Bitcoin Forum

I agree that the new requirement for level up will do something to avoid the spam. However, I wonder if its advantage is greater than its negative impacts.

As everyone knows that the activity has a limitation of 14 for two weeks. Therefore most of the spam were sent not for level, but for other objectives such as airdrop.

AS of this, I think the major role of new requirement is to limit the level up of new members. may be those who have many accounts could be limited since they may hardly to level up all their accounts to member.

However, a new market of selling/buying merit will soon appear. I believe this new requirement will finally become a new way to earn money but contribute little to the improvement of community.

welcome for your idea and discussion.

A person can only give another person 50 merit points. Merit given is also public, so if someone were to give a spam/crappy post 50 merit, it could be caught by the community and the users given negative trust. Merit isn't very plentiful at the moment (I only got 200 points by being Legendary, which isn't enough to rank someone to Sr. Member), so it would also be very expensive. Hard to predict what will happen for sure, but I don't anticipate merit selling to really pick up.

Existing ranked accounts might go up in value though.

Is the selling of trust a problem right now?

I concur. Those who would abuse the merit system would risk their account to be punished. I don't really know what are the official rules regarding this but I may assume that it would lead to permanent ban in worst case. I do believe that theymos had anticipated this that's why he made it public when you give smerit.

Good point.

the trust maybe not necessary if people didn't want to trade. but the rank is always important since new members need to join the airdrop. it is unfair that the new member get more limitation and even rejected to join the airdrop only because they can not get some merits to level up

yeah its public and we all can see it but what if someone gives merit on a verry old post that is burried around the mega spam thread that new posters, readers and moderators cannot possibly read as it is verry old? how can we combat those mortals that doing this insane idea?

Trust is unlimited, I can give out 100 positive trust ratings today, and not lose anything (maybe my credibility, people would stop caring about my ratings, if I just spam them, but you get the idea).

sMerit is limited. I have a responsibility with it. I can use my sMerit to reward good posts, incentive good behaviour with that (publicly shown) reward and help make this forum a better place by increasing the post quality.
Or I can sell it (likely be banned for doing so), incentive spam and contribute to the already very evident problematic of shitposting.

I cant do both, as I have limited ressources. I have to decide, and if I care about this place, this is an easy decision.

agreed , a new way for scammers to earn profit by selling smerits ..
and we know many legendary people also do such things for money like bumping threads .
and what about those old members who promoted to suhc higher ranks already , its a plus point for them , as they are already legendary/hero member . so no tension of merits .

theymos need to make a public list of sent and received merit of a user, like a trust summary (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=1100191). This will easily solve that problem.

I will do this in the near future, maybe tomorrow. Also top merited posts/topics/users.

The seller can easily tell the buyer "to make a good quality post and then I will merit you"
Or the seller may also include that to his service like "I will also provide you with a somewhat believable quality post so you just need to copy it from me and you post it and then I will merit you"
So yeah it might be a new problem. I think there's always a way to exploit anything.

The thing is, even if users have gained merit this just slows down account farming and alt rings. Imagine: a one-liner poster suddenly has 2k+ merit. They still aren't going to be accepted to high-paying campaigns.

Moreover, they'll probably be blacklisted for the high merit yet low post quality by many of the campaign managers who do care.

A public list will help as well, to track down abuse.

High-quality post = better for the forum. If the user has ONE good post and several shitty ones they still won't be considered for campaigns.

I'll tag them. (Or whatever future method is available for marking spammers)

If theymos is willing, smas could be transformed into something with a global (forum-wide) impact, rather than the currently limited one.
I dont think anyone currently involved with SMAS would object.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1545652.msg28858331#msg28858331

Yes, selling trust is also a problem. However, it affects a smaller sub-set of users who use this forum to trade.

Selling sMerit could potentially be a bigger problem, because a lot of members use forum activity ranks for airdrops, bounties, etc.

The problem with anything like this is that you end up with the "old boys club" type of thing. All the friends giving each other merit etc and the outsiders getting next to none. And of course there's the "I agree with you and so will give you merit" that will happen the majority of the time. It's a nice idea but it requires humans acting responsibly... which they don't...

You've got a point sir but trust is different to merits for merit is a requirement to rank up while trust is used in trading(correct me if I'm wrong). So some maybe able to use this to earn and abuse but the good thing is it is limited. If earning this merits would be hard enough then i think we would likely able to see people wanting to buy merits or people trading merits to each other. Though they will face the consequences of their action too once they get caught. I believe this issue about abusing merits will be closed soon.

Yeah I'm guessing "friends" trading merits will also be a huge problem with this merit system.
Theymos said he will have a public list of top merit post, At least we can easily see what's going on and we can just cry foul if we see "friends" trading merits.

can not agree more that is what i really worried about.

I think this would not be a problem if every member in this community has vigilance. Giving merits to each other is not an issue as long as they did it in credible posts. Everything is transparent here so we can easily see and check whether the said given merit is worth it for the said post and I think those who abused this merit giving system will be punished since we can always tap on that report button on the side to let mods take the best action or maybe we can share it here in meta.

If people want to trade merit, they will never trade it in a spam. So although people has vigilance, they can not clearly identify who is trading the merits. That is the problem

So the merit system incentives people to write high quality posts which in turn they are being rewarded for with merit?
That is what I get from your post. If so, you do expect the merit system to work as intended, right?

sorry for misleading.

A post that is not spam doesn't equal a high quality post.

I could write some long but meaningless posts and buy merit in this post. Or even I could copy some news and let people give me merit. How could you identify if my post  worth the merit?

some spam is easy to identify, however, it is also a easy thing to write a post that seems not a spam but actually a spam.

That is why I think the trading will be a easy thing to do but difficult to catch.

Long and meaningless posts are spam. I dont know if your definition of spam requires shortage, but mine doesnt.
Long posts can be spam as well as short posts, content matters, not length.

I find your source with google, report the copy&paste, you are permanently banned.
It happens now already, copy&pasters are now banned forever, they will continue to be permanently banned in the future.
With the new system, with the merit, those bans will hurt more as the ranks are harder to obtain.

Agree. It will be a trouble for newbie or 'new kids on the block' to find a club so they could receive merit point as kinda hard to earn trust from someone willing to send you some merit. I hope we could see the list of users 'mining' merit to make sure it not going to be some 'power tool' to control and bent other to their will.

I really don't want to see bitcointalk become an echo chamber where if you disagree on some topic with 'the top', you will be marked for life and have no chance to rank up.

It can be a problem if it will not be addressed quickly, merit is confusing but it we will understand how it goes in the future.

I am yet to fully grasp the new merit system but it does not mean that it can be improved upon. I know as we move on in this new era, new challenges will emerge and improvement will be done but one thing is it is not expected to be perfect at the beginning like this. My suggestions is that

1. The same way there is a number of activity that you have to reach to move from one level to another, so also should there be for merit in other to move so if you have say 30 activities but not 30 merit, you are not moving to Junior member of the forum.

2. In other to then accommodate everyone, there should be a centralised thread (not the one everyone is just open threads anyhow) where you post the link of your posts, people see it, then they can review and because one individual cannot give you the entire 30 merits, you then must prove to a lot of people to get to that point.

Merit points are deployed, because of quality control. If you start to sell or buy your merit points it would be indirectly against the rules.
They want to raise quality on BTC forum.

I could understand Merit is a good way to beat the spammers, but i'm sure Merit exchange has already happened.
I've heard from a friend that he just joined a group, and people there are selling Merit at the price about $2-$3, which is a bad news.

I know this agreement was to keep joining signature compaign alive and have a descipline for every post we made.It's a kind of rule that we should take an effort and always be guided with our post so that they can give as merit.For me this is not so easy but it can give as more knowledge and morality that we give important and avoid spammer to this forum.

You should report that friend and the link to the group to the moderators so that they can take necessary actions.

Your giving a hint bro, better if it is a merit you give.  ;)

Problem is detecting the buying and selling of merit points.

I'm starting to see that the primary importance of merit points is to allow members to take part in air drops. So why not forget the merit points, and ban the air drops. It seems that will improve post quality. :)

But that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This forum was literally the first crypto forum, and invariably still has the highest concentration of serious crypto people who have been in the trenches for several years, not just during the recent ICO craze. If I am a new project, I would value the support of this community greatly. If I am an old forum member, I wouldn't mind getting some airdrops to incentivize me to take your project more seriously. It is a win-win really.

Yes, spam is a problem especially with people trying to 'rank up' with low quality posts. But the solution to this spam isn't to ban airdrops in my opinion.