I have seen his/her post about how happy he/she is because there are many people from 3rd world country who do a good job and contribution to this forum and make money from it, and the money is considered big in their country. If this system happened, then the poor will be troubled a bit if they want to join the sig campaign. It will be like a money game, one who has money will have a higher chance to be in the game.

Let me post this first and i will find theymos’ post. This reason is just a conclusion from me tho.

Okay, this.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2986106.msg32203954#msg32203954

If you are not seeing people getting merit, then i guess you are not roaming the entire forum i guess. There have been a lot of merit given to high quality posts. And please, it is not even 2 months since merit comes.

If you see this kind of buying and selling activity, i guess you need to contact your moderator and ask him to help you to appeal this kind of problem to other moderator or even admin. Because not all moderator can read and speak in russian, but i guess your local moderator can talk russian and explain it to other moderators.

What is techie? Do you mean someone with a lot of tech knowledge? If it is yes, you are not required to be a techie to get a merit. You just need to be more engaged and connected to the forum. Being a techie is a plus side if you can, and you dont need to be a good techie, just in bitcoin and crypto things.

Learn, you still can. There are lot of things can be learned in the internet about bitcoin and crypto. You can use youtube,read news, or other platform. And you can come to this thread too to learn things https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2968050.0

It really depends on the ICO itself, and not all the coin prices dropped after they released on the exchange. The key is to do a good technical analysis on the project itself. If you do a good one, you might  find a good recently ICO like VLB. Myself is more kind of a person who buys at ICO.

You should add this ICO to your list because i have seen your OP and i would to add this with the same reason as you have mentioned in the OP.

VLB - founder with experience in real world car related business ( made CarFix and CarPrice company and it is fully working now), team experienced in blockchain (IBM blockchain director, partnership with QIWI Blockchain Technologies)

That is how to explain it short. Hope you can check the project yourself.

There are things you should make sure before investing into cryptocurrency and ICOs, which are :
1. You have strong mentality.
2. You only spend the amount you can afford to lose.
3. You pick the right cryptocurrency or ICOs.

These 3 things are based on experience i guess, you can not achieve it instantly. So my suggestion for now that you can learn instantly is picking the right ICO or Cryptocurrency. ICO and cryptocurrency is a high return high risk investment, so you need to do a great technical analysis, lets take a sample of recent ICO i found, VLB, technical analysis should cover things like :
1. Basic idea of the project, do you think the project is unique and can be executed? IMO, VLB can.
2. Founder. VLB founders have a lot of experience in car related business and one of them own 2 companies, CarFix and CarPrice.
3. Team and advisors. Team should be solid. VLB has an IBM blockchain lab director, one of great member from this forum as an advisors, etc.
4. Partnerships. An ICO can be measured from their partner too. QIWI, Uber, Magnusson and a lot of great name in their respective field are in partnership with VLB.
5. Caps. Softcap and hardcap of VLB is realistic enough.

So, you should. But you must know how to invest and how to pick one.

Indeed it is difficult but it is not impossible. you are doing very great compared to other members in the forum.

That is the problem with local people, maybe they are here only for money or they dont want to improve their english so they cant talk in international board, so the chance of they are getting merit is lower than people who are roaming to all board of the forum. It is considered already by admin and other established member to add more merit sources, but the thing is, does your local board has established members who has the ability to distinguish good and bad post? If your local board has it, they can apply themself to be a merit sources by finding 10 great posts and post it as a thread in meta section.

Here is the list of my strategies, lets make VLB as an example (because this is my recent ICO) :
1. Check website for all ico rating, i usually use icorating.com, and i see that VLB is having a good score.
2. Do technical analysis. Read their white paper for the basic idea, founder and member background checking, understand the plan and timeline, etc.
3. Only spend what you can afford to lose. This is important, because if you lose money in a great project, no matter what you will still call it a shit project or maybe even calling it scam.
Thats my strategies and i never forgot to apply it, and never regret it.

He did mention that someone must be an established member to be merit sources. Everybody can apply though but only one who fulfill the requirement (an established members and pointed 10 meritorious posts) can be merit sources, and of course it is all comes back to theymos decision.

If you re new, then beginners&help section can do good things for you, also sticky thread on meta may helpful for you, and do not forget to check your local board to get basic things as local boards also have informative thread plus your people can help you a lot without language barrier there. Also, welcome, please do not make another merit thread in the future.

Well, in my opinion, Indonesia Local Board is good, mods work hard (i have seen they clean thread and cheaters) but the problem is in the member's hands. They always bring friends here just to make money (i dont know which one, real friends or alt-accounts) and dive right in to make it without learning anything fundamental about this forum and bitcoin and cryptocurrency, that is the main problem for Indonesian. Recently i found Indonesian using their language outside the local board, i suggested them to learn in the local board but i dont know if the suggestion is effective or not.

Adding more merit sources is the key for merit to be succesful for now, because if we have a lot of them, then maybe it can provide merit to all great post out there. Anyway, Does Indonesian Local Board need more merit sources? I would love to be one if i am competent enough.

I am just a human the same as you, besides, there are many people who got more merits than me. You can do it too by engaging and making a quality post. Have dignity and increase your self quality.

I cannot give you a valid data, but i am one of many people that can rank up in this system. I am waiting for my activity points to reach 250 now. I can only suggest for you guys to keep sharp and engage to the talks and be on topic. I am not bragging, but trust me, it is hard to get it but it is not impossible if you keep giving your best and just dont focus too much on it. 1 merit per day is already a great score if you can make it.

Right now, there is no proposal on reducing the limit on merit needed for each rank, instead people are discussing to ncrease the merit needed. And i see a lot of upper rank member there, and i believe it has a chance to happen in the future because the number of merits will be increasing each month, and there will be more merits sources too in the future.

First rule to invest is you need to do technical analysis, and second is only to invest what you can afford to lose to minimize the risk of losing a lot of money as cryptocurrency is a high risk high return investment.

That is my suggestion for investing.

Next, if you ask me what good ICO for a long term investment, the last ICO i have met is VLB. The project and their member is at great level, but i guess this is a long running project because it can not be executed in a short time, as they already mentioned it on their timeline in their whitepaper. You can look at them for yourself at https://vlb.io/

Your complaining activity wont get you so much merits comparing to contributing activity (which you cant). Because the one who gives you merit by complaining most likely the one who feels just like you and they are most likely not the higher rank people or merit sources who have a lot of merit. Once their merit is out, guess what? you wont get any merit.

And to persuade people to complain? this is a whole new level thing. Maybe the next thing you want to persuade is for people to engage in merit farming/abusing?

Yes this is my main concern too when i read the part "history record of car that would increase the selling back car prices", but i guess VLB would make ti backward compatible even to the start of the production of the car (if possible), but the new car (probably 2018 and 2019 production) would be getting much advantages for the history record and would maintain the price if the user want to sell it back.

Yup, i would love to see it and called it as The Managers (group of super managers like The Avengers) while Theymos is Nick Fury, or maybe Managers League would do too, haha. What i want to say is the sam as TMAN,  since everybody can be a manager (especially the famous and skilled one) i guess it is a good thing if there are some rules to be a manager .

For now there are Singapore, US, Switszerland. But there is Japan too which going full throttle to make cryptocurrency as one of their economic system ingredient. They are regulating cryptocurrency to make it safer and better for their people. Other country worth considering is South Korea as news said that they will lift the ban on ICO. And there is a country who will make a coin and will be the first, it is Estonia. There are lot of ICO made there including Polybius and the last ICO from there is VLB, which hold a great potential in my opinion.

Is there any chance for all managers to gather and discuss a standard of merit requirement for the campaign they handle? In my opinion this is an interesting to do because managers can be served as spammer controller and this would be a great addition to the SMAS.

From my experience, these are the sign of it :

Good :
1. Detailed.
2. Simple but on point.
3. The idea of the project explained to the core.
4. Chart and images for some details.
5. Using a good contrast on color.

These are the good, while the bad is definitely the opposite of them. As we know, whitepaper is the tools to introduce the project to people, so it needs to be great, not only good. Last whitepaper i read wad VLB project , this is one example of a great whitepaper if you ask my opinion.