Bitcoin Forum

I stumbled upon a thread by Jet Cash, and it appears to be like a professor interacting with his students, rewarding them with merits for their answers. Honestly, I'm quite impressed with what he has done as it encourages posters to provide more valuable posts, especially those who want to receive merits. As we alll know, not all good posts are merited since some boards do not have as many merits as others.

This brings me to a suggestion for our merit sources out there. Maybe you can create a thread on an important topic for discussion and reward those who share their valuable insights. This way, it would be easier to determine if a thread contains valuable information, as it is initiated by the merit source itself. I hope you understand what I'm trying to emphasize.

I'm not suggesting that it should be compulsory for merit sources, but I wanted to share what I have observed. It's up to you guys to decide how you perceive it.

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You can see the thread here ; [Merits again] Discuss the velocity of Bitcoin   (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201929.0;all)

OgNasty did it here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275043
And also on my local board, hosted by joniboini https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315373.0

Actually, it wasn't just encouraging users to make good posts, but a request to learn the basic knowledge that aspiring bitcoiners should have. Overall, it's good.

Lol, in my short lived duration of being a source a few years ago, I asked people to provide information, or teach me something new and asked for other tasks, but then I realized I'm using merit for personal gain.
IMHO, it shouldn't be given out when a source is satisfied with a comment, it should be based on the effort and the weight of the content, sometimes a sentence could teach you what you could learn in 10 years of a life time, but mostly the posts are the same old repetitions just revised more carefully to pass the merit source criteria.🤣

Btw, where is this cash jet guy thread you mentioned he seems like a good target guy? I need to go fishing some merits, my merit-blood is low for some time. Lol.

What Jet Cash and others did was great, but isn't really that necessary. Merit sources can simply scout threads for users who deserve merits; it doesn't necessarily need to be them to create the thread as it only makes little difference.

Let's not do that. Merit isn't a school project, and it isn't supposed to be a form of payment for doing as I say. Merit is meant for posts that are worth reading, and if someone can do that on his own, Merit will find him.

Given this year's hype, I expect your suggestion to lead to many shitposts created by chatbots.

You highlighted the problem of sources not being active on every board and even having some on ignore.
A practical solution would be to increase the number of sources and make it so that a good post regardless of where it is posted would be found out.

Users, whether they are sources or not, can choose to make threads to offer merit, that's their own perspective of how the view merit giving, it doesn't apply to everyone. What matters is they are exhausting their source merit and being liberal when sharing it.

Is this not something that should be done by default anyway? Being, that people (merit sources or not) should be creating high quality topics that create good conversation, and those who are sharing valuable insights should be getting rewarded by merit sources who view the thread.

I always thought that's how it worked. I suppose that there's no harm on intentionally setting out to do this, but I do feel that it should come about naturally.

This would have been a good suggestion to adopt but we should also consider the possibility for the abuse, quite alright we have some threads created by merits sources that allows then to review quality posts and merits, a good example is the one created by LoyceV on reputation to report any unmerited quality post on his thread, there's one for Ratimov and so also Fillippone all on beginners and help, not all merit source will be able to adopt the same pattern, some do visit threads randomly across different boards to merit their quality posters and so on.

Absolutely true sir.
That is just the fact behind this, and for avoiding that we need to stop creating what would make people involving themselves in a taskable post as to avoid chatbots, especially to the merits hunters called newbies.

Those who deserves them get it and there are lot of threads also to help them out where they can submit post they find quality one without merits so it should be that way only but yes if you are creating a task that will help them to gain knowledge like puzzles or quiz then it's different part and motivate them to learn and gain merits in that manner.

People are more hyping up the AI usage ignoring they will come up answers they find suitable and forum is place to have discussion between members not these Chatbots like the one giving answers on Satoshi's behalf.

I'm not against your idea, but IMO, it's not needed. I prefer when merit is rewarded in natural way - when merit source or just random member see good post and simply reward it with merit. Most of these merit giveaway threads tend to ass licking and posts made just to try getting merit. Also, as mentioned above, with AI being hottest thing in 2023 many members can try writting posts with it when they try to get merit.
Sorry if my comparison may be not appropriate for some members, but merit giveway threads reminds me giving treats for dogs whn they have donesomething good. I'm not saying that these threads is bad thing, it's simply not something what I prefer.

The merit system is enough to encourage users to create high quality posts. If any user decides to create a thread and reward people that participate well in it with merits, that's their own way and nothing wrong with that, overall everybody has their own style. But what's wrong is if it becomes something we see too often, in which the only way to receive merits is if you join in threads created by a user who is giving them out. It is going to be counterproductive, and would lead people to post in threads they have no interest in, or plagiarising just to post in them.

I don't like a lot of the practices that happen with merit, so adding more permissions to merit sources is not meaningful. A person should try to create high-quality posts and not worry about that. After a while, if he doesn't get enough merits, he can ask her, but don't make your focus on getting merits more than improving the quality of your posts.

I will support any idea that will make merit sources spend their merits on quality posts. I know that it is very difficult to earn merits in this forum. Merit looks like something that is recycling within some group of people. It is not that only those people make merit worthy posts. It is because they enjoy reading one another's post, it is only when you have read my posts that you will drop merits for me.
This is why newbies who wants to rank up keep creating new topics even when it's not needed in order to expose their accounts for merits.
Conversations are buried easily, but opened thread can be bumped at any time.
The solution to this problem is that when a merit source stumbles on one quality post from a user, they should try to look into the profile of that user to drop more merits if they see quality posts. This should be done for users below 1000 merits. Another solution is what The Sceptical Chymist do as post review.

OP, I like your idea, but I did something similar 5 years ago on my Croatian local board, you can check here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4265795.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4265795.0)
At that time, we had a lot of young members who, due to their poor knowledge of the English language or weak knowledge of crypto topics, could not write in the main part of the forum and thus receive merits for their quality posts.
I started this thread with the desire to help local members have a place to report their quality posts and get merits for them.
All these years, the thread served its purpose and helped many young local members to progress on the forum, but lately this thread has died because there are not many new and active members on our local board anymore, and the old members have almost all become legendary in the meantime and give daily their great contribution to this forum.

It is good but it is not organic.

Discussions should be organic and not about merit award. To have organic discussions, a poster will have to spend more time to look around topics and find topics that are appropriate with his knowledge to join the discussions organically. Finding appropriate topics will require more time and it shows you are actually not a spammer. If I am a spammer, I can easy pick any topic to reply.

Opening those merit award threads will save time for spammers and merit hunters.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my suggestion. I appreciate the honest responses, and all of you have valid points. I also believe it's a great idea to promote "organic discussions" in this forum. Instead of focusing on quantity, we should prioritize quality. By doing so, the forum moderators' job of deleting spam threads and posts will be reduced.  :)

Stadus, where have you been all this whole time?? Cus I cannot believe that you're always active in the forum then you missed the times when several merit sources did alot of aiding to members that actually deserved them?? How's that even possible...I'm curious!!
To start with, OG Nasty ran a "sign a massage and get merited" thread, then Chymist also picked an interest and begun after few months of HODLing Smerits... Then finally, fillipone also deemed that as a perfect means to help prominent rookies rank up,...
Uhhmmm, I understand that it might not be enough since we've got alot of rookies lately; but, you seee... If it gets in excess, then there are chances of those birdbrains ranking up too... That would only cause more chaos than we thought it would..

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

There are hundreds to thousands of spam reported and deleted by moderators every month, but an idea like that would surely be great for anyone with a good knowledge of bitcoin. That thread was created on November 16th, 2019, but looking at the stats after a few years, I gathered everyone who participated in the topic as in this list.

There are only 26 users involved in the topic, JayJuanGee is the most active.

That's impossible :P
Let's start with a definition:
Even though they give suggestions of how to accomplish this, I'd argue it's not organic if someone has to promote it. An organic discussion either happens on it's own, or it doesn't. There can't be a middle ground.

I like what JetCash have done because that way, forum members will be posting content that is good for the forum and also served as a practice for others who have not known the topic yet. As I read in that thread, I noticed some forum members doesn't know what JetCash's topic all about. When they join the discussion, they wl get rewarded with merits and also learn new things if they haven't learned it yet.

I don't find it a good idea for a merit source to create a topic and then give participating members a merit, perhaps such a suggestion would be appropriate in local boards with low activity to encourage members to be active in the local board.

I see that the negatives of the idea are more than its positives. The sources of merit are not employees to give merit only, they do their work in the forum normally and when they find a post worthy of merit, they are stingy with giving merit.

That was because most of my posts were in gambling sections. I'm active in sports like the NBA, and we all know that there are only a few merits given in gambling discussion sections. Or perhaps my posts don't deserve merits. But enough about me, my observation is for the general audience, especially newcomers who want to rank up where merits are necessary to make it happen.

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I wish all of the local boards have an active merit source.  :)


I'm not saying it should be compulsory, though. I'm just suggesting that maybe if they have time, they can create something similar to Jet Cash's initiative. However, since the majority of us do not find it appealing, I suppose we can continue with the current system where we can have organic discussions on whatever topic a member creates, as long as it's valuable.

You're right, we shouldn't let it feels like having merit been given is a right, which shouldn't be because we have to consider the newbies coming everyday, they will think of making a post and expect merit to come in after, whereas that's not the major reason for creating merits, it must not be abused, it's not a right and it's not by force you received or someone gives to you, you learn to earn it, some members together with merit source have created enough means to ensure merit is well distributed accordingly where appropriately needed.


Merits sounces are trying their best in their own capacity, to identify a post worth meriting along with your own postings on the forum, including making research about things happening is not what we thought as easy as that, some of us will be worse if we are merit source because not everyone can multitask.

You're absolutely right in saying that merit will find those who make quality posts. One should always focus on the quality of the posts and replies, and the merit sources, as well as other members having sendable merits, will give merits to those posts and replies without rethinking. If someone's post or reply is helpful then the generous members of the forum will send them merits.

I have seen some scammers and alt accounts of the people who were banned from the forum, receiving merits for their quality posts and replies, and thus it's a fact that the reputed members of the forum support all those users who share quality material, that could help other users, who want to learn about the topic of discussion in detail.

In last few days I have seen some people who cheated the generosity and goodness of the reputed members of the forum. They received many merit points by deceiving those members with their acting and showing nature. However, a liar and cheater will get caught no matter how much acting he/she knows.

I've seen some reputed members who were dishearten because of those users who took advantage of their goodness. Because of those type of greedy people many good and contributive members of the forum are also unable to gain merits. I must say that the merit sources and other members having spendable merits should support good quality posts and replies so that the users will try their best at creating good quality posts and replies only.

Dear OP, your suggestion is good but to some extent, like there are not so many merit sources thus a load of giving merit to eligible ones is also very hard for them, and yet you are suggesting they start topics on their own, and they right or emphasize different topics related to crypto and will award those whose answer will be good enough to convince them to give them merits.

This will damage the image of merit (reward system) because other people (OPs) will not get that much response from the members (i am not saying every member is a merit hunter/wants to get as many merits as they can). The point is this will create problems for Merit sources plus for real hustlers here. In my opinion, the current system is good, where any person like the one you mentioned started a thread, and if any other member gives a reply that convinced any other member (not only merit source) to give him merits that is quite fine to me rather than this idea. Plus i do not think merit sources are being paid for giving merits to eligible ones, so why would they invest such precious time in making those topics especially for giving merits though they are already making topics where they are giving merits to the eligible ones despite any discrimination?

I still find it hard why on gambling it's rare to see users get merit. Gambling section is like a forbidden city, before you see or get merit in that section, you need to invite all the prayer worriors in this world before you get one, funny tho😅. When I started almost all my posts are on gambling section but I had to make a big turn (was advised to) by not only visiting gambling that much, but why is it so?


I feel it would be hard for this to happen because if newbies don't start pushing hard, making sure their post have that quality to make these merit source to look into their post then it would be too easy to rank up, like someone who's a newbie can just rank up in less than a month of joining the Forum. Just saying.

I have seen this kind of practices and most of them backfired, people use it to farm merit with Newbie account to rank-up to Jr.Member -it only needs 10 merits- joining campaigns and spamming with posts that some of us can't even understand.

If your concern is regarding merit sources not spending their merit, I think this solution is better.

Nah, this be like jerking off merit source to get merit. But, I like the one hosted by OgNasty linked in first comment (was lazy to translate other one), do fun things and giveaway merits, that sounds good.  ;D

I hardly see merit giveaway in this forum.
@OgNasty is doing one, but I haven't come across any of that but I know of @Deadsea, he's really helping out newbies and other users who care to join, but to rap it up, all merit source are really trying their best to make things move smoothly in this Forum and is not easy as we think when they start doing their thing. I Still give maximum respect to them all.

During my stay here, there have been plenty, you just gotta keep eye out for them.

Seriously, I need to... In as much as our ranks are doesn't mean we know so much about a place, and this forum is so big for one person to roam around. I still see my self as a newbie which means I'm ready to learn from anybody no matter how low or high your rank is.
I'll do as you say mate.

OgNasty already have about two threads that are active which focus on newbies majorly to help them perform a task and get rewarded with merit, one is "sign a message" and the other "send an encrypted message", some members or merits source organizes a merits giveaway thread line solving of puzzle, bitcoin quiz, and other form of questions and answers and reward participants with merits, which shows that the merits sources are upto task and are doing well in this regards.