I keep reading similar sentiments, and it's like you people think making a good post is like woodworking or something.  That it's a craft that you need to practice.  The truth is that you just need to be reasonably adept at writing, and you have to write something that's interesting. 

Forget humor, wit, sarcasm, and all of that--none of it translates well into the written word on bitcointalk, and you're not likely to be rewarded for your efforts.

I find it perplexing, because if you just write on-topic what's in your mind, and you put the words together properly....it's not hard, and it's not complicated.  Does it guarantee you'll get merits?  Absolutely not.  I've seen some well-written posts, and sometimes funny ones, that haven't received any merits, and that's the way it's going to be.  There aren't enough points to go around.  The ONLY thing you can do is to keep writing stuff that's interesting.  And if you don't get merit for it, you don't need to start a thread about the merit system.  None of us are guaranteed to get merits, no matter how fantastic our posts are.  Just suck it up and get used to it.

Who cares?  If you're just here to "grow and learn about this crypto", then you can do so without ever getting a single merit.  In fact, you could learn everything there is to know about bitcoin without ever posting here. 

But we all know that the main reason people come here is because "a friend" told them they can earn money by posting/translating/tweeting/Facebook posting, right?  None of these pajeets come right out and say it, but that's the reason.  In that case, hopefully you can earn your merits on the local boards.  The people in those sections really need to become merit sources so they can keep members away from the English section. 

If your knowledge of English isn't good, you don't have any chance of earning merit here.  This has been discussed in other threads, and it's becoming tiresome.  If you want to know about merit, just read some of the threads in meta.  They're all over the place.

He's not really trolling.  Trolls never put that much effort into any of their posts and usually cause a big ruckus online.  Farming trust merit?  Maybe; I can see that.  But at least his posts are interesting and he knows how to write.  That's more than can be said for 99% of users and/or posts here.  If he gets a disproportionate amount of merits, I'd say he's earned them.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say that I'm still not Lauda, never will be, and I hope Quickseller takes time out from gargling his hot dog to notice this, and that he stops accusing me of being Lauda.  He has a habit of projecting his heinous alt account habits onto other people.

Edit:  I didn't mean to write "farming trust".  It's been a long night and I probably should give it a rest.

I was required to get a Segwit-enabled wallet by the last campaign I was in (and my current one, too), and it was the best thing I ever did.  The fees are incredibly low, whereas before that I couldn't send any amount of bitcoin for under $48 or so.  Those fees are absolutely insane, and they were deal-breakers for me. 

I'm not very technical minded when it comes to crypto, and thus I don't understand the difference between all of these things, but I do appreciate lower network fees when I see them.  And I know damn well that if the network continues to be as congested as it has been, and if fees continue to be high, no one in their right mind is going to continue using bitcoin.

There is a cause and effect relationship--all the posts I gave points to I liked and thus merited them.  But I've only got a limited number of sMerits, so I have to ration them.  And I usually only give them out for posts that are in really good English.   Spelling, punctuation, and grammar all count in my book. Typos I can excuse, but some people just can't write.    I don't merit posts that look like they were written sloppily.   

Other people have different criteria, I'm sure.   That's what's going to make this system work.

I'd say most of the members who post in the altcoin section are complete jizzbags and they probably send whatever merit they have to their alt accounts in an ever-decreasing circle.  Just as a matter of principle I'd give up posting there if I were you.  This post you wrote wasn't bad at all, which is why I gave you a merit. 

These aren't supposed to be easy to earn, so just be patient, but it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of points are handed out in meta.  People who care about the forum post there, and these are usually members who've been here a while and were grandfathered some merit in January. 

Also don't fret that you see seemingly worthless posts being given more merits than some people have altogether.   There's some shenanigans afoot and there probably always will be.   That stuff will take care of itself eventually.   

Life isn't fair, either, I should add.  Don't bite your nails down to nubs over it.

Nor should you.  That goes very much against the spirit of what crypto means.

On the other hand, those places are probably good airdrops and are among a minority that actually pay out.  I've never participated in an airdrop and never will.  It's too much like claiming from faucets or gambling.   Too much effort and risk, and the chance of payout is very slim.  Not for me.  If only everyone in the altcoin section valued their time and sanity as much as I do.

You people keep getting taken over and over by essentially the same scam, just dressed up in a different wig every time.  Smarten up.

That's not true by a long shot.   Anyway, it doesn't surprise me that these posts not only got merit, but got it from two well-respected members here.  I know I don't check every post I merit to see if it's a copy-paste.  In fact I haven't checked a single one yet. 

As stated, the issue isn't with the merits these scum suckers earned but with the plagiarism itself, and once that's caught the account that got the merit will be nuked anyway. 

And I say props (big props) to the folks who are catching these nutsacks.  Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

You're assuming this guy is concerned about ranking up, which he may not be.   Nor may he be here just to make money, but that'd surprise me.   In any case, there are a lot of Indonesians here, and I think that particular local board is a thriving one, so I'd suggest he start off there.  His English doesn't seem to be that bad, so it's really up to him--but the English language board definitely has more action in it.  Welcome and good luck.

Well, if you're looking for shitposts, then look no further than this thread--it's filled with them.  And it looks like they were all written by members who probably won't ever earn enough merit to reach Sr. member status, but we'll see.  I've been telling myself that it'll take some time, and the amount of garbage on bitcointalk will subside, but I honestly thought I'd see results a lot quicker.  What are people getting out of writing this garbage:
And most of the rest of the posts don't really say much of anything.  The OP doesn't even make a whole lot of sense, because it's a poorly-formulated question.

I don't know about bounties, but sig campaigners are largely responsible for the shitposting problem.  Account farmers are necessary because the bct account market is alive and well, so that's another part.  The toolbags who chase after airdrops tend to pollute the whole altcoin section, but this doesn't bother me much since I have most of it on ignore.  One of the best things I ever did on bitcointalk.
Ah!  In that case, I'd say why wouldn't you?  Most of these projects aren't destined to change the world by any means.  Holding onto any of those tokens is basically like watching your money burn--I think most of them are going to be worthless, and sooner rather than later.

What you wrote is basically a generic shitpost of the kind I've seen thousands of times on bitcointalk.  The fact that someone sent you 3 merit points for this makes me very suspicious--either the guy who sent it to you is an idiot who likes to waste merits, or there was an arrangement between the two of you.  It's not that your English is horrible, because it isn't; it's the fact that the content of this post is just vapid, and it says to me that you're posting to either get paid or rank up, and not to contribute anything useful.  I've read posts just like yours many, many times before.  I'm really hoping the merit system eliminates the incentive for this crap.

What you wrote doesn't make any sense, and it's not clear what you're asking.  You might want to try just posting on the local boards, since you obviously don't have a handle on English.  I'm pretty surprised you earned 5 merit points so far--assuming you actually got them fair and square.

OP, if you've read any of my own posts, you'd know I'm with you in wanting to correct people's grammar and spelling, but when you make suggestions like these, people get offended very easily--and more importantly, they more often than not end up ignoring your suggestions.   I suspect a lot of users here don't even think grammar, let alone spelling, is important.   In addition, I think many users are just plain uneducated and don't have the capacity for improvement.  That may sound harsh but I think it's true.

I absolutely agree with this under many circumstances.   However, when it comes to the mixed bag of users that make up bitcointalk, wit is something that isn't even worth shooting for--just like sarcasm and humor.   Those things tend to get misunderstood more often than not and probably won't earn merit most of the time.   Nor does the average user from Asia have much chance of writing something witty outside of their local board.  For them, if they write anything less than 200 characters it's pretty much guaranteed to be a shitpost.

Well we see the same thing in the main section, which is English.  People are constantly posting unintelligible garbage, sometimes not even with the benefit of google translate.  My guess is that some people just haven't caught on that there's really nothing to gain from doing this.  Or, since this forum seems to be a magnet for idiots who would kill for an IQ of 70, they may think they're actually posting something substantial.  Then there's the possibility of these morons being bots...you just never know with bitcointalk.  

But I agree with the sentiment that the merit system will *eventually* take care of posters like the one OP is describing, and the ones who do the same thing on the main board.  This is all contingent on campaigns/bounties not hiring newbies & Jr. members, though.  If a low-ranked member can get paid to post no-effort spam posts, that's what he'll do 95% of the time.
I'd say that would normally be true, except now that you need merit to rank up, there's no benefit in just constantly posting garbage posts.  Activity may go up, but rank will not.

Yes, and in addition I would say that a creative, informative post is still exactly that--it benefits the community.  Whether someone gets a merit point for it or not is secondary.  I think lower-ranked members need to start facing up to the reality that it's going to take a lot longer to rank up now, and that not all of their posts (or any, for that matter) are going to be rewarded with merit.  These people who are fretting about a lack of reward for all their hard work--these are the ones I envision who would go back to shitposting once they hit legendary and no longer needed to earn merits.

Vod is definitely right.  We all need to give the system a chance to play itself out, and people need to realize that this forum isn't like it was a month ago with respect to ranking up.  The forum has had a huge problem with spam and garbage posts, and as frustrating as it is to newbies, this system is a(n overdue) response to that.

LOL.  That's not going to happen.  If only every person in the US drank only 3 more servings of Coca-Cola per day, my stock would make me a millionaire.  It's the if only part of your post that makes it an unrealistic condition.  All that money that flowed out of the stock market when it had a correction last week did not flow into crypto, and if the stock market were to lose 50% of its value next week, the money isn't going to flow there either.  Crypto money is separate from money invested in the stock market, and I don't think there's much of a correlation between the two at all. 

Frankly it'd be nice if someone with a background in econometrics did a study about this.  The only thing we're doing here is speculation with basically no hard data to back us up, and my opinion is as good as anybody else's as far as I'm concerned.

This sentence makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  This is basically like saying "Money left the Dow and was invested in the Dow".

I don't know where all that money went, but right now it's pretty obvious that investors aren't done with the stock market yet.  We had a pretty good dip and now we're recovering.  I suspect that the money that was taken off the table wasn't invested in extremely risky assets like crypto, but was converted to cash.  People take their profits when prices get sky-high.  It happens in the stock market and in crypto.  It happens in every market.  Bitcoin isn't a safe haven asset, and it's not a "storm shelter"--not by a long shot.  I get the feeling that the people who buy crypto are the ones who aren't in the stock market at all.  The ones who think the stock market is rigged or which is tied to banks or whatever.  
Eh, that's pretty much what the average person gets out of it and is what they think of when they think of bitcoin.

Yep, and though I didn't take a look at OP's posts, there's also the problem of good posts being buried in a sea of shitposts.  I've seen that happen so often in bitcoin discussion, economics, and altcoin discussion.  That's the whole problem this forum has been having all along.  And I've said this in other threads:  It's not supposed to be easy to earn merit.  If it was, there would be no point in having the system.  Get used to writing constructive posts that don't earn merit. 

Suck it up and try again. 

Also, it disturbs me somewhat that members are basically saying "Oh!  I put in so much effort into this post, and no one is giving me merit points!".  In my view, people ought to be writing posts because they want to.  That's what I was doing when I joined bitcointalk, and I wasn't in a signature campaign for quite some time--when I found out what they were, it was like being able to get something for free.  These places would be paying me to post, which is what I would already be doing.  So these kinds of threads are telling me people are still here just to earn money, and not to write good posts.  I'm not surprised, but people like OP need to stop making these threads which are basically advertising all their posts that they think need merits.

I'll have to take a look at these articles, but my first impression is that this is stretching it a bit.  Fecal-oral route transmission is always going to happen upon a dirty store clerk to spread E. coli, but I'll be interested to see what Forbes has to say.

These kind of articles make me itch, as they're exactly what I expect during a bubble.  "This new technology will change everything!" is what you hear, along with "This time it's different".  It's a damn good thing we had a correction recently and didn't drop further than $9000.