Merit & new rank requirements

[TheBeardedBaby]

Proposal, the negative trust members or at least the traded accounts to receive less sMerit due to a high risk of trading sMerit.

So instead of 0.5 sMerit for 1 merit point, let it be 0.25.

The last few cases indicates that some of the useless high rank accounts for bounties are used for merit trading.

[TMAN]

Proposal, the negative trust members or at least the traded accounts to receive less sMerit due to a high risk of trading sMerit.

So instead of 0.5 sMerit for 1 merit point, let it be 0.25.

The last few cases indicates that some of the useless high rank accounts for bounties are used for merit trading.

Or they get banned?? Much better idea if you ask me

[TheBeardedBaby]

Or they get banned?? Much better idea if you ask me

Yeah, perfect solution but who is going to ban them? I see so many now selling and buying accounts,just people with red trust everywhere.

The sMerit reduction for red trust is general approach and less time consuming. Many will be disappointed and will give up.

[tricker01]

Mates is there's a way to delete merit given? How it is?

There is no way to delete this. When sending merits, a new page opens up. Thus, you cannot give a member merit by mistake.

Sometimes it was happen due too poor connection, all I know I give merits to those who have a quality poster but after review I give it to users who can't deserve it. However thanks for your information, now I need to make sure that I can't send a merit to the users who not deserve it.

[JayJuanGee]

Or they get banned?? Much better idea if you ask me

Yeah, perfect solution but who is going to ban them? I see so many now selling and buying accounts,just people with red trust everywhere.

The sMerit reduction for red trust is general approach and less time consuming. Many will be disappointed and will give up.

sMerit reduction for red trust seems like a ridiculous proposed solution from my point of view - since the merit system and the trust system are separate, and bringing in some kind of reduction of sMerit formula for red trust would likely cause more problems than it solves in terms of adding complexity and possible unintended bad player gaming consequences.

[nascrypto]

@nascrypto, you did not mention in your posts here that you have you have multiple negative trust feedback for merit begging, e.g.:

#1587051 “nascrypto” openly claimed insufficient ability to earn merits, purported a will to learn—and then concluded, “But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .” By analogy, see how this reeks of dishonesty: “I don’t understand all the material, professor. I really want to learn. Meanwhile, you can encourage me by giving me an A. ;-)” FOR SHAME. And all the worse whereas intelligent questions rising from a *sincere* desire to learn are regularly awarded merit in the appropriate forums.

Now, observe that the following three posts are consecutive in your post history (archived snapshot):

• 2018-02-20 05:55:10Z: Archived from this thread; this is the post which caused you to be “red-tagged” by another person and by me:
  
  

  Thanks for the explanation. Yet it's very difficult for a newbie to collect merits. Still, I'll try to increase my knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. Once I gather enough information, I can start contributing with rich contents and earn merits. But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits.
  

  
  Red colour is here added.  In the post as it appears now, that text is crossed out; in the post as archived by me at 2018-02-21 06:16:51Z, it is not crossed out.  (It is good you did not try to delete it; though I infer a likelihood you knew it was archived.)
• 2018-02-20 08:44:43Z: Archived from the thread titled, “Re: 🌎 [AIRDROP] [ICO] ConnectJob - The Uber of Services 🌎”:
  
  

  Insert Quote
  #Proof of ownership:
  - Telegram: @naacrypto
  - Twitter: @nas_crypto
  - https://www.facebook.com/nas.crypto.1
  

• 2018-02-21 11:33:14Z: Archived from this thread:
  
  

  But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .
  

  No.  
  
  You go ahead and do whatever soul-uplifting research you need to do, and whenever you start writing something worth reading, then you might earn some merits.  I don't hand them out to spam monkeys for free.  Do you feed your neighborhood skunks?  
  
  Didn't think so.
  
  

  
  Understood.... I just corrected my comment. I didn't beg for merit. My intention was that the seniors can be a bit generous with the newbie and encourage them with their initial posts.
  

Your following posts consist of another post in this thread saying similarly (archived), and then another application for an airdrop (archived).

A question for you, based on reasonable inferences:  Between 06:16:51Z and 08:44:43Z today (2018-02-21), did you receive any sort of denial of eligibility for an airdrop bounty campaign (or other adverse consequence) due to having negative (red) trust?

That is a very important question.

This matter is off-topic here.  Although I do think my posting the foregoing here is a salutary instruction to others who might ask for “some free merits ”, I will not substantially discuss this further in this thread.  Should there be anything further to discuss, then I will create a thread in Reputation.

@nullius Yes, I crossed that line and you can see I mentioned in my response "I just corrected my comment". I did mentioned that I want to earn merit, not beg it; I think I could have clarified it by adding "with their armature posts and intention to adding value to the forum". I couldn't express myself properly in the last line; and I thought, I should remove it. But since it was referenced in some posts below, I crossed that line so that no further miscommunication happens and I take full responsibility of that particular line accepting that the wording was wrong. And, I didn't know about the archiving feature of the forum. Just the negative trust feedback disheartened me since my intention was not begging merit rather to earn it by learning and adding value to the forum (as you can see the same intention in my original comment as well). Unfortunately, the red trust in my profile seems like someone jailed me without giving me any chance to explain myself. Since I joined here, I learned a lot regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain that might needed months if I had to acquire them from elsewhere.

Regarding your question, as you can see, I could apply for the airdrop for Equitybase afterwards and I didn't get any denial/got any message regarding red trust so far.

[lhtot8]

This posts-from-the-past-scavenging thing is getting a bit out of control after the introduction of The System.

Not that it’s relevant, but what are you talking about?  All the posts I quoted and archived were made within about the past 36 hours.  Again, not that that’s relevant.

/offtopic

Wow, I cannot believe it when looking at your profile. You have got tons of merit points. Really amazing. However, after spending couple of minutes to check your post history, I have seen that you posted almost high-quality, constructive and helpful threads. That explains why you got those merits. Congratulations.

[thesavoyard]

Lol, I see the same two idiots still trolling. I can't see what they say but they are pathetic.

[thd26bct]

sMerit reduction for red trust seems like a ridiculous proposed solution from my point of view - since the merit system and the trust system are separate, and bringing in some kind of reduction of sMerit formula for red trust would likely cause more problems than it solves in terms of adding complexity and possible unintended bad player gaming consequences.

Both merit and trust systems can be abused as time goes on, abusements have been demonstrated by proofs. Nevertheless, I totally agree with JayJuanGee, those two systems should operated separately because they have very different original objectives in the forum. No need to combine them into one system.

[nullius]

[snip untrimmed quote]

@nullius Yes, I crossed that line and you can see I mentioned in my response "I just corrected my comment". I did mentioned that I want to earn merit, not beg it; I think I could have clarified it by adding "with their armature posts and intention to adding value to the forum". I couldn't express myself properly in the last line; and I thought, I should remove it. But since it was referenced in some posts below, I crossed that line so that no further miscommunication happens and I take full responsibility of that particular line accepting that the wording was wrong. And, I didn't know about the archiving feature of the forum. Just the negative trust feedback disheartened me since my intention was not begging merit rather to earn it by learning and adding value to the forum (as you can see the same intention in my original comment as well). Unfortunately, the red trust in my profile seems like someone jailed me without giving me any chance to explain myself. Since I joined here, I learned a lot regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain that might needed months if I had to acquire them from elsewhere.

Regarding your question, as you can see, I could apply for the airdrop for Equitybase afterwards and I didn't get any denial/got any message regarding red trust so far.

I like the phrase, “I take full responsibility”, as well as your expressed desires to learn and to improve your posts.  Thus, I will take all these at face value; and I will assume that you speak in good faith.

Whereas if your priority here be truly to “increase [your] knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to [the] blockchain and cryptocurrency”, then my negative feedback should not be a problem for you.  Go ahead!  Learn!  A red tag won’t stop you from learning; and the knowledge will be beneficial to you.

I will keep an eye on your account.  It will not take much of my time to occasionally glance in on your post history and especially, your merit page.  If I see consistent evidence that you’ve been sincere in what you told me here, then eventually, I will consider changing my feedback to neutral or removing it.

Since my feedback specifically pertained to a wrong way to seek merit, one of the most important criteria will be whether you earn merit the honest way.  That is:  Whether you earn merit for posts which a reasonable person may award merit to.  I do not mean posts which I would award merit to.  Some reasonable people might award merit to posts which I would not.  I can recognize that.  No reasonable person would award merit to spam, junk one-liners, gibberish, factually incorrect information, or otherwise objectively low-quality posts.  Also, no reasonable person would award merit as a wiseacre, as charity, or for other nefarious non-reasons.

If you don’t earn merit the honest way, then my trust feedback is almost irrelevant anyway:  You’d be permanently stuck in the low ranks.⁰  My objective here is that, if you show yourself capable of advancing, I do not wish to hold you back or impair your future forum success.

I will not set a specific timeframe.  That could be misinterpreted as a date on which I will remove the tag; and really, the only timeframe is that I do not commit to checking on your account indefinitely.  Also, there is no need to contact me about this—actually, don’t contact me about this.  You’ve said some good words here.  Now, I’m more interested in your behaviour going forward.


My advice on where to start fulfilling your expressed desire to learn:

The Beginners & Help forum is a good place to ask beginner-level learning questions.  (Yes, I checked your post history; I did not find any posts from you there.)  Read this before posting.  Also, I strongly suggest learning to ask smart questions.

(Note that as I stated in my negative feedback, intelligent questions often do earn merit.  A beginner-level question can be intelligent.  Stupid questions are not meritorious.  Neither are lazy questions, which show you couldn’t be bothered to do some basic reading and thinking, and redundant questions, which show you didn’t look around enough to see that a hundred other people had already asked the same thing.)

And don’t just talk:  Listen!  Read!  I myself spent untold hours lurking and reading forum archives before I even created an account.¹  Other people have probably asked about many of the same things which may pique your curiosity.

Another excellent starting resource is Bitcoin.ORG.  People in Beginners & Help can suggest more reading material, if you ask intelligently.

The foregoing should conclude my involvement in this discussion.  Good luck, if you deserve it.


0. I expect that as the merit system develops, an ill image will befall accounts with low rank, activity so disproportionate as to be absurd, and little or no merit.  Actually, I think this process may be in the early stages already.

1. If I had instead simply created an account and started posting daily one-liners in spam megathreads, I would now (and for some time passed) be a Legendary.  This is why we need the merit system.

[nascrypto]

[snip untrimmed quote]

@nullius Yes, I crossed that line and you can see I mentioned in my response "I just corrected my comment". I did mentioned that I want to earn merit, not beg it; I think I could have clarified it by adding "with their armature posts and intention to adding value to the forum". I couldn't express myself properly in the last line; and I thought, I should remove it. But since it was referenced in some posts below, I crossed that line so that no further miscommunication happens and I take full responsibility of that particular line accepting that the wording was wrong. And, I didn't know about the archiving feature of the forum. Just the negative trust feedback disheartened me since my intention was not begging merit rather to earn it by learning and adding value to the forum (as you can see the same intention in my original comment as well). Unfortunately, the red trust in my profile seems like someone jailed me without giving me any chance to explain myself. Since I joined here, I learned a lot regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain that might needed months if I had to acquire them from elsewhere.

Regarding your question, as you can see, I could apply for the airdrop for Equitybase afterwards and I didn't get any denial/got any message regarding red trust so far.

I like the phrase, “I take full responsibility”, as well as your expressed desires to learn and to improve your posts.  Thus, I will take all these at face value; and I will assume that you speak in good faith.

Whereas if your priority here be truly to “increase [your] knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to [the] blockchain and cryptocurrency”, then my negative feedback should not be a problem for you.  Go ahead!  Learn!  A red tag won’t stop you from learning; and the knowledge will be beneficial to you.

I will keep an eye on your account.  It will not take much of my time to occasionally glance in on your post history and especially, your merit page.  If I see consistent evidence that you’ve been sincere in what you told me here, then eventually, I will consider changing my feedback to neutral or removing it.

Since my feedback specifically pertained to a wrong way to seek merit, one of the most important criteria will be whether you earn merit the honest way.  That is:  Whether you earn merit for posts which a reasonable person may award merit to.  I do not mean posts which I would award merit to.  Some reasonable people might award merit to posts which I would not.  I can recognize that.  No reasonable person would award merit to spam, junk one-liners, gibberish, factually incorrect information, or otherwise objectively low-quality posts.  Also, no reasonable person would award merit as a wiseacre, as charity, or for other nefarious non-reasons.

If you don’t earn merit the honest way, then my trust feedback is almost irrelevant anyway:  You’d be permanently stuck in the low ranks.⁰  My objective here is that, if you show yourself capable of advancing, I do not wish to hold you back or impair your future forum success.

I will not set a specific timeframe.  That could be misinterpreted as a date on which I will remove the tag; and really, the only timeframe is that I do not commit to checking on your account indefinitely.  Also, there is no need to contact me about this—actually, don’t contact me about this.  You’ve said some good words here.  Now, I’m more interested in your behaviour going forward.


My advice on where to start fulfilling your expressed desire to learn:

The Beginners & Help forum is a good place to ask beginner-level learning questions.  (Yes, I checked your post history; I did not find any posts from you there.)  Read this before posting.  Also, I strongly suggest learning to ask smart questions.

(Note that as I stated in my negative feedback, intelligent questions often do earn merit.  A beginner-level question can be intelligent.  Stupid questions are not meritorious.  Neither are lazy questions, which show you couldn’t be bothered to do some basic reading and thinking, and redundant questions, which show you didn’t look around enough to see that a hundred other people had already asked the same thing.)

And don’t just talk:  Listen!  Read!  I myself spent untold hours lurking and reading forum archives before I even created an account.¹  Other people have probably asked about many of the same things which may pique your curiosity.

Another excellent starting resource is Bitcoin.ORG.  People in Beginners & Help can suggest more reading material, if you ask intelligently.

The foregoing should conclude my involvement in this discussion.  Good luck, if you deserve it.


0. I expect that as the merit system develops, an ill image will befall accounts with low rank, activity so disproportionate as to be absurd, and little or no merit.  Actually, I think this process may be in the early stages already.

1. If I had instead simply created an account and started posting daily one-liners in spam megathreads, I would now (and for some time passed) be a Legendary.  This is why we need the merit system.

Appreciated and thanks for the links. They are really useful.

[ridertiger]

There seems to be a general thing in the forum, among the most generous merit givers that
if you talk about altcoins instead of bitcoin, you will not get merit.
If you use any other language than English (stated as: a language I don't speak!) in some of your posts, you won't get merit. That is just racist.
If you comment on bounty posts you will not get merit AND you are an idiot.
I think the admins should take a look at this and do something about it.

[TheQuin]

There seems to be a general thing in the forum, among the most generous merit givers that
if you talk about altcoins instead of bitcoin, you will not get merit.

The forum is called Bitcointalk.

If you use any other language than English (stated as: a language I don't speak!) in some of your posts, you won't get merit. That is just racist.

How are people supposed to rate a post they do not understand?

If you comment on bounty posts you will not get merit AND you are an idiot.

That is usually true.

I think the admins should take a look at this and do something about it be happy.

[armandoz]

merit is become ranking requirement is not easy but this fair to bicoin to have a good and quality post not just posting without impact.  So we need to make up or updating every descation in bitcoin that produce us a merit, in that case we become serious in posting and not become wasting time and electricity.

[nullius]

There seems to be a general thing in the forum, among the most generous merit givers that
if you talk about altcoins instead of bitcoin, you will not get merit.

The forum is called Bitcointalk.

You’re racist against altcoins.

If you use any other language than English (stated as: a language I don't speak!) in some of your posts, you won't get merit. That is just racist.

How are people supposed to rate a post they do not understand?

You’re racist against words you do not understand.

If you comment on bounty posts you will not get merit AND you are an idiot.

That is usually true.

You’re racist against idiots.

I think the admins should take a look at this and do something about it be happy.

You’re racist against people who wish that the forum be run for their own personal benefit, everyone else be damned.

[JayJuanGee]

If you use any other language than English (stated as: a language I don't speak!) in some of your posts, you won't get merit. That is just racist.

How are people supposed to rate a post they do not understand?

You’re racist against words you do not understand.

Me too.

I don't get this stupid-ass racist allegation regarding having an expectation that understandable English is typed.

Sure, there are levels of English, and I doubt that anyone expects the English to be perfect or proper grammar in all instances.. and sometimes bad grammar and typos are purposefully used for effect.. but in the end, there is nothing racist about having an expectation that people deserve more merit (or credit) when they communicated more skillfully to get their ideas across, and the language of the forum is English, unless posting in the local sections.

In the end, the accusation would not be racist, but there could be a valid accusation of "elitism" or "prudism" if someone is expecting English skills that are perfect or near perfect when we are posting on the interwebs....... however, I don't think that anyone is expecting that kind of high level.  Surely you are judged more favorably if you can communicate your ideas clearly and concisely.

[CryptoBey]

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

Hello Theymos. I think one of the reason people make garbage messeages is "Bounty Mods wants too many post from bounty hunters for signature campaigns". Some mods want 30 constructive/meaningful messeage for a week to pay for bounty. Thats why people trying to complete their post count with garbage and meaningless posts to get paid. You can put a post limit for mods which they wants for signature campaigns.

[devotional]

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.


Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.

hi, i think adding a "like" feature to forum and  an automatic system of 10 likes = 1 merit would be more fair and easily appliable incorporating all the people on the forum.

this current system serves the higher ranked members and their fake accounts.

besides, if mods think a post is garbage, they can ban  the member for 3 5 days.

in the current system most people dont vote  the posts but threads which causes members to create already existing topics such as how to open a mew account, how to earn airdrop topics etc over and over again.

also some icos require  a lot of posts weekly and this could be hindered n their side limiting this number to 10.

[orkoso]

sMerit reduction for red trust seems like a ridiculous proposed solution from my point of view - since the merit system and the trust system are separate, and bringing in some kind of reduction of sMerit formula for red trust would likely cause more problems than it solves in terms of adding complexity and possible unintended bad player gaming consequences.

Both merit and trust systems can be abused as time goes on, abusements have been demonstrated by proofs. Nevertheless, I totally agree with JayJuanGee, those two systems should operated separately because they have very different original objectives in the forum. No need to combine them into one system.

Probably the best control is to apply some red trust in cases that are clear abuses. For cases that are not that clear... well then they won´t harm the system much, would they?

[sirfel]

It's hard to understand where to get merits. I'm not after with the merits though. Maybe doing efforts to help people make money here in bitcointalk could consider be a merit