Merit & new rank requirements

[JayJuanGee]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Thank you for your reply. I completed the message. I'm not complaining about the system. But beginners can not give a measure, because it is not. But a lot of useful on the forum and I would also like to thank for useful topics

ok.. you are still a beginner to the forum, and I have been on the forum for four years, and during those first four years, we were not able to give merits.  During that time, sometimes I wished that I could "like" a post, but the remedy ended up being responding to the post, and attempting to interact with the person on the other end, if the subject is interesting for you, and if you believe that you have a meaningful contribution that you can make.

There's is almost no chance that you are going to get me to argue that this newly implemented merit system is perfect, but from some angle, it is what it is, and Theymos already decided what he was going to implement, and he did it in such a way that he thought was fair while attempting to get this newly implemented system to attempt to remedy some issues that are developing on the forum with both a giant influx of new members but also questions of shitty posts and farmed accounts.  

Whether this newly implemented system adequately addresses those issues and does not raise it's own problems is still to be seen.  There are going to be anticipated problems and unanticipated problems and perhaps there will be some need for Theymos to tweak aspects of the merit system.. perhaps?

As you may realize, he has already decided to limit the number of sources of merits, so everyone does not receive a source of merits on a regular basis unless you 1) received some sources during the transition based on your rank and activity level in the past year, 2) receive merits from other members.  

You are likely correct that there are going to be fewer merits circulating around amongst the lower ranks, but so in that regard, you may need to attempt to figure out ways to earn merits by making interesting posts and attempting to interact with members who may be able to give merits - either by reading your post or by their showing appreciation for interacting with you... so yes, it could take some time to earn enough merits to rank up to full member.. regular member may be a bit easier to accomplish, but certainly not going to be earned without any effort.

You're right. Now I see that the merit system works like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30462833#msg30462833

This is true? My opinion is no. This is not one example. Of course there are many well-deserved awards, but much is in doubt

So, ultimately, you are concluding that the merit system does not work...  because some other complainer is saying that the system does not work?  Do you think that is a good approach?   If so you are going to approach this new system by merely complaining about it and asserting that it does not work or do you think that there could be some kind of other way that you could attempt to earn merits from other members?

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[bitart]

This new merit system doesn't work. The only thing it serves is to make people even more factional than before. Logic gets shot down for loyalty.

I agree with this post. Merit sistem really does not work.

I can understand your frustration, your activity has already reached the member level, but you miss the merits to rank up. You need to collect 8 merits to be able to rank up. This is not as bad as you see now.
If you check a few Hero members, who were 1-2 activity periods away from becoming Legendary, they have to recevie 500 (!!!) merits to be able to rank up. Also, on lower level, they also have a huge number of merits to receive before they can rank up (Senior to become Hero: 250, Full member to become Senior 150 merits, etc...)
You only have to receive 8 more merits and you can rank up, this is not so bad, comparing to the above stated ranks.
Also, the system has just changed, so you cannot decide if it works well and as expected or not in a short time like this. I know that you are not happy with these kind of answers, but what I would do to recevie my 500 merits is the following: I'm hardening my efforts to post quality content and sometime somewhere merits will start to come. You cannot expect that every post you make will receive merits, especially now, when people are not really aware about the change and they have to adapt themselves to this change but time will tell which effort of you was the key in receiving the merits on the long run. Also, you just have agreed someone who was complaining about this new merit system and you have received a merit. This can be a luck, but you cannot build your rank up process on posts like this, so it's better to start posting quality and waiting for merits (and there's nothing else you can really do).

[greeklogos]

This new merit system doesn't work. The only thing it serves is to make people even more factional than before. Logic gets shot down for loyalty.

I agree with this post. Merit sistem really does not work.

Just tell me somebody how this post got merit? Is is charity or what?!
Look at this post:

After few days I finally can see and feel how new merit system can affect all users. before I was like "whatever, I am a Hero and I have a lot of Merits and development to legendary is not so important". But today when my signature campaign over and I was searching for a new one I found this:

I am looking for a few users to advertise my Campaign Management Services. I will be very picky and only be accepting users with high merits and high quality posts.
 If most of your posts are in bitcoin discussion, trading discussion, or other shit areas you will not be chosen. I will check all merit points of those who apply as well, if it looks like you were given merit for shit posts you will not be considered

Rates

Member- .002/week Must have 15 merit to apply
Full Member- .004/week Must have 120 Merit to apply
Sr- .006/week Must have 275 merit to apply
Hero/Legendary- .008/week Must have 525 merit to apply if hero 1025 merit to apply if Legendary

And I miss over 20 Merits to apply this campaign. I was working with yahoo62278 many times, but this new requirements are just killing me. Now I am afraid that this campaign is just a first bird and with time all signature campaigns will ask for minimal number of merits to be joined.

I also saw this signature campaign and I also miss a lot of merits to join it. Now I am asking, will such practice is going to be normal? My activity is enough to become Sr. member already, but I need huge number of merits to it happen! It is just not fair! Good posts stay unnoticable and weak post get merits. The idea, how it was managed by moderators, doesn't actually work and we all suffer.
Is it even possible to Merit would be cancelled?

[katin-skl]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Thank you for your reply. I completed the message. I'm not complaining about the system. But beginners can not give a measure, because it is not. But a lot of useful on the forum and I would also like to thank for useful topics

ok.. you are still a beginner to the forum, and I have been on the forum for four years, and during those first four years, we were not able to give merits.  During that time, sometimes I wished that I could "like" a post, but the remedy ended up being responding to the post, and attempting to interact with the person on the other end, if the subject is interesting for you, and if you believe that you have a meaningful contribution that you can make.

There's is almost no chance that you are going to get me to argue that this newly implemented merit system is perfect, but from some angle, it is what it is, and Theymos already decided what he was going to implement, and he did it in such a way that he thought was fair while attempting to get this newly implemented system to attempt to remedy some issues that are developing on the forum with both a giant influx of new members but also questions of shitty posts and farmed accounts.  

Whether this newly implemented system adequately addresses those issues and does not raise it's own problems is still to be seen.  There are going to be anticipated problems and unanticipated problems and perhaps there will be some need for Theymos to tweak aspects of the merit system.. perhaps?

As you may realize, he has already decided to limit the number of sources of merits, so everyone does not receive a source of merits on a regular basis unless you 1) received some sources during the transition based on your rank and activity level in the past year, 2) receive merits from other members.  

You are likely correct that there are going to be fewer merits circulating around amongst the lower ranks, but so in that regard, you may need to attempt to figure out ways to earn merits by making interesting posts and attempting to interact with members who may be able to give merits - either by reading your post or by their showing appreciation for interacting with you... so yes, it could take some time to earn enough merits to rank up to full member.. regular member may be a bit easier to accomplish, but certainly not going to be earned without any effort.

You're right. Now I see that the merit system works like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30462833#msg30462833

This is true? My opinion is no. This is not one example. Of course there are many well-deserved awards, but much is in doubt

So, ultimately, you are concluding that the merit system does not work...  because some other complainer is saying that the system does not work?  Do you think that is a good approach?   If so you are going to approach this new system by merely complaining about it and asserting that it does not work or do you think that there could be some kind of other way that you could attempt to earn merits from other members?

I wanted to pay attention to what the merits are for. This message deserved to be measured. But how?

[katin-skl]

This new merit system doesn't work. The only thing it serves is to make people even more factional than before. Logic gets shot down for loyalty.

I agree with this post. Merit sistem really does not work.

Just tell me somebody how this post got merit? Is is charity or what?!

That's exactly what I'm talking about. And this is not the only post. The system is not finalized

[JayJuanGee]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Thank you for your reply. I completed the message. I'm not complaining about the system. But beginners can not give a measure, because it is not. But a lot of useful on the forum and I would also like to thank for useful topics

ok.. you are still a beginner to the forum, and I have been on the forum for four years, and during those first four years, we were not able to give merits.  During that time, sometimes I wished that I could "like" a post, but the remedy ended up being responding to the post, and attempting to interact with the person on the other end, if the subject is interesting for you, and if you believe that you have a meaningful contribution that you can make.

There's is almost no chance that you are going to get me to argue that this newly implemented merit system is perfect, but from some angle, it is what it is, and Theymos already decided what he was going to implement, and he did it in such a way that he thought was fair while attempting to get this newly implemented system to attempt to remedy some issues that are developing on the forum with both a giant influx of new members but also questions of shitty posts and farmed accounts.  

Whether this newly implemented system adequately addresses those issues and does not raise it's own problems is still to be seen.  There are going to be anticipated problems and unanticipated problems and perhaps there will be some need for Theymos to tweak aspects of the merit system.. perhaps?

As you may realize, he has already decided to limit the number of sources of merits, so everyone does not receive a source of merits on a regular basis unless you 1) received some sources during the transition based on your rank and activity level in the past year, 2) receive merits from other members.  

You are likely correct that there are going to be fewer merits circulating around amongst the lower ranks, but so in that regard, you may need to attempt to figure out ways to earn merits by making interesting posts and attempting to interact with members who may be able to give merits - either by reading your post or by their showing appreciation for interacting with you... so yes, it could take some time to earn enough merits to rank up to full member.. regular member may be a bit easier to accomplish, but certainly not going to be earned without any effort.

You're right. Now I see that the merit system works like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30462833#msg30462833

This is true? My opinion is no. This is not one example. Of course there are many well-deserved awards, but much is in doubt

So, ultimately, you are concluding that the merit system does not work...  because some other complainer is saying that the system does not work?  Do you think that is a good approach?   If so you are going to approach this new system by merely complaining about it and asserting that it does not work or do you think that there could be some kind of other way that you could attempt to earn merits from other members?

I wanted to pay attention to what the merits are for. This message deserved to be measured. But how?

Did you read the OP (Opening Post) of this thread?   Theymos announced the new merit system and he explained why he was implementing the new merit system.  He also made a few other posts giving further rationale behind his thinking for implementing this new merit system.

Ultimately there is no exact objective standard for getting merits, and so therefore, some members are going to like your posts for differing reasons, and some of those members might have smerits that they are willing to give to your post, if they believe that you are adding something for them or maybe if you have a kind of pattern of providing information that they believe is useful ... so there could be a combination of your attempting to learn by reading the OP but also that you are engaging in various threads and posting in ways that are potentially useful and helpful to others.

[athanz88]

Did you read the OP (Opening Post) of this thread?   Theymos announced the new merit system and he explained why he was implementing the new merit system.  He also made a few other posts giving further rationale behind his thinking for implementing this new merit system.

Ultimately there is no exact objective standard for getting merits, and so therefore, some members are going to like your posts for differing reasons, and some of those members might have smerits that they are willing to give to your post, if they believe that you are adding something for them or maybe if you have a kind of pattern of providing information that they believe is useful ... so there could be a combination of your attempting to learn by reading the OP but also that you are engaging in various threads and posting in ways that are potentially useful and helpful to others.

I like how passionate you are to make people to be more positive in to this merit system, if it were me i would just leave them alone for they to understand the meaning of merit system.
The only logic they used for saying merit isnt working is simple, see below
I dont get merit for my quality post, mEriT iS a FaILed SySTem !
*insert spongebob meme here.

[gnerro2]

I cant no longer find the wording that says that 10 merits are needed to become a member.. I'm saying it wrong !?

[MagicSmoker]

I am looking for a few users to advertise my Campaign Management Services. I will be very picky and only be accepting users with high merits and high quality posts.
 If most of your posts are in bitcoin discussion, trading discussion, or other shit areas you will not be chosen. I will check all merit points of those who apply as well, if it looks like you were given merit for shit posts you will not be considered

Rates

Member- .002/week Must have 15 merit to apply
Full Member- .004/week Must have 120 Merit to apply
Sr- .006/week Must have 275 merit to apply
Hero/Legendary- .008/week Must have 525 merit to apply if hero 1025 merit to apply if Legendary

I also saw this signature campaign and I also miss a lot of merits to join it. Now I am asking, will such practice is going to be normal? My activity is enough to become Sr. member already, but I need huge number of merits to it happen! It is just not fair! Good posts stay unnoticable and weak post get merits. The idea, how it was managed by moderators, doesn't actually work and we all suffer.
Is it even possible to Merit would be cancelled?

Actually, I believe this is precisely the sort of outcome desired by implementing merit: by selecting members who have earned merits (rather than just inherit the minimum amount for their existing rank) @yahoo62278 is filtering out the shitposters which can't help but give his signature campaign a more positive perception. I personally ignore any signature campaign /unless/ the poster made a well-reasoned and expressed post.

For example, I ignored the "intensecoin" signature campaign for quite awhile, but then one of the people who joined it made a quality post and that ended up prompting me to click on the sig, then I found out that ITNS has an interesting use case - providing payment/hosting for VPN exit nodes - and I decided to mine a few thousand of it. Granted, I didn't exactly put my life savings into this (potential shit-) coin, but I still "voted with my wallet" and all because a post made a good impression.

If that same person had only posted the usual drivel like, "wen can i haz airdrop?" or "is bounty?" or "when exchange listing?" etc. then I would have skipped over as I had done at least a 100 times before.

[suchmoon]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Says the guy who only had to hang out and post to increase his rank.

Well, JJG is also "the guy" who happened to get 100+ merits in the first month so there is little doubt that he would have ranked up even if merits were implemented years ago.

After few days I finally can see and feel how new merit system can affect all users. before I was like "whatever, I am a Hero and I have a lot of Merits and development to legendary is not so important". But today when my signature campaign over and I was searching for a new one I found this:

I am looking for a few users to advertise my Campaign Management Services. I will be very picky and only be accepting users with high merits and high quality posts.
 If most of your posts are in bitcoin discussion, trading discussion, or other shit areas you will not be chosen. I will check all merit points of those who apply as well, if it looks like you were given merit for shit posts you will not be considered

Rates

Member- .002/week Must have 15 merit to apply
Full Member- .004/week Must have 120 Merit to apply
Sr- .006/week Must have 275 merit to apply
Hero/Legendary- .008/week Must have 525 merit to apply if hero 1025 merit to apply if Legendary

And I miss over 20 Merits to apply this campaign. I was working with yahoo62278 many times, but this new requirements are just killing me. Now I am afraid that this campaign is just a first bird and with time all signature campaigns will ask for minimal number of merits to be joined.

That's how it should be. Sig campaigns used to have "quality posts" requirements but those were essentially unenforceable. Campaigns are not charities, they want some return on investment, and if they think merit requirements help them recruit better posters - more power to them. Short of banning signatures altogether, this is the next best option.

[thesavoyard]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Says the guy who only had to hang out and post to increase his rank.

What's up your butt?  Look I am using nice language, here?  

Your coming into the conversation to get in your two cents, makes you come off as a bit bitter and envious, no?  

Do you think that I had anything to do with implementing the new merit system?  

Here, I am merely talking about it, and you can proclaim my bias.. blah blah blah.. but that likely reflects more on your bad attitude rather than anything to do with me.

Accordingly, the content of your posts suggest that you are unwilling or unable to understand or accept both concepts of system changes and the concept of employing a grandfathering clause type arrangement in order to attempt to fairly transition members from the existing system into the new system.  

If you were attempting to make another point, then I am all ears, but mostly what I got from you was a weak-ass diversion attempt at an ad hominem attack rather than attempting to deal with actual substantive matters related to the merit system.

I found the tone of your post to him to be snarky and dismissive. You ranked up under a completely different standard, yet you seem to take a knee jerk defense. The system is poorly thought out, take it as bitter if you want. Personally, I think these forums are kind of a negative on the community anyways. Too factional and loyal to outdated tech. Too many scammers and too much greed.Yet if you ask an advanced question, no one here has an answer. I think the merit system is the slow death of these forums, which is probably for the best in the long run. But it's still sad to see what Satoshi founded to become irrelevant.

But I like how you created a whole story in your head about how I'm bitter and evious because your tone is snarky...

[athanz88]

Forum is the pursuit of merits now. Will live strong and persistent. Natural selection.
Merit will not appreciate the quality. Merit should not be the basis of a new rank. Merit is the gratitude of users. Not everyone can get it in the right amount. The number of merits is too large to move to new ranks

How do you know so much about how the merit system of the forum is going to play out?  

You have been a member of the forum for about 1 month.  The merit system was implemented 1 week after you registered your account.

I suppose that if you do not like this new merit system, then you don't have to use it, right?  You have only one month invested into the forum, so far, right?

Says the guy who only had to hang out and post to increase his rank.

What's up your butt?  Look I am using nice language, here?  

Your coming into the conversation to get in your two cents, makes you come off as a bit bitter and envious, no?  

Do you think that I had anything to do with implementing the new merit system?  

Here, I am merely talking about it, and you can proclaim my bias.. blah blah blah.. but that likely reflects more on your bad attitude rather than anything to do with me.

Accordingly, the content of your posts suggest that you are unwilling or unable to understand or accept both concepts of system changes and the concept of employing a grandfathering clause type arrangement in order to attempt to fairly transition members from the existing system into the new system.  

If you were attempting to make another point, then I am all ears, but mostly what I got from you was a weak-ass diversion attempt at an ad hominem attack rather than attempting to deal with actual substantive matters related to the merit system.

I found the tone of your post to him to be snarky and dismissive. You ranked up under a completely different standard, yet you seem to take a knee jerk defense. The system is poorly thought out, take it as bitter if you want. Personally, I think these forums are kind of a negative on the community anyways. Too factional and loyal to outdated tech. Too many scammers and too much greed.Yet if you ask an advanced question, no one here has an answer. I think the merit system is the slow death of these forums, which is probably for the best in the long run. But it's still sad to see what Satoshi founded to become irrelevant.

But I like how you created a whole story in your head about how I'm bitter and evious because your tone is snarky...

How come someone determine someone tone from a text? i am curious about this matters.

Being hard on the community is not the same as being negative to community, rather than negative, merit forces us to level up ourself, and how come is that a negative things for the community. And being positive to a community doesnt mean a forum needs to hear and do what the community says. Merit will only give death to member which can not rank up (mostly because they dont want to level up their self cause they dont want the hard way to earn merits)

I know satoshi made bitcoin and also one of team that made this forum (cmiiw for the forum part), but it doesnt have connection between decentralized spirit of bitcoin with this centralized forum, You really got things mixed up

[Forward_Thinking]

First, just to clear the air (if anyone will actually read this) I am biased because I don't feel I can personally rank up anymore. So, take this with a grain of salt.

My thoughts:

I know the merit is new, and I really like the concept because BitcoinTalk.org is a core part of the community and needs to be protected, but based on the evidence, I don't see this working as planned. Rather, it appears to be simply a caste system where the current ranked people have now just hard coded their levels and almost no one else will be ranking up from this point forward.

I don't have access to the actual data so I just have to go with my observations. But I would LOVE to see the ranking growth rates since the Merit system was implemented. Probably went from some rapidly growing rate to near zero. Was that the goal? To turn off leveling up? I bet that's what happened.

Here are my limited observations:

1) Merit does not appear to be moving from the haves to the have nots.

-This means we have a liquidity problem

2) Where Merit has moved, it appears to be too infrequent to work as intended, where better posters would be moving up in rank.

-Easy to confirm, just scan the latest threads you are reading and see how many people are still sitting at a round number of Merit (e.g., 10, 100, 250, etc). It's just about everyone. Again, I would love to see a % of accounts that now have anything other than a round number of Merit.

3) Where Merit has moved, it's very hard for the public to know why, who gave it, and for what posting, which leads me to believe, most of the movement has been from people who control several accounts. As a member of the blockchain community (ignore my 'creation account date' I've been in crypto since 2013) we are supposed to be about transparency and accountability.

-For those without a round number of Merit, they appear to have earned just 1 to 4 added points, and again, a scan of their recent posts do not yield anything more impressive than other people's posts (in my opinion). But the lack of transparency will lead to suspicion in this community, as it has done with me. That's just how we roll!

-I realize there is some public tracking going on, but it's not easy to find and therefore doesn't actually work as transparent (IMHO)

4) While BitcoinTalk is flooded with spammers and multiple accounts (and I completely agree that is a problem) under the new system, ranking up has become virtually impossible and will no longer reward activity. While spam is a problem, I believe a new problem will emerge, a lack of interest in posting on this site which will lead to degradation of utility.

-I've worked  in many settings where leaders considered cutting some requirement (like how under the old rules, simply posting got your rank on this site). They wanted to cut the requirement because it seemed extra, unhelpful. But I argued against cutting it because although it was not helpful directly for the intended purpose, removing it would very likely lead to a situation where performance would decline and then this seemingly unhelpful requirement would actually once again become useful. I know I'm leaving out detail here, but think of it like an ecosystem. Some would say "who cares if species XYZ goes extinct" until years later they realize that caused a chain reaction that killed off an entire jungle.

Problems and complaints, that's not very helpful. So how about a solution?

I prefer small changes, so what if Merit was no longer tied to ranking up, but the activity level requirements doubled or tripled. Or what if some small amount of Merit was required to level up. Like, people had to earn at least 1 Merit point before moving each rank level. AND, I would recommend you grant people more sMerit to solve the liquidity problem.

To summarize: the Merit change, appears to not be meeting the stated indented goals, and I would urge the leadership of this site to consider an alternative before significant damage is caused to a key institution of the crypt world...this site.

[Jednopivo]

So, do I have this correct?

In order to become a "Member", I, for example, would need 10 merits? And these merits would need to come from someone who has merits? I like the idea - will work to earn my merits (if I have this correct).

[Forward_Thinking]

One last thought about it all, when we click on merit on other peoples profile I think we should see who left that merit and where.

I agree. I don't like how hard this is for the public to track. That's a negative mark in the crypto community.

[Forward_Thinking]

Where is the button to give out Merit?
Do that disappear because my merit is 0? :thinking:

You need (s)Merit to give it out.  :/

Since you have zero merit, you also have zero sMerit to give out.  

The link will not appear until you have sMerit to send to others.   You will get one sMerit for every two Merit you receive.  

(This may not be allowed, but please send me all your current sMerits!  Please!)

Thank you. I've merited you.....in my mind  

LOL - mMerit? Mental Merit.

[Forward_Thinking]

I did some research last couple of days.

What I noticed so far is large number of accounts which are posting farming as usual and then all of sudden they post very constructive post just to receive merit, often paraphrasing articles and/or just copying articles here.

On the other hand, it is not really hard to post 50 short lines in off topic or games and rounds and after that to post 10 high quality posts at right place and point them to right people.
I don't think current system will decrease number of farming accounts, spam or account sales and honestly I think 10 merits to rank up to member rank is too low, because people will just create hundred accounts, do exactly what I said above and abuse signature/bounty campaigns, giveaways etc.

For every 10 Smerits received, junior member can easily send 5 Smerits to other account, from that account 2 Smerit to third account and so on - and repeat with many accounts.

So, in my honest opinion this system need little improvement:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	50
Full Member	120	150
Sr. Member	240	300
Hero Member	480	550
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1050

Raising merit requirement by 50 points will make difference and should solve most "merit" issues, account farming, account sales etc(or at least make them so hard that people will give up doing it) and won't affect on number of merits required for full-hero member to rank up because older users will need the same amount of Smerit to rank up(members will need 100 SMP*, full members 150 SMP, senior member 250 SMP and hero 500 SMP) and it will actually force "new users" to write better posts from first day, which isn't the case at the moment.

However, number of Smerits given to all members should remain the same as it is now, but i guess this is irrelevant because we all already received smerits.

*SMP - sMerit points

Nice to see some research. Thank you. But I disagree that the new requirements are too lax. Yes, spamming/farming etc are a problem, but to cripple the system to harm the bad actors is like chemo or a bug bomb for your house. Is that really the only option? I think we can do better than nukes.

[Forward_Thinking]

Dear admins. The system of merit has been working for more than three weeks. How does it justify itself? Are there some intermediate results? Has the number of registrations of new users decreased per week? Is there less spam in messages now? Did you receive such statistics, give an example?

It hasn’t even been a month yet. Give it some time to have an effect and I’m sure there will be no shortage of statistics available.

Would love to see the data, but I can tell you what it says. Ranking up has slowed to a crawl. Posts are down. New user sign ups are down. Just an estimate, but I would guess that easily 98% of accounts with sMerit have not sent any to anyone. I'm not saying 98% of sMerit has not moved, probably those few people with a ton have been using them as planned, but most accounts are probably afraid to send it because they have so little.

Would love to be wrong here...so again, I'm looking forward to the real data.

[Forward_Thinking]

What I see is that no one use merit.

As we cant rank up, people are going to pay a lot for high ranked account.. and its not cool.
It just add more values to accounts that reached higher rank before this update. Not rly fair.

Just look at people's merit, they only have the merit based on their previous rank (0, 10 and 100 mostly).

The idea was great, but atm its not working.  

Deleting all ranks would be better 

I see similar patterns.

[suchmoon]

3) Where Merit has moved, it's very hard for the public to know why, who gave it, and for what posting, which leads me to believe, most of the movement has been from people who control several accounts. As a member of the blockchain community (ignore my 'creation account date' I've been in crypto since 2013) we are supposed to be about transparency and accountability.

There are quite detailed stats available: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats

You made 5 posts in a row. I suggest you check the link in my sig before you get into trouble.