Bitcoin Forum

Consider my personal account is a merit source or say not anymore or it was never a merit source lol.

When I see a post is merit worthy I send merit. But I am hesitating to send merit to the team members in the Ann thread and other threads created from the official account. One mind says it's okay, they are not my alt accounts but another mind is saying sending merit to them seems like I am giving them an unethical (may be not) favour.

How would you judge it if you are in the same situation? I would like to have some discussion and based on that I will take a note if I should or should not.

Thanks in advance.

The most important part to meriting someone is the quallity of the post, not the user. I don't mind to give merit to a same user if he's post are very worthy and deserve merit. So, there's no need to worry about it, make sure you're not biased.

If you're not comfortable to give merit to your team members, then you can report his post on Unmerited good post here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0

Merits is a subjective issue, you spend it based on your own criteria and how you choose to do so. If your team members have posted what you think is good, and what you consider merit worthy by your own standards, thus why hesitate to merit them. Tbh, there's no need to feel uneasy about that, the only thing you shouldn't do with merits is to sell them, or merit your alt accounts.

It probably depends on the post and its contribution to the forum.

If you're consistently meriting similar users in the ann thread it'll probably be noticed and you might get called out/neg trusted for it - you also might not be a merit source after a while too (if you were one). If you merit their posts in other topics of the forum (unrelated to the project you're working on then it's fine) - even if you have a slight bias towards team members (as long as you're distributing your merits enough to other users too).

Re: Sending merit to merit worthy posts to team members. How would you look at it?

If it's a merit worthy post, then it is deserving of merits regardless of the personal relationship with the account.
There may be a light argument on how you could have a biased view when checking out such posts, but drawing the line for where personal interest meets objective judgement would be a thin one.

I dare say a lot of users here have developed fondness for certain profiles and look out for their post to merit. This is purely based on the quality of their posts and not for any alterior motive.

I will not refrain from meriting such profiles, but I would put in an extra effort to be objective when deciding which of such posts are merit worthy.

Well if the answers or posts of your team member contributes to better clarify the questions of other bitcointalk members, then I don't see any malicious act meriting them. Meriting any proof or answers that makes sense with regards to your project is okay.

The only malicious intent I see when it comes to merit distribution are those accounts with a generic writing that receives merit even though their posts can be found on the megathread LOL

So you are saying that you have another account here and it "was" a merit source but just got stripped of that title or something?

Well, I don't think there's an official rule with merits but as long as you are meriting what you want, why not? But the view of other members here is probably the same in which they are going to be quite suspicious of posts that have merit that doesn't have any substance, value, or repetitiveness of the post. If that happens, it means it's there's an agenda there or something.

If you see the account.

It's a business account to create a gambling review and currently doing "IBCO" based on the team they're provided. All of them are from "bitcointalk", so not really surprising the owner/team member have main account with merit source.
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I don't think the account that posted "ANN" really cares about merit, because they can buy membership and most of the time what they care is doing the business. So, without any merit they still can update the progress of their business.

To the best of my knowledge how merit works, I read somewhere theymos mentioned it and I took note of it and I cannot remember where I saw the post but it said something like this;

1. The person you are sending the merits doesn't matter, what matters is the quality of the post, in as much as it is not your alt.
2. If one person keeps making quality post, continue to send the merits to the one person.
3. Instead of you sending 1 merit to 50 non quality posts, it is better to send 50merits to 1 deserving post.

And many more I cannot remember now.

There is no rule and the situation differs from one account to another, but the probability of tampering of merits from commercial accounts is small because it is rare for those accounts to be sold (it will be easy to detect that the owner has changed) and it is also rare for those accounts to participate in signature campaigns so sending Merits to them makes no difference.

on the other hand if we note signature campaigns [ANN] topics, we find that they received many merits without having a negative reflection from the owners

As others have said, merit is subjective, you can find one liner to merit worthy, but others look for more comprehensive and detailed post to merit them.

So I don't see anything wrong with sending merit to Ann thread, it won't harm or benefit the project, in my opinion. And for this project or business, it's the exposure and the number of investors that count, how much money they can bag because they created a Ann thread in this community and not for the merits.

Say what, now?  Is you or is you not a merit sauce?  I demand an answer!

This has been brought up before if my memory serves me correctly--in the context of the Chipmixer campaign, maybe.  But I'm pretty sure what you're describing isn't a big deal at all unless you really are trying to curry favor with the member you're meriting.  Personally I wouldn't merit the OP of an ANN thread, because it just doesn't seem like the correct use of merits, but members are free to merit whatever they like.  Hell, the merit system isn't even monitored that closely anymore by the forum watchdogs.  It used to be that there were tons of threads about merit abusers in Reputation, but nowadays you don't see much of that.

It looks like most people have written much the same thing: if you want to merit a post in an ANN thread, go right ahead.  I'd say even if you're a merit source it's OK, because you've probably got some sMerits that you've earned on top of your monthly allocation. 

Run free and merit what you will, my child.  The world is your oyster.

I tend to not merit Legendary accounts very often. They cannot gain anything but bragging rights and noone is gonna catch LoyceV. Either way, long as you are not meriting a 1 word post you should probably be fine.

I don't think anyone would be able to tell you this accurately because giving away merits is based on our judgement and we decide how to spend it.If you find suitable giving merits to team members like you think they have shared something useful or even if not the whole community you are satisfied with that post you can definitely merit that post or if you think it's not fine then you don't need to merit them.

We have seen so many cases about this and the answer remains the same that it's subjective topic and we are free to give out merits to any post we find quality one or helpful.There are some cases of merit abuse where we see people transferring merits to their alts and sending to the full limit to some Bounty reports also which is categorised under merit abuse but in your case it's entirely different so feel free to give it if you find it suitable.

Consider your motivations in sending the merit, if they're sound then you're unlikely to receive any major problems. You might get challenged, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're in the wrong. There has been a certain standard set by the community, and as long as the posts are somewhat conforming to that standard I don't see too much of a issue. It only becomes an issue if you're doing it for other reasons, rather than the quality of their posts.

The thing is, merit has become almost absolutely associated with earning opportunities due to signature campaigns, so users tend to become suspicious due to the fact you're looking to exploit merit, and therefore enrol alternate accounts on signature campaigns. If that isn't the case or you aren't looking to exploit it in another way, like I said you shouldn't have too many major problems.

When you see a post which deserves merits then you are allowed to merit them if you have sMerits or as merits from source no matter either the person you know personally or belonging to the team you are currently working with.

When someone try to abuse the merits in the way you are talking then it won't take that long to get into the radar of others so its okay as long as you think its okay.

Ahhh, I never test any other sauce except tomato sauce. Merit sauce will be a great addition to Bitcoin Pizza.


Did you mean Coyster by any chance? He is also commented in this thread BTW.

Usually I don't send merits to business accounts who just make ANN's and don't interact muc here. They usually don't send merits to other user, so giving them merit is kind a waste. I rather would give merits for not commercial users - someone who isn't business acccount. I don't have other limits about giving merits, I don't care whether it's new member or Legendary.

Tomato sauce is boring. Why not to try something new, like garlic sauce? Merit sauce - well, it would be interesting to know ingredients of it :D.

I can see something different done by some other business accounts but they have good interaction with users and they are also quite used to sending merits to other users like Best_Change or Bitcasino.io Support and some other accounts do. I've seen them post merit a lot, but as a business account they're bound to have limited interaction on many topics other than just focusing on their own business. This is one of the reasons why I don't send merit on business accounts often enough, but I can still do it when I need their help and they do it well and help.

Are you hesitating to post some merit on your team members who are actually known to be good users on this forum? If you don't want to do it in the ANN thread because it seems to be supporting something unethical, do it somewhere else because I'm sure these guys are good posters for it.

I'll post it if they actually post something decent and this shouldn't be something that can be called abuse. Take for example in most cases, but if it gets sent to your account then that's the problem.

I see it and it is accepted.

If you have a company and your company must create a brand account here. Even if your company buy the copper membership, it is not like similar to Full Member and high member ranks.

It is not bad if you merit that account and make it ranking up to Full member for example.

It is only bad and unacceptable if you do this to rank that account up, and makes it easier to scam. It is unacceptable if your plan is to scam or to rank up an account just to spam in the forum.

I see some casinos merited their brand accounts and community don't complain about that.

that's because those casino accounts earn their reputation. those who give merit mostly do have experience playing or participating in campaigns with good payouts.

I don't think what the OP meant was anything wrong. as long as it doesn't support scam brands.

The thing is very simple, if your meriting pattern conforms to the required standard of the forum rules regarding merit then i think you're fine, so here i think all that is needed is to read the required rules for Meriting a post and if you're within the coverage then fine, but as for me the only standard i know is to merit a quality post, don't merit your alts and don't beg for merit, while you should also be reminded of your right in meriting some, you can decide who to and not to merit base on your convictions on their post as quality post.

When I thought about business accounts which actively send merits and interact here, Best_Change comes to my head first. But you have good point can have limited interaction, they rarely go outside their ANN/Discussion topic

Meriting a team member whose post is worthy of been merited is not bad at all. They’ve contributed to the forum and their contributions is worthy of been merited, so I don’t think it’s a bad idea. You’ll see legendary members meriting each other when one of them gives response to a post and find the solution to a question been asked. Some who are team members (merit source’s) also give merit to each other on deserving posts and response. Adding good value to the forum is one of the criteria of been given a deserving merit.

Exactly what I wanted to point out,  most project accounts rarely post outside the project announcement thread, and most important part is that this type of account have no guarantee of remaining active on this forum for a long time, most especially those in the Altcoin Ann board.

 It is very easy for such accounts to abandon the forum as soon as their project become either -
~Successful and they see no need to remain active on the forum
Or
~As soon as they abandon the project,  they also abandon the project account.

So when one considers the two scenarios above,  meriting such accounts even when they make a good post in their ANN thread feels like a waste of Merit.
So personally,  I feel the op has a good point,  and I also think the scenerios I mentioned above are among the reasons why merit sources don't pay any attention to Altcoin board.

I am going to restrict myself meriting on the ANN thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5409868.0). This should be a safe practice for me as I really don't want to have a double mind at all.


Off-topic:
Unfortunately our ANN thread moved to the Securities board :-(
It's understandable but question is aren't all ICOs are a kind of Securities?
Maybe this deserves a new meta discussion, not sure yet though.