Merit & new rank requirements

[StelioKontos]

The way I understand is that if you give merits to someone you lose that merit yourself am I right in thinking this? If this is true you could potentially derank by going below the rank requirements by giving people merits.

Sir, you didn't understand.

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[TheQuin]

Hey, all of you important moderator type peeps out there. You wanna check out this thread? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2819169.0

Google translate sucks but it was good enough for me to get the gist of that’s happening.

Note that it's not stated anywhere yet by the mods that you can't sell/buy (s)merit points, so they aren't actually infringing any rule yet.

It is stated that a merit source cannot sell them. If you're not a merit source then you'll quickly run out of sMerit to sell, so I can't see this being a big problem.

[thejaytiesto]

So basically ,you're just making sure that members with low ranks keep their low ranks so you don't get less stakes during bounty campaigns ?

It's also good for those who wanna sell accounts ,rights ?

If what you want is better posts ,just get rid of gimmick accounts ,delete useless posts...get more mods .

 

I haven't read the whole thread but I'm pretty sure I'm saying what everybody here thinks but is afraid to say .

It's a lost battle, no matter how much mods you hire, you can't keep up with the spam. A mod will clearly not check every thread post by post, It's also worth mentioning that users don't even do their part for reporting spam. This has nothing to do with less stakes, I'm pretty sure theymos never participated in these bounty campaigns. The value of accounts may increase but spammers gonna spam and will eventually get banned, as for those who are high quality posts then there is no need to buy an account in the first place, right?

Just because a battle seems lost doesn't mean you should stop fighting. By your logic, let's just stop banning spammers then? because there will be spammers with or without merit system.

And yes, you are right, a lot of people forget to report even the most obvious spammers, but what makes you think people aren't going to forget to give merit points as well?

And as all merit systems, they will be gamed/exploited. Namely, now we'll go from some broken-english shitposter trying to reach Legendary to some broken-english shitposter trying to reach Jr Member (which is achievable with 0 points of merit) in order to put a bunch of Jr Member accounts in signature campaigns, so it may even increase spammers as they will assume it is simply impossible to get higher ranked accounts anymore and instead of focusing in one account, they will focus on bulks of Jr Member accounts. I don't think it solves the basis of the gross volume of spammers which are the lowest value ones. I can tolerate the less obvious spammers, but ultimately the hardcore shitposters will still remain active.

No matter what, you are going to need mods to get care of that, it's a constant work that needs to be done. You can't ruin the forum for everyone else by adding anti-privacy friendly requirements on the registration for instance.

Other potential exploits include "merit sources" giving merit to other accounts which they control (impossible to prove), or someone negging you because you give merit to someone that you like but they hate, or someone thinking you are giving merit to an account you control when you aren't and so on.

[TheBeardedBaby]

You report all the spams accounts you created from your main account and there you have Merit points for reporting spammer.

Merit points are awarded for good posts, not for valid reports to moderators.
The problem is non-existent as the reward is non-existent. You didn't understand how the system works.
Read the OP again.

I was following the thread for while and it was mentioned that there will be a rewards system for reporting spam. I can say that I do understand the whole concept of the Merit system and I totally agree with it. I guess the reward system for reporting spam was just a user proposal.
Just wanted to thank you for doing this, answering all these questions. It's appreciated

[QuestionAuthority]

Hey, all of you important moderator type peeps out there. You wanna check out this thread? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2819169.0

Google translate sucks but it was good enough for me to get the gist of that’s happening.

Note that it's not stated anywhere yet by the mods that you can't sell/buy (s)merit points, so they aren't actually infringing any rule yet. I'm taking the first post of this thread as reference of course, not some n-th reply.

It’s not that I think it’s wrong (check my signature). I pointed out in my first post in this thread that it would be interesting to see how long it would take for someone to game the system. It took less than a day. LOL

[Hovhannes]

Without amendments, the forum will eventually clog up from the shadow trade. Corruption will grow.

[izanagi narukami]

Let say if I've 1000 smerit and I'm refuse to spend them until the end of season/month.
Will I got another 1000 smerit for new season/month ?

Hey, all of you important moderator type peeps out there. You wanna check out this thread? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2819169.0

Google translate sucks but it was good enough for me to get the gist of that’s happening.

Well it's seems that merit abuse business already start.

It is easy to get 10 but 500 or 1000 is very hard even in 2 years. I am sure they will make changes to this.

Nonsense. Look at Lutpin: he went from 500 to over 1000 in less than a day. Granted, he's an exceptional individual, but it proves that the path to Legendary status is not impossible.

Not all poster as good as Lutpin's , that's why it's difficult for them especially when english is not their mother language

[ankit10]

How i can know who sent me sMerit?

[johhnyUA]

And how we can fight with such things?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442

50 merits for useless post. Multiaccounts 

[dava0404]

essentially forcing people to post, what is even considered high quality anyway? As i think i have said before, the basis of a forum is to have questions answered, i.e. i have x problem, please help, then the community kicks into gear and helps, this has always been the way when i have had tech problems, either the asker or the answerer i have been and this works.  Wouldnt the best way be as forums have always been, we have moderators who simply kick the idiots out, nice and easy!

[jimmywh]

And how we can fight with such things?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442

50 merits for useless post. Multiaccounts 

The system is already being abused. Great. 

How i can know who sent me sMerit?

You can see it in top of your post.

[TheQuin]

How i can know who sent me sMerit?

You can see it in top of your post.

If you can find the post. It's easier with this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit

[Dvach]

I checked a lot of topics again, and didn't noticed any received merits for a good posts, although I have noticed a lot of merits received for the high rank member posts like "You want some merit bro? Here you go hehehe" and responses to such posts like "Oh, thank you, I have sent some merits for you as well hehehe". What can I say about it, I don't think, that this system will stop spam and shit posting, and I'm pretty sure, that high quality posts will be rewarded with a merit, although I have already found a telegram groups, where merits are sold for 1$. Why do you need to send your merits for free if you can sell it, right? So this system is not solving the problem, but it already added some corruption and it gave many advantages for a senior members, and gave a lot of disadvantages to the newbies. This forum is not facebook, why it is necessary to have "likes"? And I'm just curious, what was the motivation to put such ranking system - to get a full member rank, you need to gain 10x more merit, than for a member. I don't think it will stop creation of multiple accounts, as some strange activities were noticed already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439743.msg28861940#msg28861940 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

[A1exander]

LOL so basically someone is trying to launch a merit market.

on a bitcoin community, its pretty obvious that some people here are gonna have to buy merits to get up.

also i would like to show that excepted some senior/VIP/moderators members.

Next to no one got "merit" points. and the thread already has almost 40 pages.

With the current allocation rules the merit points are so scarce that selling or buying them makes little sense. And they cannot be very expensive, because nobody is going to pay that much for upranking.

this means to my humble guess, that its gonna take me and other entire year to reach the "full member" level. (ven though its only 40 activity points away ).

where the hell am i gonna find 90merit points ?

For me it is 150 points. I think it does not even worth trying.

if this system is here to stop people trying to climb the scale up, then it is an absolute success.

It probably is. It is essentially freezing the rankings.

anyway i'm not especially negative toward this, i'm quite used to natural selection, and fairness is just a human concept, not a reality.

I'm not sure if it is going to be good for the forum in the long term. Maybe it will change.

[InvestorBelarus]

How i can know who sent me sMerit?

You can see it in top of your post.

If you can find the post. It's easier with this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit

Thank you!

[bobq]

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for 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.

I don't agree with this, this is just like giving the "old members" (including me) a head start. I'm not saying that earning merits is a race but giving us a head start also means giving us a free reputation out of nothing. That does not necessarily mean we need to rebuild our reputation from zero, I mean there are so many members that have earned a good reputation on this forum.
So I think the merit points for old members have to be given based on their reputation now and without affecting the rank.
Anyway, I think this is gonna be the end of account farming.

The new system is surely better than the previous one, even though it is over-rewarding "old members". I guess nobody who has joined Bitcointalk in the past six months will EVER manage to become Legendary Member, at least not in less than one or two decades. Fine, this could be a price to pay to avoid the forum getting even more trashy, I fully agree. But I think that the implementation of this new system could be done in a more fair way. The fact that initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for one's rank is not a big deal for Newbies or Juniors, but for higher ranked members, like Senior or Hero Members, it can create big inequalities. For example a freshly ranked Senior Member is now getting the same merit score as someone who has already been a Senior Member for almost half a year and is about to become a Hero. Even more dramatic would be the case of a Hero who has already the activity to be a Legendary but the random system did not grant him the rank yet. A more fair way to distribute the inital merit would be to calculate it proportionally to the actual activity. This would avoid that people like me (I don't want to make it personal but I'm the first example which comes to my mind) who is missing only 4 points of activity (and 5 days) to the rank of Hero Member, instead of getting, let's say 470-480 merits (instead of the 500 of people who already are Heroes), is getting only 250 merits like someone who has just ranked Senior Member 10 days ago, and instead of 5 days it may now suddenly take me years before I can become a Hero - how many very good posts has one to do before he gets 250 merits? If you receive one merit every 4 post you do (on average you are likely to get less IMO) it will take you 1000 more posts to rank up from Senior to Hero, and if you like me were only 4 points of activity from that target, and now suddenly you need another 1000 posts, to say that this is becoming extremely frustrating is a big understatement. On the other side, with a more proportional and balanced initial distribution of merits I think nobody would feel that the system is penalizing them more than it penalizes others - which means people would be more inclined to recognize its substantial fairness, or at least that every effort has been done to achieve the maximum possible fairness.

[TMAN]

I checked a lot of topics again, and didn't noticed any received merits for a good posts, although I have noticed a lot of merits received for the high rank member posts like "You want some merit bro? Here you go hehehe" and responses to such posts like "Oh, thank you, I have sent some merits for you as well hehehe". What can I say about it, I don't think, that this system will stop spam and shit posting, and I'm pretty sure, that high quality posts will be rewarded with a merit, although I have already found a telegram groups, where merits are sold for 1$. Why do you need to send your merits for free if you can sell it, right? So this system is not solving the problem, but it already added some corruption and it gave many advantages for a senior members, and gave a lot of disadvantages to the newbies. This forum is not facebook, why it is necessary to have "likes"? And I'm just curious, what was the motivation to put such ranking system - to get a full member rank, you need to gain 10x more merit, than for a member. I don't think it will stop creation of multiple accounts, as some strange activities were noticed already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439743.msg28861940#msg28861940 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

all these people will run out of merits pretty soon! Ive chucked 10 about for a laugh.. the rest I will be serious with

there will always be a bedding in period.. this will take months, then the positive results will be seen.

[tbct_mt2]

I checked a lot of topics again, and didn't noticed any received merits for a good posts, although I have noticed a lot of merits received for the high rank member posts like "You want some merit bro? Here you go hehehe" and responses to such posts like "Oh, thank you, I have sent some merits for you as well hehehe". What can I say about it, I don't think, that this system will stop spam and shit posting, and I'm pretty sure, that high quality posts will be rewarded with a merit, although I have already found a telegram groups, where merits are sold for 1$. Why do you need to send your merits for free if you can sell it, right? So this system is not solving the problem, but it already added some corruption and it gave many advantages for a senior members, and gave a lot of disadvantages to the newbies. This forum is not facebook, why it is necessary to have "likes"? And I'm just curious, what was the motivation to put such ranking system - to get a full member rank, you need to gain 10x more merit, than for a member. I don't think it will stop creation of multiple accounts, as some strange activities were noticed already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439743.msg28861940#msg28861940 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

Totally agree with most of the ideas. The current merit system will tie up the opportunities to be Members, Full Members and Senior Members. Those old accounts dont worry about that, but the new ones have to face harshly with those new rules, with merit ranking.
Personally, I think admin and moderators of the forum should focus on how to release new, more strictly screening system for investigating spamming accounts, which post non-sense, shit posts most of the time. After that, banning those accounts permanently. That's rule might be better than the current merit system.

Please consider about the idea. Tie up spamming discovering system, and more strict banning rules (permanently bans)

[hilariousandco]

I checked a lot of topics again, and didn't noticed any received merits for a good posts, although I have noticed a lot of merits received for the high rank member posts like "You want some merit bro? Here you go hehehe" and responses to such posts like "Oh, thank you, I have sent some merits for you as well hehehe". What can I say about it, I don't think, that this system will stop spam and shit posting, and I'm pretty sure, that high quality posts will be rewarded with a merit, although I have already found a telegram groups, where merits are sold for 1$. Why do you need to send your merits for free if you can sell it, right? So this system is not solving the problem, but it already added some corruption and it gave many advantages for a senior members, and gave a lot of disadvantages to the newbies. This forum is not facebook, why it is necessary to have "likes"? And I'm just curious, what was the motivation to put such ranking system - to get a full member rank, you need to gain 10x more merit, than for a member. I don't think it will stop creation of multiple accounts, as some strange activities were noticed already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439743.msg28861940#msg28861940 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

infazan is possibly a bought/hacked account. Password recently changed and woke up from a long period of inactivity.

[erikalui]

The system just started today and I already see so many trying to abuse it in the best possible way and I feel that these people can be reported and their Smerits can just be nullified so that they can't abuse it. And if not, hope so signature campaigns think before adding merits earned as a criteria for any candidate unless they feel the candidate is eligible. Is there any way to find how which post has earned the user the merits? I see that once merits are given, they can't be undone unlike trust.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit

Not only mine but can we see other users' merit stats? I tried adding different uids but I can't see anything change. It still mentions my merits sent and received.