What is merit and what is it for?

[tranthidung]

If any member finds your post useful or they like it, you get merit. and when you...

Rank   Required activity   Required merit

Brand new    0                            0
Newbie            1                              0
Jr Member   30                              1
Member    60                            10
Full Member   120                             100
Sr. Member   240                              250
Hero Member 480                     500
Legendary   775-1030            1000

This way you can rank up your account with merit.

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[Bamjos]

Hi

What is merit and what is it for?
Does it give any advantage?
And how to earn it?

Thanks

Firstly, let me start by explaining using facebook and Instagram analogy. Merit is just like the likes or love icon you click on a post on facebook or instagram whenever you find the post interesting or useful, it's same thing here on the forum, whenever people find your comment or thread educating or useful, they merit your post (either thread or comment). Same thing with you, you give out merit to a post whenever you find it useful, this is a way of compensating the author of the post for his problem solving skill.

Now, this is the advantage of merit: without merit, you can't move up the ladder of rank in the forum, you can check here to see the various ranks available in the forum and the corresponding number of Activities and Merits required to attain them. Merits help you to scale up your rank in the forum and it could also partially describe your reputation on the forum.

Lastly, to earn merits, your goal should be to create quality (Educating) post, without this it might be difficult to earn merit on the forum.  You must be ready to contribute sterlingly to the forum.
You can also earn merit by participating in some activities that give merit as reward for getting the challenge right, example of this are: [Merit] Hey Newbies! Can You Sign A Message?, or/and
[Merit] Hey Bitcoiners! Can You Send Encrypted Messages?.
You can also earn merit through the magnanimity of some higher rank members who create threads to assist newbies and people who have little merit left to transit to the next rank, check here for merit assistance, you might be lucky to be assisted!

[Smartvirus]

Merits. These never decrease (except for on extremely rare cases related to cheating), and

Wow, really! I suppose this would be another avenue for some educating because;

My knowledge of merit, smerit and the merit system is one that comes without any form of decay or revocable nature to it except for merit sources that could have there merit bank reduced following a method that considers how many merits they are able to give out.
Looking at the quote as at above, I suppose that to mean cases where merits are reduced (talking about the extreme cases of cheating) and I stand to be corrected if am wrong but;

1. What are those cases?
2. Have any been exemplified in the forum?

Mean while, Merits and the merit/activity system are an upgrade  on the forum brought about by Theymos in order to contain the issues associated with spamming and low quality post from users. Hence, it directly influences one to make posts that either hits the nail on the head or are precise and constructive to explain a view. It could even be given on intelligent questions.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

You must have missed them, since I did point some out on this same thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5394318.msg59847891#msg59847891

They were not really an amount that was anywhere near being significant in the overall picture, but some of the cases were clear-cut enough to get the Admin’s attention, leading to the TXs to be deleted or countered in a few cases.

Deleted: The sMerit TX was deleted and the counters readjusted.
Countered: A Negative amount TX was issued from user "0" (a virtual forum account used for these porposed, with Id 0 on the sMerit TXs).

[Smartvirus]

<...>

You must have missed them, since I did point some out on this same thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5394318.msg59847891#msg59847891

They were not really an amount that was anywhere near being significant in the overall picture, but some of the cases were clear-cut enough to get the Admin’s attention, leading to the TXs to be deleted or countered in a few cases.

Deleted: The sMerit TX was deleted and the counters readjusted.
Countered: A Negative amount TX was issued from user "0" (a virtual forum account used for these porposed, with Id 0 on the sMerit TXs).

Apparently you did call my attention to it and I have scanned through most of what I could find and I must say, the data set wasn't very much an easy read with no clear key to the later as per what the notations stood for or pointed out on the site and it only tales one to have gone through your forum post to grasp what is presented there in. Although, it surely came with some variables that discussed the issue in question.

It's nice to know that there could be an error actually. Having the system fully automated gave me the impression of a some worth perfect system. Well, its not perfect any way and Theymos surely did put it out in the clear cut situation of sent merit as described in the last referenced link as on the first page. Which ever way, yiu did open my eyes to this and I can say, I am aware now. Thanks.