Merit & new rank requirements

[nullius]

He could be in the bitcoin scene since several years but just now found this forum and created an account.
Therefore newbie accounts can have a large knowledge on many topics and contribute high quality posts which should be merit worthy.

The former can, and the latter are!  I know this for a fact, because some posts which I made at “Newbie” and “Jr. Member” rank have been awarded merit retrospectively, more than a month later.  In some cases, people actually remembered them; in others, fresh readers were linked to them from another post and/or it is an open-source software release thread which gets bumped occasionally.

Following is an incomplete selection of posts I made before the start of the merit system, whilst at the bottom two ranks, which received merit long after the fact.  It is reasonable to expect that had the merit system been active in December, many of my other “Newbie” posts would have been awarded merit when they were fresh.  Note:  I first started actively posting 2017-12-01.  (I created the account 2017-03-29, then avoided this place for eight months due to the spam.)  Note also:  I ranked up to “Member” on 2018-01-30, so I started with zero merit; but on 2018-01-29, I logged in after a few weeks’ absence and found that I already had 17 merits from old posts.

Rank	Date/Time	Title	Current Merit
Newbie	2017-12-05 20:29:09	Will Bitcoin sidechains kill all altcoins?	+1
Newbie	2017-12-06 04:36:54	Re: Bitcoin not so anonymous?	+1
Newbie	2017-12-06 14:00:36	Re: Bitcoin not so anonymous?	+2
Jr. Member	2017-12-23 09:13:03	Re: Pieter and Greg, Bech32, please	+5
Jr. Member	2017-12-25 22:29:23	Bravo Charlie One: Branding Bech32 (cross-posted from bitcoin-dev with a few edits)	+3
Jr. Member	2017-12-29 21:54:59	bech32(1) for encoding/decoding of Bech32 strings & “Bravo Charlie” Addresses	+9
Jr. Member	2017-12-29 23:06:31	easyseed(1) secure, multilanguage tool for BIP 39 mnemonic & seed, BIP 32 xprv	+4
Jr. Member	2018-01-04 22:14:26	Re: Keys and such like - can they be rebuilt from partial?	+10

Wherefore, I agree that “newbie accounts can have a large knowledge on many topics and contribute high quality posts”; and per my experience, such newbie posts are indeed found “merit worthy” by others.

Many people here are missing that there is a life outside of this forum and the rank here is only one of many indicators how well informed someone might be about cryptos.

B4RF, does it genuinely appear to you that the account you and JayJuanGee are discussing fulfills these criteria for somebody with quality posts to contribute as a “Newbie”?  Does that look like a “well informed” person who simply has “a life outside of this forum”?

[adekpulpen]

I see many quality post here but didn't have a merit. As I can say the problem will be the members who are not participating the purpose of the merit system.

You are right, a lot of quality posts, which do not get merit
and I think that got merit, only people who know each other, they reply to each other merit

[tengui]

I am trying to contribute more in this forum. So far I have never got a reward from anyone, even I always pay attention to every post that I make so someone will give me a merit. I think it is very difficult to get it easily, I am commenting here just to know how to make a constructive and meaningful post so that I will get merit for posts I have made. I'm sure you guys will help me in this regard, given my rank is still a member and just a few months just join the forum.

[TheQuin]

I am trying to contribute more in this forum. So far I have not got any merit from anyone, even I always pay attention to every post that I make so someone will give me a reward. I think it is very difficult to get it easily, I am commenting here just to know how to make a constructive and meaningful post so that I will get reward for posts I have made. I'm sure you guys will help me in this regard, given my rank is still a member and just a few months just join the forum.

Looking at your post history apart bounty applications you only post in off-topic. There's nothing wrong with that if you just want to collect bounties and have no interest in Bitcoin. Just don't expect to get any merit that way.

[B4RF]

I don't know why some normal comments/topics by high rank member get contributing very much merit ? For new members like me , it's very hard to achieve merit by someone even we have valuable topics

how would you even know? 

You been registered about two months and you have 14 posts (13 out of 14 largely one-liner posts in the past two days).

I recall that I was on the forum for several months and attempting to interact with other members in bitcoin substantive threads, and it takes a considerable amount of time for other members to get to know you and to respond to you and to interact with your posts (more than a couple of days).

 You could hardly even have experimented with the interaction aspect of this forum if you only have 13 posts in a couple of days, right?

Yes and no.

I dont think merit should only be awarded to highly interactive posts.
He could be in the bitcoin scene since several years but just now found this forum and created an account.
Therefore newbie accounts can have a large knowledge on many topics and contribute high quality posts which should be merit worthy.

Many people here are missing that there is a life outside of this forum and the rank here is only one of many indicators how well informed someone might be about cryptos.

Who fucking gives a shit if you have a life outside of the forum and you have been a lurker on the forum for 8 years?  It does not matter, and no one is going to give you merits because you happen to be a good person in real life if they don't know what that supposed goodness is. 

Further, we don't judge you based on your many accounts and your many speculative and supposed things that were in your good intention head that you meant to say.. We only can only determine based on what is posted, and I summarized mightwalker's posting activities at the time that I read his post as largely two days, so I don't know what purpose you find, B4RF, to speculate that there could be more meritorious things there when it does not fucking matter because none of us would know about such speculative things, and even mightwalker has not even responded to declare any of these kinds of supposedly good things that he might deserve merit for.

I guess you misunderstood me.
I never tried to defend mightwalker (I havent even looked into his posts). I was just upset about the fact that you think that someone with 14 posts cant have enough knowledge to make merit worthy posts.

B4RF, does it genuinely appear to you that the account you and JayJuanGee are discussing fulfills these criteria for somebody with quality posts to contribute as a “Newbie”?  Does that look like a “well informed” person who simply has “a life outside of this forum”?

As above. I never checked his account.
But your post perfectly fits my argumentation, you were able to make quality posts as newbie which are now rewarded.
Nobody has to be a high rank member to make quality posts, any newbie account could have more knowledge in cryptos then most legendarys in this forum.
And now newbies can show this by accumulating merits.

[testingbits]

People need to stop worry, the new Merit system is not the end of the world.
You can still shitposting away (me guilty) or make quality/helpful post.
Tired of folks being to lazy/dumb to not search for info on Merits,
counted over 60 Merits threads on the first 5 pages in Meta section.

[chineseprancing]

I don't understand 100% what is merit system but through this thread,  i am able to do so.  Although it affects my ranking flow to go up,  i still think it is for the best. We can atleast minimize spamming and will be encouraged to do quality posts.  It is for the good of all and also for the new members to come,  so that when they enter the forum,  they can extract good and quality information about tge quiries on their minds.

To simplify you need to earned merit depends on your ranks needed. For example: Your currently position is Jr Member, you need to earned 10 merits before you promote into Member position. So even you have 120 activities if you can't collect merits base on your respective position, you can't ranked up. Even your activities is good for Hero Member, you can't ranked up.

It is a big challenges to us, because they need to evolve with our own. We need to shared our fruitful idea to others not shitty, because if we become contented to our position or else we can't grow up.

So take this merits systems as new challenges, cheer up for the growth of our community. I know all of them can do this.

You are correct, but how about us who have red trust, how can we ranked up? because of this negative trust most of the users can't believe and trust us. Yes merit points can given to us but the sad reality is still we can't join in some campaign. So whatever rank ups happen to us, whatever merits we received, we can't grow up because of this negative feedback appears in our accounts.

I see that your red trust are already removed, I'm happy for you, moreover you have a point regarding giving merit. Even how hard you worked if you have a red mark it is nonsense, so just continue posting sense reply or quotes to earned high numbers of merit in the future. If you do that I'm sure you ranked up so fast, also avoid posting shitty to prevent gaining red trust.

[pawel7777]

I don't know why some normal comments/topics by high rank member get contributing very much merit ? For new members like me , it's very hard to achieve merit by someone even we have valuable topics

Link me to few of your valuable topics and I'll +Merit them.

Protip: You can't.

[nullius]

But your post perfectly fits my argumentation, you were able to make quality posts as newbie which are now rewarded.
Nobody has to be a high rank member to make quality posts, any newbie account could have more knowledge in cryptos then most legendarys in this forum.
And now newbies can show this by accumulating merits.

Well, then on this point, I’d say we vehemently agree!  Hah.

I’ve spent the past five days trying to tell others what you just said.  I hope that the kinds of “newbies” we want to attract will be encouraged to put the time and effort into making high-quality posts.  I also hope that the whiners will choose to cease giving this forum the gift of their noisome (and noisy) presence, for they contribute nothing else.

Cheers.

I don't know why some normal comments/topics by high rank member get contributing very much merit ? For new members like me , it's very hard to achieve merit by someone even we have valuable topics

Link me to few of your valuable topics and I'll +Merit them.

Protip: You can't.

Not his fault.  Legendaries are stopping him—I don’t know how, but they must be.  Proof:  It can’t be his fault; therefore, it must be someone else’s.  The whole system is so unfair!

[bitart]

Guys, please help me out, I'm missing a piece of information in connection with the activity and the merit system.
If everything happens well in the near future, in a months time I'll have a chance to rank up to legendary (was working for it long time ago). In 2 activity periods, I'll have the necessary 775 activity points to have a _chance_ to rank up. I know that to become a legendary, it's different to every account, it's also possible, that I have to wait for the 1030 activity points. I guess no one can tell me how much activity points I need to have to rank up.
My question is: The necessary activity points to rank up (between 775 and 1030) are already decided when an account on this forum is created, or it's changing every day, every activity period or for whatever reason?
I'm just curious because it matters if I have to gather the remaining 464 merits in 4 weeks time (more than 100 merits per week) or just later on. Is it possible to check somewhere if I have reached the necessary activity points to rank up and I'm only waiting for the merits?
Thanks for your help!

[TheQuin]

My question is: The necessary activity points to rank up (between 775 and 1030) are already decided when an account on this forum is created, or it's changing every day, every activity period or for whatever reason?
I'm just curious because it matters if I have to gather the remaining 464 merits in 4 weeks time (more than 100 merits per week) or just later on. Is it possible to check somewhere if I have reached the necessary activity points to rank up and I'm only waiting for the merits?
Thanks for your help!

Nobody knows for sure as it has been kept secret. But the theory I have heard most is that it is based on your user ID number, so that would make it predetermined. There's not any way of checking now if you're a Legendary awaiting merit or a Legendary awaiting a random number.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I guess no one can tell me how much activity points I need to have to rank up.

I don't think that anyone can tell this, since is on a random basis.

My question is: The necessary activity points to rank up (between 775 and 1030) are already decided when an account on this forum is created, or it's changing every day, every activity period or for whatever reason?

This will be interesting also for me, but I don't think this will matter.

I'm just curious because it matters if I have to gather the remaining 464 merits in 4 weeks time (more than 100 merits per week) or just later on. Is it possible to check somewhere if I have reached the necessary activity points to rank up and I'm only waiting for the merits?

I doubt that such tool will be available to can check if you are already reached the necessary activity points. If you need 4 weeks to enter to the activity level of legendary and you want to be sure that you gonna rank-up then it's gonna be almost a merit farming. Take it slow, collect you points as you contribute to the community, at the end when you reach your 1000 Merit you will find out if you have reached the necessary activity points or not. I know it can be tempting to wait so long for it and now things have changed but hey, its like the HODL process the longer you wait the better are the results.

[borpolev]

Hi all,

In connection with the introduction of the new antispam filter - Merits - I would like to summarize what antispam filters I have found on the Bitcointalk forum. And at the end of this post, I'll also list some other antispam filtering methods that are commonly used on forums.

So, what I've found to be currently used on Bitcointalk forum :

• Flood control forces users to wait for an interval between making posts to the forum, thus preventing spambots from overwhelming the forum with repeated spam messages. The intervals decrease with increased rank of user.
• CAPTCHA (visual confirmation) on forum registration page - it can help prevent spambots from carrying out automated registrations. For Bitcointalk forum, advanced CAPTCHA system is used called "Recaptcha" (images recognition), as simple captcha systems which display alphanumeric characters have proven vulnerable to optical character recognition software but those that scramble the characters appear to be far more effective.
• Confirmation e-mails to users who registered, with activation code/link.
• Searching engine has got an interval, after which you can search again. This interval decreases with increasing user rank.
• Trust system - spammers can be marked with negative trust.
• And the new Merit system

And what are some other techniques for avoiding, removing, and mitigating forum spam, used in other forums?
Some of them might be used on Bitcointalk forum as well, but they are not visible to users, so hard to say..

• Blacklisting services such as fspamlist, StopForumSpam and BotScout keep databases of IP addresses, usernames and e-mail addresses used to post spam or register forum accounts. Forum software can query these lists and either deny posts or registration, or submit the request for human moderation.
• Textual confirmation as an alternative to CAPTCHA in which the user answers one or more random questions to prove that he/she is not a spambot.
• Manual registration approval by administrators for each account.
• Denial of registration from certain domains that are a major source of spambots, or even domain extensions
• Manual examination of new registrants for several indicators. Spammers often delay email confirmation of several hours, while humans will confirm promptly. Spambots tend to create relatively noisy user names in order to ensure uniqueness.
• Using a search engine to investigate usernames for hits as recognized spambots on other forums.
• Changing technical details of the forum software to confuse bots
• Blocking posts or registrations that contain certain blacklisted words.
• Monitoring IPs used by untrusted posters, like anonymous posts or newly registered users. A useful technique for proactive detection of well-known spammer proxies is to query a search engine for this IP. It will - show up on pages that specialize in the listing of proxies.

I wonder if you know about any other antispam filtering method used on Bitcointalk? Or any other good filtering method used on other forums, that is not mentioned above?

Have a good day !
Boris

[suchmoon]

So, how can i get merit score now, my friend?
Please kindly let me know.

Thank you and have a great working day !

By contributing something to the forum. Your entire posting history consists of 110 applications to bounty campaigns and this post.

That's unfair. This user also sends PMs begging for merits. Truly hardworking shitposter.

Dear my friend,
Now, i have 111 post and 70 activity but dont have any merit score.
How can i get merit score? Can you help me about this?

Many thank and have a great working day! 

[mexxer-2]

• Blacklisting services such as fspamlist, StopForumSpam and BotScout keep databases of IP addresses, usernames and e-mail addresses used to post spam or register forum accounts. Forum software can query these lists and either deny posts or registration, or submit the request for human moderation.
• Manual registration approval by administrators for each account.
• Using a search engine to investigate usernames for hits as recognized spambots on other forums.
• Blocking posts or registrations that contain certain blacklisted words.

I wonder if you know about any other antispam filtering method used on Bitcointalk? Or any other good filtering method used on other forums, that is not mentioned above?

Have a good day !
Boris

1) Done automatically when an account from one IP is banned.
2) The Evil points(or something similar if I remember correctly) system, where you have to pay a certain amount of BTC to get whitelisted if you're from a certain set of IP addresses.
3) Not exactly but I believe the bot managed by Mitchell does something similar
4) Same as 3.

[mrelich]

I don't know why some normal comments/topics by high rank member get contributing very much merit ? For new members like me , it's very hard to achieve merit by someone even we have valuable topics

Link me to few of your valuable topics and I'll +Merit them.

Protip: You can't.

Well he might be right - it is not easy to get merit for non-high ranked members. For example, I've created quite a popular thread, but still not a single merit.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2869616.0

[nullius]

This user also sends PMs begging for merits. Truly hardworking shitposter.

Dear my friend,
Now, i have 111 post and 70 activity but dont have any merit score.
How can i get merit score? Can you help me about this?

Many thank and have a great working day! 

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

Dear my friend,
Now, i have 111 post and 70 activity but dont have any merit score.
How can i get merit score? Can you help me about this?

Many thank and have a great working day!   

Check this user’s trust page.  Besides the negative trust I just left:  (0) While I was leaving my tag, EcuaMobi left tag, “Begging for merit points via PM”.  (1) Page currently says, “This user's password was reset recently.”  Also, check post history; there is repetition of almost identical “Dear my friend” merit-begging spams.  This needs mod action.

(Edited:  I’d somehow left out quote of suchmoon’s report of begging via PM.)

[Kavallo]

[edited out]

Just consider mine like an early warning. History tells us that people rarely listen to early warnings and eventually they punish that who is telling them what they don't want to hear, instead of being thankful as they should. Google the myth of Cassandra, if you don't understand what I'm talking about.

Looks like you are living in a pie in the sky world.  You want to predict the future before it happens, and then you have a self-fulfilling prophecy.   

Yeah, you could end up being correct, but my earlier points still stand including that your high level of negativism from the get go is still not even attempting to either give the new system a chance or to work within the parameters of the new system in order to figure out the good, bad and the ugly and to be constructive in your whole approach, whether that is brainstorming with others or making suggestions.

I agree that the risk of self-fulfilling prophecies is frequent, but probably not in our case since over 99% of the forum members won't read our discussion here, and surely not the worse shitposters who are quite likely to not even speak English and to use google-translate for posting. In fact, I guess that over 90% of the forum's members are probably still completely unaware of the change, unless they have been in the META section. They will start to suspect something when they'll realize they don't rise in rank.

I also agree that my post was unbalanced towards a negative view. I guess the reason is that experience made me quite pessimist (I would prefer the word "realist") about human behavior, and especially human mass behavior - which is even much much worse than individual human behavior, which at rare times even happens to be not bad at all. And even though I agree on the necessity of a merit system and I am afraid that this version won't work, at the moment I have no constructive idea of a better system.

Of course, we do not necessarily need to have an open mind on all points, especially if there is some lacking in facts or logic for the points that are being made, but if we can recognize that sometimes change comes that includes both negatives and positives, yet it might not be fruitful to let the perfect become the enemy of the good - and sometimes we can make progress even when we do not agree (and we might not come to complete agreement, sometimes  - or maybe frequently). 

Well, another week have passed, theymos has made an important statement regarding the necessity of the merit system to work, and I'm slowly getting more optimist. Since the success of the merit system is actually a question of life or death for this forum as it is now (with ICOs and signature campaigns etc), I think that the system could end up self-regulating itself, if fueled with enough zMerits in time and the spreading of a sense of responsibility among those able to think. Not every problem will be solved, shitposting may decrease but will not entirely disappear, but a good initial success would already be the fact of measuring (by the way of stats etc) that we are going in the right direction.

[JinCrypts]

I see many quality post here but didn't have a merit. As I can say the problem will be the members who are not participating the purpose of the merit system.

You are right, a lot of quality posts, which do not get merit
and I think that got merit, only people who know each other, they reply to each other merit

You cant control people on whom they will give their own merit. It is their sMerit so their the ones who control their own sMerit. Although it is a bit unfair for those who really posted constructive posts. Just be patience and you'll also gain merit.

I am trying to contribute more in this forum. So far I have not got any merit from anyone, even I always pay attention to every post that I make so someone will give me a reward. I think it is very difficult to get it easily, I am commenting here just to know how to make a constructive and meaningful post so that I will get reward for posts I have made. I'm sure you guys will help me in this regard, given my rank is still a member and just a few months just join the forum.

Looking at your post history apart bounty applications you only post in off-topic. There's nothing wrong with that if you just want to collect bounties and have no interest in Bitcoin. Just don't expect to get any merit that way.

I agree with TheQuin. There are two types of posters here, one the natural posters and forced posters, for you, you are the latter because you forced to post because you'll get paid and you need the post to increase activity with this type of poster it will be hard for you to get merits. And the other one the Natural posters are the one who really post naturally and genuine want to learn more on whats happening in the crypto.

[bitart]

My question is: The necessary activity points to rank up (between 775 and 1030) are already decided when an account on this forum is created, or it's changing every day, every activity period or for whatever reason?
I'm just curious because it matters if I have to gather the remaining 464 merits in 4 weeks time (more than 100 merits per week) or just later on. Is it possible to check somewhere if I have reached the necessary activity points to rank up and I'm only waiting for the merits?
Thanks for your help!

Nobody knows for sure as it has been kept secret. But the theory I have heard most is that it is based on your user ID number, so that would make it predetermined. There's not any way of checking now if you're a Legendary awaiting merit or a Legendary awaiting a random number.

Thanks for the hint, I've found a thread about the calculation of the personal activity point of ranking to legendary:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1269370.msg13133378#msg13133378
So it means it's a simple sha1 hash generated from the userID and some secret salt that's unknown...
And the first two hex characters of this hash are converted back to decimal and added to the 775 activity points, this equals the personal activity point needed to rank up.
Without the salt, it's really unpredictable, so there's no need to think about it any longer. Anyway, merits would be harder to gather, it seems. Thanks everyone for the answers!