Bitcoin Forum

A question arose that probably worries many here.
I want to appeal to newbies, where did you get the idea that by creating a topic, you will do something useful to the forum?
Recently, this is very striking. Each time you enter this section, one may wonder how smart our newcomers have become. They create many tutorials for beginners.
And then I ask myself, wise or cunning?
Today our newbies need everything at once. Those who have been on the forum for years understand what they need to go through to raise their rank.
Some of them decided that everyone has a responsibility to help, and the more generous this help, the sooner they will have their dream of participating in bounty campaigns or subscription campaigns come true.
I remember that such questions have already been raised. To prevent newbies from starting threads, and I understand this is somewhat unfair, but could there be some way to regulate the questions they ask?

Does this account motivate someone? What is this for? ???
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5299618.0

Further
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298792.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298497.0

Another sly one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298713.0
He wants to know about bitcoins and blah blah.
What about the forum itself? After all, to answer this question, you can rewrite the entire forum.

All this is what, beginners today figured out a good formula for themselves. You create a theme, you get the merit.
How can you limit this business? Otherwise, such topics really appear with questions like
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5299049.0

How to convey to newcomers that they will still get their merits, a good post will never go unnoticed. You don't have to be so rushed.
And you don't have to create a bunch of identical themes for that. ::)

I already had my opinion about these new strategy from newbie few days ago


All these topics are low value and are shamelessly looking for merit.

They won't listen until something has been done against them. Check his topic history and the time I had my response: https://archive.vn/wip/0fHSE

What I have noticed could be the best is to put 'beginners and help' on ignore lists because newbies will always be newbies. I went through some of my early posts on this forum some days ago, I was able to know some mistakes I made, although that does not mean I am 100% perfect now but I was better than before. Newbies will always be newbies, experienced or ranked members will see them boring and also unprofessional in posting.

But if this needs a remedy, only moderators can give that by deleting such poor posts but they did not because they know newbies can just be unprofessional in posting.

This is the best advice. 100% recommended for newbies.

I do not think this is lost on them; Spammers who repeatedly make such thread are not interested in putting in the effort which goes into making a good post. They do not read or use the search option and rather try to take the perceived short cut which they have seen work for a couple of other newbies.

The legitimate newbies would probably not need this advice as they would be interested in learning and understanding how the forum works and would eventually find their way around, it might happen immediately they join in, or a couple of weeks or months later.
There are just so many helpful threads and stickies for an interested user to miss.

I don't know why you have archived my posts and why you people think like that you are the owner or the king of this forum and you do not give the chance to others to come up. I don't know why you have this mind. I was just sharing that which I was learning from this forum. Even I didn't make a good post. And soon I will make it and you will also give me the merit.
You have just jealousy from the newcomers. Which posts you have just leave for us. All the topics has created.
Just be patient and give us time.

And one more thing which I noticed that is many members 2 or more accounts or they just give suggestion to make account on the forum. Like you can see these two links which has given in the topic also merited. But you can see these topics has nothing.

Anyways I have no friends who are on the forum. Otherwise they also suggest me how to post and they give the merits.

Thanks for archiving my posts.

Because they are those who have the friends of the old members. Or can say that they pay to stand. :D

Beginners and Help section was one of the merit hunting section and many newbies realized it so people starte to make guides and tutorials because simply they are looking for merits but atleast the merit system is doing its job which prevents complete spams and people are trying to produce something in order to get the incentives from signature campaign.

Has anyone figured something out of it? How about a translation?  ;D

They won't stop if they see people merit those newbie guide topics.
Newbies - Look at the list and find answers. You don't need to create your topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5282127.msg55381953#msg55381953)

Newbie But Not Beginner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286996.msg55528205#msg55528205)
Inactive Moderators (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288822.msg55578921#msg55578921) (7 days and know inactive moderators and members with good reputation)
Newbies + Bounty = Zero future (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5297750.msg55771704#msg55771704)
I want to become a Member (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5297963.msg55777359#msg55777359) (a shitposter asked, answered the interview and became a member)
Noticed something and want to share. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5295252.msg55723698#msg55723698) (2 days, 5 posts and want to share)

I have nothing against you. In fact, I am one of the user from many who believes in newbies and always give them the benefit of the doubt. However, what you are doing is not looking right. Please do not consider us a fool.  Do not pretend, if you have nothing to post then you really do not need to.

You do not need a friend, you do not need a God Father, if you are genuinely interested in Bitcoin and the community then study bitcoin and it's network. Learn the technology, learn the concept. Onec you go deeper and deeper you will find yourself having questions and answers. Create posts which are constructive but not cheesy and boring type of merit fishing. You will find people around you.

If you calm down and do not rush, then even from your questions it will be clear that you are interested in cryptocurrency, and not in ranks, merits, etc.
If you ask questions, it will be clear that you are interested in the difference, for example, in custody wallets or non-custodial wallets, in investments, or vice versa in trading, or even all at once.
Information about the confidentiality or security of being on the exchanges, or simply about the exchanges themselves.
Trust me, this is a very extensive forum that contains a lot of information. But, having read, for example, the message history of your account, it is easy to guess that you grab the top of the information, and, having received merit, you forget everything and stomp into the bounty company, flooding the forum with useless reports.
Nobody wants bad things for anyone, but on the contrary, bitcointalk is a very friendly forum, if you make useful things from it and don't do harmful things.

I can find one reason behind the creation of such threads. Although I don't have any data, it’s easy to speculate that the ratio of merit between post:thread is quite high. If the maximum number of merits in a thread is 100 (assume), it will be 20 for a post. That’s why newbies motivated to create new thread but; the problem is almost all the threads are unnecessary and surprisingly some of high rank member still post their.
There's nothing wrong with creating thread IMO but they should be enough informative, they should be on good discussion. Apart from that, I guess this board should be moderated heavily specially on creating threads.

I can not answered your question but some stats for you. There are 82141 topics received merits and the for those merited topics, the median of received merits is 3, interquartile range is 1 to 7. By that I meant 50% of merited topics have their receive merits range from 1 to 7. Min and max values are 1 and 61984. The max value belong to Wall Observer thread.

About posts received merits inside each thread, here you go:
Median: 1
Interquartile range: 1 - 2
Min - max: 1 - 29399

What does it mean? 50% of merited threads have number of merited posts range from 1 to 2 (with the median is at 1). This one does not take into account how many posts are made in each thread (I only have data for merited topics and merited posts).

Top-50 most merit-earned topics month, year (2018 - 2020) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5273654.msg55133250#msg55133250)

• They get motivation from merited topics and try to do the same thing.
• They do neither know Search nor how to use it effectively
• They know Search and how to use but skip all and create topics because they like to do it.

I didn’t mean that. I mean merit the OP (Opening Post) vs merit in replies. That would make sense why most newbie create threads. As thread/opening post receive more merits than normal replies, they tend to create more thread.

I don't think so.

• Quality topics help you earn more merit than quality posts. I see this point because topics are hardly to be covered by others. With posts, old posts will be covered by other posts.
• Shit topics don't hep you earn a single merit or if earn some, there will no significant difference with shit posts.
• It is general picture but for some knowledgeable users like o_e_l_e_o (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1188543) who does not need to create topics to earn thousand of merits

We always know a lot of new crypto lovers come to this forum and grow the family greater there is no doubt. But they should be real newbies :)
So basically the people who create such topics their main motive is hunting atleast a merit. It's normal though because we all love to earn merits. But most of the cases these newbies are not real and when they lost their first id anyway ( banned or tagged) they try to recover again and try to grow them from beginning.

I have no problem if it was done by a real newbie because I know about me when i was newbie here, but I am against them who are not real and come again and again with new accounts.

I just need that kind of guidelines. I don't want the merits do you want I will give you all my sMerits. I am trying learning going deeply want more information about cryptocurrencies world. Therefore giving time to the forum. I just shared my experience which I got. If these are boring so soon I will start the good topics.

And thanks for the suggestion that you said that go deeply. I will try to my best.
I will learn research and than ask and get knowledge.

Well, when there is such a system as the merit system, a lot of newbies will try to abuse it to rank up. The smarter ones will do so subtly.

I've been here for years now, I'm old enough to remember a time before the merit system (I know my rank probably doesn't really show that but my activity and posting has never been consistent) and I've seen quite a lot of tricks made by newbies. I even tip my hat to some of them. But most of them are as subtle as an elephant  :D

Its normal to see many newbie hunting merits since its the only way to rank in the forum besides forum activity. They are the rank that probably the most eager to earn some of it. I'm not expecting too much about there post quality because newbie always a newbie unless they are alt account of some high rank account here.

There's always an ignore button or report to moderator if you find the post as low value. What I'm confused about was how the heck some newbie thread received a merit for a post of a general discussion or something that already recycle. I believe our attention must focus on the user that give the merit rather than the newbie itself.

I looked into that somewhat, but ages ago, so I’m pretty sure that the distribution has changed a fair share since then (see Forum Merited Messages – Does size count? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4181253.0) – specifically section number 4). The analysis is from May 2018, not even half a year into the Merit System, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in it’s current validity.

On broader terms, many topics are created by all ranks for all sort of purposes. Obviously, there are many that aim at receiving merits, and a lot of them lack any real substance. The same might, at a different wording scale, apply to many other posts around the forum, that are more campaign quota related, than wanting to really add anything of value. It’s not infrequent to see threads where posts show clearly not having read the prior answers, and therefore swaying the conversation away from a more accurate route.

Merits were introduced to reduce spam, which I figure they have (I was not really around before), but they also lead to the creation of topics which otherwise may not have been created (with all sorts of outcome). Campaigns are though, probably the biggest post creating driver, being merits a stepping stone (occasionally a racing track (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5281030.0)). It’s a difficult equilibrium all in all …

actually if we want to increase our rank there are many ways we can do it. first, we open topics of information that can be used as material for discussion, the second we can share what we know to share with others. if our writing can be accounted for, surely the other members can give merit as they like, as far as I know, the two methods are ways to get merit, if something is wrong please correct it. i am still newbie and still learning

I am quite soft for newbies about sending merits. Because once a time I was a newbie and I know how hard it to earn merits. But, its true earning merits isn't too hard for true contributors. When I assume someone hunting merits by creating already discussed topics, then I just skip there from sending merits.

Merits aren't related to the activities. Users earning merits based on their contributions. If someone made 1 billion posts on bounty reports, then he shouldn't receive merits for that. Even you can earn merits from a single post if the post is considered useful or constructive. As a merit source, when I send merits for newbies, I just look for a good post. I am not looking for the best post from newbies.

Oh no, so far I see you've created 12 topics some of which you've left out.

You should at least be the most active in discussing the threads that you make yourself. I understand that the 8 merits you've earned are from your new topics and maybe that's what you think is a good opportunity, but you need to know that creating many topics is also a little annoying for some members (including me) and they'll tend to ignore you.

That's true, you can make a good post today and get merit some weeks later or even months, quality posts will never go unnoticed, people are too focused on making more merit and creating unnecessary posts and topics in return, making contributions and keep focusing on that will eventually rank you up faster, don't keep your mind on how to make merits but focus on contributing and helping those that lacks behind.

Activity is, in its simplified form (there are some additional complexities that need not be brought up now), derived from the number of posts you make within each 2 week window, with a max. of 14 per window.

A person with 1K activity could have generated all/part/some of that Activity before the Merit System kicked-off, and therefore a bunch of his posts would typically not have postulated to being merited. More typically though, you’ll find that such 1K Activity 0 Merit type accounts are busy bounty hunting, and the derived posts are therefore not merit worthy.

I doubt you'd find many accounts created after the Merit System kick-off ,with 1K Activity and 0 Merits, that do not fall into the bounty hunter spectrum.

I think they are being given "false advices" by some people or even newbies themselves, maybe the ones who bring them here - setting a formula, a plan that they execute simply to get merits. Some newbies will come here and say "Hey you, you're already a Legendary so you won't understand the struggle of a newbie". TBH, I do understand them because I myself don't get too much merits but I'm fine with it, I don't write for merits and so I don't expect them (has no relation to what my rank is). New people nowadays have stopped checking the old threads and represent the already answered question in such a fashionable way that they either get merits or even if they don't, their threads are flooded with extremely non-sense replies later after the first ones where they have already found their answers.

To be brutally honest, This 'merit' system is completely flawed!( IMHO)

I can provide thousands of very helpful posts by some users without any merit given to them. On the other hand someone with lot of merits, gets merit for posting any useless posts from their fellow forum friends. I am shocked and saddened when I see a user doesn't get any merit for posting an initial thread, but someone gets merit for simply replying to that thread even if they simply replies  such as 'yes it's correct or I agree in this point bla bla'.

Moreover, 'Useful' is a relative term. What is useful to some one may not be same to others. 

Current Merit system works same as 'Rich gets richer and Poor gets poorer'. ( IMHO)

When a newbie joins  the forum all they are told 'You need to make yourself useful to earn merit'. This a vague statement.

Here is my suggestion:

On a weekly basis, moderators can check how many posts ( non spam) a user has posted and rank them higher based on post ( no spam) count.

This is a good suggestion, but I think it would put too much workload on the moderators. And they've got their hands full by fighting spammers and ban evaders.
I believe that the Merit system was meant to be as decentralized as possible, just as is the case with Bitcoin.

In my opinion, there is no perfect system but you have to admit that before the merit system the situation had gotten out of hand with people trying to rank up by literally spaming every part of the forum. Yes, certain good posts are being ignored and other, maybe less deserving posts, are getting more merits but it's better than the previous system.

Merit system is effective in my opinion. I even rank up after shitposting in the forum before as a new member. However, after some time that I can participate in a good discussion this somehow I start to do some research especially on how to contribute in the forum. Luckily I was able to rank up. My only problem is that when you go to next rank you need to be patience because it will take some time before it could be reach depending also on how good you are in contributing the forum and earning merit.

I tend to agree, this is how the merit system works, to eliminate and filtering newbies to rank up if they are here just to keep spamming.  I think the requirement of a newbie to rank up in Jr. Member rank is just to earn single merit, just 1 merit need to earn.  By that stage, if you didn't even get single merit within a week or let say a month, you're just literally not contributing to the forum. 

We should be thankful for the merit system that has been implemented, there's no account farming and spamming in the forum.  Everyone does their best and contributing to the forum and hoping that one-day merit sources or any merit sender will find their constructive post.

In my own experienced, yes, I'm poor and had a bad English writing skill, IMHO, the merit system helped me to improved myself and motivated me to push and do research before dropping a relevant post with correct information and willing to accept mistakes if there is.  Your merit will find you if are doing a constructive and helpful post.

Ranks, as we know, have the Activity component. Even if that counter were to be solely taken into account (alongside your mod suggestion), checking every account every week would be pointless, since an account only postulates to change rank when a given Activity threshold is surpassed. Therefore, to be more efficient, the revision would have to be performed just when the account met the Activity required for his next rank (as opposed to every week; bear in mind that, currently, roughly 56k posts are created of the forum per week).

Fine, let’s continue. A moderator, who probably has a busy window to deal with reports, would also need to set time aside to go over a whole load of posts for a potential new-rank-to-be type account, and decide, as per his own and singularly unique criteria, if a postulating account ranks-up or not. If he doesn’t, then there is all the related drama that is foreseeable, coming as a tidal wave to Meta. When the account keeps posting, and reaches the next rank potentially as per his new Activity, could he actually postulate now, having being rejected on the prior rank?

It’s a lot more complicated than it seems, and it centralizes the ranking-up process way more. The Merit System does have many flaws, but it is potentially way less biased than having a single person having to decide if a given account’s rank-up. And that is not even considering the mod time factor, which is currently diluted amongst a bunch of volunteer (or such) people awarding this Merit thingy in their free time.

Accounts rank-up should be handled by artificial intelligence. Judging by the amount of posts currently on the forum, I believe it would be possible to set up a machine learning algorithm to assess the quality of each individual member. For example, we have members who write 99% of their posts in bounty sections. Their activity on the forum should not have any impact on rank-up, IMHO.

A somewhat strange assumption. Do you think that if AI is in charge of rating posts, then those who, in your opinion, write reports on awards will not understand that they just need to move on to other sections?
Set an example in which the most common bounty hunter is suddenly promoted. Surely for this, he applied at least a minimum of his actions.

We could implement some sort of ranking algorithm to determine which posts are important. I'm not sure how we would enforce it, though. So far, the forums have been very lenient on new members. That means I have to ask, who is worth my time? I would like to be able to give a recommendation.

In the future, we could potentially extend this process to have a more comprehensive list of what is important to each member, with the ability for members to vote and help make decisions based upon their opinions. This might sound really awesome in theory, but there are just too many variables that can affect how people rate content on Bitcointalk.


The above cursive text of mine is not a great content from my point of view, and it’s a bit weird to me. While being comprehensible in wording, it is not so much in the underlying key idea it is trying to state, and its relation to your comment is not that direct. It actually does not differ too much, from what other people may write here, and in general terms, an account with such type of posts may, in a more discrete board, pass-off inadvertedly. AI could even consider it count worthy towards ranking … despite the fact that I generated it through a random AI content page generator (the second one I tried).

AI, were it to be a feasible ranker (with an 'r', not a 'w') would, in any case, be a centralized criteria. I think that the grace of the Merit System is to have diverse criteria, although I’m all in for it to be even more diverse than it currently is.

Users who post LQ posts and by extension fill up the bounty section with all of their posts wouldn't rank up and no matter how much activity they have, would struggle to even earn more than one merit (cross Jr member rank), so their activity is still inconsequential and it shows that the merit system is working and there is no need for AI to assess users posts.
This system will still be criticized, it's somewhat not possible to find a system that wouldn't be scrutinized, the current system that has to do with merits for users before they rank up is the best imo, there's no need to hand the power over to a bot or a machine, it'll be complicating things too much, if you're a poster and you construct HQ posts, you'll definitely rank up, that means there's no need for change.

I'm not sure that's needed now and in the future. Although some people feel that this merit system does not reflect justice for every user but it is almost impossible for the merit source to miss user quality post and if any then they still have a way of distributing it via report on a special thread. Post quality is a requirement to earn merit and move up the ranking. Quality assessment is done manually and also objectively, it's up to you where to post it. As long as it's a quality post then you'll likely get what you want sooner or later.

This forum is a place of learning devoted to bitcoin and other cryptocurrency lovers. As usual in the real world, not all student will be high achieving student when they graduate from school and this is also the case on bitcoin forum. I think there is a clear correlation between the real world and forum, we are different but both are the people who are helping this technology to develop. You have to realize that in order to move up the rank you need to have more effort than now, I don't think reason after reason can help achieve all of this. We can become quality poster and move up the rank, but we can't achieve all of that until we start. Do it now.

I never knew I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Before i give my opinion, i think i should commend the moderator for tirelessly working just to keep making the forum a great place to be.

Newbies probably want to acquire everything at a time so to make this happen, they have to be recognized (by creating topics). Their are several topics on the forum which still means the same thing. Most especially "how to increase rank". Limiting newbies chances of creating post won't be good enough but i think moderators should start deleting topics which is related to an already existing topic in the forum.

If we start getting more and more posts like this from your example, maybe AI is just what we need. You know, fight fire with fire.  ;)


Centralized? Yes. This forum is centralized, too. As long as the AI was neutral and objective, I wouldn't have any issues with it. People are rarely neutral or objective.

I'm just saying you, with the pace of technology advances, I doubt that this forum can survive in this form as it is now.

Merit system helped deal with the signature spam problem. In the past, a huge number of new was only coming here for ICO bounties, and ICO scammers were hiring people regardless of rank, because it hosted them nothing to pay people with tokens printed out of thin air. If theymos didn't invent merit system, he would have no choice but to remove signatures and kill signature campaigns.

Merit system is not perfectly objective in every case, but it doesn't need to be, as long as it works on a large scale, it has served its purpose.

Beginners are still beginners, we became beginners as well so we should understand them by creating such not that so useful topic, some of them including thinking that creating a topic will have the advantage of gaining merits, that is my way of thinking before until one person give me some realization with it. You don't need to create a topic, no one requires you to do so, if you cant create a quality topic then you may do replies for some topics that you understand, that way you can create a good post and gain merits.

Newbie can be very funny most times with their post but I don’t pay attention as to the strength of the post because I know they are Newbie and will learn how to compose quality post from other old members reading their topics and reply in all the boards.
 I don’t want to want to focus on the Newbie that receives merit for a low quality post but rather want to question the user that gives out the merit.

Mind you that the issue of sending merits to users is highly subjective, and from a normal standpoint, a newbie isn't expected to post HQ stuff from the very beginning, that's if the user is really a newbie to crypto and the forum and not an alt account, so the criteria to reward a newbie merit would hence be different from that of let's say a hero member, who has been in the network for longer, that's if the user (hero) isn't a bought account or something. Having said that, you should not be surprised if you see a newbie being merited for something you don't consider as HQ, and at other times, users use merits to encourage newbies who are showing effort to learn.

All this is understandable when a real beginner writes. His questions may look somewhat illogical, a little funny, and this creates an understanding that he is the first time on the forum, and is trying to understand something.
But there are a lot of those who are "type" newbies. They start creating guides, explaining the rules to everyone, at a time when their message history is full of bounty reports. And if you dig further, then they have a lot of prohibited accounts.
Today the situation with joining the bounty has become somewhat complicated, and you need to have at least a few merits, these are the "newbies" and churn out such manuals.
And this is very annoying.
There is no normal discussion, communication, and interesting questions. It all comes down to the topic of earning merit. It is for this reason that this theme was created.
Even if newcomers have interesting questions, even for such questions there is an opportunity to receive merit.
I just want everyone to hear it.

Hello people, I'm still new here learning, so if you notice my post is quite unprofessional or unworthy bear with me. I'm self developing. And I need your understanding and patience. Don't be hard on us. We getting to the zenith together.


Appreciation 😊

You're a self developing? Then why posts like this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5302374.msg55893247#msg55893247)?
You could easily find the answers to all these questions on your own, right?

This is the biggest illusion for all newbies.  I was once in that shoe too 😂😂.  I created topics I considered sensible and when looking at it now, I only laugh at myself.  Creating topics doesn't always warrant merit, you just have to focus on yourself and forget about merit.

I looked at your story, and finally, I see a bounty hunter who, though two years later, starts communicating on the forum. We are glad about such changes, now start asking yourself questions: "Why do I need to bounty?" Join the study of more interesting topics on the forum. I think spending two years on the bounty cannot impress you with the earnings. During this time, your peers in registration have achieved much more. Therefore, your merits are still waiting for you.

Lol! You have no idea how much I laughed when i saw this 👆🏼. That's very true actually. The better bitter truth is "beyond all these bounties, their are much more advantage on this forum that one can benefit from". Most especially from the higher ranked ones. One just need to calm down and focus

Ahmm, due to laziness lol? Imagine, you can increase your activity while getting the answers for your question. Big brain move ;D. But actually, such deed should not be practiced all the time because it makes you lazy for real. You will get used to depending on others, losing self confidence and make you less dedicated in every task you do.

But on the other side, he got some point. It was real that some experienced members (I'm guilty into to this sometimes) get ill tempered to newbies asking simple questions. We are so harsh that's why others left the forum or the worse is complaining a lot. I don't know if this dilemma will come to and end but as long as respect and compassion exist from both parties then it might be possible tho.

The mere fact that someone has just registered on the forum doesn't mean that he is an absolute newbie who knows nothing about crypto  ;D
On my local part of the forum we even have owners of very successful crypto companies who are still newbie because they don't have time to write on the forum.
As for sharing the merits, the thing is very simple.
No matter who wrote a quality post, a newbie, a young or an old member, he deserves to get a merit.
I agree that new members usually initially have less experience and knowledge about crypto and find it harder to get merit but they can share their experience and knowledge from other areas like politics, sports and more and surely someone will give them merit and recognize their effort.