It's also worth mentioning that users don't even do their part for reporting spam.
That reminds me, I'd be interested in the recent numbers, theymos. |
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I'm just waiting for:
"Plz sir i have family starving and i only work this forum and i need rank up for my son,,, can u plz sir review [insert random shitpost links here]".
Oh, sorry. Guess I got a little cynical there for a second. Merit system is fantastic.
Sounds familiar. Oh right, I'm managing campaigns. |
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Well, something needed to happen to prevent these massive amounts of spam and nonsensical posts from flooding the forum.
I don't know if this is the perfect system, but it's at least a very good attempt to tackle the root of the problem.
I do think there also needs to be some sort of general clean up as well, so existing spammers can all start over again with a new 'unmerited' account.
The mods are probably working on that continuously anyway.
This does not address the issue completely. Once the member achieves the required merit for a level, he will spam to complete activity. Other ways like phone verification would have been better. But activity is way easier to gain than merit. Most likely, users will achieve their activity requirement quickly, and then work towards getting merit required. What does that mean? They compete with other users in an attempt to make high quality posts and be rewarded with the limited merit for those. |
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Sind schon User bekannt, die Merit Sources sind?
Ja, Nein. Vielleicht. |
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Many people here don't want to give Merit to others, sometimes even if our reply is good advice!
Perhaps because you are JR or a new person, people don't want to add Merit to you!
You're basing this assumption on what? 12 hours of evidence of which half consisted of people discovering merit, discussing it, and trying it for the first time? This will need some time to settle in and for people to get used to it. Dont expect it to be perfect from the start. |
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You report all the spams accounts you created from your main account and there you have Merit points for reporting spammer.
Merit points are awarded for good posts, not for valid reports to moderators. The problem is non-existent as the reward is non-existent. You didn't understand how the system works. Read the OP again. |
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2) I read the official thread and it mentioned that there are merit sources. What if the merit source itself starts selling merits or creating multiple accounts and sending them merits.
Theymos would have made a bad selection when picking the sources, and would have to remove them upon discovering that. It isn't allowed for sources to sell their merit, a punishment could go from being booted as source all the way up to getting your account banned, depending on how far you stepped out of line.
Why do we always need 10 threads instead of one? Why do we always have to address the same concerns in 3 different threads? |
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Being a high-rank member doesn't necessarily mean having a good judgment on how good/bad a post is.
There's a lot of Sr. Member and even Hero Member who still do a shitposting on this forum and it doesn't quite reflect their position as a high-rank member.
Which is a problem this change is intending to approach. Ranks will be gained not only by sheer amount of posts, but also by quality standards. Why doesnt theymos take them away from everyone now, why do those that already have achieved their position keep it? Well, the public outcry from a change like that would be...I dont even want to think about it. |
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tl;dr: no. Long explanation: @Theymos sMerits should be rejected if given to a legendary.
That would mean high quality posts from legendaries wouldnt be marked as such, which destroys one of the purposes of publicly showing merited posts, giving good examples. Also, when you send merit to a legendary, they gain 50% as sMerit, thus giving them an additional balance to be distributed. Simple example: I have 50 sMerit, I can't read the forum right now and distribute them, but you are writing really good posts, I reward them to you for one of your outstanding posts, now you get 25 sMerit, you do read the forum, select high quality posts from lower members, and contribute to the distribution that way. The difference here being either 50 in my account and dormant/lost or 25 being actively distributed and rewarded. The latter should be the option to pick, imo. |
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@Theymos sMerits should be rejected if given to a legendary.
That would mean high quality posts from legendaries wouldnt be marked as such, which destroys one of the purposes of publicly showing merited posts, giving good examples. Also, when you send merit to a legendary, they gain 50% as sMerit, thus giving them an additional balance to be distributed. Simple example: I have 50 sMerit, I can't read the forum right now and distribute them, but you are writing really good posts, I reward them to you for one of your outstanding posts, now you get 25 sMerit, you do read the forum, select high quality posts from lower members, and contribute to the distribution that way. The difference here being either 50 in my account and dormant/lost or 25 being actively distributed and rewarded. The latter should be the option to pick, imo. |
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For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.
I don't agree with this, this is just like giving the "old members" (including me) a head start. I'm not saying that earning merits is a race but giving us a head start also means giving us a free reputation out of nothing. That does not necessarily mean we need to rebuild our reputation from zero, I mean there are so many members that have earned a good reputation on this forum. So I think the merit points for old members have to be given based on their reputation now and without affecting the rank. I assume you mean trust when you say reputation. Trust is trade reputation, merit is post reputation, the dont have to be directly connected (eg I wouldnt trade with QS, but they can write pretty damn good texts). As merit is a direct requirement for getting ranks, they only way to do this switch is the way it was done right now. They can't "not give the merit" but let you keep the rank. Either you gain the merit and keep the rank, or nobody has merit and we all are newbies again. Then you'll have a problem on how to distribute your initial sMerit to kickstart people gaining merit and rebuilding their previous ranks. Newbie and Jr Member did not give any merit so that they could develop the account. In any sphere of life and activity there must be competition. In this case, it turns out that a person of high rank should go into the branch of beginners, re-read topics and give some good several merits. The busy people will not have time for this, and, in general, wishes too.
Failed assumption. People do read the B&H section, either because they regularly help out newcommers there and help them getting started or because they moderate the section, eg. Another nuance: the forum is like an analog of the labor market for new projects! Many people will be eliminated. From high ranks, someone does not works with the bounty, someone takes only high-paying projects, someone switched to trading. As a result, you can get a crisis in the labor market. After all, bounties give a good increase in investment. And as a result, many projects simply can not collect even softcap, not because they are bad or unpromising, but because advertising in our time is the engine of progress.
Bounty campaigns are creating this issue to start with. They are the last instances we should worry about. This forum comes first, always. |
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If you trust someone you give him merit and if you distrust someone you don't give him merit.
Merit is given based on the quality of posts, and is a finite resource. I can understand the comparison to the trust system, but they aren't as alike as it may seem. A few basic differences: Trust is unlimited, I can give out 100 positive trust ratings today, and not lose anything (maybe my credibility, people would stop caring about my ratings, if I just spam them, but you get the idea).
sMerit is limited. I have a responsibility with it. I can use my sMerit to reward good posts, incentive good behaviour with that (publicly shown) reward and help make this forum a better place by increasing the post quality.
Or I can waste/sell it (likely be banned for doing so), incentive spam and contribute to the already very evident problematic of shitposting.
I cant do both, as I have limited ressources. I have to decide, and if I care about this place, this is an easy decision.
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I can feel the frustration of those who were just a few activity points from full, senior or hero.
No love for us frustrated almost legendary members?  |
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I see people can get a negative Merit Points too. Do you actually rank down if fall under the rank limit?
They can't. This was a bug that was quickly fixed and those ratings/scores were removed. I think we should have the ability to unmerit a post If a post is worth negative Merit, you can simply click " Report to moderator" on the right-bottom of each post. I think unmerit as in remove a given merit. Merits are permanent, and I think that's good. It gives the merit you reward someone a certain finality. You can't flip forward and backwards with it, you make this decision, and you stick with it. It gives the act of rewarding merit a certain gravity. |
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One last thought about it all, when we click on merit on other peoples profile I think we should see who left that merit and where.
This was requested a few times and will be added soon. |
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I don't trust the users to be that active, meaning if I were in a Legendary user and you'll force upon me this merit thing, meaning I have to spend 100 because "with great merit comes great responsibility", I don't know if I would find the time honestly. You have to click a lot more now than before.
By that logic, people also wouldnt use the report to moderator function because you have to do extra clicks (and even enter text/a reason). But the report function gets used, and I expect similar things for the merit function. Good point. Still as already pointed out by others, there is too much clicking involved. One thing is a report, the other is giving a "like". If you just click on the post you like, maybe people is more likely to give sMerit. But merit isn't a like, it's more than that. People should consider which posts they merit (you cant unmerit a post either). The extra step makes people think about whether or not they really want to give merit for something. I think it's exactly right, people who want to troll and spam merit can't do that as fast, while those that leave considered merit for well written posts have almost no annoyance. Or do you really think someone who spends a minute or maybe two reading a post minds taking 10 seconds to merit it? Not if the post is worth it.
Whats the general feeling about meritting old posts?
Merit them if they are still relevant. If you gained some value from them, they are well written and stand out, make it noticable. Well, I am kind of scared to merit some people's posts. Like I just meritted a post by TMAN where the first 90% of it he makes a great point which I feel deserves the point, but the last bit I disagree with. So isn't possible that I will face retaliation from other users because I merited a post like that?
The merit system only works with reward, there is no punishment right now. The biggest "retaliation" you have to fear is not getting merited in return. and what if I merit some of quickseller's posts where he makes amazing points? I feel like some users won't get all of the merit they deserve.
I dont think that is a problem. I got merit from OgNasty earlier. If you follow the forum for a while, you know there's a bit of history there. But when I'll come across a great post of theirs, I'll make that known. Merits are about content, not the person providing it. |
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I don't trust the users to be that active, meaning if I were in a Legendary user and you'll force upon me this merit thing, meaning I have to spend 100 because "with great merit comes great responsibility", I don't know if I would find the time honestly. You have to click a lot more now than before.
By that logic, people also wouldnt use the report to moderator function because you have to do extra clicks (and even enter text/a reason). But the report function gets used, and I expect similar things for the merit function. |
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In my opinion this is not the right use of Smerit points. It should be given to quality posts by lower rank members as they need it more.
I was considering you for some, but I dont think any of your posts deserve merit. Ping me once you've written a post that does (one time chance) and I will make sure of "the right use". |
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it's a very bad idea ....very difficult for other language users!
I just gave out 10 merit for good posts in my local sub. Argument is invalid, try another excuse. but for other languages, who will handle this ? sub forum moderators or administrator ?
Just because I talk english with you doesnt mean I can't read or understand other languages. |
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maybe every new user should have at least 1 sMerit ?
No good. Account farmers would get a ton of free merit, which defeats the whole purpose. the other option of "merit mods" would work better actually after thinking about it.... they look over beginner sub threads and can send Merit to members who are helping newbie ranks who cant give Merit for being helped out.... just thinking sending like 1 Merit once in a while wouldnt be enough, good help is valuable.... The rich get richer in this situation , but also does help the community so theres positives and negatives in any change most of the time Called sources. yes because a great way to help the community is helping new members... but those new members have no Merit to pay your efforts for helping them out.. Which kind of defeats the purpose ?? But it works just for quality posts in general , but i think helping newer members should reward something in this system imo...
Sources monitor eg the Beginners&Help section and reward those helping out newcommers. Problem solved. |
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