Bitcoin Forum

I have come across many merit spamming due to the new ranking update. Still, it was also taking place before this update happened but it has increased much these days as everyone has noticed.

I personally think at one point that this system is working in some parts of the forum but some people are just misguided about what posts should be merited as there is no single definition of what a merit deserving post is. Still, I read a statement from thyemos explaining what type of posts deserves merits.


But I think many people are using merits to merit the posts that they agree with and not meriting the posts which are of high quality. ( I think this is also done by some merit sources )
And This is the reason why many of the quality posts are ignored.

This is a very big Flaw I think which should get some solution instead the main purpose of merits will just be lost and only the merited posts will be related to views and not for the quality an of the content.

I want some views about:

1. What flaws do you think this merit system has?

2. How do you think merit system is abused? ( I don't want buy/sell as an answer )

EDIT:

You can also find much such posts where you think the merits are wasted for supporting the view.

I would like to add some of the example about how merits are used not for the quality but for just supporting views.

https://i.imgur.com/1HEpzsa.png?1
https://i.imgur.com/ZiTjjxu.png?1
https://i.imgur.com/AEXfi6W.png?1
https://i.imgur.com/nCCZnvR.png?1

I think the biggest flaws in the merit system has is ways that it's obvious to game the system... there are several things you can do imo that will lead to more merit opportunities that have very little to do with good posts, its just a way of manipulating attention in a certain light where it favors you.  Here are some examples, whether these are disingenuous or not I guess is up for debate:

1) Only posting in sections with high merit handouts.
2) Posting only on threads that are on page 1 (lol who doesn't do this besides signature spammers)
3) Berating others complaining about rules in order to appeal to more merit sources.
4) Posting threads as merit giveaways as a way of gathering merits for the topic creator.
5) Posts about merit achievements to farm merit.  (To be fair this one is less acceptable lately but in the beginning, some heavily abused this, and its just skanky.)

It creates an environment where there is less discussion and more just "talking at" the topic creator and trying to have the most clever response. It's less shitposting and spammy I guess but it's been replaced with 70 people in certain sections trying to rewrite the same answer to a question over and over in a way that's more clever than anyone else's which becomes just boring as hell to read as well.

To your point though, I'm not really sure that there is a big difference between high quality and something you agree with.. because high quality is subjective.. like what defines a quality post?  Something in English that answers the question first?  How about more elaborate?  What if its 10 paragraphs long?  I just don't see how you can unlink subjectivity from what is considered high quality, which is why my list above I feel exists.

Yes, I too think this are some of the flaws merit system has and many people are trying to limit themself in specific areas to award merits and this is making people just concentrate on making a good post at that section and just ignore others.

I also like to add that most of the quality content posts are made in economics and bitcoin discussion sections but its weird to see more merit exchange in the meta section where most of the people just post there views.

Can easily abuse by those old users who has plenty of high rank accounts.

-This can be solve if all the reported merit abusers gets banned permanently, but obviously not.

I think this will explain it and most of the merits given is to obviously alt accounts.
https://i.imgur.com/svO69sD.png

I think that the main flaw of the merit-system is that it lured all the attention of bitcointalk participants, leaving in the shadow the main topics devoted to the most important and initial issues of the forum. This system was intended as a motivation for improving the quality of posts, whereas in fact it resulted just in an increase in the number of comments. All conversations revolve around merits. Part of the participants are in pursuit of merits, and the other part writes about what exactly the first ones do wrong and why they don`t receive merits.

Instead of encouraging forum members to write more vivid, constructive and interesting posts about crypto-currencies, economy or trade, the merit-system drove the participants into a vicious circle. After all, in general, people receive merits for posts, one way or another devoted to merits. The merit-system features were misunderstood by the majority of bitcointalk members, and that`s how I see the main flaw.

I agree, but how do you really stop the circle?   I'm willing to just post on things I know more about like the cryptocurrency trading section, but at some point I would like to rank up too and it not take me 5-10x longer than someone doing this circle grind in a more clever way.

"Everyone must be a part of the sickness, because everyone seems to need the cure."

To be honest, I have no idea how to earn this merit...to write some meaningful post ? Also not so easy, on the forum and so already a lot of all the information that helps and informs... To there was a good man and gave her just for the answer, which fully agree or like, too, I think a miracle, now more power has passed to people who have multi accounts on which there are already merits, and distribute to their other accounts... I myself am one of those people who seriously create some abstruse posts, write articles, but for all its presence tried to give some useful advice on how to support a person or to motivate, but I doubt I ever will see that Kaku merit.. This purely my opinion, all the world !

Regarding the defects of the merit system, I also thought about it. I think there are defects in the following aspects.
1）Merit is concentrated in the English section, and the local section of the merit is more difficult to obtain, and some statistics can prove it. For many non-native English speakers, they also have a lot of high-quality posts in the local section. If the same post is written in English, it may be easier to get Merit and get more Merit. But in the local section, it's hard to get Merit, or only get fewer Merit，this may cause local forums to lack incentives.
https://i.imgur.com/tCsK6RU.png
https://i.imgur.com/Ukyncgp.png
We can see that the total amount of Merits sent in the English section is about 7-8 times the total amount of the local section.

reference：https://public.tableau.com/profile/ddmrddmr#!/vizhome/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/WordCloud (https://public.tableau.com/profile/ddmrddmr#!/vizhome/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/WordCloud)

2）There is no uniform standard for high quality, so some especially long posts may not make sense, but may be used by some “smart” alts, reply a long post and get 1 Merit, and at this time, you can't tell if this belongs to Merit abuse,Because this post doesn't make much sense, but you can't think it's spam.


I think the merit system is abused cannot be completely eliminated, and we can't catch all the abusers. If you suspect that some accounts may be abusing meirt, but there is only a small amount of evidence, then In this case, don't waste time collecting evidence. You should spend more time tracking those large-scale merit abusers.
After all, Merit will decay, as long as the source of abuse is removed, the remaining sporadic abusers will soon run out of Smerit.

The system doesn't have flaws since its creation, but the flaws have been created after the implementation of the system, IMO.

I don't feel that the reason for quality posts to be missed is that people mostly Merit the posts that they agree with, but the reason behind that is the excessive spam that is posted after them, and no one with the right mind would dig deep in that shit only in the hope of finding a quality post to Merit it. I don't see any reason to blame the system for that.

On the other hand, those abusers would not leave any system to be flawless at all. They will play their part in ruining it completely, but fortunately, they only partly succeed in that. Have a look at the trust system. Even though it makes no sense for them to leave a trust on a profile since it doesn't make a difference, but they do abuse it by spamming people's profiles only because the system hits them hard in the face. But I think it is serving its purpose, as well as the Merit system, no matter how people try to turn them negative and use them the other way, they would still keep doing their work, to some extent.

Well, you see, spam is a ban and you can put on a week and a warning, and just really hard to get in the home branch very hard and English is a ban and you get bad perevedeno message, I think this system is necessary to finish...

Day by day bitcointalk.org Forum becoming more stable and secure... For extra flexibility, security forum admin changes its rules... Such kind of rule is Merit system. Merit system reduces the scamming activities, more scammers involve themselves in unfit garbages Post which make forum badly.By newbie restrictions and requirements rule by theymos will reduce scamming, cheating. As a result forum will be more stable, secure and safety. I deeply support this moderation..

Other thing I noticed (in those images) is that the top 3 most merited subforums are:
1. Announcements (Altcoins) 27,206
2. Russian 25,967
3. Meta 21,363
and Russian is having way higher number merits compared to other local boards
is this mean we're having a lot russian people registered and active in the forum?
or is this implying some other things...? ::)

It is heavily abused we can't deny that fact. Because of the
subjectivity. Plus the rules for abusing merit system is certainly not good IMO.

Most of the DT's here or mods only tagged those accounts  who were exchanging merits that are connected or has only one owner.


The only thing we could do here is to handout merit to those who we really think contributes something on the said topic and not just because you have the same opinion. On the other hand we can't do something to fix the said abuse. Especially the mutual understanding between two users like:

1. We have the same nationality and handing out a merit to his/er post is a good strategy as that user might also do the same for me.

2. The "indulgence" feeling when somebody handed out you a merit and you are thinking to also give that person to return the favor.


3. The merit gameplayers. (The real toxic users in this forum who will do illegal conversation and trade out merits for their own benefits)

I think this forum has taken a very good step, and I have found no shortcomings in this merit system, which I see many people searching for and digging deeper into this forum.

I don’t. There are lots of conversation about the merit system on the meta section. For conversations about bitcoin-related issues you have other sections. I've just replied to this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5031965.msg45974359#msg45974359), for example.

Oh dear, I've just given 2 merits to a full member.

I've been reading a lot of the threads here, and I think I'm going to adopt a new policy. Any newbie with a post count of over 100, or an activity of over 30, is going to be considered as a spambie, and I will be extra cautious about giving him any merits.

Polluting the boards with spam should be discouraged, and I think this is one way to do it.

Give us a break from your shitposting pajeet attitude. Stop talking about things you dont know or dont have the brain to comprehend.

Scamming and spamming are two remotely different things. Your post is as "garbage" as the rest 90% of the pajeets in this forum. You all bottomfeeders need to find another sexpit to crawl on.

No, and No.

You are a shitposting one liner bounty spammer who is here to beg for merits. I appreciate your effort but you should do this in whatever local language you speak in rather than in Meta.

1. What flaws do you think this merit system has?
merit system is very good, it  is the tool to determine the high rank,who has many hight article quality,if not has this merit system,everyone the same,Legendary,hero member the same brand news,newbie? we need this tools to determine who prestige and who spam and not any vaild
2 How do you think merit system is abused?
i think you say: "abused" is not exactly,we has people and we have mistake,it is normal,nobody perfect,maybe some goods post not get merit but if they have many good quality post they will get merit because there are many people give merit for everyone. Bitcointalk can build topic to everyone can report some post with low quailty but they can get merit and topic about hight quality post but they don't get merit to admin of bitcointalk check again,everyone can monitor each other,who give merit for low quality post.they will be restricted or ban and replace other member if they has many the same mistake

I would say one of the big flaws of the merit system is related to merit distribution distribution. A lot of good posts go unmerited because the merit sources are not looking at posts in some forums (Bitcoin & Altcoin Discussion, Local boards etc.).
Another one would be that merit is not moderated. You can complain all you want noting is going to change.

A lot of posts are being merited between friends or people that agree with it (like you have said) rather than being high quality.

I remember seeing posts merited with high amounts of merit just because someone was calling the other a "butt hurt idiot"...  Wtf is that all about?

Yes, one of very important reason for people not getting merits is that some members of the forum have misunderstood the purpose of the merit system.

You are just a thrash and your post is shit. Just bounty hunting is what you can do ???

This clearly shows that local boards are out merites and theymos should see this chart once for sure.

I think no one should have this mindset that only long posts should be merited, this has truly affected the merit system and in still going on as you can see. But instead I think the merit should be rewarded only if some efforts are put in the post by the user and not just because he has wrote a length post.

If they could not find a quality post that does no mean that they should just start meriting the view of other people to which they agree. It better to hold that merit until you find a really deserving post. Your reason is just worthless and we are not blaming the system we are trying to find the flaws and solve it.

My only suggestion to you is please first read your post before posting it. I just cant understand a single sentence.

Yes, some of the section where there are multiple merit deserving posts and quality contents are just very low in the list.

I think this sections should have more merit circulation than meta
1. Bitcoin Discussion
2. Alt-coin Discussion
3. Development and technical discussion

I am also shocked that there are 14680 merits to the deleted posts and I think most of this is a part of merit abuse

You have truly highlighted the mindsets of some people here. Many people just think in the way you have explained and just give merits to the posts which surely don't deserve it. Your efforts in finding this views of people deserves a merit for sure.

You have a very positive way of looking at things. I think you should change it.

I think this would not be a way to judge people by there activity or post counts. You should just check if they have put some effort in the posts. (Effort mean if they really have knowledge about the topic they are speaking and have given proper info )

Yes, I was just addressing to such type of merited posts. You will see much posts like them in the meta section everywhere!

We do have a button "Report To Moderator" for reporting low quality post. You framed the sentences very badly with too many spelling mistakes.
You need to read English articles to improve your posting till then refrain yourself from posting in English Boards.

Your post has high probability to be deleted (due to low quality.) and it is very unlikely you will get Merit for these low quality post.

@OP.  This is one of the drawback of Merit system. Merit hunter are now spamming every thread in search of Merit. Earlier it is much easier for them to farm activity in Spam Mega Thread or Off Topic.

I never said that. What I said was that the reason behind the quality posts being missed is not because people are only Meriting the posts that they agree with, but the reason is the spam.
What you have interpreted here and what I said are totally different in meaning.


I think the posts that are Merited are mostly deserving, unless it is a case of abuse where a person is Meriting one of his alts or a friend only for the sake of pushing them forward in the ranking pipeline. Besides, everyone has a different view for quality posts. Some of us may look for only exceptional posts to Merit them, while others may even Merit the posts that are mildly constructive. I don't think I can blame them for doing that since that is not what I call abusing the system.


I just said what I had in mind. You have your reasons to think my reasons are worthless and I respect that.
And, saying the system has flaws is indirectly blaming it, IMO. The flaws are not carried out by the system itself but have been created later on by its users. That's what I think.

This is the biggest flaw of merit system until now because the main reason of this forum is to discuss about the bitcoin and new crypto projects but meta and local board have more number of merit circulation that the main discussion board so still we need to make some tweaks in the merit system.

And also merits distributed in META were totally useless in my opinion so I am asking theymos to remove the merit button from the meta section then we can concentrate on the bitcoin discussion of our forum. :)

A better solution would be to remove the alt, ANN and TwitBook threads from the discussion board.

This is the fact that the local section lacks the Merit source. It is not like the English section. In local section, there are always some good articles that will be buried.
Therefore, I asked Merit sources, in addition to browsing the English part, can you pay attention to the local part, although language problems may be a big obstacle.

We all should start getting used to the fact that a merit is not a like and should never be used a such. Until then I guess we are open to manipulation.

But it is pretty much a "like".  The only difference is that giving out merit carries a lot more weight because merits are fairly scarce when you take into account the sheer number of members on the forum.  Plus we all know how valuable merits are. 

I tend to merit posts that I like.  It just so happens that those posts are usually pretty good, even if they're just a gif or a picture.  A picture is worth a thousand words sometimes.  Good posts don't always have to be long, but IMO a post that's well-written and on-topic is one I tend to "like".

I'm hoping Theymos tapped some local board members to be new merit sources, but there's no way of telling as of right now.  There's a thread in Meta that can identify suspected merit sources based on how many merits they've sent, but I think it's too early to figure out.  Having more sources in the non-English sections would alleviate some of the pressure to post in English, which some people are feeling--but then we still have the problem of signature campaigns mostly paying for English posts.  That's something that I think should change.

Yes, it's good to get points of merit, for a limited effort and useful to others at the same time, I personally set up the subject in my opinion of the fifth bike

I would agree that there are flaws in the merit system and I think that even if the postings were kind a short and not very detailed, merit has been given to the high ranking member. However, for those low ranking members and newbies may have hard time to acquire such merit even if some really deserves to have one, just continue to do the right thing for merit will soon be rewarded to your end, Anyways, I had notice that the new rule is effective where spammers had been minimize and I believe that people should support it since this will benefit the forum and the users.

I doubt theymos will do that because it will significantly affect a lot (potential good) users/posters
he even assigned a merit source in each local board to guarantee good posts get merited in that section
some users are not english fluent and some are not bitcoin (technical) savvy,
so restricting merit award only on bitcoin english discussion would be somewhat unfair

Tman's 'fuck off' post is more worth than 95% of the garbage in this dump. This will less less frequent/obvious once the amount of abuse, whining and whatnot has tackled. Non-issue. Just an FYI, if you try to restrict users (i.e. change this) most of them will just stop participating at all since it isn't worth the trouble.

Yeah all you guys can think of is doing worthless stuff for every penny and you extrapolate the same to merit system. Considering the anger that the forum members have against shitposters, the later can forget about getting merited at all if they continue to post oneliners like this one here which I quoted.


Since you never bothered to get used to the system you will always think like that. Several good posts have been merited. Personally some merit sources are trying to merit the lower ranks to help them rank up more than the ones who are already higher ranked.

99% of the posts in any thread dont deserve any merit. Accept it and move on.

Actually spamming has increased because they are desperate to get merits and are feeling frustrated because they are not getting any.

---

As long as the people who are not getting merits understand that the fault lies in them and not the merit sources or merit system they can say bye bye to getting ranked up.

Unfortunately the spambies are getting a merit. A single merit is far to low for such a major advantage. They are being given the merit by their puppet masters if they are alts or slaves. They also can receive a merit from a generous member in the mistaken belief that they are helping the forum by being sympathetic to the poster's plight.

Of course people are going to give merit to posts they agree with, but there are numerous factors that are involved in that decision. If someone makes me laugh or has entertained me then I might give them one for that because at least they've put some effort in, but spammers shouldn't be getting merit for utter shitposts and as long as that isn't happening then good, but I'm not going to not merit a post because someone might have an issue with it for whatever reason. Give them to whoever you want for whatever you want especially if they stand out to you for whatever reason and of course that is always going to be subjective.

People are just trying to nit pick things that are complete non-issues here. Big deal if you give a Legendary Member a merit for telling a shitposter to fuck off or for a meme that made you laugh. Legendaries don't even need the merits and if you're a merit source it's not like you've wasted a precious resource, but we're letting them know we enjoyed or appreciated the post amongst the mountains of mindless drivel and trash that are being spewed all over the forum. What about the hundreds of other merits we give for the hundreds of other quality posts? You're acting like this isn't happening and the merit system isn't working because we gave a couple of solitary merits for some memes or jokes to users we appreciate. Please. There are bigger issues here than this.

I see no point in giving merits to legendaries.
I also don't understand why so many merits are given in meta. That section has nothing to do with crypto. Like you said it's just a way for buddies to merit each others. If you haven't noticed, it's always the same people meriting the same people.
It's a waste and a clear disrespect to what Theymos intended to do with this system.

Bitcoin Talk is a multi-cultural and multi-dimensional community. This results in a wide variety of opinins and skills. Merit sources can only be subjective in their awarding of merits, and this could leadto a centralisation of topic replies. The sMerit creation is a good way to avod this, and to allow he better members of the community to affect the quality and content of the boards. Of course there will be abuses, but the abuses tend to highlight the members with low moral fibre, and the trust system is being used to record this for the benefit of the honest members.

The system may still be under experimentation and review, and I suspect that we will see a few more tweaks in the future. Hopefully these will appear as soon as the complaints by the newly created spambies die down.

So our posts become redundant once we hit a certain rank? We might not need them to move up a rank, but we may in the future if theymos implements another rank which requires x amount of merit, so stop being so self-centred. Merit is another way to see who are making the greatest contributions here, and that shouldn't stop being counted or become irrelevant once someone has achieved a certain rank.


Maybe because this is one of the only boards where anything productive gets discussed and is largely free of spam.


So? Neither do Politics and Society or Serious Discussion. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be meriting quality posts in there.



Or maybe there's only a handful of people actually making posts that are worth meriting. Lots of lower ranks get merited in here as well, that just isn't convenient for you.


Lol. It's not.

The interesting thing is that everything is done publicly and with records. It may actually unveil many of the spamnets out there and leave them open for the hunt. If I were a spam-hunter I would be looking directly in the merit awarded in ANN and Bounty threads.


What I did was to set a criteria for myself to give merit an try to stick to it. So, it does not matter if I personally agree with the content or even if I think it is correct from a philosophical perspective. My criteria is related to the posts helping others, providing news or insights, humor (within reason), providing value for the Forum, etc. I try no to merit any "opinion post" unless it is based on specialized knowledge or non-trivial experience and conclusions.

I guess that what I mean is that I "like" the post, but not necessarily agree, as well as the opposite, I don't agree but you post is providing a well built argument or helping.

With the new changes I had to add another criteria a day ago. I will merit newbies only after at least 20 activity, once I clearly see that they are "humans", that they haven't spammed nor made activity rising one-liners and that they are trying to learn, help others and following the basic rules. At least I will make sure that newbies have given some value to the forum and at the same time they are encouraged by the built-in "gamification" of the forum ranks.


I think Theymos has mentioned that he might create another rank above Legendary in the future. "Mythical" perhaps? ;)

I think people are missing the point of the merit system. It's to stop the worst of the worst from ranking up just by posting rubbish, not to punish higher ranks. If you write complete trash then you don't get merit. Stick to claiming bounties. If you want to be able to earn by posting then I think you should have to be qualified to do so and I think getting ten merit would be a good aptitude test for that. One isn't, especially some of the crap people are getting merited for.


This is why I'd prefer a higher merit requirement to get a signature. Anyone can get a solitary merit whether they beg or buy or trade it. It's real risky giving one merit to someone because that's all they need to be able to earn here and they could be a colossal shitposter who just makes one half decent post or has in fact copied it from somewhere and that's something you've sadly got to be aware of. Requiring ten merit would lessen the chances of this abuse happening and them luckily getting one or two merit in whatever nefarious way won't matter too much, but when it's just one it's Christmas come early for them if they can get it.


He has said he may do that, but he also put my suggestion for a new higher rank in the "no or net yet category" (though he also put the one merit requirement there so I have hope).


Bitcoin and Alt coin Discussion are both colossal shitheaps and trying to find a merit-worthy post in there is like trying to find an AIDS-infected needle in a fetid, decaying haystack. I hardly even bother posting in there because any half decent post is just drowned out by streams of crap from sig spammers and that's something that needs to change. As long as ICO campaigns can get away with paying people to post crap then nothing will change, especially not a mere one-merit requirement. To make a difference here we would probably have to remove signatures completely from everyone until they've actually earned a good bit of merit. Then we really would notice a difference in posting because if you haven't proved your worth here then you haven't eared your right to earn via posting.


Wat? So you're saying pretty much 99% of my posts are useless and shouldn't be merited? 99% of my posts are in Meta and half of them are probably suggestions of how to make this place better, one of them which was implemented recently, so I'm not sure why my contributions should be discarded or not be meritable.

You are assuming a rank above Legendary will never be created.  I believe one will be, eventually. 

Also, Theymos may introduce new features that rely on merit. 

Is that because you think they will flow your way, if not handed out to Legendary members?

The point is that someone feels it is a quality post, and regardless of the rank quality posts should earn merit.

I understand why you are agitating for more of the merits circulating in the above sections. Indeed, the forum is called bitcointalk, and it would be logical to discuss bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, and reward participants for quality posts relating specifically to this topic. But! You focus your attention on what should be, and not on what it is in fact. In reality, the situation is such that in bitcoin and altcoin discussions there is such a huge amount of spam that it`s almost impossible to find worthy posts among it. It`s in these threads that the bounty-supporters (mostly shitposters) mainly write, as the rules of the campaigns require.

META branch has become an airhole for those who are tired of garbage on the forum. It`s here that you can express your informed opinion, and expect that it`ll be heard by other forum participants. META is read by the forum users, this branch became the focus of the bitcointalk elite. And this elite thinks about how to improve the forum, develops strategies for returning to the original goals of bitcointalk. The META branch is still practically free from spam, therefore, worthy, interesting and promising discussions are held here. I believe that those, who are now directing all efforts to find ways to improve the forum, will be able to rejoice bitcoin and altcoin discussion. Only after such qualitative changes (eliminating spam, limiting the possibilities of shitposters and irresponsible bounty campaigns), it will be possible to say about increasing merit circulation in the above boards.

Oh, and BTW let´s not forget that Legendary also like to give merit and to give one, they need 2.

Maybe to reduce the flaw of merits being passed back and forth, merit can only be received if there is 2 merits for that post so that way merit giving is confirmed by another member

I'm almost certain a new rank will be added eventually and I don't see the issue in adding one sooner rather than later as it's something for all us Legendaries to strive to achieve. As I said previously, Legendary rank is becoming far too common now and will only become more so as time passes. I would suggest fixing Legendary at 960 activity and the new rank is double that at 1920. You could also make the merit requirement very high for this new rank so it's only for the crème de la crème of users. Some nice perks could be introduced for it (maybe things like a custom title, access to a special sub board or the ability to have an image banner in your signature).

Don't forget the badges theymos said he might do also. There may eventually be badges for high merited users or maybe one for the top merited user or users, which would be cool to achieve.


This could work, but it will also hinder many other genuine users who just aren't getting merited enough for their posts (and a lot of decent posts do go un or undermerited). I think a better solution would be to make the merit requirement higher so it takes ten to become a Junior and that would make it much harder for people to abuse the few merits they will get.

Yes, merit spamming has become very common and some of the smerit holders are also supporting it by meriting this type of posts now.

I think missing the quality post and meriting the posts which don't deserve it is also a big issue and it should be solved. But yes you also highlight a possible problem in the merit system.

It's not about blaming them as a merit abuser but it's about telling them the real purpose of merit system and how to use them in a proper way!

I respect your thoughts too.

You have a good solution but there are also posts in meta which surely deserve merits of there explanation and work behind it. So just eliminating it will not be so adequate. In some cases, there are useless posts merited as you can see in my main post and I would surely add up more examples so that everyone could understand the reality and improve it.

Yes, some of the posting rules should surely be modified in the bitcoin discussion board and removing spammy thread you mentioned is a good solution to it

You have explained too much in one sentence for sure. LIKE ≠ MERIT ( small but great meaning to tell everyone for what merits should not be used)

Merits are really scared and they should not be used as a LIKE and that the reason I think behind the scarcity of merits in other discussions boards as I mentioned earlier.
Most of the posts you merit are truly deserving it but anyone can make mistakes of meriting the posts which don't deserve merits but just match our thoughts and this is not the right way to use it as per the use stated by theymos.

If you think that way than there would be floods of "FUCK OFF" posts every were in demand of merits. I think there should be no partiality while giving any merit as that just makes the merit system useless logically.
( This post is also an example of how merits are used not for the quality but for just supporting views)

I think you should do some research just in meta section and you will surely come back here with many examples of undeserved posts merited and this is increasing every day and this is a big flaw I guess.

This is a totally wrong statement by you. I don't think this is right as the real purpose is just lost behind the merit system.

Posts which make you laugh are surely merit deserving as the poster has done some efforts to put some humor in it but posting a GIF or One line views does not have any efforts involved in it rather than spending the merits for telling people that you support them you can just spend them of a person who is putting some efforts in posting.

I think there should be no difference in merit source and a normal user for sending merits as there are no different rules for a merits source all are same.

Yes, you have surely motivated many users to make quality posts and merited numerous merit deserving posts too but even if you do not spend one merit on a post by legendary who make you laugh and use it to merit a newbie who is just trying to build himself on the forum he will be better motivated to make numerous such posts and help in betterment for long term.  Of course, This is also a big issue which could make the merit system useless and you should not ignore it.

Yes, this would at least save some merits getting wasted for bots.

You are using the wrong standard. I believe it is best to award merit to posts that a lot of effort was likely put into making. It is possible a one liner is deserving to have merit, and it is possible a 10 paragraph post should not receive merit if it is incoherent. The basis for giving merit is if a lot of effort was put into creating a post.

The ultimate goal of merit is to eradicate people who post as many posts they can quickly in order to "earn" as much money they can via signature advertising, which market forces have caused to pay by the post. If people who put a lot of effort into their posts are rewarded by being allowed to rank up, those who create a lot of low effort posts will leave when they can't rank up.

In general, if a post is funny or witty, chances are, not a lot of effort was put into making said post. Most of the time when I say something funny, it is because I reacted to something I read or heard, and thought of something funny off the top of my head. I wont necessarily spend a lot of time trying to find a way to make something funny.

My concern is that many of the posts cited in the OP were low effort posts, and as such, I don't think deserved merit. I think it is pretty clear those posts (and many more throughout the forum) received merit because the merit sender agreed with the content of the post.  The problem with this kind of behavior is that it will encourage the forum to become an echo chamber, and will encourage others to agree with those who clearly have merit to spend.

The underlying root problem with the merit system is that merit is valuable based on the fact that merit ultimately allows someone to earn more money via signature campaigns by way of having more signature features, however merit cannot be easily purchased with money. There are however implicit barter transactions for merit when people back someone with sMerit in a dispute. It would be more appropriate to allow people to buy merit so they can have more signature features, and so they would have incentives to not go around posting a bunch of nonsense and garbage because if they did they would lose what they paid when they get banned. 

That is one of the issues u have also noticed with users taking sides to try and get favour from higher ranked members

And some members use it as a reward for agreeing with them. (Some merit sources as well)

Meriting something you agree with is quite a task, but merits should be given you deserving posts regardless of your position, and point of view.

We might need a full guideline on how to merit posts and not just a few lines in the official rules.

I was thinking of creating a post on the same lines. The irony in the entire situation is that new members of the forum are EXPECTED to make Quality posts to get merit. That is fine by me. But the double standards lie when I see numerous posts of "biggies" in the forum who merit anything and everything. There are basically syndicates where everyone has friends and they merit posts that do no good to the forum. I have seen people who are fighting for some scam (Referring to a big fight between two groups) and then they are meriting posts on that thread. The list is endless of many useless posts without any logic/contribution getting merited.
Why the double standards in terms of new members and those biggies. New members are expected to contribute/make quality posts whereas these syndicates have gamed the system. I am slowing coming to terms with the fact that the forum is not at all decentralized. Like every system, this forum has been hijacked by these members who have reached the top and are now dictating the terms on the forum. The sad part is if someone tries to stand-up he/she is literally mobbed by the entire gang.

P.S. Though there are some very good members as well but they are greatly out-numbered.

Which is absolutely untrue and then you wonder why nobody gives your merit when you "stand up" with false statements. ::) If you are offering any proper service here, i.e. you have the actual skill-set required to do a proper job (unlike >90% of the people offering services around here), then neither trust nor merit nor rank is relevant.

As far as now we don't have any guidelines to how the merits needs to spend other than Don't merit the post you just agree,merit the high quality post so it is about our own opinion is about how to spend our merits here.When we stop hunting for merits then the whole system will work properly so stop posting for getting merits,just post yourself and the merits will follow up.

Aren't merits an overrated like button? Overrated because only a select few can dish them out as they please, and the rest of us mortals have to make do with limited amounts? Saying the system is flawed isn't fair. What people find merit worthy is subjective, unless you have a mind control drug that can be applied to everyone on the forum so that we all think and act the same way.

Constructive comes in different forms for different people: Informative, educative, helpful, funny, etc. Then you have the sycophants, and those that have the same opinions but cannot be arsed to post, so meriting is a of showing agreement, nothing wrong with that, and some use it as a way of saying thank you. It isn't perfect and can be gamed. Make no mistake, any system can be gamed, after all this is just a forum. But it has so far done what it was implemented to do, to reduce spam, Which it has to an extent, eventhough it means some of us will take forever to rank up.

Hey Jet Cash. Next year I'd say you are 100% correct.  At this moment, the merit system is still too new. There are still a lot of members like myself, who have a high post count to merit ratio due to the recent start of the merit system. Here is what my story is. I was an active forum member up until a few months ago. I logged in last month and noticed that my post count was good, but I was a newbie. I had about 80 posts and no merit. So, I think there are a lot who are in the same boat.

Overall, the merit system is better. My post quality is higher now. The only downside, is that in the back of my mind I am wondering if I am going to get validated or not. I guess that is the cost for quality right?

I don't think it is appropriate to regulate how merits are given, especially if people are volunteering their time to give out merits. It wouldn't be fair that someone has to learn (and be accountable to) a bunch of rules just to give out something that doesn't have any benefit to them. You cannot 'unsend' merit, so someone who breaks a hypothetical rule would have a hard time remediating their mistake.

That is very much similar to what the merit system is. Although not all merit is given because the sender agrees (or "likes") the post, as a decent amount of merit sent is sent for posts of which a decent amount of effort was put into it.

Maybe for the next April fools day joke, theymos can implement a system in which people can award a "LOL" to posts they find funny, and an "angry merit" for posts that upset someone. People would need both merit and "LOL" in order to rank up, and if the "angry merit" to "LOL" ratio gets too high, their avatar will automatically change to a warning that the person is mean.

This seem true even newbie rank could offer service just by buying the copper membership to enable newbie to post images and pictures. This will not limit one user to offer service to earn. I do not believe that rank and merit has to do with earning in the forum except for signature campaign. You need merit to rank up to join signature campaign and this is a problem of the common users complaining in the forum about not getting merit.

I read OP post and even saw that he had a concrete evidence on some users that has merited with just a word which is shown in the images. Maybe we should ask those users then why they had done meriting such one word post. If I were to guess it since both the merited users were possible merit source then probably they were just transferring more smerits to another user so that user could distribute it to other users that are having a quality post. theymos has consider this giving huge amount of smerit of a merit source to another trustworthy users to look for posts that are worthy to be merited.  

However, many were still complaining about the inequality of not giving merit and envied the high rank users because of the merits they receive from co-high rank users. Still we need to consider that many of this users had posted quality post and worthy to be merited. Probably they had given a protocol to reward merit to someone is not copying and pasting of posts by the other users or copying and posting without the acknowledging the owner of the articles or blog being copied, checking their posts history for some were spammers and other considerations like constructing a post with bad English skills.

So, before they complain of not getting merit/s they should make sure to check their profiles and posting habit if they were worthy to be merited.

I highly agree with you on the fact that the merit system has big flaws. The idea behind its introduction was a great one but this system is kinda bias looking at how people reward posts with merits. Looking at the current state of the merit system, its operating like the system where the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
and nothing can be done about it. Lets learn to adapt to this system  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I'm not for sure, but the merit system seems like a decent temporary fix to appease the festering problem of spam from the influx of new members and all that it entails. The rank system worked in the past because it was created on the tenets of trust, honesty and other virtues that were once abundant among fellow members of the forum, during the earlier days of course, before every Tom, Dick, and Harry got wind of Bitcoin. There wasn't any need to screen so heavy as they do now.
   I agree that the Merit system has some major issues, one being that the giving and receiving of merit will always be a subjective experience due to the inherent nature and mindset of the giver. The new merit system brutally puts you on trial by a jury of peers (there are some tough critics in our community). Opinions of any kind are subject to bias, and opinions themselves are subjective. Another flaw I believe lies within the acquirement of merit. To acquire more, you have to go through a gatekeeper, which is actually an excellent idea, but again, maybe the execution of its implementation is off?

Overall, I think the merit system works, it acts as a screening agent and deters a lot of would-be hagglers.

Just my two cents!

This analysis provided by r1s2g3  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SAi_b3umCcFJO2dMoLYjWCjNz1JhOLWrsRHhYQK-nb8/edit?usp=sharing

Does add weight to your suspicions. If you could remove even the top 300 or 400 and merits from the meta board then you would start to see a more reasonable merit score table. Most would not have more than 100 merit.

You can see already many persons merit score is cut in half or in extreme cases reduced by 75% and that is without taking meta out of it or those aspiring to join the fraction of 1% that reward each other the most merit.

There are some on the top 200 who deserve to be there for sure but I would not pay much heed to merit scores.

You can there fore see great posters from the alt board will have extremely low chance of merit.

Where do most new posters post??

Merit is good for showing you like your friends posts or agree with peoples posts... I would far rather read through a persons post history in depth to get an idea of what they are like and how much you can rely on what they say.

Trust is a more important score to look at but again I would read through it deeply not just take the scores at face value.

Guys, here is my opinion about this. The system itself raise the rating to obtain the rank - unreasoned (not thought out to the end). If earlier everything depended on the number of posts, now the main thing is the number of merit. To earn it, you have to write the posts. That's why the participants of bounty programs and write a huge number of posts without thinking about their quality. Wrote, and thinks, and suddenly me would give merit. I think to reduce the amount of spam, you need to recycle the system. For example, to give merity for any other services that person has done for the forum or the help of administrators, managers forum.