Merit & new rank requirements

[pvk444]

Every day I have new questions to merit. So, I have activity 238, to the next rank I miss 2. My Merit number is 101 and for the next rank requrement is 250. Will I stay in my full member rank as far as I will not add 149 merits more? Yes? No? Maybe?

Cases like yours show the challenge with this. I am all for a merit base system, but unless it's fair and attainable, I fear it might have the opposite effect of what it truly wants to achieve. It is darn difficult to gain merits. Unless you are active in the "right" forums it is unlikely that good quality posts will be rewarded at all. Furthermore, although it takes some time to demonstrate sufficient activity, it can take several magnitudes longer to accumulate the right amount of merits. Seeing the numbers above, I have to ask myself how long would it take somebody to accumulate 149 merits? The proportions between activity and merit just seem way out of balance.

Has anyone considered how many good quality posts it takes in general to receive a merit point (on average)? If this turns out more than say 10:1, it would somebody like greeklogos take around 1500 posts just to get to the next level. If the odds would be really this bad (and I don't have much to go on here), the merits could have the effect of destroying the incentive is wants to achieve.

[1715176227]

1715176227

[btcs-favorite]

Wow how i should get that much merit 100 for Full Member

[btcs-favorite]

Aren't you people getting tired of all those new Merit threads already? I feel like a spammer now, answering the same questions all the time, trying not to repeat myself. Here, in Beginners and Help even in the Bounty section, it's crazy. I thought this madness will eventually stop.
Please theymos, just send a PM to all the users with the information about the new merit system so people can stop posting every day 10000 topics with the same questions generating posts.
Lets just finish with it once and for all.

Thats a nice idea!

Or add a link to this thread, when people click the "Merit" link in their profiles.

[Jet Cash]

Maybe the merit system ws introduced to reduce the dominance of immigrants to the forum taking over with their bounty hunting and sig spamming.

[btcs-favorite]

Every day I have new questions to merit. So, I have activity 238, to the next rank I miss 2. My Merit number is 101 and for the next rank requrement is 250. Will I stay in my full member rank as far as I will not add 149 merits more? Yes? No? Maybe?

Cases like yours show the challenge with this. I am all for a merit base system, but unless it's fair and attainable, I fear it might have the opposite effect of what it truly wants to achieve. It is darn difficult to gain merits. Unless you are active in the "right" forums it is unlikely that good quality posts will be rewarded at all. Furthermore, although it takes some time to demonstrate sufficient activity, it can take several magnitudes longer to accumulate the right amount of merits. Seeing the numbers above, I have to ask myself how long would it take somebody to accumulate 149 merits? The proportions between activity and merit just seem way out of balance.

Has anyone considered how many good quality posts it takes in general to receive a merit point (on average)? If this turns out more than say 10:1, it would somebody like greeklogos take around 1500 posts just to get to the next level. If the odds would be really this bad (and I don't have much to go on here), the merits could have the effect of destroying the incentive is wants to achieve.

Thank you for the merit:)

[adetos]

I dont know what is wrong with my account, before the merit system was deployed, I ought to have become Member from Jnr. Member. Can I get a help from admin? or can i get analysis of my account or is there any admin to help me out

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I dont know what is wrong with my account, before the merit system was deployed, I ought to have become Member from Jnr. Member. Can I get a help from admin? or can i get analysis of my account or is there any admin to help me out

There's nothing wrong with your account.  Perhaps if you read about how the merit system works, you'll figure out that you now need merit points in addiction to activity in order to rank up.

The hard part is earning merit, because for that you have to write interesting/important/informative posts AND you're at the mercy of other people giving you merit for those posts.  So good luck.  Yes, it's now much harder to rank up, but this is the way it's supposed to be.

[adetos]

I dont know what is wrong with my account, before the merit system was deployed, I ought to have become Member from Jnr. Member. Can I get a help from admin? or can i get analysis of my account or is there any admin to help me out

There's nothing wrong with your account.  Perhaps if you read about how the merit system works, you'll figure out that you now need merit points in addiction to activity in order to rank up.

The hard part is earning merit, because for that you have to write interesting/important/informative posts AND you're at the mercy of other people giving you merit for those posts.  So good luck.  Yes, it's now much harder to rank up, but this is the way it's supposed to be.

thanks

[adetos]

In what forums here can one make post to earn merits

[fishfishfish313]

In what forums here can one make post to earn merits

I believe that any post has the potential to earn merits, provided people choose to give them to you.

In other words, create thoughtful and intelligent posts that add to the conversation and theoretically, you should be awarded with merits over time.

From the Original Post:

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.

[pvk444]

In what forums here can one make post to earn merits

I believe that any post has the potential to earn merits, provided people choose to give them to you.

In other words, create thoughtful and intelligent posts that add to the conversation and theoretically, you should be awarded with merits over time.

In theory, you might be right. In practice, there are more high quality post which don't receive any merits than those that have received merits.

Looking through the forums and the posts, I noticed that one is MUCH more likely to get noticed and receive merits, if you start a new topic. Hope this will not lead to unintended consequence of people abandoning discussions early.

[LoyceV]

or can i get analysis of my account

You must have one of the highest Activity numbers for a Jr. Member now. Your account had a large "potential activity". This means you didn't post many messages, but the ones you posted had enough time between them to cover each "14-days Activity period".
Right after the Merit system was introduced, you started posting many posts per day (including crossposting of the same post in different threads), which means your post count and thus Activity went up quickly. You even started a thread, in which these questions were answered already.
So far my analysis.

In what forums here can one make post to earn merits

Any post can earn merits.
But, if you mainly post in threads where nobody else has earned any merits, it's very unlikely you'll get them there. In that case the whole thread isn't worth any merits, and people post there only for bounties or to increase their post count.
Example: this thread has 96 posts, but it only has 1 post from a user who has earned 6 Merit points. Several other people who posted in that thread have 100, 250 or 500 Merit points, but they got them at the introduction, and not based on their post quality.

Note: this doesn't mean you should start posting irrelevant posts in threads/boards with people who have earned many Merits just to earn them.

[TheBeardedBaby]

Aren't you people getting tired of all those new Merit threads already? I feel like a spammer now, answering the same questions all the time, trying not to repeat myself. Here, in Beginners and Help even in the Bounty section, it's crazy. I thought this madness will eventually stop.
Please theymos, just send a PM to all the users with the information about the new merit system so people can stop posting every day 10000 topics with the same questions generating posts.
Lets just finish with it once and for all.

Thats a nice idea!

Or add a link to this thread, when people click the "Merit" link in their profiles.

This is also a solution, but something has to be done to stop this madness. Hope that the admin and the people here agree with me about this. I think that still a lot of people are not aware of the change and will continue posting same questions about merit for a very long time.

[etherflip]

Aren't you people getting tired of all those new Merit threads already? I feel like a spammer now, answering the same questions all the time, trying not to repeat myself. Here, in Beginners and Help even in the Bounty section, it's crazy. I thought this madness will eventually stop.
Please theymos, just send a PM to all the users with the information about the new merit system so people can stop posting every day 10000 topics with the same questions generating posts.
Lets just finish with it once and for all.

Thats a nice idea!

Or add a link to this thread, when people click the "Merit" link in their profiles.

This is also a solution, but something has to be done to stop this madness. Hope that the admin and the people here agree with me about this. I think that still a lot of people are not aware of the change and will continue posting same questions about merit for a very long time.

Or people are purposefully posting in order to gain merit. If you are more likely to gain merit from creating a thread, why not create a similar thread everyday. The merit system seems broken...

[adetos]

I believe its admins and top bitcointalk forum staff are to be the ones to allocate merits to members, that how the merit system will be free of bias situtations.

[TheBeardedBaby]

Or people are purposefully posting in order to gain merit. If you are more likely to gain merit from creating a thread, why not create a similar thread everyday. The merit system seems broken...

I don't see it as a broken system but the adoption will be too long as not many are aware of it. Most of the affected will be those who are here only for the bounties and have never read anything in the Meta section. Maybe they haven't even notice yet the merit points until it comes the time to rank-up.
Many "account farmers" are still spamming only for activity and many will give up at the end but if they are aware of the system on an earlier stage then we can spare some "shitposting".

[etherflip]

Or people are purposefully posting in order to gain merit. If you are more likely to gain merit from creating a thread, why not create a similar thread everyday. The merit system seems broken...

I don't see it as a broken system but the adoption time will take too long as not many are aware of it. Most of the affected will be those who are here only for the bounties and have never read anything in the Meta section. Maybe they haven't even notice yet the merit points until it comes the time to rank-up.
Many "account farmers" are still spamming only for activity and many will give up at the end but if they are aware of the system on an earlier stage then we can spare some "shitposting".

Actually in thinking about it, one simple fix will actually make the merit system work. If you reduce account activity by the amount of merit NOT distributed every two weeks, it would highly encourage people to distribute merit. At the same time it might be a pain for users that have a lot to distribute but that is a separate issue.

Something like this has to be implemented for it actually to work in practice. Right now there is only incentive for abuse and power hoarding.

[shalnark]

So in order for me to get my merit up I have to wait until others give the smerit to me or at least hope that other memeber want to share some merit??? I'm lost.

Yes, you would have to attain 250 sMerits from other users for you to progress to hero member rank, users are most likely to give merit to the posts which are more constructive, useful and helpful to the community, maybe you can start working towards that direction.

Merits was deserves to the users who give knowledgeable information, but it not means that all people who gives suggestion or opinion are deserves to earned merit. Because sometimes their opinion is so shitty and not realistic. They were trying to makes false information to have a topic. I truly appreciate the merits system because now all users are equally. Because on the previous even users who have lack in quality they were reach the higher ranked even their post is nonsense and totally not helpful to others.

[Magister Magus]

As I said somewhere in this thread, at the beginning I didn't like the system, because it seemed to me too hard to rank up.
But now I'm starting to appreciate the system, even if I see that there is some space for improvement.
And as  it's in the real interest of everyone (out of spammers and shitposters...) to have a better forum, I think that we all - instead of complaining - should try to make the system work and to make proposals for improvements.

Now: one of the biggest problem I see, is the fact that - to receive a merit - you need not only to write a good post, but also to have the luck that it will be read by someone that appreciates it and has merit to give.
This is very difficult, due to the enormous number of posts and threads: even with the new system, lot of people still write a big number of useless post just to respect the commitments with the bounty, and your "wonderful" post will be lost between them.

Well, I see that there is a zone of the forum, the "Serious discussion" where there is no signature and your posts don't count for the campaign.
Now it has a very limited number of threads, but it seems to me that it would be a very good idea to expand this area and to encourage its use. (of course, every one could do this by his own initiative, but - for example - I'd feel a little intimidated to start a thread in a so "elitarian" zone; but I could make a post, if I had something to say as answer).

It seems to me a win win solution: we'll have a clean zone, where spammers and shitposters won't have any reason to post, and good poster would be motivated and stimulated to write high quality posts with more chances to be read from right people.

What do you think?


 

[nullius]

<Jr. Member big whine>

<Jr. Member repetitious whine>

<Newbie whine>

<Member whine>

<Sr. Member whine>

<Jr. Member whine>

<Jr. Member whine>

<Jr. Member whine>

<whine whine whine>

I was a Jr. Member at the inception of the merit system.  I started with zero.  Whiners, shut up and observe the number below my name.

Hint:  To make relatively quick posts such as this one, I am periodically pausing from another post I’ve been working on for hours.  I maintain a semi-disorganized queue of those.

It’s not necessary to put that much time and effort into posts, because it’s not necessary to earn 100+ merit per week simply to rank up.  I am only doing now just as I did in December, before the merit system existed.  Whereas if you are a reasonably intelligent person who spends a moderate amount of time on the forum, then I think you should be able to earn an average at least +1 merit per day.  That would allow you to rise through the ranks at approximately the same rate as you would by activity level alone.  The system is well-thought.

Whereas if you can’t earn at least one measly merit per day of active posting, what that means ipso facto is that your posts are of such low quality that you are wasting other people’s time by posting junk for others to read.  The merit system is a not-so-gentle hint that you should stop.