Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I thought a lot before writing this topic and how to choose my words in order to not offend anyone.

As you already know, almost 2 years ago, the new merit system (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522) was implemented.
Prior to that point, the rank-up was realized through the activities, and prior the activity system the rank-up was performed through regular posts. Due to the systems used in the past, many were just "farming" accounts, posting hundreds of useless replies / topics etc, but they managed to rank up. Even to Legendary.

The activity system reduced the farming until some point, but it wasn't as performant as the merit system.

However, after January 25th, 2018, the new merit system was applied and the rank-up is now done through quality instead of quantity / spamming / redundant posts etc.

Once the system was applied, each rank received an airdrop of merits, according to how many merit points they should have in the respective rank (Hero received 500, Senior received 250 etc.). Since then, the reputable members kept increasing their merits through their quality posts, fact which represent they deserved indeed the respective airdrop.

However, those who used to rank-up through farming the accounts earned just a few merits, or didn't earn even a single merit in almost 2 years.

I was curious to see how many users are there who received a merit airdrop but who earned 0 merits since January 25th, 2018 and I started a topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204396.msg53175881#msg53175881). Unfortunately, I didn't find everything I wanted. However, thank to DdmrDdmr, who performed (I think) a huge effort, I found out that about 800 Legendaries and 3500 2500 [edited after Ddmr notified me about the typo] Heroes didn't earn even 1 merit after the airdrop. He said this information is a bit inexact, but we don't need the exact numbers here. Just the amounts. And the amounts are huge. I didn't dare to ask him to check also how many Seniors, Full Members or Members are out there without 1 merit earned, but I imagine there are thousands or hundreds of thousands. Indeed, some members were and still are inactive, thus they couldn't earn merits through their posts. However, they could have received some merits for their past posts, if they had quality ones. But even without taking this aspect into consideration, even without counting the inactive members, there are still thousands who are still active and who didn't earn any merit.

Having this information, I thought about asking theymos about his opinion for this situation. To be more precise, if he has something in his mind regarding all the users who received airdropped merits but didn't earn even 1 merit since then. I also expressed him my ideas about the situation, as it follows:
- it doesn't seem right for so many ranks to just "wear" the airdropped merits, without earning any single merit by their efforts, while others work so hard for earning them
- furthermore, the number of merits is one of the first things seen by a new member, who doesn't know about the airdrop, nor about what to look at when he creates his first impression about someone (trust, references, flags etc). Seeing a big number of merits gives the idea of a reputable person. However, those who received the airdrop and didn't earn any single merit since then might trick newbies with different schemes, as the newbies would tend to trust a person with so many merits.
- as a proof of the difficulty in ranking-up, since January 25th, 2018, the maximum rank that could be obtained by a member with 0 merits is Hero (due to the possible activity points that existed since then and until today). So far (also with Ddmr's help), only 31 members reached the Hero rank. And only 44 became Seniors.
- it looks weird for a Member or for a Full Member to not earn even a single merit, but it looks very bad to see a Senior, a Hero or a Legendary without earning 1 merit. If at lower ranks is not expected to have so many quality posts, at higher ranks the expectations are higher. Nobody is forced, per se, to write quality content, nor to earn merits, but it raises heavy questions to see a Legendary who didn't earn 1 merit by his skills.

In the light of the above mentioned aspects, I asked theymos if he has something in mind about this situation and I also suggested him my ideas:
- change the badges color of the members who didn't earn 1 merit by their efforts
- highlight at the profile the airdropped merits and the merits earned through effort
- remove a percentage of the airdropped merits if the respective member doesn't earn 1 merit in a certain period of time; increase the percentage in the next period
- decay entirely the airdropped merits for those who didn't earn even 1 merit (with some exceptions though; for example, satoshi, donators, VIPs could be such exceptions).

Theymos replied telling me that he is aware of the situation and he is thinking at some possible solutions, but he doesn't consider this as a priority for the moment, due to his own perception and also due to some uncertainties he expressed in the PM. However, he also said he is prioritizing things also by taking into consideration if many people express their complaints, thus he encouraged me to post this topic. In case many people would share the ideas written here, maybe we can assist to a change in the future.

- Issue of note: I understand perfectly the fact that there are members who wrote quality topics prior the merit system, who became inactive and who didn't receive any merit for their past posts (this is pure bad luck, as past posts tend to get merits though - for example, look at Satoshi's posts). None of the above refer to such reputable members. The problem is just about those who take advantage of what they received and who don't offer anything back to the forum (and all they could offer back is just quality writing).

That being said, what do you all think?

This has been discussed periodically in the past, and I generally agree with your views.

At the very least, I would like to easily be able to differentiate between airdropped and earned merits. Changing the text under everyone's avatar to something like "Merit: xxx/yyy" or "Merit: yyy (xxx)" where yyy is total merit and xxx is earned merit would be a good first step.

In terms of decaying merit, I think the idea has some merit (heh), but I'm also not sure I'm comfortable with stripping older members of their ranks. It seems a bit too much like ex post facto to me, punishing them for not earning enough merit in the past when merit didn't even exist. I think some sort of compromise would be best - decay airdropped merit over time, allow users to keep their ranks, but also introduce some new requirement to keep their signature privileges, such as earning at least 10% of the merit usually required to reach that rank.

If we are going to decay airdropped merit, it should decay for everyone in a uniform fashion. Decaying at different rates for different people will just add more confusion to the system, not less.

---

To everyone: Please don't engage TOAA and derail yet another thread. Everyone in the world is acutely aware of his opinions on the merit system at this point. It does not need discussed further.

Hi o_e_l_e_o, about what you quoted from OP, I didn't mean to apply both things (to remove a percentage of merits [to some] and to remove completely [to others]; it is an "or" between the two options). That's why it wouldn't be  a non-uniform decay, but an uniform one. At least that was what I thought (maybe I didn't explain clear my ideas).

Off topic, about TOAA, as a matter of fact and only by chance, I read many things about him here, while I was reading various threads. However, he never appeared in my topics before. But I understood clearly what he is doing. After all, although it seems hard, he managed to have a -18 trust in just 8 months of being here, which is impressive, in a way. Even if I wouldn't have seen his previous posts here, I wouldn't challenge someone with such a reputation. It's obvious he got it all wrong or he tries to derail the thread, that's why I didn't write anything after his reply. However, thank you very much for warning me :) I was fortunate though to read myself about him and thus to be able to have a clear idea (determined only by my thoughts and not being influenced by someone else) about him.

I appreciate you didn't mean both those suggestions at once, but I was talking about all forum users, not just those who hadn't earned merit. I don't think we should be decaying airdropped merit (either completely or as a percentage) for users who haven't earned a single merit, while leaving the airdropped merit intact for those who had earned some merit. It would just lead to even more confusion.

If we are going to decay airdropped merit, I would propose we should decay it uniformly for everyone, regardless of how much (if any) earned merit they have.

Oh I understand you now. It seems that you understood my point, but it was I who didn't understand you :)

Well, this is an interesting idea as well, and, after all, this is the purpose of this topic:

- to see if others agree / disagree with the merits "worn" inside the forum by those who received the airdrop but didn't offer any quality afterwards (as they didn't receive any single merit), or even before the airdrop;
- to share ideas of how to proceed;
- in case many people here agree with the OP, to see about how many (and viceversa, of course).

And thus, theymos would have a more clear idea about members' thoughts and he may (or may not) take an action about this delicate subject.

OK, so this is what this all boils down to I guess.  And as Leo said, this has been discussed before and I'm not sure Theymos wants to do anything about it.  It isn't uncommon in other things in life for people to get grandfathered into certain positions, and whether they did or didn't, it would seem unfair to either side depending on the case. 

I don't happen to think members who haven't earned even one merit should be stripped of their rank.  That would be a kick in the pants to a lot of inactive members who were otherwise very constructive members of the forum and who probably would have earned at least one merit since the system started.  Just because there are hundreds of such members, it doesn't mean they're all shitposters IMO.  Some of them certainly might be, but I just don't think those airdropped merits need to be taken away from everyone if they haven't earned any more merits.  Obviously if Theymos thought everyone should start over again, he wouldn't have airdropped any merits.

You are perfectly right about these members, this is why I wrote at the end an issue of note:

I agree that separating the "farmers" from those who brought quality in the past but became inactive would mean an almost impossible work, unfortunately, as there are thousands.

This is a pretty sensitive topic, and normally once one achieves something (i.e. rank), taking it away is like a whack in the noble parts, followed by a stampede over the ego area just above.

Removing airdropped merits and/or decaying them for all profiles would likely do more bad than good. Many profiles would be de-ranked in any scenario, even more so in the second one (decaying merits), extending over to native Merit System born accounts too (i.e. Jr. Members with 1 Merit or Members with 10 earned Merits could be re-ranked.)

Ranks will have many different stories behind how they were obtained. Some are long time forum and Bitcoin contributors, others are posters that had an easy path merely by posting little more than "good project", and newer ranks have likely has to put quite a sum of effort into their posts, and so on.

A rank really has relative value, and what is more appreciated is the person behind that account. Eventually, we all build a persona, which is above the rank for those who know one, although rank is the facial value one sees on a profile as a newcomer.

Personally, I would go with a simple double entry for the merits, displaying total and earned.

Note: The amount of Heroes that have not earned a single is around 2,5K (the OP states 3,5K). See numbers in PMs to verify this assertion.

@OP, good discussion, but I'm going to agree with The Pharmasist and partially with the Troll Formerly Known as Cryptohunter.  Merit is a funny animal, in many cases I believe they are distributed among folks that are friendly with one another.  That's not to say that those posts don't deserve merit, but it can be subject to biases that develop in any community.  On the other hand I believe most merit sources are clever enough to avoid these biases, and I've witnessed one of the more prolific sources give merit to posts of people with whom she often disagrees.  I've even seen her giving merit to a post and then go on to dismantle the post with her argument.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though I agree the system is working, I don't think it's perfect.  I started here after implementation of the merit system and during that time I've seen the quality of posts going up, while the quantity of shitposts go down.  So it's been a net positive for the forum.

To retroactively punish those benefited from the system before the change would be wrong, in my opinion.  They may not have earned a single merit, but that could be due to a lack of activity since the change.  Or it could be due to the type of activity; they might be mostly active in the altcoin sections, or gambling sections, where merit distribution is notoriously low.  I'm not concerned about all the airdropped merit, and it sounds like Theymos doesn't think of it as a priority either.  He may choose to revise the structure when migrating the Epoch Talk forum, but for now, I don't think it's something that needs any modification.

You are right Ddmr, sorry for the typo. But it's not about precise numbers, it is about speaking of thousands. Those numbers reflected only two ranks, just to have a little idea. But I am sure the numbers of all the other lower ranks are way, way bigger. And the numbers go bigger as the rank goes lower (eg. 800 Legendaries, 2500 Heroes, [maybe] 5000 Seniors and so on).

It's unnecessary and would create more than problem than it resolves.

If the main goal is to stop signature campaign spammer, then i have another idea such as :
1. Signature limitation based on your merit amount, not your rank
2. Signature only enabled for those who earned x amount of merit within y last month

If you're talking about Ddmr's suggestion of a double entry, I don't like that idea either.  Obviously it's not up to me, but I don't like the idea of any indicator denoting earned vs. airdropped merit.  A badge would be the worst, as it would start to look like a yellow Star of David armband, in my opinion.  It's not hard to look through someone's history, or look up their profile on LoyceV's or Vod's websites.  If you care to know who's earned what and who hasn't, take a moment, made a small effort to find out.

This would be a terrific idea to remove all the airdropped merit from people who didn't earn any merit yet. When Satoshi Nakamoto will look at his account, how will he feel- hellllll, I am a newbie :D Just kidding. But there are numerous number of people as you mentioned who aren't active anymore, it would hurt a lot to them; they will create chaos around. I would prefer sticky with as it is now.

There is no doubt the merit system is more in favor of old members. Now they are benefiting because they knew the forum earlier.  I expect this to be finally changed (I don't think it happens in near future). I don't think 5 years later, some users have a special privilege only because they registered earlier. Theymos will decide. All airdropped merits may be removed in a second, they might be decayed over a year or there will be a complicated formula.

Anyway, now thanks to signature campaign managers, there isn't a big problem. A legendary member who hasn't earn any merit is not qualified for participating in a good signature campaign while there are users with member and full member ranks that are participating in good campaigns.  There are many legendary members that are wasting their time in altcoin bounties without any income. Now having an account with a higher rank doesn't increase your chance of participating in campaigns.

The problem with the merit system is that it is subjective. It is given freely by those who have sMerits to give, for whatever reason, or for no reason at all. It is "human controlled". There is no objective method of giving out merits, the closest would be some sort of AI that parses posts to check for quality and grammar according to certain rules. That will eventually be exploited and abused as well.

The forum changes or adds a new system, but you can't just retroactively remove some things as that's going to break a lot of stuff or have unknown consequences, which I'm sure the forum admins do not want to deal with.

A forum is a forum, but with plenty of metrics involved, it becomes a race to "level" up just like any other massively multiplayer online .. forum. :)

It would be possible to combine this idea with merit decay. Remove all the airdropped merit, let everyone who was grandfathered in to a rank keep their rank, but remove signature privileges from ranks and instead link it to earned merit.

Satoshi is the 8th highest merit earner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topusersat) on the forum, with 2145 earned merit.

The issue is not their income; I couldn't care less if these altcoins all turn out to be worthless (and most do). The issue is the spam they create in pursuit of said income.

Can you imagine the amount of merit selling will happen once theymos will drop a bomb for something like this? Once the news will come flying that there is another change in the merit system for the ones who haven't earned a single merit I can only imagine the same thing that has happened when theymos required 1 merit for newbies to rank up, suddenly a lot of newbies are insanely getting a lot of merits. Of course the only ones who will be affected here are the ones who aren't buying merits or who don't have any alt accounts to send them back merits either way it will really just affect a few persons here.

Yes, But the lower their income is, the less they spam.
If there is no income and there is no benefit in spamming, they will leave the forum. They are here only to join campaigns, spam and earn money.

If Theymos decides to make changes, I don't think he announces anything before that.

Of course, he wouldn't have to announce the move before making changes  ;D
That announcement would definitely cause a lot of panic and merit selling among account farmers prior to the changes

I have mixed thoughts about it. Probably most of us agree that users who didn't got even single merit in almost 2 years don't deserve their rank. But before Merit system has been released, they ranked up in legitimate way and it would be little unfair to de-rank them. Offcourse, newer members will say that's unfair thst they have to work hard to reach high rank, while someone reached it just by spamming. But these older users have advantage because they came here earlier. It's similar like to complain that early Bitcoin adopter bought it at $0.3, while you had to buy it at $6600.

Deranking a user with purely airdropped merits would do more harm than good, IMO. They were earned legitimately at the time and those users were also influential in the growth of the forum.
It could also bring a debate of whether earned merits should be removed if they are believed to be given to undeserving posts.

If the goal is to prevent their joining signature campaigns, then, top managers already have a system which prevents spammers from joining their program.
Instead of deranking maybe removing some privileges, like what was done with the enhanced newbie restrictions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030366.0).

Just curious about the numbers you mentioned there - How many of those 800 legendaries and 3500 Heros are actually active on the forum? If you find that out, the numbers will drop down drastically.

I doubt signature campaign spam is that big of a problem these days. Very less bitcoin signature campaigns and strict moderation including merits have cut it down. Extreme amounts of spam come from the altcoin bounty campaigns including massive account farming. Some merit law should definitely be implemented in those sections.

Adding UI elements is very "expensive" in the sense that it's something to which every member constantly has to devote some brainspace. So I can't see adding any kind of split merit score or other UI element, since that'd be a permanent high cost as a result of a one-time thing in the past.

I also can't see decaying non-airdropped merit scores.

I could see decaying airdropped merit, though I'm not convinced of it currently. If it was done, it may be best to do something like this:
 - Your current activity score as of <whenever this change would be done> is recorded, which I'll call EPOCH_ACTIVITY.
 - Your merit score is defined as max(0, AIRDROPPED_MERIT-(CURRENT_ACTIVITY-EPOCH_ACTIVITY)/7) + EARNED_MERIT.
 
So you'd already have had a lot of time to earn merit, and you'd get an additional 7 "activity-days" per point of merit to get back even more. Inactive users wouldn't be demoted.

If I'm reading the formula correctly, active users would lose 1 airdropped merit per week (actually, they'd lose 2 airdropped merits with every activity increase, which is on a biweekly basis.)  If it's something that is important to you and the community, that seems like a fair way of implementing it. 

Those who are active and contributing to the forum shouldn't have trouble keeping their merit score up, and those who are here to shill and spam will be able to see themselves being slowly demoted.  An airdropped Legendary who earns no merit will be demoted to a newbie in a little over 19 years.  If you can't learn to earn merit in 19 years, I guess you should be demoted to a newbie. 

I like that the formula doesn't affect inactive users.  It does seem like a very fair compromise. 

You can be an active member of the forum posting constructive replies and be engaged in active discussion and still not be merited. This is what I don't get about the merit system. People tend to merit popular users that post threads and not users that post constructive replies because constructive replies seems to be the norm for many users. So essentially, you only get merited for going above and beyond which doesn't make any sense if you're going to introduce merit decay. Secondly, it would act as a disincentive to give merit away knowing that it's just going to decay way making your overall merit lower.

In this case all active users will lose their airdropped merits at a same rate.
The rate of losing airdropped merits can be a function of earned merits in the last X days too.
For example, if someone had received 500 airdropped merits and has also earned 500 merits doesn't lose airdropped merits. Because this user deserved those airdropped merits.

I agree with you on this. If there is demerit aims at airdropped merits, it should be done with active users only. It is a joke if a Legendary (active one) who made hundred or thousand of posts last two years but have not yet earn a single merit. But there is at least one minus point if we only based on the number of earned merits to judge the quality of one member. Because the one who runs their business here might not earn a single merit but that one might not be a shitposter. As a consequence of a mix of that (inactive good members, active shit posters, active businessmen, etc.), there will be a massive complaints in the forum when airdropped merits will be taken away, I can imagine that.

But if such things implemented and complaints pop-up, I imagine most of them will come from shitposters, not businessmen.

Something like the ratio between total posts made since the merit system's birthday per total counted days. There will be some level of demerit based on that ratio (that can be used to assess users' activities as well as posting activities).
I agree with it, too.

Well if you go like this then what about the handful of legends that earn 1000 points after the 1000 were dropped.

Does my Philipma1957 account  get marked legendary2x  ;D




To suggest that air dropped accounts should be stripped merits almost 2 years after the system is in place  was not the way to do it.

To suggest starting from today to  dec 31 2020 if you don't earn  you drop 1 rank  will simply mean cheaters going to cheat.

  No one with  legendary rank  set in place  had any sense of needing to earn points.

Also a hero at 500 figured fuck I won't earn 500 points. For us humans it is simply less then perfect solution  no matter what you do.

Yeah that's what I am telling that this could do more bad rather than good since either way the ones who will be abusing the merit system won't be affected by the changes at all the only ones who will be are either inactive accounts or accounts who won't be buying any merits. So if this would happen I think the best thing to do is to apply the changes first before theymos will be announcing anything about the changes which I think will be the best approach to prevent merit abuse from happening.

I'm not in support of this. Dormant accounts already got screwed over by the merit update, now having to put in much more work in order to rank up even if they had the potential activity. Also, the removal of already acquired merit wouldn't do much in that regard. We're not talking about enable merit, but rather total merit. You can't remove more than the already earner rank, and I think it'd be unfair to remove base metrit based on the future activity. The merit drop's criteria where applied when it took place, no need to go back at it with new criteria.

If you are seeing constructive replies which are going unmerited, please post them in this thread: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0).

Only airdropped merit would decay under theymos' proposal above, not earned merit.

I don't think that's true.

When theymos introduced the "1 merit for Junior Member" (and therefore a signature) requirement, there was a noticeable and measurable reduction in spam over the following weeks: The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032314.0). This is despite all the merit selling and awarding to alt accounts that went on. There would be presumably be less merit selling and alt accounts now, since a lot of accounts involved in this will have used up much of their airdropped sMerits, without earning any more.

If I understand this correctly, I see several flaws:
1. A user can increase his Merit score by deleting old posts (which reduces his Activity)
2. Users without airdropped Merit would start losing their earned Merit because it's not limited to AIRDROPPED_MERIT
3. Users who run out of airdropped Merit will also start losing their earned Merit
Update: DdmrDdmr is right (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210375.msg53377397#msg53377397), I was wrong!

I've suggested before to link decaying airdropped Merit to post count, not activity. This prevents an old user with more posts than Activity from losing his rank when he returns to the forum and makes just 1 post (and his activity goes up by 14).

I think he was talking about the users which didn't earn even a single merit in almost 2 years, though, and not about all the users who received the airdrop... After all, this is the subject of the thread...

You wrote a very goot OP, and I think you posted your ideas in a sensible manner,
I tought about it in the past, but didn't wrote anything to avoid offend anyone or being engaged in fights. But you made a good job:I don't see anyone being offended by your ideas being explained.

I have the same feeling about the "old" merits, airdropped or not, and some other made already good points.


I would agree in principle on the following:

• Decaying merits for everyone on a long enough period (2 years?)
• Rank based on "highest merit in history" (sticky, never to be reduced).
• As ETF suggested, signature limitation based on current merit amount.

So, if you were very active in the past, you would be legendary anyway, even if not active now (what's the best definition of legenday btw?)
An user like Satoshi would have a legendary rank, even if with few merits.

All the current attributes of each profile would get a different meaning:

• Merits would mean something about your "currrent" engagement on the forum and quality of posts.
• Rank/trust would refer to your quality history on the forum (best example: satoshi)
• Activity would only refers to your seniority on the forum

Only downside i think is a little bit ov overcomplicating something made to be simple. is it worth it?

Thank you, fillippone. I have to say that I thought a lot (writing, deleting and re-writing words / sentences) until I finally chose my words, both when I first PMed theymos (who suggested to create this topic) and also when I wrote the thread. Without his suggestion, however, I wouldn't have dared to start such a delicate discussion, as when you talk about a sensible subject, if you don't choose the right words and if you don't explain clearly, you might get misunderstood and the whole subject may go in a wrong direction. I'm glad it didn't happen though.

I’d say that 1 is correct, but 2 and 3 aren’t, since the max(0, 0 – activityCalculusResult) would be 0 (the max function, as is, would return 0 when compared to a negative value).

Note: In the same package, we should probably include perhaps the question on airdropped derivate sMerits, unused for nearly 2 years. These could suddenly gain a "utility" for some of those who haven’t found one yet for them (to "contribute" towards avoiding the de-ranking of other accounts).

I get your point but if you look at the proposal at the top where users are required to at least earn 1 merit on a certain period just to avoid the decay of their merits you will understand that this will be a lucrative business for merit sellers, some normal member might even be merit sellers because of this idea. Yes this might encourage people to finally share their merits as well but like I said this will also encourage members to sell their extra merits for cash which will increase because of this proposal.

That's not the point though. I'm not spamming one liners but any posts I have made in Bitcoin discussion have received no merit. I've only gotten merit for posting in meta/politics and society which tend to be more hot button topics rather than constructive discussion about cryptos, for example. Merit is not a good measurement of contribution and there are plenty of members who post constructively as a norm that shouldn't be posted in this thread. There'd be way too many replies to post. Nearly every legendary member of the forum posts non-spam and should earn merit for every 10 posts they make by default because they're the last type of members to post spam.


I understand that, but merit is displayed as one overall number. Not split into merit and sMerit. So when merit decays, your overall number decreases and now you lose overall merit through sending merit, and decaying. This would certainly act as a disincentive to send merit if you are now losing merit two ways.


Seems people that are advocating for merit decay are members that post too much on drama ridden boards and receive merit for posting on hot button topics more than anything. The idea that you can lose your ranking as a legendary member for posting because you joined the forum earlier on seems rather outrageous. This would presumably apply to Hero's, Sr., Full, ect.

If the idea is to use merit to stop farming accounts in order to allow newbies - Jr. to stop spam, I think it's a great idea. However, decaying merit only effects more established members who don't spend their entire life on this forum racking in merit but also post constructively.

That's not unique to you - Bitcoin Discussion is a mess, that's why. The last data I saw showed it has the lowest merit per post ratio of any of the non-altcoin boards. Most threads turn in to spamfests, and no one with any sense is reading past the 3rd page or so. Any replies on threads like that aren't even going to get seen, let alone merited.

Totally disagree with you here. There are plenty of legendary members which just spam one or two line nonsense. I went to Altcoin Discussion, clicked on the first megathread I saw (this one https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5165503.0), and Ctrl+F for "legendary". Here are some of the profiles I came across in the space of a few pages:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=407887
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=162975
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=22145
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=358450
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=148225
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101432

They are all spammers. It took me a total of under a minute to find these 6 profiles. There are plenty more.

I think you misunderstand. Merit and sMerit are totally separate. Your merit score will never decrease because of sending sMerit to other people.

Almost everyone (theymos included) has agreed that while airdropped merit could/should decay, ranks should not.

You have received only 4 merits. You shouldn't expect your received merits to have been distributed through all sections.
Be constructive. I am sure you will get merit. As o_e_l_e_o suggested, report unmerited posts that you think they deserve to be merited, I am sure you they will get merit if they deserve.
If you think you have already been constructive but haven't received merits you deserved:
1. Be patience.
2. Continue to be constructive and even more constructive.
3. Don't post for merit
 
I recommend you to visit the following thread created by DdmrDdmr and participate in the poll.
Merit - simple poll on operational fundamentals (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210795.0)

Bitcoin Discussion invites the most spam, you're right. I think that's why it's hard to gauge for post quality when you're viewing a thread using Bitcoin discussion because quality replies by people who aren't brain dead are cluttered with lower level members with broken English spamming 1 liners.



Okay, fair enough, you got me here. Surprising to see such shit quality posters that are legendary but I don't browse altcoins at all so that's probably why I have a skewed view. Legendary members in Bitcoin discussion, meta, and P&S tend to have great discussion value added by legendary members so I'll leave it at that.


Huh? Well, didn't know that. I was under the impression that went you send merit, your overall merit score decreases unless you are a merit source. My misunderstanding.


Good, but like I said the problem still persists that members can be active in forums that are cluttered with spam, ie Bitcoin discussion, where valuable posts are not merited because they aren't seen enough. I don't think we should leave it to chance that good quality posts are seen by people who will eventually send merit in a system where merit becomes decayed.

I will concede, though, that the initial merit airdrop seemed fairly generous and that it doesn't allow newer members to catch up efficiently.

Unfortunately the merit system will always have an element of chance in it, depending on who reads which threads and how many sMerits they have available at the time, which is why there are initiatives like the one I linked to before to try to identify and rectify any posts which are un- or under-merited.

Merit decay will have no effect on this though. Regardless of whether or not airdropped merit is decayed, there would be the same amount of sMerit available and the same amount of merit being circulated, and I wouldn't propose to introduce decay for sMerit. It's up to regular users not to hoard their sMerit and distribute it.

I absolutely think all airdropped merit should be removed.

I wouldn't be bothered if the legacy ranks remained but if you wanted to move up a rank you should have to start from a zero airdrop count just like a newbie. If you have contributed little to nothing of note in two long years then you shouldn't get a free leg up. You'll still be a good rank.

To go further you'll need to prove you've still got what it takes, not that most of them had it in the first place. Most were account farmers. I don't really regard ranks earned under the old system as in any way legitimate. All you had to was not get banned and shitpost once a day for 2-3 years to be a legend. But if it stays it stays.

If you became a legend before but have disappeared then you will remain a legend in our hearts and on the page but your merit score, or total lack thereof, will quickly illuminate your present status.

When demerits and / or deranks happen separately or concurrently, there will be another massive drama in the forum as we saw when merit system debuted.

But you are right that a Legendary is always a Legendary in the eyes of the others, no matter which rank that account wears. We can not deny the fact that Satoshi is a Legendary, forever. The same for Hal Finney, and nearly the same for nullius (who were the most oustanding guys in early weeks after merit system's debut).

For people who run business with accounts in the forum, ranks are not matter. Their accounts' ages and good trust histories make more sense than ranks.

I think it'll probably equal out in terms of popularity versus outrage. It must really annoy the newcomers who are trying to see absolute fucking deadbeats lording over them.

The sooner anything with a financial incentive that requires an indication of your worthiness switches 100% to earned merit rather than rank the healthier this forum will be. Plenty of campaign managers already do this but the total removal of the rank factor would help.

I think demerits would be an awful idea. People would start handing them out every time they disagreed with someone else's opinion. You'd end up with a situation where people are scared to post anything even remotely contentious. It would hamper free discussion (as well as those hilarious snarky one-liner put-downs).

Yes, the merit system isn't 100% fair; a lot of good posts get overlooked. And yes, perhaps the initial airdrop was too generous, but it was needed in order for people to maintain their existing ranks. I suspect we'd never reach a consensus on what is fair. Perhaps the airdropped merit could have contained an in-built decay mechanism whereby you had to keep earning merit to maintain your rank until the airdrop was fully eaten away. I have no idea how complex that would have been to implement, but again it's unlikely it would have been popular.

Let's just stick with what we've got.

No one said anything about demerits beyond removing all of the airdropped stuff for everyone in one fell swoop.

I'm fine with ranks staying. I think it should be made clear how that rank was earned by removing the unearned merit.

There's a fair solution to that if that Demerit sabotage of topic of yours were to implemented, and it will be like this:
Going with USER x, y, z: and Giving 2 Merits = 1Demerit Power
If User X gave User Y 2Merits, User X can get 1 Demerit Power for using against User Y...
Then if User Z Disagrees with User Y, he/she can't Demerit User Y for he doesn't have any Demerit Power for User Y.

That would be a hell of script/codes just for that, I guess?

The suggestion is just for another shitty guys who doesn't care about the Merit System just because they're already on a high rank.

Everything has flaws.

Suggestions can be of help whenever the system goes into failure. Besides it doesn't always go, the way we expect it to be.

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Nothing to do here for the likes of us who started with Zero Merits but still,  I do want to see the decaying Airdropped Merits as time goes by.

I sometimes merit old posts with the thought in mind that eventually airdropped merit will be eliminated or the rank requirements will be increased so that airdrops wouldn't be enough. less often now that spending a few months inactive caused my source to get hobbled. :P

One possibility would just be listing the grandfathered rank separately.  "Hero Member / Legacy Legendary".

Of course, my perspective on the relative ease of getting merit is no doubt highly atypical.

FWIW, Satoshi has received enough merit to rank legendary.

I support this (and called for it myself a while back)

There is an outstanding issue though for me: what about people that received airdropped sMerit? Alot did, and it gave existing high rankers an opportunity to shape the league table (whatever that's really worth). I wasn't especially keen on giving out merit I didn't earn (and still have about ~130 unsent sMerit), but then again alot of the merit I received was itself doubtless airdropped, no-one had any control over receiving it. It's a messier change when you consider this issue.

That said, if all airdropped merit (both sMerit and rank-supporting merit) was revoked, I have no problem dropping down to Hero member or less (which I likely would)

I don't agree with this. Someone who has received merit which was previously airdropped probably deserve that merit, so why would you remove those merits? Doesn't make much sense to remove merits from constructive posts, "airdropped" or not.

Tell one good reason why this topic https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2544574.msg25949072#msg25949072 should have most(all?) merits removed.

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I would like to see statistics on ranks without received merits which came from airdropped merits, if anyone can do this?

I think if it's something that Theymos wants to do, he should consider the method that has the least immediate impact.   There's no reason to retroactively demote thousands of accounts overnight.

As for your point about airdropped sMerit, I don't think those should be demerited.  Being a "New Era Newbie" myself, I'm sure many of the merit I've earned originated as sMerit that airdropped to older members, and revoking that from the countless accounts that have ranked up as a result would be quite disheartening.

You gained enough merits (for sure) and i think activity to be Legendary even without airdropped merits.

https://bpip.org/profile.aspx?p=Carlton+Banks

Legendary rank in your case is something not easy to strip out of you, fortunately, If I may add.

But if we revoke all merits which came from airdropped sMerit, then what do we do with all the sMerit that came from those merits? Do we revoke them too? If we follow this line of reasoning, then all merit other than that from merit source's monthly allocations would be removed. And is there really much difference between sMerit which was given freely to all forum users at the start and sMerit which is given freely to merit sources? As you say, it becomes too messy a change.

Decay airdropped merit over time, leave all sMerits and earned merits alone, leave all ranks alone. Perhaps further down the line we can then consider linking signature privileges to earned merit rather than ranks.

I add another question.
And how to know whether the merit user X sent to user Y was an airdropped smerit or an earned smerit?

yeah, that's a good argument to be fair.



yep, I imagine the merits are actually just one homogenous pool, so there is likely no way to discern airdropped sMerit from sourced sMerit, why would there be? scrap that thought :D

still though, that (unsolvable) issue further underlines how messy the change would be, but fuck it, I still think it ought to be done

I'm not sure it would be completely fair and just to take back rank from old accounts that made their rank before the merit system, because their are probably a lot of good users that don't get a lot of merits, but if anything I think theymos's algorithm is pretty good because it won't de-rank inactive users, but still might not be completely fair to users who continue to be active but only post once or twice per activity period..

Me personally, go ahead and take my airdropped 500 and give me the rare opportunity to make Legendary TWICE..
Just hurry up before I get to 1500 or it won't work ;)

I just checked merit history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=1285797) of OP.

@GazetaBitcoin, it seems that not only you want airdropped merits removed, but also, you want no user to receive merit.  ;) ;D

Or you have not read the following statement.

"There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future."

Or you have not read any post that deserves merit.

I knew there is no point in hoarding merits.

I intended to use them in the Romanian board, in a merit giveaway topic. However, as far as I saw, the Romanian board is almost completely inactive, therefore I'll use the sMerits I have in the international boards.

I don't quite fancy hoarding smerits to distribute them to a particular board via a giveaway(do not take my word for it, you can do what you wish with your Smerits), but for the love of God if everyone hoarded their smerits and saved them for giveaways on some boards then you wouldn't even have any smerits for your own giveaway on the Romanian board. ;D

This is correct. It wasn't intended for a long run.
However, this wasn't the subject proposed in OP, let's not derail...