Bitcoin Forum

I don't know if there was solution about it. I am not aware about that.
Just a question come on mind from it.

You will see that msg when you are going to send merit some one. If some one never send merit he will never see that msg. So he didn't meet the merit system yet. How it work and why. My question is if some one never used merit system from his initial smerit what will happen? My point only who got initial merit during implement of merit system. Not for who earned merit. Currently nothing happen if no use. According to forum, admin can decay unused smerit on future. It's ok forum have right to take this dicision and I welcome it.

I just want modify admin point. Not decay smerit, should be decay from his initial merit due to he didn't respect merit system & didn't meet yet with merit system. There should be time frame, like 1 year.

For example , Epimetheus (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=358058) has never used merit system on his life time. He got 1000 merit initially. Say he have 10 smerit, and he never used his smerit during last 1 year. In that case should be decay his 10 initial merit ( not smerit ) for temporary, smerit will remain. So his merit will become 990 and rank will decrease. So until he used his smerit rank will remain decreased. Once he used his smerit completely, return his rank and merit too. During his punishment time should not allow more than 1 smerit per week to send other. Otherwise he will send it to spammer at once for get back his rank.

May be some one think it will increase send merit on spam post. But currently can you give guaranty spammer not received merit ? Something is better than nothing.

Lot of user here, they got initial merit but still didn't meet with it. They don't care about it. They have their rank, so thwy didn't feel to share it. They are busy with earning ( campaign). You don't think they should also learn about merit system. Or let it for drying ?

I noticed that so many users so far haven't spent any of their sMerit - usually Bitcoint/altcoin discussion spammers who probably don't even know that Merit system exists. Probably these guys who analyze stats can give exact numbers.
I don't like your idea. Every user have right to hold their sMerit and not spend. I don't think that we need to force users to spend their sMerit. I don't think that decay of initial Merit is needed. It wouldn't be fair for users who aren't active on Bitcointalk but earned high rank in past. And they would lose it only because they didn't spent their sMerit.

IMO. The only reason i know is,  maybe he is not well informed about it or he does not care about sharing his smerit, or he didn't see any post which he thinks that is suitable for having merit, (which is impossible).

Of course, there should be such rules but how much of them have sMerit? As far as I know, most of them don't have any sMerit. They got the required by default merit for ranking up. So, we can't expect sMerit from them.
However, for those who have sMerit, theymos can implement a rule where you have to spend 1 merit (If any) per month to continue with the rank.
Also, like the badge for reports, there can be another badge for people who spend merits.

the minimum amount of merits not spent, based on the merits put in circulation, at the moment is about 32432, i attempted to calculate it with my tool, so the number is going to be much higher than that.

You can see the script i used in here:
https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

this doesn't keep in account merits from the starting airdrop and in particular merits which where never spent at all, but is easier to pull some number based on the merits sent at least.

That's the number I was wondering about, and even if it turns out to be twice that, it still doesn't seem anywhere near devastating to the forum.  I'm sure Theymos figured there would be sMerits that were going to be stuck in the system indefinitely when he rolled it out.  I'd say that as long as there are enough merit sources, it shouldn't be a problem--and as long as the merit sources are distributed fairly around the forum.  I don't know that they are, because I don't know who all the sources are.  We probably do need some more sources.

On the other hand, I'm having a hard time finding a good mix of lower-ranked members to give merits to, so I don't think the number of people hoarding their sMerits is all that important anyway.

I think that is based on users that have received sMerits and not sent out any. We cannot, as far as I’m aware of, derive the total initial airdropped sMerit to forum members that have not given any out on an individual basis.

Nevertheless, theymos mentioned that the initial airdrop was around 600K. Distributed total sMerit since the beginning is 205K. There are therefore around 400K at least that is still in the initial airdrop recipients hands (more probably, since a lot of the 205K comes from merit sources and halved sMerits).

Reference:

Give them a break and stop trolling them

Thats why  i feel user education was a key part in rolling out this merit system. Many dont understand this and even not aware of what smerit is.
I personally educated few people about smerit concept and how they can use it. Most are afraid that if they give merit to others it will decrease their own merit, which is not true but they dont know what smerit is.

This data itself shows that power given to people is not in use, why to not revisit this and do something about it.

I supported this even it was launched just week before i could have become sn member, bcoz i felt its necessary to put something to stop spammers. But now we have enough data points to see that good actors in system are negatively impacted for long, however spammer will find some other way.

I propose that a constructive discussion should start to balance out good formula to get good actors motivated to be part of system.

When such system becomes inefficient in balancing the right mix, its time to reevaluate and re-calibrate.