Bitcoin Forum

Why haven't any been awarded on the Serious discussion or Ivory Tower boards?

I gave 5 to Theymos for his helpful WiFi post, but there don't seem to have been any others. So which is failing - the Serious Discussion board, or the Merit system. I suspect that neither is failing, it's just that there is still a rush for the ability to participate in air drops and the like.

We are one day in to the new system and it's too soon to jump to conclusions, most people are still trying to figure out exactly what the merit system is and how it is going to work. Once people come to terms with such things we'll see it handed out more readily to good quality posts. As of yet it seems as if it is only really being spread about in this part of the forum.

Hmm I just gave one out in the Serious Discussion board about a minute ago (just got back after a hiatus and hadn't checked it out before), but in my opinion, that board and the Ivory tower don't seem like they will do too well.

I was looking through Serious Discussion, and it seems like the Bitcoin Discussion forum to me. There is definitely less spam, but the trade-off is a lot fewer active users.
Ivory Tower is even worse in that aspect, there is something under ten posts there right now.

Sure, they might be higher quality, but I still don't know if it will have enough active users for it to be worth monitoring.

EDIT: I notice you, OP, have probably the most posts in Ivory Tower, and I guess my point stands. Barely any users are aware of it to contribute.

When members here notice that there rank is not increasing even after required activitity through the shit posts, they will come to senses. Believe me many might not have seen this merit feature on their profile.

It's been a day. Just one. Give it a week, or even better, give it a month.
Expecting changes like this to have a noticable impact on all sections of the forum without any delay is odd.

You've made a start. Others who read and enjoy the SD/IT section will follow, eventually.

I promote the serious discussion board because I want to discuss Bitcoin. The main discussion board is completely useless. It's full of senseless posts like "can Bitcoin replace banks?". and the mega thousand reply spamfests dominate the first pages. Rather that gnashing your teeth and going to another forum to discuss Bitcoin, I hoped that peope would start to use the serious discussion boards.

The other alternative is to rename Bitcoin talk "Air Drop Talk".

But how do the merit sources work anyway?

For instance If X became a merit source, Is it as simple as digging up to look for quality posts in whatever board he wants? or will he be assigned on certain boards?

Because there's still a possibility that a significant number of merit sources are focusing too much on A,B,C,D boards (generally popular) leading to overlooked boards (E,F,G,H).

It's one of the main flaws I can see is that merit sources are too few, it would be better to have more sources but with less to distribute per source, at least then there would be greater coverage across the forum, also the fact that many will be inactive for one reason or another. It would also be nice in time if there was some way for people to nominate either themselves or others for merit if they feel they are worthy and are not being recognised for their contributions.

More sources plus less sMerits to distribute? It's just the same as we have now if you think of it and theymos already stated that merits are supposed be scarce but not too much.
IMO the problem is not the number of merit sources but the boards that will mostly get reviewed. Believe it or not some boards are really popular which will most likely get attention.


You can't be a merit source if you're inactive. People who apply gets reviewed.


You can sort of nominate yourself: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522

To be honest, the merit system seems extremely weird for Serious Discussion/Ivory Tower too tbh.
Those seem like locations where you should be motivated to talk by intrinsic motivation, rather than extrinsic motivation of post count/merit.

I honestly still see myself wading through the trash in Bitcoin Discussion to find the occasional good post, and I think the "total" amount of good discussion in Bitcoin Discussion still outweighs Serious Discussion. But I admit that permanently having to ignore spam is tiresome.