Bitcoin Forum

How Legendary members share so many merits among themselves is a little strange, but it raises interesting questions. ;D

Concern

What became of "helping newbies grow"? The truth is that not all Legendary members began writing quality posts when they were newbies. It's a learning process, and the longer you stay here, the better poster you become. I know the justification has been that newbies are shit and legendary members are great posters. C'mon lower some standard while meriting newbies.


What might the issue be? Still, using the "poor quality post" defense?

Problem

What about the merits source, which ignores B&H and Altcoin discussion boards? This is one of the issues, isn't it? Too well aware that those are the only boards with a higher proportion of newbies.

What are your suggestions/Excuse?

Legendary To Legendary Distributions
https://i.imgur.com/X3mVzkS.png

Total : 76355k merits distribution among Legendary members since this year. 2022.


Legendary To Newbies Distributions
https://i.imgur.com/uhg8RKS.png

Total: 5591k merits from Legendary to Newbies since this year. 2022.

* current month.
Data source: DdmrDdmr merit dashboard

I have a topic like this in the past, actually 2 years ago.

• Where receivers received merits from, and meriters sents merits to (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215009.0)
• Personally, I don't expect to see any big change with such things. Even nowadays, it is more easily for lower rank members to rank up with softer behavior to send merit to posts like "like, love, etc.". It is actually kind of issue because more spammers will be able to rank up faster than they should.
• Generally, the overall distribution of merit between members and member ranks won't change much
• I stopped making topics about merits when I see people feel overwhelming with it and personally I don't have more time to play with stats.

Merit discussions never gets old 🤣
A brand new account or lower rank account is creating some very high quality posts. You are impressed. Sent out some merit. After few days you discovered the account is banned for plagiarism. This is one of the many scenario. But that does not mean that we should not send merit to lower rank member, we all do.

When a good post is coming from a higher rank member, you know that he is not fishing for merit or at least some part of the posts are genuine. 

Don't make it boring.

Haven't been here for quite some time, I'll agree with you that it's never easy for a newbie to grow through the ranks. The pressure is always there as to reasons why, thy don't have to create posts just for the sake of seeking out merits but still, somehow needs to make quality posts enough which are subject to individual judgements to earn merits.

The issue then becomes, how do they do this (quality posts that could earn them merits) and avoid doing the other (posting for merits). Let's not forget, the are newbies and presumably, doesn't know much except for those that were on some other platform or have been in crypto fa before they joined up on the forum.

For this, the answers is still simply SUBJECT TO JUDGEMENT.
1. That you are a newbie doesn't mean one shouldn't seek out for some quality or points that nails it in your post. You've got to try and emulate those ahead of you. It's left for a meriter to see your effort in trying and let loose his or her standard a little bit to do the needful.

2. It's no doubt the beginners and help is one of the boards you can commonly find newbies and as much as ignoring the board seems out of place because one isn't doing much of the help for which the board is about although, that's not just about merits, some users have pushed for a more newbie educative and earn first merit threads. Like:
I [Merit] Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275032.0) By Ratimov (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2627711)
II. [Merit] Hey Bitcoiners! Can You Send Encrypted Messages? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.0) By OgNasty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18321)
III. [Merit] Hey Newbies! Can You Sign A Message? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0) By OgNasty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18321).

This is to mention only but a few and having a pattern to this would promote laziness and create a trend that would bring results such as in II & III above (posts that follows a pattern) although idea behind this one is clear and they teach a clear lesson of privacy and proving of ownership to an address and in turn account. While in the case of I, its just a helping hand to motivate that, its possible to rank up.
In my opinion, they are doing just fine and the fact remains that, the ranked users knows the ways to be themselves and get merits even when they don't need them.

The bottom line is, you might need to grow but still, you've got to be yourself, do the most you can and hope to get noticed for them.

This also doesn't look at the whole picture. How many newbies are there, compared to legendaries? How many are posting 20,30 or 50 posts a week? Legendaries get more merit, since there's some pretty significant users here which happen to be legendaries.

While, I do get your point, I do think you'd need to collect additional data, as right now it looks bad, but when you factor in the amount of newbies signing up, and remaining active it's a different story. For example, a lot of the legendaries have more posts than merit per month. Therefore, that suggests you might have to be posting quite often to receive merit, not because merit sources consider that as a factor of distributing, but because there's more exposure to their posts.

Plus, the section matters. Technical discussion is always going to get more merit, as people generally learn a little more or have interesting discussions, and debates. Gambling discussion doesn't get nearly as much, which a lot of newbies tend to gravitate towards. The altcoin section in general has been boycotted by a lot of users, on its reputation alone.

Like I said, I understand the point being made, and I'd probably agree standards should be allowed to drop a little bit or at the very least, increasing the amount of merit given marginally to those that are good.

I also believe the merit system is doing its job, and I wouldn't want to see it not doing it, if you get what I mean. Plus, we've got threads dedicated to only lower ranks, for merit sources to merit them. So, I don't think this issue is being ignored completely.

No new member is a merit source, that can never happen. People like to send merit to who is sending them merit, almost all merit sources are legendary and they see the posts of old members on this forum more useful, obviously the reason old members send merits most to themselves.

Not all merits sources are cheerful giver like DdmrDdmr that stringently focus on boards like Bitcoin Discussion and Beginners and help that newbies mostly focus on. I always respect DdmrDdmr for that, he is a very good merit source that distribute the merit appropriately as he always sends to all ranks.

But about this merit issue, newbies should wake up, most merit they will receive will be from the merit sources, this is because most merits distributed by merit source will be sent back to them (the merit sources) because they are good posters and because people that are not merit sources like sending back to them. I may be wrong but this has been what I noticed.

It is not false that some merit sources are of high standard, some do not care about the newbies, that is not a lie, but newbies that are good posters still rankup even as they are not really sent merits. Bitcointalk still retain being good forum with quality posters to have the most merits. This can not make this to change. Merit system is not perfect but helps against spammers and poor posters. So nothing may change.

Show me Newbies with good posts and I'll Merit them!

There's a flaw in these statistics: Newbies with Merit don't stay Newbie for long.

Lowering some standards doesn't necessarily entail meriting bad posts; rather, it just means that you shouldn't evaluate new posts in the same manner as legendary ones. Various knowledge levels are present.


Yes, it hurts, and I believe this is one of the main reasons some established members have grown impatient at times. However, as you pointed out, this shouldn't prevent someone from meriting a newbie-worthy post; what happens to them after that is their problem, not ours. Ratimov found himself in a circumstance where a significant portion of the newcomers he ranked up were banned.

He's been inactive on this thread for some time now.
Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275032.0)


Tagging a newbies posts as merit fishing attempts is another problem  :D

The problem was most merit source don’t post much on Altcoin Discussion and Gambling Board, Most of them focus on Bitcoin Boards which is understandable because this is Bitcointalk forum. This merit distribution will be solved if there will be a merit source that will apply on each boards with there expertise to make sure that all boards will have new merits to be distribute.

What’s happening now was, You can’t get a enough merit if your field of expertise is not about Bitcoin technicalities or in Meta which most of the merits distributes.

Genuine and quality newbie members have no issues advancing through rank but problem is that that every year there are fewer of those. Hell, there is so much merit being thrown around that all you have to do is write semi-decent posts and you will earn merit at faster pace than you earn activity.  


Standard is already pretty low (especially after theymos promoted bunch of new merit sources year ago) and if some newbie still has issue ranking up it means that he is either a shitposter or he writes in boards with low amount of merits shared.


I don't know why you got impression that merit sources ignore Beginners & Help section when in fact its one of the boards with the highest merit/post ratio. You are right about Altcoin section though.


Apply for a merit source status so you can focus on Newbies. Or even better, focus on Newbies in Altcoin section. :D

The only issue with that is the Altcoin section has a bad reputation, and that's not unwarranted. Even today, where I think things are a little more under control, since 2017/2018 was absolutely crazy, the section is still full of poor quality discussion. I reckon if I sat down, and dedicated an hour a day to reporting there, I could report north of 100 posts. That's just under two a minute, which speaks volumes to the amount of discussion that's poor there.

However, there's genuinely good discussion to be had there too. However, a merit source would have to sift through the crap, to be able to get to the good. I guess, the titles of the threads can be an indicator of the crap, but not always.

I'm of the opinion that the Altcoin Discussion is a breeding zone for account farmers. We moderators need to spend a little more time cleaning that area up before good quality discussion gets exposed there. I've been planning to start reporting there for a while now.

Maybe the newbies that deserve it are rare nowadays. Imagine new people getting into the forum every day. Do they automatically "post" super real stuff that would be considered "meritable" by those who have a lot? I don't think so. There are rare cases for sure, but it's hard to distinguish those who are fishing for merits or genuine because of the "bias" look on the accounts.

I think being able to recognize newbies would be the easiest way to help them.

This thread reminds me that over time I learned the meaning of "cycling merits".

I am one of those who hardly gives merits to lower ranked members and I have sent and received many from higher ranked ones.

Mind you, when I was a lower ranked member I did receive many merits from higher ranked ones.

I simply believe that there are few newbies and lower ranked members that stand out but when there are they receive a lot of merits, look at the case of n0nce for example.

So, this does not worry me nor do I see it as a problem unless we start from the socialist assumption of trying to equalize everyone, which is precisely the opposite of what the merit system intends, which is to recognize those who deserve it the most.

They're a outlier, so it's not fair to compare them to the average user. I mean, even if they posted in the Altcoin section, at the same quality they'd get a decent amount of merits, albeit not as much as they have, but they would've been recognised for sure.  

However, the Altcoin section doesn't have that. Honestly, I think chopping up the section a little more, i.e having a technical discussion area for Altcoins, would really help the section. It would allow to sift through some of the junk, but also for those that are only interested in emerging technology, and technical discussions could just go there.

I'd like to see us moderators getting on top of the spam problem a little bit more, and better categorisation of the whole section.

How about trading discussion? I notice very low merit distribution on the board as well.

I have reported several posts on beginners and help that supposed to belong to altcoin board and were moved to altcoin board. Also we can consider beginners and help as bitcoin board, but many merit sources do not visit the board unless such posts are reported to be given merit.

You did not understand about history of merit system and what I meant.

In the past, very different context

• There are less merit sources than now and less total monthly smerit allocation for merit sources. Let's check.
  
  • Merit source observations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180975.0)
  • Currently, 33989 smerits allocate to 110 merit sources. That is much bigger than 11975 in March 2018 (3 months after the kick-off of merit system), according to merit sources page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources)
• Rule of supply, as you have more, you distribute more and lowering your standard.
• As @Welsh mentioned, there are context and conditions, if you don't include them in your analysis, results will be distorted and readers will misunderstand your message (or even you write it not correctly) not correct enough.
  
  • Example: assume total merit distribution from Legendary members to Newbies members increases 50% in August. Do you conclude that Legendary members suddenly have more love for newbies.
  • It might be or might be not. If total smerit for merit sources increase 50%, that can be a real reason, not increase of love at all.

Recognising a newbie as a way to help them! Is that to say users looks at the ranks before dishing out merits? I greatly doubt that.
Despite the experience one might have from being involved on other platforms or in the crypto space, forum wise, the rank you bear being newbie places you as that. The posts gets the merit and not the account. Although, the rank might lead to some compromise as to standard but even intelligent questions gets merits too.

Your right about that and I wonder why!

Of course yes. There have been these likes and somehow, they tend to acquire a whole lot and are only activity stricken to the next phase.

I think part of the problem is that these boards which tend to be the most visited by newbies are so full of shitposts and spam that it becomes cumbersome to find decent posts worth meriting.  I'm not a merit source, but I spend my sMerits like a drunken sailor, and I do actively try to give merits to users who need them.  I keep the B&H board on my watchlist, but again it is infrequent that I find a newbie posts worth meriting.

There are sections of the forum that I've noticed newbies getting a significant amount of merit.  In the technical related boards it appears we have a few merit sources and many higher rank member who earn a significant amount do share their sMerits with newbies on a regular basis.


Welsh makes a really good point here.  Rather than just counting the distribution of merits to Legendries vs. Newbies, a better metric might be to graph the number merits per post within the two subsets of members.  LoyceV also made a good point; newbies who earn merit don't stay newbies for long.  That might make it hard to really get a good picture of the situation.

One small but relevant thing to consider about the data displayed on the Merit Dashboard, is something I probably pointed out within the Dashboard’s thread, but that is likely buried within the posts: Rank represents the current rank (disregarding the exact rank at the time of achieving the Merits). This is basically because I don’t have a precise log for Rank changes with exact date/times for all accounts.

The above means that, as soon as somebody ranks-up a level, his account will drag the merit data to his new Rank. In the cases being deal with here, Legendary ranks may receive a newcomer or two per week (Hero-> Legendary), but Newbie accounts subject to ranking up a level should be greater in volume and speed. The shorter the timeframe chosen, the more accurate the data since there are less people ranking-up than in a wider timeframe.

Even so, for the sake of seeing the magnitude of the effect:

The Merit Dashboard shows an all-time historical (more prone to Rank distortion) aggregate of:
Legendary-> Legendary: 538.953 (58,05%)
Legendary->Newbie: 33.230 (3,58%)

From the 01/07/2022 until the 08/07/2022 (small Rank distortion):
L-> L: 3042 (56,68%)
L->N: 223 (4,16%)

Percentages are more or less in the same magnitude.


In any case, I regularly roam B&H where one would say that Newbies would likely try to engage, but my perception is that there are not that many that post there (they may prefer Alt boards), and even less that do so with something slightly eye-catching, even if if using a lowish bar.

One additional thing to ponder is that there is often a lot of repetition and kumbaya yada yada on B&H, as opposed to (apparent) genuine newbie questions for example. The first of the kind may catch one’s interest, but over time, it may get more difficult to merit things that have been expressed time and time again.

There are no rules that say Legendary ranks should send their merits to a certain rank, or what percentage of merits they should send to newbies. The only criterion for awarding merit should be a good and high-quality post, although each member of this forum has created his own criteria over time and quality is not something that is decisive in that decision.

Maybe the admin should have created the merit system in such a way that it prevented Legendary from getting merits from the same rank, or the max amount of merits should have been set to 1000, although that would have opened some other issues in the distribution of merits.

As for Altcoin boards, the forum long ago admitted defeat regarding spam and scams in that part of the forum, and I'm just one of many who don't want to participate in it, at least by rewarding newbies who hunt for bounty prizes there. I hope that we send the message so clearly, and some who understand it will be rewarded for it in other parts of the forum where they can actually learn something and become part of the community.

I don't think that double standards is the real solution for the lack of merits shared to Newbie members.


Real problem is that we have so many Newbies writing merit fishing posts and not the other way around. How would you characterize all those posts written by newbies giving advice to other members how to behave on forum or how happy they are that they found this forum? Real reason why we get so many of those is because standards were so low that those kind of posts used to get a lot merit and now people simply call them out which is a step in the right direction.

Yeah, well, that's the most extreme example but there are many who are not nearly as good and yet receive merit. In my case, I received merits when my rank was lower, as I said before:


And I don't even come close to n0nce's shoe.


Since theymos is an avowed ancap, I doubt that such an idea even crossed his mind.

So where are the merit applicants who applied to concentrate only on B & H? I wouldn't expect a person with no football expertise to distribute merits on the betting board.

Very good point. I agree with the idea of setting a merit cap for legendary members because these days it seems like everyone is competing to have the most merits. Let's ignore any potential issues and concentrate more on the advantages.

I initially had problems with this, which is why I limited the data collection to the year 2022 and onward. I knew there would be some random errors due to daily rank up, but the charts still contain an atom of truth. ;D

Not a bad idea but my focus would be more on gambling discussion board, that's where home is. >:(

Yeah minor changes as I expected. In a whole picture, things don't change much (minor ones) but in local pictures, there are. However, if a whole picture is good enough, the forum is fine.

Categorization sounds great to me! I've wanted to talk about some Monero aspects and privacy characteristics of other Altcoins, even though I'm not interested in them directly; just in learning about the technicalities to see what may make sense to get incorporated in (or built on top of) Bitcoin.
However, I know that even if I write a good post in there, on one hand the people who are able and willing to talk about these concepts don't frequent the board due to its spam / scam problem, and on the other hand it will quickly be pushed down to later pages by aforementioned spam.
Therefore, a technical Altcoin and Layer-2 board would be extremely helpful, where anything non-technical can just be reported and subsequently deleted or moved to the right board / subsection.

I guess it could also help anyone mainly interested in (legit) Altcoin discussion who wants to give helpful contributions (and thus obviously deserves merits), but so far has no real chance to have such discussion.

Then how about a board not in the Altcoin section, but in the Bitcoin section; something like 'Altcoin concepts', a place to discuss specific concepts / aspects of certain Altcoins that could be interesting for Bitcoin?
Whereas discussions about Altcoins themselves can stay in the Altcoin section?

I don't think the 'Altcoin section spammers' will be interested in visiting that section since there won't be any airdrops, any Altcoin announcements, bounties or giveaways (or whatever else they offer in that board that seems like quick, easy money at first and ends up as a scam).

Isn't that the point of the topic here? Because the Legendary to Newbies distribution is really low and it's only cycled with the Legendary ranks themselves? What do you doubt about that?

I didn't say anything about making it about rank. I said that it's hard to merit newbies because they don't know yet how to post "meritable posts" here.

What the f*ck do you mean? I didn't say anything related to merits being given because of the account. It's the quality of post. Then the post gets the merit and it goes to the account. There are some kind of bias when it comes to seeing posts with rank and lower rank.

This isn't about how users get merits, it's about the "Legendary To Newbies Distribution Concern & Problem!" As the title suggests.

Merit fishing is a phrase coined to wicked lower-ranked members. Since my newbie days till today, I am yet to understand why the so called merit fishing is a problem.

What is not acceptable in the forum is merit begging, but I don't know the place of merit fishing and importantly, why it is used mainly for lower-ranked members. I have seen countless times posts that are tracking the merit status of high and reputable members. EG, posts that tracks first to reach 10k merits. Tbh, those posts are merit fishing posts, even if they were not created by the people concerned. Such posts indirectly biase the minds of merits senders (sources), either to increase the rate of meriting a particular account to enable him reach a merit goal or reduce the rate of meriting another in order to slow his rate of reaching a certain set merit target.

When I was in high score my lecturers said I beg for score while writing exams and that is why I was always the best. I do not practically ask them to score me high marks, but my points and method of presenting them begs for marks on my behalf. Why didn't my lecturers fail me and tag my answers as score fishing?

Well, if there is anything like merit fishing and should dwell in this context, I would say that everyone in the forum fishes for merit, the difference is while higher ranked members fish in the high sea, the lower-ranked members fish in a shallow water and that is why they are always seen and accused.

If a user sees a post that he doesn't like, it's better to skip rather than accusing the op of merit fishing. This act has denied many newbies their first merit and more.

I'm yet to understand the 'divine powers' with which some users use to categorize a post that is merit fishing, sometimes it looks to be more of what is not of their own taste, what i mean is, when they like a post, it is a good one, when they don't, then it becomes merit fishing, as far as i am concerned a user can never know the intent as to why a post is made by someone else, thus when a post is called out for merit fishing it is just their own personal speculation which should not be taken seriously at all. I'd rather ignore a thread i do not care about, that call it out for merit fishing when i am not sure of myself.

There is no concern, to be honest. Merit deserve on the post, doesn't matter the poster rank. Spreading merits better than hoarding. Newbies have to struggle to familiarize themselves with the forum. It's not possible to come to the forum and earn merits. As a merit source, I always like to send merit low ranks members. But sometimes post forced me to merit high-rank users. I am very soft when sending merits to low ranks users. Because merit is more important than a user who really needs it. High ranks don't need much merit unless there are campaign requirements. But newbies or low ranks users must need at least a good post, not spam at all to earn merits.

Ranked accounts meriting themselves is a trend in which, any involved forum user is sure to notice if he or she is observant enough. This could result from the fact that, ranked users are more versatile with the forum, makes more posts per day and are more knowledgeable on the subjects to the discussion than most newbies or beginners. We have some really good beginners too and am sure you won't find those complaining except for the multitude that just comes to the forum with there stiff ideas and aren't open to learning new things. Another thing is, merits often finds its way back to the meriter and with newbies not earning more merits and consequentlynot  having smerits to send often, they unfortunately fall short on the trend.

Be that as it may, there is really no point hodling smerits as though they were bitcoins that would be valuable in the nearest future. The smerits have got nothing to add to your account nor take from you so, its best you give it out whenever and wherever you find a merit deserving post. Making sure your not abusing it just because, you wish to boost newbies. It would be sad to have a ranked up user that acts and comments like a newbie. No, that won't be good, we need users to rep the ranks they bare!

Instead of hodling smerits, learn to hodl them precious bitcoin/sats!!!

Honestly, I merit based on content and when reading a thread, often don't even look at the usernames / profile pictures to the left.

When I check from time to time (e.g. in my merit page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit)), I do notice that I give a lot of merits to Legendary and Hero accounts. Unfortunately, that means that those users simply write good posts that match my personal criteria for distributing my sMerits.
Which are amongst others, how interesting, helpful and thoughtful the post is.

Sometimes I send someone merit and afterward notice it's a new user, which leaves me positively surprised, other times I read really trash posts (both in writing and content); I check and see a Hero or Legendary account. Both exist, to be honest. I wouldn't give the latter user merit, no matter the rank.

Okay I got 1000 airdropped and earned over 3500.
I don’t ever need another merit yet I like getting them whenever I do.
In fact sometimes I make a very good post and will guess if that post will earn more than 10 merits.

So am I merit fishing technically yes as I am efforting to write a quality post to a thread.
But I don’t earn from my signature and simply don’t need the merits.

Newbies generally need merits. They are not fishing for sport like I am doing with this post.
I have given hundreds of merits to newbies. I also have tried giving rank up points to jr members and full members and senior members.

It can be a bummer to follow a newbie that posts well and then they get caught for cheating earning a ban.
I have been following majestic-milf

liked the name he or she has been a good poster I hope they continue to do well.

I am now debating to delete this or post it.
I write over 100 posts a month that I never post.

I am going to post it.

I am also going to check on majestic-milf posts.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3454941

so m-m was new on march 9 2022

earned 60 merits and posted 140 times.

now a member

got many merits in first month as a newbie and now none of those merits count as legendary to newbie

much like loyce mentions.

So the real way is not legendary to newbie but legendary to member or at legendary to 120 day or less fourm member.

Oh, hell no.  There's no way I'm going to lower my standards, because if every merit source did that and just started handing out merits for mediocre or even shitposts, the merit system wouldn't function as it should.  It's not supposed to be easy to earn merits.  Never was, and that's the way it should be.  By making members work harder to rank up, forum post quality has gone up significantly (IMO) since 2018, and account farming has been decimated.

This is far from a life-or-death issue, so I don't see why merit sources (or anyone else) ought to lower their standards.  It isn't as if there's been a massive outcry from the community about the merit system being an impossible barrier to ranking up.  If you don't up your rank on a discussion forum....it ain't a big deal, really.

I've got both of those sections on ignore, and I'm not apologizing for that.  I don't have time for all the B&H bullshit, and though altcoins interest me, the few threads I've created to ask for information have fallen flat.  That's likely because bounty hunters and assorted shitposters don't have any incentive to give thoughtful responses--and so my threads kept getting buried under a mountain of threads like "ETH or BTC???".  Fuck that. 

Besides, the altcoin sections are the main hangout for bounty hunters, who are the least deserving of merits, hands down.  Again, I don't hear a lot of complaints about a lack of merit distribution in the altcoin boards, so let 'em rank up when they rank up.  It may take years, but they'll probably have moved on to other money-making schemes by then anyway.

I can say with a degree of certainty that if we have a 100 newbies sign up on the forum, 99 are bounty hunters recycled accounts. That one genuine user who understands how to game the system eventually ends up as a "Newbie in the spotlight" in the forum. But dont let my thought cloud your optimism because some of these "low quality" posters eventually become worthy of their rank and that will lead to merits being awarded to their posts.

There is also a lot of problem in the viewership of posts. Often good posts get buried in the flood of shitposts.

A highly merited post will get merited even more reducing the number of merit received by other well written or well though out posts. Such problems I believe are a design flaw of the system and cannot be corrected or mitigated at this stage.

This changed the whole thing. I would like to see the comparison for account older to 120 days vs Legendary. Hopefully we will not see much difference and there will be no concern too.

I never looked at your post number. It just got my attention, 39396 is a crazy number 🙄

I think now is too late for such a change, I was just thinking in the direction in which the merit system should have been designed before it came into use. While it is obvious that there is no point in freezing the current merits of all Legendary, but it is possible to prevent them from exchanging merits with each other - although I personally do not believe that any changes to the merit system are possible. If that were to happen, you and I would become very unpopular members of the forum because we broke the merit cycling club ;)

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"Altcoins that could be interesting for Bitcoin"? Do you think that something like that makes sense at all, given that the vast majority of altcoins have no purpose and that they generally do more harm than good for the entire cryptosystem? If the Terra/Luna fiasco hasn't taught us anything, then we're really in big trouble.

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The man with the most ignore boards on the forum - if you only got 1 satoshi every time you wrote that, you'd be a rich man :D

Lol, I didn't think I mentioned it that often but apparently since you noticed it, I'll probably not write about it again.

Don't most members here have a lot of sections on ignore?  Maybe I browse the forum differently, but I've been doing it the same way since I registered--my main page for browsing threads is "Show unread posts since last visit" link.  If I didn't have 98% of the forum on ignore, I'd be seeing threads in many different languages and all sorts of stuff I don't want to see.  As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think I've gone full retard.  How do the rest of you browse the forum without ignoring a bunch of sections?

I think you're spot-on about that, because I've noticed some of those spotlight newbies who make a splash very quickly after they become members of the forum.  You can tell they put in a good deal of thought into what they're posting, and generally they know how to write. 

Most newbies who post in the main English-language sections clearly don't have a good grasp of grammar, spelling, sentence construction, and all of that's on top of the fact that their posts are devoid of anything interesting and usually are very short.  That's kind of a dead giveaway that they're just here to earn money.

I do not have any section on ignore, well that could be because i browse the forum normally/different from how you do, i do not use the "show unread posts since last visit" option, i just browse from the forum main home page, thus any section i do not like i just do not open it nor go there, while the sections i visit regularly are the ones i go to immediately i am active on the forum. So technically i "ignore" boards i do not like by simply not going there bro.

It was not malicious, but just an observation given that you often mention it :)


This way of browsing explains why you have to make such a strict selection of boards that interest you, although I remember that you admitted several times that because of that you missed some important or interesting topics. I'm not inclined to browse forums like that, I simply visit various boards, although I don't write anything in some because I don't think I can contribute to the discussion.

I think that the majority have similar criteria on how they browse the forum, but that the criteria of those who are merit sources are still the most important - because they are the ones who have the most sMerits and have the most influence on the distribution of merits.

Nope, I don't have any section on ignore at the moment, even those that I never visit. I did try it in the past but I felt like something was missing, even though I didn't check those boards before ignoring.


If that's the way you browse the forum, it definitely makes sense to ignore as much boards as possible.


For start, I don't use "Show unread posts since last visit" option at all and instead I just browse the forum for interesting topic in boards I usually visit. That's pretty much the way I browse all other forums so when I  joined bitcointalk I just continued doing the same.

OP, I don't have any specific standards on how I should spend merit on posts that I deem worthy. I don't spend it only on Legendary or high rank users, but newbie and low rank users also deserve it especially if their posts are quality. I'm not going to ignore newbie but I honestly don't have a particular habit of digging more newbie  across the various board.

As a user who has experienced what it's like to be a novice after the merit system was introduced, I also feel that users have to lower quality standards to submit merits. But actually it depends on who does it regardless of the rank of the recipient. The bottom line is post quality, but actually you might have a hard time finding newbie who really deserve help as most of them are not newbie but alt from high ranking members ^{[they are merit conscious from the start]} and that's the problem.

Not sure if the merits system was intended to be held or difficult to earn; if you judge a new member and a veteran member equally, something is wrong. It was created by the community and for the community to use. Lowering the bar does not always mean meriting shitposters.

Don't play yourself! Everyone wants to climb the ranks while also making a positive contribution to the community.

I was indirectly referring to you there! You ignore almost everything on the forum, so I wasn't expecting an apology; it's a personal choice!

There is always one good poster in every spammer community; don't burn the community down because of a few bad eggs; try and SORT!! I would SORT if I become a merit source!

That's my favorite option on the forum. >:(

You are pretty old and experienced in the forum. No doubt you have experience on how different newbies behave and I have no doubt that in your capacity, you have many newbies rank up.
But on the issue of being skeptical of handing merits to newbies who might eventually get banned. I don't think it should very disappointing in as much as you merited the right and quality posts. Beside, we vote some politicians into power and in the end they don't perform, that should make us not to vote subsequently, rather we will be careful of who to vote.


Your standards are not so high or unattainable for a genuine newbie who wishes to grow. You have handed good amounts of merits to me, especially when I was in lower ranks. So, I can boldly attest to that.
My concern is knowing that you have B&H board on ignore. It doesn't only deprive the newbies merits, it also denies them some advice from an established user like you. Though other persons are there helping, who knows you could make the needed difference.

It's your personal decision and if it's cool with you, no problems. But visiting the B&H and maybe other boards you ignored occasionally (probably on your birthday) would be a good one.

I do think so, yes. Exactly because of that; exactly because of the fact that most altcoins have no purpose, it would be nice to have a section for people to talk about actually interesting or novel 'altcoin concepts'. Not concepts like 'how can we make the 1000th coin that makes us rich quick', obviously.

This is what would set it apart from the existing Altcoin board(s), make it more interesting for some of BitcoinTalk's technical / development people and allow talented cryptocurrency enthusiasts who e.g. love smart contracts or topics like this to have civilized, constructive discussion that everyone can learn from.
I'm sure these people exist, and are annoyed too about being drowned in scamcoin ads and scamtoken fraud schemes.

---

In my humble opinion, it's somehow to be expected that in a Bitcoin Forum, topics that aren't directly about Bitcoin are 'less recognized', in a way. Simiarly as how I wouldn't expect a lot of reaction and / or a lot of recognition if posting about sports on a computer forum or vice-versa.

The existing system is quite flexible, but in the end only the user will determine how he can get out of his comfort zone about writing quality. There are thousands of users who only make posts to fulfill the campaign's weekly quota, they don't care about quality but really care about rankings and merit. This is the weirdest thing I've ever experienced as a bounty hunter and I honestly can't get as much merit as I see on users like you due to the very obvious difference in post quality.

Actually I also want to be like them who can post something quality, constructive and informative, but that's something I'm still having a hard time doing so far. I try, but sometimes I have to ignore some opinions of people who think it's something bad. Hopefully one day I can be like you who managed to get merit and rank up to a higher rank to reach Legendary.

Well, lets talk about gambling discussion first. I'm not going to merit a guy just because they posted that some club just signed a player, or they predicted the outcome of a game, or anything quoted from a news article. Anybody can do those things, and we have a responsibility to regulate the ranks pipeline so that we suddenly do not have Legendaries and Heros running around with garbage posts wearing signatures from the highest bidder.

If we let that happen, then Bitcointalk campaigns will have a lower standard, and less projects will use that advertisement mode in the future.

Sure, one can argue that there are already a swarm of legendaries making garbage posts in gambling discussion, and there is nothing much that we can do about that. But we have to prevent even more of this type of poster from cropping.

Otherwise, what will happen is that bounty (yes bounty) campaigns will be full of these type of people, and the projects that they are advertising will suffer because they are all congregating in gambling, and altcoin discussion with all the other bounty participants, and the advertisements will be wasted as nobody is going to wade through 5 pages of posts on megathreads (the high-quality and low-quality ones alike). So without this advertising, the campaigns will stop, and the bounty campaign industry will basically implode, with websites taking their advertising elsewhere.

Maybe they'll even degrade Bitcointalk to a low-quality forum as cryptotalk. I don't think anybody desires this outcome.

Above does not apply to signature campaigns as managers already do a fine job of screening applicant's posting quality first.

One can argue that Bitcoin Discussion & Economics, maybe even Service Announcements, could use some more merits than what's already being distributed, and I would agree with that.

Now as for Altcoins, it's hard to merit a board that you don't even browse, and this is the case for most merit sources here including myself. I'd say there are several posts inside that are worthy of merit that simply haven't been read by a merit source yet (owing to being in Altcoins board). So this area is a work in progress for merit-sources. Of course, its not possible to find every single merit-worthy post, owing to the sheer volume of this board, but it's a board we could improve on.

I once noticed a very strange pattern regarding newbies getting merit from legendary.

To be honest, many of them are very cunning. At one time, I saw Ratimov very actively encouraging newbies. I don't know how he found them in large numbers, but later most of these newbies either went to bounties or were banned and, as philipma1957 noted, received a negative tag for something.


And it's not the giver's fault. It is easy to observe, as newbies did. In what cases can merit be obtained? They started creating hundreds of new topics with the same content, slightly changing the essence. And they were hardly different people. This is how the farms developed, until Ratimov paid attention to this, and became less kind to newbies. :)

It is likely that many people have such a judgment that once you easily give motivation for development, you only encourage people to try less and cheat more.

yeah 10 years in august 2022 means 10 x 365 = 3650 days.

I deleted about 1200 old posts here and there.
I had about 1000 posts deleted by mods or self modded threads. so my true total is likely 42000 posts divide by 3650 and I think I average 12 posts a day.

was more back in the 2012-2018 time frame. maybe 15 a day.
and say from 2018-2022 maybe 9 a day.

That's a crazy number considering that you have not taken any break at all. You must have few weeks busy with something else and did not find time to post.

I used to post a lot few years back. I remember once in a week I had around 147 posts LOL
Then slowly I got busy in real life and I was even not regular for few months. From last few weeks I am feeling that I am back. Yesterday I made almost 15 posts. I am averaging 8 to 9 posts per day now.

Merit was introduced in 2018 and considering the number of posts you make, the average per merit for x number of posts is still low although you have over 4.5k Merits. Some members like n0nce are way to relented.

You've been here since 2017, so you've got to remember what it was like before the merit system, right?  I mean I was so frustrated by all the idiotic nonsense being posted that I started handing out negative trust to chronic shitposters when I got on DT2, because that was the only tool available to combat them.  There were people farming accounts like crazy in order to enroll them in bounties, because all it took was time and activity.  That crap even continued for a few months at least after the merit system started, because I caught a whole bunch of alts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3363270.msg35226256#msg35226256) (or a bounty farm) in April 2018.  And I'd seen similar stuff like that many times prior to me creating that thread.

So yeah, it's supposed to be hard to earn merits and rank up.  I've said that a million times since 2018, and I'm sticking to it.

I guess I can only speak for myself, but I've been a member of other discussion forums in the past, and I was never the least bit concerned about what my rank was.  I suspect that the reason it's extremely important on bitcointalk is because the higher your rank, the more signature space you have available to rent out--and I think a lot of people would agree with that.  There's an obsession with earning merits that goes way past any rational desire to contribute positively to the community, and that leads me to believe that my suspicions are correct. 

And why do people buy high-ranking accounts?  Is that because they want to contribute to bitcointalk?  Didn't think so.

It seems like I just browse the forum in a different way.  If others visit certain sections they like instead of always checking unread posts, I'm guessing they're not visiting every section on the forum.  My way seems more efficient; I know the sections I like to browse, so I just ignore all the others and simply check in on all the new posts made in all of those sections I haven't ignored. 

I bet if you checked which sections I've given merits in, it'd be pretty broad.  I'm not sure how to look for that data, else I would have posted it here.  Most of my sent merits have probably been in Meta, Reputation, and Economics, but I do post history reviews for members on request, and so I often travel outside my ignore zone to hand out merits.  Keep that in mind whilst you're judging me, eh?

You'd sort what?  And why would you only do it if you were a merit source?  As far as burning things down, when it comes to sections like Bitcoin Discussion that's the only thing I can do, because that's where the shitposters live.  B&H I'm not so sure about as I haven't visited it in a while, but remember: I'm just one merit source out of many.  I've got my preferences just like any other source, and in my defense I do take my "job" seriously and have handed out a lot of merits since I became a source.

I can understand the angle OP is coming from, he might be right in his assumptions, but not totally right if the matter be looked at technically, I will draw my opinion from what Welsh said.
High ranking members, like the legendary members make far more posts than newbies, and as such, are more exposed to receiving merits, legendaries already know the right boards to post on, they also know the right post that fits a board and are much more constructive when making a post, to plainly put it, if it's about receiving merits, legendary members already know all the rudiments to making a merit worthy posts, this is what newbies don't know and must learn, it is true that many legendary member today were shit posters when they were newbies, but also do not forget that many of this legendary members already were legends or Close to being legends before the merit system was introduced, this, I believe is the advantage those who signed up earlier on the forum have over those who are signing up now.
The conclusion is that newbies should start watching the legendaries and learn from them, watch posts patterns and learn from it, I too was a shit poster, but when I became interested in ranking up, I began watching post patterns of those that earned alot of Merit, I started learning from them, each time a make a post, I tried to follow same pattern, and since then, my posts started getting noticed by meriters.

The learning method only depends on ourselves and how we are able to make useful, quality and constructive posts. Everything requires a process, but when they want to follow the process then sooner or later they will also be able to achieve it. The point is, no one will stay at the same rank "except Legendary" if the posters are quality. It's not about long posts, but it could also be about short but really useful posts.

Your method is also good, but I think beginners can still have other ways to make their posts constructive, namely by reading references while posting.

Go to https://loyce.club/active/7d.html, and check the 10 most active Newbies. Then come back and explain how evil Legendary members are for not Meriting them.

Sounds more like Hellyal to me. I had to work hard to earn my merits, and you will have to do the same. What happens to the phrase "parents should never make their children go through what they went through"? Because the Legendary members serve as mentors to the Newbies.

We had fewer merit sources back then. We now have more than 100 and still counting.

As of time of writing you've sent out 14k+ smerits since 2018,
4082 to Economic
3270 to Meta
63 to B&H ( not surprise)
61 to Offtopic
295 to Altcoin discussion.
Others.

Because I would have enough smerits to distribute at my own pace, Do you have any idea how it feels to see a good post and not have any merits to drop on it

Though this is Senate House/House Lords. Please forgive me for my comment here. My mind is disturbing me so I have to say it to have peace of mind.
In any country, State, Firm, Organization, Institution etc. Distribution or allocation of resources is the main issue/problem. And this is one of the main thing that causes crisis in the Society or the above mentioned. Look at what is happening here. Because of this distribution issue, the lower class (the poor) is always (24/7) having problems with the upper class and the middle class (the rich).  I believe the highest rank in the forum is the Legendary rank. Therefore, since you are legendary member you are not going to any other rank again. So you are to encourage the up coming ones to rank up. Then another question again, if a legendary member is not a merit sources where will he get merits to give to the newbies so with that they have to merit themselves to merit the newbies.

Distribution of resources in any community is a problem

It's as surprising as it is informative to read this message about #Merit.

Looks like for one to advance to another level of membership, he /she needs to have some merits. And merit comes from quality posts. After reading many replies that follows this topic, I am bothered by one thing which I want to ask now. If I make a post, how do I know that what I am about to post is going to be considered as high quality or who does the quality check?

If there is actually a criteria for measuring quality of posts before posting them, I will like some of my senior colleagues on the platform to kindly assist me with even one of the criteria. I will really appreciate.

The #Merit topic is very interesting. When I was brand-new member, I scalled through other members and discovered they were either Jnr or Snr members, while others were Members and Legendary, some Hero, I felt like I was really brandnew and intimidated by such two stars, three and four to five stars members. You know what? I comforted myself! I thought that when I start posting and as my days on the platform increases, I will be a Jnr member one day. Never knew my post has to be quality to attract merit and that merit too could influence my rank, or possibly not.

Till now, I am a Newbie with 22 posts and just 1 merit.

Please how do I know that I am making a quality post because I need to start posting high quality posts, get merits and leave Newbie zone.

You can start by posting and joining discussions outside of the Bounties section. No one is reading those. ;)

I find it fascinating that you have been a member of this forum for more than a year, but you claim that you dont understand how the rank system works? Do you find it hard to read or search the forum?
For God's sake, why don't you at least read the sticky threads at the top of this board?

Forum ranks/positions/badges (What do those shiny coins under my name mean?) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0)

n0nce that you mentioned is exceptional. In school there are students like that who are also referred to as gifted students but that does not make others who are not gifted like them dull. It is only that everybody will never have the same capacity to understand and interpret things at the same speed. Also you said you received alot of merits from higher ranks when you were lower rank but that you hardly give to lower ranked now that your are higher. Should that not be what you have to look into and change by being more compassionate to lower ranked members?

The purpose of making high quality posts isn't solely to get merits, or for you to "leave newbie" like you said, Bitcointalk is a forum for Bitcoin discussion and other whatnots too, so we basically discuss the aforementioned here, so as you discuss with other users and contribute to discussions in places other than the bounty section, users will give you merits if or when they like your contribution. But your contribution shouldn't be because you want merits, it should be because you want to discuss about Bitcoin with others, thus you go in search for knowledge that is required and it becomes a win-win for you in learning, contributing to the forum, and receiving the appreciation for it in the form of merits.

There are no criteria; merit is awarded based on one's judgment; aside from positively contributing, shitty posts may receive merit simply because they were extremely funny. Just choose the board with which you feel more at ease and have fun! Merit will follow.

Not everyone came to this forum to learn; some were introduced by a bounty hunter friend, so their knowledge of the forum is limited; and others only discovered the merit system a year or two.

I disagree somewhat. newbie status has many restrictions and if you actually are posting good stuff the restrictions are somewhat tiring to deal with.

Purchase a copper membership is not a solution for some third world people.

merits and leaving via good posts is the only way for some poor people.

I am not against this, and i do not think you understood my post. My idea is that the sole aim should not be about merits and signature campaign, at least at the beginning of a user's journey in Bitcointalk, the thing is this, if a user concentrates on merits, they might get too desperate/frustrated if it doesn't come as quickly as they have envisaged, and this could cause them to make some mistakes like plagiarism that might get them banned. But if a user genuinely enjoys posting in Bitcointalk and discussing Bitcoin and other whatnots/issues, they will easily garner knowledge, earn merits, eventually rank up and join a signature campaign in the end, and when on the signature campaign, they will not struggle to make as many constructive posts as the campaign (and its manager) requires.

I just check list and it still justify the statement Fivestar4everMVP said about high ranking members like legendary making more post than Newbie, because according to the 7days statistics given above, we are meant to understand the following...
Over 11,000 post was made by 2285 Newbie users in the past 7days
Whereas,
Over 7494 post was made by 375 Legendary users in the past 7days

Which if we are to calculate the number of post each users per rank made in 7days will be seen as given below

That is,
No of post each Newbie made in 7days = total No of post / Total No of users

No of post each Newbie made in 7days = 11000/2285= 4.8 post per user

While,

No of post each Legendary made in 7days = total No of post / Total No of users

No of post each Legendary made in 7days = 7494/375= 19.98 post per user


So with this little calculation from the data given above, it still shows that legendary users makes more post than Newbie, but moreover a merit was supposed to be given to any quality post irrespective of your rank on the forum

Why do you think you need to do that? You don't need to do anything; you can do that, if you wish.
You could also just read the forum without posting much; this is something that newcomers could and should do more, in my opinion. Sure, without posting, the rank won't budge, but who cares about a forum rank?

In the end it boils down to what your motivation is. In my above statement, I assumed a crypto newcomer that wants to educate themselves. This may be a totally wrong assumption.
But in general, I wouldn't say that anyone 'needs to [...] get merits and leave Newbie zone'.

Actually, I remember not being able to post pictures was a bit of an annoyance indeed. But you need just a single merit and 30 activity points to become Jr Member and remove that limit, so I don't think it's really an issue.

Maybe an Altcoin subboard where only users who earned 100+ Merit can post will work? That should stop the large majority of the spammers if airdropped Merit doesn't count.

I guess that could work, yes. Such limitations are technically possible, such as in Ivory Tower (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=251.0) (Full Members and above).

On the other hand, this thread is actually about newbies who are interested into Altcoins being unable to get merits.. ;D
Since I've got no idea about the Altcoin section, it would be interesting to know how hard it is to get 100 merit in there (from someone with actually good contributions of course - not a whining altcoin bounty spammer) to then 'unlock' the more serious / harder to get into Altcoin sub-board.

It could be argued that 100 merit can be achieved rather quickly in the Bitcoin section, and Bitcoin knowledge is kind of required for advanced concepts that go one or two steps further, anyway. So in practice, users would be required to meaningfully contribute to mostly Bitcoin discussion (I found well-formed questions to have almost as much potential for receiving merits as educational threads and replies, by the way) for a couple weeks first to get access to that board.

No, it will not work because it will not be implemented  ;)

How many times have we had such discussion threads opened where members gives valuable feedbacks but these things remain virtual as the forum is not modified with these changes.

Being a beginner is the most difficult thing because it has certain limitations. even for completely new beginners the distance between posts should not be less than 360 seconds. I still remember when I was about to reply to a discussion quickly but it turned out to have to wait 360 seconds. However, this limit decreases as activity and merit increases. or every rank up then some restrictions are removed.

so I understand how important merit is for beginners to rank up in order to remove the restrictions. like newbies who can't post pictures it will be very difficult when they newbies want to make posts accompanied by pictures.

when I was a newbie, I also had the same thought, namely why high rankers send more merit to high levels too. But after now I've gone up in rank. I'm starting to understand the reason why more and more merits are sent to the top ranks like legendary. The reason I found was that the writings of the legendarys were of higher quality and sometimes I couldn't stop myself from sending merits.
when sending merit to the top rank, it must be based on the quality of his writing which deserves to be given merit.

the reason would be different when giving merit to beginners. sometimes I give to beginners with the excuse of helping and appreciating their efforts just to be more motivated and motivated to make even better posts. because I also feel when someone sends me merit, it feels like there is an urge to be better and like I get new energy or a booster spirit.

It's good that you brought that up - I've almost forgot about that.
Now that I remember it, I can say that while I've rarely encountered that, when it did, it helped / reminded me to really think and read what I'm posting before I post it. I feel that's a very important thing to keep in mind if your aim is writing meaningful posts.

Personally, if I just agree with something, I write nothing and maybe give a merit. If I have a little correction or such, but nothing that really matters or changes a statement, I don't bother replying in like a one-sentence post. If I agree / disagree with a post, but someone already wrote basically what I was about to say, I also write nothing and maybe merit the post.

In general, I believe this 360 second limit can help newbies avoid starting 'megathreads' from normal threads, repeat something that's already been said and write other mostly useless posts that just add clutter to a topic.

As I've said above, images was the restriction I 'felt' the most, but it was still not more than a minor annoyance. If it's really important, higher ranked members also sometimes simply quote the post.

That would be a nice initiative, not only on the altcoin board but also on the bitcoin discussion board. I've been trying to get the stats of the most active users on that board, I also have the impression that most of the active accounts there were airdrop merits and haven't earned one since. They use that board as a safety net to gain Activity

But what happens to the genuine newbies who sign up to share their ideas on that forum? Who doesn't care about the merit system

True beginners will be recognized by the effort they put into sharing ideas and trying to gain knowledge. They will have no trouble getting merits or even rankings as I'm sure some of them currently have higher merit than activity.

Even though they didn't directly state that they cared about the merit system, in reality they were users who cared. I would say they don't care about the merit system if the newbie just join for the money and the activity is just for the bounty. We can get to know him more closely, so that in fact beginners who want to gain knowledge and contribute to the forum by sharing ideas are those who care about all systems in this forum, including the merit system.

The question would be: what about newbies that do put in such effort, but are simply more interested in advanced cryptocurrency aspects, maybe especially in the realm of smart contracts and this sort of stuff. They might be easily overlooked since most long-time visitors of the forum just ignore the Altcoin section due to the sheer amount of spam to sift through.

Even if they don't care about merits at all, they will have a hard time finding people to talk to when it comes to these technical subjects, because Altcoin spammers have no clue (nor interest) about those topics and technical Bitcoin people stay in the much better moderated Bitcoin sections.

Both of you cut out the point of my comments, My response was directed to LoyceV, who suggested what sounded like post jail for newbies on the altcoin discussion board, in which I provided some challenges such development would cost honest newbies.

Your concerns may be true about the situation on the Alternate cryptocurrencies board regarding the merit system, but actually I don't think the board is completely ignored by merit sources or other merit users. At least 101,174 merit have been distributed on the Alternate cryptocurrencies board since the merit system was introduced, and average 521 merit were distributed during January - June 2022 (not including July). The average sender was 122 users from January to June, and the average recipient was 167 users. The total of merit distributed on the Alternate cryptocurrency board from January to date is 3372 merit (including this month). Check here: https://public.tableau.com/shared/K38WY9Z2Y?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

About this I agree.

Sorry about that, mate. While LoyceV has not responded to you. ;D

OP might want to check out this thread I made last year. It fits this discussion nicely. Here Is One Reason Why Legendary Members Get So Many Merits. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5357032.0) 

As a merit source, I distribute my source merits as I read the threads that interest me. I would love if there were more users from lower ranks that participate in the discussions, but it's not my fault they aren't. If there are no newbies to merit, I am not going to merit newbies. Open any serious thread and it's not uncommon to see 10 posts and 7/8 are from legendary members, 1 is a hero, etc. Join the discussions to reap the benefits and create something of value. Then you will get merited. I even ran a merit giveaway thread for a long time and got very few responses there. Eventually, it died. Quality newbies will reach higher ranks easily, those who stay newbies do so for a reason.     

To be fair, this is a Bitcoin forum as the name suggests. And on a Bitcoin forum, you discuss Bitcoin. Everything else is of less importance and that includes the altcoin section. That doesn't mean that there are no quality posts there as well, but the majority don't care much about them. I am not going to merit you for your ability to fix cars because that's off topic to me. The topic of discussion is in the name of the forum.

(quotes shortened)
The suggestion was for a new board, not to impose the "earned Merit rule" on the existing altcoin boards. So genuine newbies will unfortunately not be allowed to postt here, but they can still post in the currently existing boards.
It's not ideal for them, but it's not ideal now either. At least this would give some users a board to discuss altcoins without so many useless posts.

Think of it more as Serious Discussion/Ivory Tower, but with earned Merit requirements instead of a certain (grandfathered) Rank.

Which definitely happens. It's much harder to strike up a decent conversation in the Altcoin section, than it is in somewhere like Development & Technical Discussion on the main Bitcoin section. This is because of two reasons; the altcoin section is somewhat boycotted, even though interesting discussion does happen, and in fact would benefit users Bitcoin knowledge, and be more aware of some of the issues Bitcoin might have, and what users are trying to implement to make alternatives better, which might in the future mean that Bitcoin implements something similar. This is a rare occurrence definitely, but I think it's because of the lack of involvement from most users.

Then, there's the second issue where generally speaking; the altcoin section attracts more lower quality users. That's not to say that all of them are though. That's something the moderation team needs to sort out, since most of the Altcoin section isn't getting reports, probably due to the first reason. It's boycotted. I'm hoping to get into the deep of this problem. However, at the moment we're kind of catching up on older posts made in 2017/2018. Most reports in the announcement section as an example, are from this period. I'd say 90% of reports made in those sections are on old reports.

I can't speak for other moderators, but once I feel like I'm getting a grasp on the announcement section, I'll be moving onto the other sections like Altcoin Discussion, which I've tested recently, and can report a ton of reports in a very short amount of time. So, that section is a behemoth of a task, but I'm sure we'll eventually be able to get on top of it.

I don't even want to look at the statistics of how many posts have been removed in the announcement sections, I can imagine it's well over 100k. I've easily removed hundreds of pages of spam this year alone, and I know mprep is very actively managing the section too, as well as some patrollers, and other global moderators.

Call me mad, but I genuinely believe we're starting to make an impact on that section, and given enough time I can't see why we can't get on top of the rest of the sub sections. I'm willing to put a ton of effort in to reclaiming the altcoin section, however I'm not sure that the reputation it has will ever be forgotten, and it would continue to be boycotted regardless of how clean we get it.

I gave 69 on that board Jan to July. Mostly because I mine BTC and Eth,LTC,Doge

I have to work hard to merit that board as there are huge amounts or poor content posts.

But since I do believe that alt pow coins are necessary for crypto I support the board.

You must be joking, 69 is not a real number but it is something  :D  because based on history, you have submitted 134 merit on the Alternate cryptocurrencies board especially on the altcoin mining board from Jan to July.

https://i.imgur.com/5L2GniJ.png


One of the reasons why altcoin board are ignored by many merit source is that it is difficult to find good posters and understand something that is true. I think you've made that clear, but I hope the posters there don't lose you as a user distributing some merit.