Bitcoin Forum

1.   Introduction

Edit 21/10/2018: I've updated the data shown on the post with this week's data, and archived the previous versions for reference:

28/09/2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20181021125505/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5034149.msg45969883
21/09/2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20180928165212/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5034149.msg45969883

We now have a complete month of data after the changes made to the ranking rules and the increase in Merit Sources (17/09/2018), and @TomCrypto asked me to update this post.

Bear in mind that this week’s data is partial, since it covers up to early hours of the 19/10/2018 (with the entire weekend ahead still to go), so interpreting the data has to be done with caution for the current week (marked in yellow).

We also need to consider that the newly appointed Merit Sources got their initial batch of sMerit on the 17/09/2018. The sMerit batch for each Merit Source is not fully topped-up every 30 days since the Merit Source was appointed (i.e. 17/09/2018 -> 17/10/2018), but rather 30 days from the moment each sMerit was sent from the allowance. So for example, if a Merit Source sent 3 sMerits every day from the 17th of September onwards at 10 am, he will get a daily refill of 3 sMerits from the 17th of October onwards at 10 am. The pattern a Merit Source used upon distribution is mirrored a month later in the refill.

2.   Awarded sMerit
https://i.imgur.com/ZZaFJmV.png
The total weekly merit awarded spiked during the week of the change of rules, only to fall back sharply to the 4,0-4,5K area since then, following patterns similar to June 2018.
There are likely a few factors involved such as Merit Sources running out of sMerits soon (Merits Sources have different initial allowances, which may or may not be increased over time), and quite a bit of farm Alt account merit awarding to bring demoted accounts back to their Jr. Rank (both me and @LoyceV created lists on re-ranked Jr. Members during the first days).


3.   Senders
https://i.imgur.com/dX2CBsl.png
Senders are progressively settling in the  lower 700 area, following a similar pattern seen in July 2018. New Senders shows a similar trend.

4.   Receivers
https://i.imgur.com/rWtOKXu.png
Receivers dropped drastically from one week to another after the change of rules, but numbers here are a bit better in comparison than the drop in the other ratios (total sent Merits and Receivers). Specifically, the New Receivers is now in the 350 area, a bit better than other weeks with an equivalent number of sent sMerits, but also with a trend that seems will bring it soon to pre-change of rules week’s values.

I’ve still got my doubts on how the Merit Source refills are going to play out, and we won´t really be able to compare properly until next Friday, but it does look like the charts will not spike anywhere near what occurred on the week of the 17th of September 2018. We’ll see, but there may have been more influence on the farm Alt meriting side than one would hope for, and less on the impact of the newly appointed Merit Sources.


5.   Receiver’s rank comparison

https://i.imgur.com/cdQuG7R.png

This is the Receivers rank distribution, comparing the first 4 days of the week of the change of rules, to the first four days of this week. As we can see above:

-   Jr. Member Receivers have lost half of their weight in terms of percentage (dropped six fold in terms of absolute values), whilst still being the rank where most distinct people have received sMerit.

-   New Receivers that get merited for the first time is still under the Jr. Member’s spell, although they have lost a lot of presence on the whole.

In summary, with the still unknown effect that Merit Source refills may have over the coming days, numbers seem to now be what they were three months ago, with a slightly better look in terms of new Receivers that get merited for the first time.

Very interested to see the pending results later this week. I do think these changes will have a postive effect on the quality of the forum posts. Would also be interesting to see how much of the merits received will be past through again by the smerit receivers.

There are now two classes of "newbie" - "spambies" and new members. I'd be interested in seeing if there is a difference in merit awards to these two categories.

As I stated a few posts ago, I am a reader more than a poster but all I can see lately is posts, graphs, ass licking for merits/smerits. As a reader, I must point out that, when I open the forum to read interesting stuff about bitcoin and it's evolution, ETH and other altcoins, most posts are about the merit system how good it is or how much it sucks. It seems to me that all the attention is directed towards the merit system. What is next? Merit MEMEs? Bitcointalk statues with the Moto: "Merit is my bitcointalklife"?

Why is everyone so desperate to make posts just to get merit? It's a forum, you can post with most of the ranks, almost the same way. Except for the signatures... well ... just make the sigs same size/chars limit for everyone and problem is solved.

Ohh well and then there are the shitposters to bump threads in first page... but those didn't stop posting shit because of their rank, did they?

That's because you go to the wrong board. Bitcointalk is much more than the meta section. Go to the Development and Technical Discussion or the alts boards.

That's the second time I see a similar opinion. If you don't like threads about the merit system, don't come to meta. That's like going to the beach every day and complaining about the sand.

It's not about having something against merit threads, it's just that they are WAY TOO MANY threads related to that.

Thanks for your effort. I hope the reason is really a genuinely growing distribution and not simply that newbies now desperately buy/exchange merits (or farmers meriting their newbie alts) ... So I think to draw a conclusion we would have to wait some more weeks.

Another stat I would like to see is the relation of the total number of merits produced by all merit sources to the effectively distributed sMerits. In theory, each "originally produced sMerit" should lead to a production of approximately one sMerit more, considering that in each level of the "merit pyramid" the sMerit amount is halved. This should show how effective the distribution is, e.g. if "merit hoarding" is a problem or not.

Thanks to OP, the merit system was improved: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5029372.msg45721025#msg45721025

After seeing that, theymos decided to make some changes. I don't know if there are too many but I know that among all the threads I see, some of them are very good ones and they are very well researched. Some even like in this case lead to changes that improve the forum.

So, I welcome as many threads about improving bitcointalk as necessary, because among all of them some will be good enough and will lead to changes being implemented.

There is some additional stuff I’ll try to add today (specifically, complete section 5). As to the whole week’s data (Monday .. Sunday, with the pending weekend), that cannot be completed until a week from now, since the merit.txt official file is released on Fridays.
In relation to passing the merits down the chain, I think it is not feasible in general terms. What I did do some days ago is go the other way round that question: see how many merited users have not merited anyone else. Extract from Re: sMerit participants – a worrying descending trend (!/?) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5029372.msg45763119#msg45763119):

We’d have to define the conditions for each of these classes. I guess the number of posts would serve to categorize (i.e. Merited Newbies/Jr. Members with up between a and b posts,  between c and d posts and so on. The thing is, to get a good idea it would have to be done in relation to the non-merited users for the same categorization (to see the share), but I don’t download those.

Are you serious? There are so many threads on the matter, that the forum provides you more readable content than all of Shakespeare’s writings put together. Just read around.


Yes, this week will likely be a hilltop maximum on the graphs, just as when the Merit System rolled-out.

Interesting idea, although the problem to calculate it is multiple: The first is that we do not know the aggregate of how much the Merit Sources effectively inject into the system (only the total max. potential). The second issue is that a forum member may have received sMerit from another forum member (regular sMerit TX), or from the initial airdrop. Additionally, since sMerit does not have a unique identifier, determining how far a set of sent sMerit has been halved is probably impossible.

What we do know is that there is a lot of hoarded sMerit that was originated in the initial 600K airdrop (around >=400K roughly unspent). Multiple reasons behind for sure, probably the “don’t care for the system” being one of the top reasons for those that still have not awarded any from the airdrop, but this is just my guess. That is a potential large black market though that I’m not personally too keen on.

The weekly maximal potential of merit sources alone as an additional indicator in the chart would be enough for me, as it would approximately show the efficiency (relation between generated merits and distributed merits) and could be followed over time. The current number seems to be 23045 per 30 days, or 5377.16 per week, so the total maximal potential per week is approximately 10754. If we can hold the current sMerit/week level, the value would be pretty good, imo, as always some merits get hoarded or lost.

I see some that do their research on google but some neither copy paste it so their post can look like a smart ass and the thread for plagiarism is being flooded of reports and it took for a while to ban those copypasters since there are just few that working it out.

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The result is so far good and we can see some that are motivated and doing their best yet it isn't enough to get the merit. IMO, as long as the thought of the sentence is there then it's good, certainly english isn't their native language.

Interesting graphs as always.

What I understand from these though is the overwhelming amount of the total merits given, went to newbies and Jr. Members.
Didn't that cancel the whole purpose of locking newbies out of signatures? I'm sure 1 merit was too easy to get through buying it or spamming until someone who wouldn't realize a post was made from a spammer would give 1 merit.

As for the stats... I suppose if a Newbie is awarded a 2points merit by one person then 1 point will show up in the graph as given to a newbie and 1 point toba Jr. M.

I've seen many Newbies complain about Merit, and many of them don't get anything. There is however merit abuse (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5031341.0) on a much larger scale, where high ranking accounts turn 50 Newbies into Jr. Members at once. I wouldn't be surprised if the account farmers with many accounts know their way to buy Merit (or have enough old accounts with sMerit), while the real users who are also shitposters but only have one account don't know how to buy it.

There are many obvious cases of abuse of the system that make the analyzes of previous days incorrect, especially as many of the members have lost their gains by demoted their ranks.
Some old "red trust" accounts reused for merits.

Maybe if you ask theymos will give you the numbers/names.

These sMerits will be removed in the future, especially if no one spends one year.


Newly added merit sources get only 50 sMerits, old members can generate more than 200.

Seems those real users haven't still figure out how to buy merit but eventually when they're too tired of begging they'll come up to look for a merit seller ( if we have anyone here ) and will feel accomplished. ;D

Or they probably saving some satoshis to buy a copper membership, problem solved.

The maximum potential I find may be misleading to some extent. It depends on how the distribution flows: the more chain-like shape (single thread), the nearer to the maximum potential; but a much ramified tree-like shape scores the toll more towards the original amount. Say for example that the 5.377 weekly sMerits you mention are awarded to 5.377 distinct people (1 sMerit each), and that those people are not merited again. The initial batch will in practice not generate more sMerits (1 sMerit creates a virtual half, but non-transferable).
The numbers on the charts are precise, but the maximum potential Merit Sourced sMerit would be a theoretical figure, with the problem above mentioned, and the additional fact that Merit Sources are not the only player in the awarding game (albeit being behind a very large proportion as we can infer up to a certain degree here: sMerit Senders & Receivers – Weight of top 100 and 200 weekly contributors (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4837924.msg43643466#msg43643466)).

Correct, the data table shows how many people have receives sMerit by rank, not the amount of sMerits received. There are many now Jr. Members that have been awarded sMerit this week. This is really expected, since I guess the idea is to reinstate to Jr. Member those that have a decent posting track and/or are capable of creating decent content now. With that in mind, it has become easier these days to award sMerit so some degraded  Jr. Members in the context of this week. I figure that the share of merited people on the Jr. Member rank will decrease over the next few weeks.

A correlated fact that I didn’t emphasize before is that there is a large peak in senders these four days (see Senders chart, nearly doubling that of the entire previous week). The hopeful interpretation here would be that the buzz has stimulated many to participate in the merit awarding side of the system. Of course, there are likely to be a certain amount of merit abusing accounts meriting some de-ranked alts (@LoyceV has this hutch too as I’ve seen on his post here). The truth is somewhere in between.

I really don’t believe that it would be released. I’ve asked for some info recently but I don’t believe I’ll get it (nothing too important though).

That is likely to be the sway they will take, since a Copper membership is relatively cheap (depending on the country of origin, and how many alts are "at work" here).

Gosh! Do you even take time to read threads at all? A thread has been opened boldly by one of the moderators in the forum right above in the Meta section buy yet you just walk blindly into any of the threads and start asking questions about merits. Anyway i will indulge you for now.
READ THIS THREAD https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2766177.msg28250551#msg28250551 CAREFULLY AND PLEASE DON'T ASK ANYTHING ABOUT HOW TO GET MERIT AGAIN BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS IN THERE. GOODLUCK.

Thanks for this statistics really interesting to see it!But as for the copper members, so their number seems to have increased much more, I had not seen before not when there were so many of them)all who understood that they can not earn a merit started buying copper members.It's great that many with beginners become Jr.member

What we see on the stats are only merited copper members. The vast majority of de-ranked Jr. Members that have purchase a copper membership are likely not merited yet and, therefore, do not show up.
The number of copper members must have really spiked these days, at it allows to fast pass your way back into wearing a signature (amongst other perks). I tried to see if I could see the number, but the BTC address I see (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote) shown nothing on the BTC explorer, and the forum search function (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=mlist;sa=search -> filter by position = ‘Copper Member’) shows only up to 1020 Copper members (40 pages with 30 entries), so it falls short and shows a partial all-time list.

It will be interesting to look at the statistics in a month. How the introduction of new rules will affect the ratio of rank "Jr" and Copper.

As far as I know, meta section is a section for discussion relating to forum, so anything concerning the forum are been discussed here, If you are a regular reader of this section, you will know that merit discussion has been main topic here since it's introduction, it is here that the idea of 1 merit to rank to Jr member was conceived. So if you want to read about bitcoin here is the link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0 and for altcoins https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0. Trust me, you won't read about merit on these sections.   

It's a good thing that there is continuous sharing of merits initiated by the staff of this forum and I would only say to those who really wanted to acquire such merit, it would be better not to expect too much and just do meaningful and interesting post that could one day will become one of the post to be merited soon because your post deserve to get one.

Statistics? ???
Here found in the next topic https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037073.0

as a novice received 2 times 50 merit from the Copper and the Hero in one day.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=909166


There is another newcomer who gets 100 merits in 1 day, it's interesting that the registration of 2016 but the posts are not less than 20 ...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=907810

I was once again convinced that the merit system does not work and needs to be adjusted ...

P.S. Remove the signature completely, or make it for everyone in the same format. ;)

Ok. Marlbaroza had already put negative trust because of multiple accounts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=807879

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=909166
And this account is also allegedly his alt account and should be tagged for merit abuse.

This is also might an alt account of mention above. ( Please refer to trust reference )

Merit system is fine so far and those that caught abusing the system was been tagged and that can do for now.

I've update the OP with this week's data, now with a complete week and a half since the change of rules for Jr. Members, and archieved the OP for last week (referenced archieve can be found in the OP).

Dear OP, one month has passed since Theymos granted new merit sources to the forum as well as increasing their merit regeneration. If you have some time, would it be possible to have an update on those graph to see if those changes had an impact on the descending trends of merit awarding?
Thank in advance

Hi @TomCrypto. Ok, no worries, I’ll find some time to update it tomorrow. There didn’t seem to be much interest in the thread, so I let it sink for a while. Now that you have re-floated it, I’m obliged to update it ...

Just to mention, the core information is available weekly though the Merit Dashboard (https://public.tableau.com/profile/ddmrddmr#!/vizhome/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/GlobalSummary), although in a tabular manner and not a graphical one. If you want to take a look right now, just go the the tab called “Global Summary” (third tab from the beginning), and take a look at the data on the Weekly Ratios section. The essential information is the same there as in my OP on this thread when updated, but even so I’ll update it tomorrow jut the same.

One last comment: As you say, a month has gone by since the changes, and the Merit Sources are refilled every 30 days, but the way it goes is that they get refilled with sMerit at the same rate they were spent. This means that, if a new Merit Source spent all his sMerits on the 17/09/2018, he will have received a full refill by now. On the other hand, say he awards two merits per day, then he will get a refill of 2 awardable sMerits per day after the 30 days have gone by (the refill is 30 days from the date that each sMerit was spent on).

Thanks for your reply and additional information, I will take a look in the non graphical data on your merit dashboard.

In my opinion, this thread as well as other statistic topics on merit are of upmost importance because they are helping us to determine if the merit system in his current state is working or not and how it could be improved. And Theymos have taken into account those kind of merit data analysis to make the first huge change in the merit system, therefore those kind of topics are indeed quite important. And even if this particular topic was lost in the abyss of the forum, for me it's one of the great tool to follow the impact of the last changes made par Theymos on the merit system! that's why I asked you an update.

So keep up the good work OP :)

I’ve update the OP with data that takes us up to last Friday (early hours of 19/10/2018). While the numbers are better than before the change of rules and the addition of the newly appointed Merit Sources, they are not dazzling, and if fact look similar to the situation we had three months ago roughly.

We still need to see how the Merit Sources refills play out, since they are refilled every 30 days but not all in one go. Rather, the Merit Source refill process mirrors the pattern of the spent sMerit (in the OP I explain this in further detail).