Bitcoin Forum

I've been awarding points in ones and twos because I believe that that is the best way to encourage members to make good posts. This logic probably comes from the likes system on another professional forum that I frequent. I've been a member for just over 2 years, and I've received over 5,200 "likes" in that forum. Members can only award one like per post, but there is no limit to the number of likes an individual post can receive. I think this system has helped me to hone my posting, and it encourages me to make posts that members will find useful or amusing.

I've still got 80 sMerits because I don't go out hunting for posts to merit, but I just award them when I find a post that appeals to me. However, it is quite difficult to find these posts. The most promising boards ( the serious discussion ones ) tend to be neglected by most members. I don't visit the Frog Pond very much, as most of the threads seem to be worthless ( in my opinion ) long tail spam fests. I think I have given away too many on the Meta board - there are too many posts about Merit points, and I've just created another one. :) The beginners board ought to be the place for me to read threads, but that seems to be more about issues other than Bitcoin. Tech support has some interesting threads, but I'm not a power user of Bitcoin, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to make judgements there.

So what's the point of this thread. It's really a plea to turn the Frog Pond into a useful board for Bitcoiners. It wouldn't be too difficult to do. If the mods could lock the long tail spam fest threads so that they slipped away, and the non Bitcoin and newbie threads were moved to the appropiate boards, that would create some breathing space on the first page. There is also something that members could do, please start to make quality posts on the serious discussion boards.

ps. I don't sell sMerit, or give it to people who ask for it, sorry.

Just go everywhere and give them to Newbies/Jr.Members that deserve them.
It's pretty hard to rank up now for them.

Key point here

I think most Newbies and Jr. Members are bounty hunters. They are only want to rank up for signature bounties then hard to choose correct one to give merit. They have to make good posts for earn merit. I think bitcointalk rank up rules will be change more than in future.

Well I've managed to give away 6 sMerit since I started this thread ( big deal :) ).

and I found some interesting posts as well.

Not trying to say that the merit system is not good but to me I feel it's not a good determinant of ranks, reasons being that:
1. There are people out there whose posts are educating and yet no one is touched to merit their work.
2. Friends could just keep sharing their merits among themselves irrespective of the quality of a post.
3. Sooner or later it will be sold and bought all in the quest to rank up.
This will make people try to rank up by all means and for those quality post makers, they end up being where they're. Just imagine newbies and Jr member's account were not given any merit and this leaves me wondering if the mods have no room for them in this forum or better still, no regards for them at all.

I don't think merit is intended to be a ranking tool. I believe it is a tool to improve the quality of the forum. It is really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of posts. So far it seems to be used to "reward" ghosts of the past, and to help members of sig campaigns to "rank up" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think that merit points should only be awarded singly, that woud reduce the abuses slightly.

Would you mind explaining more about those words "~ merit points should only be awarded singly ~", please.

As the name of the topic shown, Merit and new rank requirements, for sure the system was created as a ranking tool, stricter than the older ranking system.

Another problem which related to designing is as you can see in the Theymos topic, there are bunch of merits' senders behind the topic's tittle. It looks extremely messy. I think Theymos should make it better, such as a drop-down list.

Let me take the second point first. The merit system is not a means for ranking members directly. It is more likely to have been created as a barrier to prevent spammers and low value posters gaining rank to pollute the boards with promotional spam.

Now the first point. Awarding 50 points for an indifferent post is not productive for the board, and it centralises control into the hands of the points faucets. This can create conflicts of interest. If it is only possible for a member to award one merit point to a post, then the recognition of good posts is distributed amongst all of the members, and I think that this will reduce the load on the moderators, as posters will try to comply with community values.

Give it to the one who needed , mostly the new comers in the forum. This policy improve our industry or our forum to reduce spammers here in our forum. And by the way give you smerit to people that reply or quote an specific or should I say influence other users. To be specific a post that is constructive and helping , goodluck.

Yes, I'm doing the same. All the points I receive I'm giving to the newbies in the Beginners and Help section. Well, you have to read a lot but from time to time you find a good one which deserve a reward for the effort. So basically just browse the Altcoin/bitcoin  discussion and help section and you will find something for sure. And don't forget reporting spam in the meantime :)

I don't think rank should have anything to do with awarding merit points. The award should be based solely on the post quality and relevance. In fact newbies posting the results of a Google search, without understanding the problem, can clog up a decent thread.

This is the main point of the merit system, this merit system encouraged us to improve our post quality and become more constructive. Also theymos added this to be requirement of ranking system to burden those who are bounty farmers which they only join bounty yet they only do a one liner post with this they will be forced to improve their post if they want their rank to be promoted or they can choose to leave either.

Well this quite true, not only low rank members should be awarded by merit, we also needed it, however the higher rank members like Hero - Legend helps the newly ones to earn merit so that they will improve their post at the same time they can join any bounties out there.

It's good to know that some people are willing to give away sMerit. I really think that some people doesn't even care about giving away their sMerit. They might have a reason or not. This beats the new system, because if some people will not just give away merits, some posts that are educating and sensible will just be left out ignored.

Yeah you're right nothing to do with ranking but still I have 1 point to give, its not easy to decide to whom I shall give it, I prefer to give it to someone to whom it will be valuable, like for a newbie, putting effort to learn or trying to help, like this one for example : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2819905
And not discourage them by calling all of them shitposters.
I hope you get my point. Being a newbie doesn't mean being a 100% spammer, I know that the account farming is a big disease here but between all those fake accounts there are real people joining with interest not only to benefit from the bounty campaigns but to learn and be part of the community and contribute with what they can. Keep in mind that people change by the time and even some shitposters are improving not only because of the merit system but because they gain experience and change their point of view.
I apologize for not being word-perfect in English.

It's not about what your thoughts are it's what's at play right this moment. Merits are determinants of ranks now. To achieve a new rank, your merit point has to be same with the rank post count requirements.

Merit doesn't determine rank, activity does that. Merit just blocks promotion for spammers who gained activity by abusing the forum.

If I may help you to clear the point and say it out loud to other person who read this thread.
I believe that ;


So, you can be a higher rank member but as a person you re still a low class rank member, or you can be a lower rank member but you re a high quality person for this forum (in short, you re worthy).
Activity needs merit to fight the spammer, abuser, and account farmer. Merit needs activity to make sure people rank up in a proper time so there is no account which suddenly get into higher rank members just because that account got so many merit in a day.

Merits will cause nothing but problems for forum users and admins. We have allready seen members being accused of selling merits to other members. When I used to run forums (not crypto forums) I tried the merit sytem out and the emails from users claiming that this person or that person sold merits got so bad I disabled it in the end.
A forum of this size will never stop spammy posts unless there is heavy moderation with admins reviewing every post before it goes live.

While I agree with the merit system and praise the admin/s for their decision to help prevent the stream of low quality posts on the system, it could be seen as a flaw with the activity system. Im not sure if the post/time requirements Ive read before are in place (as in you can only get x amount of activity a week and you need to post x amount of times). Ive seen people ranking up pretty quickly, you can especially see this in ICO organisers accounts who post regularly on their threads. If a person actively participates in the forum for a long period of time then do they not deserve to rank up? If people are only giving out merit for 'outstanding' posts instead of 'beneficial' posts then some people may miss out entirely. There is a lot of politics that enter the frey with a merit system and I hope that the admin/s keep an eye on how it progressing to ensure it is working as they hoped it would.

My sMerit seem to be breeding, I've given out quite a few, but I seem to be back up to 80 again. Giving them out seems to be getting close to having a job here. :)

Posts don't have to be outstanding for me to award sMerit, but they do have to be up to my own ideas of quality/usefulness. I'm sorry that it has to be personal, but that is really the only way that I can handle it. Unfortunately, this means that some outstanding technical posts don't get an award from me - this is because my level of knowledge is not up to understanding the post.

I don't have time to read all the threads here, so I only get to see a small proportion of the posts, but hopefull other members with sMerit can fill in the gaps. This is the advantage of a system that provides for peer approval of members posting.

Absolutely this. The merit system is welcomed and necessary, however as it currently stands with so many established members here saying it's good to only hand out 1 merit at a time for good quality posts - it makes the activity system obsolete since now ranking up will take months if not years per rank. If this is the new goal, then activity requirements should also be made more difficult, perhaps 3x as high as they are currently to reflect the difficulty in acquiring merit. Already we can see a lot of members with the required activity but not enough merit - and some of them are good posters.

That isn't a fault of the merit system, but the fault of members who don't want to act and help to rebuild the forum into a worthwhile asset for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community.

As I have posted elsewhere, merit isn't a requirement for rank upgrade, but it is a filtering system to ensure that activity is not abused. Activity is the toll road through the community that leads to the next platform. Merits are the tokens you receive on the way through the community, and are used to pay the gatekeeper when he opens the gates for activity evaluation. If you don't have enough to pay the gatekeeper, then you have to go back to the community to earn some more tokens. Well it isn't really a payment, as you get to keep the merits, but it is a badge of worth that is awarded by the community. Because it should be a community award, and not a system of bribery, I think there should be a fairly low cap on individual awards.

your words are valid for most of people in this forum. because everyone needs money  :) even so I also support merit system to protect this forum from junk posts.

Wherever the fault may lie, it's still non Hero/Legendary members that foot the burden. And ironically it's only Hero/Legendary members that have the faucet to distribute merit down the chain, and a lot of us see most of this just being awarded to other faucets in a circle. It is great though that you're contributing 80 merit to posters here, but how many others are doing that? I'm not critiquing the merit system though, I like it and agree with it, but the activity requirements just feels out of sync with it - it means on average for every activity you gain, you should be gaining one merit, and it's nearly impossible to acquire merit at that rate. It just feels out of sync.

I'm not a faucet, I have to earn my sMerit. I don't want the responsibility of being a faucet either, as I don't want to become an alt moderator, and that what the faucets should be. I just award sMerit to post that conform to my own subjective ideas. We really need other members to award points to good posters with different opinions and skills.

The idea itself is good, too many fake accounts just to make money in the bounty or just for the purpose of selling them. But at the same time, ti must be revised  because, being limited, someone started to profit by selling the merits . Probably I think there should be some kind of moderation to check that really the merits have been given to really constructive posts.

Okay, first of all, we are facing merit system now, so it cant be applied to the people who get the rank before the system applied. They got that because they are in this forum for long and play by the rules back then and they got the ranks. Maybe they are not a good quality poster, but nothing can be done right now.

Secondly, lets think about this merit points as a score for you when you are in a college or work.



I am not going to discuss about politics, but it is just a real life law that is applied to this forum, and people thinks that they are free from the real world when they are on the internet.

Having a wallet full of sMerit is a bit of a responsibilty. I seem to have reduced it  bit, so I'm a bit more relaxed this afternoon. Hopefully this will give me the chance to research the current problems of running a node under Windows 10.

When everyone complains, do we also have to complain. I think just enjoy what has become our ability. Maybe one moment people will appreciate us.

When we consider the post we created is the best post we ever made, because it must search for so many sources, but not one person respects us, take the positive. What we do is knowledge for ourselves.

Like the philosophy contained in Bitcoin, He is valuable because people think of him as valuable. It is precious because it makes it worthwhile.

Members who don't spend their sMerit should be punished because this is meant to spend for those people who deserve it. Maybe they just don't care for now but I hope in the future sMerit will be given to everyone specially for lower ranks.

The institutionalization system by Merit, for newbie and jr, is obstructive grow, as an newbie come to this forum is for study more, can not write an high technical article or post(unless plagiarism). But for this new Merit system how can i understand there is a source for real beginning to stronger?  We can find it is have effect on spam, but it is also headache for newbie and jr. how can we got the merit?  beg or how to write some good quality post? who care's? so i even just come to here to see some post and do not write anything now, and even reduce to come here. So for an good institutionalization system i think is not to stop the newbie on it way

For newbie and not high ranks, this is a very big problem, for those who have been moving around here for a long time and understand well in the crypto currency, it will not be difficult to collect merit, but for those who are just starting, it's like a noose around your neck, waiting for someone likes your constructive message, now develop account has become much more difficult and longer. It's  not fair :P

It's quite a bit of work hunting for people to award sMerit, and it seems you don't get much thanks for it. I'm starting to understand why sMerit holders just dump their merit on out of date posts. If there was any indication that there would be a penalty for not allocating sMerit, then I would dump them immediately.

The point is we dont find good posts to give merit or even if we find, may people here are too lazy to give smerit.
Think of a point that 70% of the members here are to earn the BTC and tokens, so they don't care much in giving.

Exactly. people only come here just to earn and not to give. They dont give a shit about this new merrit system and they only care about bounties and signature campaigns.

Some people have embraced the system, some of us have even gone out of our way to start threads like this, but quality threads for the lower ranks are few and far between. I am pretty sure that over the next few months I will end up helping to Level UP SR and Hero members more than the lower ranks.

Among other things, this system destroy the community because promotes merits to comments with the same line of thought, no one will ever merit for "good comments" with which you do not agree.

Members do not realize that even those campaigns and bounty programs will leave this forum if they do not see good returns. At such, we should do our best to contribute to the merit system (by giving merits to quality posts) for improvement of this forum.

nope not at all. It destroys the chance of 3rd world account farmers leveling up accounts, once all those accounts stop trying then there will be less shitposts for everyone to trawl through. Less posts = More merits.. Even the likes of Lauda will be handing  out to unknowns then as they will see quality posts and will reward them, Just wait and see..

Why do you think the merit system will destroy the community? I may not want to give points to someone with whom I disagree, but this is a very diverse community, so if you can't find someone to agree with you, then the opinion probably doesn't have a place in this forum.

An example is Tman. I don't agree with some of his opinions and ideas, but I respect his right to have those opinions, and I respect him for following his own standards of morality. I think I've even awarded him some points. :)

Thanks fella, probably because I am a bit of a cunt.. but I do speak the truth in there somewhere!

They Don't care shot about given smerit but each one them and us wants other people gives us merit so we may rank up and up.
we need to do something about not giving smerit thing.

Don't you think it's possible that someone, seeing that one gives merit, write something that might please him instead of writing what he really thinks?

can you give merit for my post ?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2866742.msg29449238#msg29449238

I don't think you will ever receive merit through beg.

Also this is an example to a new type of spam

From what I have been seeing lately will get much harder for ranking up, especially in low ranks!

I have been seeing a lot of merit given to Hero/Legendary, but not that much to Jr. and Members, because people tend to give to the persons they easily recognize!
And sometimes it's not only by name, but a mix of factors to recognize a person... Subconsciously it's easier to recognize a person with an avatar and colorful signature.

I'm doing what is supposed to do... When I see a post that consider good, or someone give me helpful information’s I give some merit, but I don't see many people doing the same.

And start seeing some begging like: "If this post was helpful to you give me some merit"

I know it's hard to change people mentality... And some don't give a crap in rewarding others.
We need some motivation for people to give merit to the ones who deserve it!

Just giving my two cents....

Yes, this is also a type of spam i think. why beg? if your post is good enough for the people who have sMerit then they will give you. i think having merit system is good to reduce the toxic here in the bitcoin forum in my opinion of course and also, patience and giving good quality post that will benefit the thread is the key here. patience in waiting for the merit to come. it might be hard of course because of the users abusing merit but i still believe that making quality post is the key for you to gain merit. not by begging.

Or, we have another case. They just ignore it, don't care about Merit System.
Just focusing achieve and greed themselves. It is correct that people only doing Bounty but never discuss with other people in this forum.
I don't care you will be Smurf forever, because i can have many coins in my Wallet.
Make sense right? :D

And, this my idea. Sorry if it is bad idea to share. Okay, so why dont we get Merit with small amount and it will increase for certain periods.
Example :

User ABC in Member Ranks have 10 Merit and need 90 Merit to achieve next-rank. Maybe every 2 weeks, when activity +14, their merit can rise +0.005, so your merit is 10.005 and next 2 weeks your merit will rise to 10.01.
Different case for higher ranks.
If you think, "woah, this is bad idea because people can get easy Merit. So they just keep their account until the Merit is enough". Oh, i must say that your account be ancient if do that way ;D.
Anyway, if you want to discuss this more is okay. Or, maybe you disagree with this, is Okay. Discussion is open. once again, sorry if i have make many mistake here ;D

It is hard to understand what you mean to say here but let me try. You are suggesting some merits to be added based on activity ? This defeats the purpose. The shit posters will post more garbage at faster rates to become eligible for these.

if you have 80 sMerit to give wahaha I need 8 sMerit I keep on posting stuffs with value but none in the forum is looking at it they more lok on the questions about "if you have 1 btc what will you do?"

If no one noticing your posts, how you got those 2 merit points ? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=1263843

You cannot stop people from showing interests in topics they like. If you want to increase your chances of getting merits, you should actually post on those topics to get "noticed".

I rather post important and helpful things than keep posting and spamming the system with repeated post it's the best thing about merit system you need to work for rank but the disadvantage is most valuable post was unheard :) just thinking positive :)

If you think your valuable posts are unheard, you can ask for review from senior members here. I made a list of threads giving away merits for quality posts:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2832127.0

There are six members offering this currently and you can post there to get your posts "heard". All the best.

At first I really thought that merits will benefit different groups of users on forum , the newcomers to get relevant answers they are seeking and older members to actually be willing to help instead of just linking people to read the manual and also  admins - so they have less job to moderate posts.

Now when I look at different part of forum during the day, occasionally you can see people indirectly asking for merits.
Merits will probably soon become new currency for bounties and that would be very funny because my theory is that one of the reasons they introduced merits was to stop new bounty seekers from flooding the forum.


 

Oh, no. I'm sorry if i make you misunderstanding. :(
Here is the simpler one.
Me in Member Rank (Have 70 Activity and 10 Merit), to reach Full Member you need 120 Activity and 100 Merit.
Every two weeks you will get Max 14 Activity, but now it added some bonus. Max 14 Activity and 0.005 Merit (Remember Just Merit, sMerit not included)
So, next stage My Rank is 84 Activity (if get max activity) and 10.005 Merit.
And next 2 weeks is 98 Activity (if get max activity) and 10.01 .
You can calculate how long that i have to reach Full-Member?

100 Merit - 10 Merit = 90 Merit / 0.005 = 18000 times.

In activity position they should Legendary, but stucked on little merit.
For the conclusion this system will not broke the purpose, they just have nano-amount reward on it.

Please don't ask me for points. I award them based on my ideas of the benefits posts make to the community.
http://www.cryptobounty.com/posting-images/edsnow-ignore.jpg
http://www.cryptobounty.com/posting-images/manismanja-ignore.jpg

Btw, is total sMerit enough to give out merits to good posts?

Merits and sMerits are available all over the place, unfortunately good posts aren't. :)

I see. Thank god that I became a member before the merit system. :D Actually, this forum is quite fun. Learn new things, share what your opinion, and earn while you do so. Sometimes, saying 'meaningful' shit in 'politics and society' section is also fun. I hope these will not be included as shitposts in the future. :)

People begging for merits are just asking for not being given any. It's very tempting to throw in a request for merits after you've taken the time to write a good quality, helpful post, but man — don't invoke the power of reverse psychology here. Even if you are hoping for merits deep inside (most here probably do, it's human nature to want a reward), keep it to yourself. Just leave your post as is and let it speak for itself.

I do not think it is appropriate to be a rating tool. I believe this is a tool to improve the quality of forums. It's really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of writing. So far it seems to be used to "appreciate" ghosts in the past, and to help sig campaign members to "rank" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think the good points can only be given alone, which reduces a bit of the offense. Merits will cause nothing but problems for forum users and admins. We have allready seen members being accused of selling merits to other members. When I used to run forums (not crypto forums) I tried the merit sytem out and the emails from users claiming that this person or that person sold merits got so bad I disabled it in

I'm leaving myself open here to another attack by you-know-who. :)

This is my account on another forum. Every member has the ability to "like" a post, and he can like every post on the forum if he wants to, but that wouldn't really be productive. If I analyse my likes, it gives me a very good idea of public opinion and approval in the forum. Because a member can only give one like to a post and it is public, it gives me a lot of encouragement to make what I consider to be helpful and informative posts, especially when the like comes from a senior and experienced member.

http://cryptobounty.com/posting-images/domain-likes.jpg

I've contributed nothing but shitposted tons.   I've been shitposting for days now, never got any merit, so I think this system is working well. 

I suppose you would need a dislike button to really gauge public approval.  What you're proposing with the "likes" is sort of like only being able to long an asset.  To get the true prevailing bias you need to be able to short it as well.

If anything, find some board that has low usage, but is of quality topics, and inform users that you will be looking for quality posts in that board in a more popular board such as Meta. This will encourage more users in said board, and will also award those with quality posts. Win/Win

I tried that with the serious discussion board, but it didn't really work. I suspect this is becuse posts don't increase post count, and sigs aren't allowed.

I agree with you on this.

However, I'm enjoying myself.  I often LOL at things I read, or find them valuable.  Most often I don't want to leave positive trust, and leaving a few merit points to appreciate a good post goes just as far as the trust.

Basically the aim of sMerit is to motivate users to post higher quality content with the aim of ranking up, is a good logical measure to combat spam, however there is a direct correlation between the boards with the highest spam rate and the merit these posts have.

As an example, "Economics" is full of spammers asking the same question over and over, although your post there and you have a decent quality I'm pretty sure you have a lesser chance of being merited just because serious people with some background will most likely avoid these boards, and if they don't they will search for very specific topics (at least what I would do).

Maybe merit sources could have different amount of sMerits to grant in different boards, that would keep the posting competitive pretty much everywhere, and that can be based on the amount of threads being created on each board.

The merit system seems to be settling down, and I think that broadly it is a reasonable concept, and a useful addition to the forum. The only thing I would change is the maximum award per member per post. I think it should be reduced to 2. I suspect that the pattern of merit awards will be considered, and there will be some changes in the methods of creating sMerits and merit faucets. For example, if people are abusing their ability to award sMerit, then they should be deprived of that ability. It may also be useful for some members to receive one sMerit for every merit they receive if they are using the sMerits wisely.

 I would also like to see an end to begging for merits via the soup kitchens and food banks. A better solution is the closing of spam threads, and the merging of others, this would allow members to find interesting threads in the swamp. Moving other threads to more relevant boards like speculation, beginners, and political would probably help as well.

Another useful change would be a cap on the size of images. I've closed several threads because of oversized images, and this isn't fair to the posters with comments following the image.

There are some unfortunate side effects however (at least in some subforums).
You can receive merits ONLY from other people. But if these people never give merits, no matter what, what can you do about that? Currently nothing.
My example is the romanian subforum. Nobody is giving merits there for anything. Maybe they are not aware about the new system, but I highly doubt that.
So, if you are romanian and your english skills are not that great, you are screwed and you will never rank up.
How such an issue can be solved? Currently the guys that offer merits will not bother with non english subforums.

This system is more necessary for another point system. He does not encourage himself to write good messages alone.

It's not that we don't bother with the boards, in my case I couldn't contribute, and I couldn't evaluate posts. The answer is for bilingual members to frequent the boards. Alternative a Romanian merit source could evaluate the posts.

Part of the problem may be that some of the alternative language boards are being reported as low value spam areas ( I don't know if this is relevant to the Romanian board ). If this is the case, then the members of that board should endeavour to clean up the posting.

No, the forum is fine. Occasional spam, like anywhere i guess, but otherwise normal topics (help, discussions etc).
Lack of merit points however.
I understand why you personally (or others non romanian speakers) would/could not evaluate the topics from there, that's normal.
But I would expect each language forum to have at least one native merit source admin/moderator.

I agree, if there are many unused sMerits, this system does not make any sense.  I think that is the reason why theymos wrote

"There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future."

You can check this sentence when clicking +Merit link.  As far as I know this is not written anywhere else but maybe it is good to share this information to encourage people to use sMerit more.

As a new comer I now realize how hard is it with this merit system to get the next rank.
I feel that I do not have the knowledge to join a serious discussion and I do not want to give
misinformation. It was fun actually before the merit system to join a campaign and see my rank going up
with just posting. Generally I do not think that merits are a bad idea I think it will stop the ones who are posting
shit posts.

This clear my unsettled thought about merit. Glad I found it here, I did make a lot of reading for this.

I gave you a merit for that post, and I suspect this will be another controversial award by me, so here is my justification.

The award was not really for the post, although it was precise and free from bloat. The award was for the fact that you had done some research before you made the post, and hopefully it will encourage others to do the same. :)

I’ve got 187 left (used my allowance for the month as a merit source though)

I've just awarded a point to a new(ish) member who posted in the beginners board. I decided to look through page 4 of that board, and I only found one post that I liked. Am I being too severe, or is it just that there are too many repetitive and thread bloating posts still?

You realize that was just a garbage post, right?  Like this one?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2700855.msg28672524#msg28672524

I didn't think it was garbage, but as I said, the merit was for the fact that the poster appeared to have done some research before posting. Maybe I was conned, but I think researching before posting should be encouraged.

Thank you Vod. Although you consider my post as garbage at least you gave a support to what I say by quoting that one. I believe you love to incourage the new one to spend time for reading which what I did to avoid shitposts. Also I can't see any problem of giving thanks to someone from a helpful link specially I am just a newbie and have no merit to offer.

Its true, its so difficult to get some merits but ill just wait if somebody wants to give,if they think i really deserves .,i'll just be patience i have to take lots of ideas and informations for me to be more better.

You are a shitposter.  You will never receive any merit.  You might as well abandon your account now. :/

It is definitely a hard work to hunt for people to award sMerit. I also noticed that some out of date posts are given merits probably because what Jet Cash said.

But it is real that good posts are hard to find because some topics are being flooded by spams and because of that, quality posts are getting hard to notice.

And with what 2girls said I also think that some member here don't just care about the system or just to lazy to give smerit to somebody. I hope that all the members will not only be encouraged by this system to make quality posts but also be encouraged to give something to other members who deserve sMerit for their hard work.

Thanks Jet Cash. The merit was much appreciated. I'm hoping that this simple message of mine would not make others think that I am a shitposter as there is no reason to be like that.  :)

I think you got me into trouble for awarding that point, but then what's new? I seem to be at variance with a lot of people about merits. In fact I'm starting to wonder if there should be an opt out choice. It would mean that you couldn't increase rank, but it would free you from all the bad feeling and abuse that is creeping into the merit system.

I think newer members underestimate how much shitposting you have to wade through to find good posts. It takes work.


Agreed there. The system loses meaning when some people are getting 20 or even 50 merits from one user, for a single post.

If my simple word of honesty doesn't deserve for one merit by your act of goodness just to incourage the new comers then how much more the other got 50 merit from a nonsense post, this kind of post is more unworthy than mine. And if my post brings you trouble because some are questioning your goodness act, then merit is a big burden to a worthy person and to the good members in this community. But I don't think merit is a burden, it only goes like that because some are corrupt existing in this place misusing the merit. 

As far as what I understand for merit it is intentionally implemented to create a better community for the future that all new bitconers will become worthy for having a higher rank. I said this because merit is incouraging a person to create a quality post and this would stop the spammers and farming accounts. Meaning to say many of bitcoiners now that have a higher rank are considered as spammers and their quality is questionable even their merit. I also said this because I saw someone here demoted to Jr member from full member and his posts really bad. 

And now I'm hoping that this will saves you from trouble. Thanks once again.

Don't worry, I've been in trouble all my life for speaking my mind, and for being politically incorrect. :)

I gave this guy a merit  for a nice introductory thread -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2891967

What a shame that it has sunk to page 3. There was a time when new members were  welcomed, and their intro threads we not sucked into the swamp.

Your goal in this industry most especially using your merit to give away to deserving people just to drive them and make them motivated to continue posting quality stuffs are very inspirational, hopefully all the elders like you in the industry will have that same kind of attitude, more power to you sir, and have a blessed one ahead!

Pendapat anda benar pak,tetapi kurang bijaksana. Karena post yang yang bagus itu sifatnya mendidik untuk kemajuan forum ini agar tetap exis Dan pemberian smerit bukan ajang perlombaan. Terima kasih

Hi Jet Cash.
I was just surfing the threads and saw your thread about rewarding Merits to deserving posts. As you and all of us have already seen the value of Merits already, I want to get as more of them as I can, and I won't leave a chance for doing that.
So, I won't ask you to give me Merits for no reason because I need them, because I don't, but I just want you to have a look at my posts from my profile and see if you find something worthy. And, don't tell anyone if you find nothing there.  ;D That was a joke, of course.

I don't run a merit soup kitchen I'm afraid, so I don't look at posts by request, sorry.

Sunday's update.

I'm glad I went on a spree awarding my sMerit. It took me through  lot of the boards here that I hadn't visited. The best one, and the one I wish I had found earlier is the Speculation sub-board. There are some knowledgeable posters there, and they areeven articulate. :) The graphic images that are embedded in some posts are clear and useful, and show that used correctly, images can enhance the value of an information post. At the moment, it isn't overrun with spam threads, so kudos to the mod for that board. The board is useful to me even though I am a long term investor ( sometimes called a HODLer ). Choosing the correct time to acquire Bitcoin can double your holding in these volatile times.

I've completely abandoned the Frog Pond, and I don't even bother to open the index. The beginners board can throw up some interesting threads, but there seem to be a lot of threads that ought to be on other boards such as the Alts, Mining and Meta. I've reduced the number of visits to Serious discussion - I had high hopes for these boards, but they seem to be moving in the direction ofthe |Frog Pond, and ignored by most of the "serious" members. I've given up on attempting to discuss crypto domain names - they seem to be ignored, or attract adverse comments. It is a major industry, and thereis a lot of support for bitcoin amongst investors. Prices seem to be increasing as well, so I am surprised that it doesn't attract  any interest here. Fortunately there are a lot of domaining forums around, but it would be nice to have some intelligent discussions about this important virtual asset here on Bitcoin Talk.

I've still got 30+ sMerit to award, so I'll have another look around today and see if I can find some deserving posts. Please don't spam me, or ask me to look at your posts, as I only award merits to posts that I like, and I don't seem to have the same standards of approval as many other members. :)

Thank you for doing this, you are a good person!

If there are more people like you here, I'm sure a lot of beginners will be very grateful to you.

It is very difficult for beginners to get sMerit because they need to study hard!

You give them sMerit, they will learn very diligently!

Finally I see something different from merit issues for a while or I just don't look around.

I also encourage you to maybe look carefully to Jr.Member post if they are contributing helpful post.
As they only need 5 merit to rank Member.  :)

Your initiative is great
because with what you do can give motivation to a newbie to try to further develop in this forum

Of course Newbies and Jr. Member are the most weak ranks here after new requirements, but do not forget about those ranks which stayed kinda on boarder, let's take myself as an example, it stayed just 2 activity points to the next rank to me, but by new rules I will not be able to raise to Sr. Member till I will not fill enough Merit points, just for the record, I need 147 more. With my current temp of getting Merits it will take months and maybe a whole year.

You're a good man. But better to focus on newbie and jr.member to give some merit that are trying their best to post quality. For me I don't mind merit because my rank for now can join other campaign or what so over. Also Im giving other member here a merit but only for 2 points per week only. So good luck. Keep it up and help the others.

I can understand both of previous guys. The first one needs 147 merits more to raise up and just 2 points of activity which he will get in couple of days. I think that for such cases as his moderators should create something special, like if full member needs 100 and sr.member 250, for users who are on the edge between two ranks, they could make 175 merits as the base.
The second one is also right about new users, they are really the most weak persons here, but the number of merits which will allow them to move on another level and start to earn, as you say is just 10, and that is not so much indeed. Such target is going to be one of the easiest.

Life is unfair I'm afraid. Paul Newman was born better looking than me, I'm more like Alfred E Newman - well maybe a bit older, but I can cope with that, and I try to make the most of it. If you start to drop the merit requirements, where do you stop? You'll end up with a 5 point requirement to become a legendary. The real question is - why do members want to increase their ranking? In most cases it seems to be a desire to earn more from sig spamming.

I do not spam and still did not get any merits. I am wondering what kind of construtive posts we need to make to earn these merits. I have already red a lots of complains about this.

Comparison to Paul Newman?! Someone is revealing their age  ;)

I used to go into L'Auberge coffee bar in Richmond with the Rolling Stones before they became famous. :)

I participate in the bawning of the compilation on the subscription, I write only strictly on the topic and I do not check anything superfluous with all the information, 70 activity but the rank of the youngest member because of the insufficient number of myerits can not go to the next rank and lead the subscription from the member (((and this is just another payment and the level of trust in my posts.

I have no reason to not believe you - that is amazing. I watched them on their 40 Licks Tour and listening to 30k+ people hum during Paint It Black was an unbelievable experience.

I lived in Surrey, and there were lots of stars around there. 'Sham 69 came from Hersham, Paul Simon used to sing in the Troubadour. I could go on - Nettlefolds studio and Shepperton Studios were just some of the film studios there.

But we should be talking about merit points here. I seem to be having trouble finding posts again, and I wonder if that is the weekend, or just me getting involved in the statistics of Bitcoin price forecasting. I got distracted by fibonacci series, and I'm trying to relste that to Bitcoin price movements. It may also be that there is an influx of new members at the weekend, but I haven't researched that.

I got like 30 smerits now. I feel like all of them will go to campaign supporters who pledge their life in the service of better mankind.
If these are worthless, why we even speak about them? I think they should have made it that is not linked to forum rank. Smerit should be like a thank you, have no trace, no criteria, no stain and no self gratification and especially no pride.

I see - another bleeding heart with misguided intentions that lead to the further destruction of mankind and the environment. I bet you think every child shoud be vaccinated as well. Merits are to clean up the Bitcoin Talk forum, and not to push misguided social issues.

I've put you on ignore in case I give you a merit by accident. :)

and what do merits give? how to earn it?))) :)

I'm getting each day more convinced that most of the people don't give a f*** to give merit to others!
I bet also that there are a huge number of users that don't heard about merit yet.

I think that I made good posts! It's not common to write big posts about something, but I usually help people out!
And so far... only 2 merit points!
This will be very very hard to rank up to Sr. Member! Only 1 month left and a bunch of merit points missing.

Can someone help me to realize what is bad with my posts? What should I do?

The thing that bothers me the most is seeing multiple accounts, or friends, or whatever giving huge number of merits for one line posts, and un-useful posts.

@ Jet Cash
I know you are considerable and have a deep understanding toward this entire system. I found out my name in your list for merit beggars. Honestly if you notice my post back then there was am emoji at the end of my message. I'm not a beggar of merit but why you include me in your list.? Is there a problem to say just kidding through emoji.? I seen some of my seniors colleague here do it also in a way of just kidding but they were given merit.
I admit I tried it. And that is my mistake I though it is okey. Sorry for that.

I just want to say my reason.

I know you are open minded. Thanks

After few days I finally can see and feel how new merit system can affect all users. before I was like "whatever, I am a Hero and I have a lot of Merits and development to legendary is not so important". But today when my signature campaign over and I was searching for a new one I found this:
And I miss over 20 Merits to apply this campaign. I was working with yahoo62278 many times, but this new requirements are just killing me. Now I am afraid that this campaign is just a first bird and with time all signature campaigns will ask for minimal number of merits to be joined.

I wish that people will not make th merit system as their profit to gain bitcoin and I hope that it will never happen. There are times that  people buy merit as an  exchanged of bitcoin especially those people who want to level up their rank. Be a responsible user and be loyal all the time to each and everyone. Don't spread some merit to other people to make as profit.

I have added a link to this post in my thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2964968 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2964968)

Appreciate the service, thanks.

I appreciate the link, but I don't consider a poster's rank when I award merits. I've even given some to Themos and Tman. :)

High Ranked Member that read this, please kindly review my posts, thanks a lot for your precious time :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2945458.msg30330426#msg30330426
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2932110.msg30330299#msg30330299
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2954668.msg30329814#msg30329814

Try giving merits in the alternative coins section there are lot of posts there that are deserving to be given merit not just because they are constructive and informative one but also the way they endorse or explain why the people should or not invest or their stated coins.

With this new merit system many of newbies and jr members are trying to makes quality posts by avoide spams.that is true but unfortunately most of time they never earn atleast single merit for a quality post.soo give merits for the newbies and jr members who desrve for that

I don't know enough about alts to be able to evaluate posts. I know I should be looking at the whole crypto world, but at the moment I'm a bit overloaded. I will look at Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Lightning, Wax and Steem over the next month or so.

You should offer to newbies only even though the post is not good, since hey might need to rank up for future participating in forums. just look at the Bitcoin section where we find daily a lot of newbies asking for help in investing into Bitcoin.

As a Jr. Member its very hard for us to rank up. But we (jr. members and newbies) are trying to grow more and learn to create more quality post. So if you have spare time maybe help us to learn more.

That goes against the whole pont of the merit system. Bitcoin Talk is not here to provide indifferent posters with an income source. If I award merits just because members want to rank up and spam the boards, then I'm not helping BitcoinTalk to regain its former glory.

I don't look at rank anyway when I'm reading posts. I don't think " this guy is a legendary, and he doesn't need merit, so I won't award any" or " this guy is a new member, and he can't spam the boards until he gets promoted, so I'll give him some points".

hopefully all members, especially me who is still new continue to improve the quality of posts and follow a useful thread to dig information

hi sir can you review my post briefly?
thanks, if my post is not appropriate I will continue to learn to improve it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2939756.msg30520248#msg30520248

Although you don't need my presence and participation particularly in your giving away smerit.
Sorry to say I'm annoyed with your idea. How could you make giving away smerit to particular participants like in the middle of the game. Are you insane with us.? You think this is fair?
Mine, NO.
Who controls the rebound, controls the game. Why not make a harder effort by yourself searching who is deserving and not let the frogs fall in the pond with no absolute water in it.

This can be said of the competition to get smerit for members who are still new and will memeberi learning so that each post is made feasible
but how to judge
and it's like a wedding to get smerit

I don't think you quite understnd the purpose of this forum. I'm here to learn about Bitcoin, and to talk about it. I don't work for Bitcoin Talk, but I would like to see the board go back to being a useful asset for Bitcoin. I'm not going to spend time trying to teach people how to rank up sso that they can spam the boards with a load of spammy promotions that clutter the board. If I give merit, it's because I've seen a post that I feel is helping to rebuild Bitcoin Talk.

btw. I put you on ignore for disrespect.

You have merit, then it can be said that you have power.You must give those merits to the members (they can be of any rank)of this forum who are really contributing good wuality posts.But here I think you should listen to your heart,to your thinking.I've seen that,there are so many members who have smerits but can't give them of other's influence. You should mind this that,the post you like,may won't be liked by other. Because,we all have our own way to feel the good.

Thank you.I hope you will give those smerits who really deserve them.

Please don't submit threads for me to read - I won't read them unless Ihappen to find them on the correct boards.

This thread is not a merit soup kitchen or a merit food bank.

In fact I've put a few people on ignore for pushing their psts to try to beg merit.

It is because some guys don't read title or topic so they think title is: 80 merit giveaway .
But you are only 6 days here and all your posts are about merit and random rant.
I can't imagine someone signing up to bitcoin forum just to talk about merits. Maybe you are butthurt because you can't rank up your alt accounts so you created another one to complain about system  :D

These merits are fun. I've been giving them away all over the place, and I've still got 50 to find homes for.. :)

I think I might start a topic of the day for awarding merits. Maybe something like the influence of RSI indicators on the price of Bitcoin. :)

I agree that thing, but its just my concern, although offering to the quality post is better than to anyone. anyway I wish you for your giveaway to the best people.

I'm sitting upstairs in McDonalds with a coffee ( black with a touch of bicarbonate of soda in it ), and an egg and bacon roll. The sun is shining on me, and I'm feeling generous.

Now how many merits can I award before I finish my coffee? :)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2966815.msg30862419#msg30862419
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2965877.msg30526660#msg30526660
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2934207.msg30162961#msg30162961
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2946640.msg30265285#msg30265285
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2998483.msg30852483#msg30852483


I'm adding a legendary and his brother to my merit abuse gallery. The legendary awarded 10 merits to his brother for an indifferent post.

Hi,

Could you review my post? Really appreciate your time.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2958771.0

This is a post about how to add image, resize image and make image clickable.   :)

Which part of Please don't submit threads for me to read did you guys not understand? Maybe I should have said posts instead of threads.

Also, you may have noticed that I dislike large embedded images in posts. If an image is essential, then a clickable small one that opens the full sized image would be more courteous to your readers.

Have been lurking and participating at Bitcoin Talk for less than a year, tell us more about the golden days of this forum. Hard to imagine it without the "spammy promotions" to be quite honest, though that'd be quite nice...

A member here introduced me to "The Safelist" and "The Badlist" on badbitcoin.org as a useful resource in differentiating between credible and scammy crypto sites. Yes, Bitcoin Talk is on the former and not the latter, but I found its description pretty amusing:

"Bitcointalk The original bitcoin forum, but be very wary of posting, unless you have a strong constitution, and then only if you really like shedloads of abuse from arrogant halfwits. This is also a favourite haunt of the bitcoin thieves who like to announce their crooked schemes and catch the 'newbies' - Sad but true."

 ;D :D

http://badbitcoin.org/safelist/index.htm

I joined Bitcoin Talk because I saw Bitcoin as a means of making international payments, and a possible store of wealth. Being a cautious investor, I decided that the safest option was to run a full node, especially as ths gave me a lot of control over payments and receipts. Many members were helpful and supportive, and they helped me to gain a resonable level of understanding so that I could use Bitcoin for my purposes at that time. Faucets were the big spam issue at that time ( apart from scammers), but their intrusion wasn't as pervasive as the current sig spamming projects.

It seemed to be easier to exchange help and advice, and, although there was a certain amount of clutter creeping onto the boards, it still seemed possible to maintain an advice thread. It seems that the current boards have become so polluted that sometimes one has to read two or three pages of garbled and useless messages to find one useful post. It just isn't worth the effort, and this means that many useful posters have stopped contributing to many of the boards.

The merit system is a useful addition to the forum, and will contribute even more whe the abuses are cut back. More moderation of posts would also make a massive difference, and the consolidation of threads, removal of useless posts, and the moving of threads onto the correct boards would clean up the indexes.

Hopefully with our communal effort, it can return to that time soon. Thanks for sharing.

I agree, consolidation of threads would be nice (guessing it's the mods that do that?). Like in the "Beginners & Help" thread, maybe there can be a sticked post at top for newbies to introduce themselves if they wish. Seems like a lot of the posts recently in that thread are just that.

I think it's a shared responsibility with users though to at least do an honest search to see if a topic that is relatively recent already exists before creating a new one. Or reading the stickied posts at the top first before doing anything. They are stickied for a reason.

Some of the old member of this forum is nowhere to be found, they scattered through out the years they may also lurking every now and then to see changes (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=167.0) however, there's no solid evidence that they do. perhaps good contributor of this forum started their own business or alike, or might also join in another forum that they like. what is the original idiomatic saying? birds of a feather flock together

And it made me think if users need to have a decent amount of merit they need to study the programming of blockchain in general in addition they can contribute in development & technical dis (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0).

Yes, some good posts are not found, or just discovered by a few people, and then more people did not see, and the author did not get much reward, affecting their enthusiasm, it is necessary to high quality Posts listed to allow more people to see, forming a conscience cycle.

A bit off-topic reply but I'd like to ask you, what is the frog pond? I know you're talking about "Bitcoin Discussion" but are there any other boards that fall under your definition of "Frog Pond" ;D
It seems like I'm having the same trouble finding my favorite board... So what'd you suggest? what are those "promising boards"?

It is a bit difficult at the moment, but it seems to be improving slowly.

The boards of which I was thinking were probably the serious discussion, the stats/speculation, and the two tech ones. Those are the ones that spring to mind immediately.

It's usually a forum system work not as wiki storing good final knowledge. If you open the forum then you must give people the right to post thing they want even it's shitty. I'm tired with the off-topic removing even I replied to the topic like just a comment.

By the way, I think merit system is good to sanitize posts. But I personally think it's not too important. The majority newbie people here need high rank level account to participate bounty programs. They can clone accounts to earn a lot quickly and much more than trying to level up their account to legendary level.

Bitcoin Talk is a private forum, and as such it doesn't have to give anybody any rights that the admins don't agree to. Also, it is a valuable source of information about Bitcoin.

If you run a real life forum, you don't want scruffy dogs entering the forum areas, and defecating all over the place. If it happens, you clean up the mess, and ban the dogs. We don't want scruffy dogs joining the forum, and defecating all over our boards.  If you continue to do it, then I'm sure they will give you a perma-ban.

My comments are based on your post, and not on a review of your posting btw.

I'm locking this thread because I am still getting PMs and posts from people asking me to review their posts. I don't do this, as I have posted several times.