Bitcoin Forum

There have been some good and quality posts that I've come across why navigating through the forum and I found out that some of the users have been inactive for a very long time but the posts they've made deserved merit, so is it advisable to merit the post(s) of a user(s) that have been inactive for a long interval of time considering the fact that they made Meritable posts?

They and their posts deserved to receive merit if post quality, thread quality are excellent.

Merit is for quality contributions. Sending your sendable merit to quality posts if you see them.

Active or inactive users is not a concern because forum has unlimited merit and monthly theymos dumps more sendable merit to merit sources. You don't have concern that if you and other members send smerit to inactive users, total sendable merit in the forum will dry out.

Absolutely, buddy! If you find a post or reply helpful and you've learned something from it, you can give some smerits as a way of showing appreciation. Even if users are inactive or have been away for a while, they still deserve recognition. Merits are never wasted(I think that's a taught running through your mind)

yeah, it's okay, I mean, you are meriting the post they made, the person being inactive does not matter, but if you are worried about the merit being wasted on someone inactive(despite you think their post deserves merit) you can always just save your merit and give it to someone who you think made a quality post and is active. in the end, everything is up to you.

You almost have same reasoning with me because sometimes I use to wonder why giving a merit to a good and quality posts of a user who have been inactive for a long time like close to or over a decade now, like whats the need for? When we know truly well that such a user may have either lost access to the account or may be dead? Like what's the essence

It is how you show your recognition for their past contributions. You send merit if you see their contributions are important for you and Bitcoin.

You don't lose anything if you send your sendable merit away to a good post. Don't hoard your sendable merit because it is created to be spent (spendable). You also won't lose your merit or your rank won't be deranked by sending your sendable merit.

Of course, if a user makes a good post and becomes inactive, that post will definitely get merit. In this case if you can learn something based on that post and give merit as good post then surely you will have no problem.

I dont think the period of hybernation is important or matter when someone posted a good one. The readers dont often check first whether he is active or not but just actually reading the post they wanna merit. Am I right with the assumption? Of course we cant deny that some are probably bought account that suddenly become alive but who knows they just rest for a while and come back now.

It doesn't actually matters, you can be active and also be merited especially when the post is impacting something really important most people in this forum still gain merit without being active, like satoshi Nakamoto his in active though some users still decide to merit his previous post, so doesn't matter as long you like the post and you see as something that really impact on you so you can merit it.

I think I'm very much comfortable with the highlighted statement, that is a kind of showing recognition to them for their past contributions to the Bitcointalk forum. I like this so much as anyone who has done well deserves appreciation. So in this forum, our appreciation and commendation is the merit we send to valuable posts by users who made good impact towards the well being and development of the forum regardless of whether they're active or inactive, I'm now very much pleased to hear this.

Ofcourse the essence of merit is to reward quality posts, it doesn't matter how long the post have existed, it'll probably be the first time that you're coming across it. Although you don't need to focus your worry about rewarding merit to inactive posts because there are many active quality posts that are under merited, I think that those are the more deserving, however it's your prerogative to decide who you give merit to.

Giving merit to quality posts, regardless to active or inactive poster, gives other users an indication of worthy content, either to read or as a template of what makes up a quality post. If a user cares to earn merit other merited posts serve as sort of a role model. Therefore it shouldn't matter if the poster is active or inactive.

It is better to send all your merits to the quality post of an inactive account than to send merit to the post of an active account with useless or spam posts.

Example is the founder of this forum. His is not active since 2010. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3

But you can see how people continue to send his posts merits: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=3

There are other members like that.

I don't see why not. Users who posted helpful information in the past should still be credited for their contributions, even if they haven't been active recently.  Just 'cause someone takes a break doesn't negate the fact that what they shared before was useful and  people might still be getting good info from their old posts.  Makes sense to me to keep showing them appreciation with merits - keeps things fair for users who gave their time to contribute good stuff here.

This is actually a good question to bring up, I believe there is nothing wrong in giving merit to a post or thread that is actually giving good impact for the community, even if the Original Poster has been inactive. But there will be a problem when they decided to sell their account, I know it seems out of topic, but I think an inactive have more possibility to sell their account than the active user. And I believe there are some cases where a very reputable member of this forum that has been inactive for sometimes and keep getting merit from their post in those period, and one day they just sell their account.

That’s simply because you are not acknowledging the said person but actually the post. Merit is sent to a post you found that helped you it doesn’t matter if the account is inactive, you aren’t sure if they must have lost their password. Smerits are not even money that we will say you are wasting it, although one can limits the amount they send to inactive accounts.


That still doesn’t change anything you were actually meriting the post and not the person. If the account gets sold later the difference will certainly be clear because the post quality will reduce drastically and if substantial informations are found although it is not against the forum rule the account will get tagged by some members and that actually defeats the purpose why the buyer bought it and also the merit earn will be useless. So nothing much in it.

Of course, they deserve merits for their quality contribution. Even though people earn merits to rank up and participate in signature campaigns these days, merit was introduced to reduce spam. You could always appreciate it if you see worthy posts. Satoshi had already disappeared when this forum moved to this current domain (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33393.0). Merit systems were introduced way after this. Still, Satoshi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3)'s account has earned a lot of merits because of his valuable contribution to the community, to Bitcoin, and its development. This should be an example answer to your question and this thread.

Depend on the post, If the post left by those inactive users is good one which totally help a lot of people to know something technical that hard to understand by some newbie then it still deserve to get a merit even if the user is inactive since its like you are appreciating their efforts here in forum when they are active.

But if the post is just totally nonsense then its no brainer that it doesn't deserve to get merit since we can't get any helpful things with that and those people will give a merit will question on why he give a merit to that post while there's no good thing we can see there.

So overall regarding on your question it all matter depend on the contribution so hopefully a lot of users answer your questions here.

Given out merits is not regulated in the forum or any rules being laid down or who you’ll give merit or who not to give merit. Meriting a post is about your personal opinion on how the post have influenced you, by either gaining knowledge or how constructive the user might be in sharing the knowledge to the general public. You can merit any post as long as you feel the need to after finding the content of the post informative enough for it. Some post might look not good to others but if you think it is good and worth it, you can go ahead and merit the user.

There is no sticky rule, but yesterday I gave @aantonop some merits even though I know he may not return, but he may come back one day and see that some people sent him some merits and decide to continue posting here.
If you are not a merit source, try to be wise in distributing your merits, especially if your local board needs them, but no one prevents you from spending them however you want.

Provided that the post is quality enough then you can give them merits, I have came across a post that has spent many years and the user in question has not been around (active) for about 3 to 4 years but yet i still find people giving that post merits. Although if you don't have merits you can report them to merits source those that says report any post you find quality to merit them, except that user is ban and i don't see any reason to waste merits on their profile while they already been ban here.

If merit is supposed to be given to a meritable Post without minding if the user is inactive I also assume that merit should be given to a ban account because even its a ban account it has also contributed meaningfuly to someone else. Because if you said a ban account should not be given merit, that is to say you are not given a fair judgment.

Merit is not only something that helps a user rank up, it also helps to identify how important/effective a topic/post is. So from this point of view, inactive users/topics also deserve merits.

And this is also possible that the user can come back anytime.

Every merit deserving post ought to be merited irrespective of whether their posters are active or now. As the posts are not deleted and are seen by everyone who joined the forum, the standard of meriting a post should be visible in every post made on the forum. Newbies will also be able to see how the merit system is applied, in a way that posts that deserve merits are given merits.

Let me ask you a question, what do you think is the purpose of merits? Is it because you see it as a way of ranking; or is it because you admire and view the post as knowledgeable?

Personally, a post deserves a merit if it is knowledgeable that it definitely helped or supported someone in their problem or query. Additionally, merits are also rewarded to posts that I feel they deserve it because it provided a good insight or discussion on a certain topic.

Bearing that in mind, ask yourself that question- even if the person is inactive but he/she created a thread or a post that helped hundreds of users, do you think he/she still deserves it?

Well yes, there are some useful post that are being noticed late or became relevant at the current time. Imagine the post of satoshi are still receiving merits up to this date, this proves how useful his/her invention to our current time. This forum is also created without the merit feature, it was later introduced and surely play significant role in this forum. Those who are inactive but made good post surely deserves to be rewarded with merits. Inactive accounts might comeback to this forum with full of merits, it would be a great surprise for them seing their account full of merits because of their past contribution.

"Does inactive users deserve merits?" - this is determined only by the merit holder who is ready to press the “+Merit” button and send it to an inactive user. I want to say that this is a personal choice of everyone who is ready to reward the posts of inactive forum members.

From the point of view of the merit system that has formed on the forum, it is not advisable to give merit to an inactive user, because the idea of merit is to circulate in the forum community. It will be better if merit is given to an active user who will help his ranking.

But as always there are nuances. What if an inactive user eventually returns to the forum? Then he deserves the same merit as the active ones.

There are merit sources on the forum in which merits are constantly generated from time to time, that is, there can't be a shortage of merits, therefore, there is no need to save merit and even inactive users can be safely rewarded.

I believe that a post (whether from an active or inactive user), if deserved, should be rewarded with merit. Personally, I regard merit on other people’s posts as a “sign of quality” and if one of the forum users left a merit, then this post contains some useful or interesting idea that can't be ignored.

Since merit system is not moderated, everyone has the right to choose whom to merit, but let's consider these two reasons for meriting an inactive users, maybe he has contributed a lot prior to the time that he left or became inactive, secondly, secondly if the inactive user has done nothing to deserve receiving merits then it all means that one shouldn't do such except on a quality post that everyone could reason along with being of a merit standard, if you're giving merits, do it with the conviction that you're giving to appreciated the quality effort contributed and not for being inactive just like that.

Even those active who don't deserve merits still getting one. Why do you ask?
Sending merit is based on the feeling of the user towards the post. If he feels that the post is constructive, he will give merit to that post.

You don't believe? Just look at Satoshi and the amount of merits the account has. Satoshi wasn't even active when the merit system was implemented, and yet Satoshi surpassed most of the users here in terms of the number of merits, so don't look at whether the user is inactive or not. If you feel that the post needs to be merited, just send merits on it.

Good quality posts definitely deserve merit but if the member has been in the forum for a long time and is unlikely to return to the forum then it is better not to spend merit there. If you search, you may find many more such members who are regularly posting from active in the forum, you can send merit to those posts if you want. This will increase his enthusiasm towards his work and help him in his rankup. 
It is completely up to a user to send merit to another user's post and which post to not send merit to that user. But you have definitely raised a good point here that will give those members who are in doubt whether to merit cents for inactive members a chance to comment.

Inactive user deserve to be merited.
Negative tagged user deserve to be merited.
Banned user deserve to be merited.
Scammer deserve to be merited.
Cheater deserve to be merited.
Abuser deserve to be merited.
Troll deserve to be merited.

Only an account who never post don't deserved to be merited because there's no way for someone to merit him.

Merit is for good posts. The user shouldn't matter.

The Merit system is not moderated directly by the forum, you are free to give merit to any post, even posts made by users who have not been active for a long time. As long as you consider it appropriate to give merit based on the quality of the post, there is no prohibition on giving merit to users who have not been active for a long time. Merit is awarded to worthy posts, not to posts you like.

You nailed it, direct to the point.

If you think the post helps you and you've agreed with it, that deserves to be merited, it doesn't matter the user account status. (inactive, having a red tag, or even a banned account).

Look out for this user account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=3), which has been inactive since December 13, 2010, but until now year 2024 received merits.

In theory, one should merit posts based on their content (1), so there’s no conceptual restriction to refrain from meriting posts from accounts that have not been active for a long time, or that are not actively participating in the Merit System for that matter. Some may refrain from doing so, and that is their prerogative really.

In the big picture of things, lets call being inactive for a very long time an arbitrary number of 3 years or above. Going over my Merit data (as of last Friday), it seems that:

-   Overall, 1.704.769 Merits have been awarded to date (total sent sMerits since inception).

-   Out of those, 15.538 Merits have been awarded to accounts that have been inactive for > 1095 days (2), in 2.791 TXs, from 513 accounts, to 968 receiving accounts.

It may seem a like a lot, but it really only represents 0,91% of all awarded Merits.

-   Without detailing who sent how much to whom, which is really not the point here, we can see that the core recipients are satoshi (6028 receive Merits), Hal (2699), Laszlo (1584). Them three alone account for 66,36% of merits awarded to inactive accounts as per the 3 year criteria established above.

-   Going over the top 20 Senders of these sMerit TXs, they aggregate sending 11.337 (72,96% of merits awarded to inactive accounts as per the 3 year criteria). They are obviously essentially Merit Sources, which more often than not may find themselves with some sMerits surplus they wish to spend on older posts/homages or whatnot.

All in all, the way I see it, the amount sent to these inactive accounts is close to a drop in the ocean (0,91% of all sent sMerits), and the top recipients are key historical contributors to bitcoin.


(1)   Obviously, other factors come into play at times, but that’s another debate.

(2)   Date difference in days between the sMerit TX and the recipients current last active date. Accounts that have become active afterwards are therefore not accounted for.

You are meriting the post itself, not the poster or user, so for me even if you see the user is not active anymore but the post deserves a merit, then I guess meriting the post is not an issue. Newbies might come to read it, and see it as a concrete example for a quality post, so it’s still helping.

However, if you are hesitant to give away your merit since the poster itself will no longer see it anymore, that doesn’t matter. Regardless if it’s an old post that deserves a merit, you should decide it for yourself since you are the one responsible to merit someone or something that is worth to share.

What if the account is a ban account ? Because I think there are many active users that deserves merit and they need it more. and given to an inactive users whom have stayed Upto 6-7 year who might likely come online or not or a ban account, is like a waste of merit in my own view. But if the system permit it then no problem.

It's your merit, you're free to do with it what you want provided you're not abusing the merit. If you see a post that you feel adds value to the forum then it should be awarded the merits irrespective of how old the post is or the status of the posters. Accounts with red tags that have contributed something meaningful to the forum deserved merits. You're not meriting the person but the post so being inactive shouldn't deny a quality post of been highlighted with merits.

Haven't you noticed some of the old topics that were posted before the merit system was introduced are been merited for their quality. What should be merited are quality contributions and this should be done irrespective of the person that made the posts or the status of the account.


Why did you have to look through the account to know it was banned before deciding to merit the account. There's no waste of merit when you're meriting a quality post. Satoshi posts has been receiving merits for his quality contributions to the forum and the account hasn't been active for years. Merits are for quality not account reputation or status (been active or inactive).

There are no standard rules regarding awarding merit to which members are currently active or inactive. Only merit goes to posts that really deserve to get merit. and once again how someone assesses other people's posts and gives them marriage may vary. So, for example, if you think the post deserves to get merit and you are sure that the post is informative, high quality, and most importantly, it really deserves to get merit, then in the end there is no problem giving it regardless of whether the account is still active or not.

Unfortunately, perhaps there are still many people who view the relationship of being married as just to increase their rank. Maybe there are still many people chasing them just to increase their rank so this will also have an impact on the goals of making future posts. even though as you said, merit is given to posts that really deserve it, not because of rank but indeed the post is informative, adds to the experience of understanding and is indeed contributive to other members.

I think the whole essence of the merit implementation on the forum was to give quality posts a thumps up(merits) so even if the user has been inactive for some time it really doesn't matter because it's the post you are meriting not the users although given out of merit have turn out to be someone sentimental IMO. I have also seen some quality posts of individual that have been barred due to one or two errors that they refuse to take to correction but I always wonder of it will be good to merits these posts base on the fact that they have been ban but on later the mentality changed because the merit is actually given for Worthy posts .

Merits are given to those deserving posts, regardless if those posts were made long time ago, even if those posters are inactive already at the time of meriting. This is from my own point of view. However, you are the one to give merits so you should be the one to decide if you stick to the post itself or just find another post wherein it’s poster is still active until present.

Merits are vital for a position to level up, so it might only be a waste if you give it to those who are no longer active in posting, while those who are still doing their part in the forum sharing their own insights are patiently waiting for their posts to receive merits.

If the account is inactive but it is not ban then it needs to be merited but if the account is banned and the post is good, I don't think it is good to merit that account because it is just like waste of merits. And normally merits have to be circulated and those accounts can not send back the smerits to other people people who need merits. And Merit should be given to active account and not inactive accounts. And as I said again if the account is not ban and you like the information then you can merit it.

In my opinion, it has nothing to do with whether he is active or not, a reader will definitely be rewarded if the reader gets new knowledge from his posts. I also find a lot of old posts from accounts that are no longer active but still get Merits from other members because the quality of the posts or Theared is very useful for readers.

This is the same as the saying "A tiger dies leaving behind stripes, an elephant dies leaving behind tusks, a human dies leaving behind a name." The meaning of this saying is that every member who is no longer active will definitely be remembered according to his posts on this forum. If he leaves this forum with posts that provide benefits to readers, the account can still get Merits.

As far as I know merits can be given to anyone regardless of them being active or not.  It is up to the person whether he will give the post merit or not and nothing can contest it.  So if you think the post deserve a merit then why not give it a merit?  After all it is your own smerit that you are giving and not others.

Remember people don't just give merit because it is a quality post, other gives merit because the post align with their belief and/or happy about the post, reason why sometimes we see some people meriting applications.

I know merits are rewards for good post as others have said but it's solely a personal decision, if you think you have smerits that you feel it's good to reward any post whether they are inactive or active accounts it's totally your decision.

But from perspective it's probably not wise to merit an account that has been inactive for decades as you said because they clearly do not need it. So why waste your sendables on those accounts while there are so many people out there trying their best with good post too that deserves merit.

Once again its your personal decision, you should do what you like.

Not just in active accounts even ban accounts are receiving merits for there good contribution in the forum, so if you have merit to give out you can gift any good post you fine around that’s the best you can do to appreciate those post.

If you check out Satoshi account in this forum which have been inactive over the years it still receives merit for the old posts which was made before he left the forum, so there is no harm in trying to appreciate a post just gift them if they are worth your merit.

You are right there, mate. We don't check the inactiveness of the person who posted it but it's only the content of the post that matters. If it's a valuable post, then meriting it would be the best option, no if's and but's.
But if meriting for you would mean also the availability of the owner itself, I guess that's also your own perspective and we can't control you for that.

However for me, I'm fine meriting the post even if the user is not existing anymore. Merits should be given to those who deserve it and should not be only kept to myself.

It's not about being active or inactive because if the post is good then that deserves a merit even though the one who posted it is not active or inactive as you have said. There's no criteria for giving merits that an account must be active before you get merited and even an account that is already inactive even got an airdropped merits although it is different from the merits received through other forum members because it is received through posting good/high quality posts.

Merit is for post, so I'd suggest so.

Some people filter quality posts by looking at merit received by post, so you giving merit helps post with visibility, which it should get if it's helpful.

Aside from that, look at Laszlo's pizza post or Satoshi's posts, you could argue why their posts have merits despite the fact that they have been inactive for so long, it's so because those are historical posts and merit given is for their contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem and forum.

They've already said that it's about the quality of the post and the contribution or impact that it's got on the forum as a whole so it puzzles me that some posts of Satoshi's that's not technical or even that relevant (anymore) is getting merits like this one. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.msg28#msg28) I'm not hating on it though, other users that are active quality posters could've get that and used it to increase their merits but I guess I'm being unfair as giving merit to Satoshi's post is a pilgrimage of some sort for everyone here on the forum.

I quite agree with you though I know that awarding merit to quality posts of users regardless of whether they are active or inactive is a way of showing regards for their quality contributions to the forum but I think those profiles doesn't really need much merit anymore because each merit comes with a sendable merits that can be transferred to another quality post of a user in the forum so a situation whereby we keep meriting inactive or rather Banned profiles it's probably a kind of allowing those sendable merits those users have got decaying and becoming useless.

I certainly agree with you and on a more reasonable note considerations need to be made as per how long the account has been inactive, the possibilities of the account to become active, if this can not be validated, then post of the user that has added so much to you shouldn't be forgotten in a hurry by making use of it in quote where necessary, well as for meritng the inactive user is totally your decision.

Merit is to be issued to users of the forum who make contributions to the forum.

If we disect this statement then it is almost impossible to say that one is inactive cos he has his footprints in the forum, as long as he has activity or posts that contributes to the forum then he deserves to earn merits.

His activity is in the value of contribution not about activity, cos, you can only award merit to a post made and not just throw it into a profile.

Let merit be issued based on value and we wouldn't be talking about activity. If someone for some health reason or something decides to sign out of the forum for a week, month or even a year, it changes nothing in his ability to earn merit.

Its just like asking if we should be issuing "Post Humorous Awards" since the awardees aren't alive, should we then deny their inputs in the cause of humanity? NO.

I will send Merit to posts that I consider very useful for myself when I read them. It doesn't matter if it's an old post and the user is no longer active. Because I'm just showing everyone that I appreciate the writing. And when the user wakes up from his long sleep, he will realize that his writing has been useful for many people. Well Merit can also be an indicator that a piece of writing is considered quality by the person giving the Merit. And it can be a motivation for beginners that if they have writing of the same quality then they will also get a Merit award for their posts.

But maybe other people can have a different opinion. But for me, appreciation must still be given to everything that is worthy of appreciation. It doesn't matter who he is and whether he is still active or not. Like we give Merit to the legendary posts in this forum. Like Satoshi and Hal Finney's posts. And also a post about pizza bought with bitcoin which is the history of the first purchase with bitcoin. and other.

if the post helps other users, it's okay to give merit to them regardless of whether the user is active or no longer active. but i think it's better to pay more attention to other users who have quality posts and are also active in the forum, because that will help them to build their accounts and encourage them to make better contributions to the forum.

This suggestion is indeed good for merit sources so that there will be a circulation of merit through active user but for regular forum member that browsing the forum for the content that they want then being inactive or active of the poster doesn’t matter as long as the post is helpful for the user that will give merits.

We are not a regular sender of merit so that occasional 1 merit will not gonna hurt if send to inactive user because they deserve. Their contribution is still counted even if they are offline so there’s no way for their post to become invalid recipient of merit.

I've thought about my first reply (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5480589.msg63450352#msg63450352) in this topic again. My stance to give merit is still mainly to flag/honor valuable posts so that they stand out. Yes, merit also honors the author, but I wouldn't care so much or investigate prior if the author is still active or inactive.

What made me do some rethinking is that I'm somewhat biased if the post's author is a banned user or someone who constantly annoys me with his posting style or content (I put those on my ignore list) even if such users manage to post something worthy. I don't know and admit that in such circumstances I likely might divert from my main merit giving stance as I'm usually low on sMerits, I don't hoard them, so I've to prioritize here and there.
When I give merits I sometimes prioritize users in lower ranks over those who are already Legendary and have already a large amount of merits. I also take a user's ratio of posts vs. received merits into consideration, if I have to make a choice whose contribution to merit due to a low amount of sMerits left to distribute.


Edit:
It seems perception and reality don't match to which ranks I send my sMerits:

Legendary	_	66.43%
Hero Member	_	14.45%
Sr. Member	_	5.36%
Full Member	_	5.36%
JMember	_	1.63%
Jr. Member	_	1.17%
Newbie	_	5.59%

It is the post that deserves merit;
It is not person or reputation of the person behind the account;
It doesn't matter how long the post is...I am yet to merit the population "I AM HODLING" post, but I'll still do that;
You can even send merits to a post more than once;
It is better to send 50 merits to a quality post than to sent 50 merits to 50 non quality posts;
Maybe I can bookmark a post I feel that I feel haven't received enough merits and will return after many months to merit same post.

Merits are meant to be spent, not to be kept forever. If you find something that creates a huge impact on your part, and maybe for other members as well, then merit the post and acknowledge the value of that certain post regardless if the owner itself is already an inactive user or not. The users do not matter to us since we don’t have the control over them but when it comes to high quality posts, it certainly has a great effect on us most particularly for newbies who really need a lot of them.

However, it still relies to the owner itself if he is kind enough to give his merits. But nevertheless, once you earned merits, you should give it back so that others will benefit as well.

Merits are not "issued" per se (except to MS's), before you earn merits another user must have read your post and had the impression that this post is worthy of their merits, you could be making contributions (in your own way), and still not earn too many merits, maybe because MS's do not visit where you make your posts or for some other reasons.

Having said that, as regards either meriting inactive accounts or not, i'd say it is subjective, some people might not want to, whilst others see nothing wrong in it. The Smerit belong to the users, thus they should spend it how they think is appropriate, because there would never be a hard and fast rule on things like these.

I think it is no problem as long as it is a quality post and is valuable. Sometimes people just found the post through "search" feature, they send the post merits because the post helps them. I think the post deserves for merits, it probably helps people by giving certain information. But if it is for a useless post, it doesn't deserve to get merits whether it is an old or new post. TBH, I personally never too much consider about how long the post is made, I will always give the merits for any post if the post helps me and I think it deserves merits.

Agree. Merits won't determine by old or new post, it actually depends on the quality and usefulness of its content. For the useful posts, it will always deserve to get merits because it contributes to help people in the forum.

Merits system was created to applaud good, quality and informative post's, it is of course deserving of a quality post to be merited despite the user being inactive. The merit is as a result of the post quality and not for being active or inactive. The shortfall there is that, while a user receives merit's the S'merits from those merits received would be dormant in an inactive user's possession and that's one core reason I notice as to why inactive user's posts that deserves merits don't get merited to avoid wasting S'merit that could be circulated around to other active users.

No matter how many sMerit can no longer circulate among users who are no longer active - the purpose of the merit system is to reward quality and informative user posts. Satoshi is a clear example of this - he got 6279 merit until January 2024 even though he has not been active since December 13, 2010.

Of course there are exceptions for certain users - but as long as you get benefits from that user's posts, then you are free to spend your merit on them even if they are not active. There are no rules about it - but perhaps you should avoid it as much as you can if you are not merit source.

A post to merit is base on your personal opinion about the post. It doesn’t matter how long the user have being inactive or how long the post was created. A post worth meriting is worth meriting irrespective of what others feel about it. We think differently and will have different views and opinions on a post, what Mr A feels with be different from what Mr B feels, so we can’t judge each other’s opinion.

Some users abuse the merit system and if caught can be penalized for it. How you feel about a post and the meriting of the post will always differ depending on what the post is and who the user is. I only come across old posts when a user sends a link to the post or when I am searching  the forum  for something. If those posts  are not related to what you posted and added the link there, it will look suspicious when just merited out of the moon.

I have only seen big personalities posts who are inactive but getting merits. for example Satoshi's post and Hal Finney's posts and some other renowned people in Crypto. Or I've seen historical posts getting merits like that of Buying Bitcoin Pizza. there are so many posts getting merits but their posters are not active.

Giving merit is everyone's personal choice. if you like someone's posts you can give him merit. But I don't for normal bitcoin users being active should be considered before giving merits. it is better to give merits to someone who is active and contributing to the forum than someone who might have left the forum.

If you think that they deserve merit, do it. That's how it goes if you think that they're meritable and high quality posts and helpful to you, you can even post the links here for everyone's reference and to see if many will agree to you. It's not just about agreeing that they deserve merit but if they seem to be good as well based on someone's judgement, then they're good to be merited. There have been a lot of high quality posts/threads that deserve more merits even the posters of it were inactive long time ago, it's like a legacy that they've left here.

If the post is high quality you don't have to avoid it because the person is not active anymore, there must be a reason why you see the post as high quality, so yes it deserve the merit, even very old posts still get merits because as new people come on the forum and they stumble on the quality post, they have no choice but to merit it if they find the post to be very useful for them.

It's your choice to merit any posts, there are people who even merit posts that are not high quality enough, but it's theirs so there is no crime doing so.

OP, when we were in college the text books that we read were written by people that are no longer in the world i.e they are dead but that didn't stop people from using these text books because they have all the information that the students needs to learn that subject, and till date those books are still recommended in schools for students to have them in order for them to read on their own and have the knowledge of that subject, and how will you get these books, you are to buy them.

This is how those quality posts are even though the OP are no longer active, as long as you learnt something from the post, and you see it that it deserves merit, don't hesitate to merit them. This is why old posts are not deleted in the forum because they can be useful to forum members anytime. I have also learnt from a lot of inactive users post.

It is very appropriate and deserving of merit for old posts that can help other members broaden their horizons about knowledge that has not been known so far. Merit is intended for quality posts, anyone who can contribute to the forum and can provide benefits to other users deserves to be given merit even though the topic owner has not been active for a long time. Don't hesitate to give merit to the post you mean because there is no prohibition on giving merit to posts made by users who have not been active for a long time. Merit is intended for quality posts, not who owns the post.

Obviously, Yes they deserve merits if their post is helpful and qualifies for one because we don't have to see if the user is active or inactive rather we need to see the quality of post and how helpful is it for us. I would definitely provide merits to such if I find them useful and don't be bothered checking whether the user is active or inactive.

It is undisputed that the merit system was to reward posts be it active for a very long period or not, but be it as that it still calls to apply wisdom in doing that, the Satoshi account you use as an example it should satisfy you to know that Satoshi is an extraordinary figure in the forum to which users will for any unspecified reason want to merit his account despite being inactive. Now this is my personal opinion which is, I prefer rewarding an active user's post counting on the knowing that whatever S'merit that's made will be rewarded to another merit deserving post by the active user moving forward. It's a personal mindset.

The more that a post has merits, The more people were treated as quality or important whenever they come across it so if you read a post that is quality and will be as helpful to others as it was to you then it is OK to endorse it with a merit and increase the number of merits on the post so that whenever a new person comes across such a post they know that that post is actually a high value post. You do not need to exhaust all your merits, just a few is okay.

The user might be off for some reasons and might come back to the forum some days to continue their forum journey; if their post is merit worthy, then meriting the posts of an inactive user's quality post is not bad because no one can tell if they are going to come back to the forum another time.
Although given merit to an active user is better since the smerits will keep circulating and the merit system will keep working properly.

Yes - that's good, you understand me correctly. I don't want to repeat something that is so obvious - there are no rules about how you spend your merits, but make sure you do things at your own discretion. I'm not used to distributing merit to inactive users - but maybe I can do it when I get something that's really personally useful.

When you are giving out a merit, you giving it to a post which the person makes,  so if the person is not active on the forum, that shouldn’t be your problem, after giving out merit, the might end up coming back to the forum later and they are going to see the merit that you gave them, and if they didn’t come online again, then you shouldn’t have problem with that since you know that the post which you give the merit really worth it, and that should be a sign of appreciation even if the person doesn’t come online again, you have already appreciated them for the good post which they make.

From the contents or subjects of your post....I will say yes because I have come across so many inactive users in this community that continues to earn merit from the post the have posted before some of us join bitcointalk.org community, so a good post or quality posts continues to impress whoever that knows the value, that is while many Sr colleagues will advice you to make a quality post, because they know that quality post is always attractive and it pass information or knowledge across another.

 Of course they do as long as you find the post qualitable and you have learnt from it ,the post should be merited  Inactive or not because thes are the criteria for awarding merit because the post keeps on teaching whoever reads it, since you gain from it others too will

Meriting a post that you find merit worthy is up to you, irrespective of the user being inactive for long. Some people are not an every user of the forum. Them being inactive doesn't mean that they have not been contributing with the little time they got. For me if I see such posts I will merit them.

You are free to award a merit to a post if you believe it merits it; it makes no difference if the user is active or not. As long as you have read the thread and the post appears to be worthwhile and beneficial to you personally, you are free to award it a merit. Giving merit doesn't mean that a user is active; rather, it refers to when a user posts something worthwhile on the forum and others read it and find it beneficial. Some users may be excellent at maintaining quality content on the forum, but they may still be able to be active, and some users may have a valid reason for not being active.

The primary reason we are in this forum is to learn about cryptocurrencies and other relevant topics. It is also guaranteed that if you make a well-written post and someone finds it extremely interesting and helpful, you will receive a merit. Additionally, you can award a merit to someone who you think is doing a great job in the forum by simply pointing out their excellent work, which will, in my opinion, encourage them to put in more effort.

Active or inactive, as long as posts deserve to be merited, it is advisable to send your smerits to those posts. You know, merits are for showing appreciation to the content if you find the post meaningful, helpful, and educational to other forum members, and you too can merit them. We don’t have to wait till the OP of such content is an active member since he provides something tangible to the community. You can see that sending some smerits to the post is a good thing to do. However, some users inactiveness may just be for a while before he comes back and sees those merits sent to one of his posts, which may even encourage him to produce more quality contents for the community.


You don’t have to wait to see who the user of a content is before sending merits to them, from newbies to legendarys. Regardless of anyone's rank, if their post is good to be merited, it's advisable to send them merits because if we should say we should consider who the user is, it will make no sense to me, so anybody that is doing a good job for the community is worth meriting.

That's another angle to encouraging inactive posters to become active. Once they visit and find out that even in their absence there were those who thought their posts meaningful and worthy to be merited, they're more likely to feel missed and important. This conception will encourage them to stage a come back. I think so.

You're one of the local board advocates I know of here. I like that zeal and urge you to keep it up. The LB is a microcosm of the entire forum. Everything big starts small, just like the family being the smallest unit of socialization. Keep it up, HB.

Well, the only red tagged accounts I can merit are those who got tagged based on controversies which aren't related to scam. Once it's a scam related issue, frankly writing I find it very difficult meriting such posts even if others find them merit worthy.

Another post about merits :-\
Anyways every user has their individual reason for sending merits. In an ideal situation sending of merits is not supposed to be a decision or the user himself but a decision based on the quality of the post. Except that user is actually Satoshi NAKAMOTO 🙂 who happens to not be active here for the good of all.
Wether a user is active or not should not be the reason you send merits but rather how important the reply or thread is.
I think most merit sources understand this very well that is why you notice them sending huge amounts of merits to old users or inactive users sometimes.
Worry about making nice contributions to the forum and merits will definitely find your posts. Besides merits and quality posts are like metal and magnet ;D  our top Merit earners like o_e_l_e_o and LoyceV amongst many others can testify of that

All of us here are freely give our sMerits to everyone if we want And that's the reason why other users merited the old Post by inactive users here in our community. Because they will know that post made an History and worthy enough Tobe given some merits. And also like what they said above some merit source sent their merits to those users who bring good contribute and they are hoping that someday those inactive users open his/her account once again and then when they see that their account earn some merits then they will decide do comeback and contribute again.

People have a different ideas of given merit to an old post they may give their smerit due to they seems that post worthy of emulate and sometimes people give out their smerit due to they like the posting methods of that particular user, because I have seen a satoshi nakamoto post and till now the same post is receiving merits why satoshi is not longer in the forum, so you may wish to give adamant thread a merits due to you have find the post credible

Regardless if they have plans to come back or not, there is no rule that will stop us from giving merits if we really think that certain post deserves to be merited. Even if the post is old, still if it has a high quality content that can motivate other posters, then meriting it will always be valid.

Meriting one’s post is actually a good motivation to create more meaningful and valuable post, but if the owner of that post is already inactive, then at least other posters will still be able to learn from that post.

It is allowed but not recommended because Merit spend at such account will not be available for re-distribution.
One more point: old and inactive accounts don't have any profit from higher rank.

Firstly I would like to thanks for your topic because it's one of my question. If I give merits to inactive ID then the 0.5 send merit will spoil for few months or will be permanently .One day I was stuck a problem and unfortunately that's solution had got in inactive ID then I realised every helpful post deserve merits because people benifited from those post though that is inactive or dormant account.I would like to give a merit for this post but it's a matter of sorrow that there is no merits in my hand so I would like to say everyone that please send merit and spread merits every good post, not just definite some high profile ID's post .

If you see a quality post and it something that has added value to you as you went through the post and you feel such post deserves merit I think it is not bad if you decide to give the post merit it is not a bad decision whether the person is an active member or inactive member . Some times when we see a post that deserves merit and such post is given merit it is to appreciate the post by giving it a merit. Every good post deserves merit whether the user is active or not active.  Merit giving to an inactive user is not a waste but to appreciate the post for the the good information and knowledge one has gained from it.

Every user have right how they want to spend their merit so far as the merit is being giving in a good way that is not against the forum rules and regulations.

Even though they are inactive and if you see their contents, and replies are still valuable I guess they still deserve merit as part of giving their effort to help and contribute to the community. It is a normal thing that new comers or old-era accounts come here to visit and just take a look and take another week, month or year again to hibernate and get back to the forum, still their essence is through their previous post, still its your option if you want to give or not its your rights.

Accounts that have been inactive for a long time are generally not marinated.  But if someone benefits from a good quality post of an inactive account then he can definitely give merit to that post for which there will be no problem for him or the merit receiver.  You can give your Smerit to anyone it is your personal matter but Merit cannot be misused.  Because this merit changes the rank of an account.  So it is a very important thing and has a lot of value.

Yes of course,  just like Satoshi's posts that received merits from various members even though when he made those posts, there wasn't anything like a merits system, but even now that there is a merits system, when members find the posts to be helpful,  they still offer to give it merits.
So when members hand out merits not not for the activeness of the said member,  but just that the post is found helpful at the time the merit was awarded, so for me, I don't see anything wrong in giving merits to inactive accounts when the wrote innthepostt something helpful.

Why not? Some of those post might be,

1. historical - like the HODL terms and then Satoshi obviously and other legends
2. it members find it helpful then yeah and that is the very essence of merit in the first place
3. no one can question whether a posts or just one liner deserves a merit, it's very subjective and everyone thoughts are very different.

So for me there's nothing wrong with giving old post that are good and helpful up to this day.

In addition, we don't have the right to question users about why they gave a post by an inactive user merit, you may see less quality in a post, but the more quality some users may see in content in it that deserves to be given a merit. If you come across an inactive user who has a post that deserves merit, there is nothing wrong with rewarding them with merit since the content is good and worthy to be given merit. That's why, if you conduct thorough research and create quality content in this forum, merit will find you, not until you find merit by creating content to obtain merit. I think we all have more free time than one another, many users have different explanations for not being active at all times.

[Edited]

Inactive users can still gain merits if there posts is worth meriting mostly is the post is of high quality. There are reputable members of the forum that is still getting merited till now because of the good works they have established in the forum. Good works pays even though they are not active again like before, they still get merited which is why we need to create reputation as we are in the forum wirtin to and trying to help other people to see the light. Good work pays for as long as possible.

 Just like the others have opined, it's cool to merit an inactive member since you deemed his/ her post worthy of meriting but I feel I understand why you are asking; feel free to correct me if I misunderstood you tho. Probably you are wondering that if you merit an account that has been dormant for a time, it might look like you are trying to grow the account, or you are the alt? The forum is quite vigilant on how merits are been disbursed to accounts who have been MIA so you felt if you did that, you just set the BitcoinTalk police on you? ;D
 Well, if that isn't the reason you asked, I guess you e been answered.

it's depends on the personalities involved though... For me, I merit users that would most likely be able to spend/circular 'em smerits.... what's the point of meriting a user that's not even active to acknowledge them accolades?.. it's kinda like blurring out the opportunities of other low-ranked members ranking up soon enough - it could also like make the whole merit ecosystem slag - when this happens, Bitcointalkforum becomes really boring as it'll look like nothing is really happening...

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don't forget in a hurry that so many generous merit givers are kinda like slagging alot too... Merit sources ain't even meriting threads the way it ought to be - I'm not saying they ain't trying buh, it's becoming more infrequent than it used to be... Facts!
So my point is - the little that's generated should be circulated evenly, to most qualified post. Alive!

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

I think that those who have marked any post with merit do not check the activity of the participant, since it does not matter in principle. The rule here is simple, if you liked a participant's message, you can mark it with a merite, since you rate the message, not the participant himself.

Yes, provided that the piece is well-written and offers a unique viewpoint. Whether they are active or not doesn't matter; what counts is a well-written post that contributes valuable information to the community.
Furthermore, sMerit decays to stop that and render sMerit useless. Spending it on a sincere and high-quality post would be polite.

Of course, make it a habit to read a lot so that we have a strong reference when something is discussed or asked. Must be good at asking and answering and that is the added value.


Sure.. ;)

Wow!!  This is a very nice question though and not in position to answer this but let just give my opinion. If a person made a post or comment that deserves a merit whether he/she is active or not I think it should be awarded to the person because not being active doesn't mean the person is not serious sometimes it could be that the person is having difficult time and sometimes it could be that the person is not actually serious but we can't tell for sure.
In summary, I think we shouldn't deprive someone of something he/she actually merit or deserve.