Bitcoin Forum

Well, here's another crazy idea of mine.

I couldn't help but notice that a lot of zero-merit-newbies seem to struggle with meeting at least minimum capabilities in English writing.
Also, being newbies, they tend to voice "opinions" or whatever they believe to be such, rather than insightful knowledge of even basic facts about Bitcoin.
It's not uncommon for whole threads to read like
"I think Bitcoin will go moon" "I too think Bitcoin go moon, Sir!" "Oh, but what if Bitcoin not go moon?" "Yes, I hear whales make Bitcoin not go moon."
Well, you get the idea, and you probably know what I'm talking about.

Therefore, I'd like to incentivize newbies to actually learn about Bitcoin, rather than spend their time in futile attempts at grasping somebody's attention and maybe pity-meriting them.

So here's my idea:
What if there were a thread where "oldies" posted relatively simple "puzzles" about Bitcoin and its history with a clear-cut, easy to research answer?
And the first newbie to post the correct answer would be awarded a merit or two.

E.g. I might ask for a link to the last post of the creator of Bitcoin.
You post "https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2228.msg29479#msg29479" and you win one merit.

What do you think? Good idea? Stupid idea? I can haz merit, Sir?

Great idea you got but still only newbies with the zeal to learn and improve would benefit for these type of competition. I do think some thing like this or in relation to it has been done atleast i know of those by @jetcash  and I was a beneficiary of
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201929.msg53089722#msg53089722
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5201659.msg53083589#msg53083589

Many newbies has to develop the zeal to learn and contribute more helpfully.

Your idea is great and the zealous newbies would benefit -well they are newbies also- aren't they.

I wouldn't insult you by calling it a stupid idea, but it's a bad one IMO.  I don't think those illiterate newbies ought to be doing mindless tasks that they'll probably learn nothing from anyway in order to earn merits.  That isn't what the merit system is for.  It's to prevent said illiterates from ranking up and incentivizing them to join signature campaigns in which they'll absolutely crank out shitposts by the dozens.

If a member can't earn merits by making good posts, let them remain meritless.  I won't feel badly about that, and I don't think most merit sources or senior members who've seen the carnage shitposters have wrought would either.

Jet Cash has tried to engage Newbies in many topics, but without much result.
The ones who open useless topics are the ones the merit system is supposed to stop from ranking up.

On the one hand, your idea is good because it is aimed at increasing the knowledge of newcomers and getting them to take merit for it, but on the other hand, such a distribution of gelding can lead to a quick pumping of alts by tricky farmers.

They're not interested to learn, but there are members relatively new to the forum and they're able to express their opinion correctly and debate with others. I mean with arguments, etc. Well, a normal discussion. I would rather send merits to them instead to send to the "merit prostitutes"

It was supposed to encourage quality posts, people turned it like the Red Light District, hence it's not easy for newbies

Quite correct illiterate newbies would hardly learn or rank up well that if they still choose to remain adamant.
But tasks where merit are giving as incentive aren't bad. Like the 10years anniversary contests where merit where given out and other task like this serves as an encouragement for a good work. But just like a good contests only hardworking people would get it.

Any effort to educate others is commendable. So, generally it's not a bad idea. But I doubt such things can attract newbies. Many of them have stuck in bounties board, don't check any other board and don't even know what is going on in the forum. They will never see such giveaways and contests.
1miau (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2143453) held a contest (Visit the link below) in December, 2019 focusing on education of participants. But no newbie was attracted.
Educational giveaway | guess first Bitcoin Block in 2020 [9.5 mBTC] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205895.0)

I don't think OP's idea is good. The merit system was born to solve many problems in this forum, from spammers to beginners. They have to learn how to make their writing better and deserve to be rewarded. The sending of merit is based on each person's thoughts, there is a standard that each person to accept someone. Answering simple puzzles is not a good idea for you to send merit, it is not the way this system works, merit should be given a more worthy way. The rules for giving merit are in place and should not be changed.

Thanks for mentioning that. I offered to help non-English speakers to post in English as well through The Fit to Talk English project (https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/), and many members were able to gain merits through creating interesting threads. I've made a few posts there recently, and I would be prepared to revive the site if there is any interest.

For me. the most interesting recent change in Bitcoin is the large new mining farms that are starting up in America, and are being funded by corporates. If any new member wants to research that and start a thread, then I be pleased to consider that for merit awards. I rarely have fewer than 200 sMerit available, so I can guarantee rewards for non-plagiarised threads and posts. If you are not a native English speaker, then send me a PM, and I'll help you to build a good opening post.

Of course, the use of Bitcoin in countries like  Iran and Venezuela would be interesting as well, especially if you are a native of those countries.

I made a crossword puzzle with some popular events related to the bitcoin or the forum, the interaction was good but it should be chastity for fun and not for getting Merits.
Misuse, attempting to participate using alternative accounts and other things may cause such games to fail.


Make ut for fun

So you want to make stimuli for them to learn more about bitcoin, yeah? To be fair if you want to learn, you'll learn, just google anything you wish and you'll find a lot of answers, just ask on this forum and you'll get responses too. Personally I can say that in Development & Technical Discussion section achow101 has never left me without full answer, I appreciate that.
I have also seen one newbie who was receiving merits like rain because of his very, very high quality posts, he gained attention in the beginning when merit was implemented, can't remember that user. So what I want to say is that idea is still ok but it won't push newbies to try to rank up. Shit poster = shit poster, no matter what. You can't make child intelligent by giving chocolate if he/she gets good marks cause he/she prefers to put less afford and be left without reward.

The irony behind this idea is that if these newbies spend a bit of time researching and learning, then they would earn merit anyway, with or without a competition or giveaway.

There was a time for every single user of this forum when they were newbie, when they had zero earned merit, and when they knew nothing about bitcoin. Everyone with a large amount of earned merit has spent time learning and discussing to earn their merit. Every person who has made a worthwhile post or started an interesting discussion once knew nothing about bitcoin, or cryptocurrency, or mining, or computing, or math, or anything else for that matter. If the newbies spent time learning and contributing rather than just posting "to the moon" and other such vapid nonsense (as you rightly suggest), then they would earn the merit they so desperately want.

I can see where you are coming from qwk, but it kind of feels like it's missing the point. If you start giving away merit for answers which take 3 seconds to Google, newbies won't actually learn, and will just continue to shitpost albeit now with a signature. On the other hand I can get behind the kind of thing Jet Cash has tried, where he encouraged newbies to actually research a topic and present an argument or start a discussion about it, but as mentioned it seems that very few newbies actually want to take the effort to do that.

Last year I was newbie until October but now I have earned some merits and ranked up so I can understand that how much effort it takes to collect a single merit for a newbie and I appreciate your idea hopefully you will do something like that in near future so the newbies who deserves merits can get it.

No offense but I consider all these newbie-supporting scheme as an easy way of farming accounts. Any experienced member can make a new account and start claiming such merits much faster than real newbies.

Being an avid supporter of *Capitalism*, I never liked the idea of government providing free supplies to poor and taxing high-rates to rich. Everyone should be given equal chances in similar environment. If newbies are smart enough, they will make their way up to top soon without any assistance.

That's the beauty of it, isn't it? ;)

Formal protest. This is absolutely untrue for satoshi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3) and a few others :P

I actually didn't have something as simple as that in mind, obviously my example was poorly chosen.

This is more like what I had in mind.

But well, it seems like my idea doesn't receive a lot of love, which is totally understandable for me.
I guess I'll not go forward with it (I doubt that I would ever have put a lot of effort into it, anyway).

Don't be too discouraged, and I'd be happy to work with you if you do want to try something. My primary interest was to get members from non-English speaking countries to contribute to the English boards, and this is why I paid for a domain and hosting to allow me to help with the post translations. I'd be really interested in doing something to help Islamic members discuss the use of Bitcoin in their countries. There is so much misinformation flying around at the moment, that it would be great to get some opinions from the people who are affected by the bellicose bullies.

I think even though they got lots of merits from some giveaway merits , they should still spend more time to be recognized since they have to engange in better discussion and so a lot of works to be qualified to some campaign and more , yea they do have merits bit they will not be qualified, in the end they will be more active for their goal and with that more discussion, so I think this is a good idea in some ways

[  ] Good idea?
[  ] Stupid idea?
[  ] Non of the above?
[  ] all of the above?
[X] Merit is overrated?

Counter protest. There was a time when Satoshi knew nothing about bitcoin because he had not thought it up yet. 8)

In which case I think it's a reasonable idea, and I'd be happy to award some merit in such a thread.

I think the key is the difference between a question which has an answer which can just be paraphrased from a single source, and one that requires actual reading and self education; closed questions versus open questions. "Who created bitcoin?" isn't a great question, but you could maybe try something like "Discuss some of the motivations behind Satoshi's creation of bitcoin?" Instead of "What is an unconfirmed transaction?", how about "Explain why it is unsafe to accept unconfirmed transactions?" Anything that requires reading and learning, as opposed to just copy and pasting and changing a few words.

It's almost as if you're saying that we should be using this site as a discussion forum of some sort and even send merits to users who put some effort into their posts. Blasphemy.

Great idea! Let's start our own forum, with blackjack and hookers discussion and effort!

I can see how it would be intimidating for a newbie to get involved in a question regarding some technical aspect of bitcoin (for example), when there are plenty of experienced users involved in the discussion. Indeed, one of my pet peeves is people "answering" questions incorrectly or with wrong information because they are trying to boost their post count and end up posting about things they don't know. If you don't know the answer, don't guess or provide bad advice. A thread aimed solely at newbies removes all these barriers, and gives them freedom to make mistakes while still learning.

Counter counter protest. Satoshi was born all wise and knowing. Prove me wrong! 8)

There is a slight difference, I wouldn't necessarily require a very carefully phrased, lengthy, comprehensive answer, but would settle for whatever legible gibberish they're able to cough up ;)

Counter counter counter protest. Your statement assumes Satoshi was born. You cannot prove that.

Counter counter counter counter protest. If he wasn't born, he is god. As such, he is omniscient. q.e.d. :P

As a newbie, you don't have to answer questions if you aren't sure of the answer. However, you can always start discussions around some of your ideas, and members can be really helpful. I can remember having fairly long discussions about reducing the block generation interval when I first joined the forum, and I was wrong because I didn't understand the problems resulting from the creation of orphan blocks.

I think that one of the differences in the current forum is that I was chasing knowledge rather than merits then. Somehow we have to put merits behind us, and return to the ambition of self-improvement, and not try to harvest chocolate crypto coins.

What happens when somebody starts handing out the answers to the legions of broken English spammers that seem to flock to this forum every day?

At best, it is a flawed plan, at worst, it is dangerous. There would need to be a huge number of questions and they would need to be randomly assigned in order to make sure the system can't be easily bypassed just like most other online quizzes.

Also, this can't just be gamed by illiterate users, because there would be nothing to stop someone creating hundreds of accounts and scoring the minimum amount of merit on them, then using this merit to transfer to their main account etc.

Alternatively, I think it would be a better idea if people could simply flag other users for merit-worthy posts. These could show up in a stream that merit holders and merit sources can view if they're looking particularly generous.

We do that on our local board (Portuguese). Some users from the community make some questions (e.g How does Bitcoin mining work) and if you make a good answer, you get a merit or two). It works because we have quite a small and limited community, so we incentive some activity and learning-seek between us.

This is the thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3336968.0

Its not that the idea itself is entirely bad, there is just severe lack on interest on this forum. I tried starting a Q/A thread  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2968050.msg30499459#msg30499459)for people, it worked a little well at start, then I just started getting answers from the same few people, or from newbies who weren't willing to put *noticeable* effort into the posts, so I eventually gave up. Its kinda the same thing you're proposing. It just died, eventually.

I dont think there's a lack of merits, its that people who usually give merit, give it to the regulars, because hunting for newbies has never gone too well. Jet Cash tried so hard, so so hard, and it sucks how it went. I don't think the community has to try this hard for newbies to earn merit. People who like this place will eventually earn merit. Also, people tend to mistake that if someone doesn't have good english, they won't get merit, which is kinda false, cause I am aware of so many users who have moderate English get more merit than posters with better English.

I think sometimes newbies thought that if you post a lot , just by spamming the threads with nonsense post
they will think they will rank up, but its not true, why because the first thing a newbie will look for is the one
with the highest rank and look at their stats sheet, and think they have lost of post, and they will start, posting
every minute, just to reach a certain post, but since the ranking system already change thats not how it works
What newbies really need to do
1. Post things that can help others ,
2. Share information others don't know
3. Help others problem on something they ask for or seek
4. don't do bad things in others in the community

You see this are simple steps to rank up, when you have this , i assure you those merits will come on raining down
why? because you deserve it, spend more time creating a post, its not how many you post in the forum, its what
the content of the post is it helpful or just a spam,
I hope newbies will be able to read this

I like the idea of qwk. There could be many educational challenges set with great variety. It would take a large effort to create the challenges and reward deserving. I don't assume merit should be top priority. I like more social small regular group and characters. Meta group and politics are most interesting for me above Bitcoin board right now.

Moist new members may be not be concerned about merits, only interest in accumulation of bitcoins and alt coins. Or perhaps make friends and talk. So merits may not attract people to the challenges, but we can try the small experiment to test? I don't specialize with math or cryptography only recent hear about game theory so merit challenges on these advanced principles will not work for me. Very complex. Some new members can learn these thing deep so worth a try to educate more members on deeper technology. Variations  some other challenges, or discussions on other ideas with advancement of adoption of crypto. A plan how to self perpetually contagion others with crypto interest. Testing and challenges  on board rules and etiquette.
Could be fun to try. No success can stop it. Not dangerous in my opinion to test. What harm? Good suggestion.

i agree with this , they post a lot things just to reach a certain target post, but the content of the post has nothing , or sometimes a mile a way of the topic
regarding the merit , i would like to suggest to start a topic then, all the newbies will be sharing their thoughts about it and if their statement or answers
or good and helpful i think even other high rank will never hesitate to give them a merit, i really hate spamming since , its just covering the one comment that
has all the thoughts about the topic

From what i can read and understand, this might be a superb idea. It might also help for gaining some basic knowledge about might be anything related to bitcoins/cryptocurrencies as well as it might open doors of ranking up for several struggling newbies who have a will to rankup.

It would be a good way for us(newbies) to earn few merits and in this case "we would literally earn merits with our knowledge and it really is a quite innovative concept.

Let me answer your first question if you ask one in order to earn a merit. ;D

I think the point is that it won't be easy to answer questions which have answers which can just be handed out or (more likely) bought and sold, but be questions which require some research and thought. Such a system would be no easier to game for merit than buying an answer to any other thread.

It's not a case of every newbie is presented with a question to answer. They would just be threads like any others. Once the thread had dwindled, it could be locked.

Such a thread already exists here: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0). It is very under utilized, and unfortunately consists almost exclusively of people suggesting their own posts.

I've tried to start discussion threads on the beginner's board, and have had mixed success. It's quite difficult to think of suitable topics though. Here is one that I've just started as an experiment.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5216645.0

The main theme of the forum is to write constructive and good posts which add value to the forum. If someone is not able to write quality posts he has no right to get merits and rank up by other means. Faucets and puzzles to get the merit will only help non-serious poster rank up and keep spamming without improving themselves.

Well that thread was a waste of time - it's been moved into technical, and no beginners will be visiting there. I don't know why I bother to try to stimulate research by beginners here.

Yeah, what a shame. We can flood the Beginners' Board with pointless topics like "How to earn merit?" and "I ranked up, aren't I amazing!", but if you try to actually stimulate learning and discussion then the topic is moved. What good is the Beginners' Board if not to help beginners explore more complicated topics and ask questions about topics they don't fully understand in a relatively safe environment? theymos has previously expressed his desire to help newbies learn about bitcoin with his courses idea (Idea: Courses (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4609442.0)), so it's a real shame this has been moved.

I suppose there's your answer though, qwk. If the mods aren't going to allow it, then the whole discussion is moot.

This one may be too difficult to understand. Do you believe it is best for each member to understand deep cryptography first. One small team of experts required only not many. Forum can be useful more , generate army of promoters and push for adoption. Young at school can influence greatly. We maybe shall increase knowledge of the benefits of decentralized governance, and much more fair system, than fiat system? Make all members experts of technical deep topics may be difficult and not needed for the best result of this forum.? How about this idea? If make nice and easy then they can stay on beginners and not moved to expert section? Maybe tasks on Facebook and social to promote ideas for Bitcoin for merit? What about this one? Explain for friends on face book their personal experience with Bitcoin also bitcoin talk forums this build up members on this forum? Always start test first for small effort. Later in their education if interested learn sha 512 encryption advantages?

Everyone has the right to give ideas and there is nothing bad about it. Some people will like the ideas and others won't. Even if this idea is not to be implemented, some other idea may popup from this and the room for improvement is always there.

This is called freedom of speech.

The most important idea here IMO are the thoughts that each member has, regardless of their capability to communicate using the English language, that is why we have local boards to help these members share their knowledge without ease and away from criticism of their way of speaking. If they really want to engage with international boards, there are extensions they could use to do so, Grammarly is one of these grammar correcting software we could incorporate to our browser to help us further enhance our way of organizing our thoughts.

I have a thread where I award Newbies and Jr. Members with Merits for quality posts. Do you know when the last post was made by a Newbie asking me to review some of his posts? August 31, 2019. I have bumped the thread a few times but it is slowly dying.

The thread taught me two things:

1. Those Newbies who know something about Bitcoin and crypto or have the ability to research and understand, will get merited sooner or later.
2. Many don't want to learn anything. All they want is a merit to be a Jr. Member and be able to take part in bounties. They can't even understand what a normal looking post should look like. I've had users suggest I take a look at their bounty reports and merit them if I like them.   

SHA256 is one of the fundamentals of Bitcoin, and one should have an appreciation of it in my opinion. Most members here will have a more advanced knowledge about cryptography than I have, but I believe that I understand its purpose in Bitcoin, even though I don't have a deep knowledge of its nuances. If you don't know why Bitcoin incorporates SHA256, then you don't understand Bitcoin. This is why i thought it would be a good discussion topic for the beginners board. This is especially true with all the talk about Quantum computers, and their effect on Bitcoin.

Maybe discussions about links in signatures is more important for the current direction of Bitcoin Talk.

Maybe it is time to introduce a beginners' tech board, and moderate it to keep out the sig spamming.

And essentially turn the forum in to one big bounty campaign while we're at it? No thanks.

We want people to understand how bitcoin works and why it is better than fiat. We don't want uneducated shills mindlessly repeating things they don't understand; there are 2000+ other coins you can choose from if that's your game plan.

I have never withheld merit from a user because I thought their English wasn't good enough, with the only caveat being it needs to be good enough that I can understand what they are trying to say. Merit should be for the ideas being communicated, not how well someone can spell or construct sentences. Although there are certainly plenty of users who could do with improving their English, again unfortunately there seems be little desire for improvement based on the uptake of JC's Fit to Talk project.

Genuine lol.

Invoking "freedom of speech" on an online forum is kind of the new Godwin's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law) ::)

Maybe we should call it "Munroe's Law": "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone invoking free speech approaches 1".
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png
https://xkcd.com/1357/ (https://xkcd.com/1357/)