust, etc earn dozens...


However, It is ridiculous to say where should people spend their merits. But it amazes me to see that crypto related discussions are not the best place to "farm" merits.

And what's really the problem if people rank up by "being normal" and "not spammer" as you said ? xD

It's already too hard to rank up, and making it harder would just kill the cause! 2 years is still fine to be a legendary, and tbh it takes more than that time, 2 years is just an estimate.

If the forum really needs tighter ranking up rules, I would say to delete the airdropped merits that people recieved as they ranked up before the merit systems were introduced and they got it by default. So many people who ranked up by virtue of their activity has never earnt a single merit after that and many of them are the real spammers and scammers!

That is a situational irony you've got here, OP. That you your merits easily thrown at you doesn't mean it's that easy for others or that you're a better poster than they are. Just count your blessings and be mutely grateful to the community.

In addition, your post brings to the fore of a popular saying in my tribe, this I will loosely translate here - A man with a healthy penis doesn't know the travails of one with the elephantiasis of the scrotum.

True,  I can not image wheeling my testicles in a wheel barrel.  I can only say it must be terrible.

Indeed, I was not someone who did not know a thing about crypto when I joined this forum. Quite the opposite. Indeed Rikafip, you remembered well - I'm running a Romanian crypto portal. I'm still learning though, as many still do. But it's not a fault to have a skillset, is it? Some people have this skillset and don't share it at all, what about them?


None taken, don't worry. However, you contradict yourself a bit with these two sentences. Either you implied that I "gamed" the system, or if you talked in general, in the second sentence appears the contradiction. Because in the second sentence you state that the member who helps the community and earns fast merits for ranking up deserves them.
And about the possibility of "gaming" the system, no offense, but it's funny :) I'm not even in the Merit Cycling Club; can't imagine what you would have said if I was a member of that select gang :)


Did I ever say it's unfair? I just stated that seeing the generosity and the multiple possibilities of earning merits (giveaways, contests, predictions plus, of course the well documented topics etc), they are earned a bit too easy. And there should be required more merits for ranking up. About the hours spent writing good posts and being active: that's what I stated in OP: "practically, all you need in order to rank up is to be a honorable person and to wait. Honorable person means the following: to not spam, to not scam, to not plagiarize and post what you think is helpful here. To act as a normal person. And users will appreciate your work. They will give you merits if you post useful consideration and if you don't try to cheat the system. So merit barrier is not a real barrier at all if you act with good intentions."


I fully understand you regarding the time you spent for writing them; I also mentioned that in a previous post. That means you are a honorable person :) Btw - just this reply post took me about 2h.


Thank you so much! You are my fellow cinephile as well :)


Thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate!


In my case, as I earned my first merit on Oct. 25th, 2019 (and also my first activity points), the activity system would allow me to become Legendary somewhere between Sep. 22nd, 2021 (when I'll reach 775 activity points) and Jun. 6th, 2022 (when I'll reach the maximum of 1030 activity points required for being Legendary). Taking as an example the minimum period for becoming Legendary in my case: since Oct. 25th 2019 and Sep. 22nd, 2021 there are almost 23 months. Mathematically speaking, it would be expected to reach - theoretically - the half of merits at the half of the time interval - that is in Oct. 2020, after ~12 months. I reached the half of the merits in 5 months. And that was in a best case scenario, of 775 activity. In worst case scenario (1030 activity points) - from Oct. 25th 2019 to Jun. 6th 2022 there are 31.5 months. The half of the interval is ~January 2021 (15 months). And still, that would mean that I reached half of the merits in 5 months instead of 15.

Now let's take another example: did you take a look at nullius (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=976210)? :) He is the best example. Not to mention anymore that he also had a topic on a similar matter - Suggestion: Raise merit requirements at the lower and highest ranks (@theymos) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3114287). Let's remember some of his words from that time:


Meanwhile, nullius has 1517 merits and 1260 posts. Posts, not activity! His activity is 280.

Getting back to his suggestion:





Not a problem with ranking up by being normal. Just a bit too easy. About the deletion of the airdrops, I suggested that too in the past:



Well, that's the problem, stated also in the OP - you have to wait. You reach already your merits (if you are a good contributor) and you wait. If more merits were required, you would be incentivized to contribute more and more, instead of just waiting.


Lol...sry, I didn't understand the saying it but it sounded funny. And somehow painfully. Can you try with other words, please?

Anyone who is able to consistently earn more merits than activity over a prolonged period of time will be, as you say, a good contributor. Users such as these are unlikely to be here simply to spam for some signature or bounty campaign, and are instead here due to a genuine interest in bitcoin. They are unlikely to stop posting and just wait due to some arbitrary activity number.

Not including theymos and satoshi, there are only 83 members who have earned 1000 merit ever, in the >2 years since merit was introduced. That's not even 1 new legendary a week. I don't think that's an unreasonable position. Increasing the limit to 3,000 would give a grand total of 5 legendary members on the entire forum (again, not including theymos). I don't see the benefit of doing that. The merit system was supposed to prevent spammers from ranking up, not create a new rank which is only obtainable by <0.001% of the forum.

I would agree, however, with increasing the threshold from Junior member from 1 merit to 10 merit. It is still too easy for spammers and account farmers to beg, buy, trade, use alts, or plagiarize their way to single merit and then start signature spamming for some meaningless altcoin. I'd also agree with removing airdropped merit for the same reason.

Of course that it is not your fault to have certain skillset/inclinations, but having it make it very easy for you to rank up on this forum. And what is easy for you might be very hard for someone else, and I really don't understand how can't you see that? Do you think it is smart thing to do, to base things like that on top 1% of the members?  

I really don't see what would this forum gain from increasing merit and activity requirement 2x. That  increased  merit requirement could only lead to more merit abuse,and people would trade merit way more than they are now.  At the time when forums in general  ain't popular as they used to be, and while there are a lot of other platforms. After all, point of merit system was to stop shit posters and spammers, and not turning ranking up on this forum into heavy grind for an average user.


You are taking things to extremes, using  one way way above average member as an example.  Equivalent of that would be using  bounty hunter shitposter with  400 activity, 5k posts in Bounty section and 0 merit as an example how hard it is to reach Jr Member rank.

Now we're getting somewhere :) About removing the airdropped merits I'm with you, if you want to start a riot.

Of course, if we take Bossian's exploits of the merit system as being granted, even these 10 merits seem too few. But it could me a start.

For the lulz, let's remember how Bossian "hacked (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205835.msg53222617#msg53222617)" the system:



And in the end, a very precious information:



Maybe avoid such situations as thoroughly explained by Bossian? But of course, not 2x.


Lol as a matter of fact that remembered me of something: 6000+ posts and 0 merit...and the winner 🥇 is... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219641.0). But I see that guy Rimidalv (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1808762) managed somehow since then.

Indeed I took an extreme as an example. But did you read also that extreme's suggestion? Meaning what I quoted from nullius.

Nullius deserves a rank by his name.

He writes very well. He put so much effort in his posts. It is a privilege to have a member such as him in this forum. He has knowledge, will to share, time, patience... He can't be an example for anything.



I agree with this.
You can create a new rank for those 3000k merited members, or members who are here for a long time (i.e, very high activity).

But to become a legendary you need 1000 merits, which was done only by 83 members in this forum is already very unobtainable.

Maybe there should a badge or something for each 1000 earned merits.

Lol... You can only imagine that scenario. Glad it cracked you up to the point of you shilling it some merits. I appreciate.

In my opinion, making the rank up more difficult is necessary. It is true that some of your merits are from joining bitcointalk art competition which is far for faster than earning merit without ths competition. Also, this is not a forum where people visit this site just to rank up. Remember, this forum is for discussions not ranking up accounts.

@OP,

From DdmrDdmr data (on the day your snapshotted the photo), there are 15665 ranked up users.

From my latest update in my thread - At-least-1 sent & earned merits users , excludes autobanned/ nuked. Stats! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5206032.msg54160944#msg54160944), we have something to think of, I only quote main parts:
You see it. There are 18971 users who earned at least 1 merit till the last Friday's merit data dump. After took into consideration only users who earned AND sent at least 1 merits we have 14547 users. Next, after excluding users who have been banned or nuked, we have only 12040 legit users left.
Let's make a very raw calculation to have percent of legit users on total users on the forum:

• Total users: 2775211 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats)
• Total legit users (from my definition): 12040
• Percent of legit users: 12040/2775211*100 ~ 0.43%

In addition, from my observations on weekly new legit users, the number increases very slowly weekly. Details (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213426.msg54178482#msg54178482).

I don't support the idea to make ranking up more difficult.  :D

https://i.imgur.com/6WBQOir.jpg

But being serious any changes would affect every single user, not just some "merit receiving sources" that manage to earn truck loads of merit (for their well thought out posts, don't get me wrong).
It's like tomorrow they changed the period for masters degrees. Not 1.5-2 years anymore. Now it's 7 !
Want to be called a "master"... well you better earn it ! :))

Not really as simple as you describe it dude !

How could you say it is easy to become a legendary? I can't imagine how could you become a legendary in 2 years time even if you post a low quality one. High quality posts are needed to become one and that's what we are lacking as Jr. Members. We still need to learn more I guess.

Oh well, after more investigations through the history, I just found two more threads sharing the same idea (and, of course, even more members who posted in those threads supporting this idea).

The threads are the following: Coin-1's [Proposal] Enhance the requirements for ranking up to Member position (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5113111.0) and r1s2g3's Merit requirement should be proportional to activity (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5081840.0).

Why not add new index to get a Legendary rank ? As it seems activity and merit is no longer enough?

Or to emphasize the person really is a Legendary on the forum, make legendary rank obtainable only through voting and trust system?
How forum decides who is DT1 and DT2, same system will decide who is ready to be legendary and who doesn't deserve that (or be an anti-legendary :) ).

But as theymos said he wont make new rank, that is greater than legendary, I doubt that he will make changes in ranking system.

First, you should beat most meriters user in this forum (@theymos) it's will make your suggestion have strongest proof. Even theymos have 7713 merit now, he doesn't create a thread about that's suggestion.
I you beat him, you can came back and suggest to make rank-up/ get merit more difficult.

Or maybe @theymos should make a new system only for you to rank-up more difficult.

Currently it's a lottery for DT. Theymos picks the names out of a hat (not exactly, but you get the gist of it).
And what will happen to current legendary rank members ? They keep their current rank ? Would it be weird to see some legendary with 1000 merit/1000 posts and others Hero member with 1200 merit/ 2000 posts ? Are they demoted ? Is that fair ?

Seems to me that whenever we don't have any problems we start making some :)) but hey... live and let live !

 :) good memories this thread. Forgot about it.

I didn't "hack" the system though, just observed the forum and aside my personal case I saw many other users getting merits for a post that, in a perfect world, should never get a merit. The ones to blame are clearly the merit sources though. The thread I pinpointed above ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.510540 ) is a big joke.

Currently it is hard enough. The difference between member and full member is already too much. As a new member you are definetly going to receive 1 merit maybe each 10 posts. Does that sounds right? For a full member, 1000 posts sounds like too much.

It should be also a system where the merit can be airdroped to users that are constantly active and they posts have nothing to do with plagyarism. Simply reward content creators that are on topic.

I would add as rule minimum characters in order to get merit, let's say 40/50. I saw so many one liners where people get rewarded.

Absolutely not. Merit was specifically designed to be given to posts which are high quality, and not just any old trash that happens to be "on topic". See the quote from theymos when he launched the merit system at the bottom of this post. Meriting people simply for being active defeats the entire point of the merit system in the first place. Its reason for existing is to stop people from ranking up just for being active, and force people to actually contribute constructively to conversations and discussions. Airdropping merit to active users makes it no different from activity.

Furthermore, a post of less than 40 characters could easily be merit worthy, if it directly and succinctly answers a question. I'm thinking about posts in the technical section where users have asked for a specific command or piece of code to perform a task.

whether our personal main achievement in this forum is "Legendary Rank"??  A high rank does not promise that you are knowledgeable and a low rank does not prove that you are a beginner. on average, many starter topics that get many Merit that I see are members who are good at reading opportunities (even though their topics are not educational).. don't force yourself, because a low rank isn't too bad  ;)

Merit rotation is spread everywhere *I hope you understand what I mean  :D

There is no use doing such merit to post counting as there are numerous forum members who have merits more than posts.

Anyway GazetaBitcoin, why would you want to slow down ranking-up? Take a look on ranking from different angle - it is easy to rank-up because forum and members are evolving rapidly. Same as the whole world. Previously users need to study something, search and share for something new for weeks. Now people do it in days days a get appropriate reward (merit, reputation). Same as I had to learn how to do this and that on PC, while kids now in the age of 6-8 can google how to set up windows from usb and do that while their parents are at work :D

I dont think that Legendary ranking is the main goal or achievement of every forum user. But it is a right for every user who has a contribution and quality in the forum. When the merit system is implemented, Legendary ranking can only be achieved with positive contributions to the forum and also to most users. And I must say that they are the most entitled to get merit on most posts made consistently.

The number of merit a user receives is clear evidence that the user is a quality poster, the more merit a user receives indicates that the user is a quality poster or user who is contributing.

I do not agree if you say that Legendary members achieved after the merit system is implemented cant guarantee that it is not a user who has good quality posts and also does not prove that the user does not have extensive knowledge. If you think so, then I will never agree with you.

If you can understand what theymos say, then I am sure you will change your current perception. From this quote we can interpret that only the shit posters has never reached a higher rank even if only one merit.

Today, while I writing in a topic, I accidentally remembered this one. And also accidentally I realized I never replied you lol.

Oh well, while beating theymos is something I'll never achieve (and, most likely, nobody else will achieve ???), regarding your second statement I have to tell you that actually I did it :)

I think there is no need for that the difficult establish before is fair to all members, although some still find it more difficult to get merits as I do but still it's Fair enough to make forum members productive. And people should not be selfish as they in a certain high rank so they Don't Need others to reach that level.
I tried to understand the psychology of the writer then I find out he/she find out to move from that rank she/he is, is more difficult so he/she find a way to give people attention on adding more difficulties so other will not reach Him/her which is not fair.                                                                             
People should be given merits due to the efforts of their contributions to the forum. 

We are building this forum together and you are making a suggestion that will weaken people that have done a great job in this forum without being recognized. I must say we are all friends and why would a friend suggest for a difficult ranking system because you are almost a High ranked member. They is a saying that the higher a monkey climbs a tree the more he expose his anus You don't care anymore for others that are finding it difficult while it's easy for to rank.

After replying to your topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5249339) from Beginners & Help section, I just realized I somehow forgot to reply to you here as well.


Please show me a few members which did a great job inside the forum and which are not recognized. Can you name some? And, of course their unrecognized posts.


This would be nice, but, unfortunately, we are not all friends. Some have acquintances here...some have friends...some have enemies / ignored users and so on. Regarding the part "because you are almost a High ranked member" - I started also from 0, from nothing and all I did was to bring good contributions to the forum. I started my activity here 1.5 years after the implementation of the merit system with 0 merits at the respective time. For more information, please read my previous posts in this topic. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't write this topic when I had 600 merits and when I was already a Sr. Member, but when I had "only" 201 merits, being a Full Member who earned those 201 merits in only 3 months at that time.


Actually I do care for others, this is why I also started a merit giveaway topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201719) in the Romanian board, this being also the first merit giveaway from this section of the forum. Regarding the easiness to rank: ranking up is as easy as you make it. If you contribute a lot, your efforts will be appreciated. If you think your efforts are not appreciated, you can also try LoyceV's topic Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0). If even this try won't bring you recognition, it means that your post is actually of no use.

Finally, regarding your saying - insulting will certainly not bring you recognition lol. Actually, as far as I know, nullius is the only one here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2854290.msg29320411#msg29320411) who managed ever to receive merits after insulting someone, this being also a 50-merits bomb from the insulted person :) But I doubt you would achieve something similar with insults.

I don't think is too easy to rank up.

I'd love to see a script to check retroactive merit transactions from Theymos side (AFAIK he is the only one who can see IPs) to check if merit has been sent from the same IP to alts. (also trust)
It would be fun to see.

I agree with you but it's also true that high ranked users send merits to other high ranked users.But they don't give merits so much to  those who are working hard to prove them.
That's why Newbies are getting disappointed and approaching to make plagiarized posts.

You agree with OP and then you end up saying that newbies find it hard to rank up? Don't see that you are contradicting your statements?
Maybe the newbies you are talking about are posting in the wrong places like Bounty threads, ICO spam threads etc. I have seen so many newbie accounts that make contributions in the forum earn merits even on their very first post. Stop having such a negative mind if you ever want to receive any Merits

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Ranking up shouldn't be made more difficult either. It's not a competition or a game that has so many difficulty levels for God's sake  ::)
The purpose of the Merit system was to kill spam and account farming, period.

IIRC in the beginning there was only one section where newbies could post. Over time I think bitcointalk is generally relaxing restrictions and making it less difficult for new users to actively post, send messages and rank-up.

Newbies and Jr. members have restrictions placed upon them. Once they receive merit from more established members, they are given more relaxations as they rank up? It is good. It shouldn't be hard to rank up.


Time runs faster on the internet. 2 years internet time is more than 5 years real time.

You will have to change this mentality if you want to rank up, my very first topic earned a merit, my second topic earned ore than 5 merits, I have made topics that earned more than 15 merits, I joined less than four months ago. I was so patient to learn about the forum, knowing their rules and ways of meriting posts before starting at first.

I will advice you to be positive about high rank members still give merits to low rank members, study the high rank members, knowing how they comment to topics, there will be similar things like that later again, comment like them and they will not hesitate to rank your post. Also check merited posts to improve yours. Good luck.

I feel the rules applied by the moderators in this forum already have heavy considerations..  making ranking even more difficult will only make this forum a closed forum because people who just joined are subject to very heavy rules compared to old members.  I would rather agree with strict rules in registering (not ranking up) in this forum, such as applying KYC or other strict rules before registering or members who have joined for a long time (no difference)..

We don't need KYC on this forum. Else, that pretty much defeats the Trust system in the first place.

Regarding KYC part (something that will never happen on this forum), you might wanna reconsider your stance. I suggest that you read topic made by @1miau Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221497.0) where it is nicely explained dangers of giving your documents and info to 3rd parties, and that s not as good and effective as you might think. KYC is not a solution, if anything it is part of the problem.

Additionally to 1miau's very thorough topic, I'd suggest also a topic of mine which depicts other dangers associated with KYC: Governs are coming for the traders! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5202758). To be more precise, the topic shows the great dangers which may occur once that the govern has your personal information -- personal information given willingly (through KYC) by the people to centralized exchanges or banks. I believe the topics are complementary about the dangers determined by KYC, each of them covering different aspects.

On October 16th 2020, at 15:29:53 I received my 1000th merit (thanks nullius!), the threshold necessary for becoming Legendary member, while I'm still a Sr. Member. I managed to obtain this achievement in less than a year since I received my first merit. So it's doable :) It took me just 357d 3h 34' 03" to reach this milestone. Considering that I obtained my first 500 merits in 163 days, it took me an amount of time just a bit longer for obtaining the other 500 (~194 days).

My current merits vs. activity ratio is 2.60 while my merits vs. posts ratio is 0.70.

Therefore I'll repeat what I said in the OP and in another post inside this topic:



Now all I need to do to become Legenday per se is to obtain the required activity. Meaning the "to wait" part. Of course, I won't resume to just waiting and posting low value post just for increasing my activity. I'm not that type. But obtaining the merit threshold for becoming Legendary still seems too easy. For being Legendary you need 775-1030 activity. I'll surpass the 775 activity on November 3rd, 2021 (I'll have 784 activity at that activity update) and I'll reach 1036 activity on the activity update from June 29th, 2022. So I earned my merits for being Legendary with 1 year and ~3 weeks earlier than reaching 775 activity and with 1 year and 8.5 months earlier than reaching 1030 activity (in case I'll be unlucky enough to get promoted after reaching the upper threshold of 1030 activity points).

Due to the above mentioned statistics, I want to encourage all honorable members to keep doing what they're doing and they'll be rewarded. Obtaining 1000 merits is not impossible and also not hard. Just act with decency, be respectful, share your wisdom and try to help the forum as much as you can, either that means to report posts, to flag scammers, spammers, plagiarists, to help newbies, to answer questions and so on. Bring your contributions on the areas where you have knowledge! And you'll see, ranking up won't see too hard!

Determining whether it’s easy or not to rank-up is a subjective matter, but objectively it stills doesn’t seem like a simple thing to achieve, be it for whatever set of underlying reasons. This is a summary of the accounts, created in 2017, that have been merited at some point, and have ranked-up at least one level:

https://i.imgur.com/GtC4ETr.png

Theoretically, all those accounts have had the time to rank-up to Legendary (perhaps the trailing December 2017 created accounts still need another cycle in the worst case scenario). The numbers indicate that only 0,74% of those accounts have made it to Legendary, and 0,95% to Hero Member. Seems a pretty small subset of those 2017 created and merited accounts (I don' track unmerited ones).

Now, of course, there are many factors that play here: available time, stamina, expressiveness, the treated topics, novelty, and so forth, so we can’t really distinguish in the numbers those accounts really made the effort from those that didn’t, but even so, from an objective point of view, the numbers seem smallish to me, and don’t stand behind a need to increase rank difficulty.

Yet again I have to disagree with you my fellow cinephile & spambuster, and repeat what I said before, that just because it was easy for you to reach Legendary merit requirement way ahead of the curve doesn't mean that it should be made harder in general. You are not an average bitcointalk user, not by time spent here and your knowledge, you even have experience in running news website, and when theymos decided on those numbers, he probably had an average  users in mind, and not experienced writers, crypto experts and generally creme de la creme of the forum.

By even doubling current merit requirements it wouldn't change anything for you while it would discourage those that are not on the same level. Based on all available metrics new users are rare, forums are not as popular as they were 10-15 years ago so there is no reason to make additional obstacles when main purpose of merit system is to prevent spammers ever reaching higher ranks and not make some kind of "forum elite".

Before introducing something like that, you have to ask yourself how exactly would that improve quality of the forum as I honestly don't see how would that happen. As I said before, new users are rare, especially good enough, just look at this interesting fact shared by @suchmoon the other day


99% of the new users give up after few months. I know that increased merit&activity requirement shouldn't  discourage quality members and those that are genuinely interested in crypto, but it might some of those that are new to all this and forums in general. Because of them, and all the others that struggle even now, I don't think that increased requirements is a good idea.

Or look at these numbers from @DdmrDdmr Merit Dashboard, rank of the people who created account between 1.1.2019-31.12.2019. Numbers are not the best to say the least, and show that it's not so easy for new users to rank up.

https://i.postimg.cc/QCVJR5t3/ranked.png
https://public.tableau.com/shared/B8ZB5M7FT?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link


Last but not the least, congrats on reaching 1000 merit, well deserved. Cheers!

Ranking up is already difficult for the users of this forum. I do not think that it is better if we will make it more difficult. Let's say that some merits are earned through giveaways but not all merits are earned with that way. Still, you must be creative and constructive when creating your post, making sure that it is always on point. Before thinking about how many merits you will gain, you must first question yourself if this post you are creating helps the people in our bitcoin community.

What you say may be true in some cases but I noticed it is not so easy for everyone to earn merits like in your case.
Ranking up even more harder in current situation would be terrible for this forum and your suggestion for reaching Legendary rank in 10 years... some of people will be dead before they ever get to this rank, and they would have no motivation to ever reach it.
This is forum and not a gulag or concentration camp. :)


That means there are no legendary members and only 5 are potential to become Legends in 2021 from that time frame.

I understand what you're saying. But I'm thinking that maybe not the difficulty of ranking up is the problem with all these account. It is possible that their lack of determination brought them in this situation. If these users would have been motivated to rank up and to help the forum and to help themselves too by learning from the forum, then those numbers may be bigger. It's hard to find a motivation though. Indeed, maybe for some the rank up criteria may look hard. But in case they don't even try to achieve the criteria, the criteria will never be filled. Besides, it's also possible that a substantial number of those which "gave up trying" were in part accounts created by entities similar to Vitor Services (just for spamming / farming purposes); they could be accounts of users which were interested only in earning money from the forum and seeing they can;t earn money so easy they decided to head to other horizons (such as CryptoTalk). I can't say for sure what percentage represents the two types I mentioned, but for sure some of them were in these cases. And they influenced the overall low numbers. For the rest of the users contributing to the low numbers shown by Ddmr I think, in part, are those which did not find a good motivation and, in part, those for which the rank up was indeed hard... But I certainly don;t believe that those numbers are so small only due to users which found ranking up to be too difficult.


Although what I'll write here won't change these low numbers, there is a chance to have more Legendary members. I'm not sure how Ddmr counted, but I think he counted those members by their actual rank. But some of them - let's say some of the Full Members - could have earned already the merits for being Hero but they're mentioned by Ddmr as Full Members because this is their actual rank. If this is the case, it means for sure that the real number of Hero will be bigger at some point in the future, when these Full Members with more than 500 merits will also meet the activity criterion for being Hero. And the same applies for other ranks. For example, there are 21 Sr. Members and 5 Heroes. From these, maybe a few earned already more than 1000 merits so for sure they'll be Legendary members when the activity will allow them. I'm not 100% sure if this is the case (Ddmr can correct me if I'm wrong).


Thank you so much, Rikafip! Much appreciated! It's been a nice journey to this point!

It isn't mathematically possible to have Legendary members among the accounts created during 2019. If you created account on January 1st 2019 and have reached merit requirement, you would still be a few months of activity short to reach Legendary activity requirement. And that's best case scenario in case RNG gods like you and you became Legendary with 775 activity.

Another thing is worrisome here, and that's the number of Sr Member accounts. Even if you made account on December 31st 2019, by now you would have enough activity to be Sr Member now, if you are an active user and have met merit requirement of course. Based on that data, only 22 managed that, out of 1100+ accounts that got at least 1 merit. When you put that in the percentage, less than 2% of the accounts created during 2019 and received at least 1 merit are Sr Members now.

To me that shows that even something like that is a problem for huge majority of new users, so there is no real need to increase that. If numbers were opposite, if we have inflation of new users reaching high ranks, then I would think of this request as valid.


You are correct, only those that met both merit and activity requirements count among those 5 Hero, 21 Sr Member, 26 Full Member etc. Out of all those accounts created during 2019, four members earned more than 1000 merit: Ratimov, zasad@, efialtis and me.

GazetaBitcoin, if you suggest to create rank-up more difficult, then are you ready to repeat you path to Legendary once again ?

You already have some reputation on the forum so for your "account name" it will be easier to rank-up once again. But lets imagine you are new, unexperienced or anonymous on this forum. Will you be able to reach Legendary rank with, for example, 2000 merit + 2000 activity requirement? Maybe proper words will be "still have desire" or "still have strength" to repeat all that way once again?

If you would have read the previous posts, you would have seen that I already stated that :)



Well that's a good question. That's what I was talking about in my previous post: I think many new users lack the motivation needed for ranking up. Everybody should find what determines him/her the most in order to engage in a rank up until becoming Legendary. Even after obtaining the 1000 merits this motivation is still needed. In my case, for example, I have the merits, but not the activity. And for obtaining the necessary activity I am supposed to wait between 1 year and ~3 weeks and 1 year and 8.5 months. Of course, in this time I should be active.

Maybe finding the proper motivation is the most difficult thing... not the difficulty of the rank up system.

Any geek off the street is able to be a hero member now. mostly by posting pure bounty hunter bullshit. they merit each others posts too and it becomes a popularity contest of gaming the system.

This site needs to cater to real actual discussion not 5 line replies where someone repeats the same lame point over and over again in broken english.

It was a mandate or requirement in getting stakes or getting paid in signature bounty. Sometimes in order to trick the bounty manager with 4-5 lines post is to stretch the idea of the post.

Aside from that in making it more long to see is to use paragraph form and that is how to obtain qualofication of post to get paid.

This is why if it is possible for the admin of the forum if they wanted change in signature bounties especially those projects that pays token as a reward to re orient them to get standards in joining signature bounties and how to do better in signature bounties to save the forum from their shitposting activities.

me too, cause even im a newbie here i can send merit

To ranked up is not something that comes easily as op stated, because if it happened to be easy everyone would have reach the rank of Hero ranked and legendary ranked, from my perspective I noticed that ranking based on the creativity and adequate research of users of the community, I know that it's obvious rank of any achievement in the forum have a criteria through a specific numbers of merits needed to ascertain a specific slot as a rank which has been shown above @Rikafip looking at his data of merits ranking in forum, its the best way for merits explanation upgrade.

I think the ranking system is already good IMO because having a 1 to 10 merit is just simple to earn if they deserve I think it's just reasonable there are a lot of members below are good and quality poster too but the problem is they don't give too much effort on their threads, unlike others.  Even they already reached their rank of the latest problem now to them is the road to their next rank which is the Full member this may test their willingness to improve the quality of their post and participate in the signature campaigns. It's quite hard to earn merit too if you are just posting your thoughts unlike making a thread to share information. Merit sources are there to help them to rank up too.