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?