Obliterate all Aridropped Merit Please @theymos

[dragonvslinux]

I think eventually another merit airdrop will be necessary, rather than destroying "airdropped" merit, especially if there are continued waves of permabans for plagiarism, spamming, multiaccounts, etc, that includes enough higher ranking members. The continued culling of higher ranking members with the lack of members ranking up (in compairson) will require further merit airdrop in my opinion to maintain the same number of ranking users. Maybe not now, but in the future.

I realise many high ranking members will not like this, but if new users came here and earned a minimum of one merit while contributing activity to the forum, then I think they are deserving of further merit. After all many newbies disappear when they find it too difficult to rank up, even ranked members, so it makes sense to reward those who stuck around rather than gave up because "they couldn't rank up". I think we're still a year or two away from needing another merit airdrop though.

Maybe alternatively there could be merit decay, for users who are no longer active, but I don't see why removing all merit completely makes any sense, personally.

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[malevolent]

I'm against removing all airdropped merit but some sort of activity-based decay (like Loyce mentioned above) would be good I think.

I'd like the number of merits shown on user profile and next to each post to be changed to show earned merits instead of total (or show both, or show merit/posts ratio). Just a display change, without actually removing merits or demoting anyone.

I'd prefer a merit to posts ratio only be displayed if it counted posts made since the introduction of the merit system. I was mostly active on bitcointalk between 2011 and 2014, and 90% of my posts were made before the merit had come to existence, so I'll admit I'm biased

[FontSeli]

OP, many people that you propose to deprive a Merit at the time really worked hard to improve the forum. They wrote guides, promoted cryptocurrencies to masses of people. And to deprive them of their merits only for the fact that they are now retired and do not show much activity unfairly.
It's like depriving your grandmother of food because she retired and doesn't work.

[Mpamaegbu]

OP, what you're asking for is analogous to telling a company to take away the sole distributorship right it gave to its early patronisers just because some new dudes are coming in with bigger cash and wanting the distributorship deal. I am a member of a forum on crypytocurrency, cryptotalksworld, and I know how tedious it has been for us as early member to get traffic to the site. Will you now think it right to flush out all old members who slaved for that forum if traffic increased a few years from now by denying them certain rights and incentives? Life doesn't work that way and I believe that's the principle Theymos is considering most.

[lobcmt2]

There are users in higher ranks who don't contribute anything, you are right about that but those are a handful compared with low rank spammers.

If a decision is made to do something regarding the airdropped merits I am sure those from high ranks who have not contributed to the forum ever, meaning both before and after the introduction of the merit system, can be singled out manually and demoted if needed. But doing it to everyone in the same way would be wrong.
Someone mentioned Hal - good example, or Zepher or anyone else... May they rest in Peace!

I agreed with you, Pmalek. Even grandfather high rank users have not contributed anything or contributed limited things for the forum, and luckily hit high ranks before January of 2018; they - at least - have not spammed the forum. At least, they did  not spam the forum after January of 2018, because they knew their account values very well, and became more careful with each of their posts. However, non-spam posts don't equal to constructive posts for sure.
Things might become much complex on how to classify grandfather users whom won't be demoted because they deserve such ranks due to their past contributions; and grandfather users whom will be demoted due to their lack of contributions (both in the past and after birthday of merit system in 2018).
Therefore, the best thing to do is don't do anything.