Bitcoin Forum

Members, reputable members. Was it better before back then when this forum was without merits or is it better or even much better now with merits? Please explain your answer so users like me can get an idea how it was and what you prefer. :)

Merit system was created in 2018 because of the way many people are spamming and having low quality posts. Merit system was introduced and the spam and low quality posts with multiple accounts become reduced. I think this answers your question.

when merit was not yet introduced, members only require activity to rank up but after the merit system got introduced, users now need merit and activity before they can enter a new rank. There are members who are complaining that they can't earn merit to be able to rank up, i think for members now, it's becoming more of a merit hunt than quality post but any member who gets tired of hunting for merit will get tired an leave if they don't earn merit on their low quality post. I am not saying this because I feel that my post is of extremely good quality but I know that the quality of posters before was better than now and that's what changed. I also know that the introduction of the merit system was to help encourage users to make quality post.

Better after but also I remember the newest members had a special forum section and only posted there, to some extent that was good containment and discouragement to start new accounts and spam.  I guess that was and still is the largest problem.  Merit isnt perfect but its generally a good idea to have some limited scoring to posts, I do think it should be a little more liquid for anyone active but I understand it has to lean on the hard money side of balancing things rather then letting it all be too loose and becoming not a worthwhile marker or commodity to circulate on the forum.

Much, much better now than before the merit system was created--and I think I've said that like a million times across the span of 5 years already.  While I think there's still a big shitposting problem, at least people aren't doing it with a stable of alt accounts that they're ranking up either to enroll in bounties/campaigns or to sell to account buyers.  The merit system swept the legs right out from under account farmers, and that was no small thing.

There used to be threads where it was obvious that alt accounts were responding to each other as though they were actually different people; you don't see that much anymore.

In my opinion, the addition of merits has brought a positive change to the community. Merits provide a structured way to acknowledge and reward valuable contributions, which helps in recognizing the efforts of members who consistently provide helpful and insightful content.
Before merits, while the forum might have been functional, there may have been challenges in highlighting and appreciating quality contributions. The introduction of merits seems to have added a layer of accountability and recognition, encouraging members to contribute meaningfully and maintain a positive and constructive environment.
Of course, improvement for the better.

I am not sure whether it was better back then (before the implementation of the merit system) or not, because of the simple fact I joined this wonderful community back during the pandemic. Though, reading the opinions of The Sceptical Chymist (aka The Pharmacist) among other members who joined much earlier than me, it makes sense the merit system helped to halt to some degree the spamming and the account farming. Now obviously takes much more effort to account farm for the purpose of selling them outside of the forum, to the extent many of the farmers probably stopped trying at this point.

No system is perfect, that is for sure, but having a system like this one is better than not having one. At least, that is my humble opinion.

I'm registered since 2020, but since I've check the old thread discussions where most users were create one liner posts and there are many airdropped merit users stuck can't receive many merits, I'll say the forum is better after merit implementation.

Unfortunately the current merit system isn't perfect yet, we need to improve in punishment for user who keep meriting each other with his alts or friends.

Before the merit system, as consequence of cryptocurrency market and ICO booming in 2017 and 2018, the forum was flooded with shit posters. Merit system kicked off in January 2018 helped to indirectly eliminate shit posters because they have no available space to spam and get money for their 'works'.

Then another wave of spam returned when those farms exchanged merits to rank up to like Junior member (without 1 merit required back in the day with initial merit system (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0)), then theymos launched an Enhanced merit system (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.0) (with 1 merit required to be Junior member, previous junior members without 1 earned merit will be deranked to newbies). Spam reduced effectively and significantly again.

Then the massive booster of monthly sourced merits caused another issue, when I can see many shit posters rising again. They wrote wall of texts and use those text walls as their fake marks of quality to exchange merit, rank up and spam to work.

That's true if we don't have a merit system to rank up we will see newbies ranking up to legendary because of activity and post count when their contributions to the community are bounty reports, those who contributed and earned the respect the respect of the community are the one who deserves to rank up.
Merits are a vote of confidence by the community to members who make a great contribution to what the forum should be.

I was here 2years before the merit system was started and I am still here after 5years of the merit system.

The good thing/or so we thought, was that alt-accounts would reduce in number and account farming would be discouraged, although the second point has fairly been effective, they eventually are managing to rank up and introduce their own into multiple campaign and defraud them like previously. In other words, there are loopholes and its not perfect, but sometimes merit ends up being a distraction rather than engaging in the community.

So my opinion is that not much has changed, we had bootlickers previously and we still have, its just how democracy works. Suck it up and continue on your one man army life.

It's obvious that the merit system brought a level of sanity and control in the forum and helped push account farmers off the forum or minimized their activities and kicked shitposters in the balls. Though I'm of the opinion that meriting a post is a subjective thing than objective. I've said this times without number. By the way, in the past with your current status of 126 activities you would've ranked up to Full Member long ago but that's not possible now as you've merit to contend with and that will push you to put more efforts in your posts to get merit. You see how a plus it's?

To a larger extent, the forum is better with the integration of the merit system to it. However, it comes with its own downsides just like every other invention.

Firstly, the way the merit system is being earned. People are have to depend on sources to issue them merit based on their inputs.

Secondly, the pace of growth being slow. One has to satisfy activity as well as merit also to move up the rank ladder, if one of these conditions is satified leaving the other then the growth is impaired.

These basics have not settled in properly with a good percentage of the form users but it does help regulate the system and move along with those who give meaningful input into the forum.

I don’t know what is "merits" are so I can’t answer your question.
I only know that here at the forum you can simply communicate and debate without any "merits"

The merit system is not perfect, but notwithstanding, it's doing a great job.

I wasn't here before the merit system was newly introduced, and so are many Legendary members as well, yet, we could imagine just as it is in other forums without much moderation. This also goes in line with the story I heard that there was too much spamming. I can't but imagine that as well in a forum where there was an opportunity to earn, a lot of people might be writing jargons just to meet up with their pay posts requirements, but careless about the quality of posts that could move the forum forward.

This makes me conclude that this merit era is better and will also reduce the stress on the moderators.

IMO merit was introduced to try to force users to do better since they weren't taking the initiative to do it on their own. Merit is needed in order to rank up and in order to earn some merit you have to put some effort in when posting.

If merit was used correctly, then of course it's a good thing for the forum. The issue is these farmers all got airdropped merit and are able to merit new accounts and rank them up, sell merit and make a buck, or help their already existing accounts rank up.

Overall, merit is great for the forum, but like everything else there are some issues.

For me, I find the forum after activating the merit system much better than it was before the merit system was in place. Merit distinguishes between good members who provide benefit to the forum and others who spread spam.

In general, the merit that a member obtains is an indicator of the quality of posts and the positive, constructive activity of members in the forum. Activity alone is not enough.

Of course, there is no perfect system. There must be some defects, but I find that the benefits that the forum obtains are much greater than the defects that may exist in this system.

I was not a part of the forum before the implementation of the merit system, but from the research I’ve done and several posts I have read I think I can boldly say that the merit system has done a pretty good job and there have been an improvement in posts standards.

But that does not mean that you still won’t come across a low quality post, some are made due to the poster not understanding the Op or something similar, but you won’t see anyone post just to increase their activity status like they did before the merit era.


Some gave up when they were unable to earn merits from their posts while the rest realized that something was wrong and then decide to up their game and right now they are doing quite well and will still be in support of the merit system of asked to give their opinion.

It was better when bitcoin was something new and people were discovering it, it was better when web wasn't super advanced and when crypto businesses were a new thing. It was just a good time, a new day, revolution in financial system, a new niche, a new thing to build business around.
Merit was implemented in 2017, this was the time when bitcoin gained widespread attention and become a very successful cryptocurrency. Also, since 2017, web and crypto businesses developed further and this forum lost popularity a little bit. This forum is not as mainstream as it was before and new things don't start from this forum like it was before.

So, I wouldn't ask whether was this forum better before merit or not, I would ask, was this forum better before 2017 or not. Btw it's noticeable that forum members are putting more effort to post high quality posts. To be honest, merit and high-paying signature campaigns, like Chipmixer, played very important role into making this forum a better place.

The forum is much better now. This thread reminded me of one I opened in this same section when I had only been on the forum for a week. Take a look at it to get an idea of what was going on:

Poor English, careless writing, ranks and signature campaigns. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2111476.msg21111462#msg21111462)

Basically before the merit system the forum was ranked up by time since registration and activity, and the forum was full of rubbish as has been mentioned. Neither the people reporting could report everything nor the moderators couldn't cope with it, so no matter how hard they tried the forum looked pretty filthy, much worse than now.

I have no idea how it was before merit implentation as I joined later, but if we have so many high ranking shitposters now, I can only imagine how bad it was when you could rank tp Legendary by simply writing one liner shitposts for a couple of years.

Merit system ain't perfect, but it definitely made it harder for account farmers.

The forum was okay without merits but the spammers and accounts farmers took advantage of the forum's no merit system back then and farmed they used to farm many accounts so they can sell those low-effort ranked accounts for money.

The merit system almost eradicated those merit farmers and has improved the quality of posts to much higher levels. I would say that the merit system is the best system for the forum and it's implementation has improved the number of quality posters as well as helped those to rank up who contribute to the forum.

Thank everyone for the replies.

As I understand it from the poll and replies that it's better now! The merit system avoids spammer to running around here free, and that's good and what we want?  :D
Someone said it's not perfect, but I think we call can agree that's nothing is perfect in life, but if it's better then it was it's already winning.  :D




When was it possible to start enroll in campaigns on the forum? Was also that a positive change? For the reason now an account can actually make move in a respected way (Post high quality posts) so it should also make the forum a bit cleaner from spam?




I agree you on this one bro! As long we trying ur best with what we got, it will be much better then if we work against it.




I can understand that many people using signature campaign as a main source of income, since I understand that some users are from poor countries so I am so glad it's possible to earn money here in a legal way that also can improve your intellect. with this thinking the scam should be less and honestly should be the way everyone wants to go. It must be much more fun to have a honest account you farmed up during long time instead of cheating your way up.
Thank you BitcoinTalk!




Thank you for this information.

I saw both periods on this forum: both before and after merits. And this is what I will say about this. I have already voiced this point of view several times, but I repeat that I believe that the introduction of merits benefited the bitcointalk, which made it possible to improve the quality of posts, pushing users not just to spam all sorts of garbage, but at least to generate more or less useful and interesting texts. I won’t talk about everyone, but I’m sure that for me, at least, the introduction of the merit system had a beneficial effect and forced me to be more thoughtful about what I write on this forum.

I think both era's had/have their strengths and weakness, but I think the first era without the merit requirements was a great one has it gave us the freedom which many of us enjoyed!
But unfortunately this freedom was abused with spam on the forum, which lead to the era of the merit system..which meant any spammers of the forum would not rank up..and unfortunately I think the system of merit is broken aswell as most users have brought in their A game but because of language barriers not belonging  to the forums local boards or not fitting in into certain cliques some users don't rank up as the merit system doesn't favour all!!

Otherwise all in all, I liked the era without merit way better than this one, no hard feelings guys and girls ::)

Much better with merits since there’s tons of spammer out there that literally posting nonsense on any thread just to farm an account because activity can be gained by just posting per 2 weeks.

Now, it’s very hard to farm account that decreases account sales which consider as a win for the merit system. Although there are some cases with merit begging but at least everyone is already trying to make a better post compared before.

Man, it's not because of language barriers, but those local posters are also giving their merit to their group in global board. So it's not really because of language barriers, but they're from beginning has a plan to abuse the merit. More importantly giving merit is very subjective, making a report by using merit connection as a proof alone is really weak, you would get criticized by other users. :D

I think a way to reduce this problem is only merit sources can send sMerit.

I wasn't around when the merit system was first introduced, but based on how older members are commenting and sharing their experiences between now and then, I'm convinced that the merit system was one of the best things to be introduced to the forum. The merit system has also enabled one to contribute valuable and informative forum discussions. The merit is more like a  gold of inestimable value in that you must demonstrate your desire for it before it can be given to you by someone who saw your potential and have some to share. Merit cannot be bought, but it can be earned through your contributions to the forum.

You can't compare then and now the forum is more free from spam post if not for this merits system I wonder how the forum would have look by now, where newbies keeps spamming and they gets promoted to the next rank without doing what it takes to merits the next rank.
Though lazy posters especially newbies that are finding it difficult to meet the next rank would say is bad but technically this merits has shown how constructives and creative we seems to be, and anyone who ranked up so easily then you need to watch out to such person he is putting more efforts in discovery or tends to be more creatives.

Theymos isn’t one that enjoys making changes to the forum, and when he does, there is a good reason why that is. The merit system was a much needed solution to the problem of shitposters and account farmers. Before the merit system, I could have been a legendary member by simply posting trash all over the forum. Unlike today when the rank closely matches the experience of the person behind the account, in 2016 I don’t think much was expected from a legendary rank member.

I wasn’t here before the introduction of the merit system, but I know if the forum didn’t have merit system in place, the moderators would spend all their time deleting shitposts.

Yes I think you absolutely right here, without being here for to long or knowing how Theymos works. I got feeling he does what best for the forum and not what best for himself. Sometimes maybe users wont understand it direct, but in the end it will be obvious why he did take a certain decision.

Even if I did not witness the old days, through your statement, I am able to understand how it was then. Even with the merit system, it is still not perfect as there are still loop holes. Now, let's imagine where the only thing required to rank up is actively count. The spam obviously would be much. A random person can decide to create 3 accounts and endeavour to make atleast a post (shitty post), in  each of the accounts a day, in less than 3 months, the 3 accounts will become full member accounts. Thanks to the merit system.

Well I did present when the merit wasnt existed yet but due to that I stopped ranking to member when they implement it of course I am not agreed at first cause it halt my upgrade on full member due to lack of merits. But I realized it on the end that what happened is much bettet to filter spams and make some users improved their posting and not just create a post or response just to have one.

Before the introduction of merits, the forum was better

Of course, this isn't my problem alone when it comes to being more difficult to obsess over rankings, but it is slowly becoming a regular thing and even more fun. I feel more honored by achieving every rankings after the merit system. On the other hand, my circle left the forum one by one at the beginning of the system implementation because they were unable to adapt. And damn, I have to say more when I bring up any topic in this forum to discuss it with them irl.

Since you only registered less than a year ago, how would you know how it was before.  :P

Members like you are the proof that merit system works because without it you would already be a Member rank, on the road to become Full Member and eventually Legendary while not investing any effort at all.

Where do such oddballs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2658890) come from?  :P

Every reader of the forum is required to immediately register on it or what?

I don't know what the bitcointalk forum was like before the merit system was introduced - certainly because I came after it. But from various references I've read - bitcointalk had a great improvement after the merit system was introduced and theymos themselves have also emphasized that the merit system is to improve the quality of each user to post something quality and emphasize spam posts and such.

Based on the facts - it's true, bitcointalk has been better after the merit system was introduced. SSpam and low-quality posts have decreased - forum contributors have become easier to identified.

I don't know how the forum was before so I would have been able to tell if the merit does limit spam. However, it does not provide a total solution because I have seen quality posts with no merit while posts with no contribution or solution were giving merit and I have also seen some local board posts being merited just by posting information about a new open campaign on this forum which is sign that the merit system was in favor of people that didn't participate in the local board.
If the campaign manager can start to exclude merit accumulated in the local board yes I would say the merit system limits spam.

For merits there are thread that talks about reporting quality post for them to be merited, you wouldn't know how it works before you weren't active or registered then so I don't expect you to give an accurate answer about the changes. There are post that is quality first you will asked if those post are being made are the regular board where people or merits sources often visit? I think for long now merits hasn't been the issues here because they are trying as much as possible to distribute merits to everyone that merits it to their post.

Edit..
Your account was registered 2018 so I believe the merits system has been implement before you signed up.

What do you mean better? Has useful information stop being spread here? are there not still very many helpful topics created by still very quality writers? The forum is good, and it just strikes me that if the merit system was added to the forum when it was not a part of the original plan, then it means it was meant to make the forum better as an improvement. At this stage I the forum where things has remained like nice and running with the merit system, the forum will feel odd if the merit system is abolished.

Without asking, you will understand that even with the merit system, there are good evidences of alt accounts and possibly account farming by some individuals. You have to imagine that if with the presence of the merit system, some people are still trying to spam up their accounts by posting low quality posts, and trying to buy merits and do shady activities to grow the account.
If this is like this presently, what happens when there was merit system. This means a crusade of spammers and I understood it was worse somewhere 2018 and this made some quality posters exited the forum to have their sanity.

Of course not (I personally first just passively read for a month or two before registering) but in your case it would mean that you were lurking the forum for 5 years befiore actually registering and based on your posting habits I don't think its true.

I’d say that the merit system we have right bow made “positive contribution” real and quantitative, whereas before the system was imposed which I would say was fairly easy to get into, no form of real credibility can be seen. You can get yourself an account you’d post every week or so for a couple of days in a year and voila, you now get a senior member account you could easily use for signature campaigns.

Let’s face it, the advent of signature campaigns in this forum is what made this forum kicking. And thanks to merits, signature campaigns, and moderators as well as keen observers alike are able to quickly deduce who’s making posts for shit and who’s really passionate about making this forum a better site.

Plus, it’s way more rewarding to create and join in discussions that matters a lot to the industry, cause if yoi’re good enough to be able to contribute as much as an insightful opinion about certain somethings, people can merit you for it.

I can’t give you a perspective on a time when I didn’t exist but, I can as much give you an answer based on what the system was set to archive based on how far it’s gone to achieve that.
The merit system came as a way to boost quality in posts and push for more creative writing in the minds of users.

If you see the merit system to have been able to achieve that, then you can agree that, there is a good chance that the forum is far better now than it would have been before the creation of the merit system. If otherwise, then it’s up to you.

Of course there might be a down side to it but, I think the positive out weighs the negotiable and that’s how you measure it. Hardly anyone who seeks to be creative doesn’t expect a feedback and that means, the system is working.

I dont think the forum has either benefited or suffered from the Merit system, I voted "No Difference"

IMO there is still the same amount of posts which are not needed, its mostly by low ranked members
who are trying to write posts primarily to get Merits, to rank up and get into a signature campaign, but
there is a finite amount of campaign positions anyway.

For me what the Merit system has done is put a -visual number- on everyones technical ability, Bitcoin
Knowledge and communication skills. Its a measure now of generally "how good you are" and its easier
now for the campaign managers to filter the applicants to their campaigns

There are still going to be people who are better than others and who are able to rank up quicker, that
was the case prior to the Merit system too.

I'm not so sure I agree with that. Take a look at this graph (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476341.msg63260372#msg63260372). The raw number of posts per month has dropped dramatically from over 1.5 million in 2017 to around 300 thousand (in December 2022, according to ninjastic.space). So, I would say that the merit system probably contributed a lot in that regard.


I don't think that's true either. Before the merit system, everyone could rank up on the forum at the same pace, as all that was required was activity and time. No one was able to rank up faster than any other member sharing the same activity.

If the administrator forbids or no longer wants any signature campaign here will these merits matter, it's like working in a company you get a better position and pay if you have a lot of feathers in your caps.

For those who are into true discussion getting a merit is an incentive that they are doing good, but for those who are eyeing to make money through a signature campaign it is a ticket for a seat.

Merit will still be matter for quality users because it is like forum member ranks. You received more merits, it is like a recognition of your contribution and value in Bitcointalk community. It is not true for all because earned merit can be easier or harder for different forum members but generally it is one of quality signals.

If I am a good poster, I will make good posts and I am sure I would feel a bit happy when I see someone drops their merit on my posts.

There are good posters who make posts but don't wear any signature and they don't care to join any paid signature campaign. They will not stop posting, sharing idea when all signatures are disabled in Bitcointalk.

Thats interesting for sure and is a perfect example actually of a change in general member/spam behavour,
I had to examine that graph again to figure it out.


Thats actually very true, all things being equal ^{time spent on the forum and post count} the "rising
tide was floating all boats"

These points have changed my opinion on the thread title, I guess I was focussing too much on what I would deem
as low quality posts and useless threads.

Regardless, the forum is better moderated by the merit system, we can't ignore that. Fine, the forum would still be informative before now, but I do not know by then, yet I believe that spamming and lesser quality posts would be more dominant then, this is normal. Especially when the moderators are overwhelmed by them.

This, I believe was the reason why the admin thought of a way that would naturally limit the nonsense here rather than putting the whole load on the moderators. Also, I would like you to reason that if there is no need at all, I don't think it would have ever happened. For me, this is wise and this is not the first forum where something like this has been introduced to curb menaces. There must be rules or ways to restrict excesses, if not people will misuse the free opportunity they have. There is still spamming at times, but little, and one thing that is peculiar to those who are guilty of that is that they do not ever grow in the forum. Who will merit the post of a bad poster? This is why many of them think twice before they write rubbish since they want to grow even as they desire to be in a campaign.

If you truly understand the reason for the introduction of the merit system then you will understand that it was intended for something good and not bad, we don't need the spammers to get rankef up, the merits system will fight against them and ever since then, there have been moderation in times of dealing with these spammers and trollers, most of them were also confined to the altcoins sections then you could easily found on the main bitcoin discussion boards.

Exactly and it's also difficult for account farms to grow because it's difficult to rank up anymore unlike the last time where they can just create more and more account and then apply it to signature campaigns but most obviously it's for spammers and at the same time make sure that the contents in the forum grow to a much higher standard because those who do good with their posts are given merit so they're more inspired to do it more. Merit system is actually a good way to prevent abuse and exploits in the forum and I've seen a lot of games and forums do measures against spams and so far, this is the best that I've seen or heard.

I voted better with merits now, with merits we will know who is serious about contributing and being an active member of the forum, it weeds out spammers and more farm accounts, there are members of this forum that only post here for bounty without contributing to the forum, if there is no merit we will see legendaries with no contribution but bounty reports and this is not good for the activity and reputation of the forum.
With merits, it stopped creating high-rank members with no contribution.

I wasn't around when this came but you present an interesting question.

Makes me wonder;

When was merit first added to the forums?

What were the old ways of ranking up?

A little bit of searching around the forum and from help of search engines or by reading the threads started by theymos you can find this out yourself, let that be your homework. ::)

By being active you would attain a activity of 14 every 14 days. Now read the rank requirements and just remove the merit requirement from there and only activity remains. That was what determined rank at that time. To get that activity people used to post, but that posting became spam because it was easy to rank up many accounts owned by the same person.

Hard to calculate if the forum became better or not when merit were introduced. People manage to spam anyway. But, it definitely decreased the amount of spam or low quality posts. It is better to say that with merit introduction forum was separated from users who registered here only to get money, but never to learn, to create or to share, from those who care not only about how thick is their wallet.

With merit, the quality level of the forum increases significantly!

I have always participated in forums all my life, before registering I always appeared here just to read what people wrote.

One thing I can say, all or almost all internet forums with this layout are dead. What keeps this forum very busy and with quality is largely due to the merits system, which is a valuable part of an entire ecosystem that works alone in favor of quality.

And the person who invented this deserves congratulations, the result is incredible.

A challenge? Shouldn't be too hard. Time to go searching  ;)



Hmm. I see, thanks

OP is fond of creating topics that make little sense or coming up with fabricated stories. Sometimes he ends up deleting the thread when caught in his lies. Anyone who has been on forums before or spent a few weeks on bitcointalk will come to appreciate the merit system. Though at first newbies may feel the merit system is working against them because they are not getting the merits they think they deserve. Hence the resentment and suspicions of older members hoarding merits or only giving merits to high rank accounts.

You're right. I remember the time when you were growing up and were extremely worried about your posts, so much so that you probably wrote not only me by PM but also other users to check your posts. ;)
But the reason is that people grow up differently here. Some beg for merit or are extremely concerned about quality, while others create content that cannot exist without user approval.

 
Before the merit system, some users didn't have to pay more attention to the BitcoinTalk, I'm not considering all the users here but just some of them. When the merit system came every individual is in struggled to get more merit through his posts and his better activities on the BitcoinTalk so his BitcoinTalk ID could be in the front of the last of the better users who were active there, and their posts quality was even better.
 
It has a better impact on Bitcointalk as users can help each other by sending merits and giving merits to each other's posts regarding their qualities. This way, the community of BitcoinTalk is growing day by day and engaging in different talks here in different forms.

I wasn't around when the merit system was introduced. But I do know that the forum was filled with spam and garbage posts before the merit system. So to fight this off, theymos implemented the merit system. Correct me if I'm wrong.

To be honest, I think merit system made quite the impact to the forum. Mostly to the users. They are trying to improve their post qualities in order to earn merits and rank up. So yes, there were many changes after all.

i think it is better

I checked too a few years ago when my curiosity pushed me to as finding out if the forum started hosting campaigns from its first year. Nope, it didn't. Signature campaigns weren't even a thing until around 2014 or before it (I can't be sure of what year I discovered then now). Even then, campaigns were run mostly on monthly basis and some campaigns would demand that participants reapplied once the 30 days period were over. The pay wasn't much to write home about then but that same pay now is humongous if we compare it with what value it has now. Human traffic was minimal too then. So, I think this forum grew from nothing to what it's now. I also believe that more changes also await us in future at BTT.

The merit system as I know was introduced in 2018 of which I got into the forum in 2022 which clearly indicates that I didn't experience how the forum was regarding to discussions/threads quality as at that time before the merit system but by the role and purpose of the merit system as established common sense alone will tell you that the introduction of the merit system  was to solve a recurring problem called spamming and low quality posting and it has made things much better in the forum than when it wasn't in place.

Simply put, If before when there was no meriting system was so great than now then there wouldn't be a need for enacting merit system. With the merit system spamming has been been reduced to it barest minimum as merit stands as a reward for quality delivery in posts/comments.

although i joined the forum at the stage when merit system is he guarantee for your ranking up, I feel that it's what is best for a forum as this. Let's assume you just need an activity of 100 to rank up, it would be very difficult for bounty managers to select those that they will accept no a particular campaign since the number if persons ranking at the same page would have been much.

But using the merit system, you can easily access the quality of a particular users post by going through his merit history and checking the post that ranked him up and it's going to be easy to know those that spam the forum and those that don't.

I feel that the challenge is that the number of merit source might not be all that much and sometimes ranking up might not necessarily be all that easy but the fact that quality threads gets you merited help one to out in the effort to making contribution that I of high quality and that can help some users that comes across your thread or replies

You're right, some of us weren't around when all this happened, but we met the story on ground about what led to the introduction of the merit system, i learnt that it was later as well that the altcoins sections was seperated from the other bitcoin discussions section to also confined all those spammers and trollers in the same place.


The merit system has made the quality delivery of members to increase and post what make sense before they can earn merit and that same merit is what will make them rank up, if you're not a spammer indeed then you will concentrate on giving your best in quality post.

Obviously, much better now. Although I am a user after the implementation of the merit system and I know how a newbie initially struggles to rank up. But anyway I would say the merit system has saved the forum from being worthless. Otherwise, the legendary rank holder who ranked up by shitposting would have reached millions by now,  ;D
Anyway, I won't say that merit system is directly removing shitposts/spamposts from the forum or is implemented to remove it, I think the main reason for employing merit system is to stop those shit posters from ranking up. >:D

Beyond all reasonable doubt, the merit system has helped reduce the population of alt farmers, Plus the fact that strict measures are being taken should anyone be found in the very act -- note... it hasn't ELIMINATED them, it only created a boundary that'd take only a guru to bypass.. which would most likely be revealed with time.

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I wasn't there before the merit system, but with the evidences from most prominent members at the time, I feel the forum was assumed the worst place if you ever wanted to read on some crypto valuables... Theymos made a Good decision.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

The simple truth is that the merit system is a natural way to filter the forum by moderating it all by itself. Of course, this can't be a perfect way of moderation but it tries so well as we can all see and has lessened the work of the moderators too. I wonder how the forum would have been if this had not been implemented. If too many shitposts and spamming were not happening then, there will not be a reason for implementing the merits system.

As it is now, it is really working with no regrets, only that those who have sMerit should continue to use it judiciously and not partially so that it will not be difficult for those deserving it to get it. This is the only issue about the merit system, the distribution could be partial and some who deserve it most might not get it compared to those who deserve it less who get it more.