sMerit Anti-Hodling Scheme

[Jet Cash]

I disagree.  If I only gave merits to exceptional posts, the majority of them would probably be handed out to Legendary members and I wouldn't be helping members rank up, which is an important thing to a lot of people.  The merit system was intended to make it difficult for shitposters to climb the ranks, but it's become clear to me that there aren't a lot of members ranking up in general--and I don't think Theymos wanted it to be that hard for "good" (but not excellent) posters to rank up.  I was tempted to write "average posters" but average around here means garbage shitpost quality. 

The merit system is not confined to the awarding  of single merits - Exceptional posts can receive awards of up to 50 sMerit. Of course I don't know what Theymos intended to be the primary motivation in implementing the merit system, so I have to guess, and that means that I introduce a bit of personal bias. My impression is that the merit system has two functions. One is to deprive low value noise posters of the rewards that are available to higher ranked members. The other function is to improve the quality and variety of the thread topics in the forum. Without the quality topics and posts, then there is no value in trying to achieve higher ranks, and the forum will start to lose the members that make it the valuable resource that it is at the moment.

We are entering into to period of unprecedented economic change, and I hope that Bitcoin Talk will remain a leading discussion forum for the shift from fiat currencies to cryptos over the next few years. To enable this, we will have to retain and recruit some of the leading players.

[1715193720]

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[1715193720]

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[Upgrade00]

If I only gave merits to exceptional posts, the majority of them would probably be handed out to Legendary members and I wouldn't be helping members rank up, which is an important thing to a lot of people. 

I judge the quality of a post according to rank. Newbies can be rewarded for curiosity, like asking a technical question about a topic that shows a willingness to learn. This could earn them merit but is less likely to earn a Hero or Legendary member any. The quality of a user's post is expected to improve with an increase in rank. So the longer a person stays on the forum, the more activity they get and the more knowledge they acquire, and finally, this is reflected in their merit count.

[philipma1957]

I try to give merit away, but my main problem is that 99% of the posts i come across are either:

• Newbie ramblings, asking questions that have been answered hundreds of times before, spamming,bounty hunting, reflinks, wrong subforum,...
• Posts that were clearly designed to beg for merit
• Good posts by people that don't need any more merit cause their rank is more or less in balance with their merit total

It's very rare for me to see a post and think: "this guy/girl is actually making coherent posts that aren't created for the sole purpose of getting merit, and on top of this, this guy/girl actually needs merit... So i'll send him/her some".

So, the end result is that i'm still sitting on a bunch of smerit, not because i'm trying to be a hoarder, but because the newbie/junior/member/full member post quality is so low i can't in good conscience give them merit.

I feel exactly the same and nearly merited you for that, but didn't want to add to your problem... 

i merited him as his post is very good.

i merited you as your post gave me a smile 😊