Bitcoin Forum

 On 10-March-2019 I started this thread  Zero To Hero in under 4 months (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5119148.0)

Yesterday 16-July-2019 I earned another 500 merit with total of 1000 merit in less than 10 months of being active on the forum.


Other members have probably done this way faster than I did, This should clear any doubts you have about being able to gain enough merit to rank up, despite the noise, the complains and the number of people who can't even rank up to Member rank - you should know that it's pretty doable.



1- Always participate in constructive discussions:


-Pick the topics you are interested in,  most importantly the subjects you understand because you can't possibly add into a topic you don't understand.

-Don't throw a comment and then disappear, go on with the discussion, using piggy's bot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.msg45324722#msg45324722) will help you with mention notifications in order for you to have healthy discussions.

-Read the comments, don't simply comment on the original post because in most cases you might not be adding any value to the discussion.

by doing the above, you will most importantly get to learn new stuff, plus you will be "recognized" and that does help a lot because let's face it, unconscious mind does exist, when other members realize that you usually post quality posts , your name will somehow appear in bold and be easily recognized, for obvious reasons the exact opposite is true, post a dozen useless shit and you will most likely be ignored in the future even if you start to post quality posts - it will be way too hard for you to gain merit.


2- Answer questions/Solve problems:


The most constructive posts in my opinion are those that answer questions/solve problems, many people ask different types of questions on different boards, provide answers and you will more than likely earn a good amount of merit by doing so.

You don't always have to know the answer, you might have better "Googling"' skills than the person who asks the question, get them the answer ( don't forget the reference)


3- Spend your Smerit:

Some people "including myself" don't seem to be wanting to send merit to those who don't participate in the merit system by meriting other members, simply because we all have limited number of Smerit and most of us would like to seem them "circulate" rather than sit in your account doing nothing, you don't necessarily have to merit the members who merit you, i personally usually try to merit lower ranks to help them rank up.


4- Be friendly to others (Don't be an Asshole)


While this is not a social club and many members publicly state that they don't really care about WHO posts what, and that they will still merit members they don't like if they post something worthy of merit, that's great and all, but I am willing to bet my horse that many members don't really do that, I mean come to think about it, if someone who thinks that you are complete jerk has 10 sMerit, what are the chances of you getting any of them when there are other people he likes that have the same post quality ?

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Notice that , depending on what boards you are active in , your chances of earning merit can vary , merit sources are more active on some sections than others, but that's okay, don't force your self to post in places you don't like/understand because either ways , you will not earn merit and you will damage your post quality.

I know at least 4 persons who can be a Legendary by now even if they just registered last year.

Point number 3 is probably subjective. I don't give a fuck on whether you use your smerit or not as long as you bring something to the table. However, I don't like people who write an essay when saying yes or no is enough. So I guess, post what is required, don't make a very long post that will make you get ignored by me (or others who share the same views as me).

I've ignored more than 3 members because they did that.

There are only 30 people who have 1,000 merit period, and 105 who have 500 or more merit. This is out of tens of thousands of accounts that were likely registered in the same month as you did. Granted, some of them are spammers and/or otherwise not deserving of merit.

I have seen a decent amount of people who appear to have a genuine interest in bitcoin and helping other users (and put a decent amount of effort into their posts here) that are not ranking up as quickly as they probably should. A common theme among them is they often wish to stay out of forum politics and/or stay neutral in disputes. Others simply frequent different subs in which the merit does not flow as freely.

I have seen others who are clearly posting for the merit, based on where they know where merit is given out liberally. 

this is a terrible thing to do in my opinion.
one of the reasons why merit was introduced was to "highlight" the answers in a topic that are better than others. in other words should be giving merit to the reply not the person.

This is fine if there is no immediately obvious right/wrong answer to the question, for example in cases when the user has a technical issue and may need to try several solutions before arriving at the correct one. Offering some advice or potential steps to try is usually helpful. However, in cases where there is a right answer, nothing annoys me more than users who obviously don't know what they are talking about chiming in with some vague rubbish, obviously only to boost their post count. When someone does post the actual answer, it gets buried amongst several pages of nonsense. Posting when you don't know what you are talking about is more likely to earn you an inclusion on someone's ignore list than it is to earn you a merit.

Given you need at least 775 activity to be a Legendary, and the maximum you can earn is 1 activity per day, the earliest someone could have registered and be a Legendary today is a little over 2 years ago, so around June 2017.

In the next couple of hours you'll get ranked up to the hero member status and that's a milestone worth celebrating so i most congratulation you. Also for reaching another milestone of 1000 earned merit you too have to be celebrated as it's not an easy task because not everyone can boost of that. The merit system was introduced to highlight quality post at the same time to highlight quality users separating them from the average users and spammers. You're one of those quality users so congratulations once again.

About your tips although your intention were genuine others are free to interpret it in the way they deem fit but as for me it's just common knowledge (sense) as there are more advantages you get from spending your smerits, been friendly and helpful. We're mostly humans here so we can't denied the fact emotions controls our decision making also doing so make you a good forums user therefore it is recommended.

Link to piggy's bot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.msg45324744#msg45324744) isn't working in your post. I don't know if you  did that on purpose.

Congrats btw, I've read some of your comments before and noticed that you usually don't "go with the crowd". Nice personal text.  

That was a mistake , i fixed the bot's url  , thanks for pointing that out.


I agree to the purpose of merit, but let us be realistic, there is only so much merit given to merit sources, the ratio of  posts to merit is a dozen to little.

Based on the above, what do you think the outcome will be if a good number of Smerit are given to those who don't really participate in the merit system?

Depending on the section merit could be very scarce , in my local board we have a lot of quality of posts and only 2 merit sources, I as someone who is not a merit source I always have a small number of Smerit , on what bases would I merit someone who doesn't participate in the merit system when there are other members with the same post quality who participate in the merit system?

Obviously if we had more merit than posts that would be irrelevant , but when i have 2 merit and i find 5 good posts , sure thing "WHO" becomes relevant, am sure many others agree to this but probably just refraining from admitting it publicly.    

To be honest I have to agree with mikeywith here. Why send merits to someone who obviously has no interest in distributing them further?
I made a thread about this topic a few months ago https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5100042.0

Even if members make merit worthy posts any merits thrown their way are wasted. This is a fact because they are not sending any merits to other members. If they don't want to be part of the system they don't have to.

Out of the 20.542 merited accounts (as of last Friday), 6.642 have received at least 2 sMerits and never sent any sMerits, 4.199 of them being active (logged-in) during 2019.
If we narrow that down to other ranges, we get:

-   Received >= 4 sMerits, sent 0:   3.523 profiles (2.251 active in 2019)
-   Received >= 6 sMerits, sent 0:   2.332 profiles (1.510 active in 2019)
-   Received >= 8 sMerits, sent 0:   1.838 profiles (1.186 active in 2019)
-   Received >= 10 sMerits, sent 0:   1.629 profiles (1.037 active in 2019)

I’ve just checked, and seen that I’ve sent sMerit to 72 profiles who, having received more than 2 sMerits, have never sent any sMerit themselves (I believe 17 have escaped from this criteria in your case).

Of course things are not so simple, as some of the non-senders may not have had time yet (or are special cases such as Satoshi’s account).

I’ve personally never looked at this factor (less of all being a Merit Source), but I do understand it as a possible personal criteria, just as one of many others that people have under their wing (i.e. do/don’t merit trolls, do/don’t merit stats, do/don’t merit memes, do/don’t merit politically, etc.). The more people meriting, the more diverse the criteria, which is how it should be.

Note: Congrats by the way …

I earned around 800 points in last year.

But I was not a newcomer.

Your 4 rules are pretty much what I try to practice.

Number 4 be polite don’t be an asshole is really good advice.  For all people all over the world it works and is pretty much advice to follow.

1000 merits within 1 year is an impossible task for me but I do believe that I can achieved that milestone even if it will take me years to achieved having 1000 merits. Anyway, it's not the main purpose of having an account here in this forum where we create an account then focus on earning merits. Having a vast knowledge about anything that is related to crypto will help you achieved that milestone within a year or less than a year.

I know a local board in this forum where the flow of merit is very low and you can hardly see any thread that received merits unlike meta and beginners and help board and luckily there is a person who are doing his best to have a decent amount of smerits circulating in the board.

Threads like the one that LoyceV started (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0) do help with such cases, many merit sources are willing to take the effort to use online translator to evaluate posts in other languages, now of cource you shouldn't be expecting the merit sources to be visiting your local board and finding posts to merit ( some may do so but it's highly unlikely) so it's your duty towards your local board to actually help them earn merit for posts that are worthy of merit.

you can also apply to be a merit source, I am pretty sure Theymos is giving the priority to local boards in terms of merit sources, so your chances or anybody else's to become a merit source in a local board are technically much better than the rest of the members who only speak English.

that's amazing how you uprank your account!! congratulation! it's good for doing bounty campaigns
the rules about merit things sometimes made me confused

if I was a newbie, I wouldn't do good such a half of you :')

Congratulations for reaching the milestone of 1000 merits !

I find most of your suggestions related to my experiences on the forum and following them can guide any user to a better walk through here.

I tried something like that where I translated a language to english language but the result is not 100% correct that's why I don't translate that much. I don't know if there is a translator that translate any language to english correctly. I would like to become a merit source but I think i'm not fit yet to become one but still I'm giving merits as long as it is meritable post.

@nakamura12

You don't really need to translate anything, merit sources will do that, you just need to post the link to the post that you think deserves merit and put a simple explanation about it.

Example : URL  > a guide on how to secure your desktop wallet.

Merit sources or whoever is looking for quality posts will visit the url and use auto-translation, while the translation won't be 100% accurate it is usually good enough to distinguish quality posts from shitposts.

As for applying for a merit source, you have nothing to lose, also if there are more established members on your local board you should advice them to apply.

@DdmrDdmr posted some interesting stats and i don't think the percentage of smerits that never get spent is that high.
you are raising a valid point here about circulation of merits in the system though, but i still believe that only caring about the posts and not the person is the approach that i am going to stick to. most of those who are good posters are already spending their merits anyways.

Well, I will try to follow your advice basically don't know how to work merit but know got merit help for upper rank.


I thing already got enough Merit to get Legendary member.

What a great guide for forum newbies!
I added your guide in my thread, Promotion with merit system and new rank requirements. It's possible. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5121906.0), in which I presented some of my tips.

A good post deserves a merit but it do seems that those that has the number finds it hard to give out. On a reg,accounts are been created,newly or existing account all aiming to be merited someday. For me getting a merit requires enough patience while your post a quality post

I find that the most sMerit is granted to people with new refreshing content on this forum. Most people just take old topics that was discussed to death and they put a new spin on it and then they expect to get sMerit for it. You also get people posting "copy&paste" responses to common threads and simply changing some words to make it look like it is their own opinion.

Go look at new threads that got the most sMerit and you will find that most of them are contributing new ideas and new discussions to the forum.

My advise would be for people to do proper research on previous threads that has been posted on this forum and to post something new and constructive to get loads of sMerit. People like myself that has been on this forum for years, can easily spot new constructive discussions and I like to award sMerit for those kinds of posts.  ;)

Example : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.0

Members seem to wrap so much round the merits system. Surely the whole purpose of merits is to encourage good and helpful posting. I don't believe that factors such as the merit awarding policy of the poster should enter into the discussion. We should also try to help those with bad posting habits, or weak English, to improve their posting skills. Bitcoin Talk is an information exchange site ( amongst other things ), we need to keep it as a fast flow site with easy reading, if it is to maintain its popularity and influence.

The number three you talked about is also the main reason why other people who post constructively don't make it up there. Why? Because they weren't so lucky like you to gain some merits in their first month or two (either they weren't recognized or don't have friends to help them with that).

But should one be lucky to get some merits, they start spending and then they make friends and then the circulation enters a continuum. The merit system is good and works fine but it creates an "unconscious/unnoticed/unrecognized" circus which escapes many of us.

Other than that, your other points sounds good to me. Thanks for sharing though!

Not sure how far the “friends” factor goes really. If we take it literally, friendship is not a reason to merit someone, and in fact can and has in the past lead to unpleasant situations.

The core driver is (and should be) content, although we are all subjective beings, and as such, will favour one sort of content over others (or understand it better). With time, certain profiles will be repeatedly merited by one, not necessarily due to a specific shine on them, but rather because they tend to create posts that are more appealing to them than others. That’s why the more people meriting the better, so as to get a broader range of diverse criteria rolling.

There are also a couple of threads, both on Beginners and Help and Reputation where allegedly good posts that go by unnoticed can be reported, in order to postulate to being merited by the thread owners or other viewers.

Sometimes accounts crop up and stand out from the beginning, which leads to them being merited easily without a wink. I’ve seen a few of those recently. Ux (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2647827) is one of such accounts: The account was created three days ago, and already received 10 merits for 9 posts (he’s done something weird though, and seems to have deleted the content of some of his merited OPs for some reason).

OP mentioned that some posts may be overlooked for some reason. You may submit those constructive post you are referring to in some of the merit giveaway threads.
Merit for Crypto (and other) Knowledge (no guide threads) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5124376.0)
Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0)

While everyone has the exact same chances of making "friends" I have to disagree to it being directly related to gaining merit,  what you are referring to is politics, some members have many friends and supporters here, that might get you elected to be on DT but sure thing does not grant you a good portion of merit, I do not want to point out exact members, but many highly respected and well trusted members here who do have a lot of friends/fans have a very limited earned merit.

The opposite is also true, many people have a lot of merit  and barely any friends/supporters , while I don't completely discard the possibility of someone helping their friend by sending them merit for shitposts, but let's be realistic, even if you are best friends with people who sent most merit , how many will you actually get before you get caught  ? 10? 100?


Post quality is very important, if my dad start using the forum and I decide to "help him" with merit, he has to post something worthy of merit, I can't send him merit for posts like "great project, when Lambo" ?  ::)