Merit & new rank requirements

[Grafschmidt]

In that case it would be easier to spot them

How will you differentiate between genuine users and scammers doing the same thing (sending invitations) ?

That's the whole purpose of the merit system: giving you a tool to do it.

Fact is, you can't.
And what's more, those "scammers" are much likely already inside the system.

[Piggy]

In that case it would be easier to spot them

How will you differentiate between genuine users and scammers doing the same thing (sending invitations) ?

Genuine users wont post "nice project" or any two random words message

Like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2068554.msg30006038#msg30006038

[gopaljiverma]

Yeah, in theory you post "quality" messages, you'll get rewarded.

Cannot say about others but I posted some threads which I think will benefit the forum and got some merits from different members of the forum. So, I got rewarded for quality posts in "practical."

In reality people do not send a lot of merit, slowing down by at least 100x the ranking up, for any reason - there are few merit sources here and they get a refill once a month.
Other people will judge your posts and for any reason will not send you merit even if you'll explain why the grass is green and the wind is never seen...
It won't stop in any way the spam.
Merit won't induce me to browse this forum and partecipate in any discussion I just don't want to partecipate.
And that won't stop legendary that just want to cheat, not to cheat.

If the admin feels that merit sources are not enough to cover the forum entirely, he will simple add more. Regarding senior members cheating, I agree with you. In case, such members are found, there should be some change in current system to punish them as well.

[athanz88]

no one merit i only got 5 merit from someone thats sucks really

The merit system is a dead failure.
It only allows the advanced members to gain more bounty rewards...I'm sure that is why it was imposed...

This is Bitcoin forum. Not a bounty forum. The fact that most complainers seem to be focused on making money is a good indication that the merit system is a step in the right direction.

I don't mean any offence to either the merit recipient or the merit givers. But I believe this post is an example of the unexpected consequences of the merit system as implemented:

The post of suchmoon has received a rather significant amount of merits, which, I dare to say, reflect agreement with the opinion, rather than the quality of the post.

Again, this is not to critique the comment of suchmoon. I hole-heartedly agree with it. Also, everybody has their own reasons why they give their sMerits to somebody.

But I also don't believe the comment provided can be regarded as a "high-quality" post, in the original sense of what the sMerit system is expected to encourage.

If the merits are then being used to award simply for stating an opinion one is agreement with, then over time this will lead to the messages becoming biased towards the "majority opinion", and will not have much relevance with the quality of the post per se. (Again, I don't mean to imply that the post above is bad quality. But I also fail to see that it would be of such high quality deserving all the merits it received)

Unfortunatly I also can't offer up a remedy at this point in time, as with any such system it will always be possible to award an opinion expressed in a message rather than the quality of the message.

You re missing one point out there, which is, an account cant give merits all the time, they will run out of their merit points, unless they are a "merit sources". So there will be no much biases on this merit system i guess. The key here is obviously to give merit to the right person, and who is that right person?
1. Who posts a quality posts.
2. Has a great forum manner.
3. Can decide a good posts out of bias.
I guess they must fulfill this 3 category to a user before they give the merits. So the person who are given the merit can pass the merit to the right person too, and in the end the merits will be circulated in to right person and will diminish people who only join this forum to rank up and gain money. And for now, i guess the old high rank members/users are persons that have enough knowledge in crypto and have good forum manner so thats why some of them are sources, so just let them do their job and hope they will do it perfectly.
Dont get me wrong, i love getting money from this forum, but i am not like people who only focusing this forum to earn money, and when they can not get the money, they will whine about it in this forum because of merit. For all people who whine about it, you are a worker not a boss here, the boss can search other people who has more knowledge and experience and replace you, in fact, there are lot of people who can do that besides you, if you dont step up your game, no one will hire you in the end.

[suchmoon]

If the problem was the shitposters why not act on that? Peraphs closing the forum to new users, banning all the shitposters? And then adding an invite system maybe? Or something else?

This is acting on shitposters. Except instead of having moderators do it this system attempts to spread the responsibility to the users.

That may be true. There's twitter to spam wide and large. And facebook. That place is a huge advertisement banner.

But I know that now I'm stuck at senior member. I won't get merit because it's held like Gollum holds the One.
You may say I will get merit if I post quality text.
Except for the fact there is a lot of shitposts everywhere with a lot of merit.

And as far as I can see, only high ranked people are enthusiastic about this merit. I wonder why.

Yet you already got 14 merits in 2 or 3 weeks since merits have been implemented, which is not far off the regular activity rank-up pace.

I don't mean any offence to either the merit recipient or the merit givers. But I believe this post is an example of the unexpected consequences of the merit system as implemented:

The post of suchmoon has received a rather significant amount of merits, which, I dare to say, reflect agreement with the opinion, rather than the quality of the post.

Again, this is not to critique the comment of suchmoon. I hole-heartedly agree with it. Also, everybody has their own reasons why they give their sMerits to somebody.

But I also don't believe the comment provided can be regarded as a "high-quality" post, in the original sense of what the sMerit system is expected to encourage.

If the merits are then being used to award simply for stating an opinion one is agreement with, then over time this will lead to the messages becoming biased towards the "majority opinion", and will not have much relevance with the quality of the post per se. (Again, I don't mean to imply that the post above is bad quality. But I also fail to see that it would be of such high quality deserving all the merits it received)

Unfortunatly I also can't offer up a remedy at this point in time, as with any such system it will always be possible to award an opinion expressed in a message rather than the quality of the message.

I don't think individual anecdotes are reflective of the overall state of the merit system. I could come up with dozens or even hundreds of "unfairly" merited (or not merited) posts but the idea is that in the LONG RUN this system will help to separate egregious shitposters (who should never rank up) from slightly shitposting but generally harmless trolls (who will likely rank up eventually) and from truly constructive/helpful/valuable users (who will likely collect most merits but will also spread most sMerits).

I can't speak for others but I have merited some posts that I disagree with or have no personal opinion about. I'm not naive to expect that everyone will do this all the time, however I have no doubt that there are ways to earn merits without bowing to the majority, whatever that is.

[itranslate]

The merit system is aimed to improve posts quality and this is a positive trend. However, walking around the forum I see that many high-rank members haven’t yet achieved any merit. Thinking about this situation I have some ideas to share:
1) It seems like many forum members do not correspond to their ranks. If Hero member can’t produce any valuable post (e.g. posts that do not receive merit) what can this situation mean?
2) Is it true that Full Member achieved according to new rules will be much more helpful for community than vast majority of old Heroes? I believe yes!
3) It is interesting why is there such a big gap between Member and Full Member (you need 10 times more merit)? Recently it was needed only to double activity score…
4) It is interesting if somebody tried to estimate the average forum correlation between posts made and merits received? Is it 1 to 1000? More? And what if we take into consideration that many merits are granted within topics discussing them? (let alone “internal” or “friends” transfer).
5) Is it only my impression that this system (in the introduced form) is aimed not only to fight for posts quality?

[JayJuanGee]

The merit system is aimed to improve posts quality and this is a positive trend. However, walking around the forum I see that many high-rank members haven’t yet achieved any merit. Thinking about this situation I have some ideas to share:
1) It seems like many forum members do not correspond to their ranks. If Hero member can’t produce any valuable post (e.g. posts that do not receive merit) what can this situation mean?
2) Is it true that Full Member achieved according to new rules will be much more helpful for community than vast majority of old Heroes? I believe yes!
3) It is interesting why is there such a big gap between Member and Full Member (you need 10 times more merit)? Recently it was needed only to double activity score…
4) It is interesting if somebody tried to estimate the average forum correlation between posts made and merits received? Is it 1 to 1000? More? And what if we take into consideration that many merits are granted within topics discussing them? (let alone “internal” or “friends” transfer).
5) Is it only my impression that this system (in the introduced form) is aimed not only to fight for posts quality?

Even though this post is good, it looks like you have a lot of one liner posts, so it may be difficult to earn merit in certain sections and when there is not very much substance to your posts.

I gave one merit for this post, and since your writing is decent, you may be able to find ways to get 9 more merits based on your post quality.

[albermaze]

Many forum participants have noted that starting position on merit points isn't fair. Some people received merits without doing anything and other people will have to work hard to get at least some. I agree with this position, however I have constructive offer:
Let’s show real number of received merits. If Hero received zero merit that means that 0 merits should be displayed for his account. Why forum gives them 500 if they have earned nothing? In such a case everyone will see the real situation.

[JayJuanGee]

Many forum participants have noted that starting position on merit points isn't fair. Some people received merits without doing anything and other people will have to work hard to get at least some. I agree with this position, however I have constructive offer:
Let’s show real number of received merits. If Hero received zero merit that means that 0 merits should be displayed for his account. Why forum gives them 500 if they have earned nothing? In such a case everyone will see the real situation.

Hero members received 500 because of grandfather clause concept.  You received 10 merits, as a member, based on grandfather clause concept.

You are living in a fantasy world if you believe that a new system would start from zero, so any proposal that you were to make should attempt to figure out a way to start from something rather than your current bold (to be noticed) proposal of starting from zero.  By the way, you are assuming a non-existent situation when you say that some members were given merit based on nothing - and you can read the rationale in the OP - that stated that it was an attempt to approximate the minimum merit of each rank.., so merit was given based on an already existing system that was change, rather than based on nothing, as you fantastically proclaim.

[albermaze]

Many forum participants have noted that starting position on merit points isn't fair. Some people received merits without doing anything and other people will have to work hard to get at least some. I agree with this position, however I have constructive offer:
Let’s show real number of received merits. If Hero received zero merit that means that 0 merits should be displayed for his account. Why forum gives them 500 if they have earned nothing? In such a case everyone will see the real situation.

Hero members received 500 because of grandfather clause concept.  You received 10 merits, as a member, based on grandfather clause concept.

You are living in a fantasy world if you believe that a new system would start from zero, so any proposal that you were to make should attempt to figure out a way to start from something rather than your current bold (to be noticed) proposal of starting from zero.  By the way, you are assuming a non-existent situation when you say that some members were given merit based on nothing - and you can read the rationale in the OP - that stated that it was an attempt to approximate the minimum merit of each rank.., so merit was given based on an already existing system that was change, rather than based on nothing, as you fantastically proclaim.

That is not actually true.I am living in a real world and here is a guest with the aim to find information and share thoughts. The old ranks were achieved due to activity. Merit is a new phenomenon why should we not start from 0? I am not proposing the re-ranking, I just offer fair approach. Imagine the situation in a year when there will be two Full Members with 100 merits (but one recieved it initially and the another achieved them). Can you give a sound reason not to show only achieved merits? It seems that it will reflect the real situation and we will have Members with 25 merits and Legendaries with 0 merits? Why not?

[Praesidium]

Many forum participants have noted that starting position on merit points isn't fair. Some people received merits without doing anything and other people will have to work hard to get at least some. I agree with this position, however I have constructive offer:
Let’s show real number of received merits. If Hero received zero merit that means that 0 merits should be displayed for his account. Why forum gives them 500 if they have earned nothing? In such a case everyone will see the real situation.

It is because the difference in activity and contribution. Do you expect that Member will get the same initial merit with Heroes and others while they are only 3 months here in the forum, meanwhile the heroes and other ranks had been here for years and contributed to the forum very well. It is logical that high rank will receive high initial merit than the lower ones.

[itranslate]

I gave one merit for this post, and since your writing is decent, you may be able to find ways to get 9 more merits based on your post quality.

Thank you for replying on my thoughts. Really appreciate this.

Even though this post is good, it looks like you have a lot of one liner posts, so it may be difficult to earn merit in certain sections and when there is not very much substance to your posts.

Yes I have a lot of liner posts as I am just starting to study cryptocurrencies. I don't yet feel to be able to produce high quality posts on specific cryptocurrency issues.
But it seems that I have enough another life-based background to see that something wrong with merit system. I dare to ask a question:

If we look into the post #3 to this thread

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

What is the super value of this post that respective members of this forum gave it more than 30 merit points? At the same time people making original Announcement of cool projects recieve 0 merit

[JayJuanGee]

Many forum participants have noted that starting position on merit points isn't fair. Some people received merits without doing anything and other people will have to work hard to get at least some. I agree with this position, however I have constructive offer:
Let’s show real number of received merits. If Hero received zero merit that means that 0 merits should be displayed for his account. Why forum gives them 500 if they have earned nothing? In such a case everyone will see the real situation.

Hero members received 500 because of grandfather clause concept.  You received 10 merits, as a member, based on grandfather clause concept.

You are living in a fantasy world if you believe that a new system would start from zero, so any proposal that you were to make should attempt to figure out a way to start from something rather than your current bold (to be noticed) proposal of starting from zero.  By the way, you are assuming a non-existent situation when you say that some members were given merit based on nothing - and you can read the rationale in the OP - that stated that it was an attempt to approximate the minimum merit of each rank.., so merit was given based on an already existing system that was change, rather than based on nothing, as you fantastically proclaim.

That is not actually true.I am living in a real world and here is a guest with the aim to find information and share thoughts. The old ranks were achieved due to activity. Merit is a new phenomenon why should we not start from 0? I am not proposing the re-ranking, I just offer fair approach. Imagine the situation in a year when there will be two Full Members with 100 merits (but one recieved it initially and the another achieved them). Can you give a sound reason not to show only achieved merits? It seems that it will reflect the real situation and we will have Members with 25 merits and Legendaries with 0 merits? Why not?

A sound reason to NOT start from zero is because a decision has already been made about how to implement, and the decision has already been implemented for more than two weeks.  Therefore, realistic propositions should be to attempt to work with what we already got and what is already implemented, rather than going backwards to a time before the decision had been made and implemented.   In this regard, we are not at a deliberative stage to determine what system is going to be implemented, but instead at a situation that contemplates where to go with a system that has already been implemented. 

Accordingly, it seems quite fantastical for you to be attempting to put any burden on me or anyone else who defends the status quo system that has already been implemented to come up with good reasons for the change that has already been decided and implemented. 

It seems to me that if you are making a proposal to make changes to this already existing system in the way that you are suggesting, then you have the burden to show why your proposed changes would be better.  I see that you are not opposed to keeping the ranks, but you just want to start from scratch with the merits - even though Theymos had already said that he chose to initially distribute minimum merit for each rank as a means to coordinate the past with the future.  I agree with you that the number of initially distributed merits were based mostly on a combination of activity level and rank.. and really if you look at OP and some subsequent explanations by Theymos, the current implementation and initial distribution of merit was primarily based on prior Rank, except for the hero members who ended up receiving additional merit in accordance with their having achieved at least a 775 activity level. 

Yet, having said all that, so far, you have not given too much facts and/or logic for your proposal to start from scratch except to attempt to shift the burden to someone else, such as me, to defend a decision that has already been made and already coordinated initial merit distributions based on rank, which seems like a BIG waste of time to hypothesize starting from scratch when even the current implementation does not contemplate the starting point that you are choosing.

[Praesidium]

If we look into the #3 to this thread

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

What is the super value of this post that respective members of this forum gave it more than 30 merit points? At the same time people making original Announcement of cool projects recieve 0 merit

Ofcourse is Vod a reputed member here in bitcointalk, and his statement about merit must open new window is so useful, it is really annoying in the first week of this system that clicking merit takes us away from the thread. Good thing that his suggestion is implemented huge help to decrease annoyance in the system.

[JayJuanGee]

I gave one merit for this post, and since your writing is decent, you may be able to find ways to get 9 more merits based on your post quality.

Thank you for replying on my thoughts. Really appreciate this.

Even though this post is good, it looks like you have a lot of one liner posts, so it may be difficult to earn merit in certain sections and when there is not very much substance to your posts.

Yes I have a lot of liner posts as I am just starting to study cryptocurrencies. I don't yet feel to be able to produce high quality posts on specific cryptocurrency issues.

You do not have to have a lot of crypto currency experience in order to find threads that interest you and to attempt to constructively engage with
various thread participants.  Through that engaging process you can learn and also provide your life experiences and opinions to the conversation, which may result in your earning merits....   You likely have a better chance with those kinds of interactive posts, rather than seeking bounty type activities.

But it seems that I have enough another life-based background to see that something wrong with merit system. I dare to ask a question:

If we look into the post #3 to this thread

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

What is the super value of this post that respective members of this forum gave it more than 30 merit points? At the same time people making original Announcement of cool projects recieve 0 merit

Seems a waste of time to attempt to figure out why people give out merits.  I used a lot of my initial distribution of merits to give to posters that I already know and based on past contributions that I believe that they have made to me and/or the forum.  It is likely that the intitial sending of merits is not going to be as reflective as future sending of merit, and the system will likely adapt to members getting used to merit and perhaps looking at current posts rather than historical.  However, there is also a subjective component to merit, too, which leaves discretion in the hands of the person who has smerits to give (rather than attempting to make some kind of objective validation regarding which posts or posters are more worthy of merit, which seems a waste of time endeavor).

[suchmoon]

That is not actually true.I am living in a real world and here is a guest with the aim to find information and share thoughts. The old ranks were achieved due to activity. Merit is a new phenomenon why should we not start from 0? I am not proposing the re-ranking, I just offer fair approach. Imagine the situation in a year when there will be two Full Members with 100 merits (but one recieved it initially and the another achieved them). Can you give a sound reason not to show only achieved merits? It seems that it will reflect the real situation and we will have Members with 25 merits and Legendaries with 0 merits? Why not?

Let's look at your example of two Full Members if your proposal was implemented. One would have zero merits, the other one would have 100. Is that really fair? The one who didn't earn any merits may have made as many or even more good posts as the one who earned 100, it just so happened that those posts were made before the merit system was in place.

The current approach is similar to many other examples of "grandfathering" old accounts into the conditions that existed before introducing new features. Let's say you sign up for a free beta service of some sort, and you're give the option to keep it for free when the service goes live and starts charging a fee to new users. Is that unfair to new users?

[YuTü.Co.in]

If we look into the #3 to this thread

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

What is the super value of this post that respective members of this forum gave it more than 30 merit points? At the same time people making original Announcement of cool projects recieve 0 merit

Ofcourse is Vod a reputed member here in bitcointalk, and his statement about merit must open new window is so useful, it is really annoying in the first week of this system that clicking merit takes us away from the thread. Good thing that his suggestion is implemented huge help to decrease annoyance in the system.

Did everybody forget as to why ALL the links on this forum were changed from opening in new tabs/windows, now ALL opening in the same tab with the exception now of the Merit thingy link?

[jimmywh]

That is not actually true.I am living in a real world and here is a guest with the aim to find information and share thoughts. The old ranks were achieved due to activity. Merit is a new phenomenon why should we not start from 0? I am not proposing the re-ranking, I just offer fair approach. Imagine the situation in a year when there will be two Full Members with 100 merits (but one recieved it initially and the another achieved them). Can you give a sound reason not to show only achieved merits? It seems that it will reflect the real situation and we will have Members with 25 merits and Legendaries with 0 merits? Why not?

Let's look at your example of two Full Members if your proposal was implemented. One would have zero merits, the other one would have 100. Is that really fair? The one who didn't earn any merits may have made as many or even more good posts as the one who earned 100, it just so happened that those posts were made before the merit system was in place.

The current approach is similar to many other examples of "grandfathering" old accounts into the conditions that existed before introducing new features. Let's say you sign up for a free beta service of some sort, and you're give the option to keep it for free when the service goes live and starts charging a fee to new users. Is that unfair to new users?

Are you actually saying that all people who became Full Members and above before merit was implemented wrote quality posts? In order to rank up before merit was introduced, you didn't have to write quality posts, they just couldn't be shit posts worthy of deletion.
I agree that with merit introduced everybody should have started from 0 to make the merit system more transparent. By starting at 0 I don't mean that Hero members would have to earn 1000 merits to become legendary. However, they would need the 500 equal to the difference between Hero and Legendary. What I would prefer is the following:

Jr. Member -> Member 0-10
Member -> Full Member 0-90
Full Member -> Sr. Member 0-150
Sr. Member -> Hero Member 0-250
Hero Member -> Legendary 0-500
Legendary 0-0

By using the system like this, no-one would be born with a "grandparent" advantage, and at the same time no-one would have the right to feel "cheated".

Win/win

[suchmoon]

Are you actually saying that all people who became Full Members and above before merit was implemented wrote quality posts? In order to rank up before merit was introduced, you didn't have to write quality posts, they just couldn't be shit posts worthy of deletion.

I didn't say that. But you also can't claim that NO ONE is worth having those merits and should be set to 0. Without going through every post ever made and re-evaluating everything (completely unfeasible) I don't think it's possible to come up with a totally fair formula. Just to make this clear - I would be fine with 0 merits. I don't see any significance in the starting number at all. I'm saying that if theymos had started everyone with 0 the moaning would be just as loud.

I agree that with merit introduced everybody should have started from 0 to make the merit system more transparent. By starting at 0 I don't mean that Hero members would have to earn 1000 merits to become legendary. However, they would need the 500 equal to the difference between Hero and Legendary. What I would prefer is the following:

Jr. Member -> Member 0-10
Member -> Full Member 0-90
Full Member -> Sr. Member 0-150
Sr. Member -> Hero Member 0-250
Hero Member -> Legendary 0-500
Legendary 0-0

By using the system like this, no-one would be born with a "grandparent" advantage, and at the same time no-one would have the right to feel "cheated".

Win/win

This scheme wouldn't work when those old members need to get to the next rank after their first rank-up. Sr. Member who started at zero earns 250 and becomes a Hero Member. Then what?

[coin5haker]

"Wow, this the best system which will eliminate all shit posters and do the greatest good to the forum. If you cannot rank up, means you're shit poster. Like me getting merit every day!:" Then I check this guy, and all his merits are from posts like that, kissing asses and pleasing some legendary members. Now it surely increased people-pleasing miserable posts from newbies and juniors, spam and "What altcoin will make me rich" posts count are still the same.