No matter how much you provide for the needy around you, but you cannot finish their poverty as long as the government is not doing something for that. If the government is not doing anything to provide them an opportunity to work (unless they are handicaps) and earn for themselves, it deserves to be blamed for it.


Not everyone get their wealth out of luck. Maybe a few get lucky enough to earn a lot of money in a very short period of time, or some may get it as an inheritance from their ancestors, but the majority of the people having a lot of wealth are the ones who have seen hardships in their lives as well but they came out the other side with a better lifestyle, and that's because they worked hard. And to be honest, the ones who get their wealth by luck, would rarely understand the situation of a person in need while if someone's wealth is hard-earned, he would definitely understand that without even saying.


Though giving money to the homeless and needy people is a good deed, but that would absolutely not eradicate poverty, not at all. Passing by such people and giving them money, food, supplies or anything every day would simply give them enough for the day, but that wouldn't finish their poverty. As long as they don't get a source of income for themselves, they won't be stable, and that is what people or the governments should be looking forward to do. Only distributing wealth won't make the world a better place for the less privileged unless you provide them with a source of earning it of their own.

And, check the post history of someone who hasn't got a single Merit yet but has written something very good. Such users mostly plagiarize from other posts or simply copy/paste things from outer sources.

---

@philipma1957, you, being a Legendary member, and a now a Merit source too, should know the basic rules of the forum and try not to go against them, and break them. You now have the responsibility to promote new users as you have the power of a source, so maybe you should be a little bit more careful with these things because younger members usually take motivations from higher rank users of the forum, and it won't be a good impression on them.

I wonder why you have never got any Merit even after writing such big posts.
Oh, yes! It is not about the length, but it is about the point you are conveying through your post, and if what you convey has nothing useful, it is not needed, no matter how long it is.
Learn to be constructive and give out the things that the community needs to know. And then writing articles as big as this one might benefit you as well and earn you a Merit or two.



It's big enough, IMO.

Not all of them suffer from something like this. I was a Newbie at the time Merit system was introduced, and I never felt like suffering because of that. You only suffer if you don't have what it takes, and that is because of your own inabilities. You cannot blame the system for that.


Not every one have gotten into higher positions because of the post quality in past, and each and every step being taken right now are the consequences of those things. If there was no spam, account farming or anything like that in past, there wouldn't have been anything to stop it, like the Merit system and now this, but it happened, and to tackle that, the community had to do something and so they did.
Besides, even if there was no spam in past and no system like this until now, I'm sure they would have been implemented later in future, seeing the current situation of the forum.


Again, if that was true, I and many other users wouldn't have been able to earn any, and remain Newbies until now, like many of you. There is no partiality in the eyes of anyone in the forum, but you need to show them that you are worthy of it.


Yeah, so that you guys can outrun us by 1/1000 votes on every 1% counted.   That really sounds like a good idea to me. theymos should probably try something like this next time when he is doing something to prevent spam or something. I mean, it isn't a bad idea to have a poll among the workers of a company before firing them (because they have been constantly ruining the reputation of it) and act according the results of that. Is it?  


Because Bitcoin doesn't need moderation, and Bitcointalk does (?).  

You have every right to be. At the end of the day, this has stopped you from earning free money. And who wants that chance to be taken away from them, huh?


You have a chance to remain a Jr. member, only if you can earn just 1 Merit with your posts, which doesn't seem to be a very tough task, though it might be one for you.


Would you have left your bounty hunting tasks and start working on this if you were notified for the change that you are gonna need 1 Merit to be a Jr. member in future? I doubt it. And if you would do this in that case, you can do it now as well, only if you have the ability to achieve what it takes.


This doesn't damage any bounties, it only damages the hunters, who have made this forum a marketplace for getting money for doing nothing. Such people (including you) should either start dedicating some of your time to the forum, or simply leave it and find another job (I assume that's what you people take it as).

These changes have been in discussions for a very long time now. I assume you haven't been a part of them since you think it can be a joke, but in reality, the forum has become a joke for the last couple of years because of the vast majority of spambeasts who are right now busy whining and crying by creating useless and repetitive threads in Meta just because they have been demoted and would require Merit to get their rank again and be able to wear signatures so that they can start their bounty business again.

In a few weeks from now, we are surely going to see a very large amount of spammers leaving the forum because they won't be able to do what they have been here for, and that would be a very pleasing time for a lot of us. I know, that some of them might bypass this assuming they might have other accounts to fill up the need of their lower rank accounts, but most of them will surely get tired of trying and run away, because I don't really think they would be able to earn any Merits since all they have been doing was posting crap and hunting bounties, none of which must have given them any knowledge at all which is what's required to be constructive.

Exactly! And it will keep going for a few days/weeks/months until they get tired and start leaving one by one, or to find some illegal way of getting a Merit to rank up. We're gonna have a Show again that none of us are gonna like, but we will still have to watch it till the end. Poor us! 

That's only what we can do. This is what happens every time when some new restriction is implemented that irritates the large community of spammers and they just start either trying to get passed the restriction or simply post rubbish or repetitive things to annoy the mods and other users.

Maybe theymos should've assigned some new mods along with the 36 new Merit Sources to have the situation, that we are gonna face for some time now, a bit in control.

There is no need for that. Deserving members would eventually get there if they keep visiting the threads they should and avoid posting only in SMTs (Spam Mega Threads) which would never ever get anyone a single Merit even if they keep posting so many decent posts in there. If people think they cannot keep up with the quality required to rank up, then they simply don't deserve to rank up at all. But if they can make up their minds to dedicate some of their time into their posting routine, they won't really need any reviews to their profiles in order to get Merits and rank up.

Remember; the changes have only restricted the signature wearing ability of Newbies, not the posting. So constructiveness can still take them out of that well and show them the dawn if only they can do it.

Merit system helps those who help themselves.  

I know, the original saying is "God helps those who help themselves", but it just felt right to say it like that here  

What rules are you talking about?   Why would new members not like the rules? Merit system is something beside the rules. It is just a system implemented to reduce spam and restrict useless users to rank up which is not something not to be liked by anyone if they are genuine users and are not bounty hunters and signature spammers.

Read the rules here if you haven't already. Seems like you have are comparing the systems to the rules, which are somehow different.

Finally, something to back-up the Merit system a little bit. Those out-of-control spambeasts would now have no reason to keep doing what made the forum look extremely off-context. Eventhough they can possibly bypass this quite easily if one of their friends/relatives have some sMerits to give away, but that won't be the case for everyone, and it would definitely reduce the spam to a large extent.

Thank you hilariousandco for always saying this to be implemented though it took some time, and thank you theymos for finally implementing this.

I'm literally happy to see this happening!  

Although I think it is a good idea overall, but I totally agree with the people that are saying that it should not be a priority right now.
Seeing the current situation of the forum, I don't think it would be good to convert your complete focus to something else other than the present problems that need time and work. Leaving a job that needs more work and taking up another task in your hands seems utterly unprofessional to me.

Currently, we don't really need more good new users, but we need to get rid of the bad old users.

I don't think there can be any involvement of greed for something that benefits you in no way even if you keep it with you all the time, and if someone thinks of collecting sMerits and keeping them as a collection, that would totally be an idiotic mindset to have. I think just because the spam has taken over the complete forum (Bitcoin Discussion might be on top 5 of most corrupted (by spammers) boards, but the whole forum is bleeding, TBH), the posts that are actually meant to be Merited are mostly missed because of the excessive spam posts submitted after them, and are that's why not seen by people who are willing to give away their sMerits.


What about the accounts that are inactive from before the system was implemented? There are hundreds or thousands of accounts that are not being used anymore. Some because the people using them have left the forum, and most of them because they had been red tagged and left unused after that by the signature spammers. All of those accounts must have also gotten sMerits from the airdrop, but since they have not been used, the sMerits are frozen within those accounts. I think those frozen sMerits would probably have made a difference assuming the inactive accounts would be quite large in number.

Thank you for adding me to the list. I was hoping to get listed in this list (where we are posting right now) because I thought it has more active members which may help me a little bit to get the required Merits to rank up. I think my posts are good enough for that, but maybe others don't think so and I don't always meet their criteria for a quality post.

Merits given away in the first few months after the implementation of the system were way more than the latter months till now. The distribution has since been decreasing, and a possible reason for that is that Merits are cut into half when given away, because the receiver only gets to give away 1 sMerit after receiving 2 Merits which have probably caused the existing sMerits to shrink somehow. As soon as more Merit Sources are chosen, that amount would gradually increase, hopefully. Other than that, the posts that are constructive or even mildly constructive are unnoticed because of the spam that is posted after them which covers them up, and a person carrying sMerits to give away don't get to see them unless they care to surf multiple pages in search of a post worth Meriting. And that is very big reason why some people being constructive enough are lacking Merits.


To @OP,
A little shameless self-promotion-- Is it possible for a person to get a place in the list if he lacks more than 10 Merits to rank up?  

If you are asking about the forum, then I came here for learning, and I have learnt a lot, and I'm still here for learning as one can always increase the knowledge he has.

Although quite spoiled by the large number of people with the only will to earn money, this forum is still the most precious place for me to be when it comes to crypto. I could not find a better place than this in my entire life for the knowledge and the legends that exist/existed in here. I just wish I could find out about Bitcoin earlier and could join the forum at the time when there wasn't a thing like spam but only pure knowledge flowing in every single topic created in any random board.

The reason behind the weekly decrement of participation in giving away sMerits might be the increment in the spamming industry of the forum. People tend to find high-quality posts to give away their sMerits, as theymos himself said:

So, I think people are taking that very seriously and that might have affected the circulation a little bit.
Other than that, as someone else also said in a post earlier, the system is designed in a way that such changes with time are not really surprising. Getting 1 Merit produces only 0.5 sMerits for you which means only 50 sMerits are generated from 100 Merits given away. That is also one of the reasons of why this is happening, I believe.

Is it just me who thinks that OP is not the original owner of this account? Because, a person who has spent around 2 years on the forum (Date registered: 8 November, 2016) should know how the trust system works, and should probably know the very simple and basic rules that sharing referral codes and using link shorteners is not allowed.

He has probably bought the account for either signature spamming or something else which is still unknown to us. Look at all those one liners in his post history. That doesn't represent a genuine senior member of the community.

And, in case the account is his own, I think what he did is not really worth it. People dream to reach the rank he is at, today, and he ruins it to get a little referral commission from a site that is barely legit.

I don't know how the "views" are increasing day by day. Maybe the old members are opening them for seeing stuff for posting and references and some other reasons, because if the newcomers were really reading the stickies in each board, there wouldn't have been so many repeated questions and threads in almost every single board. I don't think they don't care about being nuked or banned as their purpose is to earn money from the forum and they won't be able to do it after any of the two, I mentioned, happens. Maybe they are too lazy to read them, or they just don't realize they are important and they ignore them because they are a little dim in appearance than the threads below them, I don't know.

If the selection really happens, then Bitcoin Discussion and Altcoin Discussion boards would require more mods, and Economics section definitely needs a mod or two. These are the most annoyingly crowded boards on the forum which probably require a lot of attention and clean up. Other than that, Beginners & Help can use one more mod along with Flying Hellfish too.