I can see that your pending paid has gone up now so everything works!

Invite your friends to the pool!

Of course, Epochtalk was made so Bitcointalk could use a better forum software than the current SMF, read here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=523070.0. Bitcointalk on Epochtalk preview is already live in beta.bitcointalk.org. I believe we're just a few steps away from fully migrating to Epochtalk.

Good catch. I gave them both merits. I think others will as well

It wouldn't make much sense to do this right now as Epochtalk is being written from scratch. Theymo's could've done that years ago by just buying a vBulletin license.

So it's been a day or so now since merit was introduced and I've shared some of my thoughts and opinions on it across a number of threads, now I feel I'll compile them all in one place.

1. Is the initial amount of merit people received fair?

Many people have complained at the unfairness of receiving the same merit points when they were 1 week away from a rank compared to someone who just ranked up. Frankly they're right and it isn't fair. However it's hard to have done anything that would have been fair, the most logical would have been to give everyone merit = activity (except for newbies and juniors) but even if we had settled on everyone receiving the merit between their ranks it would've been a much fairer solution overall. In this scenario all Members would have received 55 merit, all full 175 merit etc.

For anyone saying that they should've waited until the next activity period - the argument is completely false because there would be people each activity period who are one activity period away from a new rank.

I think it's safe to say this could've been introduced in a better way but now it's too late and it's just going to have to be something people suck up and deal with.

2. Will it combat spam effectively?

To answer this I think we need to consider the two main sources of spam - account farmers and signature campaign exploiters. Account farmers build up accounts and rank them up to sell them on. Signature campaign exploiters have many alts that participate in signature campaigns. So how do these changes effect each one?

Account Farmers

Account farmers are the ones that will be hit the hardest and this is where we'll probably see the biggest change. They can no longer just spam there 14 posts per activity period to ensure they achieve the highest rank, or even 1 post per activity period until they reach the potential activity they desire and then spam all their posts at once. They will now have to produce constructive posts in order to rank the accounts beyond Jr Member status. Mostly the farmed accounts are sold to people to use for signature campaigns (will probably require member+ we'll cover that next) or just because they want a high ranking account. This will make a huge difference in that many will simply not try and those that do try will have to up their post quality. In short, merit will probably combat this problem very well.

Signature campaign spammers

The second source of spam in the forum comes from signature campaigns, I myself have participated in campaigns and am a big supporter but it's no doubt people create multiple accounts and spam the forum as a result of such campaigns. Before we start, it's important to note that with the changes, junior members can no longer have links within their signature, this in turn will likely lead to signature campaigns being for members and above.

The merit system will struggle to combat this in a number of ways. Firstly all accounts that are already member plus will still be able to participate in campaigns and their post quality can remain exactly the same. This is going to make up a large number of the accounts. It can act as a deterrent to new accounts being created as it will require some quality posts to achieve a higher rank and higher rewards but still people can just farm member accounts and use these, once they have their 10 merit then their post quality does not matter.

Even worse, if signature campaigns decide to still allow Jr Members (this is entirely possible) and accept that they won't have links in their signatures then the spam could actually become worse. In the environment whereby accounts cannot rank up beyond Jr Member without quality posts there is no incentive to write anything of use or substance. Previously signature campaign participants had an incentive to post quality posts because they did not want their accounts to be banned for spamming and lose all of their progress. It would take months to reach a new rank and having to start again is a big set back. If Jr Members are still allowed in campaigns there is very little risk in regard to their accounts being banned for spam, they can simply create another Jr Member in approximately 1 month. In short, I think merit will have mixed effects here and won't be nearly as effective as it will be against account farmers.

3. Is the way that sMerit works well thought and will it be fair and effective?

The math

By now you probably know that the only long term source of sMerit is from selected accounts. Theymos has said that in total there will be 8175 sMerit to be distributed each month. Before we actually look at how this sMerit may or may not be fairly distributed let's just break that down with some numbers.

Each account previously if fulfilling its potential growth would grow by 30 activity per 30 days. Given that, dividing 8175 by 30 we get 272.5. That means that 272.5 accounts with the new measure could grow at the rate they were previously able to grow. Now as of writing we have approximately 1.7m accounts in this forum, of course many will be inactive but even removing those it's a lot more than 272.5

An alternative way to look at this point is to consider the posts per day. If we take the average number of posts per month from January 2015 to December 2017 (therefore discounting for the fact the forum has got a lot busier in the last months than at the beginning of this time period which would only serve to worsen things) we get an average monthly number of posts of 451,274. Given that of those 451,274 posts there will be a total of 8175 merit given out we can calculate that per post we are looking at approximately 0.0018 merit being given per post, or alternatively 1 in 55 posts earning 1 merit. Compare that to previously where a user could assume that per 1 post they'd gain 1 activity up to the limit then it's a much slower rate of progression. These figures were calculated from the official forum stats if anyone wants to check my calculations.

The logic

The math is all very good at showing that there's probably not enough sMerit to go around but it also fails to highlight a number of other things.

Will sMerits be fairly distributed across ranks and sections of the forums? I've seen many concerns that lower ranked members will never receive merit and that it will in fact always go to the higher ranked members of the forum, undoubtedly there is some correlation between post quality and ranking but it does not mean to say that a newbie can not have excellent post quality, will they be rewarded for that, that remains to be seen. Also, given that there are currently about 30 merit sources, will they check enough of the forum that all areas are covered and peoples contributions are rewarded, it's highly likely that they are more likely to be in sections that are regarded as more 'elite' such as 'development and technical discussion' or 'serious discussion'. Newer ranked members are less likely to post in these sections and even some higher ranked members may chose no to, I myself do not and find I am much more able to offer advice in other sections of the forum, it remains to be seen how the spread of sMerits will be across the forum. One seemingly obvious solution to this would be to have more sMerit sources, it does not have to mean more circulating sMerits but more sources would mean that more of the forum is likely to be scoured for good quality posts. Furthermore I think it is worth considering sMerits not being spendable/giftable to legendary accounts, they are effectively wasted as there is nowhere for them to progress from Legendary.

What of sMerit sources that become inactive, we only have a finite amount already, we can be sure that some of the 30 or so sources will become inactive and that even further reduces the scarcity of sMerit.

One thing I feel would be a nice solution in the long term would be to have some sort of way to nominate yourself or others for consideration for a rank increase or a merit boost. Undoubtedly some people's contributions will go unrewarded and they should be able to speak out about it. Of course some consideration of controls would be needed so as to not have many Jr Members spamming saying they deserve more merit.

From both the intuition and the math it would seem right now that we are set for a period of great scarcity and ranks will be much harder to progress throughout, of course it's early days and this could change but those are my initial impressions.

4. Why do ranks even matter, it's not like it makes a difference?

This is one question I found myself answering earlier and the real short of it is this. Rightly or wrongly people can make money by posting in this forum, as they increase ranks, their earning potential increases. The community is incentivised to contribute and help one another by such things as signature campaigns. If we end up in a scenario whereby the elite remain elite and those at the bottom remain at the bottom then it will only promote discontent within the forum. It is vital for the forums success that there is always a progression and a constant stream of new members. If these new members feel that the same opportunities are not afforded to them then they won't stick around.

5. Summing up

This covers most of my initial thoughts on the new merit system, I see a lot of good in it and a lot of potential but also it has a feel of something that was perhaps a little rush and not well thought out. It remains to be seen how well it will function and we should all give it time but subsequently there should be a willingness for people to listen to feedback and consider change. Spam will certainly be reduced in the forum but a correct balance needs to be found between limiting spam and limiting opportunity for new members. If things don't work out and sMerits are too scarce I hope that this is acknowledged and changes are made whether that be in increasing the number of sMerits in supply or reducing the merits required to rank up.

I'm really interested for some feedback and your inputs on this, especially your feelings regarding the total supply of sMerits and if you feel like it's enough to sustain the ranking up of accounts. If anyone has any access to more detailed numbers about things such as the amount of activity gained each month by the whole forum or anything similar please let me know as I'd be really interested to look in to it.

Now feel free to agree or disagree with some of my points but let's try keep it to constructive criticism and discussion instead of just flaming people.

What would be the purpose of the +1/liking a post? Just to show your agree? Would they be tallied up or a score kept to show how many +1s/likes you have? (like being another feedback system). I thought about being able to favourite/bookmark posts or threads, not to score them or whatever, but just to keep tabs on them for future reference.

People are stupid, they have no idea of what could happen to them in few months, paying these overpriced prices is taking a huge risk, in 2013 the problem was not gpu's shortage or increase in gpu prices, it was really the coin price crashing, ltc hit $50 and it crashed to $0.55, that was almost 100 times crash. So imagine now if coin prices crash 100 times again, imagine if eth  which is $1000 crashes to $1, not going to happen cause this year is eth's year and many people are betting on that but why mine something that can be very risk cause of gpus prices instead of just buying the coin is stupid.

Hello miners, I would like to ask a "stupid" question since it bores me for some days:
If someone is using his desktop to do some normal work and in the meanwhile mining like SUMO coin, will it cost addtional power consumption than without mining?

Thanks in advance for reply

I wrote an entire piece dedicated to having a plan before you invest in an altcoin. Here are the key points that I truly believe you MUST follow before you invest to truly have a decent idea of what you are doing.

Look at the website.
Your first impression of the coin is how they present itself to their customer on their website.  Take a holistic approach and read over the whole site.  Does it appear someone just threw it together?  Does it read well and make sense? If the answer to any of these questions is no then you should immediately start taking note something is wrong.  They want people to believe in the tech and vision for millions if not billions of dollars but cant take the time to make a proper website.  Tread carefully!  However, if the website seems legit then just take note of what you liked about it and continue on.

Read the whitepaper! I'll say it again READ THE WHITEPAPER!

This should include what the coin is trying to solve and how they are going to get there. Understand the plan the developers are trying to accomplish.  Does it make sense? Does it seem attainable or is it full of fluff and buzzwords? There are so many white papers that are just copied versions of other coins with a few tweaks.  After you read a few you should be able to identify this and is another sign maybe you should stay away.

If the whitepaper makes sense then you have two great signs! Next, you should look at the roadmap.  It should align with what the whitepaper discussed and give milestone that the project is trying to accomplish  Have they met these goals? Has the roadmap been updated if they have or haven't met those timelines?


Examine the forums

Look at the market trends/volume for the coins.

Never invest more than you can lose.

More details on all of these points can be found at the article below.


https://theminerhub.com/news/what-to-do-before-investing-in-an-altcoin/

Just be active here in forum and post high quality post if someone gives you a positive merit until you reach 60 activity and 10 merit in your account your account will upgrade to member account and this rank you can hyperlink url or for your signature..
Much better to read the complete function of merit here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522