Merit & new rank requirements

[prehisto]

I think that there is one overlooked problem which needs to be addressed if we want forum quality to raise.

No.

What are the low quality farmers doing when they understand that chance of them ranking up is close to zero?
I believe that  they just could start farming more accounts in order to compensate for their inability to rank up, thus generating more sh*t post than ever.

You lack common sense and any understanding for incentives of any kind. Once they realize that they are unable to rank up, thus unable to progress, thus unable to earn, there is a near-zero incentive to continue doing what they're doing.

Otherwise there is no real way to prove or disprove my theory.

Your theory is fundamentally flawed. Empirical evidence is not needed to disprove it.

If they can rank up to Jr.Member who can still earn with signatures, they have motivation to farm more accounts thus generating more accounts.
If you can not see logic in this, you are the one lacking common sense.

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[athanz88]

I think that there is one overlooked problem which needs to be addressed if we want forum quality to raise.

No.

What are the low quality farmers doing when they understand that chance of them ranking up is close to zero?
I believe that  they just could start farming more accounts in order to compensate for their inability to rank up, thus generating more sh*t post than ever.

You lack common sense and any understanding for incentives of any kind. Once they realize that they are unable to rank up, thus unable to progress, thus unable to earn, there is a near-zero incentive to continue doing what they're doing.

Otherwise there is no real way to prove or disprove my theory.

Your theory is fundamentally flawed. Empirical evidence is not needed to disprove it.

If they can rank up to Jr.Member who can still earn with signatures, they have motivation to farm more accounts thus generating more accounts.
If you can not see the logic in this, you are the one lacking common sense.

Well i guess it is still better if they only have 10 Jr. Members account rather than if they have 10 high rank accounts because they can rank up just because they posted shit. And you still missed out the trend now. For campaign, some manager already applied merit as a requirement, if they dont have it, they will get lower payment rate. So it will eventually discouraged people who is always finding an easy way to get money because things will be hard from now on. Luckily, based on my poll and data i gathered from my thread, there are some low rank members who is being positive with this merit point system.
You guys can check my infographic that i made from my thread in here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg29502964#msg29502964

[prehisto]

I think that there is one overlooked problem which needs to be addressed if we want forum quality to raise.

No.

What are the low quality farmers doing when they understand that chance of them ranking up is close to zero?
I believe that  they just could start farming more accounts in order to compensate for their inability to rank up, thus generating more sh*t post than ever.

You lack common sense and any understanding for incentives of any kind. Once they realize that they are unable to rank up, thus unable to progress, thus unable to earn, there is a near-zero incentive to continue doing what they're doing.

Otherwise there is no real way to prove or disprove my theory.

Your theory is fundamentally flawed. Empirical evidence is not needed to disprove it.

If they can rank up to Jr.Member who can still earn with signatures, they have motivation to farm more accounts thus generating more accounts.
If you can not see the logic in this, you are the one lacking common sense.

Well i guess it is still better if they only have 10 Jr. Members account rather than if they have 10 high rank accounts because they can rank up just because they posted shit. And you still missed out the trend now. For campaign, some manager already applied merit as a requirement, if they dont have it, they will get lower payment rate. So it will eventually discouraged people who is always finding an easy way to get money because things will be hard from now on. Luckily, based on my poll and data i gathered from my thread, there are some low rank members who is being positive with this merit point system.
You guys can check my infographic that i made from my thread in here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg29502964#msg29502964

If this about trend of Managers adding criteria about merits is true then you are right and then my theory is disapproved.
Thank you for providing solid argument.

[captain_blood]

We should wait for the realistic outcome of this merit system, and if things doesn't work out like such massive abuse of merits thru alts account, then I hope the administration should have the PLAN B at least to alter the abuse and not make it worst.

[athanz88]

I think that there is one overlooked problem which needs to be addressed if we want forum quality to raise.

No.

What are the low quality farmers doing when they understand that chance of them ranking up is close to zero?
I believe that  they just could start farming more accounts in order to compensate for their inability to rank up, thus generating more sh*t post than ever.

You lack common sense and any understanding for incentives of any kind. Once they realize that they are unable to rank up, thus unable to progress, thus unable to earn, there is a near-zero incentive to continue doing what they're doing.

Otherwise there is no real way to prove or disprove my theory.

Your theory is fundamentally flawed. Empirical evidence is not needed to disprove it.

If they can rank up to Jr.Member who can still earn with signatures, they have motivation to farm more accounts thus generating more accounts.
If you can not see the logic in this, you are the one lacking common sense.

Well i guess it is still better if they only have 10 Jr. Members account rather than if they have 10 high rank accounts because they can rank up just because they posted shit. And you still missed out the trend now. For campaign, some manager already applied merit as a requirement, if they dont have it, they will get lower payment rate. So it will eventually discouraged people who is always finding an easy way to get money because things will be hard from now on. Luckily, based on my poll and data i gathered from my thread, there are some low rank members who is being positive with this merit point system.
You guys can check my infographic that i made from my thread in here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg29502964#msg29502964

If this about trend of Managers adding criteria about merits is true then you are right and then my theory is disapproved.
Thank you for providing solid argument.

There is already a manager who applied this rule, the campaign starts last week, just not too long after the merit system was introduced. I guess this is the future for the campaign in a near time, since merit indicates (hopefully) people who did a great posts, so it is natural that people with higher merit will get a better payment than other in the same rank who doesnt have merit.
This is the payment rate for my campaign

Rates without merit
Jr member - .00075/week
Member - .0015/week
Full Member - .003/week
Sr Member - .006/week
Hero - .008/week
Legendary - .01/week

With merit
This means merits above what you started with. You can only get this rate if you have the merits when applying
Jr Member with at least 1 merit - .00125/week
Member with at least 2 merit - .0025/week
Full Member with at least 5 merit - .005
Sr member with at least 5 merit - .009/week
Hero Member with at least 10 merit - .012/week
Legendary Member with at least 10 merit .015/week

I want to make a post and make it clear how the tiers work here. All users depending on rank were given a Merit score. Newbie 0 Jr member 0 Member 10 Full member 100 Sr member 250 Hero member 500 Legendary 1000. Anyone who is in this campaign wanting the higher tier pay needed to have scores of Jr member 1 Member 12 Full member 105 sr member 255 Hero member 510 Legendary 1010.

This is the link to the campaign if you want to look at it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827626.0

[digaran]

Rates without merit
Jr member - .00075/week
Member - .0015/week
Full Member - .003/week
Sr Member - .006/week
Hero - .008/week
Legendary - .01/week

With merit
This means merits above what you started with. You can only get this rate if you have the merits when applying
Jr Member with at least 1 merit - .00125/week
Member with at least 2 merit - .0025/week
Full Member with at least 5 merit - .005
Sr member with at least 5 merit - .009/week
Hero Member with at least 10 merit - .012/week
Legendary Member with at least 10 merit .015/week

I want to make a post and make it clear how the tiers work here. All users depending on rank were given a Merit score. Newbie 0 Jr member 0 Member 10 Full member 100 Sr member 250 Hero member 500 Legendary 1000. Anyone who is in this campaign wanting the higher tier pay needed to have scores of Jr member 1 Member 12 Full member 105 sr member 255 Hero member 510 Legendary 1010.

This is the link to the campaign if you want to look at it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827626.0

What if the campaign manager rejects you even if you have enough merits for the high pay tier?

[krishnaverma]

What if the campaign manager rejects you even if you have enough merits for the high pay tier?

This can be possible if he is not convinced with the quality of posts made by that member. That member can try on other signature campaigns.

[sitnikov]

There is already a manager who applied this rule, the campaign starts last week, just not too long after the merit system was introduced. I guess this is the future for the campaign in a near time, since merit indicates (hopefully) people who did a great posts, so it is natural that people with higher merit will get a better payment than other in the same rank who doesnt have merit.
This is the payment rate for my campaign

I also liked that initiative taken by that campaign manager. It would be nice if the other old campaigns also add this requirement for the participants.

[evaann777]

I like this. Hopefully, I can get merit soon!

[gnerro2]

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.

"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."

is this option still active?
tnx a lot.

[Samarkand]

... While the legit members who the Merit system is designed to aid get next to no Merit due to scarcity and lack of desire to Merit.

It may work out this way, but who knows.. is early days lol

I´m sympathetic to this viewpoint. Many people don´t seem to bother with the merit system
at all, which artificially reduces the supply of merit. I read somewhere that roughly 600k merits
were initially distributed. As of now merits are not really circulating as freely as theymos envisioned
it. The situation is going to get worse, because only ~11k merits are generated by the merit sources each month.

If the system is not working properly in spite of the huge supply due to the initial starting
balance of each user, how is it ever going to work when new merits are only generated by merit sources?

I know the theory is that merits will trickle down, because each awarded merit generates 0.5 sMerit.
However, this is clearly not working as intended, because many users don´t award merits at all.

Just take a look at a recent 1 hour period:

Today at 04:28:40 PM: 1 from actmyname for Re:

USERS THAT ARE ABUSING MERIT SYSTEM
Today at 04:20:08 PM: 1 from vinz7229 for Re: Why Bitcoin is better than cash?
Today at 04:13:27 PM: 1 from Altcoins enthusiast for when you sell out of panic, you are contributing to the dump!
Today at 04:05:49 PM: 2 from rog1121 for Re: How to explain bitcoin to teenagers or children
Today at 04:02:03 PM: 3 from Copulative for Re: How to protect your bitcoin
Today at 03:37:50 PM: 2 from mjglqw for Re: Only 21.000.000 Bitcoins in existance
Today at 03:37:29 PM: 1 from filterMX for Re: Penjualan Token Sampai Jadi Rupiah Lewat Etherdelta
Today at 03:36:28 PM: 1 from Old God for Airdrop & Bounty
Today at 03:36:12 PM: 1 from Old God for Re: Кoшeлeк pиппл нe oтдaeт 22 pипплa
Today at 03:34:48 PM: 1 from Old God for Re: чyвaк, зaчeм тeбe cтoлькo дeнeг?
Today at 03:34:13 PM: 1 from kaisa for Re: Why the bitcoin price is down?
Today at 03:31:47 PM: 1 from twbt for Re: Der Aktuelle Kursverlauf

A few random observations:
-only 16 merits were awarded in one hour
-for nearly 25 minutes of this hour not a single merit was awarded
-maybe 3/16 merits were awarded to a quality post (I concede that this is subjective and only my opinion) ... but if you take
a look at the posts that were awarded with merits most are pretty terrible

There are several other 1 hour periods where exactly the same problems
occurred (low total amount of merits awarded, merits for questionable posts) and I didn´t really
had to invest any time into cherry picking.

I like the general intention behind the merit system, but it clearly is not working very well.
I also disagree with the viewpoint that "you have to give it some time" or "it´s early days" or
similar adages, because as I argued above it should work great at the start due to the merit starting
balances of most Member-Legendary users.

Besides, I completely understand why many people don´t want to bother with the merit
system at all. Even if giving out a merit only takes a few seconds if you are fast it still
interrupts your reading experience.

I would compare merits to a shitcoin with a 600k coin supply, where probably half
of the supply belongs to inactive users and will never be spent while many of the remaining
HODLers don´t want to bother with it, because it is worth nothing and isn´t traded
at any exchange. Consequently, we are left with a few enthusiasts, who use the shitcoin
for its intended purpose and a few people, who just use it to troll or to have fun (e.g. stuff
like awarding merits to random shitposts or old classics like the Satoshi posts).

Disclaimer: I´m not even particularly affected by the merit system personally, because even though
I would be a Sr. Member based on activity, I have already "earned" 91 merits since the introduction
of the system and will likely rank up soon anyway.

I just don´t think that the sytem is working as intended and that theymos has to take
some measures to increase the circulation of merits.

Possible solutions could be:
-increase the amount of merit sources (I´m not talking about 2-3 new sources, I would increase them by 100 % or more)
-lower the merit requirements for ranking up to take into account the fact that they are not circulating as intended
-remove the merit system completely and replace it with another solution
-impose a minimum merit requirement to prevent people from only awarding a single merit to a post
(theymos argued in one of his recent posts that he initially envisioned that people would award 5-10 merits to a good
post and 1 merit to every post that is remotely readable)
...

[/list]

[QuestionAuthority]

... While the legit members who the Merit system is designed to aid get next to no Merit due to scarcity and lack of desire to Merit.

It may work out this way, but who knows.. is early days lol

I´m sympathetic to this viewpoint. Many people don´t seem to bother with the merit system
at all, which artificially reduces the supply of merit. I read somewhere that roughly 600k merits
were initially distributed. As of now merits are not really circulating as freely as theymos envisioned
it. The situation is going to get worse, because only ~11k merits are generated by the merit sources each month.

If the system is not working properly in spite of the huge supply due to the initial starting
balance of each user, how is it ever going to work when new merits are only generated by merit sources?

I know the theory is that merits will trickle down, because each awarded merit generates 0.5 sMerit.
However, this is clearly not working as intended, because many users don´t award merits at all.

Just take a look at a recent 1 hour period:

Today at 04:28:40 PM: 1 from actmyname for Re:

USERS THAT ARE ABUSING MERIT SYSTEM
Today at 04:20:08 PM: 1 from vinz7229 for Re: Why Bitcoin is better than cash?
Today at 04:13:27 PM: 1 from Altcoins enthusiast for when you sell out of panic, you are contributing to the dump!
Today at 04:05:49 PM: 2 from rog1121 for Re: How to explain bitcoin to teenagers or children
Today at 04:02:03 PM: 3 from Copulative for Re: How to protect your bitcoin
Today at 03:37:50 PM: 2 from mjglqw for Re: Only 21.000.000 Bitcoins in existance
Today at 03:37:29 PM: 1 from filterMX for Re: Penjualan Token Sampai Jadi Rupiah Lewat Etherdelta
Today at 03:36:28 PM: 1 from Old God for Airdrop & Bounty
Today at 03:36:12 PM: 1 from Old God for Re: Кoшeлeк pиппл нe oтдaeт 22 pипплa
Today at 03:34:48 PM: 1 from Old God for Re: чyвaк, зaчeм тeбe cтoлькo дeнeг?
Today at 03:34:13 PM: 1 from kaisa for Re: Why the bitcoin price is down?
Today at 03:31:47 PM: 1 from twbt for Re: Der Aktuelle Kursverlauf

A few random observations:
-only 16 merits were awarded in one hour
-for nearly 25 minutes of this hour not a single merit was awarded
-maybe 3/16 merits were awarded to a quality post (I concede that this is subjective and only my opinion) ... but if you take
a look at the posts that were awarded with merits most are pretty terrible

There are several other 1 hour periods where exactly the same problems
occurred (low total amount of merits awarded, merits for questionable posts) and I didn´t really
had to invest any time into cherry picking.

I like the general intention behind the merit system, but it clearly is not working very well.
I also disagree with the viewpoint that "you have to give it some time" or "it´s early days" or
similar adages, because as I argued above it should work great at the start due to the merit starting
balances of most Member-Legendary users.

Besides, I completely understand why many people don´t want to bother with the merit
system at all. Even if giving out a merit only takes a few seconds if you are fast it still
interrupts your reading experience.

I would compare merits to a shitcoin with a 600k coin supply, where probably half
of the supply belongs to inactive users and will never be spent while many of the remaining
HODLers don´t want to bother with it, because it is worth nothing and isn´t traded
at any exchange. Consequently, we are left with a few enthusiasts, who use the shitcoin
for its intended purpose and a few people, who just use it to troll or to have fun (e.g. stuff
like awarding merits to random shitposts or old classics like the Satoshi posts).

Disclaimer: I´m not even particularly affected by the merit system personally, because even though
I would be a Sr. Member based on activity, I have already "earned" 91 merits since the introduction
of the system and will likely rank up soon anyway.

I just don´t think that the sytem is working as intended and that theymos has to take
some measures to increase the circulation of merits.

Possible solutions could be:
-increase the amount of merit sources (I´m not talking about 2-3 new sources, I would increase them by 100 % or more)
-lower the merit requirements for ranking up to take into account the fact that they are not circulating as intended
-remove the merit system completely and replace it with another solution
-impose a minimum merit requirement to prevent people from only awarding a single merit to a post
(theymos argued in one of his recent posts that he initially envisioned that people would award 5-10 merits to a good
post and 1 merit to every post that is remotely readable)
...

[/list]

People are so impatient. I would imagine theymos spent 100 times longer attempting to develop a solution to the problem than this solution has been in place. Your dataset is too small to determine anything. Come back in six months and let’s see if it’s working.

How many Legendary members with plenty of merit to give have had to work the last week and have had no free time to visit the forum?

How many Legendary members have been here once or twice but have yet to notice the merit system?

You said, there was a period of 25 minutes of a one hour period where no merit was awarded. I’m sorry, I had to take a shower. I couldn’t do it right then. I’ve noticed for, um, let’s see, about the last 7 years that there are frequently large periods of inactivity on this forum. People are doing other things. They’re not all here at once.

What I’ve observed since the merit system began is that there are fewer people posting:

My doggie is a pony.

I like bitcoin go higher so snickers make money do good top run.

I want make deposit to bitcoin bank can I buy fish with bitcoin credit card?

Bitcoin transactions cost so much because so much fee is really really high for selling. That’s why you have problem. Glad I could help. Can you tip me?

You don’t like the response, “give it some time” because your impatient. I’ve already seen it working but to really know you will need a lot more time not just a little.

This forum was a shitnest of people that were either all 9 years old, having a monkey rank them up by banging on their keyboard so they can earn money, or non english speaking people banging on a keyboard nonsensically so they can earn money. This has to change.

Would you rather implement a “likes” system. If you remove this system you’re just as likely to get something that’s worse. I can tell you that it’s harder to find people worthy of ranking up than you think it is. I’ve lowered my standards a lot just to be able to give merit to reasonably decent posters because I can’t find very many.

Increasing the number of sources would only help if there were these great members that are being ignored. If sources aren’t handing out enough merit to people that will become obvious and theymos can replace them with a new source.

Lowering the requirements would just keep the same monkeys banging on keyboards. Making people give more merit per post is the equivalent of increasing the number of sources.

I am handing out merit in the thread linked in my signature but I’m not getting nearly as many requests as I thought I would so obviously not that many people care or have found out yet. So what’s my answer to you? Wait for it, you’re gonna love it, you need to give this more time to work.

[belyaevi]

I´m sympathetic to this viewpoint. Many people don´t seem to bother with the merit system
at all, which artificially reduces the supply of merit. I read somewhere that roughly 600k merits
were initially distributed.

600k  merits were not announced in the official thread and it can  be a rumor. That figure seems to be quite high for me.

[Soke]

I think the requirements for the merit system is off.  Merits are harder to earn than activity points, so the merit requirements should be less than the activity requirements.  The requirements are off for Sr. Members and above. 

[Zandar]

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.


In other words we are supposed to become cheerleaders for other people.
This new merit system is nothing more than a popularity contest. You think people will give out merits because the post is good? Think again. People will hand out merits to their friends and people they know. Even merit pump groups will appear.
Also there are lots of people with multiple accounts, all they'll do is keep giving merits from one acount to their other accounts and keep racking it in, while others will stay stuck in same rank no matter the quality of their posts.

You want quality posts only? That's easy. Get enough moderators working on the site that will keep on deleting one line posts and shitty posts and people will fall in line in no time.
With this merit system this place is going to turn into highschool in no time. Allready lots of topics have opened that are selling merits. Ofcourse they opened the topics with completely new accounts so their high rank accounts can hand out the sold merits behind the curtains.

Also I have gone through the entire 112 pages of this topic and the quality posts I saw can only fill like 5-10 pages max, so the highschool antics are still in place. There are even tons of single line spam posts in this topic alone and some might even have been merited.

And not anymore seeing the trust immediately under a user while reading in a topic doesn't help things either, now one has to click upon that user to see it.

Edit: Might want to make it so that one can only give a certain max merits per month to the exact same user no matter how many quality posts made. This will force that user to spread around their merits instead of keep handing them out to their 'select' few.

[gnerro2]

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.


In other words we are supposed to become cheerleaders for other people.
This new merit system is nothing more than a popularity contest. You think people will give out merits because the post is good? Think again. People will hand out merits to their friends and people they know. Even merit pump groups will appear.
Also there are lots of people with multiple accounts, all they'll do is keep giving merits from one acount to their other accounts and keep racking it in, while others will stay stuck in same rank no matter the quality of their posts.

You want quality posts only? That's easy. Get enough moderators working on the site that will keep on deleting one line posts and shitty posts and people will fall in line in no time.
With this merit system this place is going to turn into highschool in no time. Allready lots of topics have opened that are selling merits. Ofcourse they opened the topics with completely new accounts so their high rank accounts can hand out the sold merits behind the curtains.

Also I have gone through the entire 112 pages of this topic and the quality posts I saw can only fill like 5-10 pages max, so the highschool antics are still in place. There are even tons of single line spam posts in this topic alone and some might even have been merited.

And not anymore seeing the trust immediately under a user while reading in a topic doesn't help things either, now one has to click upon that user to see it.

that's sad .. but tnx. bitcointalk are so inefficient than.

[theymos]

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.

[adetos]

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.


In other words we are supposed to become cheerleaders for other people.
This new merit system is nothing more than a popularity contest. You think people will give out merits because the post is good? Think again. People will hand out merits to their friends and people they know. Even merit pump groups will appear.
Also there are lots of people with multiple accounts, all they'll do is keep giving merits from one acount to their other accounts and keep racking it in, while others will stay stuck in same rank no matter the quality of their posts.

You want quality posts only? That's easy. Get enough moderators working on the site that will keep on deleting one line posts and shitty posts and people will fall in line in no time.
With this merit system this place is going to turn into high school in no time. Already lots of topics have opened that are selling merits. Ofcourse they opened the topics with completely new accounts so their high rank accounts can hand out the sold merits behind the curtains.

Also I have gone through the entire 112 pages of this topic and the quality posts I saw can only fill like 5-10 pages max, so the highschool antics are still in place. There are even tons of single line spam posts in this topic alone and some might even have been merited.

And not anymore seeing the trust immediately under a user while reading in a topic doesn't help things either, now one has to click upon that user to see it.

Yes i agree with you. The system encourage more cheaters and people with multiple accounts will continue to get their other accounts rank up fast. There are so many forum members with sincerity, people who really contributing to the forum and ecosystem will not get rewarded for their activities. I will suggest the merit system should be stopped and let the old system continue the way it was running.

[G00DFe77a]

No system is perfect, I think you have give time to the staff to review and make adjustments where necessary. It does look like they're open to suggestions and making changes for the better.

[gnerro2]

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.

"I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit."

that's sounds good, improve it!