Bitcoin Forum

So, back in the old days, "rank" ("Sr. Member", "Hero Member", etc.) used to be determined by your post count. To write that out in some symbolic form (that I'll iterate on as we go):


Using the "Hero Member" rank as an example, all you had to do in order to reach that rank was make 501 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86580) posts (posts that survive moderation and don't get deleted, that is). People could max out their rank in just a few days back then...

Spammers be like:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/08/27/UZ9D85.jpeg

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Then, the first major intervention (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=237597) took place, and rank determination became:


If you back-read Meta, you'll see that people really struggled at the time to understand what this "activity" thing was.

A precise definition of "activity" isn't important for this post, what's important is to understand it conceptually: It's a way to slow down the ranking-up process. To reach "Hero Member", you now need to write 480 posts spread out over 480 days. For the purpose of increasing your rank, there's no real point in posting more than once a day; technically, there's more to it than that, and you can make just a single post in a given 14-day "window" and then make 27 (14+13) posts in the next 14-day window and have your "activity" jump up accordingly, but, that's an implementation detail and shouldn't distract you from the central idea of an effective rank-wise 1-post-per-day speed limit.

Spammers be like:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/08/27/UZ9eI2.jpeg

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Then, the second major intervention (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350) took place, and rank determination became:


Now things get really tricky for spammers, because even making 480 posts spread out over 480 days isn't sufficient to reach "Hero Member". You'll also need to accumulate roughly the same amount of "merit". The idea here is that some of your readership will award your substantive/appreciated contributions by marking those posts with "merit". In this "new era", you can't just rely on patience in order to rank up, you also have to try to post things that might be appreciated: If nobody finds value in what you have to say, then you'll never rank up...

Spammers be like:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/08/27/UZ9q5c.jpeg

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We're now up-to-date, and I'd like to propose a third "intervention":


The idea here is that there's a new term called "carry" that will slowly de-rank you if you keep posting/doing things that nobody appreciates. That is, you can't just apply yourself to the task of achieving a given rank, you also have to apply yourself to the task of maintaining it. Just like your "merit" is a >=0 balance based on logged events, your "carry" is also a >=0 balance based on logged events. There's a more general version of this idea where different forum actions attract different amounts of "carry", but, the simple version that I think should be experimented with initially is just one where there's a single type of system-generated "carry transaction": Whenever you make a new post, your balance goes up by 0.1. In effect, you'll need to earn at least 1 merit for every 10 posts you write (on average) if you wish to prevent your account from slowly drifting toward a lower rank. And you'll need to get beyond a 0.1 merit-to-post ratio if you're aiming to increase your rank.

Spammers be like:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/08/27/UZBXQD.jpeg

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I think this would help with a few things (without impacting any even halfway-decent posters):

(*) It would slowly decay "airdropped" merits that either belong to accounts that have now changed hands or that were awarded in the first place to users that would have been unable to earn those merits organically. Basically, I'm thinking of accounts like mich (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=9645) (that account has only managed to earn 36 merits over thousands of posts, but it has the rank of "Legendary" and wears a paid signature). If an adjustment like what I'm proposing were put in place, then the person behind that account would have to re-think their whole approach to the forum (if they wanted to keep spamming their signature, that is).

(*) It would make it harder to buy/sell accounts. As in, sure, you could buy a "Legendary" account, but if you're going to just post mindlessly with it to make money, then eventually the "merit" that came with the account will be undone by the "carry" that accumulates each time you make a post. (And then, hopefully, the account will be considered worthless and can stop being traded.)

(*) It would make it harder to buy/sell merit. As in, sure, you could cheat by buying some, but, you'll likely have to do that repeatedly, because, as with the previous point, if you're just going to post mindlessly, then eventually the "merit" you bought will be undone by the "carry" that accumulates each time you make a post.

(*) It would encourage more mindful posting in general, I think. A small "cost" risked by the poster each time they submit something encourages them to ask "Do I really need to be posting this? Do I really think that people might appreciate it? Or is this likely to be a post that only contributes to me losing rank?".

I was previously against this sort of thing:


I guess, my view on this has changed over time, and I now think that the right amount of de-ranking "drift" can raise the forum's signal-to-noise ratio while only really frustrating accounts that nobody would miss. If you think about it, rank adjustments like the one I'm proposing shouldn't affect organic usage of the forum. As in, why would someone coming to Bitcointalk so that they can ask a question or post a scam accusation, for example, be put off by the idea of a subtractive term in the rank calculation? They wouldn't care one way or the other, IMO. I think the only users that might feel something like "No. This will ruin Bitcointalk!" are the users that view the forum as some kind of weird "writing job". (And while it'll always be the case that some amount of the user base will only ever be interested in what they can get rather than what they can give, at least with the proposed adjustment in place it'll also be the case that their chickens will eventually come home to roost unless they also throw in a merit-worthy post once in a while.)

Two final thoughts:

(*) I can't really say that I'm happy with the name "carry". Maybe someone else will have better luck than me with finding a good name for a subtractive term in the rank calculation.

(*) I don't think "carry" (or whatever it ends up being called) should be something that's displayed independently. In my mind, it'll affect the display of your merit balance. As in, if you have 100 merit and 5 carry, then your merit balance will appear as 95. (I guess, for display purposes, your merit balance should then be clamped to prevent it going negative. Otherwise, it'll be kind of demotivating for most new users to see their merit balance as "-1" after making their first 10 posts.)

(I haven't managed to state things exactly how I would have liked, but, my wife is shouting at me from across the house to come and eat, so, I'm going to stop fussing this post now and go get some chow.) :D

How is it going to be. Did you mean after every 10 posts someone make without having one merit, 1 merit will be deducted? Or the merit will not be deducted but the deranking will be based on carry? I think you meant the later. I still like how the merit system is and I will not like anything to be added.

Did you think some people will rank up and later become spammers or you think some accounts are waking up recently which belongs to spammers?

I noticed some people will have 10 posts and not yet have merit consistently, while sometimes they will earn merit.

That's a great idea , but I think it would effect the paid signature campaigns for peoples posting right now. I'm not disagree with this carry system , but do you think for mapping this ratio we should consider it more flexible way. Cause for the advertisement Manager's are seeking a certain amount of posts, and mostly half of these came from gambling section and I saw that talking about sport/casino anyone hardly intersted to contribute the merits there.  instead of 1:10 ratio we can determine it by time countdown , like 30days /120D ratio. Everyone has to be maintain a certain amounts of merit in these timeframe, although the initial idea isn't that bad. Let's hear from the comminty.


That's an excellent observation, it would eliminate those who is only seeking this forum for cash grabing and buying/hacking/airdroped account will loose their integrity. Well what's the point if you've received the Hero/Legendary rank and couldn't even earn bunch of merits by contributing forum. This shows a user's contribution on forum .

One more thing is concerning here is should theymos increase merit sources or the amount of merit they recive each month.

 this will be a nice idea but I don't think it's going to help because people are active in the forum to share their ideas with others on the crypto space and at the same time we are all here to improve too, people like to progress in anything they do and when they don't they forget about it. And you know, if we divide the accounts on this forum into four parts I'm sure that roughly one part of the accounts here normally earn merits in each post. And if in the future people also see that their ranks are decreasing many will leave the forum and the forum might lose it traffic too. Just like what happened when mixer was banned, some people left the forum.

Enjoy your meal

Well I'm someone who struggle to earn merit, but I think my post wasn't that bad, it just I'm not a part of circle.

If the forum really implement this, probably my rank would stuck at Full Member.

I prefer with demerit idea.

I don't agree if this as one of your reason to propose this idea.

If a participant spamming, it's the manager should be the one who make decision to extend or remove him.

Didn't the solution of spamming is report the post to moderator? and then if the moderator didn't delete the post, the post isn't spam/meet the forum's standard? ???

As everything PowerGlove does, this is a very thoughtful approach to introducing a possible improvement to the forum. I don't think encouraging a user to earn 1 merit for every 10 posts is too much to ask.

Let's say a post-merit system introduction user just earned their 1000th merit and became a Legendary. They have to earn 1 merit in the next 10 posts to maintain that rank. If they don't do this and drop to Hero, they can go 5000 meritless posts before they are deranked to Senior Member. However, if they earn >1 merit for every 10 posts, they'll be bumped back up to Legendary. Which I think is fair.

I can see how this would help prevent mindless posting.

A bit off-topic but for next year's April Fool's day, I would like to see the introduction of "merit zapping," where you can spend 10 sMerits to remove 1 merit from any user's profile. (at least for up to a week.) That would be fun. Lol.

Seems Power glove got bored again  ;D. Anyways Can we just leave the forum as it is now? I'm already suffering enough from activity and adding carry to it might just be a nightmare. Now from the perspective of a merit source things change based on how you receive merit after you become a source (especially if you are not in a gang circling merit).

My main point here is I'm someone that surfs a lot more than I post most times a read multiple threads without making a single post and it became more often since I have to distribute merit. Now that simply means if I continue same way I'll probably be jr member in no time.... There are tons of members like this all over the forum.

Inasmuch as implementing this would seem to only combat spammers and low quality posters across the forum, i still believe that some good quality posters who are mostly active in boards that don't receive quite a lot of merits would also be affected. for example, there are a lot of good posters who are mostly active on the gambling board and a few other boards that we all know doesn't receive much merits would be affected in one way or the other, even if they manage to earn a few merits from other boards, it's not guaranteed to come in the next 10 posts, which means they'll constantly be deranked.

Additionally, don't you think this would result to some people hoarding their smerits rather than giving it to other quality posts, just incase they fail to earn any merits after making 9 posts, so they'd simply just look for someone to trade it with, which IMHO defiles the merit system.

The merit system is already making things difficult for some genuine users to grow in the forum since our growth is dependent on others judgement and help but do we need anything to make the forum become more difficult for each one of us? maybe we need to transition into a military regime whereby the forum will become stricter for all of us ;D

However, no matter the strategy that is being employed to tackle spammers, shitposters and low quality posters, it won't completely sanitize the system.

That notwithstanding, it will really be a hectic work for the algorithms to function properly at all times which means that this development might at some point develop some bugs which might affect forum activities.

I don't know what this will achieve but to me, the idea will make the forum lose membership very fast. It is more or less saying that active users must earn merits daily, something that is not possible given house merits can be very scarce sometimes. Therefore, my opinion is that status quo should be maintain because the forum is just fine as it is.

The way the account rankings increased in the old days was straight. Any user could become a room member and a legendary member by fulfilling the requirements of the post. Then, a minor update came, and the rank was increased based on the activity with the post. This was also not very difficult for the forum at that time. Then came the countdown of merit with activity. This was a good time for the forum accounts to move towards the ranking. Combining activity with merit was a very good thing for the forum, which complicated things with the growth of beautiful scammers, which continues to this day.

Here, you want to add a new "carry" with merit that will control the system of a user's rank going up and down. This idea of yours will generate an idea about the disability of the users of the forum and the quality of posts they are making. You have explained that the "carry" system will show the merit number as a reduction. Although your idea is nice, I could not agree with it because the number of users in the forum is not very high. If such a system is introduced, the number of users in the forum will be reduced even more. If someone cannot earn a merit in every ten posts, then the busyness of their account will decrease. In reality, if a user has made ten posts but cannot earn merit, their "carry" will increase, indicating the reduction in merit. In reality, this will have an impactful signature. In reality, this is effective; the number of spammers will be completely zero, and the number of users in the forum will decrease, which is natural. I believe the current merit system in operation is sufficient for this forum.

Yes, it will erode airdrop merits, and accounts that have changed hands will no longer be able to grow. However, it would be great if all legendary rank accounts were progressing as they should be, clearly visible. Signature spammers can be identified and removed.

I agree that accounts that are bought and sold will no longer be able to move forward. When these accounts see that it is complicated to move forward in this forum, no one will buy them, and the buying and selling of accounts on the forum will stop.

If this practice is introduced, then after writing a post, a user will think about what it will look like if they make this post. Nowadays, people write posts very quickly to fulfill the requirements of the signature campaign, but do not care about the quality of the post or how much that post can be appreciated in the forum.  The "carry" of accounts that meet such requirements will increase, and those accounts will lose their position by decreasing their rank. If this practice is implemented, the poster should try to write quality posts with great care before and after writing a post. This will maintain the balance of the forum, and many good-quality posts will be noticed.

It's not a bad idea at all, and I also believe it is going to encourage users to improve their posts if they don't want to keep losing their ranks. :) Even though I know I might not earn 1 merit for every 10 posts that I make, I'm pretty confident that I'm not going to lose my rank if this addition is made in the ranking system, because I know if I lose 1 merit, I will regain it soon, this might slow me down for achieving the next rank, but I don't have a problem with that.

Those who are saying that this is going to affect those who post only in a specific board where merit circulation is very low, I would say that it's better because such a system will make them get out of that board or section, and visit other boards and have discussions all around the forum, and this shouldn't be an excuse used by them to say that they are getting deranked only because there are no merits in that section. No one is restricted, and even signature campaigns don't ask you to make all your posts in one section, be it Gambling or anything.

In this proposal, ChartBuddy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=110685) is going to need a couple thousand Merits to keep it's rank, and to prevent it from being a Newbie again. Even though I expect it to receive enough Merit to keep it's Rank, I think the 1:10 ratio is too strong. Even 1:100 would be enough to drop the worst spammers back to Newbie. But that makes me wonder (again) why we keep those spammers here. There are accounts with 1000+ Activity and 0 Merit. Dropping them to -100 Activity doesn't help, unless it comes with severe restrictions. Maybe 36 million seconds between posts.
On a more serious note: deMerit and other forms of expiring airdropped and abused Merit have been discussed before, but so far it never happened (other than a few cases where theymos manually undid Merit transactions).

This will bring a very good change to the forum. The number of posts that are posted in large numbers will decrease. No one will be able to post randomly whenever they want.

Interesting idea, but I think this could backfire pretty badly.
You're basically taxing people for posting, which seems backwards for a discussion forum. Good contributors who help newbies or engage in active discussions would get punished just for participating. Meanwhile, people will probably just focus even more on merit farming instead of actually contributing useful content.

Also, merit distribution is already uneven across different board sections. Someone posting helpful stuff in the altcoin section is going to have a much harder time than someone in Bitcoin Discussion.
Maybe instead of penalizing every post, we could look at post quality over time periods? Like if someone's merit-to-post ratio tanks for a month straight, then apply some kind of warning or temporary rank adjustment.

Just my 2 sats - I think we want to encourage participation, not make people scared to post.

In a perfect world, it could work, but what happens when you publish quality content that's considered unvaluable by others, or when users are simply too lazy to give merit to someone? Most people here have their own criteria for awarding merit, and many only award it to people who share their thoughts and ideas, even if the posts aren't of quality.

An alternative would be to have certain post moderators as sources of merit. That is, for every 10 posts from a user, if they haven't received merit, they would be re-evaluated to see if any quality content has slipped through the cracks, in order to be 100% fair.

But I think this would be difficult to maintain due to the large number of posts.

It would have to be thought through very carefully, since not everyone is in the habit of awarding merit.

This could come off as putting too much emphasis on merits. A simple approach to spam will be to have heavier spam moderation and a full application of the rules for defaulters, which involves a couple of temporary bans and then a permanent one if it persists.

I could get on board with something like this for airdropped merits for accounts that have not earned a single merit per 500 or 100 posts made. For members who have been able to contribute constructively and help out other users, they have effectively earned their merits and shouldn't need to retain it.

I want to use a gardening analogy for this proposal..

Spraying toxic weedkiller everywhere to eradicate troublesome weeds which actually
kills all the other beneficial plants which largely go unnoticed - but yay we killed a
few nasties

There was discussions a while back that the forum was in decline, I fear with
this approach there will eventually only be 20 or so members with 10,000 merit
each just rattling around on their own on an otherwise empty forum.

Anyone that implement such a thing in this forum don't have the forum at heart because it's the easiest way to kill the the forum.
Members will be afraid of posting and sharing an idea or knowledge because if the post is not merited, he might loose his rank, and because of that we can't have a decent conversation anymore concerning a topic, which will make this forum very boring and uninteresting .
Or are we going to kill the forum because of spammers?
If that's the case then it's a very big shame to all of us here

Believe me the traffic Bitcointalk used to have, and has right now will drop as soon as possible.

I believe Theymos probably have thought of the demeriting system over and over since the suggestions have been flying up and down the meta board but I guess he knows what will happen if he initiated it, we are only getting the level of entertainment because most things are allowed, once they are gone even those who post most meaningful things will become boring and the great Bitcointalk will fall off!

Mind you, I'm not underscoring your proposal PowerGlove but I'm trying to think this in another perspective, maybe high increase in banning spammers would reduce it, than eliminate it totally because an atom of everything makes it more important and interesting.

This doesn't affect newbie or low ranked account from spamming
There are quite a number of user(s) with high post counts but barely any merit
But they are still junior member or member
Which changes nothing is their rank is supposedly reduced.

I have seen users that make quality posts on the economics board but not all are opportuned to receive a merit.

The thoughts behind your idea is noble, maybe one in an hundred. Too easy I know but wouldn't affect traffic much.

This doesn't stop account farmers from keeping their rank though

If I may get you correctly all these is just to eliminate Spam or what?
Usually, Spam can't be entirely eliminated from this forum as I know, and making this forum too difficult is not also good as well, then why does this forum exist for the first place if I may asked? At least for the past years after the introduction of merits we see the spam gradually reduce and we see those who are not making effort or contributing to the forum remain on their ranks and that is enough.

At least sometimes making here a bit friendly could be fine, why because we must surey have newbies coming on board, and if I must say bitcointalk.org is mostly featured on Google search engine immediately you mentioned anything related to Bitcoin it would redirect you to here, and then probably such person would sign up and began the same process by asking same questions (doing same thing) or not even abiding to some rules or doesn't even know what is merits and it functions, when the forum is too difficult for them to scale through you see them automatically dumping the forum to somewhere else that is more easier for them to use.

And then guess what? The traffic of this forum gradually decreases whereby you are giving way to the other forum to grow above Bitcointalk.org So, for me I say no no to all the above proposed methods. Why do we talk about freedom on this forum but now you are trying to restrict such freedom from people here in the name of eliminating spam which  to me it makes no sense.

While this is for a good intention, it may makes things more difficult for the forum in general.

The rate of earning merit as a newbie is really difficult that I think even on average making 20 posts doesn't guarantee merit and such a user might not be a spammer rather trying to contribute, learn and others which include what you added on your post about those coming to make complaints.

Also, this will lead to even more eagerness  for wanting merit, making not just spammers but more merit farmers neither of these are good for the forum growth.

This is a good idea for forum members who are in the technical field and can earn tons of merits in just one post and not for members like us who barely earn merit based on our own area of interest. The forum is a place that welcome all categories of people, slow learners and fast learner even with the lazy ones. If this ranking down is implemented, it will discourage new members from joining the forum and scare already registered members away. Which I don't think that is what the forum wants.

Who offended PowerGlove?
Please, someone should give him a beer to forget this idea. This is not all about spammers, but I bet you that you will disrupt the whole arrangement of the forum. Merit sources will be so powerful, merit buying will increase and the richest will remain at the top.
In fact, this your idea came too early, I thought it was intended to be given theymos on the eve of 1st April. Why did you expose it so early ;D

I see where you’re coming from and I totally agree that moderation should always be the first line of defense. If spam was handled more firmly with escalating bans, I don’t think we will even be thinking or discussing about “carry” or decay formulas in the first place.

I also like your point about targeting only those accounts that have huge post counts but zero earned merit because it sounds very fair. Anyone who has contributed and picked up merits naturally has already proven their worth, so I think it'll be unfair to make them fight to keep what they’ve rightly earned.

Instead of implementing a deranking mechanism with "carry," why not simplify the whole idea and base the rank directly on the ratio of merits to posts?
The higher your merit/post ratio, the higher your rank.

The need to maintain a high share of useful contributions will only apply until a member reaches the highest rank. Once you’ve achieved the top rank, it means you’ve already proven yourself as a respected contributor to the forum. At that stage, you should be allowed some “elder’s grumbling” and casual posting without fear of losing your status.

This would give a very clear purpose to reaching the highest rank: it’s not just about patience or consistency, but about maintaining a strong balance of quality to quantity. After that milestone, the forum recognizes your legacy and contribution, and you can enjoy more freedom in how you post.

Nope, the lower the rank, the easier to get merit.

I think many users give merit based on the users' rank and knowledge, if they're not that good, but they're still newbie, they can still get couple merits. But if they were Hero or Legendary, but they post like a newbie's knowledge, people won't merit them.

Users can delete their own posts, there were few users did that.

Oh, that’s true! I’ve run into this many times myself. It’s especially frustrating when actually useful posts get deleted. Sometimes I even give them merit just so I can find them later, but then when I check my sent merits, the post is gone and I can’t access the information I wanted.

So yes, that’s a real way to abuse the system. Although, if “carry” is counted at the moment of posting, then deleting posts would be pointless. In that case, the original proposal is definitely more effective than mine.

Also, with my merit/post ratio idea, nothing would prevent the trading of high-rank accounts. But in the original “carry” scheme, there are built-in barriers against that.

I will still stand on this ground that earning merit as a newbie is really difficult. Reputation plays a role here and while is not like it's not the main criteria it helps others to be sure this is not just another newbie using Ai or something else in order to rank up.

I don't know hie you distribute your merit but I will say people are more mindful in sending merit to a newbie than  a reputable account.

I think this occur when the newbie is showing a sign of willingness to learn and not too far off from the answer.  While reputable accounts here might not earn from it but still can depending on how they portray themselves in such situation, someone is willing to learn and doesn't Speaks with pride when they lacks knowledge in that regard will likely earn merit and be enlightened. 

The later by the way is more important.

I would agree in principle but 1 merit for every 10 posts is outrageous and certainly demotivating most of new comers (low rank members). IMO, 1 merit per 50 posts (even 100)
would be fair and more compatible.
Just my 2 cents, you guys know much more than I do, of course.


  

Signature campaigns cloud people's judgement. Bitcointalk is discussion forum foremost, and one should not do things that make people think twice before posting.

From what I can tell, most people with even half decent quality don’t have a problem maintaining the necessary ratio. The only people this might affect are super spammers and a few people that don’t ever join paid campaigns.

Like with any other system, there will inevitably be those who try to cheat. I suspect we will start to see accounts who suddenly show a lot of interest in doing push ups and talking about the Bitcoin price.

Not too much task for you because you are earning merit almost everyday, but why not think of other people? If it can be 100 posts and not 10 posts, that will be better. But I still see no use of this because this forum is good how it is now with the merit system. We do not need to be stricter. Many newbies will suffer from this while those people that are old on this forum will know where they will meet and discuss about merit and send themselves merit regardless of their post quality. Even this has not be done, it is happening. Psychologically...

I was only suggesting that as a last resort. While I understand that spammers do not contribute effectively and make tons of posts that are zero value, I also understand that early posters before merits and signatures were a thing contributed to the growth of the forum. There was lots of spam then, but also lots of helpful contributions, without which the forum may not be at the stage it is now.

My top recommendation will be stricter moderation and a zero spam policy.

We always advise newbies to be sincere, to be who they really are, without exaggerating anything about themselves, without lies and fabrications. The condition of getting one merit in the period of their ten posts will simply "blow the mind" of those who know little but will diligently follow this rule. I think we will see a lot of rephrasing of plagiarism and many posts with AI somehow changing their wording. In addition, the one who did not get the merit for ten posts will write even more, hoping to compensate for the gap and get these merits by increasing the number of posts.

The idea is good, but given that people now read little, we will really lose users who cannot cope. If we talk about farmers, they will be the same as they were. Who will forbid one alternative account from sending the merit to another account, considering that in some local sections, there are whole groups of friends? I think many people observe a situation where merits are distributed for posts exclusively in one language section, several pieces over a period of several minutes or even seconds, although the posts themselves do not relate to the date of distribution of merit, and there is a large period of time between them. It is clear that an agreement works that can be designated "you to me, and I to you," even between three or more accounts.

I've gotta say, I'm slightly surprised (in a good way). I mean, I figured people would just point out flaws and "boo" this one into oblivion (and while that's mostly what is happening, it's not to the extent that I imagined it would be).

Here are a few more thoughts (after digesting the responses and doing some thinking of my own):

(*) I think 0.1 is somewhere in the ballpark of a merit-to-post ratio that should be exceeded if someone's trying to grow their rank. I mean, I realize that not everyone can contribute at the same level, and so, I'm trying to find a ratio that I think most every person can hit without giving themselves a hernia (so to speak). If all I wanted was to drive up the forum's signal-to-noise ratio while not really considering where this might leave people who depend on the forum for some amount of their income, then I'd be tempted to set it much higher (like 1.5, which while 15 times greater than 0.1 and completely unrealistic-seeming to most, is still ~6 times lower than my own merit-to-post ratio). The problem with setting it too low (like 0.01, or something) is that we would then have complexified things in exchange for no real improvement to anything. If 1000 posts can be produced while only risking a backslide of 10 merits, then I predict very little will change by implementing this "carry" thing. But if writing 1000 unappreciated posts can end up costing you 100 merits, then that's genuinely behavior-affecting, IMO. As with everything Bitcoin(talk), I'm pro-freedom. As in, if you want to make 1000 posts that the community is effectively "telling you" (by not leaving you any merit) that they don't appreciate, then that's fine, and you should feel free to keep doing that. But, if for some reason that's the posting pattern that you've fallen into and you're still very concerned with maintaining or increasing your "rank", then something like what I'm proposing will encourage you to find a more community-appreciated way to spend your time on the forum. (And when you think about it, what kind of BS user is that, anyway? Someone who's at once saying "I have little to offer" and "I wish to be highly regarded"?)

(*) There would need to be some exemptions, I think. ChartBuddy should be able to post without building up "carry" (though, like LV said, probably the WO crowd would have been happy to keep CB fed with merits). Also, people should be able to post redirection topics without worrying about "carry". Maybe the "Serious discussion" and "Ivory Tower" boards should be exempted. That kind of thing. Because the "carry" database table would be event-style in the same sense that the "merit" database table is (as in, balances in either case are derived by summing over an adjustable record of events, rather than just being stored opaquely), I don't think it's very important to ahead-of-time think of every piece of special casing. Over time, cases can be made for specific things to be exempted (like maybe some of LV's data-dumping threads, for example), and even if those cases are only discovered after they've already caused unwarranted accumulation of "carry", it would be very easy to after-the-fact fix that with retroactive exemptions. (In general, though, if I were making the decisions, which I won't be, I'd lean toward "no" for most exemption requests. There's something very natural to me about letting merit decide whether or not the community appreciates something, and I struggle to think of clear examples of things that definitely should keep happening despite the fact that they don't/can't carry their own weight in terms of receiving merit.)

(*) It's natural for me to consider things in very abstract ways and to keep my mental "wavefunction" from collapsing around concrete details that aren't central to the "shape" of whatever it is that I'm thinking about. But, I know that that's not how everyone thinks, and some people prefer a style of thinking where concrete details dominate their analysis of something. In my experience, it's very frustrating trying to transmit ideas across an abstract-thinking vs. concrete-thinking "impedance mismatch". With the particular proposal in the OP, I've tried to "project" an abstract idea down onto the "concrete plane" so that it can be easily discussed. But, it's important to remember that many such "projections" exist, and there's no real value in picking apart just one of them (it's only really valuable when you've found a problem that would exist in every concrete projection of an abstract idea). Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm not very attached to any given detail in the OP, and I only really have a sense that something like what I've suggested could be made to work. For example, maybe it should instead work like: If you've received any amount of merit during the previous 14-day "activity" window, then all the posts you make in the current 14-day window won't attract any "carry" (all that that changes is the specific logic driving when the system does and doesn't generate a "carry transaction", but the scaffolding remains: a subtractive term in the rank calculation that's kept track of with an event-style database table).

(*) Back when rank used to be post-count-only, and things were adjusted to be based on "activity" (in June of 2013), many posters were all like "Why change this? FFS, I liked how it was before!". Then, when an additional term was introduced (in January of 2018), again, many posters were all like "Why change this? FFS, I liked how it was before!". So, it's inevitable, IMO, that any rank-hardening adjustment made at this point, even one that manages to "thread the needle" just so and long-term improve the forum's signal-to-noise ratio without causing too many casualties in that pursuit, will, at the time of its proposal or implementation, be met with some amount of, wait for it... "Why change this? FFS, I liked how it was before!" :D

We can not automatically get rid of everything that is associated to spam, the more people comes the more task increases for the mods itself.
The ranking system is actually enough with the rules over the forum, most time when we are trying to make things better it's then we are even trying out to soiled what has already been done properly.

I specially thank you for the countless efforts towards this forum. @PowerGlove

People can always use AI checker before merit the post, that's for the user who avoid to meriting AI poster.

If reputation plays a role for meriting someone, that's mean the users aren't completely correct to spend their merit because they judge the users more than the post quality.

I give merit based on quality, not like someone who think post from high ranked users are always correct.

No offense but we have already an ongoing issue about merit circle jerker that farming merits on spam thread, WO and local merit thread.

Your suggestion is pro merit jerker and will remove the natural poster that doesn’t have any good knowledge on the board which merit is heavily distributed. Your suggestion is feasible if merit source is available on every thread of the forum and no bias on merit sharing, hence everyone should have an allocation of sMerit per month in able to cover the merit distribution on the forum just like the reddit upvote and downvote power for everyone to gather karma.

You are trying to build a contribution group like github and not a forum by adding a stricter rules that requires merit just to keep your rank. It’s bitcointalk, I believe any form of discussion related to Bitcoin given that it’s not a spam is already a contribution here CMIIW.

One thing i still don't understand about the idea here is if the suggestion is made applicable to all ranks, secondly, regarding members, does the suggestion also applies only to the airdropped or inactive forum accounts or everyone of us, because from what i know, any member could go being inactive for a while and then feels like coming back to the forum as they pleases, deranking them may go way too far because of inactivities, except the approach is directed towards the airdropped merit members.

The suggestion will not affect inactive members because it’s based on post to merit ratio. The OP is suggesting a de rank if user reach a certain post count that doesn’t get merit.

Affected user are those posting on board that has less merit distribution such as altcoin board, gambling board and other local board that has no merit source/low merit circulation.

We all know that Bitcoin technical, WO and few local board with huge number of merit source have the highest merit circulation. It will purge those user that is posting outside these board.

Users can be de-ranked in the current system, if their posts will be removed. So, maybe it is all about reporting more posts for deletion? I guess there are enough crawlers like https://ninjastic.space/ which will keep storing what was removed, so it will be still resistant to "censorship".

Or, if you don't want to "remove" anything, then "ignore" can be used. Which means, that if some user is ignored, or some posts, made by some user are on a "blacklist", then any "merit displaying sites" like BPIP, can simply count such cases, and display, that "you created 1000 posts, but 800 are ignored, so you really have something like 200".

Because merits likely don't circulate evenly accross the boards, I don't like and won't support a de-merit mechanism that's solely based on post count, like it's proposed here. I don't like the fact that posting is in some way punished. Sure, I understand that good posts with valuable content will likely receive their share of merit to compensate the punishing "carry". But I don't like that boards with low merit circulation for whatever reasons will be overly affected negatively, maybe shutting down lively discussions because of over-amplified "carry".

Spammers already can't rank up so easy because they'll hardly get merit for their shit-posts.

I'm also not so sure about off-loading all burden to moderation, stricter rules, more bans and whatnotelse. Good moderation is done by real people and real people can fail and more important need to have an incentive and time to execute good and fair moderation. How do we want to achieve this?

I think it is logical to implement this policy for those that received airdropped merits but that will still be problematic along the line but even if theymos wants to implement that, it will not only be a very complex job for them but will appear unnecessary or not really worth the energy and time. Therefore, keeping things as they are is definitely better to avoid causing chaos in the forum.

When you put it that way, I kind of like this idea even more now.  :D

It will make shitposters think twice before pushing "Post" under some text they know is pointless garbage. Which, let's face it, is at least half the posts on the forum on any given day.


Sure, some boards are definitely under-represented in terms of merit. However, most forum members don't post solely on one board. And again, we're talking 1 earned merit for every 10 posts. This shouldn't be too hard for anyone to do. If it already is right now, someone can't earn 1 merit in 10 posts should seriously question what it is they are actually doing here.

Actually I can imagine who will it affect the most: bounty hunters. There are hundreds of accounts with less than 5 merits and thousands of posts. They will quickly go from Jr. Member to Newbie. Maybe some boards could be carry-exempt, like Bounties, Dev & Tech Discussion, and Serious Discussion.


Ah but they often have "friends" that give them merits for their shitposts, enough to rank up, anyway.

Haha, that was sort of obvious.

I'm a bit torn between chairs. On one hand (aka chair) I find PowerGlove's idea quite compelling, on the other hand there're (not very strong) reasons for me to not like it and I don't think I'm trying to cling to the status quo. If there were an easy solution, we likely would've it here already.

Low ranked shitposters can still shitpost. I don't see serious limitations for them here, especially when there's no newbie jail. And theymos stated quite clearly there will be no newbie jail.

Is this only about trying to prevent that shitposters can rank up and be eligible for signature campaigns? There might be other, more suitable metrics to sieve out or prevent shitposters to enter paid campaigns, like merits earned in low, mid, long-term periods, merits-per-post ratio e.g. And campaign managers have a responsibility, too, who they accept into campaigns.

For me to decide if I want to put someone on my ignore list, I consider their content and merits-per-post ratio. Someone with a low ratio, say below 0.1, is way more likely to be ignored in the future than someone with a higher ratio who just happened to annoy me with their current crap in a particular forum spot.


I get that and am actually quite on your side here, to be frank.

How about a new rank "Shitposter" that is skipped when ranking up, i.e. can't be reached by "normally" ranking up? But you can be de-ranked into it! This rank, once reached by enough shitposting with PowerGlove's proposal, would put severe limitations for those who become de-ranked into it. The details of such limitations are tbd.

Users with rank "Shitposter" will likely simply abandon their account? Not sure about that.

I would be fine with a month temporary ban for an account who gets de-ranked into "Shitposter". On second occasion, temporary ban of 3 months, increasing by 3 months every time.


Mystery merits economy...

um.. challenge accepted?

Especially since you were previously against any form of a De-merit function (not to mention a stern one). To what extent did you place your imaginary line Gloves?

So, this isn't some generally-relative solution for problem solving against spam, but an active check on a user's merit-to-post ratio? Cause not everyone is trying to grow their ranks. You do know, just like I do that the forum has a different approach on meritocracy on the higher levels (I'm talking of the 1ks, 2ks and 3k score limits/gangs) right? If I've been fighting hard to rank up all the way to the top, why do I need to strain to retain the achievements?
I mean, this has nothing to do with post quality and impactfulness as there are a thousand and one prerequisites to earn merits, and at what level it can be the most essential; as an additional cherry on top of the ice, people are not supposed to be controlled/ given directions on how to spend their merits/ whom to merit Ffs!

I remember how I got into a very heated, but critical arguments (metaphorically) with Jay and Malek (and this is one of the reasons why I picked an interest on this) on the  issues (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5357032.msg61012597#msg61012597) of long-standing members getting more attention than newbies, which I thought wasn't right at all; I still stand by that till my dying day.
Or maybe just ban signatures on the forum and leave the ranks in place?
So what happens in this case? Does the algorithm on the "carry" database understands this?
Neil deGrasse Tyson's quote of unchecked uncertainty says thus; "One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong".
This is not about whether you're wrong or right; this is about accepting an open criticism as part of an undebatable protocol in cases where only a unanimous decision is made to function... But what do I know? I may be wrong..
So what was your motivation at first Gloves? No, like seriously..

Don't get me wrong, I've always been in support of any form of adjustment-- even a yardstick against spam, but if Theymos had an intention of demoting users, the first set in his consideration plan would be users with airdropped merits (like one of those users that you brought up, who has earned only 36 organic merits or so)
[Was this supposed to be some kind of auto-moderation function?]
Good sir, Challenge accepted!!!

I'd prefer a simpler solution such as this one, as it is less likely to create unintended consequences such as the mentioned deranking of valuable members in boards where merit distribution is limited. Further, local merit abusers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5542027) such as the ones that helped this guy rank up would bypass merit distribution limitations easily.

I mentioned the example above in another thread already. They have friends and merit sources on board, the ones that are connected have no issue getting merits to rank up new accounts.

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That said, I'd take any solution over none. Now you gotta convince the boss man, but good topic nevertheless.  :P

I like it. Instead of saying the normal rank, it just says "Shitposter," after someone has written something like 100 meritless posts in a row. It would make it pretty hard to join a signature campaign. The special title could be removed after they receive at least 1 merit from 5 different accounts within their next 100 posts.

Quite honestly these all sound like April Fool's implementations, lol.

@PowerGlove sorry to ask, did you by any means have issues with family at home or did your wife denied you of your bed duty?
Don't you think the restriction could be much on us? Currently the system is even more tougher for newbie like us to grow up and yet people are sourcing for me strict measures to make people suffer on the forum, so where is the freedom we are talking about were people wouldn't be able to grow as usual or have free mind to post without being scared of law that would hold them if they make any slightest mistake. Your proposal seems fine but I don't think that should be implemented rather I am more good this current restriction where one needs to put more effort to earn more merits and grow to their required rank, I think this is more of scaring newbies or people away from this forum since there are many laws that governs the forum.

OK but how many different accounts do you have on the forum? Going by your post history, its pretty obvious this isn't your first account. Your 2nd post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5536807.msg65226166#msg65226166) is an in-depth critique of signature campaign managers, even though your account has never actually been in a sig campaign. Did it ever occur to you that if you concentrated on "growing" just one account you'd be more likely to get merits and rank up beyond the Member ranking?

Or implement it as a browser plugin first, to see, how it will work.

Well, things like that were already done at previous 1st Aprils. I think merit poker was better.

"Nobody appreciated" when? Some of my posts have received merits even after half a year or more, and I've even seen posts from other users that were merited after years. In my view, this expression should be time-normalized, but that raises the question again: normalized to what period?

It’s probably best to leave the existing scheme as is. As the saying goes, you may go farther and fare worse.'"

I really don't have much to say concerning the new merit system which might be implemented in the future.In my own opinion,I don't think this demeriting system would affect newbies that are spamming the forum with garbage,rather it's going to affect high ranked members that doesn't earn merits consistently.
Merits are given based on a constructive post,but it's becoming very obvious that a user's constructive post may not be merited if it isn't presented in the giver's ideas/thoughts.So in such scenerio, what do you think should be done? Everyone has a primary goal why they're on this forum,so you think implementing this rule would stop newbies from hunting peanuts on airdrop token?
Op in your own perspective you think this system would reduce the rate of spam, though it might but it won't.In my own perspective the system/rule is unfair.

I guess "now".

And then, the act of sending a merit, can potentially bump someone's rank.

I think we currently have quite good estimator, which is "activity/merit" ratio. If you have more merits than activity, then your posts are highly merited. If it is somewhat equal, then it means you can receive one merit per post on average, so you are just an average user. But if you have much more activity than merits, then it means, that you probably write too many things, which are left unmerited. So, by just calculating "activity/merit" ratio, and making a simple table, you can easily check, if that kind of system could work even in theory.

For example: by having 1204 posts/2128 merits, you have 0.565789473684 posts per merit. Congratulations! You are highly merited person!

Sorry I didn't have the time to read the whole thread, but I read the OP with great interest.

I like the idea and I 'd welcome it in the forum. However, there are 2 things I 'd like to see being considered:

1. The ratio of 1:10 (like LoyceV said) seems tight.
2. Does this "carry" feature essentially strengthen the "merit" feature even more? Could it work totally on the backend? Like running a stored procedure monthly or quarterly? I am thinking that since the received merit is publicly available for every user, we could apply a merit/post ratio for the past 120 days and if it's not met, the rank could drop. The question with this implementation is how the "rank up again" would happen.

You're right, newbies can't be affected because they don't have any merits. A lot of "high ranked members" are just bought or farmed accounts run by multi-accounters. These accounts will be affected more than people who only have 1 account because they're not used to spending the time necessary to construct good posts. If you can't get 1 merit for every 10 posts, I don't have sympathy for you.


No, and that has nothing to do with anything. Its not aimed to discourage bounty hunters so much as shitposters who know they are doing nothing but posting shit.

Don't you feel this will encourage merit abuse? For those who achieved the ranks by earning merits, for them it's not a hard task to earn one merit for ten posts. But definitely spammers will exchange merits between them. So the idea still will benefits spammers. Real contributors don't have any issues at all. On the other hand, forcing merits for each ten posts really looks like a stupid idea. Sometimes even a good contributor doesn't receive merits in their ten posts. But maybe in the next post they will receive 10 merits. So forcing isn't an ideal idea at all.

The current merit system is working well. Still a lot of people struggling to achieve their ranks. Even some good posts have been underestimated and not receiving merits unless someone points it out. Because it doesn't possibly merit all the good posts by merit sources, they might miss a lot of things. However, the idea isn't much useful at all. Merit is a reward of your post, not a matter of force.

No, I don't think you get him right here. Your activity and merits won't be alter if you don't make posts, it can only affect your merits after making ten posts without earning at least a single merit. As good as this sounds, I don't think it's the perfect way to combat spam, it would rather give more room to merits selling.

There is a campaign manager that make it as a requirement to earn a merit in every week you participate in his campaign in order to retain your slot. For once, I never noticed a participant was removed for failing to meet up with that requirement. People can always find their way out as long as its merit related. We can think of other alternatives but this particular one seems to be defeated imo.

I don't like most approaches that are based directly on ratios (even though I've suggested them myself before), because those ratios are sometimes way off (for an example of this, consider Symmetrick (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2627711), who now has a jaw-slackening merit-to-post ratio of ~23:1 over 516 posts, but, before much of their stuff was self-deleted, their ratio was closer to ~0.77:1; still good, but, ~30 times less so). Also, if you read the rest of this post, I think you'll see that I'm advocating for something that wouldn't continually force any particular "time frame" on anyone (neither in terms of real time, nor in terms of "time" that only advances by one unit when you make a post).

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Agreed. But, that's not what I'm proposing. When I say, "In effect, you'll need to earn at least 1 merit for every 10 posts you write (on average) if you wish to prevent your account from slowly drifting toward a lower rank.", what I mean is, "A system that charges you 0.1 merits for each post you make has the practical effect of establishing a rank-wise equilibrium requirement of 1 merit for every 10 posts.", but, there's nothing in what I'm proposing that can even notice when you've made 10 posts, so, really, it's all about how things go over the long term for any poster (as in, it's fine if someone makes 100 posts without receiving any merits at all, and then suddenly writes a banger that gets 10 merits [1]).

[1] The only issue around this, which I'm reluctant to get into because it's not important, is that some back-and-forth bouncing will sometimes occur when someone is near to a rank boundary.

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It's clear to me (from some of the responses I've read) that I've done a poor job with explaining this idea. So, I'll take another shot at it, by way of analogy: Imagine that there's a service/website/app called Thoughts4Berries where you can submit very short pieces of original writing (as many and as often as you like) on any of a wide range of topics, and for each submission of yours that's deemed worthy (according to an algorithm that nobody seems to be able to fully figure out) you receive a prize of at least 10 berries (but you might also receive 50, 100, 250, 500, or even 1000+ berries if your submission is truly outstanding). Thoughts4Berries guarantees you that every submission received is always exposed to some chance of winning a prize (either now or in the future). So, basically, if you want berries, write something good and send it to Thoughts4Berries. You'll either get no berries for that attempt, or at least 10 berries for it. If you take the two possible outcomes and combine them with the previously-mentioned "greater-than-zero probability" guarantee, then you'll see that there's something very naive about this whole setup: the expected value (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value) is always positive. So, no matter what you submit, your berry balance will increase (not your actual balance, but the expected balance that your actual balance will tend toward over many attempts). Given the fact that the expected value of any submission is always positive, many people figure out that it's possible to farm berries by submitting lots and lots of attempts, but, if your submissions are terrible then the low chance of reward makes that a very slow process, so, a better strategy would be to submit many bad-but-not-terrible attempts. Of course, the best strategy (for everyone involved) would be to only make actually-worthwhile submissions, but, who has the time to do things sensibly, amirite? Now, let's say Thoughts4Berries comes to realize that most of what they get sent is low-effort junk that's barely worth reading. What can/should they do about that? There's a frustrated (and good-looking, too) dude working at Thoughts4Berries that goes by the name of, uh, MaxLegroom. MaxLegroom thinks that it's worth exploring the following idea: What if we extended an infinite line of "berry" credit to every user (to be offset against any prizes they might win), and then used that credit facility to charge 1 berry per submission? MaxLegroom sees that as an obvious way to reduce the amount of junk submissions by establishing a submission-wise "noise floor" that's too expensive for any rational user to keep operating entirely beneath. The only real question in ML's mind is where that cut-off should be placed (which is determined by the per-submission cost; maybe 1 berry is too much, he thinks).

OK. So. What does it look like when something like the above is applied to Bitcointalk's ranking system?

Instead of the "rank requirements" table looking like this:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr. Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	775-1030 (random)	1000

It would look like this:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit (less carry)
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr. Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	775-1030 (random)	1000

Notice that I've changed nothing except for the description of the third column, because that's really all I'm proposing. I'm saying that the rank requirements should stay the same, but, instead of the third column referring to the required amount of merit, I think it would encourage better posting behavior if that column referred to the required amount of after-carry merit (where "carry" is something that slowly builds up as you post).

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I do get what you're saying. The first issue I have with that approach is that it's subjective and therefore would be unevenly applied (different mods have different views concerning what makes something low-value; if I were a mod, for example, I'd probably leave many reports in an "unhandled" state because my anti-censorship inclination is much stronger than my dislike for junk posts). My second issue with that approach is that it applies pressure to a building block of the forum that's much more crucial than "ranking up": the forum's free-speech orientation should be preserved as much as possible, IMO, and placing it under unnecessary strain is unwise, I think. The right to post is paramount, the right to rank up... not so much. My third issue with that approach is that it's inefficient compared to a systemic disincentive that attenuates the creation of junk posts. (There's a software engineering idea that goes something like: "the fastest code is the code that's never executed", or, in the context of debugging: "the easiest code to debug is the code that isn't there". Applying that sentiment to moderation would go something like: "the easiest posts to moderate are the posts that were never written".)

I once tried to explain this whole "carry" concept in a PM, and I'll quote a small piece of that because it adds to the above:


Maybe. But, it doesn't make sense to me for the forum to "outsource" something so fundamental.

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Let me express my interpretation of your point, as: "If the ranking-up mechanism is largely subjective, then I think it's a mistake for the ranking-down mechanism to be objective".

As in, it's unfair when the thing that lifts you up is hit-or-miss, but the thing that pushes you down always hits. I get that. It sounds very unfair. But, that conclusion depends on:

(1) How unreliable is the first thing?

(2) How strong is the second thing compared to the first thing?

To answer (1): I don't think the merit system is very unreliable. I can imagine that the whole apparatus must seem very unfair/rigged/cliquey to anyone that's struggling to earn merit, but, my own experience here has been that it's impossible not to get merited when you're actually trying to add value to conversations and you're avoiding conversations where you don't believe that you have anything valuable to say. Sure, maybe some of your really good posts will go unnoticed, but, if you keep hitting the "value" nail instead of the "quota" nail (or the "agenda" nail, or the "vendetta" nail, the list goes on), then, trust me, you'll stand out, and you'll eventually get enough merit that "activity" might become your ranking-up bottleneck (obviously, I'm not talking about you; you're already a stand-out member). I realize that I haven't answered any of your concerns around uneven merit distribution across the forum's different sections, but, I view that as an issue that would take me many posts to unpack, and one that's orthogonal to the adjustment I'm proposing.

To answer (2): I've purposely tried to make the ranking-down force weak compared to the ranking-up force (partially to address the perfectly-enforced vs. imperfectly-enforced mismatch). I don't believe it's possible to make the ranking-up force perfect without also making it unmeritocratic. But, I also don't believe that that means that the ranking-down force has to be imperfect, too. It just means that the ranking-down force has to be tuned to compensate.

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There's more that I'd like to say, but, I'm in a pretty annoyed mood at the moment, and I don't think that a massive wall of text is anything that anyone wants to parse, anyway. (I've also noticed that I tend to write posts and PMs in a way where the things I've said in one part are comprehension-wise affected by the things I've said in earlier or later parts. As in, I often try to explain things conversationally, like I'm talking to a peer, rather than expositionally, like I'm talking to a student. So, the longer I make a post, or the more posts about something that I make, the more opportunity there is for unsatisfying discussion around not-meant-to-be-isolated parts of what I'm saying.)

But without a time-frame, I don't understand by your post how it will work. I will read the follow-up explanation you posted and if it's unclear I will ask again. 


Pun intended?  :P

I agree with Mia though, even though I am not a merit source. I suggest we leave it as is because the "carry" is good in theory and philosophy, but I am worried about the changes and the algorithm which decides the "rank / de-rank".

Then how can you justify merit jerker? Obviously they are alt farm account that is done in legal way through merit system.

Applying this will just remove the old farm account which now few because they are already struggling to get merit while you are welcoming this new blood merit jerker which is the new gen alt farmer.

Maybe start cleaning first this merit jerker issue that is rampant on local board such as Nigeria, Indonesia and many more local that has high merit circulation?

Thinking about this one some more...

(I'm going to assume that 0.1 is the right amount of "carry" to pay per post, not because I'm convinced that it is, but because it's easier to explain things with a specific number in mind.)

I reckon I made two (and a half) mistakes with what I proposed in the OP:

(1) I said that $merit - $carry should be clamped for display purposes only, but now I think that it should never be allowed to go negative. My first thought to prevent it going below zero was to add a condition like $merit - $carry >= 0.1 to the carry-transaction predicate (I'll get into my second thought on this later). I like this cannot-go-negative rule because it would have the effect of preventing anyone from ever getting themselves "in debt" (I'm specifically trying to protect new users who are still trying to find their feet on the forum). I also like it because a system that can never generate more "carry" than "merit" illuminates an interpretation of what I'm proposing that I think is easier to swallow: When you make a post and increase your carry balance by 0.1, instead of thinking of that action as you (effectively) "losing" 0.1 merit, it's actually more to the point that 0.1 merit is being converted into a form that precludes it from benefiting you in the rank-determination function (as in, you still "have" that 0.1 merit in every sense except that it can no longer contribute to your rank).

(2) I said that if someone had, for example, accumulated 100 merit and 5 carry, then their merit balance should display as "95" (as in, the amount of rank-relevant merit should be displayed). I still think that that makes sense for the merit balance that's displayed next to posts/PMs (either that, or the total amount of merit; though I think that that would be less behavior-affecting, which works against the main goal of this whole proposal). But, for the merit balance that's displayed on a user's profile page, I think that what should be shown is "95 (+5)" (as in, their rank-relevant merit balance, followed by their rank-irrelevant merit balance, aka their "carry"; of course, the sum of those two things amounts to that user's total merit).

(3) I'm being a little lazy (both in the OP and later posts) with defining what rounding should be used at the different stages of this whole idea because I figure that those details aren't interesting. For example, when I'm thinking of rank-relevant merit, and I say $merit - $carry, really what I (often, but not always) mean is something more like $merit - floor($carry). It follows that when I'm thinking of rank-irrelevant merit [1], and I say $carry, really what I (often, but not always) mean is something more like floor($carry) (and not that it has anything to do with this specific point, but, when I say $carry, what I'm referring to is the value that you would get if you summed over all of that user's carry transactions; and in case you're trying to make sense of this post without having read the others: a "carry transaction" is an additional database record that gets conditionally created each time a post is made). (Also, though I'm explaining things in a way that suggests I imagine this whole idea being implemented with floating-point arithmetic, if I were implementing something like this myself, it's likely that I would do it largely with integer arithmetic by working in a unit like "millimerits".)

[1] Just so that there's no confusion: When I say "rank-irrelevant merit", I mean rank-irrelevant in the sense defined by this proposal (that is, merit that has been converted into carry). I obviously don't mean the amount of merit you possess in excess of the maximum attainable "rank" (and obviously something similar applies to my usage of the term "rank-relevant merit").

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I said earlier in this post that I had a second idea around implementing a cannot-go-negative rule. That idea would be to change the amount of per-post carry from a constant value like 0.1 to an expression like 0.1 * pow(lesserOf($merit - floor($carry), 100) / 100, 0.7). The cannot-go-negative thing falls out of that expression naturally (because as your rank-relevant merit approaches zero, so does the amount of per-post carry). And, the thing I really like about a scaled-cost expression like this, is that it would "fade in" the effect of the carry system as a new user approaches "Full Member". So, instead of saying, "In order to stay ahead of the carry system, you'll need to average 1 merit or more per 10 posts", it would be the case that that's only true after you've already established yourself on the forum to some degree, and that the number of unappreciated posts you can make before you backslide by 1 merit would look more like this:

Rank-relevant merits	Number of posts before 1 merit turns rank-irrelevant
0	None
1	~252
2	~155
4	~96
8	~59
16	~37
32	~23
64	~14
100+	10

---

One last thing that I think is really easy to sleep on with this whole idea:

I personally feel that two of Bitcointalk's biggest problems are that (1) its SNR is too low (which has the effect of driving away both old and new users seeking to have genuine interest-based discussions), and (2) it's an environment that's too ungenerous with new users (which has the positive effect of preventing many would-be spammers and scammers from ranking up easily, but also has the negative effect of driving away many would-be quality users). I think that something like what I'm proposing might help with both of those issues. How it might help with the first issue (the forum's low SNR) is easy to appreciate and I spoke a little about that in the OP, but, how it might help with the second issue (a generally hostile-to-newbies environment) is harder to see. My thinking here is that (ignoring the deletion of posts) the forum currently thinks of "rank" as a strictly same-or-increasing measure. So, there's a fair amount of hesitation on the part of merit-senders when dealing with unestablished accounts (nobody wants to be responsible for accidentally giving what might turn out to be the wrong kind of user a permanent leg up). But, if the system I'm proposing were put in place, then there'd be less potential harm in giving merits to accounts that you're not yet sure of, because if they do go on to contribute little of value and reveal themselves as long-term spammers, then the merits that they received in their early days will slowly be "undone" by the carry system. I don't expect many people to become more generous with new accounts out of their own comprehension of how the forum dynamics have changed in the presence of the system I'm proposing, but, if word came from on high (from theymos, basically) that it's now "correct" to be less thrifty when it comes to handing out merits to new users, then I could see the carry system supporting a significant drop in suspicion/hostility toward new users (and though I estimate that a large portion of the hostility problem has less to do with merit-starvation and more to do with overzealous/clairvoyant "scam busting", doing something to help with that component of the problem is out-of-scope for this proposal).

I know this post is already dense, but, something else occurred to me as I was writing the previous paragraph. You know how it's pretty common to find people on the forum advising someone to lock their thread (lest it develop into an over-responded-to spam topic)? Well, that's something that I personally find to be really annoying (not the unsolicited advice part, nor the obvious tell-tale sign that advice like that being common suggests that the forum really does have a serious mindless-posting problem, but the fact that it often takes me a long time to formulate a worthwhile response to a topic, and by the time that I have, it's annoying to find that the topic has been locked). One of the positive effects (provided the chosen parameters have enough bite) of the system I'm proposing would be that it would no longer really make sense to bug one another (or the mods) about locking topics, because in an environment where a small amount of your merit gets converted into a non-beneficial form each time you make a post, that "payment" is a disincentive against spam all on its own, and it should "buy" the poster the right to post wherever they choose (after all, if they're wrong too many times in their assessment that they're making a post that will be appreciated, then they'll start to slide backwards in rank which will hopefully be encouragement enough for them to re-think which topics they should be posting in).

Oh wow, that's a huge thread with multiple wall-of-texts that I can't go through all at the moment. I don't necessarily disagree with @PowerGlove's theory that you need to still contribute after ranking up, someone who reaches Legendary ultimately doesn't have an ulterior "motive" to keep up with increasing their merit. This means that the post quality may deteriorate after ranking up, due to lack of motive. Agreeably, this is an issue, but from my perspective, is it worth addressing? What do I want to say, is the risk of losing website activity, active posters and generally creating a scene on the forum.

The merit system isn't perfect, but it's relatively adequate. This move would ultimately discourage some users who will struggle to maintain their ranks, may resort to lower traffic, less user base, and perhaps a loss in signature campaigns.

Bumping this. Did you ever get any feedback or try to get feedback from theymos? It doesn't have to be this particular proposal, but it is clear that something must be changed.

Nonsense, it does not work at all. It merely punishes complete strangers at the expense of those who are connected to existing users or familiar with the ways of farming merit here.

Your course of action is: 'Because your personal earnings are at risk here, write a post that criticizes the idea and state that more spam is good and less spam is bad'. You are brilliant. ::) If any traffic is good then we may as well let people fully automate their posting with AIs. The content of those posts would still be superior to the posts that are made by most users.

Lol, how are my personal earnings at risk here? You're being delusional, firstly, I'm not saying that more spam is good. The more traffic this website gets, the better it is. No one is talking about posting with AIs and there's an active movement in which I'm part of which is against them, and trust me, we've driven many AI bots away from the forum. The merit system is far from perfect but it's at least weeding out spammers who would simply post gibberish and eventually rank up to Legendary.

I'm personally receiving merit on a relatively often basis, so I'm certainly not at a risk here, you're just appearing salty about the spam, which has been greatly reduced since 2018-2019 when the merit system was introduced, but how would you know?

People don't come to Bitcointalk as much as they used to. Activity and interest is down for forums in general. I don't think we need to make it harder for those who are already here and want to stay. They have already made an effort to collect the merits they have received and to reach whatever ranks they have. They have already earned it. Even though your proposal to keep earning merits is achievable and any decent poster can collect the needed merits, I am not for making a stay on Bitcointalk any more inconvenient. 

This new system will be good to maintain the standard of the forum, whereby it will be a forum for reputable high ranking members. The environment will become rigid to new users and friendly to those who are already high rank members who are focused on maintaining their ranks, and not worried with growing anymore.

Ranking will be much more difficult for new users and low ranking members, while the high ranking members will be more focused on maintaining their ranks from deranking. New users will not find interest joining the forum, due to the rigid system, the activity/traffic of the forum will reduce as well, as a result of reduced posting, in other to maintain ranks from deranking and quality posts.

With this new system, if the forum do have a total of 1000 posts a day, and 100 spam post before this implementation, the forum posts will reduce to 500 posts a day, maybe with no spam posts and the rate of merit farming will as well increase, for the reason that every posts will be merited.

Signature campaign will also be affected, the total number of posts will be reduced for every campaign, the number of participants will be reduced as well for participation, and also, the number of campaigns coming to the forum might also be affected.

One thing I have noticed since coming to this forum is that bitcointalk has been around for a long time but even though it has been around for a long time, there are no such enthusiastic members here anymore. There were many users who have become inactive and are not using their accounts. There is no guarantee that those who are here will stay for a long time but I think that according to the system that the forum has to gain talent, new users who come to this forum gradually become interested in this forum but many are not interested in these things.

Those who are interested try to gain qualifications after seeing everything on the forum but if the forum becomes more complicated then the users will become more disinterested and the number of users on the forum will decrease further. Although the discussion about bringing a new system is very good, it remains to be seen how the forum users will take it. I think the forum users will not be very interested in the new system that is being discussed.

With this system being discussed, a lot could be achieved. Spam would definitely be reduced, and many negative things, as the OP mentioned, would be prevented. On the other hand, in my opinion, it would significantly decrease the number of members on the forum, because if you already had to work hard to earn merits, you would have to work even harder to maintain your rank. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you’re not very active, and as a result, you would lose your rank. It definitely has both advantages and disadvantages.

Any type of de-meriting system can also become counter effective and actually cause more spam in certain forum boards while reducing it elsewhere. If users can lose the ranks they have achieved if they don't keep earning merits regularly, they will start writing more in sub-boards where most of the merits are issued. Why? Because they will want to earn those few merits that allow them to keep their rank until next time. You will then have spam in areas where we don't have that much of it, and you will see new names posting there and repeating like parrots what other users (better than them) already said in a hope that they will be merited.   

To be honest, I don't think this is such a good idea.

Its perfectly normal to take a break from forums from time to time, and it makes no sense to me to lose rank you achieved just because you wanted to take a break every once in a while. People take bitcointalk (and forums in general) way too seriously already and this will just add to that feeling.

Currently we can see how effective concretion has become in the gambling board, because every campaign is about gambling, saying this because if this demeriting is implemented according to your own perception of it, people will spam to meet up merit like they spam in the gambling board to meet up post requirement for campaigns which explains your opinion. Personally, I just noticed that there is no much spamming as before but that’s a bias maybe it’s as a result of my absence in the forum for a while now.

I agree with @Ultegra134 that the merit system isn't perfect, but it has ameliorated the forum in many ways.
I also agree with @Pmalek that de-merit can be counter effective, but I disagree with the "any" de-meriting system.
I also agree with @Rikafip that taking breaks is not only normal but also very likely to happen. Sometimes either for recreation, or other times for more serious reasons. I've seen many respected and well-established users taking breaks.

Having said that, I'm sure that @PowerGlove can adjust the proposed system in a way that can respect both the existing system (by making de-meriting as efficient and fair as possible), but also allowing breaks for users.

In fact, if you consider it, I'm not saying something very wise here. All I'm saying is that the system should be fair and not to judge based on users' away-time.

I don't see a pressing need for a change. As I said, the forum isn't gaining in popularity. No forum is. Are we expecting a huge influx of brand-new users coming to Bitcointalk soon? because I am not. I don't see why you should log in to the forum one day and see 2150 merits to your name (or less) when you earned 2174 but took a break from Bitcointalk or you were sick, recovering from an accident, etc. Any problem a de-merit system is supposed to fix isn't as serious as it might have been back in the day when merits were first introduced.

Almost nobody worthwhile is going to come to a place where 95-99% of the posts are generic junk. Chicken and egg, you got the order of things reversed. If the quality was better, there may be a chance for attracting valuable users. At the current state of things, however, there is no chance.

I think you're both a bit unfair. Obviously forums aren't popular for many reasons. However:

1. I'm seeing the bullshit being posted on X, reddit and other platforms and, especially regarding bitcoin, in this forum you'll see top-notch content from several users, whereas in other platforms you'll literally see only garbage. Yes, there is lot of junk in here, obviously, but I owe a lot of my knowledge to this forum.

2. I don't think it's fair to characterize people as non-worthwile for coming to the forum. I mean, for me, even though you'll laugh, this forum is mostly entertainment. I don't think writting on X is more worthwile. I write for bitcoin because I like it, but there's nothing wrong with writting for unrelated stuff.

3. The most serious discussions for Bitcoin; I thinks I've seen them on GitHub or in some Nostr conversations. I can't compare them with this forum because this forum is called BitcoinTalk, but only one section of the forum is intended for Bitcoin. There is a marketplace, there are off-topic discussions, altcoins' discussions etc. Why there is a gambling section in a bitcoin-related forum? Because it's a forum... It's not supposed to be a place where onlyscientific papers are discussed. I don't like this fact, but I don't care too much, I'm participating where I want to participate.

To conclude: there are many valuable users in this forum from whom you can get great knowledge. It's supposed to relax us, not to make us angry, anxious or whatever.

There is a difference. Ignoring the bots, there is simply a lot more genuine content over there even if it is bullshit or stuff like "GM" or shilling shitcoin scams like Zcash. Posts that farm engagement tend to have a much wider scope and style than posts that are trying to fill a predetermined criteria relating to the number of posts per week. I think generally the way signature campaigns are structured is making this problem worse too.

My observation leads me to conclude that we have an extreme pareto principle here, 5-10% of participants are good posters and everyone else is trash. They seem to try to create as many posts as possible with the least amount of effort -- which leads to very generic and bland posts. When you are grinding for engagement on places like X, the opposite is often true as you are essentially in a battle for attention with everyone else.

This was not my intention. People who are spamming and shitposting are not worthwhile, people like d5000 and stwenhao are worthwhile. Perhaps my choice of wording was not the best, but you get my point. We need more of the latter and fewer of the former. It is hard to get more of such users when most threads are filled with generic junk. They would have to know where to look and which threads to avoid in order to find good content that would interest them to stay here.

I can't argue against this one. I'm seeing it too. I just know that some managers are doing much better work in selecting quality posters than others.


No worries, I understand your point. Although you're kinda biased for these two users because you share common thoughts. I mean I like users with different opinions, if they're not dogmatic. But I understand that you're referring to bullshit posting and not to well-explained posting of different opinions.

Sure, but the problem (relating to campaigns) lies in the campaign design which seems similar across all managers. It does not do much to incentivize quality posting -- neither does it usually make a differentiation between d5000 and any other equally ranked member that just barely meets the threshold. I don't know how it was before, I've just read some comments in passing but surely something could be done to improve it. The issue of spam is how it is currently because no side that could do something about it is actually doing anything. If the current things don't work well, a few experimental tweaks won't cause a catastrophe.

Anyway, if the campaign design is such that it requires a lot of users and the situation with the number of quality users is already critical then this issue just circulates back and forth and makes things worse at each step. When you think about incentives you must realize that there are many different types of actors here. Let's focus on those whose only goal is to earn money. If there is no incentive at all for them to even try to be better, they won't. While this group is generally undesirable, it can be manipulated through incentives.

Somebody may claim that the merit system already has these incentives, but they are weak and unrelated to campaign design. Most users are easily able to pass the merit requirements that campaigns have. You can earn merit through contests, reports, and from local board merit farmers. At no point does this directly incentivize you to write better posts all the time; that would be the case if the merit system was exclusively rewarding high quality posts (with an increasing average quality threshold for the whole forum) which is not the case here.

The reason I bring those two up is because I come across them frequently, not because we agree on everything (but yes, of course I am biased in my choice of example -- everyone is). Furthermore, they are a good pair to use as an example because one participates in a signature campaign and the other does not. We need both of these types of users, but on a level of quality that goes in that direction (which is the point that I wanted to make). How to best incentivize such users to join and to improve their retention is the question, but clearly doing nothing is the wrong answer in any case.  :P

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Further, you can see that any excuses relating to "a chance for improvement or education" are just bullshit designed to keep the status quo. If you take a good note, you may only occasionally find an user that has shown significant improvements in their quality over time. It simply does not happen often because most users are just spamming whatever, content that is extremely generic but somehow relevant to the topic, with the least amount of effort. I'm certain that it is not impossible to design incentives (for each relevant system) that will start changing this for the better. It should be noted that no incentive system can fix this in a short period of time as the issue here is systemic.

Social media is mostly junk, advertising, and shilling, and the people who don't want to hang out on forums still spend time there. That's what the kids do nowadays, even if it's mostly garbage and very forgettable. There are very few sections of this forum that I feel are worth protecting and preserving. They aren't as good as they were a few years ago, but they don't have the amount of spam we see elsewhere. I would rather keep them as they are and not have spammers go there in search of a lifeline. I think a de-meriting system would make them do that.

If mods and admins feel like it, then they can apply stricter moderation on spammers and start deleting more junk posts. If campaign managers want more quality in the campaigns they manage, they can restrict access to fewer participants.

And this, in my opinion is the best summary of the actions we can take, in order to ameliorate the forum:
a. better moderation
b. stricter campaigns

I sent theymos a PM about (a differently named and more elaborate version of) this idea about a year ago. I don't recall getting a response. In fact, most of the reason I created this topic is because I thought, "I'm getting ready to move on, and I think that this idea is good enough to preserve, so I better make a post about it." :-\

I had a recent exchange with him about this thread, and I think he'll leave some thoughts here when he finds the time.

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I think I've said everything I can usefully say about this idea with the four posts that I've already made in this topic, here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5557124.msg65740399#msg65740399), here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5557124.msg65747786#msg65747786), here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5557124.msg65760722#msg65760722), and here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5557124.msg65832867#msg65832867)). Honestly, I don't see how someone could read those four posts and still be confused about what's being proposed, but, communication is hard and I know that I'm not the easiest person to understand, so I'll try to wrap this whole thing up into one last attempt to explain this idea...

Firstly, I've seen some persistent confusion around whether or not this system might de-rank people or mess with their merit balance while they're away from the forum. It won't. If they're not making posts, then it can't do anything to their account.

Secondly, I've seen some confusion around people thinking that they'll somehow be penalized if they don't receive merit within ten posts. That's not how it works:


When I wrote the above (in the OP), I picked the words carefully, and things like in effect, on average, and slowly drifting are important cues that, in the general case, nothing bad is going to happen if you write ten posts without receiving any merit (I say in the general case because there will be situations, at least according to what's described in the OP, where you happen to have exactly the amount of merit needed for your jr-member-or-higher rank, and you then happen to make exactly ten posts at a cost of 0.1 merit per post without receiving any merit back for either those posts or any of your previous posts, which will mean that your "carry" balance has then reached the precise point of causing you to drop down one level in rank).

So, the system as proposed already handles the above two points of concern. That is:

(1) You can post 50 times a day, or twice a year, or once a decade, it's fine: You're not expected (or even encouraged) to try to post according to any specific schedule.

(2) You can earn merit either regularly or irregularly, in small amounts or in large amounts, for new posts or for old posts, it's fine: You're not expected (or even encouraged) to try to earn merit according to any specific schedule.

What you are expected to do (and only if you care about maintaining or growing your rank) is to aim for a long-term merit:post ratio of at least 1:10 (and by that I mean a true merit:post ratio of at least 1:10, not a cheeseball ratio accomplished by deleting your posts, which, BTW, will not confuse the system that I'm proposing).

I also feel like it's important to understand the "framework" that's being proposed. The main idea contained in the OP (and refined in later posts) is the idea that merit could be "spendable" (ordinary merit, I mean, not sMerit, obviously). And when I say "spendable", I mean spendable in a partially non-destructive way, as in, in a way that doesn't make it simply disappear once it's been spent (after all, merit is hard-won for many people, including myself). So, when you "spend" (some amount of) your merit, the idea is that it gets converted into a different form called "carry". Once merit has been converted into carry, it loses its utility and can't be spent again. For a really silly example, and one that's actually come up before as an April Fools idea, imagine that Bitcointalk had a cool little "shop" where you could buy cosmetic items for your profile. You've got, let's say, 2000 merit, and you see something special in the shop that you have to have, like maybe a specific song that will play when people look at your profile. The song costs 100 merit. You buy it. Now you have 1900 merit left to spend and 100 carry (aka spent merit). Then you see something else you want, like maybe a feature that allows you to have an animated avatar. The animated avatar feature costs 500 merit. You buy it. Now you have 1400 merit left to spend and 600 carry. And so on. Notice that what's going on here is that you have two balances, one that represents your unspent merit, and one that represents your spent merit. If you add your unspent balance to your spent balance then you'll have your total merit (in the preceding example, the sum is, at every point, 2000).

Now, if you understand the above paragraph then you have everything you need to understand this whole idea. If $merit represents the sum over the ledger-like table that records merit transactions (a database table that already exists), and $carry represents the sum over the ledger-like table that records carry transactions (a database table that I'm proposing), then your unspent merit balance is $merit - floor($carry), and your spent merit balance is floor($carry) (and your total merit balance is just $merit). Let's call your unspent merit balance your UMB, your spent merit balance your SMB, and your total merit balance your TMB. What I'm saying in the OP is that I think it would generally raise the quality of people's posts if their rank depended on their UMB instead of their TMB and if there was a small-but-not-inconsequential payment required to post (unless, as I explained later in the thread, that person has no merit left to spend, in which case they'll effectively be allowed to post "for free").

The questions that need to be answered within this framework (for now) are:

(1) How much merit should it cost to make a post?

(2) How should this UMB vs. SMB vs. TMB stuff be displayed?

My current answer to (1) is: I think 0.1 merit is a reasonable starting point (though, if you read my other posts, you'll see that I also think it's perhaps wise to make things easier for accounts that haven't yet reached "Full Member"). The specific amount of merit that you routinely "pay" to make a post has the effect of establishing the long-term merit:post ratio that, if you care about maintaining or growing your rank, you should aim to reach or exceed. I can't think of any active users that have a merit:post ratio of less than 1:10 (as in, their merit balance divided by their post count is less than 0.1) that I also think can't improve and that I also think would be generally missed if they got frustrated by this system and left Bitcointalk. My concern with setting this value to something very low/forgiving is that this system would then end up making very little difference to the problem that it's attempting to "move the needle" on (which is, basically, mindless/low-effort posting).

My current answer to (2) is: I think the TMB should be displayed next to posts/PMs (that is, like it is currently, so, change nothing in terms of how your merit balance is displayed away from your profile page). I think this will have the effect of making people feel like the merit that they've earned (or been airdropped) still exists in its original form and that they should still be proud of their total balance. On the profile page, I think it should display your TMB while your SMB is zero, otherwise it should display something like "UMB (+SMB)" (which, remember, sums to your TMB, so it's just a slightly more informative way of showing the same thing that it currently shows). For example, let's say that this system has been in effect for a few years and someone has 4000 activity and 1200 merit. When you encounter their posts/PMs and look below their name, those are the metrics you'll see. But, you might also notice something odd, and think, "Hero Member? How can that be? They have enough activity and merit to be a Legendary, so what's going on?", and then when you navigate to their profile page you see that next to "Merit:" it says "900 (+300)". That should be read as, "This account has received 1200 merits, 900 of which remain unspent, and 300 of which have been spent and lost their utility." (And the only change that profile scrapers will have to make is to maybe use a global regex like \d+ and mind the match count. If there's one match, then turn it into an integer and use it as is. If there are two matches, then turn each one into an integer and use the sum. If there are no matches, or more than two, then log an error.)

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I've been working on this post for a few days, and I'm now out of energy to keep re-writing it, but, I do want to maybe revise my above answer to (2). What if, even on the profile page, your TMB was displayed (so, leave it the way it is, basically), and the "UMB (+SMB)" thing only appeared as a tooltip (that is, it was put into a title attribute on the td that contains your merit balance)? That way, it really would feel like your merit balance isn't being "messed with" by this system.

For example, here are my own current metrics:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/10/29/UmBoBG.png

Now, imagine that I never received another merit and that I made 3000 posts over the next 1000 days. Then my metrics might look like:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/10/29/UmB5XD.png

And, if you hovered over (or near to) my merit balance, you'd see:

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/10/29/UmB7zf.png

I believe that this is more than conservative and there should be no issue for anyone who is not a shitposter. My situation:

• These days I have a fair number of posts in the gambling sections. Those receive practically no merits because 99.99% of the posts in there are complete shit. Aside from a few people, nobody reads anything there and the users just write whatever they can, no matter how wrong or bland it is. Merit sources generally ignore it.
• I am specifically ignored by a few biased global merit sources because they don't like my tone of writing and by the CSAM reviewing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5560420) retards in Wall Observer.
• I am specifically ignored by local board sources because I call them out for their shenanigans and local merit farming.

Despite all of these, I am at a very comfortable ratio of ~ 1:1.27 (with this post included). Meanwhile:

• d5000 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=85033) is at 1:1.06.
• stwenhao (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2755792) is at 1:0.45.
• Your ratio: 1:0.104.

I don't see any significant members having issues keeping a good ratio. The highest quality contributors or users that engage in merit cycling (like in WO) will converge towards 1 or lower. Most users will probably be in the middle 4-8 and only the worst shitposters will have an issue with this over time. However, since there are contests and other easy way to get some merits they will still have ways to try to fix their situation if they put in some effort. Furthermore, they can just play nice towards merit sources (both global and local board) and this will increase their prospects of earning merits (and avoid limitations as in my case). I don't see how anyone reasonable could complain about this proposal.

I'd make it much stricter if it was up to me. Even 1:5 would be generous, but there is no chance that the admin would approve of something like that. The ratio that you propose, as you said, is very forgiving.

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This is my post number 666, I guess that's some sort of sign.  :P

Yes. Usually, reaching something around 1:0.5 is easy. I think the limit should be somewhat like 1:1 or 1:2. Because 1:1 basically means reaching a single merit per post, and 1:2 means one merit per two posts. For 1:0.5, it means two merits per post, and many people send two merits, instead of one, just because it allows sending back one merit by the receiver.

Also, the activity counter can tell something. Usually, it should be 1:1, meaning that your post count is the same as your activity. If it is not, then it is usually a sign of writing simply too much, and then, the quality can be easily increased, by making a delay. For example: if someone has one activity point per four posts, then by just posting 4x less things, the quality could usually significantly go up, by spending that time, to make one better post, instead of four average ones.

That's why alt-accounts are needed: to say, what you want to say, without worrying about merit blacklists. Usually, owning at least two accounts is needed, because then, one account can simply "be nice", and earn enough merits, and another account can "say the truth". Also, it is useful, if you want to argue with yourself, because many people cannot stand the fact, that you can disagree with your old posts, and for that reason, alt accounts are useful, because otherwise, people would believe, that the account changed hands, if you start judging your old arguments.

In many places, removing/editing an old post is blocked. Fortunately, there are many crawlers here, so even if someone destroys "the property of the forum", by making old topics less useful, then the previous content can still be accessed. But in the case of just counting some ratios, removing posts can simply not decrease the counter, and that should solve it. Which means, that if someone produced 1000 posts, and removed 900, then if 1000 will be used, instead of 100, when counting ratios, then it should be hard enough to game the system.

A rule of a thumb is to reach 1:0.5 ratio, which means two merits per post on average. Better results are great, but worse results usually means, that there are too many posts, and their quality should be increased. Another rule of a thumb, is to have 1:1 post to activity ratio, which means sending one post per day on average. Then, by just comparing these two counters, it is easy to determine, if a given post should have a delay of publication, or not. And then, if there are many delayed posts, then there is more than enough content, to moderate it, and make one good post, instead of many worse ones.

This part I can't agree with. There are times where corrupt forces are spending resources to attack Bitcoin, for example as they managed to corrupt luke-jr and cause the OP_RETURN drama. At those times one can easily make more than 14 posts per day only about that single topic, and you would be doing it for a good reason. There are other times where this would apply though, e.g., if there are a lot of large news relating to Bitcoin in a short period of time. The user would have force himself to abstain from contributing for longer periods of time to get back to the ratio. Anyhow, quality post =/= long post. Unless the idea is to turn every post into a long essay, then I can't agree with this idea.

I think merit source bias and blacklists are issues that are of less priority though, so it would warrant tweaking the system in regards to this only after some measures have been undertaken (such as the one proposed here). Regarding the bolded part, I agree but it probably results from too much vigilance. On average it is probably better to be extra cautious this way as long as account trades are allowed.

This seems extreme but I understand where you are coming from. However, I can't agree with it at this time and of course the chance that the liberal admin would do it this way is zero chance. If a post does not receive a lot of merit that does not necessarily mean that it is not a good post, even if this is often exactly what it means. It can simply mean that nobody who has enough merit or wants to send merit has seen it. This is understandable. Who wants to read a 55-page thread titled "Is Gambling a scam (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5520439.0)" or a thread with more than 1000 pages titled "Buy the DIP, and HODL! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5132720.0)" to find a few meritable posts? (most users who are participating in the latter are doing so to farm merit off of a single generous sender, they couldn't care less about the topic -- I am aware; still, other merit sources or quality contributors will ignore such massive threads).

I believe that starting at 1:10 or even down to 1:5 would be better and then this limit can be progressively tightened over time. If the proposal starts working which would mean that the number of junk posts started to diminish, then good posts shall become more visible and thus receive a higher number of merits on average. This could become a self-reinforcing positive loop, whereas right now there is a negatively reinforcing loop. A small observation here is that most shitposters (or their accomplices) almost never give merit to the best posters of the forum (such as the ones that I usually give in my examples).  ;)

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I gave you a merit even if we don't agree in the details. That's how it should be done; instead many users turned this into an Instagram style popularity contest.  ::)

Sure, that's why the first metric to check, is activity to merit ratio (which is visible on the left, and can be easily checked). So, if you want to avoid punishing people with more posts, then you can replace posts to merit with activity to merit, and then it should work better.

Many statistics on BPIP can be checked for the last 30 days, 90 days, 120 days, or 150 days. Even if there are bubbles, then they can reach more stable values over time. So, to avoid punishing some users, then it can be counted per more posts, or per more days, and only applied then. For example: for lower ranks, for the first 100 posts or so, rules can be less restrictive. But if someone made 100 posts, and didn't receive a single merit, then it definitely means, that there is some problem. And if that user can write hundreds of posts more, and also remains unmerited, then something is at least suspicious.

Of course. But forum is mainly made for longer than shorter posts. For shorter messages, there are other channels, like IRC, Discord, or whatever. And also, forum is prepared for the content, that needs to be indexed.

Yes. But it is a clear signal: "try harder". Or "write better content". People don't have to make masterpieces, rewarded with 50 merits. Much more important thing, is if they can get any merits from anyone.

And it is by design. To get at least a single merit from many sources, it is enough to just get their attention. If the content you make is not a spam, and if they reply to you, by just quoting it, then you should get at least a single merit from them. So, 1:1 ratio is achievable just by "being noticed", and "writing in the always-merited places". And then, going to "1:0.5" is all about "putting some effort". So, picking 1:2 or 1:5 is just "extremely easy". But well, even 1:10 is better than nothing.

Topics like that are blacklisted by many sources, just because of the title. Also, if there is "a thread with more than 1000 pages", then it is usually considered as "the bubble for spammers". In that case, it is good, that we have such topics, because their main purpose, is to keep spammers in their own honeypot, and let other users talk in shorter topics, where things are easier to find and discuss.

Also, topics with a lot of pages, are needed mainly for entertainment. Serious topics are splitted out of such places, and developed separately. But because first, you need a content, and then you can give it a title, it is a good brainstorming tool.

Hmm... I see that I left an unbalanced closing paren in my previous post. That's a bad bad PowerGlove. No steak with your chips tonight! OK, fine, maybe half a steak, but no fried egg! OK, fine, you can have one fried egg, but it will be cooked through! And don't let me see you having a slice of tarte tatin or asking your wife to dust cinnamon on your cappuccino! :D

Don't worry too much about people not "liking" you. I've noticed you sometimes say things in an abrasive way and/or say things that a lot of people are probably already thinking but would never actually state publicly. That kind of thing, when it isn't trolling, is rare and appreciated on Bitcointalk (by some, anyway). That being said, and if I may offer you a bit of advice: I think you'll do better (as in, I think you'll avoid picking up trust-system-related "punishments" and will therefore last longer with a healthier frame of mind) if you find more constructive ways to express your perspectives. Thinking of my own trajectory, I'm pretty much certain that if I had just impulsively said everything that I wanted to say on/about Bitcointalk without first toning down my frustration level and then making a considerable effort to come across as polite, I'd have "flamed out" after a few months of posting and would likely have been thought of as a troll. (For better or worse, and among a million other forms of modern brain damage, the working definition for "trolling" seems to be: "Sharing upsetting perspectives, especially in an impolite way.")

For example, the specific incident that compelled me to work on adding 2FA to the forum (when I was still an ordinary user) was something that, at the time, made me think, "It's so very fucking stupid that the forum hasn't implemented TOTP. Can someone please pull their finger out of their ass and just get this done, FFS! Why is this so difficult? How has this been complained about for over a decade without solution? Can nobody here program? Are you all soft in the head, or what?", but, instead of sharing that perspective, I shared something much more politely worded and then quickly concluded that I should just tackle the problem myself (as in, if I had shared my honest thoughts on the 2FA issue, it would only have led to me rubbing people very much the wrong way and causing them to think, "Wow you're an asshole. If you think this is an easy problem to solve and that the rest of us are idiots, then why don't you try to solve it yourself, or maybe just fuck off altogether?", and so I skipped past that avoidable ugliness and decided that the only path with any profit on it would be for me to keep my criticisms to myself and quietly get to work).

Yup. Me, too.

Probably 0.2 merit per post is where I would start if it were up to me, and I'd then ramp it up (slowly) over time until Bitcointalk became readable and enjoyable enough that a random intelligent outsider might choose to spend their time here without any financial incentive to do so. I'll know that it's starting to do some good when I can read the "Bitcoin Discussion" board for more than 2 minutes without feeling embarrassed for all of us. Though, on other days, I'm less bullish about this whole idea, and I worry that the "brain drain" is already so close to complete that it's now a lost cause to try to reverse it. It's as if years of "Bitcointalk's fine! In fact, it's better than fine. It's great!" has given its many problems the breathing room they needed to metastasize, and now its treatment options are severely limited (as in, all of the options that might actually work also carry the risk of quickly killing the patient).

I've gone back and forth about this, but, after I wrote my previous post, I was left with the thought that 0.1 is very close to "inconsequential". The thing is, 0.1 is about as high as I think might actually be implemented, and my thinking, especially as I wind down my "Bitcointalk career" [1], is very shaped by:


[1] I've been alluding to, for a while now, the fact that I'm getting close to throwing in the towel and stepping down as the forum's fix-it guy. In case anyone cares, all that really means is that I'm finding it very, very difficult to operate within this environment (I can't tell you how much I miss working alone and actually getting stuff done), and I think that to prevent me from (very soon) just completely losing my sense of humor and leaving the forum permanently, it would be wise for me to opt-out of receiving further payments, to again consider myself to only be a sometimes-volunteer, and to then re-focus the bulk of my freed-up attention on the independently-pursuable Bitcoin(talk)-related projects that I've been wanting to work on for a long time now. In practice, what I think that will look like is me finishing one or two more SMF patches and then being mostly absent for 2026 and 2027 before showing up again in 2028 to ask people to help me test whatever mini-project it is that I've completed by that point. (I'm hoping that by the time I return, Bitcointalk hasn't yet crossed the event horizon dooming it to become just a few big fish left flopping around in the murky puddle of a micro-earning shithole disguised as a discussion forum, but, if it has, then, I guess I'll just politely wish everyone all the best and say my final goodbyes.)