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Hope that got your attention, Theymos. 

I respect that you made me a merit source even though I did not ask to be one.  I'm trying to give merits to the lower ranks (Newbie-Sr. Member), but I'm always falling short of sMerits.  Always.  And I've earned quite a few sMerits from my own posts, and those are all gone now too. 

I would absolutely love to give something like 5 merits to a great post, but as it stands I feel like I have to use my sMerits in an ungenerous, miserly, ass-squeaking, and niggardly way.  Can you please, please, please up the amount of sMerits I get?  If you take a look at my meriting history, you can see what I'm talking about.  I give them out in dribs and drabs and I'd like to be able to give them out more liberally. 

Got no idea how merit-givingly active I am in comparison to other merit sources, nor do I hear any other merit source complaining about their monthly source allotments, so I don't care if you increase any other merit source's monthly sMerit number.  I just want more so I can give out more.  I would respectfully ask you to consider my request, and I thank you in advance for doing so.

You can report the good posts here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.msg49051692#msg49051692) as long as you run out of sMerit. I also think that those merit sources who are running out of sMerits, should get more sMerits per month. It will increase the equality in the merit system.

LOL, did you accidentally click "new thread" instead of "send PM"? :)

FWIW, I fully support this petition. I wouldn't mind if any merit source who exhausts their allocation and spreads their merits reasonably wide would get a bump. The number of merits sent per month has declined to 15k, while merit sources alone should be sending out 22k. So clearly some are slacking and the ones that aren't should be encouraged¹.

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¹ up to a reasonable limit. You don't want your merit sources overworked and sleep-deprived.

You know I thought about sending him a PM, but I didn't think that would be effective for some reason since I'm pretty sure he gets tons of them, and I know he reads threads in Meta. 

Plus I wouldn't mind reading some comments from other merit sources about how their monthly allocation is going.  I think Jet Cash said in a thread a few days ago that he had something like 100 sMerits or more, and I've never had anywhere near that amount.  As I said, I don't know who's slacking or what other sources are doing with their sMerits, but I'm chronically short.  I very much want to participate in LoyceV's new thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0) and sure I'll be able to do so in the future, but I just need more source sMerits.

Here is one sMerit. Spend it wisely. Theymos can consider giving you more.

I'll go dutch with you on that.

For now if you can't reward them let other people know! I'd be more than willing to spend some sMerits to those that deserve them. I only dedicated certain hours to sending sMerit, and will miss quite a few deserving posts!

I've been doing that in some threads where I can't merit them, like here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.msg49053313#msg49053313) and here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.msg48066205#msg48066205).  One of the posts is by o_e_l_e_o, who is definitely not under-merited, but the other post was from a member I'm not familiar with and thought that his post made sense and looked like he at least put some effort into it.

OK, I appreciate that (especially from QS, who has never heard a good word spoken about him from me) but I'm not asking for personal merits in this thread--I just want more sMerits from Theymos.

I'm going to see if I can merit those posts I linked with what I just got.

Edit:  I only had 1 sMerit, so I gave it to the lower-ranked member (Coyster) and o_e_l_e_o got a merit for his post from TryNinja.

TP, did you get an increase?

Holy shit, yes I did!  Thank you, Theymos, I appreciate it.  I got your PM and suchmoon's, and I'm assuming there's been some more sMerits put into circulation, and that's great.

Now I'm going to keep an eye on LoyceV's thread and see if there are any newbies with good posts, but I'm going to do some hunting on my own tomorrow.  Good deal, made my day!

Wow, I got an increase too. Also there are now 123 merit sources. I wonder who got the honors.

Fun fact: the total allocation went down from ~22k to 20735.

Congrats, let's spread 'em out.

So do you think he increased allocation to more active merit sources perhaps and decreased allocation to the less active ones?  Theymos will probably stay silent like the invisible hand of Adam Smith that moves the merit economy, so I'm guessing that's what he did.  I too am curious about who the new merit sources are.  I suppose if they don't reveal themselves, they'll eventually get outed in that thread that does it mathematically.  I forget where that thread is, so I can't link to it at the moment.

Edit:
Lol, thank you.  I'm a bit slow at remembering where I see things on this forum and forgot the title of that thread.

Likely yes. And/or removed some sources and added more than 3 new ones.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4523027.0

That parsimonious old bugger Jet Cash didn't get a source increase. Serves him right for not being active in his Fit to Talk English project, and for moaning about the poor post quality here.

I would like to see how many Source Merits are sent each month. @theymos: can you show data on that?
The remainder is either airdropped, or created by "trickle-down" Merit distribution.

I've had "my own" sMerit stach >300 for months. Since a few months, I've been trying to keep my Source supply as close to 0 as possible, and started using my own stash.
Then this happened:
My initial plan was to ask for a source increase once I'm out completely, but it didn't come to that.

My thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0) has no shortage of people wanting to Merit posts, but doesn't have a single link to a good post. I guess it once again shows that merit isn't scarce. Good posts are.

It's to be expected that different sources will require different amounts, and it's good to know that once you show you are consistently using up your supply (responsibly), you will be given more. It sounds like along with creating the 3 new sources (or more, if some were removed, who knows!?), he's increased supply for the people who need it and decreased supply for the people who don't.



As I mentioned on my source application, while there are more "good" posts by newbies than I was expecting, unmerited ones are hard to find, and I had to spend quite some time actively looking for these posts. Hopefully once word of your thread spreads, these good posts will find us, rather than vice versa.

O-e-l-e-o is one of them https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093287.0
And his application was approved speedily,it shows things are rather moving up quickly in here(2019 hasn't started bad at all ;D) and also the fact that his posts are all quality and he sure will be able to judge which post is worth some merits.
Now there would be less dearths of Smerits in your portfolio,as I can relate/understand how frustrating it is to come across merit worthy posts but not having the Smerits to splash out.

But on a second thought, judging by your spending rate,i don't think it'll be long before you complain about a shortfall again ;D

I have no idea when this happened, but someone must have been high af when they decided to make me a merit source :D

@the parmacist, you are probably better off sending him a pm...

The title is a bit misleading, I doubt he'll publicly post here anyway and not just send a pm to grant more merits.

I think tennexing what every merit sources has might be interesting and just tell then to give as many times as before but with ten times the amount.

I think you missed this part somehow.

https://www.davidbrentquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1eh5re.jpg

 ;D

Where we can see this figure please?

I guess he meant the latest monthly merits dumped by Theymos fell to 15k.

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Personally, in my analysis, that used merit data dumped by LoyceV, new All-Time-Low of intraday merits found days ago.
More details are available there:

You get a fast response to PM's if it's a genuine thing.

It's just stupid to make threads about this sort of trivial stuff. I get that he's worried that theymos wouldn't read the PM's but theymos normally does. The PM's theymos doesn't respond to see the spammers that contribute nothing to the forum, the pharmacist would be listened to by theymos (the first time I pmd theymos, I thought it'd tske ages for him to reply, in truth it was probably between 5 minutes and half an hour - my reply took longer than his)...

I got a fast response from Theymos when I pm'd him about a merit source problem. It may be that the more a member send PMs to him, the less likely they are to get a reply. It is best to keep your PMs restricted to really essential messages.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsend


The bump (or more like re-balancing) seems to be having an effect - it was ~14900-ish just a few hours ago.


Yeah but then we wouldn't know who's to thank (or to blame) for the merit source changes :)

Woohoo, for the first time I see a merit source complaining about not enough sMerit :) Cool. Just read Jet Cash's thread about how many good post he is finding lately and I feel like the forum is going toward the right direction finally.
Maybe one day I can also apply for a Merit Source if needed ;)

     Please do apply. The more the merrier.

Ouch, that hurts.  I thought you loved me--you even bought me dinner and a movie before coitus.

Seriously, why not make a thread about something like this so that the community knows what's going through the mind of a merit source?  Though I didn't anticipate the outcome, it turns out that it was a good thing I made my 'gripe' public, because 1) Theymos acted, and 2) We're all discussing the changes that got made, and all of this is out in the open.  And yeah, my first inclination was to PM Theymos, but I've never done that, don't think he likes me all that much, and didn't think I'd get any sort of response.  I'm sure he gets tons of PMs daily, and I don't know how he responds to them.  Cut me just a tiny bit of slack, eh?

Yeah, I'm glad o_e_l_e_o (I hate typing out his name) got made a source, and because of the sMerits Theymos gave me I was able to merit that post of yours I mentioned.  I didn't get anything near a mega-grant of sMerits, but it'll last me for a while and it was much more than what I had before.

I've no clue as to what Theymos is thinking along the lines of adding new merit sources, but he obviously surprised me by adding new ones yesterday.  I thought it'd be a while before he'd do that, so you ought to make an application thread if you're really interested.  You're another member who I think knows good posts from bad, so I'd support your application.

I've got Piggy's bot set up to ping me for any mention of "oeleo" as well, so feel free to miss out the underscores. Or just call me Leo. I would also accept "Leonidas, King of the Spartans" or "Leonardo, the best Ninja Turtle".

mmmm best gonna wait for a while myself ::)

but i could apply for some other members that would fit to be good merit sources

HairyMaclairy

last of the V8

XhomerX10

BTCMILLIONAIRE

bitserve

Spaceman_Spiff_Original

somac.

raja_MBZ

biodom

jojo69

paashaas or maybe friends1980 ( don't know him good) --- but just saw he put some effort in the dutch (Netherlands) threads, and probably someone needed there, still many members available if needed


there are many more but just some regular posters with good intentions etc....

leonardo dicaprio, man of 100 good movies
leonardo da vinci, man of (what was he not?)

meeeh for me keep it easy with mic or Micg  :P

Ok maybe I was being a little harsh... To be honest, I'm getting annoyed at people opening threads on meta in order to fish for merits... In hindsight this isn't one of those but my point is it could still easily be resolved with a pm now the main issue, not the underlying one and not the actual "experience of a merit source" that's probably worth a thread. I haven't negged anyone yet for it which I think is showing great restraint on my part (the inforgraphics are what really annoy me). This forum is becoming a little bit disinteresting, you have to look at historical threads if you want anything interesting to read at the moment (not for everything just a few things). It disappoints me that more merit has been earnt from meta than everywhere else. Maybe this will change with the new forum software, they're either putting a lot of effort into it or have hired a lot of mercenaries and bought their own island.

I'm not sure theymos holds grudges for long either. I'm pretty sure he used to hate me for quite some time.. 

He is quite a fast replier I don't know how he does it either. It was faster than a btc transaction confirmation at a low fee ;D.

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I thought your merit source budget increased with experience and based on expenses for the month (expenses based on smerit not the lambo hilarious has on lease).

@o_e_l_e_o I always take the effort to use the underscores and now you're saying we can just call you Leo? ??? ;D

@mic, wow I didn't make the cut ;D.

^
sorry thought you are a source  :-\ .... and just wrote down a few i think that aren't a source...... and really would fit the JOB, there are many other members of course :)

Whenever a merit source's source amount is adjusted upward or downward, it is immediately completely replenished. This'll be a factor.


How I handle PMs:

 - I try to at least skim all PMs. Rarely I might misplace some, but usually not.
 - If I feel ready to immediately resolve your PM, and I feel that it is a reasonable request worth my time, then I do it. Often this is replying to questions or doing simple tasks, but sometimes I'll have already been working on / thinking about it for days/weeks/months and your PM will get me to devote a few hours to finally resolving the thing right then and there. If even newbies ask questions which I consider reasonable, I usually answer!
 - If I am not ready to act on your thing, often due to uncertainty or lack of immediate time, then your issue enters my "leaky queue". Unfortunately, a lot of these things never end up getting done. (But I do try to get to the most important ones.)

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You have to do a lot more than disagree with me to get me to dislike you. And even if eg. MemoryDealers came to me with some reasonable issue with his usage of the forum, I'd handle it like I would for anyone else.

It says "Administrator" under my name, not "President". Anyone is free to PM/email me.

Lol, that's much more comforting to know ;D,probably a P.M could have been the better option for this issue, but starting a thread turned out to be the best,not only is the community discussing the issue,exchanging views on it, but even the president Administrator ;D Theymos is on hand in the thread to clarify a lingering issue on PM's(To him)cos me personally prior to this thread,i wouldn't consider sending you a PM cos I'll feel you wouldn't read it in a million years,so we kinda solved two issues with one thread.

I guess it turned out to be the perfect thread, kudos to TP

I guess you can send a PM to an Admin if this is necessary , if you have a problem or else about the forum .

Just do it if you feel about or let it , depends on yourself !

Good to see that your smerit amount has been increase. You are the one if them who handle their smerit very carefully. I am not sure how much amount allocated for you but I think all merit sources smerit allocations are not same. I am aware about your merit distribution that how hardly you handle them.

I am also encourage to help lower rank peoples especially newbie who made at least good post. Everyone could check my merit history. But I don't have enough merit to distribute and its little bit difficult to find newbie meritable post. Especially during send merit to newbie who have 0 merit I would like to visit his post history. My bad luck theymos haven't accept me as a merit source, however I will follow up LoyceV post once I will run out from smerit.

Good to know, that means my source doubled instead of trippled which I initially thought.

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For what it's worth: I appreciate this topic, it turned out to be informative.

I used to think every smerit sources had a constant particular merit allocated to them evenly well correct me if that is wrong?  If your smerit is increased it will affect the balance of distribution no matter how many smerit you are giving if you want to use them up quickly you would still do that. Well the best is to work on your allocation of distribution

Merits isn't and should never be about how quickly they get used, but rather how well they're used. Would you say If a post is obviously merit worthy it shouldn't be merited simply because you're going to run out allocation ?
Looking at The Pharmacist merit history for the past 120 days he has merited over 200 posts (I lost count at 200) and has only given a maximum of 3 merits to Just only 8 different posts and has only given out a max of 8 merits a single day, he'd mostly given out 1 or 2 merits to post which in my opinion connotes that he'd prefer to have it widely spread so as a worthy post would not have to miss out. How else do you think it could have been more wisely/fairly used ?

I had seen on few occasions that other merit sources complaining that they are not getting enough good post to complete their merit quota of that period,even though theymos said them to send more amount of merits to the merit worthy post if you can't see much worthy post.

But @TP here asking for more merits to give the generous amount of merits to the HQ post,well deserved to be a merit source.

I am sure theymos will consider about this. He already did.

I'd love to be able to give out 5-8 merits to some exceptional posts (but I would reserve such a large grant to ranks lower than Hero), but previously there was no way I could do this and still have enough sMerits left over to merit all the other good posts I see.

Thank you for checking my meriting history for the last 120 days.  I haven't even been a merit source for that long--I think it was at the end or middle of september when Theymos added that batch of 36 new sources.  I've been trying to spread out merits to deserving posts (and NOT just the really good posters on Meta who don't need them to rank up) but always ran out of sMerits even when I became a merit source.  That's why I had to ask Theymos for this favor, which I'm grateful for, as well as for his reply here.  I may disagree with some of his administrating tactics, but he's no dummy and I've seen worse administrators. 

I'm on the hunt now mainly in Economics/Speculation, Meta, and Reputation, though occasionally I stray far from my usual sections.  Yes, I definitely do have a lot of sections blocked, but that's because there are only so many hours in the day to read and write on bitcointalk, and I just find some sections too spam-infested to even bother with.  I would be tickled pink to be able to merit a good post by a Newbie in Bitcoin Discussion, but trying to find one of those is incredibly difficult just by searching and reading through posts--that's why there needs to be some sort of reporting mechanism.  The individual threads don't seem to be effective.

I will say this again:  ***If you're a lower-ranked member and think you or someone else has made or found a post that's gone unmerited, drop me a PM and I'll take a look.***  I've made the offer in other threads, but got zero takers.  In the PM, just write something like "Merit?" and then a link to the post.  I'll either merit it or I won't, but you can be guaranteed I'll look at the PM, the post, and most likely the member's post history as well.

  If you are looking for newbies to merit, the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board as well as the Bitcoin Technical Boards are a good place to start. Some newbies come up with some really good questions and answers.

Merit Sources have a personal assigned sMerit quota, which differs from one source to another (the smaller Merit Sources may have a 30 day quota in the lower two digits, whilst the top Merit Sources may have a quota near 1K). They are given all their allocated sMerit on the first day they are appointed/upgraded, and have 30 days to award it in (unawarded sMerit is "lost").

The sMerit quota is replenished exactly 30 days after every single spent sMerit, and mirrors the last 30 day spending behaviour. So say a Merit Source has a total allocated quota of 50 sMerits per 30 days, and awards 10 sMerits on the first day he is appointed a Merit Source, 20 on the second, none on the third and 30 on the fourth. He will then (in this example) be out of merit for the following 26 days.
Exactly 30 days(*) after he sent his first 10 sMerits, his balance will be replenished with 10 additional sMerits, the following day he will see an additional 20 sMerits on his balance, the following day will not have an increase, and on the day after that he’ll receive another 30 sMerits.

(*) It’s a bit more complicated, since it really considers exactly 30 days. Down to the minute and second (I believe).

I don't doubt you at all.  The problem is that I can almost guarantee that most answers would be over my head, technically.  I might be able to tell whether a post is a shitpost or not, but I don't trust my technical knowledge enough to know a good answer from a bad one.  Still, I'll keep that in mind.  

This has been mentioned before, but remind me:  Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?  That's a section I have on ignore, but not because of the quality of posts.  It's because of my own ignorance.  All of my education has been in fields having little to do with computer science, and when I see people incorporating a lot of tech jargon in their posts, my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.  

I'll keep an open mind on this one and un-ignore that section for the time being.

Edit:
Alright, that's reassuring.  I'm still going to un-ignore the tech sections for now and see if I can do a little reading and hunting. 

You would think that Bitcoin Discussion would be the place where most merit-worthy posts get made, since this is Bitcointalk, but it's the exact opposite.  Yet it makes sense that the technical sections would be places where the shitposters don't go, because they can't get away with having their shitposts hidden in an ocean of similar vacuous nonsense, nor can they simply tap out a generic statement about how bitcoin has a bright future and is increasing day by day and expect it to fit in with the members who really know what they're talking about.

  Many of the answers are over by head too, TBH. However, if someone is spouting an error, it's pretty common for others to quickly point it out. Also, the questions and answers sometimes inspire me to go out and do my own research. I don't believe that the two boards are particularly under-merited. However, if you ever grow weary of trying to hunt out newbie posts by sifting through a great deal of muck, there is much low-hanging fruit to be picked in those two boards.

I don't think so. Plus ETFbitcoin became a merit source just now and he's hanging out there a lot.

According to DdmrDdmr's data (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5083312.0) Development & Technical Discussion has fewer overall merits than many other boards (~7k in 10 months, compared to 12k for Bitcoin Discussion, 27k for Meta, and 22k for Economics). However, it has the highest merit-to-post ratio at 0.566, which is around 2x Meta, 10x Economics and 20x Bitcoin Discussion. So although posts there are generally the highest merited of anywhere on the forum, I still think there are some posts that are under-merited for how good they are.



Definitely agree here. I very rarely comment in Technical Discussion, but I read it a lot. Some of the content, particularly from users like gmaxwell and Coding Enthusiast, are way above my level of knowledge, but I figure if you never read things you don't understand/challenge you, then you'll never learn more, and learning more about the technical side of bitcoin is something that I think is good for everyone in this space.



I was thrilled to find one just yesterday (here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5089214.msg49070143#msg49070143) if you are interested). It reminded me the initial reason I started trawling these threads was in search of good posts and not just to mass report spammers, which unfortunately seems to be what the majority of my time in that board is spent doing.

Used to be, but recently it's not anymore.


You can start by only merit question/answer that you can understand, i also use this method


Besides, i read all thread on those section (since usually there's only 3-10 bumped thread everyday) & i report all recent spam/plagiarism, so there's no way shitpost exist on recent threads.

Still, there's few spammer who throw jargon (such as using SHA256 to encrypt data) and think no one would notice

Did you pat that motherfucker down for explosives (https://musing.io/q/metama/f3trhqyyq)?  That post was written on a different website, albeit by a person with the same user name.  I don't even know if that's considered plagiarism, but the post I linked to was obviously written before the one you merited and no source was given.

That is fantastic data, and I'm glad you summarized and posted it here, because apparently I missed it.  I'm actually surprised that many merits are given out in Bitcoin Discussion, and I'm wondering how many of them are people genuinely liking other members' posts as opposed to merit-swapping.

Good, glad to know you've got it covered.  Very glad you got made a merit source, too.

Oh, god damn it. Just when I thought I had found a genuinely good newbie...

I did review his post history, and found another post by him on Technical Discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093031.msg49070448#msg49070448) that was quite good, and so thought he deserved a merit. He also didn't seem like a shitposter. I would have given him a pass on the post you linked, since the usernames are the same, but on closer inspection this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4587786.0) is a direct lift from here (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-underlying-asset-in-a-bitcoin/answer/Ross-Donovan).

Reported for a ban. Sigh.

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Edit: Banned

https://i.imgur.com/YhsHlC4.jpg

I had a genuine LOL about this. Sorry.

I've done this numerous times, particularly in Off Topic and BD - see a non-shitty post, sounds too good to be true, let's google around - end up reporting the whole farm. That's a big reason why I'm so salty when someone starts harping about mysteriously unmerited great posters hiding somewhere... I really can't see that happening to any appreciable extent when there's 100+ sources looking for them.

Thank you suchmoon

Glad my misery amuses you. :P

That'll teach me to try and do something nice. Off to report 100 shitposters in a fit of rage to let off steam.

That's OK, because hopefully you'll know now that when you see a new account like that making an excellent post, always check for copy/pasting, text-spinning, or translation plagiarism.  You wasted some merits but a greater good came from it--hopefully he'll get banned and you'll be as chary as I am when meriting noobs.  It's sad that we have to be this way, but we do.  

Everyone makes mistakes, doc.

The exact point I was trying to explain. I missed out "NOT", which gave the post a different meaning.



I have seen LoyceV's and one other thread with such offers, but it is rather too bad there have been next no application on those threads, at least the good side is that there have been a reduced threads of users ranting about not getting merits.

In fact, this is a good approach.
Instead of looking for shitposts and reporting them, look for good posts (too good to be true). Shitposters changed their "modus operandi" because it is not working any more because of the merit system and the increasing number of reporters.

They are too smart in fact, one of their tactics is to use alts, one asks a question and the other answers with a pre-made answer. The problem is that you know what they are doing but it is hard to prove it.

@the pharmacist and o_e_l_e_o. In reference to your post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093301.msg49087575#msg49087575.

Technical boards are quite under merited because it's normally newbies coming along and saying they have an issue with their client software. These newbies are either one hit wonders or people who are really legendaries here or at least of a high rank who don't want to admit they can't fathem the software... Thus a lot of people on those boards (not just me) barely scrape any merit while those like suchmoon and vod who stay quite a lot on meta along with you both and jet Cash seem to rake in the merits.

Of course it's fine for the likes of me because I don't actually need any merit (unless a new rank gets made) but someone like tryninja or bob could do with a showering of merits for their work. (I'm trying not to be hypocritical but I'm also not very good at it myself).

It will be a golden opportunity for creative newbie members to earn merits through their lucrative posts.I really think if our forum most valuable members have got the right to give enough amount of merits for a good post than we will possibly see many more great posts and activities from newbies in future.  

I had to look to see how many times I've merited TryNinja, and in the past 120 days it's been twice as far as I can tell, but who is this bob of whom you speak?  Boblawblaw?  Bipolar Bob?  BobOnMyKnob?

In any case, it looks like TryNinja has enough activity to make Legendary status but is short quite a few merits.  I'll take a look at some of his posts and see what I can do, because he makes good posts and I respect his opinions on things.  He's just one who's flown under my radar a bit, but he's also a Hero member already.  I've been trying to merit lower-ranked members (failing sometimes) a little more, just so that the good ones don't get left behind and think it's impossible to rank up.  Rank on a discussion forum shouldn't be a big deal, but we all know it is on bitcointalk, so...

Is this Jet Cash imitating a shitpost?  It approximates one, but the grammar and spelling are not bad enough.  The run-on sentence is a good start, though.

Newbies have always been afforded the opportunity to earn merits unhindered,the more reason why it's the ones who put their heart to it and try to communicate on the forum who eventually find it a stroll in the park to rank up.
And I do not think merits should be the major incentive for one to come up with great posts
With or without merits,this forum would exist,thus with or without it,users should be obliged to treat the forum like HOME.

bob123 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=579628), I assume. He is one of the guys I had in mind when when I was talking about users that do get some merit, but not enough for how good and helpful they are. He posts almost exclusively in the Technical Boards, which probably explains why you don't run in to him much.

Re: TalkStar, I think you are confusing with Talk merit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1977706).

Bob123 I meant https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=579628.

He has earnt little merit, his English is sometimes a tad broken but you can work out what he's saying just fine (or I can).

My point is to say that the Bitcoin boards don't get much merit on them to the good users who actually know the fundamentals. Something that, if you're not prepared to learn them or at least have some interest in them, you may as well pm a mod to nuke your account (we are a Bitcoin forum not a gossip about our ranks forum - sort of to the entire community as a whole)...

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I was talking about appreciation not rank but trying not to make it look that way...

Bob123 received only 250 Merit from the airdrop, and has been earning Merit faster than Activity.
He's receiving a steady flow of Merit:
http://loyce.club/Merit/history/img/579628_blue.gif

The point isn't how steadily someone is learning merits. Most people, on the old system, used to become legendary by about 800 activity points. Bob is very close to that and still more than 200 from the merit perspective.

If we believe this isn't an issue I'll disappear back to the technical boards quietly however it seemed something worth pointing out that there's a low distribution on the technical boards.

No - he doesn't understand when to use the word "amount" :)

My shitpost account is Flash Cunt ( TMAN is my hero :) ). but I've gone off that concept, and I'm more interested in tokenised securities.

I expect bob123 to have 1000 Merit before he has 1000 Activity. I thought most users become Legendary far above 800, but you have a point.
I'll try to do my part on those boards, and I've just started with bob123.
I took the lazy route though, by meriting posts that received Merit already.

I've quoted this post a few times recently, and bob123 is one of the users who shouldn't be restricted by the Merit system.

Dont expect too much privilege from theymos you  not SPECIAL HERE ,and you are one of those abusing the current trust system please dont pretend of being a nice guy by giving smerits to newbies as far as im here you arent giving a single merit to lower ranks from the past few months and you are just giving it to higher ranks that you know of and what makes your ass turn?

hHmmmm..other sources  has managed to distribute their smerits for months without whining to theymos.

Paging TP, sewer overflow on page 4, please lock this thread ASAP.

Why scared mate?  Be a man and post this with your main account and for your information he has been rewarded with higher allocation of smerit from Theymos and ask you can see he's also receiving more smerits from this topic. Also looking at his merit history I believe he's doing just fine.


So what's burakike saying? Can someone search to find his main account because I'm force to believe this isn't.

Let’s see if The Pharmacist has given merit to the lower ranks ... Considering all Merit System history, and bearing in mind that these are the current ranks of those merited by him (and not the ranks at the time of the actual sMerit awarding) we’ve got:

Current rank   nMerited
Newbie          14
Jr. Member     33
Member         64

That makes 111 distinct currently lower rank profiles merited by The Pharmacist at some point or other. There are bags more of data I could draw-up, but the above is succinct enough to addresses and refute the assertion as it stands (and falls …).

Bad The Pharmacist. Not so bad The Pharmacist.

my smerits were just increased. so the amount i just saw is the monthly smerit i have to send every month. does that also mean my replenishment schedule is also reset. like if i send all smerits in the next 5 days they are gone till 30 days of the last smerit sent, ie 25 days with none? it wont use the previous sent schedule of so many a day over the last 30 days?

i sometimes tend to merit in spurts till they are gone (well if less than like 10-15 or so) so i have tried to more or less time them to get some every couple day or so. i hate being out for days at a time. do i need to time giving these new ones out for the next month as to not to be out of new ones for days?

Yes. Pace yourself :)

This, The Pharmacist, is the guy I believe I should hand over my merits easily (I don't doubt on my own efficiency, but watching a decent merit-giver asking for sMerits and he who always have been giving only with both hands, should be able to give more without any difficulties) as I believe that he has been very much active in this merit-sharing mania  ;) and I feel he's the perfect crazy-enough guy who knows what he's been doing. Pharmacist, neither it's a help nor is it a favor, you needed them, now you have them. So, no more excuses and get back to work.  ;D 8)

I fully support this idea. For the first time I saw a source of merit complaining about not being enough of Merit. I would not mind if any source of merit depleted their distribution and spread their merit reasonably would have a trace. I hope in the future you can increase sMerit every month to reward low-ranking members like me who have good articles for the community.

Thank you so much for posting here! I just checked your post history for good posts to Merit, you can expect your reward soon (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg49480030#msg49480030).

Giving merits to some one isn't just a reward for his/her creativity & excellenc. Its also encourage that person to deliver more exceptional thoughts & ideas in future. There's maybe some users here who doesn't like to spend their smerit. Perhaps still now they haven't find enough worthy user to spend their smerit.

Personally i feel so encouraging when i get merit from someone here. I always ready to appreciate that i am a apprentice who is trying to learn and follow the lead of my seniors. In real senses one merit can change the entire view of a new user. For us merit isn't everything, we need everyones guidance & acceptation.

Sometimes it really hurts me when i see someone like me try to share his/her thoughts by opening a thread but many guys comment flawlessly that this user is begging  for Merits. Is it because we are low rank members?

I want to tell them plz don't take us as an enemy. Take us as your student. Maybe once upon a time you were someone like us but now you established your own reputation here. Inspiring new users isn't a scam. Obiously users will try their best to achieve their merit by showing his excellence not by begging.

Did you even take a second to anaylse what just happened here  ?

No one is undermining another here solely for being a low ranked member, If your contribution is genuine and based on your ideas it doesn't matter what your rank is.

 @nguyet91btc Just bumped a thread of over 20 days ago, which was already buried. And afaik could have gotten merits from Loyce if his his postbor post history were reasonable enough or just his ideas.

@TalkStar, nguyet91btc is a copy and paste offender and he'll be be getting banned soon. What must lower rank user don't understand is,  each time they show some interest in begging for merit they espose their account to intends investigation and their wrong doings will be expose for moderators to handle. Actually I won't ask them to stop because they make the busting much more easier. You beg for merit, you invite your account for investigation and you get the reward you deserve (Ban for breaking forum rules or merit for quality posting).

Hey mate i think you haven't read my comment carefully. I just told about new users thread posting relative views not mentioned that anyone underestimating low rank members here. I think you got the point.

Achtung!!!  

Theymos, I'm bumping this 2.5 year old thread in the hopes that you'll see it and hear my plea for more merit source sMerits.  I've already posted a request in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5198889.msg57322890#msg57322890), which went unheard.  For the last 2-3 days at least I've been steadily running out of them, and they don't seem to be refilling fast enough.  I know merit-giving isn't a contest, but I do watch LoyceV's monthly updates to his merit data analysis thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3078328.300) and Coin-1's related thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4523027.0) and when I do I see members like LoyceV and suchmoon handing out so many merits that there's no way I could even come close to their monthly total.  And sure, they also earn a lot of merits as well but I have to assume they've been getting a very generous allotment of source sMerits as well.

So please....PLEASE....can you either airdrop me a big care package of sMerits (you don't even have to tie a bow around it) or at least increase the rate at which my source sMerits are topped up?  

Since I haven't heard a word about what you, Theymos, think about how the merit system is working, I've no clue what your plans are as far as increasing the amount of circulating merits, adding new merit sources, etc.  All I know is that I'm a merit source without any to give, and that's a problem.

Thanks in advance,

Sceptical Chymist.

I don't see theymos changing the frequency at which source sMerit is refilled, however it would probably be appropriate to evaluate how many source sMerit each source has considering how many merit sources have gone inactive and how much source sMerit has effectively become unavailable.   

I'm also lurking in the forum when I have the time, so if theymos decides that he might need a new merit source. I'm still available. Currency out of smerit. I still have a merit source on a speed dial but I would like to continue on my own.

Question: How can you tell how many merit sources have dropped out?  I thought there was in fact a way to look that up, but if there is, I've long since forgotten how.  I know Jet Cash was a merit source, but he hasn't been active for a while.  TMAN was one, too, if I'm not mistaken.  He's been gone for even longer at this point.  [By the way, anyone know whatever happened to xtraelv?]

I agree with you, though.  If there has been anything close to a mass exodus of merit sources, Theymos ought to either up the amount of sMerits allocated to active sources or tap some new merit sources.  I'm pretty sure there are some applications that have gone unacknowledged.

Did you submit an application in Meta?  If you haven't already, it wouldn't hurt to do so.  Theymos hasn't responded here, nor have I gotten any additional sMerits (though I just started this thread yesterday), but you might luck out if he decides to take a look at merit source applications and add some new sources.

You can't know exactly, because there is no official list of Merit sources. But we know There are 97 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 21171 sMerit per 30 days (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources).
I checked the last 30 days in my merit.all.txt (large file) (https://loyce.club/Merit/merit.all.txt): 13061 Merit sent in 7815 transactions. Not all of those are sent by Merit sources, so it could very well be Merit sources use less than half of their allocated source each month.

Have you tried PMing theymos and asking him directly? In my experience, he is quite responsive to things that concern the forum. When I had some doubts in the past, I PMed him and he responded. When I found some bugs, he even checked back after he corrected them to see if everything is OK now. Make him aware of this thread and your request, you have got nothing to lose. Unless he bans you for unsolicited PMs :o   

You have to know who is a merit source. There are a couple of threads that keep track of who at one point is a merit source- they know because they keep track of how many merit they had when the merit system was introduced, how many merit they received and how many merit they spent. If they spend more sMerit than they should have if they didn’t have source merit, they are a merit source.

TMAN was a merit source that had a high allocation and I don’t think this has changed despite him being inactive for a year+. The same is true for Flying Helfish, although I don’t think he has been inactive for as long. I’m sure other merit sources have gone inactive over time.

Also, although I have a source merit allocation of 100 merit per month, and I often have zero available source merit, I don’t spend 100 source merit per month. Source merit is replenished 30 days after it is spent, but I may not spend replenished source merit as soon as it is available, it may take a few days for me to spend it, so I might spend 100 source merit every 32 or so days. If this is true for all merit sources, the actual amount of source merit is actually lower than the published amount available.

I don't know how it is with others but I never have enough merits available and I can't reward all quality posts with merits.
If there really are merit sources that don't spend all available merits, it might be a good idea to reduce the amount of merit available to such members and increase it for those who don't have enough merits.
I know that only theymos have all the data and can answer this question but it seems to me that the right time has come for certain changes in this area.
It would be nice to see the new merit sources, we already have a lot of quality applications in the Meta.

Yeah I did that almost 2 years ago.. it's still quiet.
I did put a lot of time and effort in this forum with the hope to make it a better place, and it changed for good, for which I'm happy. I asked only for to be a source, and never heard from theymos again.
I wasnt really active the past months but life turned 180° last year (sad story) and I couldn't spent all that time here like I did before, it's getting better now and again if theymos need a hand in the merit, I am here.
Stay safe guys... love ya

I'm still a merit source, and I have over 500 sMerits to award at the moment. I do award merits to lower rank members if I think their posts are worthwhile, bur I'm starting to prefer to award merits to senior members. I don't see merits as a means to increase rank, but as an encouragement to make good threads and posts for the benefit of the forum. Merits are an indication of public approval for posts, I've backed away because I don't feel that many of my topics reflect board opinion. Certainly this is true of my opinions of the current artificial pandemic. I'm surprised that a community of educated and intelligent people is failing to recognise the patterns in medical and government behaviour, and fails to question issues such as the testing cycle differences between pre-vaccinated and post-vaccinated people. It is 36-40 for the general public, and 28 or less for the vaccinated. The covid test results are the only ones that don't include the cycle rates, and it is easy to see why. I don't appreciate being belittled and trolled for having an enquiring mind, and questioning the manipulated statistics.

I would like to so something to bring back some of the interesting senior members that we have lost, but I'm not sure how to do this. It is especially true as we seem to have many fiat supporters who don't understand or want Bitcoin. I'd love to see more discussions on world politics and economics, but not if they just push the low level narrative. I don't want to "build back better", but I want to see a return to the old capitalist system that rewards hard work, creativity, and risk taking. We are losing the capital to invest in new ventures, and the small creative businesses, and until people become aware of the damage this is doing to us, we don't have a hope of staying out of an enslaved future. It is ironic that so many protests and extreme actions are happening in the name of anti-slavery at a time when most people are being forced into slavery, and the handing over of their health to the governments..

You mentioned something similar in a different thread and I failed to understand why the pandemic bothers you so much that you don't want to participate in a bitcoin forum because of it. I still do. If you said I don't post as much because I don't like the white and blue background on the forum, that would make more sense to me. ;D

I never visit the political discussions because most of it is off-topic to me. I care as much about what people on a bitcoin forum think of COVID as I care about the type of sneakers they are wearing - not at all. But I am interested in hearing if you don't believe there is a virus at all or you just believe it didn't occur naturally but was released intentionally as a biological weapon and a way for governments to achieve absolute control?   

That is a lot of source merit going unused. I reviewed your merit history and you have given out 110 merit in the past 120 days. Depending on what your source allocation is, there is a minimum of 1900 source merit going unused in the past four months, if not over 2000.

I think Theymos should review how much each merit source is actually spending and reallocate merit accordingly.

I guess I didn't check your merit history before I posted, otherwise I would have realized that you hadn't completely disappeared from the forum for as long as I thought.  You're still a merit source but haven't been a very active one (no judgement, just stating what I saw), which means that that's one merit source who isn't handing out lots of merits and helping the lower ranks, which is what I see as the purpose of having merit sources.  We can agree to disagree on that one with no hard feelings.

I do too, but everyone is different, and Jet Cash seems to lead a very unconventional life and I respect that.  And besides, there are plenty of members who've just straight-up disappeared since the pandemic started--like xtraelv, TMAN, Flying Hellfish, Vod, and probably many more that either I can't remember or didn't know of at all.  

QS, I know the thread you're referring to, but it'd be nice if Theymos would drop some data on merit distribution by merit sources without identifying them.  That sounds right up his alley, and it would give a good indication as to whether we need more merit sources or more sMerits in the hands of the sources that are still active.

Edit:  Jet Cash, thank you for the generous merit grant!  I don't care so much about my personal merit count, but now I've got 25 more sMerits to give out, and I needed that.  Much appreciated.

Sceptical Chymist ^{[Just for reference]} ... If you have a desire, you can always contact Vod by mail (as far as I know, he is always happy to exchange a few words). As for xtraelv, I think he will not scold me if I say that everything is fine with him ... he leads a more active lifestyle than many of us, and in his free time he works to refute the lies that CSW has been telling for years, (at least that was the case a couple of weeks ago). _::)

Yeah, I don't want to bother Vod now that he left the forum, even though I've always been on good terms with him (at least I hope so).  He needed a break, and I don't intend to intrude on that break.  As far as xtraelv goes, I'm glad to hear that he's alive and well and is still active in the bitcoin community, even if it's not on this forum.  I've always liked him and didn't notice he was missing until I saw his name in a thread recently.  I tend to forget people's usernames very quickly if I don't see them all the time, but I remember them very quickly once my memory is refreshed.

And hey, I got some new source sMerits recently, although not that many so far.  I plan to give out a bunch over the weekend when I do some more reading.

I wanted to bump this thread because since I bumped it on June 28th, I still haven't gotten more than 20 source sMerits or so, which seems unusual to me--and right now I'm completely out again (though I have some new earned ones to give out). 

What is clear to me is that Theymos either hasn't seen this thread or is ignoring it for whatever reason.  I'm hoping it's the former, and I'm also hoping that if he does view my posts here that he'll grant me more source sMerits and perhaps tell us his views on the merit system as it stands in 2021.  Maybe I'm overreacting somewhat, but it seems ominous to me that a merit source (me) is being allowed to run dry on sMerits--and hopefully my allocation hasn't decreased, either.  It seems that way to me, but I'm not really keeping track of incoming/outgoing sMerits.

C'mon, Theymos!  You started this merit system and all of the merit sources you picked are volunteering to do the job for the forum, so it'd be nice if you could acknowledge a thread like this.  Thanks, sorry.

If your source sMerit is increased or decreased, it's reset. So you'd see the total maximum instantly.

I keep track:
Merit sent by The Pharmacist (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=487418) (Trust list (https://loyce.club/trust/2021-06-26_Sat_06.09h/487418.html)) from January 24, 2018 until July 02, 2021 (source (https://loyce.club/Merit/history/487418.html))
https://loyce.club/Merit/history/img/487418_red.gif

Merit received by The Pharmacist (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=487418) (Trust list (https://loyce.club/trust/2021-06-26_Sat_06.09h/487418.html)) from January 24, 2018 until July 02, 2021 (source (https://loyce.club/Merit/history/487418.html))
https://loyce.club/Merit/history/img/487418_blue.gif

Skeptical Chymist ... I may be wrong, but the 20 sMerit you are talking about most likely came from Jet Cash ... and Theymos really did not read this thread, (although it seems to me unlikely that you missed it). ^{[Edited: Just saw that you already mentioned this]}

As for Theymos opinion on the current state of affairs, I also doubt that he will say anything, since I am almost sure that it is easier for him to update the list of merit sources than to talk about it. But since we are talking about this, I have one idea that I will try to outline in detail in the near future, (in short, the idea is based on the ratio of sMerit to inclusions of DT for each user and monthly elections (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117330.new;topicseen#new)). It is my deep conviction that there is no single chance that this innovation would not fix all the current problems in the merit system.

Damn, you're good.  Thanks for that info, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

He hasn't said anything in a post, but today he tapped at least one new merit source (NotATether) and upped the sMerit allocation of existing sources.  I got airdropped 1000 sMerits a few minutes ago with a PM from Theymos that was sent to other merit sources as well, so there should be a lot more merits in circulation thanks to his actions.  It's a great outcome, and as I like being a merit source and take the position seriously, I'm elated to have gotten all of those sMerits.

My source sMerit wasn't adjusted, so it's not a generic increase like last time. I didn't need more, so that's fine.
There used to be 97 Merit sources (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources), now it's:

For some reason, it seemed to me that public appeals to Theymos were absolutely useless, at least due to the fact that for a very long time the number of sources and the total amount of sMerits remained unchanged, (and I have not seen anyone in their own thread say that the appeal has been heard). Anyway, congratulations ... now you have more room to maneuver when evaluating posts (without getting hung up on the sMerit meter). _;)

What time stamp are we talking about? ^{[As I said earlier, apart from recent changes, over the past year and a half I have not seen the number of m'sources change]}

We're talking about the same time stamp ;)

Thanks for taking this up TP and Thanks to Theymos for upgrading the merit sources. There is quite enough to go around and the forum has not been garnering as much attention as it used to. The increased merit will allow us to encourage and help rank up the good contributors we all see but don't have enough merit to disburse to at times. So, not a problem any more. 

Its good to know about Vod and xtraelv. His signature was one of the best sources of historically interesting and important information on Bitcoin. Thanks for the update icopress. Nobody has an update on @TMAN yet. I think @Lauda would have had some idea. Then again, those two really were part of the old guard so its possible that they didn't have any idea of each other's real world identities.

I'm not taking credit for Theymos's response, but I did want to say that sometimes you just have to be a very squeaky wheel in order to get greased, know what I'm saying?  And I know damn well Theymos reads threads on the forum and in particular in Meta, so it was disheartening that all of those merit source applications were going unanswered, in addition to my plea for more sMerits. 

So yeah, I'm still happy he took heed of our posts and decided to increase the number of circulating merits.  Hopefully the new merit sources will do a good job--I know at least one of them (LeGaulois) got tapped to be a source without applying. 

I'm not quite clear what you mean by Lauda's idea, but ... I have repeatedly seen TMAN mentioned in this context, so I think if someone with whom he traded on the forum had a connection with him, we would have known the reason for his absence long ago.

p.s. And as I understand by "old guard" you mean adherents of crypto-anarchism?

I think amishmanish thinks Lauda and TMAN knew each other's identities, but I find that unlikely.  Lauda was extremely private, and as far as I know never gave clues to his/her identity--but if anyone would know it, it would probably be Theymos. 

I don't want to speak for amishmanish again, but I'm pretty sure by "old guard" he means long-time members of bitcointalk.  Amishmanish registered in 2017, so both Lauda and TMAN probably seem like they've been around since the beginning, even though they both registered in April 2013 (4 days apart, which I never realized....hmmm).  Come to think of it, they might know each others' identities quite well. 

TMAN traded on the forum quite a lot so his identity is probably known to some folks, particularly in collectibles. Not that it matters really. If someone leaves quietly and doesn't owe anyone, why would we need to know anything about them or the circumstances of their departure.

They seem to know each other, but only they can confirm it. I read some of TMAN's post history, it seems true that they know each other. https://ninjastic.space/search?author=TMAN&content=Lauda. Some of TMAN's post about lauda made me laugh.  :D

These two don't owe anyone anything, maybe that's true but both are worth remembering on the forum. Afaik, maybe people are still thinking about it because TMAN and Lauda are two good contributors to the forum and it make some of us very curious about what, why and how thing are out there.

Upon looking at the link, it only shows the total number of Merit sources and not the exact names of who are these 111 Merit sources. Perhaps the name is hidden so people don't flood their inbox for merits. Fair enough.

34000+ sMerits is quite a good number. Do we have a measure that these all merits are distrusted monthly before the new bag of smerit is handed over to the merit sources for next month ?

Yeah, they were both very colorful members to put it mildly--and honestly I'm a bit disappointed that they both disappeared, because they tended to make the forum a much more interesting place.  Lauda was a straight-up drama hound (in a way that I always found entertaining), and TMAN was just funny as hell with some of the stuff he wrote.

By the way, I might be off base in making this statement, as I haven't checked Lauda's merit history but he was pretty stingy as far as handing them out, and I'm pretty sure he was particularly ungenerous toward lower-ranked members, whom he viewed as the root cause of a lot of the forum's issues with low-value posts.  TMAN, on the other hand, would drop 50 merits at a time and I think he was a merit source.  Not sure if Lauda was one, though I'm sure someone here knows.

Skeptical Chymist, I will not argue about Lauda's stinginess, since I did not go into the details of his earlier smerit activity, but I can say one thing for sure ... on his last day on the forum, he was quite generous, meriting the posts of all who decided to say goodbye to him. And even though his last publication received a lot of merit, he had something to send, since it is unlikely that when assigning m'sources, Theymos could ignore such a famous name.

Wow, I thought I'd locked this thread a long time ago, but I guess I hadn't.

Anyway, I'm bumping it because once again I'm going to publicly plead with Theymos for more sMerits.  I never thought I'd run out of earned ones, as I had over 500 of them and my source sMerits kept refilling nicely and I was able to make it through each month without even coming close to using them all up.

However, since I created that thread in Meta with my rules for post history reviews (not going to link to it, lol), I've used up all of my sMerits, and the PMs keep coming in.  I hate to offer something only to put people on a waiting list for it within two days, but that's exactly what happened.

So Theymos, I humbly ask you to either give me a one-time injection of sMerits or to increase my monthly allowance.  And note that I blew through about 700 sMerits within 3 days or so.  I don't think I'm going to continue at that pace, but I definitely could use some help right now. 

I hope you see this, and I thank you whatever your decision is.

Instead of waiting, make a list with those who deserve smerit and let us know,  I'm sure there are people willing to help. I managed to collect some smerit as well and I can give a hand,  just send me the links :)

here are a few 27 to be exact.

I just thought I'd mention here that it is a condition of meriting in the Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List ^{Mk IV} (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5394559.0;dt) thread that you are attesting that you have verified that the evidence presented in the post is correct.

(It's in the fine print - (as agreed through consensus in the Mk III thread) - in a post that was last edited on the first of July, 2022)


I only mention this because I've just noticed that you've merited one investigator (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=487418) five times with six merits a piece (i.e. 30 merits) while seemingly shunning other investigators whose posts are of equal quality.

https://i.imgur.com/BMGtWmI.jpg

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You're not a merit source?

How interesting.

Of course The Pharmacist is a merit source, otherwise why ask theymos for more sMerits.

You had time to derail the thread with unrelated garbage but didn't have time to read it (or at least the OP). How interesting (not really).


BTW setting conditions in your thread for how other users should send merits is absurd.

The Pharmacist doesn't Merit "investigators", he merits users' posts. That's a difference. If you look at his sent Merit history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=487418), you'll see he Merited several users several times in a row. That means he checks their post history (see Rules for my post history review offer to the community (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410264.0)) and doesn't necessarily read or check the rest of the topic.

Agreed.

Investigators who merit other Investigators research are giving Campaign Managers (and anyone else that requires verification of the information) an assurance that the research is sound not just that two or more UID's are Alts, but if the evidence is uncovered, we also report that they have scamed or are in breach of the terms of campaigns that participants have signed up for.

Ordinarily I would also merit their work, however I read once that the OP of a thread shouldn't necessarily merit posts as it might be seen as in some way "buying" comments.

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Merit dumping sounds lazy.

... So does trying to justify it ...

Thank you kindly, philipma1957!!  To be clear, I'm not asking for merits from the community, though obviously I can't stop anyone from giving me any and I appreciate the support.  

I don't have a list of posts; I have a waiting list of post histories that I need to review, per my long-standing offer to the community and the recent thread I created about it.  But I definitely appreciate your offer of help and I'd link to specific posts if I had any.

Oh crap--I admit I did not read the fine print in your thread, but on the other hand nobody has to comply with your rules for meriting posts, even if it's your own thread.  As far as I know, you can set rules for posting if it's a thread you created, but since you can't report a merit given against your rules (like you can with a post), it's kind of an absurd rule to begin with.

And to your point, I've given out merits in that thread based on effort and not necessarily accuracy.  Regardless of my feelings about your rule, I'll abide by it in the future.  It probably isn't the smartest thing to do, giving merits to a report if said report might be complete BS.  Got it.

And yes, I'm a merit source.

Well yeah, it is lazy.  That's why I took the time to explain my reasons for doing it (not lazy).  If I scan the last month of a member's post history and it's obvious I'm going to be giving out the entire 50 merit limit, why bother going through all the trouble meriting posts individually?  If you offer a service to the community like this, feel free to conduct it how you see fit.  Otherwise, if you have a problem with the way I do things, bring it up with Theymos.

Hi and thank you for your responses. I appreciate your feedback and your understanding that meriting a post that might turn out to be inaccurate isn't a good idea.

I don't have an issue with your merits which is why I came to you for clarity on why just one users' work was chosen for merits (and to remind you of our commitment to excellence and accuracy).

Let's move on.

That's not what the merit system is for, and you have no options for enforcing this anyway.

If users want to confirm (or deny) what's been posted they can make a post.


Because (IMO) that's what the merit system is for - to merit good posts, not just to give bags of merits to users.

For example if I want to read best recent posts and go here...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topreplies

... large merit dumps skew this picture. That's not to say I haven't done that, and you're right that it is really the merit sender's discretion how they choose to do it, but I need to point out that "going through all the trouble" does have value.

my main account posts more than this one and I occasionally give a lump out with it.

Like I just gave 27 to the pharmacist.

But if you look at my philipma1957 account I would think I mostly do 1 or 2 merits to  posts.

He has an option to prevent posts from being Merited: his thread is self-moderated. If reports are inaccurate, he can simply delete them and nobody can Merit them anymore.

This is probably something I should know, but deleted posts don't invalidate any merits given to them, do they?  And I guess that's a way of enforcing the local rule, it's really not a viable option unless the report is eventually deemed inaccurate and Timelord2067 wants it scrubbed entirely.

Point taken, suchmoon.  That's not to say I'm going to give up taking that particular shortcut, but I respect your views.

Sounds good to me!

Correct.

wow!!! what a liberal mindset in the forum. Your are a merit source, you finished your allocation of merits of the month within two to three weeks or below for the masses (lower ranks) and you still want to help more. If you become a politician, your ward, constituency, state and country will really be happy because we don't have such politician in the world. I have said it in one of my comment on your post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410264.0 that you are a liberal and progressivist scholar. It is only those who are from the social science field would understand what I mean. This your request is very good and I also want to make a suggestion which other users has also made before. If Theymos has not responded to your request. Other merit sources can help you out by meriting the threads and the post you want to merit. I also believe a merit source told you to send the post you want to merit to him so he can also merit them. I was trying find out the comment but I could not again.

As it is, i know you are not happy for seen a good post and you don't have merit to give. I understand your feeling. I am also begging other merit sources to help our humble liberal merit source. Please permit me to address you THE LIBERAL MERIT SOURCE in my generation.

Wow, that nearly made me spit my coffee out :)

You have a way with words! If anyone else has never run into "niggardly" before, it's an easy-to-misunderstand adjective that means "grudgingly mean about spending or granting" according to Merriam-Webster.

I really appreciate The Pharmacist's generosity and hope that his sMerit allocation is increased (or at least temporarily boosted, given the situation).

I sent 30 merit your way (to the bump post), I hope it helps!

Good lord, you don't know me or my history on this forum very well, do you?  I'm neither liberal nor progressive (these days I'm not even sure what those terms mean, but I think I have an idea), though I try my damned-est to live and let live.  I'm not sure what any of my political views have to do with handing out merits anyway.  

Do you know why I want more merits to give away?  It's so the merit system keeps functioning, which keeps members from wandering into areas of the forum where they have nothing to say, hoping they'll earn some.  So you could almost say I do it in a segregationist spirit (though with none of the mean-spiritedness of what that term usually brings to mind).  If you don't believe me, just take a look at Reputation and Meta in 2017 right up until Jan. 2018 when the merit system was started.  There were a lot of pissed off people complaining about what I just described, me among them.  

So please, do not call me the liberal merit source.  It smacks of ass-kissing anyway.

Yeah, I know the post you're referring to and what my response was to it.

So here we are, a week or so later and I guess Theymos isn't listening to my pleas for more sMerits.  They sure would come in handy, because I've got more requests than I was able to handle with everything I had.  If I had maybe 100-150 more sMerits I might be able to catch up within a day or so--but that is NOT a request for anyone to merit my post(s).  I don't want merits from anyone except Theymos, if he hears my cries and has mercy on my blackened and damned soul.

Damn, don't waste good coffee spitting it up because of my purple prose.  And that's why I used the word; it was appropriate, perhaps a bit amusing, and maybe even a vocab-builder for a few folks.

Thanks, I appreciate it.  I wrote the above before reading your post--not that I could have prevented you from meriting any of my posts in any case.  I just gave a few members some merits, so your contribution did help.

A'ight, it's been two weeks since I bumped this thread with an earnest appeal for more sMerits in order to help out the community and I've been met with SWEET FUCK ALL of a response from Theymos, except for the resounding silence which in itself is actually a very loud statement.

I'm not sure what the implications of the statement are, but I'm hoping he still gives a shit about the merit system, which is the only fucking tool the community has to suppress shitposters, account farmers, and to improve the quality of bitcointalk--and it's a blunt tool at that.

Theymos:  You made me a merit source; I did not apply to be one.  I'm trying to help members rank up and in general I'm trying to do a good thing for the forum, that's it.  I don't want to be the most generous merit-giver or any of that shit.  If you really can't be bothered to even acknowledge my initial bump and all the posts between that and this one, what the fuck do you want out of all this?  How many merits do you want circulated?  Do I have way too many already?  What are your thoughts on maintaining the system?  All of these things and more would be nice to know, especially when you've got an unpaid army working to run the merit system.

You couldn't even give me maybe another 100 sMerits out of sheer gratitude for the 3 years I've been a merit source??

Jesus, dude.