Bitcoin Forum

Almost two years ago the user OgNasty created a thread/topic on Beginners & Help in order to give merit to newbies and Juniors who proved to be able to sign a message with a Bitcoin address (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0). I don't talk to OgNasty but I assume he took this iniciative to spread merits and help others to learn something new and useful within the crypto world.

Some time has passed and I took the liberty to gather some data from that thread/topic in order to see how these kind of "merit Faucets" may affect the development or growth of a population of users (Newbies) or whether these kinds of opportunities only attract low value users for this forum. Here are the results I have found so far.



- 209 Users participated on the thread/topic and 111 of them were merited by OP, each of them received between 2 and 4 merits. Importan to note I did not consider merits provided by others here. About 47% of Newbies who summited their signed message did not receive merits while 53% did, those who did not receive merit seemed to have failed to sign their massage correctly, were suspected to be merit farmers/spammers or were of a rank above Jr. Member.

-OP distributed 301 merits to Newbies /Juniors.




- After almost two years from the beginning of the merit distribution some of the Newbies who participated have grown to become more active and in some cases more valuable members of this forum, while others did not. In general, nowadays those Newbies are today:

Newbie [84]
Jr.Member [45]
Member [55]
Full Member [13]
Sr. Member [9]
Hero Member [3]
Legendary[0]


-Here we can see the nowadays distribution of those users who have participated on the faucet in terms of whether they remain a newbie or junior to this day.



-Here is the list of users that have participated so far and attempted to sign a message with their adresses:



-I have taken the comments of @jackg  in consideration and added a graph summarizing the amount of users who participate on the merit faucet and have participated on the forum within a year (Since June 2021). In total 171 users have participated this year and 38 have not.


I may consider to add a thinner time period when I have more spare time to do so, which logically will decrease de percentage of users considered to be active.

Here's the list of the active ones under the presented conditions.



-I am leaving a link to the spread-sheet I have used for this little statistic research, in case anyone of you want to verify the information or perhaps let me know some error I commited (I have gathered this information manually).

Here is the Google Drive Link (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d08Vuux8Urr48E9XfFUgVrxNV63q0Z_L/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102324095732831039805&rtpof=true&sd=true)


-I shall present you my personal conclusions I have reached through the making of this thread/topic:

1) OgNasty has smerits to spare  
2) Knowing that about 38% of the people who participated are Members now (and beyond) it is save to say these kind of threads/topics are not only sought for spammers, but also for future good member of this community.
3) I did not personally checked the signatures of the participants of the merit faucet, so this small study would not be very accurate to know the percentage of people who managed to sign a message correctly. Notheless, if we assume those merited by OgNasty were the only ones which managed to do so this percentage would be as well about 53%, but clearly some cheaters may have signed correctly without receiving the reward.

Please feel free to let us know your own conlusions on these results!  :)



-Here are the sources of information and tools I have used for all this

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0 (Data)
https://fontmeme.com/es/fuentes-pixeladas/   (Letters)
Microsoft(R) Excell(TM) 2016  (Processing of information and graphs)
https://ninjastic.space/

Very interesting thread (and nice presentation of your findings as well), OP.  I wasn't aware of OgNasty's merit "faucet" so this is the first I'm hearing of its history and how the members who participated in it have fared on the forum since doing so. 

Looks like Timelord2067 tried to call Og out as being dishonest, and I'll put all of the other accusations of the same aside and just assume that there were a lot of members who tried to take advantage of his merit giveaway by using alt accounts--a conclusion which you came to yourself.  It seems likely that that would happen, since lower-ranked members have been clamoring to get merits right from the start, even going so far as to buy them on social media sites.

I'm not sure what the dropout rate is for members joining the forum, i.e., how long newbies remain active before going dormant, but I bet it's pretty high.  In fact, I would think it's fairly high for most forums.  I've joined quite a few in my lifetime, but there are only about two that I'm still active on, with bitcointalk being one of them.

I don't know about OgNasty and what happened with him in the past. I only talk about him, his contribution from my experience. Honestly, OgNasty has made some good initiatives to educate people about Bitcoin. This way, he truly is a Bitcoiner. Educational initiatives are good to boost Bitcoin adoption and not only this, education will help people to have better knowledge and be safer in crypto.

• [Merit] Hey Newbies! Can You Sign A Message? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0)
• [Merit] Hey Bitcoiners! Can You Send Encrypted Messages? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.0). I like this one more than the above one. It is more challenging for newbies.

I'd have found it more interesting if you listed which users are still active here (but since you did it all by hand I'm not sure that's as worthwhile).

No one could've become a legendary member in that time afaik (unless they were a newbie for a while and then suddenly got merits).

100 and 500 merits are actually a lot, those 3 users since then would've had to average 1 merit a day to get to hero already.


A lot of people interested in the technology probably linger here as a guest too (and maybe make a thread when they find something interesting - and potentially a new account with it) so I think that'd be hard to track.

I actually learned how to sign, verify, and encrypt a message with OgNasty's threads when I joined the forum.

Offering some merit to newbies in exchange of some practical knowledge is great in my opinion.

I personally did not think that rewarding with merits in this way is something that is the right way to motivate beginners. In doing so, I always took into account that there will be more of those who will try to abuse it to get 1 or 2 merits and thus become Jr. Members who will spend their time exclusively as bounty hunters. However, I think that in the end, when everything was looked at, it was more useful than harmful - looking at the list, I noticed at least a dozen members who became valuable members of the forum.

We also have classic examples of bounty hunters who didn't get single merit outside of that specific thread :

https://bpip.org/Profile?id=2865807
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2865807;sa=showPosts;start=0

From the top 10 on the list, 4 are permabanned, and even those who have at some point acted as members with potential.

https://bpip.org/Profile?id=2889812
https://bpip.org/Profile?id=2848591
https://bpip.org/Profile?id=1140480
https://bpip.org/Profile?id=2869882

I'm one of those who follow this :D even though maybe it's too late and it doesn't get Merit there but it's still good enough for me considering it was my first experience in making such a  sign, verify, and encrypt. it was definitely a pretty good experience for me to remember that is the beginning of my being here

I have checked for my name in the list but I couldn't find, even in the Drive file. I knew I received 4 merits from Ognasty after I signed a message. Though my application stayed for upto a month but was later granted, when Ognasty said he ran out of smerits. It could be that the statistics is for one thread, I know he runs two of similar threads. One for signing messages and the other for sending encrypted messages. It is fine to know that the thread helped many newbies.

Some people said that the thread also helped alts. This can be true but what happens is that he sends the merit once, so someone who cannot grow his account will still face challenges after the merit award.

Could you please provide the link to your post which was awarded with the merits?


I also leant how to do so on that thread.


I took your feedback in consideration.
I added the statistics on the users that have participated on the forum since June 2021, considering OgNasty opened his faucet on 2020, it should give an idea of the forum users which at least -tried- to continue participating, but I am aware that a year may be quite a huge gap for someone to be considered "active".


Thanks for the feedback, I am expecting some mistakes, though, this is my first attempt to summarize forum statistics.


I'd say what some of the users being banned at this point does not surprise me.

i followed the thread above belonging to OgNasty. i was very optimistic in those 3 days. I am confused and confused about choosing a wallet for my first mission and I succeeded in what I think is quite a long time. Hi friends, until this second please anyone give me a small gift for my struggle which is not easy. Maybe it will make me smile with a little help you all gave it to me even though it was only 1 piece for my bedtime. You all know and you all have been in a beginner position like me. Of course I believe that you are all very wise and understand the struggle.

There were certainly some who did that, but there is another way to look at it. At least they learned to sign a message and one day they might realize that bounty hunting is a dead end and not worth it. When that happens, they might look at those merits as some sort of incentive to start learning and focusing more on Bitcoin.   

Exactly. Even if some tried to abuse it or succeeded doing so, I would rather look at the positive side and on those who are today contributing forum members and maybe became such because of the positive experience they had with OgNasty. 

I don't think it was ever a debate as to whether I was a Bitcoiner or not, but I appreciate the sentiment.  I've done a lot for users of this forum and for Bitcoin over the years (now measured in decades), so it's nice when someone picks up on a tiny thing I've done to try and help out and gives me my flowers while I can still smell them.



So many people here focus on the negative.  They try to drag down as many people as they can with negative feedback and are even proud of the negativity they spread.  I have always chosen the opposite, and gone with positivity (except to defend myself from those casting provable lies my direction).  At some point when you've been here for long enough, you figure out that you can only elevate the good, not lower the bad.



I did check all of the signatures and also took a quick glance at the user's posting history to try and determine if they were a legitimate poster or not.  Many of those who did not receive merit were able to sign messages correctly, but it was blatantly obvious that they were alt accounts spamming for money so they did not receive any merit.


My conclusion from reading this thread...  LOL
People here like stats more than good deeds.  I've been working on that merit thread doing good for approaching 3 years now and it received less merit than this thread has in under a week...  A perfect showcasing as to why this forum has more people creating statistics than those actually creating use cases for Bitcoin and helping members of this community succeed with their projects...   Please do better.  If you merited this thread and not mine, you are the problem here (both threads deserve it, TBH).  Please don't take this as me caring about merit either.  I don't care if you never send me any.  Just pointing out a hilarious observation.

Perhaps many perceived that those that give away Merits are not in need of them as they have aplenty.

Since you're one of the OG contributors, pun intended, here are some Merits to cheer you up!

Well, nobody is in NEED of them.  I also didn't mean to come off as though I cared about my situation personally.  I don't.  I was more preaching from a soapbox that one of the problems on this forum is that people want to praise those that comment or analyze those that are doing things, instead of praising the people that are actually doing things, so we end up with more statisticians than project developers...  Giving another example from me personally...  NastyMining (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86854.0) was a project I started over a decade ago that has distributed more than 700 BTC, but that thread is merited by less individuals than this thread received in a week.  If paying all the costs to run a community organization for over a decade while distributing hundreds of BTC with 100% transparency to community members isn't merit worthy, what is?  What are we trying to achieve on these forums? 

I thought the other thread of OgNasty which is can you send an encrypted message is included in the statistics since both threads reward merits when they complete the task and both accept newbie participants. It is a great thread and I don't see any reason why we should spare our smerits to those who are new yet we know that some people will abuse it. As you have said, it could also bring low value users in this forum but it also bring users who did contribute in this forum. What nullama share is where I also learn how to do it.

Hello.
I decided not to get a statistic study of that thread because it was one targeted to general "Bitcoiners" or users, unlike the thread I have decided to study, I had not practical way to know the initial rank of those who participated long ago.

In this case, those who participated in the thread to sign a message, it was easier to tag them as newbies/Jr. Members by the time they applied. Since I tried to apply as a Member and OgNasty himself directed me to the second thread to learn how to encrypt a message, which I did.


I personally think it was a quite good idea to distribute merits while helping newbies to learn something useful, besides OG clarified he checked the users who applied to avoid meriting cheaters, spammers, etc as much as possible, encoraging users who had a fairly chance to become good contributors of the forum, that's just my personal point of view, of course...

So this is a statistic of those newbies who participated in that thread to see how many are merited and how many that are not merited and to see how many are still active starting when they participated in the thread?. As far as I can see, this could help to know how many newbies that rankrd up and still active and to see how many good newbies have come to Bitcointalk forum.

Yes, exactly.
However, those I have tagged as still active for these statistics graphs are those that have practicipated on the forum since the last year ( about June 2021) to the time I opened this thread. I am aware that perhaps a year is a too wide gap of time to consider someone to be "an active" user of the forum, but I supposed it would work as an aproximation in this case.



I have stimated the percentage of Newbies that have ranked up to several posotions and those active within a year, however to know how many New users we have in a period of time would require more data than I have taken from OGNasty's faucet Thread, since a Newbie perfectly could join and ignore or choose nor to participate in the faucet.

I get you. Same thing as those reposted contents that receive more likes/ upvotes than the original content. Not just on this forum.

Either they (content creators) have to suck it up or adopt to changes (i.e. posting on different communities that appreciate it more or "game" the system).

Yes, all of that is mentioned in the Ops post.
I must say that it's really interesting to see this data here and also how alot of newbies have benefited from the initiative and most of them have now become permanent members of the forum.

And I second what uchegod-21 said concerning those who said the initiative also helped alts, nothing is perfect, even in trading, we trade to profit, but attimes, we have to bear some losses, an initiative like this one is bound to be abused in one way or the way, but what is most important is that the abusers are not more than the genuine benefactors, and then, those who used the initiative to gain merit for the alts, how far can they go now the initiative has come to an end.

I thought so as well, even though I did get a ton of pushback and saw some threads making allegations that I was doing this for nefarious reasons (shocker, I know).  It isn't totally selfless though I will admit.  I've found that checking the newbies in that thread has allowed me to ignore a TON of spammers.  This pays dividends down the road as well, because those users will NEVER have the chance to get merit from me now.  Not to mention I'll never have to waste my time reading their posts.  From my perspective that's an awesome benefit and nearly worth the effort of the thread by itself. 

Wow, how long has it been, I can barely recall even though its just months ago but, it tells how far I've come. Yeah, I'm guilty as charged and i stand one of the beneficiaries of OgNasty, from that thread of years back. At a time, it was just some way to get around, trying to do something fun and earn merits too. Mostly, the merits seemed like a much enticing thing at the time. You know, when you've got just a few not numbering to 10merits on your reader, your looking up to a 100merits and you've got a thread that offers even 1 for some educative fun activity. You've got to give it a go right!

Anyway, I did and wasn't disappointed and it still was a fun thing to do at the time and still, would be a very good means to send confidential information between a pal when the time comes. As fun as it was, it did cleared certain sentiments and taught some lessons too. Like;

For Sentiments:

1. Ranking up is possible
2. Merits aren't being hold by high rank users on the forum
3. There are those who genuinely wants you to rank up

For leasons:
1. There is a reward for hardwork, learning or fulfilling a task
2. Your better off learning than having others do it for you and it's fun too
3. The importance of privacy in the cryptospace
4. How a signed message could be all you need to clarify certain truths and lies

The ills to this means of merit distribution that came with a clear part to its awarding is,
* Those who just need it to cross certain merit barriers could get away with it rather easily.

The truth is, most systems comes with a loophole and you can't really keep users from exploiting it when found. On the whole, it was agood initiative for those who realised its usefulness and truth. I am still grateful to OgNasty on those Newbie lessons.

I would assume most of them stayed on the bounty section anyways.
Still, good to know some of those who participated ended up being constructive members of the forum.


Time flies, doesn't it?
And I agree with you, there are some people here on the forum that wish others to rank up, it is not an hostile place as it may appear to be when one's a newcomer.

I suppose, there is always the uncentainly of not knowing whether one is meriting a good Newbie or a Spammer/ Plagiarist.
I have been in the position I felt like helping a new user with a merit, only to find out the got banned after some months since.

The thing is, will it be abused by alternate account farmers? Undoubtedly. However, those types of accounts rarely get to rank up anyway, so whatever their objective is, which I'll be honest likely is bounty related, will be dealt with either via the trust system or moderation if appropriate. The fact that alternate farms will abuse it, means they could actually be a silver lining to it, giving us a list of accounts that could be monitored for abuse.

However, I know this wasn't your intention, and I quite appreciate the sentiment behind it. Those that will rank up anyway, get to learn something that they might not have interest in otherwise, and it'll teach them some key fundamentals about signing, verifying, as well as having a kick start into the forum. I personally don't have much of a problem with that at all.

It doesn't matter too much that the majority might not stay active in the long term, you couldn't possibly know that. Likely, these are the alternate account farmers who gave up, or simply legitimate users who don't want to participate long term in the forum, which is fine too.

Honestly, I think the damage that can be done via something like this is rather small, and it does encourage legitimate users. I don't have a problem with it personally. There's plenty of other comparable threads which offer merit for answering a question, this might even be more important, as I consider verifying signatures to be one of the most important factors, and also teaches them how to verify in general outside of Bitcoin.