You only have to look to the volumes of merits the merit sources gift each other, or, to those they are trying to give a helping hand to rank up (instead of letting the system work as intended).
That's exactly how theymos intended the Merit system:
But undoubtedly some people got screwed by this, and if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.
Another one to look at are the merit sources who will dump seven or eight merits to nearly all users (because they can't find enough posts to merit)
That too follows theymos' intention:
If they complain about amounts, tell them to complain to me. It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.
then dial back to just one merit to those they are in despute with.
Can you show some examples? I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I'm more careful sending a large amount at once to a Newbie who makes one good post than to more established users.
...and it's not just "useful" posts that are showered with merits either.
Sarcasm works too, or just posts that say a lot about the person making it. For new users, all I'm looking for is "a real user", for instance asking a real question about a real problem. That's what this forum needs, and those users aren't the spammers that were the reason the Merit system was introduced.
I like your suggestion of rotating merit sources in much the same way the DT 1 are "chosen" - each month. Perhaps a strict rule no more than two months in then an automatic one month out then the fourth month you are in the pool of randomly selected.
What does that solve? There's no reason to deny good Merit sources their sMerit for a month. If they're doing a good job, they should continue, and if they're doing bad, they should be removed completely, not just for a month.
If a merit source can't find enough posts to merit, then don't just dump what you have just because you have them.
Why not? As a Merit source, it often feels like a
burden to get rid of source sMerits. A few days ago, I finally managed to empty it, and now I have 106 of them waiting again! The sooner I get rid of them, the sooner they'll replenish and thus the more I can send to forum users.
It might sound draconian but cancell all merits gifted between merit sources.
Why? Merit sources can make good posts too, and when Meriting a post, I couldn't care less if someone is a Merit source or not. It may even discourage people from wanting to become a Merit source.
While we're on the subject: have you applied to be a Merit source yet?
1) We had already seen that theymos seems to be having difficulties establishing any kind of decently large sized pool of merit sources that he is willing to assign. He started out with something like 35 merit sources, and he intermittently increased the merit sources to about 130, one year later (or maybe less than a year later). In the past year, the number of merit sources has only been 100, so the pool seems a bit small, anyhow.
At the last change, inactive Merit sources were removed while active sources got their sMerit amount increased. Those changes lead to more sMerit being distributed.
I have always had a policy to just spend 1 merit per post, with the exception of 2 or three merits from time to time, but even I have found that giving one merit per post can take a lot of time, sometimes, and sometimes I just feel that I do not have that much time to be reading posts.
I started with 1 sMerit at a time, and even after my first source increase I sticked to that. But with
826 sMerit in 30 days I can't keep up that way. I used 4 at a time for a while, until I made the same mistake twice by sending 44 by accident. I now often send 6, so I can't accidentally send 66.
Suchmoon has been very busy with 2555 sMerit in 30 days!
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Thanks!
