Merit & new rank requirements

[TheQuin]

They were gone once already, and then showed back up.
Either it's intentional hiding from theymos or it's due to a bug, eg with a limited space assigned to showing merits, which has been exceeded by the OP.

Fair enough, probably a good idea to reduce the display area anyway. Maybe add an expand button if it is full. When it fills the whole screen up it's not really ideal for viewing.

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[retlaw04]

Congratulations. A very good system to get old-established board members cash out the bounties.
Regardless of the quality of their postings. (in past and in future)

And this ranking will give a lot of information about the authors quality of the members, even if the merit are already traded against coins.
In short time, the absolute transparency of the activities will be given here.

[codemanX]

On the other hand it does already take a very long time to go though the ranks any way (1.5 years or so for Hero for example) so maybe it wont be that uncommon to achieve so many merit points over that time span if you're not just making spam posts. I think it will all depend on how easily people give points out but I think it's an interesting experiment at least and I will be following it's progress.

It should be pretty easy to reach the required amount of Merit for Hero rank in that time span, given that you are creating quality posts.

"in that time span" ... that's true, I absolutely support that Lauda.

But, I'm a Full Member since more than 4 months, rank-up should be in two days. 2 days for 150 Merit isn't a big time span, right?

The distribution of Merit was just unfair and should have been calculated from the activity points using some fair formula. theymos hasn't responded to my PM anyway.

[Nuky1289]

I think, its way to hard to earn some merits, because they seem to be very rare at the moment. Maybe that will change with time.

[TheQuin]

The distribution of Merit was just unfair and should have been calculated from the activity points using some fair formula. theymos hasn't responded to my PM anyway.

If you PM'd him about the distribution being unfair he talked about it in another thread.

I agree with this approach. I considered giving merit proportional to activity, but I decided not to because doing so would probably give far more undeserved merit than deserved merit in total. But undoubtedly some people got screwed by this, and if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.

[weblouartisan]

I don't know you at all, but i already feel you may be quite biased here. I mean just look how much Merit you (a Legendary Rank) have been awarded in just a few meager days. This is in no way indicative of a typical user or even a power user.

Given that I've reached the top rank quite a long time ago, there is little to no meaning behind receiving any extra Merit points. Why would that makes me biased?

Not really what i was getting at..

I was implying: biased in the sense that it's given you a skewed view on the likely distribution of Merits.. i.e. if one receives a lot of Merits then one may come to the conclusion that Merits must be easily attainable for all.

There's pros and cons in the new system, those who are creating multiple accounts will have a hard time to rank up their account and it will absolutely decrease the number of users who aren't creating constructive post.

It was a big advantage for those who started earlier because they were able to attain their current rank before the merit system occur. There are chances that some high ranks might sell their sMerits because they do not need it somehow.

I do not like the new system that much also but lets all start to strive creating more productive post that will help other new members in order to earn merits and rank up our account.

[retlaw04]

"in that time span" ... that's true, I absolutely support that Lauda.

But, I'm a Full Member since more than 4 months, rank-up should be in two days. 2 days for 150 Merit isn't a big time span, right?

The distribution of Merit was just unfair and should have been calculated from the activity points using some fair formula. theymos hasn't responded to my PM anyway.

You are completely right. The distribution of the merit and its initial state is another point.

One can ask oneself, for which reason they had not simply take the current activity points and possibly converted 70 or 80 percent of them in Merit.
And indeed for "all" active members.

Members with 2000 Merit probably do not know anymore how many of their postings do not contain more than 3 words.

[Gandalf86]

I think, a system like the merit system is a good idea, but its not well implemented. I think the needed amount of merit is too high.
But maybe im just a bit frustrated, because i was close to full member and now need 90! more merit to achieve this rank.

Maybe they should have awarded more merit at the start, so the upranking prozess wouldnt be delayed this much.

Right ... even if I would get one merit for every post I am writing, and do one post per day, my activity will be at least 1240 until I can possibly hope to become a legendary.    But's that's how life goes, especially in crypto. Sometimes you lose and other people win, sometimes it's the opposite. As in trading, what matters is that you are continuing to contribute quality decisions and posts. I think I might actually just ignore all this stuff, as someone suggested. 

[djangocoin]

I don't know you at all, but i already feel you may be quite biased here. I mean just look how much Merit you (a Legendary Rank) have been awarded in just a few meager days. This is in no way indicative of a typical user or even a power user.

Given that I've reached the top rank quite a long time ago, there is little to no meaning behind receiving any extra Merit points. Why would that makes me biased?

Not really what i was getting at..

I was implying: biased in the sense that it's given you a skewed view on the likely distribution of Merits.. i.e. if one receives a lot of Merits then one may come to the conclusion that Merits must be easily attainable for all.

There's pros and cons in the new system, those who are creating multiple accounts will have a hard time to rank up their account and it will absolutely decrease the number of users who aren't creating constructive post.

It was a big advantage for those who started earlier because they were able to attain their current rank before the merit system occur. There are chances that some high ranks might sell their sMerits because they do not need it somehow.

I do not like the new system that much also but lets all start to strive creating more productive post that will help other new members in order to earn merits and rank up our account.

Yeah, am not a fan of it either. Maybe i am being a bit pessimistic about it though.. and it all works out better than i predict. It's early days so maybe i shouldn't be drawing too many conclusions just yet.

[mexxer-2]

Huh, new system. Seems pretty complicated to rank up at the moment, considering how "valuable" merit points are right now. Oh well, I'm not one to talk, who doesn't like collecting fake internet points/karma/merits/likes....

[retlaw04]

Huh, new system. Seems pretty complicated to rank up at the moment, considering how "valuable" merit points are right now. Oh well, I'm not one to talk, who doesn't like collecting fake internet points/karma/merits/likes....

Sold Merit are not less fake.

What will happen to members who sell or offer to sell their Merit? Will they are be banished? Or will their merit be canceled?
I mean only - because of the quality of the posts.

[ruletheworld]

Huh, new system. Seems pretty complicated to rank up at the moment, considering how "valuable" merit points are right now. Oh well, I'm not one to talk, who doesn't like collecting fake internet points/karma/merits/likes....

You don't really need to 'collect' the points - the hope is the points follow quality.

[smartJEV]

Great improvement! The tread were getting more and more like a mess. 50% just were trying to reach the activity score, by publishing rubish posts, with no sence. Thanks for the improvement, probably It will force me to come here more often.

[JayJuanGee]

I think that there are a couple of points here that I could elaborate on, but I don't claim to know everything either, even if I have spent more hours on the forum.  

Regarding activity, I think that if you are averaging more than 14 posts per two weeks, then you will get all of the 14 activity points for each activity period even if you only post a couple of posts in the most recent activity period. However, when you start to go below a 14 posts per two weeks average, then you receive fewer activity points.  Something like that.   So I have mostly kept my average up above 14 per two weeks, and I think that there was only a few two week periods that I did not post anything, so I did not receive any activity points for those few two week periods.

As you already suspected, you are wrong on this one
You can find the calculation for activity here

The activity number is determined in this way:
time = number of two-week periods in which you've posted since your registration
activity = min(time * 14, posts)

Lets say you have a new account which does only one post in his first two-week period, this account would have an activity of 1 but his time variable would already be one which results into a potential activity of 14 for his account.
So if this account would make 27 or more post in his next two-week period he would have an activity of 28.
Therefore its enough to make at least one post in one period to maintain an increase of your activity but to actually make it increase you would have to make many more posts.
And sadly thats the case for my account
I dont even know my potential activity. There has been a website which was able to calculate that by using your post history I think, but it is no longer online.

Your further explanation does not contradict what I said, it merely elaborates on what i had said, so we are largely saying similar things... to make similar points, and that is that your activity level could have been a lot higher based on more posts, and you may have fairly easily been able to reach legendary status before the change in the system had you posted several more times before the change took place. 

Seems like water under the bridge at this point if you are wishing that you would have ranked up prior to the change.

[shushanika]

Sold Merit are not less fake.
What will happen to members who sell or offer to sell their Merit? Will they are be banished? Or will their merit be canceled?
I mean only - because of the quality of the posts.

They are already being given negative trust by some of the trusted members here. You can help the forum by reporting such a behavior. I think once the members here have spent the default merits that they have got, we will have a better picture. Thereafter, it will be merit sources mainly giving the merits and I hope they consider the trust of the member as well while giving those merits. This will ensure that cheaters do not have any access to merit points at all.

[Kavallo]

Merit is a new system where older users can withhold merit from younger users so they can't rank up and earn all the bounties!

I don't think so, just look at this thread, a lot of higher rank members are already giving merits to lower rank members. This new method is not about hoarding bounties, this is about preserving the quality of the forum. There are a lot of forums in the internet that are already using the merit system in terms of likes and upvotes and so far it's been helping improve the quality of their forums.

Not sure you can say that at this stage though.. just because a trickle of new users in this thread (maybe 10% or so) are getting merit doesn't mean it's working. A lot are getting merit just because they are complaining that they don't have any merit and that it's unfair lol.

Out there in the wild: it may turn out that new users seldom get any merit at all.

Check this young account out..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2828014.0

right attitude, quality post.. lots of merit from lots of people.. it is working fella

Again, that is just one sample, one data point. It could even just be an anomaly.

For every one user that makes a hot post/thread and gets tons of merit. You could have 99 users who get next to nothing or anything substantial.

Two more days have passed, which have proved that this was an anomaly... and at the same time a paradigmatic example of the new non written rule.
Go through the thread and look: Low ranked don't usually get merits, unless they praise the new rules. This is not a theory, these are the facts - you could even start to make a statistics counting how many people of which rank have got X many merits and by writing what. Low ranking people have no sMerits to give or just a few. Now only high ranking member can give sMerits and they usually give them to each others or to Juniors who praise the new rules. I am afraid that the new non written rule is that if you want to rank up you have to reflect the opinion of the high ranking. Time will tell, but you have a good vision you'll see that it is already telling exactly this now. I think I don't nee to tell you where this will lead to.

You don't need to tell us where this will lead because you are full of shit.

Come on JayJuanGee, you can do better that this. I can understand that for a moment this has been the best answer that your Legendary mind could think at, but luckily other parts of your mind are able of a higher level of debate than this shitposting oversimplified reasoning.

Look.  This system has only been in place for a bit more than 4 days, and you are already spouting off a lot of stupid-ass conspiracy theories based on flimsy evidence.

I extrapolate how things are likely to unfold in the future based on the available data. Not enough data after 4 days? Perhaps. But it is never too early to try to figure out which will be the outcome of our actions. Had more analysis been done on the consequences of this change before implementing it, quite likely it could have been done better. But it's never too late to improve things. Unfortunately, you HAVE to try to forecast future events for doing that.

Sure, you are likely correct that in the end that there are some biases towards any members with smerits giving those smerits to other members that they already know, but that is not a complete loss on the forum, because the receipt of those smerits do generate more smerits (at a 50% rate), so yeah, sometimes it can take a large number of posts for a newbie to get known, and members may not want to give smerits based on one post, but instead after they see a pattern of good posts. 

These kinds of patterns and building of credibility take time, it is not merely a reflection of one or two posts, and the past few days, I have been attempting to send smerits, and sometimes i have given those smerits merely on a kind of whim, and other times, I hesitate to send, and watch for further posts from the member before sending smerits.  So in other words, it can take time to both get a sense of another member (and their quality or lack of) and there can be some reservation too, because almost all members (except for sources) have a limited supply of smerit in their bank and they also have to generate smerit before they are going to be able to give any smerits out to anyone.

You assume, optimistically, that the best side of human nature will be able to tune this system in a way that it will start to work. I assume, pessimistically, that the worse side of human nature will unfortunately prevail. I hope you are right. But it would be useful to think at a plan B for the case you aren't. A merit system would surely benefit the forum... but only if it will be the merit system which was supposed to be.

In other words, members are still learning about this whole process, and there are likely a lot of quasi-active members who still have not even figured out what merit versus smerits are, and might not even have logged into their account in the past several days.  So, doesn't it seem to be preposterous to be calling the end of the good aspects of the bitcoin talk world as we know it, merely based on a system's change that is still quite early in its implementation and playing 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.

[JayJuanGee]

150 additional merits to go from full member to senior member seems excessive and unfair frankly to those of us that were almost there.  It will take years to reach that.  

How cute...I am a potential Legendary member (only missing the post count) and I got only 500 Merit instead of 1000.

So be happy that you only got screwed by less then 150  

Well B4RF, you have been a forum member almost as long as me, so you are correct that your post count has caused you to not move up in ranks, and if you had been at least minimally active in ever two week activity period, you would have earned enough activity points to have become legendary a year ago (something like that).  

So, yeah, none of us knew this change was coming, but those of us who remained active benefited by this unexpected change based on activity level (which includes posting regularly).

i've been a member nearly a year longer than you, but I did take a hiatus from posting for 18 months after some losses to scams, (ASICMINER & LABCOIN) I am not moaning about it though, just see it as a challenge to earn the merits needed.

Some of these newbies haven't been through the rise and fall of bitcoin like some of us.. $250-$80 in a matter of hours, MTGOX going pop! SR going down... all these things don't matter to the newbies moaning as they feel entitled, like spoiled little children.

if you can type a coherent post, and be positive and helpful in the community then senior guys and sources will splash Merits.. its not rocket science..

Hahahahaha...

I had not noticed that you were a member of the forum a year long than me, but your explanation makes sense, and yes, I see the date in your forum profile.  

So, yeah, there is nothing wrong with having disagreements with a system, yet you are correct that a whining approach is likely to get you no where quickly.  There are also ways to be innovative, such as the level up approach that you took.  Of course, not everyone is going to agree with it, and some people will even dislike you for it, but it still seems to be a vehicle to attempt for you to make some of your points to encourage positive posts, and those points/goals are not contrary to those of the forum (in fact they line up).

Also, the point has been made several times, that if you merely want to read posts, you don't necessarily need to rank up, but sometimes if you want to be "taken more seriously" in your posts, then rank does seem to have its benefits- especially in a place like this that has a decent number of disingenuous posters (otherwise known as trolls).

I am not a fan of hierarchies, nor on forums neither in life, but if you find yourself immerged in a hierarcy then you have to play the game and if a twist in the rules suddenly makes the system look unfair, then it sucks. The merit system is a good idea but it has been implemented so as so induce in most of the people the feeling they have been screwed. This would have not happened, had the people received one merit for every point of activity. That would have been fair (or it would be fair, it can still be corrected) and 90% of complains would fade away. As so many others I should have become a Hero tomorrow, now it is likely to take years. BTW I'd be a Legendary myself already hadn't I left the world or cryptos and this forum for a few years our of frustration of things which had damaged me in 2014, just like it happened to TMAN. But that's of course is nobody's fault but mine.

Actually, you are correct that there are a lot of ways that folks might end up overinvesting in crypto in one way or another, and that becomes a kind of gambling, especially, if you end up having a decent amount of value in one place or another, and then you either get robbed or some exchange does an exit scam or something like that. Many of us in the space a long time come to realize that scams proliferate the space, but there still remain decent ways to navigate the space and take reasonable risks rather than extra risks. 

Another thing is that sometimes you might not realize the extent of the risk that you are taking, especially when aspects of your portfolio increase so exorbitantly in such a short period of time, but your security precautions do not increase to a reasonably equal level.  I ended up getting screwed pretty badly at one point too (in early 2017), but I guess that I had some luck in the matter, too because I did not really feel a need to take a break from my crypto activity because of such high level of getting screwed over, and I think that in my case, the subsequent exorbitant BTC price increase almost negated (in some ways of calculating) the level that I had been screwed in terms of my total holdings.  I mean really from early 2017 to late 2017, we had a 20x price increase... which really helped because we had already experienced a 4x price increase in 2016, too (at least if we start calculating from October 2015)... so the outrageously high level of gains - even going quite  a bit beyond expectations can help to deal with some of the losses and to put into a better perspective, but still hopefully each of us can learn from our mistakes to improve our own practices and perhaps through forums like this brainstorm with others who go through similar experiences in order to help each other whether that is logic or exposure to new facts, practices or procedures. 

Sometimes there may also be new practices or procedures that come on line (in this evolving space), and I suppose getting ranked up will help each of us to be more credible and sometimes share higher levels of insider information with other members that we come to trust through networks like this (but hopefully always with a bit of a grain of salt).

[JayJuanGee]

I DARE those so called Legendary and Heroes  to agree with me if you have BALLS enough (only people who have BALLS will quote and agree) and you are really serious to eliminate shit posters.

I'm also calling all DT's to agree with me and lets finish this shit posting for good.

Your challenge here is a bit much, and likely has the opposite effect.  In reality, I should just ignore you rather than even quoting anything... even though you made some decent other points, but your points are not the be all end all, there are a lot of ways of framing matters, and there is not ONLY ONE way of looking at things, which happen to be your own way.  Get a grip.        (see trying to find some humor in your nonsensical attempt at seriousness).

[JayJuanGee]

[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.

[PoolMinor]

I DARE those so called Legendary and Heroes  to agree with me if you have BALLS enough (only people who have BALLS will quote and agree) and you are really serious to eliminate shit posters.

I'm also calling all DT's to agree with me and lets finish this shit posting for good.

Your challenge here is a bit much, and likely has the opposite effect.  In reality, I should just ignore you rather than even quoting anything... even though you made some decent other points, but your points are not the be all end all, there are a lot of ways of framing matters, and there is not ONLY ONE way of looking at things, which happen to be your own way.  Get a grip.        (see trying to find some humor in your nonsensical attempt at seriousness).

What makes you think that any of your opinion is valid? Just because you have a huge pile of sMerit to give out somehow this makes you an authority on what deserves praise?

Most of of what you post is merely drivel, nonsensical shitposting. Why don't you just put this whole thread on ignore and quit double posting?