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Sad to say this, but given the fact that Theymos kept silent when I requested more sMerits I'm no longer going to be doing post history reviews on request.  I have a number of members who've been PMing me from months back, and those are the only folks I'm going to continue reviewing posts for.  So if you're not getting a bunch of merits from me in the near future, you didn't make the cut (through no fault of your own).

I've simply had too many requests and too few sMerits.  I seriously considered quitting the merit source position as a FUCK YOU to Theymos, but that would just be an emotional reaction which ultimately wouldn't help the forum.  But I'd still like to state it, and I think I just did.

I'll leave this thread open for a few hours if anyone wants to comment, but I'm not going to be answering questions about whether individual members are going to still have their posts reviewed, because as of right now I have to go back and check all my PMs.

My opinion is that maybe you approach it too emotionally and in the wrong way when it comes to being a good merit source. I have always thought that rewarding posts with merits should be done in a more natural way, and that is through normal browsing of the forum and spontaneous rewarding of posts that deserve it.

I don't know how you review someone's post history, but sometimes even a seemingly good post in the context of the entire topic in which it is located may not deserve merit because it may just be a repetition of something that xx members wrote before. I'm not a merit source, so I don't have a problem with such things - but I try to reward posts that, according to my criteria, are useful and of high quality.

Of course, everyone has their own criteria and I respect everyone who tries to contribute to the forum, especially if that contribution is not financially motivated.

I see you are doing everything to get the attention of the main man but he is doing well to ignoring everything that are coming from you LOL

Calm down brother. You do not need to take all responsibility on your shoulder. You can just close the merit thread and update the status. People will start realizing it's closed and will not PM you. I don't receive many emails requesting for post review. I am sure a lot of others too don't receive PMs.

I'm calm as a mizzafizzin' cucumber.  But I'll tell ya, you wouldn't believe how many new requests I get even after that other thread in Meta has been locked for a while.  Members keep saying they came across it and are requesting reviews which I'm just unable to keep up with, and it's frustrating.

When I was doing it by just meriting posts that I came across, I'd always wind up with a surplus of sMerits.  There are members here whose posts are being overlooked simply because of what section they're posted in or for whatever reason, and my goal was to try to help them out in the ranking up process.  When I can dump all of my sMerits each month I feel like I'm doing a much better job as a merit source, and I know I've helped at least a few members to rank up because of my offer.

You have to understand how important I think the merit system is; that's why I probably seem emotional, likely angry.  And yes I'm just a wee bit pissed off that Theymos just keeps ignoring my requests for more sMerits--and that's in addition to his general silence about what he thinks of the state of the system, e.g., whether we need more merit sources and so forth. 

I don't think my request was an unreasonable one, and if it was it'd be nice if I'd at least gotten a response one way or another.  I'm sure Theymos is hard at work developing the new obsolete forum software, but I know damn well he reads threads like the ones I've made, so that's the reason for my FU to him.  I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

So, I have a question. Is it personal preference, strongly agree with a statement, like the user, super good post, or some other reason that decides how many merits you give a person when you merit them? I try to give 1-2 merits to users when I merit them. The only time I normally give more than that is if I see someone close to a new rank. As a merit source, wouldn't you be able to stretch things a bit further by limiting the number you give to users?

I'm sorry to see you give up on this, TP (or, at least feel like giving up on this).

Other than using Loyce's thread once (which I slightly regret), you were the only merit source that had an initiative that I took advantage of. Your merit dumps were very motivating to me (especially when I was just starting out), and at least some of the forum improvement stuff that I occasionally spend/spent my time on (SMF patches, etc.) was due to feeling motivated/appreciated after one of your post history reviews. It even occurred to me (naive, I know) that theymos might be predisposed to granting me a favor after I send him the 2FA patch, and that I would ask him to give in on your name change request. :D

With that all said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if you have to become a little more selective in your merit giving. I hate to say it, but once in a while I do run into an objectively bad post that you've merited perhaps a bit too eagerly (just being honest; it doesn't happen often and I'll dig up an example if you like).

Anyway, thanks for the hard work you've put into being such a diligent merit source, I'm sure there are more than a few members (like me) that really appreciate your efforts! :)

P.S. I can't afford to be as generous as Mitchell, but I've left you a present, all the same.

I could not find the thread, I guess my type of guys are too ignorant to find archives. Consider to update the thread title, update the OP of the thread too. Some people will still try to take their chance but in that case just ignore the PMs. You may feel you are being rude but sometimes it helps to ignore unwanted stress.

I am very sorry to hear this news from you. The Pharmacist, I've known you for a long time with generosity as a merit source and I think you should be able to keep it up even if you only do what you can. I can't see any other problem other than that you lack merit to share among those who sent you PMs, but you should be able to limit it based on the number of merit you have without having to make it a moral burden.

But for whatever reason, I support your decision in the end. You can still continue your volunteer work as merit source and distributing it to those with quality posts even though you won't receive any more review requests. Finally, I will always remember that I am someone you have helped, so thank you for that, The Pharmacist.

It's sad to see you in this condition as I am also one of those who was at one time helped by you yo reach my next closet rank with your merit shower but I would say not too feel stressed about it and simply tell members that you will be sharing the smerits to limited number of post depending on the amount you have.

I don't know how many post history request you would be getting after that thread although you have the policy back also but it was not known to mass and every member want to have merits so I can feel the pressure you would be having to cope with them without even having more smerit dump and also remember you are among most generous merit sources but still you are doing great.

If you are looking to find out the thread that he started making clear his rules for the post history for merits then it's here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410264.msg60770668#msg60770668) and after some time it was locked by him.He started the thread to tell memeber they can PM him for post history review but you see how the situation have gone bad because he is out of smerits now.

What if there is a child board which is only accessible by merit sources so where one who ran out of merits they can post the user profile for other merit sources to review them. Because I remember many merit sources said they never able to exhaust their source merits so if there is communication system between the people who are being merit source can bring a permanent solution to this.

hi The Pharmacist, you have done the best you can,, but if you don't really have the sMerit to share with people who ask for it then it's not your fault, you are one of the best members in this forum, don't feel frustrated with pressure given by merit requesters, if they are aware of what struggles you are experiencing then they will definitely not pressure you. I do think you should "ignore" all those who ask you for Merit their post.

Well they should give sources more smerits when they ask for it, no harm in that. If a source misuses their smerits it would become known and they can either remove them or give them less.
And if they are not giving you more maybe it's because they don't like the way you merit people, I'm not them, so can't say for sure which is it.

Thanks to bring it for me.
The thread of course looks like that he is still offering the review (Current title: Rules for my post history review offer to the community). None of these merit hunter read anything else than read the OP and go for it. Changing the title of the thread will do the work 99%.

Would you mind signing an old bitcoin address please. An address posted before August 2018 will help.

Please don't do it, you really have to hold back and control your emotions. Now you have every right to vent your anger because theymos don't give you more merit kouta every month but I think you are really suffering these days with a lot of PM. I think you can still review as usual but you should probably stop when your merit bank is used up. You just have to enjoy it and keep at it because you are a really good contributor to this task.

The Pharmacist, I am not advising you on this but take it as a support for what you have been doing for the community so far. Hopefully after this theymos really hear you.

I think that's theymos' intention. Empty the source, but that's your limit.
Considering the number of posts dropped 90% compared to what it was 4 years ago, and the amount of Merit distributed didn't drop (or maybe even went up a bit), the Merit-to-Post-ratio increased a lot already.

I considered duplicated The Pharmacist's sent Merit, but it doesn't feel right to do it without reading the posts (and context), and I don't have the time for that.

I sent you 50 merit, so you can give out 25 sMerit to deserving forum members, either via your original initiative or otherwise.

Fellow forum @The Pharmacist just wanted to share something for you:
Keep committed to doing your best for the good of this community. With many or few merits to give away, whatever your contribution is greatly appreciated (at least for me it is)!
I even understand (to a certain extent) your feelings, it's frustrating to want to give merits and not succeed. But he continued to believe that regardless of how you decide to give your merits, they will be given in the right way!
Each one gives what merits he can and how he can, and more should not be demanded. And I don't think they should demand that from you!

So keep going buddy. Better days will come.  ;)



Thank you @The Pharmacist, always!

It was very generous of you to do what you did and wanted to (by the sounds of it) continue doing to read through posts and give merits. If I recall correctly your request for extra merits was made a long time ago, I am sorry you did not receive them. Look at it this way, on the plus side if you have more time on your hands it will give you an opportunity to do something else either in and around the forum or away from here.

I once had an interesting discussion with a member regarding the early implementation of the merit system and how him being an early merit source had an impact on his activity here. The feedback was quite sincere - being an early merit source means that he/she would feel the "burden" of the "responsibility" of making the best distribution of the new system. The first days/weeks of any new system being implemented are always critical to its success, and this would also be true for the merit system since the merit sources would be the "barometer" that would show the community which kind of posts are worthy to receive merit and thus promote more similar posts/threads in that nature. The first merit sources didn't had an easy task - they had to make a good distribution of merits, remain neutral, spend it all and distribute as widely and as wisely as that they could even if that meant browsing hundreds of posts only to find only 1 post being worthy of 1 or 2 merits (yeah it was that bad at the time).

The same merit source also told me - and I think that this is relevant for you TP - that his/her job became easier when merit sources were gradually added as time moved on since he felt that he wasn't alone in this "job". I totally understand your struggle of wanting to promote good posts/threads that you feel that get lost within the numerous posts/threads that are generated here daily but I also don't want you to think that you're alone in this - you've got users like fillippone[1], ratimov[2], LoyceV[3] (and many more) that also go beyond their duties and actively promote our user base to send them posts that are indeed worthy (or at least that they think they are) so that they can also distribute their smerits. You also have merit sources that promote merit giveaways to our community by teaching them something of value in the process[4][5] (as an example), which is another great example of cross work.

All of this to say that I totally understand what you're feeling TP - there isn't a worst feeling in the world that having the desire to do something only to be blocked by something that you can't possibly overcome - but don't forget that you're not alone in the "merit squad" - I'm sure that while you're unable to send smerits, there are a lot of merit sources that are working in parallel making the rightful distribution of them.

Quite honestly I think that the community would lose a great member of the "merit squid" if you decided to leave but at the same time I think that it isn't a healthy feeling what you're feeling at the moment so I just hope that you end up choosing whatever decision you're most comfortable with.

Better days will surely come TP.

PS: While there isn't a full list of who is a merit source - rightfully so - I would say that there is a high probability that a good chunk of users are found in this list[6]...

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[1]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5412657 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5412657)
[2]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275032.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275032.0)
[3]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0)
[4]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.0)
[5]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300698.0)
[6]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsendat (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsendat)

Another one bites the dust...

There were many users who were doing this back in the early days of the merit system, if I remember few of them were QuestionAuthority, BTCforJoe and TMAN. They used to organize small challenges or you ask them to review your post history and in reward you will get merits for the good posts.

During those times 2018-2019 such "post history review offers” were very great and helped many including me too to achieve early ranks until Sr. Member. However keeping the current stats in mind you will notice number of posts have declined significantly but merits have increased or at least stable round ~ 5000 merits weekly, based on Bitcointalk Merit Dashboard (https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ddmrddmr/viz/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/GlobalSummary). That means on average there's a high chance you will not be able to find a merit-able post unmerited.

Maybe that's the reason theymos don't want to create merit "inflation", there aren't enough posts anymore.

But still I feel for you, I know reviewing someone’s posts takes time and you are dedicating your time for bitcointalk.

I understand why you're so emotional right now, but I'm not sure it will sway theymos enough to agree to your request. I agree about one positive you might get once you decide to stop reviewing posts, you'll probably have plenty of time to do something more useful for the forum while still being a merit source.

Your request is reasonable and I completely support your wish, but you still can't force theymos to accept your request until now, maybe things will change later. The Pharmacist, you can still contribute as a merit source and stay that way even if you take a break from reviewing many post.

I understand his feelings. It's quite upsetting that he couldn't get a simple yes or no answer from theymos at least for the effort he's put in for many years on the forum, and it hurts to see that theymos favor only a few members on the forum. Even some new members who joined this year are receiving PMs from theymos, whereas he is experiencing total blackout.

https://i.imgur.com/zfj3dMC.png

someone who has distributed over 15k merits since last year This is enormous. If he enjoys what he does, why not give him a few extras as long as he doesn't abuse or trade them?

I appreciate your candor, and I'm sure I've merited posts that others wouldn't think twice about skipping over.  The whole point of my offer was to help members who are at least putting some effort into their posts, even if they're not the most informative, insightful, or well-written.  And believe me, I've had to tell quite a few people that their entire post history wasn't up to my standards.

Thanks to those who've dropped some merits on me, but please don't; even with what I've received since starting this thread and giving away all of the sMerits I had about a half hour ago, there are still roughly 14 members in line for reviews--and that's on top of all the members who'll still need reviews in their next 30-day cycle (which I can't even promise I'll get to).

I will do my best from here on out to distribute merits to the people who've regularly been PMing me, and hopefully I've still got their PMs.  If you've been requesting reviews for at least 3 months and are due for a review, please message me just in case.  To the rest, I apologize sincerely for an offer that I'm unable to fulfill--and I mean that.  I feel terrible that members who PMed me last month still haven't had a review because I simply don't have enough sMerits.

Give your thoughts to Theymos, because at this point it's out of my hands.  

I know I can't force him to do anything, especially by expressing my anger toward him--but since he's not doing a damn thing about this either way, what do I have to lose?  Is he going to ban me?  Probably not.  Is he going to fire me from my merit source position?  Dunno.  That would be silly, especially since I didn't ask to be one in the first place and am just trying to do a good job.

Sure, that's an option, but I've actually increased the number of merits I hand out for good posts since I think I got a response to this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093301) a long time ago.  I don't have a policy as to how many merits I give out for posts of varying degrees of quality; in general I look for thought, effort, and content, and secondarily grammar and other factors.  I know a shitpost when I see it, and I also know what a post looks like from someone who doesn't know English very well but is at least trying to make a point.

Ideally I try to give members the full 50 merits per 30 days, and in a lot of cases that's totally doable, sometimes not.  The problem is in how many requests I've been getting as of late.  It's just too much to keep up with, and it isn't fair to those I've extended the offer to, keeping them waiting weeks, months, perhaps infinity before I review their post history.

I understand that it may seem like you are not keeping a promise! But think about it: you are doing what you promised, within your capabilities. And that should not be criticized or devalued!


Now maybe I ask a broader question: Why are so many people asking for merits? ???
In the places where they post, aren't there other members with merits who recognize the work of these users?

I ask these questions, because I never asked anyone for merits, even sometimes I felt that I deserved them but I didn't have that opportunity.
Therefore, I think that those who ask should also be available to receive a no, either for not meeting the proposed criteria, or for lack of sMerit.


@The Pharmacist
Allow me a suggestion, which may lighten this weight on your conscience a little:
Why don't you create a monthly ceiling for the sMerit you have, publicly informing that you have this specific ceiling (you don't need to say how many) and then make the distribution you think is appropriate.
And if you receive more requests, for what you have to give, a simple reply informing you that the plafon has ended and for them to try again, may help to minimize the situation. I think everyone should understand this.

Let me give you a little thought because it seems like you never really intended to stop your contribution to the community especially when it comes to reviewing posts.

You have to have a really convenient way to do that without any problems and you probably don't need to spend 50 merit per month per user who making a request when you're not really getting the posts deserve. You can reduce the number of merit per user to eg 20-30 merit per review period so that you can reach more users in the same period. But all that is your right, so you are free to do whatever. Just a few thoughts from me.

Now I really hope theymos listen to your complaints and consider your request, meanwhile some other people can support you with merit too.

It's perfectly fine if you can't give people more merit than you usually do. The ones you've done previously have made many people to rank up and feel grateful for their contributions to the forum. You've done your best and we applaud your efforts in this forum, but we still hope your request is considered and more Smerit is given to you to help low rank users in the forum who have also contributed fruitfully. Thank you for everything you've done. Gracias The Pharmacist.

There is no way you can satisfy everybody no matter how good or bad they are in this forum but the most important thing is to do everything within your professional knowledge to make people believe that you are doing the right thing which is part of those things that made people to elected you to be in this position. I guess, you will not break that trust people have for you by quitting from this position by people demands. 

I have been following this topic diagonally for a few days and today I can't help answer you.
Forget the tag "Staff" under my nickname, this is just my personal opinion and not an "official" answer. I warn you it's just a reaction to this topic, I don't want it become a personal drama between you and me. Because yes, I might be a bit harsh. I'm not going to give Theymos my thoughts, but give you mine (for what it's worth).

What you don't say (or maybe don't know) is that you are already one of the biggest MS. So you are already very privileged.
I take Theymos' silence like this : learn to deal with what you have, I don't want to go brrrrrrrr.

When I see that you give merits by packs of 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, etc... give them rather by packs of 5, 3, 1. If finally you have some merits left, you can go back on the merits you gave like DdmrDdmr does. And everyone will be happy.


Excuse me, but this is the stupidest thing I've read about merits.
50 merits per month to each user will make him/her go up faster in merits than in activity. What would be the point ? What was the merit system created for ?

Exceptional members will never have a merit problem (merits > activity).
Good users will become legendary without much problem (merit = activity).
Less good users may have some problems, but there are ways to get the attention of MS (I think of this kind of topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093271.0) or even this one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5405705.msg61413420#msg61413420)).
That leave shitposters, trolls and bounty hunters, but they get what they deserve.

And as we say : the important thing is not the destination, it's the journey.
Climbing the ranks of Bitcointalk is a long and bumpy journey. But the satisfaction of finally becoming legendary will be greater.

Imagine if Tolkien had written the Lord of the Rings this way :
Frodo: So I have to take this ring to a volcano in Mordor ?
Gandalf : Yes.
Frodo : Pfff it's far and dangerous. Can't you use your magic powers to teleport me ?
Gandalf : OK....
THE END.

Exciting ?


And to finish on a lighter note:

So far, I'm not wrong yet. We will see in July.:).

It is looking like what will eventually happen as theymos has not responded to him till date and this is very discouraging for a MS who is dedicated to seeing less ranked members cone up in rank.


Activities is never a problem because he only awards such huge merit to users who already have more than enough activities to their next rank but lack merit. It is not for every user he does that for.

I don't wanna quote anyone on this, though I've read alot of annoying, self-centered stuffs...

CHYMIST, you're just cute the way you are...btw, I understand how frustrating it is to tender a request only to get snubbed, for a couple of times that you'd easily manipulate -- that's if you had the Techs --. It's really painful (ain't gonna lie) that you're only gonna limit these for some reasons we all understand, it appalling.!! But you seeee, erhhh.... Sometimes, things are not just allowed to workout the way you'd seem to have it(maybe, getting usual obstructions from some powerful people, which is the case here) ... I'm not here to question Theymos for not seeing in the same spectacles as you did, but I'm not also citing his actions (most especially when he's not even saying a dime)... I just want you to keep it together; if someone would quote me previously, I never wanted this whole thing for myself alone, it was for everyone else and that's a priority to me... It's the fact that I felt maybe MS were some kinda logical when it comes to distribution so I had to awaken a lost thread, that's somewhat compatible, I guess it had a different impact anyways but that's not the point here. I respect your decisions as I don't think Theymos would wanna consider an incessant (as he'd have it) request fr.

@Halab, I mean no disrespect but that statement you wrote; that giving 50 merits in 30 days to a user is the stupidest ?? That's quite unruly. I wasn't expecting that you'd fuel up the whole situation like that.... How you expect CHYMIST to feel?? Yeah, that's unfair.
I'd get even more pissed if it were directed on me.

Sandra 🧑

Biggest in terms of what, sMerits allocated per month?  I'm not sure what you mean by that, but currently I'm #13 on the most generous merit senders of all time (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsendat) (and no, I don't consider that list to be a competition).  That certainly could be due to the fact that I wasn't one of the original merit sources or that I started offering post history reviews very late in the game, but I have no way of knowing how my monthly allocation measures up to any other merit source.  If you're saying it's one of the highest then that's constructive feedback and something I wasn't aware of.

"Privileged".  BRB, going to scream into my pillow for a minute.

Sorry you feel that way, but there are a lot of members who are making decent posts but aren't getting any merits for any number of reasons unrelated to post quality.  And in response to your argument about activity and merits, there are a number of people who've sent me PMs that have >1000 activity but lack sufficient merits to rank up.  In any case, it seems like the ranking-up process has slowed down to turtle speed, and I don't think dropping 50 merits on a single member per 30 days is in any way stupid.  But hey, we can agree to disagree.

I do appreciate criticism no matter how harsh, as I'm trying to get a sense of what the community thinks (and having a staff member weigh in is great).

Don't you worry about a thing, my dear.  I had skin as thick as a rhino before I joined the forum, and at this point it's so thick that almost nothing hits my nerve endings.  Halab is entitled to his opinion and I want that kind of honesty in a situation like this; sometimes more is gained from getting blasted than smooched from the backside.

Check your PM.
(If a Merit source wants to know how much his allocation is per month, I can give him this info)

I don't have the divine knowledge, I can say bullshit too :).


Do the maths :


and 50 merits / month.

What will reach 1000 first ? Merit or activity ?


Edit : OK, I was talking about recently created accounts, they will be restricted by the activity. For older accounts, this is less true.

Did I just get my name change granted???  I almost jizzed my knickers!  Thank you, Theymos!!

Halab set me straight via PM about where I stand in terms of my sMerit allocation, so I understand why my request was denied/ignored.  Well, I don't know why it was ignored but I get why no increase is forthcoming.  Therefore, I'm still halting requests via PM but will continue to review post histories from members I've been doing them for for at least 3 months--and I'll try my best to get to more recent requests, but I'm making no promises.

Again I apologize to those who PMed me and aren't going to have their posts reviewed or will have to wait for a long, long time before I get to them.  After reading what Halab sent me, I realize that it's not a problem with Theymos but with the scope of my offer, which is now obviously too much for one merit source to handle.  I feel icky all over, and I hope there are no hard feelings.

I'm rescinding my FU toward Theymos (and not because he granted the name change, lol).  I had incomplete information and probably too much hubris for my own good.  I'm going to leave this thread open for maybe another hour or so and then it'll be locked up for good and for all.

It gladdens me to see that you got part of what you want, I just want to say Congratulations for the change of name my Man. At least, the change of name came quicker than expected as I expected Biq Daddy T ( Theymos ) to respond to my request as a Christmas gift.

And also, to the the user who almost spoiled your show, he/ her should try harder next time lol. Fvck whoever did that Shiiiiiitt!
You have been a great advocate from time, a good writer which I lurk around to learn vocabularies from lol. I'm just pleased you got this one after all of your plights.
You've been a great help to so many users ranking up, not just to Nigerians even to those I don't know, I'll halt me writing here.
Congratulations The Sceptical Chymist xx  ;D

Thank You Biq Daddy T ( Theymos )

Edit: Chymist for abbreviation  :D

Any abbreviation or initial for your new name? writing your full name is too annoying I think. It wastes seconds :P

It is a happy ending for you in this thread before you lock it. Congratulations on becoming The Sceptical Chymist (may The Pharmacist rest in peace). What happened to the original The Sceptical Chymist who took the name when you announced you wanted a name-change and posted to make his own announcement?

Well done for your perseverance in this matter, you got there in the end even though it looked like it was not going to happen  :)

Feel free to review either (or both) my entire post history and my trust feedback posts.

Good, bad and indifferent.  Warts and all.

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What indeed ??

BPIP has already updated the name too.

TSC or Chymist or whatever if you have to use my brand-new username (whoop whoop!).  I agree it's long, but I'm still glad my request was granted.

I was wondering the same thing, too.  But unless Theymos drops the knowledge on us, I guess we're going to have to speculate or just forget about it.  Me?  It troubles me not one bit what happened.

All that said, I'm locking this bitch up.  Thanks to everyone for their input.

I'm bumping this thread because I've been getting PMs from people who don't meet this qualification:


I am not taking any new requests for post history reviews and until further notice I'm only doing reviews for members who've been consistently PMing me--specifically for the last 3 months (since September).  Any member who doesn't fit into that category and sends me a PM is just going to have it deleted without reply.

Currently I'm waiting for my sMerit allocation to refill before I start doing more reviews.  I've got roughly 50, and once I get my normal monthly allocation I'll start up where I left off.  I'll leave this thread open for a while in case anyone has questions and so that people have time to see this.

You seeee... Its appalling -- how some new users had significantly taken advantage of the monthly review..

I know for sure that this man, Chymist won't even dare to look into a dumb profile twice -- talk more of meriting a post outta some petty sentiments, pity or as a mistake -- I could vouch for him. Sometimes, I'll just have to take a quick trip around those profiles and truly, they deserve merits -- so is that supposed to mean that the system is running on a scale of imbalance? Or maybe they ain't enough sources? Or no one cares?
When I got registered in here, I could remember how hard it was to get my first merit; all thanks to some eccentric dudes like Fillipone and CHYMIST who've stood firm to swirl the stress (for some newbies) of "posting in mega boards like dev&tech just to get merited " and as a result, they'll plagiarize and will have no choice but to face some witty juries...
My whole point is that; looks like this is a designed formula just to curb some incessant circulation ( maybe to some shitty accounts?)? If yes, then that's crazily programmed yunno... Or maybe it'll be more of "Theymos not giving an increase on the source merits" ?? Who knows what's on TSC's mind ??

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

Nobody is taking advantage of me, but it's tiresome having to PM people when they haven't read what I've written in this thread and the other one where I laid out the rules--but I fully understand that things I've written could have been missed.  But man, with offers like the one I've made you wouldn't believe how many god-awful posters just try their luck to see if they can score some merits.  Obviously those folks don't know me very well.

To the bolded part above: no, Theymos has made it clear that he's not planning on increasing any merit source's monthly allocation of sMerits, so that's not something I'm going to continue pressing him on.  If the community isn't making a big stink out of the ranking up process, then it's a good bet that it's running smoothly enough.  Maybe not perfectly smooth, but the system is doing its job--and yes, it's to inhibit shitposters from ranking up, which they'd be hard at work trying to do if it weren't for the big, bad merit barrier.

Also: I'm not giving out merits anymore in this thread, so I'm not incentivizing people to post here.  Just looking for honest feedback and for members who might be thinking of PMing me to see it.

Gave you all I was allowed 49.

Relax your mind take a deep breath.


A) Appreciate your new name I do.
B) Remind me in a month I will give you 50 more points.
C) I appreciate the work you do on the forum. I am pretty much just a guy in New Jersey typing on a keyboard, but I do read your post and look at your work.

Thanks so much--I really appreciate the gesture, but you don't have to give me merits that I didn't earn because of what I posted.  I'll put the sMerits to good use, though.

B-b-b-but that'll mean standing up and walking away from my crappy PC!

One love, homey.  Thanks for the props, pops.

I feel like the town drunk next to your expertise, and I don't know what work it is you're referring to that I'm doing.  I'm still subscribed to your Youtube channel, though I don't log into anything Googly anymore for sanity reasons.  And hey, I'm a New Englander and you're close enough.  We can be rude and obnoxious to each other, and if I ever travel down the pike to wherever it is your crib is located, I'll drive like a complete asshole.  Not like a Masshole, mind you.  Those drivers are worse than New Yorkers (or at least a close tie).  Nothing personal, DaveF.

There are many members who will ignore the rules and just rush into things like this when you open up the merit applications through post history reviews.I could imagine how many requests you would be getting after you made that thread because in past you have personally said to many to PM you for post history review but now the scenario has changed so it would be tiring.But above them all you have to go through all those posts to see merit worthy ones.But you can still continue the previous way you were allocating smerits to the post you like without going through these methods.Those who didn't have any merits find these as opportunity to try their luck and see if they can get 2-3 merits and take part in signature campaigns as they have such criteria but forgot you get for your contributions not just shitposts.

No need to mention that those smerits are going to help some deserving memeber on the forum to reach his next goal/rank and you undoubtedly you have earned them by keeping the merit distribution on forum.What you will get as earned merits will go on to help someone else.

Both Dave and I have connections to Long Island.

I spent my first 29 years on the Queens side of the border of Brooklyn and Queens

OK, people need to start paying attention to my most recent posts in this thread, because I've already had to ghost several members who either hadn't read my updates or missed this thread being bumped altogether (though for some odd reason I find that hard to believe).

Here's an example of a PM I got just a few minutes ago.  I'm not calling this guy out specifically or naming names, but this is what makes me want to pluck my hair out:

Note: Sir, sir, sir.

I had already complained about an update when I posted this 10 days ago, so I know it was mentioned twice:


The bolded, enlarged-fonted, blood red-colored part above is never ever going to be repeated.  Tell all your friends.  

And thus we come to the entirety of merits I'd sent to the member who sent the PM:

https://i.imgur.com/SHipUyL.png

Not only does that not meet the requirement never to be spoken of again, but the one review I did for him didn't even result in a lot of merits being given, so that ought to tell you and me that most of his posts are generic crap (which they are).  Now that I've tightened up my quality requirements because of all the requests....if you figure out who this member is, don't post like him.

Anyone who cares about any of this have any questions?  I'll be happy to answer.

@ OP,you are a kind hearted man,and I understand how you feel for not being able to continue with your good work in meriting the reviews that are in your PM due to insufficient smerit. Don't feel bad or paranoid, everybody knows the good work that you are doing in the forum to help people get to their next rank.

Like you said that Theymos is working on a software presently,I guess he might still grant you your request on more smerit,but it might not be too soon. Theymos is a man that takes time to come into conclusion with decisions or request of forum members,remember how long that you have asked him to change your name,which he just did recently, maybe he is still contemplating on your request. Don't be discouraged from doing your good work and helping people in the forum.

Most forum members know how you have helped many of us to our next rank and will never forget your good deeds and zeal to see people grow in the forum. You helped me to my present rank and I will not forget that kindness of yours.

Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it.  It's OK that I don't have more sMerits.  It was pointed out to me that I'm not getting any more or less than any other merit source, and I certainly don't expect special treatment.  Should Theymos decide that there wasn't enough merit circulating, I'd hope that he'd either increase the allocation to every merit source or just add new ones.  There are plenty of members who'd jump at the chance to be one.

Now then.  Because of the holidays I've been incredibly lazy with regards to reviewing post histories, but I'm planning on resuming my efforts today, or tomorrow at the latest.

At first I could hardly believe that you had stopped reviewing Post history for members who had sent PMs, But here you have explained everything *END* Post history review offer (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5426440.msg61406071#msg61406071) so clearly.

All decisions you have made I believe have been through careful consideration and we hope you are still reviewing everyone who consistently PMs you, I was a terrible poster in the past and the quality of my posts is completely undirected and far from quality. However, when I listen to you regularly review the posts of low ranking users, it motivates me to consistently improve the quality of the posts, so that thanks to hard work I rose from Full Member to Sr. members.

This all happened because you were willing to review my post twice, and I think until now many people hoped that you would continue to do so, because it's hard to move up in rankings if users don't have technical expertise.



The lines and words in red, I hope in the future will change to ?


And finally you are the final owner of the decisions that have been taken, even though we try to influence and force you to continue, but if you have made a decision, we cannot do much. One more Skeptical Chymist, I am very foreign with your new name because for me the old name is quite special to remember !!!

I know how you dislike people addressing you that way as sir. The person who sent you that mail does not know your personality or maybe he feels that your change of name can also affect your principle and decided to try his luck with it.

Because the last time you got a review was in October, of course you are still in the category presented in the post above. This means you can still PM him and ask him to do a review, but I totally understand why The Skeptical Chymist doesn't want to accept new requests at this time. After all, he did this for free to the bitcointalk community, and I can only agree that no one has the right to force him. Give him a time, and actually anyone can rank up and earn merit even if The Skeptical Chymist doesn't review their posts.

You know, here's one of the reasons: Lack of post quality as expected.

Yeah, and he noticed I posted his PM even though I didn't identify him, and it wasn't my intention to humiliate him--it's just aggravating, because although I would normally responded to the PM with the info in this thread, there have been way too many cases like his and it just isn't feasible to do so.  I hated to make that decision not to respond directly, but I don't have much of a choice.

That's not how I'm saying this works.  If a member has requested reviews from me in September, October, and November then I will continue to accept reminders on a monthly basis.  Lizarder had posts merited by me in September and October, but I don't know if he sent me a PM in November or December or if I was already severely backed up at that point and something got lost in the chaos.  I'd have to go back and look at my PMs--but in any case, for him he's close enough to having fulfilled my criteria so assuming there's still a PM in my inbox I'll get to him eventually.

Ugh.  I meant to start reviewing posts today, but time kind of slipped away from me.  Tomorrow, I swear!

It can be said that everyone who has benefited from the results of the review conducted by The Skeptical Chymist will continue to improve the quality of their posts, because most people think they will continue to get the opportunity to be reviewed again, even though sometimes the quality drops slightly or is not included in the desired category, and I also don't know if I fall into the category that will be reviewed again.

That's right...!!!!
Nothing can force him to continue reviewing the user who sent him a PM. But in my opinion, what he did was enough to help many people to increase Rank.

Like what I said before

Actually, I regularly sent PMs to you, starting in September and October but both have been reviewed, whereas in December I sent PMs again but not implicitly asking for a review, but congratulating you on changing your new name to (The Skeptical Chymist). As someone who has provided assistance to me, it is only fitting that I send these congratulations.

Although not implicitly asking for a review in December, because in the end all decisions are yours and that means we have to respect whatever decision you have made.

I believe you (and still haven't checked my PMs since I posted earlier today, and as far as you go I made it clear I'll continue to do monthly reviews if you keep PMing me.

And speaking of reviews, I'm off to un-ignore a whole bunch of sections and pick up wherever the hell it was that I left off when I took the longer-than-expected break from doing them.  I've presently got over 500 source sMerits, so that should be plenty for a while.

Edit:

After reviewing another member's posts, I went back and saw that you had indeed sent me a PM this month--I must have been doing all the requests after yours (doh!!!).  I sincerely apologize for that.  Doing your review now.

I can you some next month.

I am at 1000 plus merits. I am looking to get numbers lower.

No, don't worry about it--but I appreciate the offer.  I'd prefer to earn my merits because of my posting and not as a means to redistribute sMerits among sources.

And wouldn't you know I just got a PM from a member who specifically said they were following this thread but apparently missed the big red, large-font qualifications for continuing to get reviews from me, because they hadn't been getting reviews from me since September and yet asked if I would do one for them. 

That member's PMs are now blocked, by the way.  I hope anyone who reads this post will keep that in mind when contemplating sending me a message asking for a review yet not meeting the criteria I laid out.

I think it’s the whole lots of PMs that actually made you forgot some. Now where I seem confused is, Is there a chance for members that PMed in the month of November to get a post reviewed after been skipped or does that simply tells the member he didn’t meets the new requirements for review.

Is this on behalf of yourself who has contacted the OP requesting a review?
If yes, then you will get the answer later because the OP has his own decision in seeing and reading every incoming message.

Don't worry that the OP is always willing to give benefits to every post that is worthy.
You can read for yourself the OP's answer to one of the offers that came above your post.

Maybe he is currently resting, especially since it is still in the atmosphere of the New Year holidays.

I think you understand what I mean and I also don't want to interfere further because more or less we already understand how the OP takes a stand.

It was the OP's decision, so I also did the same PM to TSC in August but but I didn't show the post that he wanted to review for that reason why my message was ignored or my post was not appropriate then of course I respect the OP's decision because he himself decide who knows better.

So don't be confused even if you get sMerit from TSC then it's worth it if not then it has to be upgraded again, (this is just my opinion)

That's right, OP never gets tired of giving sMerit to those who deserve it, even today there were 3 people getting sMerit, so if it hasn't, maybe there's no proper order.

But back again all the decisions of the OP are entitled to it.

If you've looked at Zaguru12's merit stats before, you can see that the OP gave him a decent amount of merit in November. I don't think Zaguru12 wrote about himself. But at the same time, when I accidentally stumbled upon this thread, I realized that the OP is literally being abused here, as his goodwill for giving merit seems to be turning into a requirement to rate every post he was given a link to.
Do you understand the concept of "modesty," PM writers? Why not play fair and earn merit in front of everyone?

I don't know if there's a language barrier issue going on with this or what, but I thought I made it crystal clear what my plans are.

As to your question, if you've only started PMing me in November, then you are not eligible for a review until further notice.  You have to have been requesting reviews every month since September.  In case you missed it, I said it the last time here:


And this is that last PM I mentioned, which had me slapping my head:


"Pardon my ignorance for still requesting a review".  Amazing.  Guys, I'm not kidding.  I might be generous with merits and some of you might think I'm a swell guy, but I don't suffer fools gladly.  And if you take a look at some of my posts from 2017 and earlier, you'll see that I'm actually a complete bastard.  I've mellowed out at bit, but it doesn't take much to awaken the beast if you know what I mean.

Good day sir,I wrote to you on the month of September for a review of my posts,which you did and merited them,the next day,you wrote to me that my post are not quality enough for your merits,I have posted some quality post which I wanted to PM you and it writes that you have blocked me from sending message to you. That's is why am posting here to let you know if you can review my new posts or grant access for application,since my first review was on September.

Thank you Sir

OP...!!!
It doesn't look like this will help those of you and I who have been blocked by The Skeptical Chymist, despite requesting a review in this thread, as he has already explained the criteria for people falling into that category who have a chance for review.


Meaning if we send messages sequentially in September, October and November then we fall into that category, but in December he no longer receives messages for review history and in this post he has explained. At this time we have to get used to earning Merit independently, by increasing the quality of posts, because I'm sure there will be others who are also willing to help.

As long as the red text below has not been edited and there have been no new notifications, the possibility for review is very small.


From now on we must also get used to respecting his privacy.

I don't think he is OP  ::)
BTW, Is it The Pharmacist who has tried to change his username for a long time?

I probably was trying to be extremely generous when I gave you those merits, but the fact is that your posts are extremely generic and their quality is such that if I just came across them in a thread I was reading I would skip right over them.  And if I'm being really honest, you're not the kind of member I want to help rank up, because I know damn well why you're a member of the forum.

And you obviously don't read anything, else you would have seen what I wrote in big bold red letters, which MarjorieZimmermanGinger was kind enough to quote.  I mean, c'mon man.

I keep getting PMs like this from members who obviously heard about my offer but mysteriously haven't come across this thread.  Blows my mind.  


I blanked out the name, but I've never even given this member a single merit before (and after peeking at his posts, that's going to remain unchanged).

I haven't been getting many PMs from members who meet my criteria, so I'm going to ask that if I've done a review for you for at least two months (doesn't matter which months), send me a PM and I'll see what I can do.  I don't want to discourage people--just the ones who can't or don't read, are shitposters, idiots, or have too many chromosomes.

Yep!

I am not active all over the forum. But I have to now because of my signature campaign (LOL).
I used to be active on the WO thread, and I don't see you there. Maybe you don't like WO? I remember I saw your name change request thread and trying to get the attention of theymos. Congratulations on your name change. I am sorry, but your old name was also famous and cool. BTW, Sorry for the off-topic.

It's just a nickname, doesn't mean it only applies to post creators right? ;D

Does this apply to people who don't meet your review criteria, I'm starting to err on the side of asking for a second review and not reading the rules you set. I'm wondering if there's any chance you'd review people who have had reviews before, even if they only got one review in November for example.

This is important for me to ask, so that in the future we don't make a second mistake, both for me personally and for other people. Because to be honest, we still really need you in the process of increasing the next account ranking.

Eh, I've visited the thread (usually when I'm reviewing posts) but it just seems like a lot of masturbation, and there's definitely a unique community there that's seemingly apart from the rest of the forum and I never felt like making myself a part of it.  But hey, if you like it more power to you.  If we were all the same, the world would be fucked in every hole and stale as dollar store bagel.

Grrrr.  I never heard words like that until after my name change got approved, and I'd no idea anyone even gave a millisecond of brainspace to my username before.  I'm definitely happy, but I can see it from your perspective as well.  I don't know about having a famous name, but given how many posts I've made and how long I've been active I don't doubt the ol' moniker was recognizable at least.

Thanks for the nice wordz.

Well, there are a lot of other users as well who do not feel interested in some specific part of the forum. Yeah, some users always post on WO just to catch some merits. That's why sometimes the WO thread seems like you described.

Also, I saw a lot of WO guys do not post in other sections except WO. What about legendary don't hunters who have made thousands of posts in bounty and never feel like they should explore the forum? They are still on newbie rank.


Of course, your satisfaction and your happiness should be your main priority. Yeah, Your old name was famous enough. If someone does not notice that you changed your name, they may think "Where was this guy?" Newbie Legendary? 😂
Just kidding.

This thing you're doing is nothing but more invocation of provocation, this thread was already created to clear the air that he has ended the post review, yet you're asking him to do so, dont you think you're already on his ignored list if am not mistaken, i will employ that you stop sending unsolicited pm in other nit to get yourself reported to the moderators and possibly got a temporary ban, it's not a force you must received Merits from a user, if you're truly a quality poster you shouldn't have challenges with receiving Merits from other members.

In the forum context the term @OP is used for the original poster not nicknames so that's why he was saying that.As you can see the OP patch was also added recently by @theymos to recognise the @OP which means who has started the topic with his each post in that thread.

---

Btw when this thread was unlocked I thought it was closed few weeks back?

Yeah, I opened it back up to make that big bold and red announcement and figured I might as well keep it open so it'd stay visible (which helps me out).  So far the shitposts haven't been too bad, though it does seem like people either aren't reading things fully, at all, don't understand what they're reading, or don't give a shit about words in general.

You know, business as usual on bitcointalk.

I can lock it up if you or anyone else thinks it's becoming a spectacle, but I have a feeling that if and when I do that I'll just have to bump it again with another message that....fucking mongoloids....are just going to ignore.  But you know, I just keep rollin' that ball up the hill over and over.

For instance, people may think "Since the thread is opened again, maybe he started allowing post review again". But, I believe before they knock you, they should read the thread. If you still get DM about post review. They are shit posters and they didn't read your thread. So, you can use the simple button you have under their username 😉

Hope I can throw a few suggestions, as you already have mentioned most of the members are just random posters, I got to thinking, what if you could actually set out weekly tasks for those who know things and are capable technically to help the forum members especially those with limited knowledge about a lot of stuff.
There are very useful and educative topics presenting new tools, scripts, new methods on how to do variety of so many constructive content.

I'm not going deep and try to keep it short, currently on project/ technical/ development boards there are at least 20 good developers, many of which with low merits, however they do work hard and spend time, but when a developer releases a new tool, they just provide a generic guide thinking their audience is already a nerd, that decreases the number of users, and definitely scares the non technical away, which they consist a large amount of userbase BTW.

I was thinkinh, maybe you could be so kind, as always and incentivize those developers with merits asking them to create thorough and easy to uderstand tutorials on how any member with no knowledge of programing could watch, learn and implement what they need simply from one source which would be the OP of a project topic.

You know If I had 500 smerits per 30 days I would transform at least a few boards of the forum in 3 month, going to their topic suggesting them to dedicate their reserved second post only to provide step by step guidance on how to properly and efficiently work around the problems to reach a satisfactory result for the members.
If you go to project developent where the new and interestig stuff happens, posts in a topic are a mess, everyone other than OP comes to discussion and tries to push and advertise their own product, not that's a bad thing, but they could each open their own topic to provide their services, and since most of the project are open source, there is actullay a no thanks job, but they contribute to the community this way, however if someone with a decent supply of smerits could constantly observe and even demand as a forum member, suggesting them to provide detailed information for all kinds of operating system, things like how to set this set that ect. And have them organized if not on OP but under the OP where they could reserve and update from to time.

I know this will take a lot of time to do for them, but they are here to do the hard work, so adding a few hourse or days to help the newbies in a specific field. As they are the devepolers, going a few miles to help 20 members won't do any damage, but on the other hand people with limited knowledg find their source, their go to for answers instead of wondering around the net while the answer is here and just needs a bit push to motivate the useful content creators to actually care and help others.

If no one would have helped me as a newbie I could never become what I am, and there has been so many lost opportunities where I lost my chance to learn more and not just stay idle.

This forum could become a reliable source of information for many people, imagine every newcomer and their dozens of questions, if they can get all their answers from a reliable source in one place, why not heh?

They could show codes, post videos uplaod images live share screen, etc and at the end you as a merit sourse go to their topic, check the content they have provided, read the feed back from users and based of the gathered information then decide to send merits to them, remember recognition is extremely important for young developers, it motivates them provides inspiration, and at the end of the day you used the smerits on people who actually deserve them and not many merit sources see their work.

Remember a meritable post is not a 10 page essay about a subject, sometimes 6 line of codes is what it takes to have the post worth giving 10 merits while it looks something ordinary and simple, but there has been days of working and testing behind the scenes to make that happen.

I know they won't make me even a teporary source, but that't fine, I don't have a huge ego, my intention is to help, whether I can do it by myself or simply plead to the currently merit sources, both results are satisfactory.


Sadly developers see everyone as if they are technicaly inclined, so they post generic guidance either on github or on this forum, and what is better for them to provide a detailed guide to help a certain member and receive dozens of merits in return, other people see this and it encourage them to come forward and ask the questions to then leave the topic satisfied with their answer.

Doing this frequently will also incentivize others to improve and up their game if they see sources are giving their smerits to actuall real world solution helping people, they would up their game and the competition begins, IMO this is a way for a community to grow and thrive at the same time for starters 50 smerits per month is enough, Im around for a 2 years God willing, and am more than happy to help, if not then I hope this post count at least as my 2 satoshi contribution for the forum.

❤😗 missed you chymist, I miss your tantrum for annoying members, I wish you the best which you don't even know what they are, but they will come to your life God willing.

It's true that @theymos added the OP's patch to identify the original poster, but I've also seen a lot of users calling out the OP in ongoing discussions and I don't think it matters anyone using the OP for the call  ;D

The Merit system is implemented to maintain the quality of poster posts for the better and to increase rank up, meaning that there are no specific thread restrictions for giving merit to people, it's just that some people choose to share it in certain threads. Merit Source has its own qualifications in determining the categories and requirements for granting merit to people.

If the merit distribution limit only applies to several discussion boards, then every existing local board will never develop, both for assessing the quality of posts and for rank up, everyone has different qualities and it is impossible for everyone to dominate all discussion boards.

This really doesn't make sense. Merit is a system for recognizing good contributions to the entire community, no matter which board it occurs on. Because if a board exists it's because it's relevant to the community, even if it's just an offtopics board. Since even for leisure we can use the forum - appropriately of course.

Come on, guy! Do not make the world any more difficult than it already is. I was enjoying this thread until I came across your comment. I read a few lines before giving up and rolling some bluns. This is too long to be a comment within a thread. I'm just one of those lazy people that finds reading words longer than 200 characters tedious.

If I understand you correctly, you're asking him to pay closer attention to the forum's technical aspects. Why would he do that if he has no interest in those topics? In addition, the technical board has a lot of merit sources assigned to it, so you must hold those sources accountable if they are not sending out merits.

In the first line of your post, you suggested that he should create a task, and whomever completes it correctly get merit right?  Indeed, we had such threads in the B&H, but the results were terrible; it opened the floodgates for spammers and bounty hunters to rank up by just completing a task. However, merits are not rewards for games; in my opinion, TSC's use of the merit system is ideal. Post review is perfect.

I was high that night, sorry. Lol you should never mind my suggestions, Though I wasn't talking about spammers, this is a forum filled with open source programmers, some of which are young and in pursuit of fame, earning more merits would help them to be more recognized in the community and motivate them to participate more in the community, something bla bla bla since you don't like long posts. Lol

They ought to focus their efforts on the Epotalk dev if they want to be famous. Lol

BTW ! If those users you mentioned aren't receiving enough merits, don't you think their posts aren't of high enough quality? I'm too lazy to gather merit data from the technical support board, but I'm assuming it's one of the most merited boards.

Please provide those posts that deserve merits. I might throw a token at them.

No need to be sad friend.
I have never known the contents of the OP writing that was sent to you via PM, from my understanding in your post here, the Op has rated your post based on his personal views. Actually he expects something more from you to break old habits by improving the quality of posts.

You don't need to tell him has posted some quality posts, Op has his own judgment on posts submitted to him. Op decision has been considered wisely, he only considers users who follow his rules. Regarding quality posts, Merit Source including Op will spend sMerit on worthy posts.

Sorry for late noticing this thread. It's sad that your request is ignored by @Theymos despite you doing this voluntarily without any benefits that you can get. I'm one of many users who benefit from your good gesture because the merit system on our local board is already dry due to the absence of our own merit source. You are the only hope for users like me that is not being noticed due to the nature of my post. I hope that @theymos will eventually notice your request to continue your service.

Honestly, I never thought the word rank up again if I didn't see your thread.  :'(

Noticing it sooner wouldn't have made any difference. Lol.
Problem was solved, theymos gave the Chymist a chocolate bar and he is calm for now, please don't wake the beast by mentioning the past. 😅
If your local board has no active merit source, please inform the admins in the respective merit topic.

I audibly chuckled at that with no one else in my house, that's how funny I found your metaphor. 

I am calm, and in fact I've gotten caught up on all the requests I needed to do and have about 160 sMerits left.  So I'm going to relax that last rule about people needing to have consistently requested post history reviews since September.  If you're under Legendary rank and/or have fewer than 1000 merits and would like me to take a look at your posts, drop me a PM and try your luck.

Should I get overwhelmed with requests and run out of sMerits within a day or two, I'll have to tighten up the requirements again of course.  Thanks for bumping this thread, else I probably wouldn't have posted any updates about my offer.

Rofl, Sorry if I almost awaken Mr.Beast again but seriously the current title looks like his request is still unanswered. I just notice this thread when I browse TP post history to check his merit thread. I thought his recent merit distribution will be the last batch.  :D

Can we do PM about this. I’m interested to know what’s necessary step to request for merit source besides the merit source application. I don’t to off topic here so can we discuss via PM?


Sir, Maybe add a note on the title as resolve?

I just realized I can't send you a PM after the last one I sent. My last PM to you was a post-review reminder, so I'm guessing my chances of acceptance are now 0.1%. I would have liked to join onboard, but whatever decision you make is final.. apologies

Done.  I'm going to lock this thread in a few minutes so as not to boost the chance of me getting PM-bombed.  Not that it completely helps; even when I said the offer was on hold, I'd still get so many requests from members who obviously hadn't read the updates.

If I blocked your PMs, I did it intentionally and for a good reason.  I don't remember blocking you specifically, but if you're blocked you're going to remain blocked.  Sorry.

My first request via PM went through last November, and I received some merits from you; the second PM was a reminder after I discovered this thread in December, because I was one of those you requested for. I guess you mistook me for someone else, which is why you blocked me. fate accepted.

*Restarted* Post history review

Wow so there’s a good news…? Should we let the merit party begin   :D

Please tell us… looks like your wishes coming true.

Ehhh....OK, since I've gotten like 20 PMs in the past 24 hours asking for reviews and I'm not exactly willing to go back on my word as far as restarting this offer, I just want to tell those of you who've contacted me to be patient.  Right now I think I've got about 150 sMerits, so I probably don't even have enough to give away even if I was willing and able to do everyone's requests today. 

If I haven't reviewed your post history within a week (or more), or if I haven't PMed you back telling you your posts suck, please don't send a reminder PM.  I'm not deleting any messages until after I've done reviews, so they aren't going anywhere.

And with that, I'm locking this bitch up and hoping it disappears to page 30 of Meta within minutes.

LOL.  I unlocked this thread last night and was going to do an update but got distracted and never did.

Just a message to those who've PMed me in the past 2 weeks or so:  right now I'm just waiting for my sMerit allocation to replenish and then I'll pick up wherever I left off with the reviews, and I apologize for the delay.  Again, just be patient and I'll get to you ASAP.

Now I'll leave this open for a few hours and hopefully I won't forget to lock it.

Unfortunately I am still a newbie who does not dare to send you PM and various rules that you have given the red color above.

Maybe later it will be filled again. If you forget to lock, I will remind you.

It's even possible that you can't PM higher ranking users because they don't allow newbies to do so.

Regarding the rules, you can understand by reading, but since you are a newbie, the best advice for you is keep consistency your post rather than expecting higher merit source attention for a low number of posts. You will get it sooner or later, but don't get distracted by the merit.

Oh shit....I just checked, and I didn't have the button checked off that allows newbies to send me PMs.  I know I intentionally unchecked it (or made sure it was that way) a long time ago, because a lot of newbies were bothering me about feedback removal but I just fixed that. 

However, I would advise any newbies to really evaluate whether they think I'm likely to merit their posts before contacting me.  If a member has been here for a few months, has been posting regularly, and still hasn't gotten any merits then I'm probably not going to find anything in that member's post history that's good--and if that started happening regularly, then I'm going to block PMs from newbies again without a second thought.

Lol again.  This time I didn't forget; I fell asleep.  But thanks for the thought, and with that I'm going to lock this bee-otch of a thread and see what's going on with the rest of the forum today.

Crap, I missed your post entirely up until now, and I appreciate what you wrote--but knowing I'm not alone in being a merit source isn't of comfort to me.  And why?  Because I've made this offer to the community, and it has nothing to do with any other merit sources, and it's often a grind. 

I just started looking at a bunch of post histories today, and I'll admit I was a bit lax about reading in detail in the past few months.  Now that I'm looking closely at what's being said in the posts I'm reading, I'm seeing that while there might be time and effort put into them, many of them are generic and don't say anything of value. 

So I'm telling everyone who has or is thinking of PMing me: If I think your posts are crap, I'm just going to block any further PMs from you.  I don't have time to give feedback or send PMs telling people that I won't review their posts anymore (even though I've done that already today, that's ending now).  Also, I see a lot of posts in the gambling section, and I'm not a gambler and thus have a hard time judging a truly constructive post from one that's just bloated.  I'm going to start handing out way fewer merits in that section.

I'll keep this open for a few hours.

This is another good step for you. To be honest, I thought you already read every post that you merited. I don't know how you merited before. You must have some criteria and I believe it was good as well. Posts like "I agree with you" and adding some generic words don't make the most valuable. In any discussion, if people share their points of view, that's better than saying I agree with you.

If we want to talk about boards, I want to be bold here. I used to post on the Gambling discussion section just to increase the post count. Before the signature campaign, I was only posting in WO and The casino I play.

Recently my signature campaign manager Royse777 Asked me to improve my post quality. Then I tried to explore more sections where I could have an interest. If I post somewhere without any interest. That is going to be Crap.

Anyways, I sent you a DM last week asking about the current situation of your post-history review. I believe you receive a lot of DM and maybe you missed mine.

That's pretty honest of you.  I suspect many members here in sig campaigns do the same thing--and there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to make some money by posting, but if you're posting in a thread with a topic you either don't know anything about or have no interest in, it's going to result in posts that add sweet fuck all to the discussion at hand--and it will show, too.

About my merit-giving process.  Since I don't want to spend all day and night reviewing people's posts, I do a lot of skimming as opposed to close reading.  I've read so many posts since I've been a member here that I can generally gauge the quality of them fairly quickly, because mistakes in grammar, spelling, and all that other stuff will usually show up in the first sentence.  However, today I did do some close reading of a few members' posts, and I could absolutely tell that some of them were posting in the gambling section because their campaign required it, and it was clear that they either weren't gamblers or were just posting in threads that they could kinda-sorta say something, but what they wrote was far from substantial and were not what I'd consider constructive.  Suffice to say, I've been fooled (probably many times) by my skimming style of reading into meriting posts I shouldn't have.

I will be more strict and attentive from here on out.

I did get your PM (the title of which amused me) but haven't gotten to you yet.  I'm getting caught up, though I can't guarantee I'll get to your review today.  You were honest about your motivations for posting, but I hope when I do your review that I'm not going to be disappointed, because I'm not in the mood to show mercy right now.  No offense intended, my man.

I just wanted to share the real thing that shouldn't be done. But, I wanted to be honest as well. I believe people can improve their post quality if they want. But, when Campaigns require you to post in certain areas where you are not interested at all. It's not going to be good. I can return to my original interest because my campaign does not require me to post in the gambling section. But, Campaigns like Stake or other Casino Campaigns require high post count on Gambling sections, then you have no choice even if you have no interest there. I still post in the gambling section even though my campaign doesn't require me Because there is a thread to discuss cricket which I love to discuss.


About the Title, That's an honest thing as well. We don't use the subject here.😆
I shouldn't ask for mercy as well because I believe if I have quality, you won't miss judge me. If I don't, then it's not your fault.

This is main highlight of your post on which each member who is trying to get merits from you by any means primarily by PM should keep in their mind and not waste your time and efforts in reviewing those posts which have no value added to the discussion or share something useful.

When we are applying for such post review offers we should keep in mind that our best posts which have not received merits should be shared only but you are right on the part there are many spam posters who will pile up such posts so if you are not comfortable in sharing merits in gambling board you can completely ignore giving merits or very few if you find them worthy or like you have Altcoin section board on ignore list completely.But it's all your choice at last.

It's true, because there are some signature promotion campaigns that we can't post at will. Most of the signature campaigns have a rule that the Gambling section should have most of the posts, but to be honest, the Gambling section constructive posts/Improve posts can't be done much. So how can we post quality while joining these signature campaigns?

If you are a gambler, You have a lot of choices. If you are not a gambler but still wanted to join the Gambling section, I would say, you have to read a lot before you make any posts. Read what people saying and verify it. Suppose someone said this is that, you don't have to agree with them. Find out what they talking about and verify it yourself.

Don't join a discussion that you do not understand. I tried to understand what people writing in the Development section. I end up reading some programming codes and I have no idea what codes they writing. It's absurd to say anything there. I am not the right guy to suggest to you what you should do. Everyone has different interests and different points of view.

OK, it might seem to those of you who've recently requested reviews that I'm asleep at the wheel, but that is far from the truth.  I've been out of sMerits for a couple of weeks now, and I've just been waiting for my monthly allocation to be re-upped.  I just checked and I have something like 150 (much lower than my full allocation), so I'm going to start doing some reviews later today.

Please be patient and I'll get to you.  Also, if you've never requested a post history review from me, now probably isn't a good time to start.  I've got a waiting list a mile long and only so many sMerits to go around.

This has been a public service announcement courtesy of your friendly neighborhood pharmacist...err...chymist. 

To the people who've been PMing me for post history reviews and have not had them done yet, I give you a sincere apology as I've offered something that's pretty important to members who take this forum and their standing on it seriously but seemingly have slacked off since at least my last post here. 

I'm not going to go into the details behind my merit-giving torpor, but I'm just posting this to say that I haven't forgotten any of you and I've still got everyone's PM if you sent me one since July.  Today is a new day, and I'm making it my goal to whittle down the list a bit. 

My offer isn't paused, so anyone can still feel free to message me with a request--but be prepared to wait, because I could go flat-out Rambo and run out of sMerits or simply just not catch up enough with all the requests I've already received.

Ugh.  Life is kicking me in the nuts, hard.

You are a dedicated member of this community, I bet you are a loyal husband as well, because you have been loyal to your promises and to this forum.

I wish you the best where ever you are. People like you are rare nowadays.

That's life for you sir, no matter how hard you try to beat it...it will still look for a way to bring your down.
Ever since I joined this Forum, I have been seeing this coming from you on how you elevate users on reviewing their post, at some point I was like, "this guy is really really trying in this Forum, is he the only merit source in here?" Life had to be tough on us to see who can withstand it.
Take your time and I believe you'd scale through.

I dare not send you a message after reading this post. The reason for not daring to send you this message is maybe because I'm still afraid of getting a sudden attack which can make my stomach experience acid levels so I can't stand spicy food anymore... The second reason, my self-confidence is still weak in the quality of my posts.

Maybe when my confidence percentage increases I will try to contact you to ask for a review.
For now I will learn to often stand in front of a bigger mirror so that the overall posture is seen.

Life is complicated and we all know that but sometimes the hard times are really unbearable for us and in such times we mostly give up on it and grief follows us as a partner. I have also gone through a similar phase of my life where I thought that everything in my life is over and my life is the worst life someone can have, but those times are gone now and I'm very thankful to the ones who supported me in those times with their kind words and support. And, I have also realized that who were my true well-wishers during that phase of my life.

I must say that you should be bold to face all the challenges that you're having in your life because if you ignore them then we would only be lying with yourself. The hard times will go away but buddy don't just give up, continue to face all those challenges with a smile on your face. I know that it's easy to say such words then to do it in real life, but I've gone through the worst phase of my life and from experience I can tell you that these times are temporary and they will go away if you continue to face them as a bold person.

I would also say that you should not share your personal life with others because sometimes when we are trapped by the emotions like sadness and worries, and in those times we tend to trust others blindly and tell them everything about our situations. There are always wolves in the sheep's clothing and we sometimes tend to share with those people about the situations we are going through and instead of helping us they take advantage of our state of mind and we may face more troubles due to such people. Just trust yourself and face the challenges and they'll disappear after some time. Best of luck!

In life everything we do comes with a demand for the task, honestly, The Sceptical Chymist you're trying your best in doing what you know and how to best apply it for the benefit of everyone, am not saying this because it will get to you or to praise your role as a merit source but the truth must be told that you're doing well ever since your post review initiative began, this can be attested by many members of this community that they have once or in many times had an encounter with you reviewing their profile, we understand how sometimes we could also appears being busy with loads of schedules despite we are not merit source, how much more the merit sources, yet you still find time amidst these busy schedules to review profiles and merits those deserving it, i will say nothing than to wish you more efforts and replenishment in the task ahead.

I think I've stated numerous times that I'm so hermetic that I'm close to being a shut-in, i.e., social interactions mean less to me than other, normal people.  So I might have been a good husband had things turned out differently....but thanks.

Thanks to the rest of you who offered words of support.  Now I'm going to lock this thread, try to wake up, and later on I'll get to work on meriting the members who need merits.

First I'd like to say that when I get requests for reviews, I'm always on the lookout for shenanigans.  The rule of this forum since I've been a member is that if something can be abused in order to milk it for all it's worth, there's going to be a bunch of idiot shitposters trying to do it.  Therefore when I started my offer to the community I expected people to get over on me in as many ways as can be imagined.

Over the last few months I've noticed that I'm getting requests from members who:

1. Post in a very similar style (which I'm not going to describe here, lest it cause those members and/or their alts to change their habits in order to drop off my radar).
2. Post primarily in the gambling section.
3. Are in gambling-related sig campaigns, sometimes the same one.
4. Sometimes have registration dates close enough that they arouse my suspicions.

I actually went back though my merit history and made a table of some of the above info and used it to judge whether there was something to my suspicions or if they were just me being paranoid.  I came to conclude that there's something fishy going on and therefore I am no longer going to give any merits for posts in the gambling section, since it seems like that's where I might be getting taken advantage of.

The second reason for my decision is that I'm not a gambler and have a hard time judging the value or even the veracity of some posts about gambling.  I can usually tell if someone has put in a decent amount of thought and effort into a post, and I've always given great weight to that when deciding to give out merits, but I think I've been too generous when it comes to gambling posts.  This is going to apply to requests that arrived anywhere in my waiting list, i.e., retroactively.

I'll leave this thread open for a bit.  I'd apologize but I'm not sorry.

As far as I know, we are not allowed to ask for merit, but as you said, some members ask for their posts to be reviewed, is that another way to ask for merits?

I did see several threads specifically for receiving merit aid, especially for those of us who still have a small rank, and I have made posts there several times. But I just found out that we can PM someone to review post/merit request. Is that ethical enough? I didn't think to do that because I thought it would be rude

That's really understandable since you're not a gambler and it's fair for you to not give merit to a discussion or section you don't like. I think majority in this forum are participating in signature campaign related to gambling and they're obviously need to post in gambling board.

My suggestion for people who're creating a lot posts in gambling board could made a list of good posts on non gambling board when they want to ask you for a post history review, so you will not have keep scrolling to find the non gambling posts.

What do you think for this idea?

As long as the merit source did state it's fine to contact him through PM, it's not a problem.

But if he never state it, never try to ask a review or something like that through PM.

Lol....did you read the beginning of this thread where I made the offer?  It's bad etiquette to straight-up ask another member to give them merits without pointing them to a post that would be merit-worthy, but there have been merit giveaway threads similar to mine here ever since 2018 when the merit system was unleashed upon an unsuspecting and chaotic forum.  I think nearly all of those have ended since they basically became magnets for shitposters, but it's absolutely OK to ask for merits when someone invites you to (as I'm doing in this thread).

It's not that I dislike gambling; I just don't gamble myself and thus have a hard time telling whether many posts are untrue crap or if what's being written is legit and constructive.  I really hate to add this restriction, but at this point I have to. 

That isn't necessary.  What I'm going to do is put both of the gambling sections on ignore, and if someone PMs me for a review I'll only be able to judge their posts outside of those.

Of course I've read it. And this is the first time I came across this thread. This forum has many mechanisms and rules so it is increasingly complicated for me to understand. On the one hand, sometimes I see people like you giving negative tags as if you really hate beginners, but on the other hand you help beginners. In my opinion, studying this forum is not enough if I just read the rules, but it takes time and experience, it's really a complicated forum  ;D

No!!!

All right, so you haven't been here long and I didn't realize it's only been since June based on your rank (I just looked).  Yes, it does take a while to figure out what's what here, but I do not hate new members because they're new.  I don't think I've ever said that, though I'm almost certain that I've said that newbies are the source of most of the post quality issues and similar sentiments--and I still stand by that, but I judge members on their contributions, not their rank. 

My reaction to your post (asking if you'd read the OP of this thread) was because it seemed like you hadn't read it.  If there was a misunderstanding, my bad and no hard feelings.  And look, don't get offended at shit like that or else you're going to hate being here.  If you grow a thick skin, make yourself known, make interesting/productive posts, and generally gain a reputation on the forum over time, people are going to look at you like the Legendary members that get called "sir".  It's just silly IMO, but that's the way it is.  But good on you for trying to call me out for bad....thoughts.  In a year or two, you'll be the next JollyGood!

That last part's a joke, JG.

Is not like him, LoyceV, lovesmayfamilis and others hate them, they just don't like rule breakers while some beginners are reading rules and trying to understand the forum system, some are just don't care about that rather making shit post even to the point of plagiarising or making Ai generated posts while others just come to spam the forum or find means to scam. Even after they might even give warning/pardon.

Don't worry, my skin is thick enough now, I still remember you giving me that advice when I made a post about complaints against other members. I'm also starting to get to know your writing style, which is often sarcastic and cynical  ;D. If I'm honest, at first I hated JG for making a tag on my account, but maybe I should thank him because since arguing with him I've been challenged to read more forum rules (because I don't want to lose to him) even though in the end I can't do much . But the neutral tag doesn't seem bad  :D


Yes, maybe many beginners don't take much time to read more here and end up badly. but I also don't know what the motivation of the peoples here is

Here we go again! Another merit source has placed the gaming board on the ignore list. This will only worsen till thyemos appoints one for us.  >:(

Side Note: I agree with you on the rate of spam on the gambling board, particularly in non-moderated threads, but if you really want to find serious gamblers with deep thoughts and quality, you have to go in self-moderated threads. There is minimally no spam on these threads. All reputable gamblers only post on self-moderated threads. GL

I haven't seen your merits on self -moderated thread- you're looking at the wrong place mate.  :D

I love your decisions, and although I am not a regular gambling poster but sometimes I do give out my little ideas that is not deep into much gambling discussions.
Again I will like to suggest you indicates the only section you will be receiving, or exclude those boards on the op so that if any one is applying for a review they will know that these are the board that you won't accept the review because I know too well that not everyone will read this update here and they would still go ahead to include the gambling board you don't want to review, sometimes seeing those messages might gets you angry maybe you may decide to skip such review.

Again I will also want to request for a review from you, I could have submitted my application but since I didn't know you are still accepting new application or not. Please if you are still accepting I don't mind trying my luck as I believe I have increased in my post quality, your feedback is highly appreciated.

Thank you

Good, glad to hear your skin has thickened and hopefully you don't take things so personally that you either start to think this forum sucks or, even worse, decide to abandon it altogether.  Yes, I am as cynical as one can be and often sarcastic--but humor and sarcasm don't often translate well when written, and I try to keep that in mind.

And hey, JollyGood even wrote in his feedback that once he figures out who you are and what you're trying to do (if anything), he'll review that neutral.  Coulda been a hell of a lot worse.  You could have gotten a big ol' DT1 negative and then had that member die or just disappear forever from the forum.  You'd be stuck with that black eye forever.  Positive thinking, my man.

Wait a sec.  Did you read the explanation I gave for my decision to not merit gambling posts?  It isn't because of shitposts necessarily, it's mainly because I can't tell the difference between a post that's saying something true and meaningful and one that's total horseshit--and that's due to my own ignorance of gambling.

On top of that I suspect I might be getting alt accounts PMing me with most of their posts in the gambling section.  I said explicitly that I have nothing fundamentally against gambling.  

That part in bold up there?  I'm not out to merit anything in any particular section; I'm just reviewing members' post histories, so I'm just looking in whatever sections those members post in.  There might be excellent posts in self-modded threads by gamblers, but if the members who are requesting reviews don't post there, I'm not going to see them (and once again, l am ignorant of gambling-related stuff, so that point still holds).

Did you PM me?  You have to do it that way, not by posting here.  You might well have and I just haven't seen it, but I'm just saying.  I've got to get caught up, because right now I feel like the biggest merit source slouch there is--and I'm probably right on the money.

Thank you for the feedback, though was actually waiting for your permission before sending it especially someone like me do not like a random pm from unauthorized user and I know how sucking it could be to us. Mostly someone like you for a review from various users sometimes its gets someone weird especially when you are not in a happy moment that was why I didn't send any till upon your approval which I just did now.

You're a Sr. Member and have been here a couple of years, right?  Well I get PMs from all sorts of members, from Jr. up to Hero, and most of the time when they initially message me I have no idea who they are.  But I extended this offer to the entire community (except for Legendary members), so I anticipated tons of PMs.  It doesn't matter what kind of mood I'm in, believe me, because you're probably going to have to wait a bit until I can get to you anyway.  My queue is long and my laziness isn't helping matters.

I don't know why certain members feel intimidated like this.  I'm nothing special on bitcointalk, just a merit source and a guy who just happened to have stuck around this joint for a few years.  What is it you think I could possibly do to you if you send me a message, especially one that I've essentially solicited by virtue of making the offer that's the subject of this thread?  I'm not going to give you negative trust or even bite your head off if your posts don't meet my standards. 

You don't need anybody's permission to send them a PM.  If you're using PMs to promote something or whatever, those might get reported but you don't need to feel timid just because someone has a higher rank than you or has been here longer.  Ideally we should be helping each other, and that's kind of tough when there appears to be a hierarchy, power structure, or the like that inhibits communication.

TL;DR: Feel free to PM me, any of you.

You just explained everything actually most times it's scary to me while sending out pm in request to get my profile reviewed though this led me to create my personal topic on the reputation board seeking for the higher member to justify my profile or give a rating on my overall performance for the few months I have decided to change my posting style and also becoming more useful to our local board. So kindly I got few people whom I respected mostly got rated and they commended on my overall performance and since then I have been striving and I didn't even know when I succeeded going this far in rank but I can term it to the effects of change I have just accepted. Actually I never had a very solid skin over here whereby to whatever they said always got me pierced in my body which I have been trying to learn to grow a very thick skin to be able to withstand any pressure or the amount criticism that may arose from whomever.

One thing I later understood is that sometimes we can always judge by ourselves that Mrs. A could be very hard to approach and get accessed to but until we come encountered with them we can never tell how soft they are except coming in contact with them, so actually I was scared to Pm'ed you but your feedback gives me this joy and happiness that you are not what I thought about and same to others. Although sometimes when I am replying some comments i do include Sir, but few people did never wanted it and they always wanted anyone coming across their way to address them with their names. Well did not see this as any problem otherwise I wouldn't have address my pm with your names below but, I learnt that from reputable user who also suggested that few reputable user especially the high profile don't find it funny while addressing them with their names so I apologise if that gets you upset as well.

Btw there's this mentality I do have that most of the higher profile do not want the lower rank to grow but along the line the more I keeps exploring here the more I unveiled more things that shows I was wrong with my instincts and state of mind that is why we don't need to allowed our emotions or instincts controls us (especially people like me) who always allowed emotions to be controlled. Sincerely speaking I feels honored and grateful to interact with you irrespective of my newbie nature, of course I wouldn't say I knew it all because I am here open and always ready to learn my rank won't play any bad role in me rather to be positioned to learn and upgrade my wisdom bank.

Thank you sir ❤️

I like this forum, one thing I don't like so far is that not many members really like discussing and like to leave discussions before the discussion is finished. Even though I'm not good at English, I know you often use metaphors in your writing and it's certainly an advanced writing aesthetic (Ah... even though I usually don't like to praise someone)


Hahahaha... It seems like a lot of members are hoping I made a mistake or found proof that I'm an alt, but so far no one has found it because I'm just me and nothing else

However, it seems like the negative tag only applies to regular members, I saw several popular members have negative tags including JG, but it looks like it's okay and they can still take part in the campaign. Trust systems are truly confusing

In fact, as far as I know, if we get a negative tag, we can still discuss it here. However, because not many members really like discussing, they will leave, because they only discuss for money

It's no biggie. You just admire @Chymist's style of writing and I kinda enjoy reading it too. So playful and on point at the same time. He's one of the few users I've been opportuned to come across who doesn't take things too seriously but that doesn't mean you should take liberties though.
@pytagoraZ, I'm glad you've settled within yourself that this is a public space where opinions differ and some have no filter when dishing it out because that will help you go far here.
 It's not everyone that has the ability to take criticism both good and bad and work on where needs to be worked on, some will prefer to snap, thereby missing out on the essence of the criticism (good, in this case).

Fear that has turned into courage. This happened after getting an extraordinary input for me to look into myself closer so that my confidence increased because he asked to review my post. During this time I do it very often routinely on the local board and find many positive things.

I had thought carefully about various advice that I would never find the location of the shortcomings if I did not have the courage to ask people to do it because I only had two eyes and it turned out to be true for positive things.

So, I have thrown away that fear and ventured to things that can bring my self-change. It turned out that the wisdom was quite large because all the input was valuable even though initially scared asking people to visit the profile and ask to review a post like fear of my mother when he was scolded and ignored because the level of confidence was not ready.

Just like I responded to this, courage was 70%, the rest was fear and over time I would continue to try to decrease.

Nice to read this from you. Honestly bitcointalk is so dynamic and sometimes unpredictable, especially when there are so many unofficial police in a forum where no police get punished even when they make wrong decisions or accusations. I most times have seen this type of thread intending to help people (new users), but I skip them because some come with conditions while some look like traps.
If only here could be seen by everyone as a community where people come to learn about bitcoin and also get necessary help, it would be fine.

Is most likely that some see here as a place to display superiority by oppressing the new generation members. Also I have seen new members attacking old members with great audacity. I have seen old members leave negative tags for slight mistakes and then the same tag givers also help others to grow by giving merits.
Tbh, here is so dynamic and I can say that it is unique also. Thanks for the offer and I think I will try my luck.

Thank you for saying this, because I now understand exactly how your DM is and why maybe I never got a reply.

I cannot say I was not intimidated, my reason for not sending a follow up message because I felt like I did something wrong.

You are a humble person, thank you for making lower rank members like me feel more comfortable with you.

---

EDITS:

I tried to resend my request for review, but the error message was that "my personal messages have been blocked"
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/19/RWglm.png

I would like to publicly apologize if I did anything wrong before to warrant this. @ The Sceptical Chymist

I was going to bump this thread anyway, but I guess I never replied to Queentoshi.  If I look at a member's post history and it's obvious that there's very little chance of that member improving their posts (more often than not because of a massive language barrier), I put their PMs on ignore so as not to have my time wasted.  I also do the same when I've given members a chance to improve their posts to meet my criteria for merit and they've failed.

So anyway, I've noticed that as soon as I do a few reviews I always get at least 2-3 requests within hours of doing them.  Can anybody think of an innocent explanation for that?  It's obvious to me that people are either looking at my merit-giving activity or saw that I just gave one of their alt accounts some merits (and I have no way of knowing).  It's making my paranoia itch.

Also, I'm starting to get back to reviews after a long slump for which I apologize.  A lot of real life stuff is happening, and I haven't been a great merit source as of late. 

It could be one of the two things you mentioned, and the third possibility that comes to my mind is that the users to whom you give merits may communicate with each other and thus find out that you have become active again. I don't think you can be sure what it is about, because the "community" we are talking about here does not have very high moral principles when it comes to using alt accounts, plagiarizing or using AI.

I already wrote it, but I still think that the best way to reward a post with merit is the natural one, which means that you read the forum and then reward the post that you think is "good" according to your criteria. For me, it makes more sense to use your monthly supply in a way to reward 10-20 posts you come across by using the forum normally, than to wonder if someone is taking advantage of your kindness - and I'm sure some are doing just that.

Someone offering post review and issuing merits is regarded as a forum philanthropist. You are ofcourse a celebrity. Also the forum is open, by visiting your profile, I would know how much merits you have given out today. So, such a thing shouldn't bother you because this is an open forum, everyone who visits your profile frequently will definitely know when you start releasing merits. Don't be surprised that there are people who on loggin into the forum, they will first visit your profile to know your merit activities.

I know, and I took your words to heart, believe me.  The problem is that there's no way I'm going to be able to unload anywhere near my monthly allocation of sMerits just by meriting posts I come across--plus I think my offer is a good way to help out members who need merits and otherwise might have their posts overlooked.  That could be because they're complete crap, but it could also be due to the sections those posts are in.  In any case, I don't just hand out 50 merits/month to anyone who asks.  It's not even close to that kind of situation, and yes I do realize that there are most likely alt accounts requesting reviews from me.  Note that I did not make a rule about that, but it is irritating to contemplate.  On the other hand, as long as the posts meet my standards for merit, I don't think I'm encouraging shitposting (at least I hope not; said standards have increased, and I've sent out tons of PMs to members telling them to either improve their posts or simply that they don't qualify for a review).

I am no such thing.  If you could see me behind the keyboard you would assume I regularly sleep on a park bench and forage for food in dumpsters.

Why in the world would anyone keep checking my profile?  Is that a thing for some people?

Then i think its time for you to revisit the rules for applications and make it clear for anyone not to use alts in applying and if i may bring a suggestion to you, you can demand that each application can be made once in three month and no alts account should apply or risk being tagged, what you're doing is out of love and passion you have for the members of the forum to receive a fair worthy merit to their quality posts, but flooding request once they see that you're giving more will attract them to abuse the privilege, but restricting alts from applying and making each applicant to only have a privilege of quarterly application will give you enough time to make it up to every deserving applicants, even though am also not able to send you a PM long time ago, but i count it nothing than to keep the quality post and without applying, one day you may find my post worthy of receiving merits from you, keep up the good works.

As far as I can see, you are active on the forum, and if you see a really good post, why not reward it with 5 or 10 (maybe even more merits) and that way you can share a lot more than you do through private reviews. There are also people who will never ask anyone to review their posts, and all of them somehow remain out of your reach - and I know there are a lot of good posters who don't get nearly the merits they deserve.

There is no doubt that your intention is good, but you yourself have doubts about the sincerity of those who send you PMs.


Every merits source is in some way a person of interest, especially those like you who offer private reviews - because unlike those who do it publicly, it is much easier to hide bad intentions (alt accounts) when no one but you can see it.

I'm not at all surprised that people do everything to get merits, because for a good part of the members, this forum is, as they say, "a place for work", and nothing more than that.

I don’t think people are keeping on your profile. Well you can never tell but my theory is these accounts are following a pattern. It’s possible they figured you do post reviews at the end/beginning of the month, so they know the right time to pitch in their request. If you’re being taken advantage of by alts, it won’t be long before you find a resemblance in their posting pattern.

Any person who has no doubts about what he's doing is either stupid or a sociopath (take that statement with a grain of salt).  Of course I've got doubts about people taking advantage of my offer.  I always have, and I had them right from the get-go.  But since I eliminated gambling posts from my review offer I think I might have prevented myself getting taken advantage of just a little bit.  And again, what nobody else sees aside from me and the PM recipients is that I reject a lot of requests based on post quality, and I put a lot of members' PMs on ignore so that I don't get fooled into doing reviews for them again.

Also, I do also give merits to posts I happen to come across, so it's not as though that doesn't happen at all.  It just accounts for much less of my sMerit stash.  I do thank you for the input.

I'm not sure about the 3 month thing, but I might consider the suggestion about alts and tagging.  But I think I've tagged at least one member for taking advantage of my offer before, so it's not like that's unprecedented.  Anyway, I'm going to sleep on it and appreciate the suggestion.

The merit system doesn't seem to be able to automatically throttle; when I left as a merit source I had over 1,000 smerit.  Theymos said to give more merit to an individual post rather than merit posts not worthy.

Merit has now become a commodity; I am going to be reviewing negative trust on profiles in the past regarding this.

Naaaa...Damn it!!! That's not true old boyyyy!! Remember I looked through your profile and somehow, I described you 8)... Only that i learnt you don't have a protruding tummy, but that doesn't make you look like anything close to your description..

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I see alot of sense in that as well... I've read through several post that didn't get merited but has a shitty reply as though it was a constructive criticism merited.. That alone made the discussion a chaos of unnecessary point proving and argument.
I got messaged by a user several months ago from bitcoingirl's thread, begging me to merit their post for some returns....I'm afraid the worst is yet to happen,Vod.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

As has been unravelled in this excellent thread PytagoraZ & komisariatku are alts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5489102.0), there are far too many nefarious characters around the forum that have one goal which is to obtain a higher rank to join signature campaigns.

Those accounts cannot rank up without a sizeable amount of merits therefore they try a wide array of activities to try to achieve their goal. You mentioned that thread you were asked by PytagoraZ to review his posts, thankfully it seems his alt-account and cheating competitions was made public before you responded but that episode demonstrates why it is difficult to review posts and give merits.

I am curious, will you raise the The Sceptical Chymist review assessment bar in order to give out merits to posts that meet a certain higher threshold because of what happened with those alt-accounts being linked?

I don't think that's the case, like going through your merit giving activity, you're like a teacher in this Forum that always push members to get on their feet whenever they're slowly dropping their efforts to give the Forum quality post. And you're well known to give out merit by reviewing posts that deserves it not like you wake up one morning and start giving merit to post that's not close to receiving any merit, you know how to do your thing and I believe you're more popular than the other merit source.
And again, you can't tell in any way that you're giving alt account merit, you're not from the spirit world to know who's who, you do what you have to do without minding if you're giving alts some merit, believe me that if you start thinking that way, this journey of post review will come to an end, you'll stop doing the merit review because you feel you're giving alt account merit.


Long or short slump it doesn't matter, you also need a time out to cool down a bit before coming back to start up from where you left it. Everyone have some other things to do outside the Forum that's why we get to see some account being inactive for long, so I'd say take your time in handling your stuff before coming back (which you have, I suppose) stronger.

To the community:

After giving this a lot of thought, I've decided to end my offer to do post history reviews for people on request.  The whole thing started off great, but as of late I get the strong feeling that I've been basically helping a bunch of mediocre posters (and most likely their alt accounts) rank up, which was never my intention.  I've also been refusing more and more requests because posts don't meet my standards for merits, and it's just turned into a big time waster that I don't want to deal with any more.

I'm going to take a look at the requests that are still in my PM box, and if any of those members have written decent posts they'll get merits.  Aside from that, I am done.

I'll leave this thread open for a little bit and then I'm going to lock it.

Dang it. I was putting together myself to make a request but its cool. I trust your judgement and you are right about how you feel. I appreciate the good work you have done in the forum with post history reviews. I know many many who have been beneficiaries of your benevolence when I look at their merit history. Thank you for this particular service to the community.

Hello community,

"Take advantage of the time that people give you, without taking advantage of the people giving you time"

...Curtis Tyrone Jones

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Don't beat yourself, might not be the end you wanted but "Kindness" is the ROI. You won!!

Thanks for your kindness towards our community - you lifted a lot of "Deserved" profiles over there. Don't stop paying us a visit   :D

From what I remember, you had good will but far too many of those that benefitted from your efforts did not deserve it as they had nefarious intentions. Alt-accounts and account farmers were pouncing on any member that was offering to merit their posts and not only that, any opportunity they had to make a list of their posts trying to rank up in any thread facilitating ranking up or merits.

I am glad you have removed yourself this situation because far too many accounts took advantage of your good will.

To be honest, I think that it is a good decision, I don't like the idea of sending your posts to someone to get merits, it just looks very fake and unnatural. It's okay to not receive merit on every good post. I think that giving away merits should be a more natural thing, i.e. you visit threads, read posts and then merit the one that you think deserves to be merited.
I think that sending your posts to someone via PM and asking them to check if they are eligible for merits, to me, looks like an attempt to rank up just for the sake of signature campaign. That's why I try to not post in local board, locals are always a little biased, no offence but this is just the way I think.

You did what you thought was right at the time. Your criteria has changed, which is normal. It is important for a person to admit this change and move on.

I believe you will continue to distribute the smerits as you see fit.  ;)

Sad that this has to go but I totally understand where sir Sceptical Chymist is coming from, the fact alone that you're doing this shit for an extended period of time while having to wait to get your rations of merits before you can even do something is already a pretty arduous ordeal, add to this the concept of beign potentially taken advantage of by people you barely know for the sake of provisioning merits and actually promoting constructive content in this forum, and you get a pretty exhausted merit source.

It was fun while it lasted, being some of those who continually received merit assistance and content advice after leaving this forum for a lengthy amount of time, but if it meant having to deal with people who can't even increase the quality of their content on a daily basis, then I guess all of us have no choice but to deal with his decision.

Thank you very much Sir Sceptical for being one of the most helpful merit sources around here, and I would never forget just how much you have helped me grow this account after quitting and returning recently. Hope you find further success IRL as you have found here, also hope you get an extra chicken nugget every time you order.

I have already expressed a similar opinion in some of the previous discussions that took place in another topic, but also before when I also expressed my opinion that this way of "distributing" merits is not what it should be. Personally, it never occurred to me to ask that someone "review" my posts, but then again, everyone is free to share their sMerits as they wish, as long as it does not enter the sphere of abuse.

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@The Sceptical Chymist, I think I already suggested it to you, but if you want to distribute most or all of your sMerits, simply raise the scale and give 5 or 10 merits for each post you consider valuable (even max 50 merits). That way, you can still be a useful merits source, and if you also reward people who know how to distribute your merits to other quality posts, you've done a great job.

Hey The Sceptical Chymist, I completely understand your decision and all I want you to think is that it was not all in vain. You helped me rank up to Hero if I remember correctly and I think as a poster I haven't done badly subsequently. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Thank you.

I won't lie, this would be missed and I'm talking as a beneficiary of your kind gestures but I do understand your reasons for stopping because just like you said, many alts accounts have taken this as an avenue to grow their accounts and as it is, not much effort is put into making a good post anymore since they know that they can always apply for a post review and the merits will come.
Like I said, you had good intentions when you initially started this but like with every other thing in life, there's the pros and cons to it. Thank you for what you did for most of us in this community as many of us owe it to you for our rank ups and I sincerely hope you don't regret ever doing this..
 

This is something the community has to get used to because you have made your decision and all you said is true after all you choose to take this path as a merit source and now that you want to put a stop it (not receiving PMs) what would then happen to your position, are you still going to be a merit source?🤔
I'm ok with what ever decision you've made, I'd say instead of leaving all these behind why don't you change the way you normally use to do or have a specific time to preview  post or why not take that space of Ratimov since he's no longer making use of that thread or start your thread (with a title you choose)...just saying, and don't feel bad for doing what you did, after all you don't know which is sending a PM if is an alt or not.

Have to say a big thanks S.C...

You have your own right to make use of any criterial for the pattern to how you distribute your merit, if you think this has gone so far, then consider it a worthwhile benefit as well, you have achieved a lot in doing that.

I may also want to go by your idea of stopping it because of the numbers of inflows on request for the review, in which a times its could be tiring or frustrating when you even see those that don't qualify applying, maybe you can be it a personal deliberation on whom you see make a quality post, then you go through their profile and if you finds such interesting, you can choose to merit such without them applying.

In a nutshell, my suggestion is that, you may choose to make a personal random selection on forum members whom you must have targeted for making quality post and go through their profiles, if the initial method of profile review base on application does not work anymore, you can take it up yourself to choose on a random selection of quality posters across the boards, it will be a surprised for someone who doesn't expect merits seeing you giving him, just my suggestion anyway.

quote author=Casdinyard link=topic=5426440.msg64009398#msg64009398 date=1714406179]
and you get a pretty exhausted merit source.
[/quote]

Nail===>Head.  Plus at this point--at least as far as doing post history reviews--I'm a dejected one due to the general mediocrity of the posts I'm seeing come my way and the 98% certainty that I've been meriting members with alt accounts making borderline 'good' posts.  I always tried to be generous, but I've also kept in mind why the merit system was such a blessing from on high (Theymos).  No way in hell I want to start helping shitposters or account farmers to rank up with relative ease.


No problem; you write well and you earned the merits I gave you.  Lol about the chicken nugget.  I'd prefer an extra dipping sauce, but honestly anything free these days I'm grateful for.


Oh yeah.  It's basically just that it's going to be harder to get rid of my monthly allotment of sMerits each month.  Over the years, the closeness of my reading on the forum has diminished due to the quality of the average post.  I've come to expect that most posts here are just crapola written to earn money (which can be seen in the number of duplicate answers whenever someone asks a question; nobody really reads anything anymore, and for the literary-minded I can't say I blame them).  But I'll keep spreading those merits around, believe me.


Nah.  I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way, as I did when I first became a merit source in 2019, i.e., reading and evaluating.


You're welcome.  Your posts are kind of funny, even if your grammar is atrocious (lol). 

...............................And with that, I am sealing this thread with a kiss and burying it in dust and the sands of time....................................