~plenty of other people that have well over 1500 merit. Should I still merit there posts if I think it is good? I realize merit is meant for good posts, but I am not a merit source and my merit is limited so I am really stingy with merit, escpically when I feel like they don't need the merit, especially staff and admin accounts.
Merit is addictive: I have no use for it, I don't need it, and yet, I've checked every Merit transaction that ever reached me (MSP (Merit Source Problem): that's
a long scroll down each time).
Merit shows appreciation, and that's much appreciated.
Admin (theymos) is my favourite profile to
send sMerit to. Not because theymos needs it, but because I think many of his posts should be read by many people. And I use it to find back theymos' posts, although the list gets too long already.
However, if you're not loaded with sMerit, by all means, give them to someone else who deserves it. Not because they "need" it to rank up, but because they're good users who aren't spammers and thus shouldn't be restricted on this forum. And helping them Rank up ultimately helps this forum.
I've slightly adjusted my stance on meriting posts in the past year, but this is what I do now. And the lower the rank, the less demanding I am.
When Theymos tapped all those new merit sources last September, he sent out a PM to the new sources in which he implied that sources should hand out merits to Newbies pretty liberally. I just can't find it within myself to lower my standards, though. If a post by a new member is just average or is written in very broken English, there's no way I'm going to give them merits for it.
I don't really care about broken English, as long as it's a real user who has a real interest (or problem to solve). I'm a bit afraid spammers will copy this to earn Merit on new accounts, so I always check for plagiarism before meriting a Newbie.
Many of the Newbies I merit disappear again, which confirms to me they're real users, not spammers or account farmers. And those are the users this forum needs, if only they'd find the interest to stick around.
Some examples:
crossevian,
superbotolo and
Nikaniko319.
The problem now is the lower rank users aren't posting what this meriters consider high quality posts because not everyone is LoyceV that might merit you just because your post isn't spam. Most members have strict rules.
Lol
Let me explain again why I do this: Merit was meant to stop account farmers from ranking up their farmed spam accounts. If a user isn't a spammer, that's a win for the forum and he can turn into an asset. Or maybe my expectations have been lowered after seeing too much spam
A Newbie making one "not spam post" won't earn him many Merits, but if he continues like that and makes hundreds of posts that are more or less decent, he'll get there eventually. That's also why I usually give only 1 Merit per post.
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, the number is really shocking. This does not look like a manual job
