Bitcoin Forum

A system that would reward quality over quantity has significant potential on a forum, where information and opinions are shared - such as Bitcointalk.

The current merit system has only started and will likely improve and change (as has the member system on Bitcointalk). However, the way it is right now, there are some CRITICAL flaws.

(1) FORGET DECENTRALIZED DEMOCRACY - NOW CENTRALIZED ARISTOCRACY

The higher ranks get all the merit power.

It would be a correct assumption to say that accounts that have been on the platform longer have more significance and their posts are of higher quality, but sMerits raise this assumption to the absolute. Old accounts definitely post better quality and are rewarded with sMerits without review, while newer accounts are definitely posting shittier quality and get no sMerits.

Moreover, accounts with higher statuses will be perceived psychologically as posting something more important and will get unfairly more sMerits than the same post by a Newbie.

Plus, opinions held by older generations of Bitcointalk have FAR more significance and ability to be rewarded than fresh ideas and posts brought on by the new.

What happens when one minority class is inherently preferred to the other? Democracy fails. Decentralization, the core of blockchain technology - fails.

(2) INFLATION TO PLATFORM STAGNATION

Right now is the time when people have the most sMerits. Each transaction will divide them by two and eventually only the sMerits that are mined will remain. That means two things:

(1) the time to get sMerits is now, because it will get increasingly harder in the future;
(2) the newer the member is (joined now, joined a month from now, two months from now) - the harder the climb up will be, regardless of whether they are posting quality posts or not.

Eventually, only a few will be allowed to join higher ranks through the process of sMerit limitation. Elitist? Absolutely. Moreover, the support it offers to current old members is EXTREMELY disproportional to the damage it does to newer ones. Perhaps, a dip in bitcointalk popularity can be foreseen.

(3) DOES QUALITY WIN? PERHAPS NOT.

People are people. With the current system, opinions that are supported by the majority, opinions that are populist and inflammatory, and opinions on select topics - all get rewarded, others get discouraged. Not popular opinions, great for discussion but not for sMerit, calmly stated opinions - which will lose to attention grabbing, and non-mainstream topics will all naturally decline through this motivation system. Goodbye opinions discourse?

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I believe these problems are likely to get fixed as sMerits develop. Perhaps there will be supply easement or maybe new members will also get some sMerits to vote.
As for right now, it is a flawed system that is likely to shake up the status quo - and not in a positive direction.

What do you think can be done about this? Would a post get more merit points if it would be written in caps, have an extremely worded, but popular opinion? I am all for a quality-measuring system, but this...

For every merit you get, you get half of the Smerits. This has nothing to do with your current rank. Unless the merit sources are partial , I see only benefits with this system for the forum.

ill bite and give you a merit.. why? because you actually put time and effort into this post.

that's what this whole thing is about..

This highlights the problem in my opinion. Opinions get rewarded, sig campaign supporters will get rewarded, but what about those involved in tech discussions? I bet they will get ignored. Tech support and help about Bitcoin used to be the primary aim of the forum. I got a lot of help when I joined from people like Shorena, but where are they now?

Thanks TMAN!

Time and effort can get rewarded, but the inherent problems still remain. I saw a post made by another user that I haven't thought of myself - in addition to the flaws I mentioned, first couple of posts in a thread get far higher rewards, than those in the middle or even new ones.

That also seems far less to do with quality, but rather inadvertently encouraging a different pattern of behaviour - starting new threads, or being "first" to comment (perhaps something contradictory, to provide a difference of opinion just for the sake of that difference?) - will get more rewards than something of better quality, but posted later. 

This isn't entirely true mate. Yes, for each sMerit you send, only 0.5 sMerits are credited to the receiver. However, there are also Merit Sources. There are 49 such accounts at the moment, likely increasing over time. The 'supply' of sMerits is replenished every month for these Merit Sources.

There is no reason for them to 'hoard' sMerits, because they will get more next month. Besides, they are trusted forum members with the intention to use this new Merit system to help the forum, so if they see good posts, they should Merit that post to keep the system going.

As I posted in another thread, it would be interesting to see some data, if the moderators/staff will make it available. Forum members can analyze the data, and even suggest better ways to help circulate Merit in the system.

You're right - there are merit miners! These miners are already active (I assume?). However, there is also the amount of points that was released to the members. With each transaction, the amount the members currently hold gets halved - until it is JUST the miners. Thus, supply is at a maximum right now and falling.

Moreover. As the crypto-economy gets increasingly accepted and known, I assume the number of new members coming onto the platform will increase faster than the number of miners? Thus, the gap between supply and demand will rise.

That means the price - whether it'd be the degree of quality, connections, or actual currency will increase and the ability to get points and advance in the ranks will decrease. Am I wrong somewhere in the logic?

The amount of sources was already increased from 35 to 49, as well as the average sMerit every source gets per month.
This is after just one day, it's growing and likely to do so even more if needed.

That is true. If the number of active sources will be proportionally dependent on the number of active users on the platform, that will keep the merit supply & demand in equilibrium. But that is not yet clear or transparent. It probably will be once the merit system gets more developed and stable!

I read through the thread,  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0 and the concept is wonderful. We are not left in doubt of room for improvement as time goes on. One other thing is that the points seem to be accumulating that is why the higher ranks have higher points.

I agree that the concept is wonderful, it's just that the implementation needs some ironing out. Higher ranks have higher points makes sense if we would award merits just for the number of posts. But the whole point is that we award them for the quality of posts and not all high rank members post with the same quality. The genesis of the merit program now has more of a blanket approach it seems.

I think it will help in the long run, but it is far too early to tell if it is working quite yet. I think it will stop the flow of farmed accounts and we can focus on catching the already farmed up accounts etc...

A lot of people who complain, although it is still too early to judge whether the merit system is successful or not.

Many members think the sale of merit will happen or many useful posts that don't get merit and blah blah blah. But to make this system successfully, I think the sources member must be added the amount was too little.

Merit sources are already being added and now we have 49. Admin said that we may expect up to 100 by the end of this year.

Yeah - if there will be more sources added according to the platform's needs, then it would improve many of its flaws. Funny how a forum meant for decentralized technology and ideology is so centralized :)