Merit & new rank requirements

[John Richards]

 I think that there is not enough merit points. Even though the system could be good.
Everybody wants quality, but we might blew it with low points.

[1714176378]

1714176378

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Bloody hell, I get the point, I really do. But it won't prevent from shitposting anyway, It will just be a pain in the ass for new users, who are just starting their journey in crypto world. They won't be able to post quality content, as they don't have any knowledge. Being a Jr Member all that time will be just demotivating for young fellows. It'll be way way harder to rank up now. Daamn, I mean it's just too subjective.

Then they don't need to post before they do a whole bunch of reading, do they? 

That's what I did.  I lurked for months before even creating an account, and it was more months before I joined a signature campaign.   

These days we've got whole towns in Asia coming here just for the campaigns, and they are all shitposters and they all sound alike.  So it's too damn bad that these noobs won't rank up.  They shouldn't be able to, and the merit system is near perfect for ensuring that.

[SM23031997]

Bloody hell, I get the point, I really do. But it won't prevent from shitposting anyway, It will just be a pain in the ass for new users.

It will be pain in the ass of shit-posters as i'm sure new users won't need points as they were not here to earn free money.

[Meraki]

I think that there is not enough merit points. Even though the system could be good.
Everybody wants quality, but we might blew it with low points.

The merit is enough since there are also Merit sources out there that has a bunch of merit to give, so there will be no scarcity issue on giving merits.

It will just be a pain in the ass for new users, who are just starting their journey in crypto world.

Weird for me, what's the connection of the rank in starting journey in cryptoverse? You can even start in crypto without making account here. If you just invest in crypto or mining coins that would make you belong in crypto community.

I'll correct the statement for you, "who are just starting their journey in bounty world" thank me later.

[Joel_Jantsen]

These days we've got whole towns in Asia coming here just for the campaigns, and they are all shitposters and they all sound alike.  So it's too damn bad that these noobs won't rank up.  They shouldn't be able to, and the merit system is near perfect for ensuring that.

Lmao! Man you crack me up at times.
"Whole Towns in Asia" - It literally gave me an heart attack while spilling the food from my mouth as I was at the dinner.You know signature campaigns is an old trend now.The trend heavily is shifting towards bounty campaigns.You will find accounts that literally have no posting history but only links for the bounty campaigns.

[johhnyUA]

This is funny thread, but weaker then the same in russian local - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818398.0
241 pages of pure butthurt!

I'm proud of my local board! We are the first in all forum! As always!  

[OgNasty]

The Merit Stats link at the bottom of a user's Merit page is a nice addition.  Thanks theymos!

[pcatalin93]

Correct me if i`m wrong guys ,

So for me, which i`m part of this comunity for one month and a half , it`s quite impossible at the time we speak to receive Merit Points ?
So far i can`t figure out why someone will merit me , for a post or something i wrote since i`m a little bit newbie on Crypto market and i`m not able to come with personalized opinions and very good points of view and expressing something that makes other people , " WOW , he deserve a merit point " .

I understand why this procedure , people abusing in posts for rank-up and go to bounty campaings. It`s very good for some of us, but bad for others .. so it`s debatable.

Thanks.

[leowonderful]

Correct me if i`m wrong guys ,

So for me, which i`m part of this comunity for one month and a half , it`s quite impossible at the time we speak to receive Merit Points ?
So far i can`t figure out why someone will merit me , for a post or something i wrote since i`m a little bit newbie on Crypto market and i`m not able to come with personalized opinions and very good points of view and expressing something that makes other people , " WOW , he deserve a merit point " .

I understand why this procedure , people abusing in posts for rank-up and go to bounty campaings. It`s very good for some of us, but bad for others .. so it`s debatable.

Thanks.

The way you're typing right now is incredibly difficult to read and that doesn't exactly bode well for you getting Merit.

If you're a newbie to Crypto, learn and make a post that IS quality. If your post actually deserves getting merit it WILL get merited. Plenty of people have recieved merits and plenty of people are sending merits right now. The system works, you just have to make a post that attracts someone's attention like you said in your own post.

[pcatalin93]

Correct me if i`m wrong guys ,

So for me, which i`m part of this comunity for one month and a half , it`s quite impossible at the time we speak to receive Merit Points ?
So far i can`t figure out why someone will merit me , for a post or something i wrote since i`m a little bit newbie on Crypto market and i`m not able to come with personalized opinions and very good points of view and expressing something that makes other people , " WOW , he deserve a merit point " .

I understand why this procedure , people abusing in posts for rank-up and go to bounty campaings. It`s very good for some of us, but bad for others .. so it`s debatable.

Thanks.

The way you're typing right now is incredibly difficult to read and that doesn't exactly bode well for you getting Merit.

If you're a newbie to Crypto, learn and make a post that IS quality. If your post actually deserves getting merit it WILL get merited. Plenty of people have recieved merits and plenty of people are sending merits right now. The system works, you just have to make a post that attracts someone's attention like you said in your own post.

Yep , sorry for my "swamp" english. I`ll just do some research about Crypto market but i won`t focus on getting merits, i was just curious. Anyway , thanks for your answer.

[cabalism13]

With this new system some of us newbies find it a problem for ranking up but with a greater knowledge of it we are truly greatful for this because we're striving to do our best to make quality posts.

For the people with a higher ranks, Im looking forward for you contributions here in this thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3021637.0
(Inside of this threads are links that helps the newbies gain some Merits, We are trying our best to achieve such accomplishments.)
I know it is a bothersome to do, to make a review on their post but please just a little time. You may give some Merits on those deserving people or a reliable source that can also help them participate.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

[JayJuanGee]

I think there should be some easy way to earn merit without being spotted by source to post quality response, probably achieving some numbers of activity for some period of time, logging in in one day earn 1 merit, curating good, quality, highest quality post, correcting non English speaker post grammar or anything that does not depends on other people giving out merit, task that members can do on their own to earn merit, probably steemit system can be employed here to increase overall effectiveness of rewarding system, right now the only way to earn merit is quality post and being spotted by merit source and the merit source must be willing and have time to give merit which make it probably only 1% of this forum members capable of, but probability of that happen probably 0.001% only as demonstrated by so many long winding post without any merit given.

I must admire you for your long-ass sentence.... reminds me of my own style, somewhat.

You may be correct that there is some deficiencies in this newly implemented system that relies to some degree to be spotted and appreciated by other members in order to receive merit - yet you suggest a shortage of smerits that is not yet proven by evidence and you also seem to suggest that some merit sources would be reluctant to give out merit.  I would presume that Theymos is choosing merit sources who are more likely to be ready, willing and able to give out their smerits and if they are not giving out their smerits, then they would likely lose their source status.  Furthermore, you also seem to be presuming that members are going to hoard their smerits, and sure there may be some logical expectation that some members will hoard some smerits, yet if they continue to receive merits for their posts, then they continue to accumulate smerits, and it seems less  likely that in the long term they are going to consider scarcity in smerits, especially if they are earning smerits (through their posts) on a regular basis.

One month into this whole process seems a bit early to come to some of the conclusions that you have made, and even you may be lacking considerable amounts of factual evidence to even be logically making some of your assertions.... but let's see, let's see.. you may be correct about some of your above asserted points.

I believe there is some people with quality content/idea just get put off by the restriction of their ranking although he is a good contributor

case as example:


Development team of new alt coin using new account will be limited to few post for certain period of time and no link/image allowed, if he stuck at Newbie rank probably for long period of time because nobody care to give him merit, that just hinder productive discussion.

Your example does not make a whole hell of a lot of sense because you seem to assume that some newbie member has good intentions, a good system, a right to come into this forum and have credibility to pump his shit coin merely because he has a lot of supposedly good ideas.  Your framing of the hypothetical assumes to be true (good credibility and knowledge and intentions of the newbie member), and it seems to me that the merit system is conceptualized as a way to for newbies to actually establish their credibility, intentions and knowledge and the merit system is meant to battle against the exact problem that you are assuming away in your framing of your hypothetical good intentioned newbie.  

In my humble bumble (or maybe not so humble.. hahahahaha), if some newbie fuck has some decent, good and well intentioned ideas and wants to pump some shitty coin (or possibly good coin, as you presume), then yeah, it is likely a whole hell-of-a-lot better that s/he/it goes through the motions and process of building up some reputation and credibility on the forum by earning some merits before being granted some free reign to promote his/her bullshit (even if the bullshit, as you are hypothesizing it to be in your example, happens to be good, well-intended and smart).

TLDR: In my opinion, the presumption about newbie members should not be that they are honorable, well-intended, good, smart, blah blah blah.. because that is part of the reason why we have this newly established merit system to help to substantiate those credibility related characteristics.  Contrarily, we also do not presume newbies to be dishonorable, bad-intended, mischevious, evil, dumb, blah blah blah and that is part of the reason why we have this newly established merit system to help to substantiate those credibility related characteristics.


Edit:

[edited out]

@theymos:  Please add a merit requirement for reaching Jr. Member status.  Thanks.

Hahahahaha... nullius, you surely beat me to the beat up on the bad ideas of fxstrike post, and yeah you are probably correct in your assertion that Theymos may have been too generous to allow Jr. Member status without any merits whatsoever, and maybe a requirement to receive something like 2-5 merits would helpful to the forum overall to cause better quality posts right from the start, or otherwise the newbie could just be stuck at newbie status, forever and ever....

[nullius]

[edited out]

@theymos:  Please add a merit requirement for reaching Jr. Member status.  Thanks.

Hahahahaha... nullius, you surely beat me to the beat up on the bad ideas of fxstrike post, and yeah you are probably correct in your assertion that Theymos may have been too generous to allow Jr. Member status without any merits whatsoever, and maybe a requirement to receive something like 2-5 merits would helpful to the forum overall to cause better quality posts right from the start, or otherwise the newbie could just be stuck at newbie status, forever and ever....

Actually, I think that the Jr. threshold should be 10 and the Member threshold should be around 30.  I am preparing a post with these and other suggestions.  My immediate impetus for making proposals is that I reached the Hero threshold of 500 merit within 27 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 22 seconds of active posting.  Zero to Hero within four weeks?  That should not be humanly possible.  Adjustments are needed at the high and low ends; I do think the middle ranks’ thresholds are appropriate.

(<whine>The earliest I can actually rank up to Hero will be Activity Period 1283, which will start during 12 March 2019.  The activity system is oppressive to new users!  Legendaries push everybody else down!</whine>)

(Edit following JayJuanGee’s below reply:  <whine> tag with gratuitous complaint about Legendaries implies /s.  I will follow up later; for now, I just want to make that excruciatingly clear for those reading this thread.)


Edit:  As for “better quality posts right from the start”, it is good for new users to lurk awhile.  Some do that by reading the forum for months (or even years) without making an account; they (we) can make good posts “right from the start”.  Vide my debut post in Development & Technical Discussion, three days after I started actively posting.  It discusses covert ASICBOOST, quotes gmaxwell from bitcoin-dev, speaks about miners’ job of BFT transaction ordering—all to analyze the ulterior motives of people who hate Segwit.  Is that a “Newbie” post, in any sense?  Whereas users who make an account as soon as they find the forum, and especially those who are totally new to Bitcoin, should surely be kept at Newbie rank for awhile.  They are newbies!  Nothing wrong with that; we all start somewhere.

I wanted to reply to some others upthread, but thus far—well, priorities.

[SevenSign]

The Merit Stats link at the bottom of a user's Merit page is a nice addition.  Thanks theymos!

Yeah, Indeed.

[JayJuanGee]

[edited out]

@theymos:  Please add a merit requirement for reaching Jr. Member status.  Thanks.

Hahahahaha... nullius, you surely beat me to the beat up on the bad ideas of fxstrike post, and yeah you are probably correct in your assertion that Theymos may have been too generous to allow Jr. Member status without any merits whatsoever, and maybe a requirement to receive something like 2-5 merits would helpful to the forum overall to cause better quality posts right from the start, or otherwise the newbie could just be stuck at newbie status, forever and ever....

Actually, I think that the Jr. threshold should be 10 and the Member threshold should be around 30.  I am preparing a post with these and other suggestions.

Sure these are kind of discretionary tweaks, and certainly Theymos and/or any other person(s) that he relies upon for recommendations can decide whether they believe that they are tweaks in a direction that would be beneficial to them in terms of the forum.

Since a lot of the decision had already been made to implement this new merit system, I would surmise that the system changing suggestions that are more "tweaking" in nature rather than revolutionary would seem more likely to receive the greater level of receptiveness from Theymos.

 My immediate impetus for making proposals is that I reached the Hero threshold of 500 merit within 27 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 22 seconds of active posting.  Zero to Hero within four weeks?  That should not be humanly possible.  

Your personal example seems extreme and therefore somewhat anecdotal.  It surely shows what is possible, but you seem more like a bot or a team of 10 rather than a real representative humanoid.  That is supposed to be a joke.. hahahahaha, except the truth of the matter is that we should be attempting to draw from the more common experiences, even if there can be some outliers and even some models to aspire to, but most humans are somewhat flawed, and there are problems with expecting perfection when dealing with a large number of peeps.

Adjustments are needed at the high and low ends; I do think the middle ranks’ thresholds are appropriate.

Could be... sounds like a discretionary matter too.   Without really seeing how this plays out, I personally do think that the merit thresholds do seem to increase quite a lot quickly, and they seem a bit high in my thinking, even though we know that it is quite possible to earn a decent amount of merits in a short time, the more regular and normal usage might not presume averaging more than 10-20 merits per month, depending on whether members are not going to hoard smerits and whether sources are going to be able to reach out enough in order to circulate enough merits that end up with decent levels of additional smerits to keep quality contributions from being overlooked.

(<whine>The earliest I can actually rank up to Hero will be Activity Period 1283, which will start during 12 March 2019.  The activity system is oppressive to new users!  Legendaries push everybody else down!</whine>)

It seems to me that the merit system was added to supplement the ranking up, but not to anyhow change the activity level requirements - however there may have been some concerns regarding phasing out some aspect of the trust system, perhaps?

Regarding your personal situation.  I doubt that you would really need to receive an expedited actual ranking up in order to be appreciated for the number of merits that you receive - however it could be possible that either algorithmically or discretionarily that Theymos might look at some high merit statuses in order permit them to rank up more expeditiously based on their high level of merits.. whether that is a 2x consideration or a 3x or some other formula that might be deemed fair and reasonable.

Edit:  As for “better quality posts right from the start”, it is good for new users to lurk awhile.  Some do that by reading the forum for months (or even years) without making an account; they (we) can make good posts “right from the start”.  Vide my debut post in Development & Technical Discussion, three days after I started actively posting.  It discusses covert ASICBOOST, quotes gmaxwell from bitcoin-dev, speaks about miners’ job of BFT transaction ordering—all to analyze the ulterior motives of people who hate Segwit.  Is that a “Newbie” post, in any sense?  Whereas users who make an account as soon as they find the forum, and especially those who are totally new to Bitcoin, should surely be kept at Newbie rank for awhile.  They are newbies!  Nothing wrong with that; we all start somewhere.

Again, we get to the idea of whether the perfection is the enemy of the good.  Sure on a personal aspiration and from making a good first (and perhaps lasting) impression, then it is good for posters to aspire to quality posts because their history could likely follow them forever, and whether going back and deleting post would help may be a messy kind of process rather than just letting post history stand, "right out of the starting gate."

I wanted to reply to some others upthread, but thus far—well, priorities.

Thanks for taking me out of order... hahahahahhaha     By the way, I share with others in my enjoyment in reading a lot of your posts, and surely each of us need not agree with all the points made in any post in order to recognize substantive contributions (and even art sometimes) that goes into creating decent and good posts (whether they are perfect or not.. in their time)  

[SevenSign]

Thank you so much!
I think this is a very good idea.

Yah, right.

Take an acting class.

Some forum use "Like" system. With each post in a thread, readers (users) can LIKE (vote up), it is easier than our Merit system

...and that is why we have a merit system instead of a “like” system.  You wouldn’t want spammers and trash posters to have farmloads of alt accounts hitting the “like” button on each other, now would you?  I mean, would you?

INDEED. This is the great idea to achieve more constrative post, or useful post to got the GREAT MERIT AWARD. Love it!
A great challenge to everyone like us.
More power @Thymos and God speed on you!
Hope someday, you will bless me, YIUR WONDERFUL MERIT!
Have a great day ahead MERIT SYSTEM!

[ACVinegar]

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

OMG, they had a new rules in bitcointalk? I missed that, because I'm so busy in my newly job. Though I need to get 10 merit points before I rank up right? I think its hard to us to earned merit if the other users send this.

[inbizin]

[Kelly_Coinut]

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

Finally found the explanation on merit ranks & requirements! Thanks a lot!

[lucario21]

OMG, they had a new rules in bitcointalk? I missed that, because I'm so busy in my newly job. Though I need to get 10 merit points before I rank up right? I think its hard to us to earned merit if the other users send this.

Yes, you need  to get 10 merit points before you rank up to member. It was implemented to improved the quality of post within the forum. So if you could make a constructive and informative post definitely they will give you merit, and please avoid qouting that entire post of OP so we could read your post directly.