Merit & new rank requirements

[tricker01]

Mates is there's a way to delete merit given? How it is?

[Forward_Thinking]

Well, I'm frustrated as you are, because next week I'd reached the full member rank, and now I have to earn a lot of merits to achieve that result. And of course I've no idea when I'll succeed.

But... firstly, I received already a few, and some of them from "difficult" high ranks members, so... it's possible.
Then, I improved very much the quality of my posts, and this is very positive. I'm ashamed of my first ones. I'll write a specific post about this.
Much more, I understood that I'm not here to earn some cheap money just spamming the forum.

WTF! I'm here because I want to became a f...ing cryptomillionarie, not a shitpost worker.

So, after this enlightenment, suddenly all this discussion about merits and ranks becomes insignificant: if I'll receive a merit, I'll be happy just because I give a contribution and someone appreciated me. That's all.

And don't forget: the merit system has still a lot of space for improvement, but - like it or not - it stopped the tsunami of shitpost.
Of course now the situation is a little stuck, but it was necessary. Now we'll see how can we make it better.

But I'm not just talking about my own self interest. I'm concerned about how this could cripple what is a very important part of the crypto ecosystem.

And frankly, you just made the case "for" the merit system, so I'm glad to see some data on the for side, but I still also believe the data on the against must be overwhelming - though I don't have access to it in a usable manner.

There is no way in the world that posts have not dropped faster than the Bitcoin price in January. I understand that is probably the goal, but just because people make a mess when they walk across the floor doesn't mean you should shut down the whole building, rather, you should clean up the mess, hire janitors, etc. I feel like they closed the building because they didn't like the mess.


 

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.

[/quote]

[Forward_Thinking]

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.

Just to respond publicly...

Yeah, I'm not really a professional Bitcoin Talk poster and so I had not read all those rule before. That's a lot of rules, I hope my reply here is not seen as breaking them. However, the data list you provided is not what I mean by "stats." In general, statistics are used to summarize numerical data. But I appreciate that tracking list. I couldn't find it on my own. What I would really like to are summary data such as:

The percentage of accounts with sMerit that have sent sMerit.
The percentage of accounts that have received sMerit that had less than 100 Merit (in other words, the more likely situation where quality, not friendship or duplicate accounts was the reason sMerit moved).
The quantity of new account creation rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).
The quantity of new account posts rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).

Those are the types of numbers I would personally find more helpful in forming my own opinion regrading the effectiveness of this intervention.

Again, I personally agree change was needed - but this feels more like a dome was put over the city to protect us from the sun, but now there are two worlds - those living in the dome, and those living outside of the dome.

I worked on a location once where a huge fence went up around it. They created a deer problem because of the deer they trapped inside the fence. The merit change not only prevents spammer from flooding the forum (good job on that), but also trapped the deer inside the fence (not a great problem to have). The spammers now how a lot of sMerit and new users are discouraged from posting.

[marcau]

Merit can be sent to someone else ? how does this work ?

[Jannn]

Merit can be sent to someone else ?

You can merit a post by sending a Smerit

how does this work ?

Sending Smerit (sendeable merit) to someone post will not deduct your current merit but it will deduct to your Smerit.

[yohananaomi]

hi friends i am not on the current issues bounty and airdrops i have to take the rank for attending, if you can give me very much rejoice.

I think mate you know how to get merit, also you know that begging gor merit is not good it will tagged you, i think also your porpose here is to earn and not for the good of the forum. No merit will be given to you unless you will post more contributed post that may help other users.

the usual requests are often done to be easier and faster, but it does not educate actually if I can try to get there happiness myself, I agree with madwica that there is no benefit that will get there for that.
let's get to try to get it right.

[athanz88]

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.

Just to respond publicly...

Yeah, I'm not really a professional Bitcoin Talk poster and so I had not read all those rule before. That's a lot of rules, I hope my reply here is not seen as breaking them. However, the data list you provided is not what I mean by "stats." In general, statistics are used to summarize numerical data. But I appreciate that tracking list. I couldn't find it on my own. What I would really like to are summary data such as:

The percentage of accounts with sMerit that have sent sMerit.
The percentage of accounts that have received sMerit that had less than 100 Merit (in other words, the more likely situation where quality, not friendship or duplicate accounts was the reason sMerit moved).
The quantity of new account creation rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).
The quantity of new account posts rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).

Those are the types of numbers I would personally find more helpful in forming my own opinion regrading the effectiveness of this intervention.

Again, I personally agree change was needed - but this feels more like a dome was put over the city to protect us from the sun, but now there are two worlds - those living in the dome, and those living outside of the dome.

I worked on a location once where a huge fence went up around it. They created a deer problem because of the deer they trapped inside the fence. The merit change not only prevents spammer from flooding the forum (good job on that), but also trapped the deer inside the fence (not a great problem to have). The spammers now how a lot of sMerit and new users are discouraged from posting.

Are you referring to Attack On Titan? hehe.

Look mate, merit doesnt stop this things directly :
1. spamming, there are still many spammers in the forum
2. newcomer, you can find many newbie with 0-14 activity in any board
3. alt-accounts, its hard to prove someone alt-accounts tho
The spamming still occurs, there are newcomers, and there are users with alt-accounts. Most of all users like this are here for the money, merit just stop them from ranking up which is a big deal for them who wants money from this forum. So if they want to earn money, they need to level up their game and earn merits which is hard for the spammer as they dont learn much about cryptocurrency and bitcoin, hard for the newcomer who only wants easy money, hard for alt-account users to maintain such a high level posting in many accounts. So later on, they will make a change to themself which can reduce the spamming and shitposting activity. I guess one other reason why theymos made this system is to make sure only worthy people can earn the money from this forum.

[JayJuanGee]

Merit can be sent to someone else ? how does this work ?

I had read in one of the merit threads (perhaps this one) that your "+merit" link (or button on the top of each post) to be able to send merit to someone else does not appear unless you have at least one sendable merit in your bank. 

So, for you, you need to earn two merits to then have acquired one smerit to be able to send, and then your button/link will appear, and the rest should be fairly straight forward.

[elpsycongree]

Merit can be sent to someone else ?

You can merit a post by sending a Smerit

how does this work ?

Sending Smerit (sendeable merit) to someone post will not deduct your current merit but it will deduct to your Smerit.

Follow up to what has Jannn said, you can merit a post by sending a Smerit. But for you to get a Smerit to send users for their posts, you need to have someone to send you a merit first by making quality/informative/constructive posts.

[romanovst]

Mates is there's a way to delete merit given? How it is?

There is no way to delete this. When sending merits, a new page opens up. Thus, you cannot give a member merit by mistake.

[siopaotsin]

The probability of me getting a girlfriend is much higher than me getting merits here in the forum lol.

I agree and supports the idea that spammers are to be filtered out in this forum and hoping to see a better community but don't you guys think that we should have a level (criteria) of how much merit you can give to users depending on how informative it was not just how much they feel like giving to.

Like for example, decent and on-topic posts gets 0.5-1 merit, while those informative ones receive 1-5 merit depending on how informative/constructive it was. 50 if it was a well-written thread or something like that.

Or that the posts have something like a like button that if the post 4 likes it will automatically receive 1 merit. This can also be monitored if users are taking advantage of it because it's easy to check who likes who per post. so user liking their posts using alt accounts can also be determined.

I will be lying if I say that I'm only here for is to become educated in crypto/bitcoin/blockchain with the benefit of knowing the opinions of other people across the globe. I also want to would want to have the opportunity to join signature campaigns too just like everyone else in this forum.

[athanz88]

The probability of me getting a girlfriend is much higher than me getting merits here in the forum lol.

I agree and supports the idea that spammers are to be filtered out in this forum and hoping to see a better community but don't you guys think that we should have a level (criteria) of how much merit you can give to users depending on how informative it was not just how much they feel like giving to.

Like for example, decent and on-topic posts gets 0.5-1 merit, while those informative ones receive 1-5 merit depending on how informative/constructive it was. 50 if it was a well-written thread or something like that.

Or that the posts have something like a like button that if the post 4 likes it will automatically receive 1 merit. This can also be monitored if users are taking advantage of it because it's easy to check who likes who per post. so user liking their posts using alt accounts can also be determined.

I will be lying if I say that I'm only here for is to become educated in crypto/bitcoin/blockchain with the benefit of knowing the opinions of other people across the globe. I also want to would want to have the opportunity to join signature campaigns too just like everyone else in this forum.

Because it is subjective, highly based on personal point of view, it is hard to make a standard for what we call "quality Post". We cant force someone to follow a standard about quality post i guess.

I guess "like" system like social media cant be implemented to this merit system, because people will abuse it for sure. There are so many people with alt accounts here and to make a new account is not that hard, so i guess this system is not good.

Well, everyone is not prohibited to earn money from signature or anything else in this forum, as far as i know. Merit just make sure that the money is going to the "right and worthy" person.

[anakrea]

Well, everyone is not prohibited to earn money from signature or anything else in this forum, as far as i know. Merit just make sure that the money is going to the "right and worthy" person.

You mean the persons who joined the forum earlier and therefor had the chance to rank up by spamming 

[athanz88]

Well, everyone is not prohibited to earn money from signature or anything else in this forum, as far as i know. Merit just make sure that the money is going to the "right and worthy" person.

You mean the persons who joined the forum earlier and therefor had the chance to rank up by spamming 

Look man, i envy them too, but what is the function of whining and pointing out they have upperhand because past system? It wont make our accounts rank up instantly, it wont make the merit system erased, it wont make us any richer. It is better to give your energy to earn merit mate. And to point out, you are not even here when this forum didnt have campaign to pay for their user, while some of the old members do.
And for your info, there are worse people who can earn money from this forum, the alt-account, because not only they get a lot of money, they block the chance of others to earn money.

[anakrea]

Well, everyone is not prohibited to earn money from signature or anything else in this forum, as far as i know. Merit just make sure that the money is going to the "right and worthy" person.

You mean the persons who joined the forum earlier and therefor had the chance to rank up by spamming  

Look man, i envy them too, but what is the function of whining and pointing out they have upperhand because past system? It wont make our accounts rank up instantly, it wont make the merit system erased, it wont make us any richer. It is better to give your energy to earn merit mate. And to point out, you are not even here when this forum didnt have campaign to pay for their user, while some of the old members do.
And for your info, there are worse people who can earn money from this forum, the alt-account, because not only they get a lot of money, they block the chance of others to earn money.

I don't care about the bounty campaigns anyway, as I don't want to participate in them. I'm here to discuss about cryptocurrency. I just wanted to point out, that the merit system does not only benefit "the right and worthy persons" but currently it mainly favors the old accounts. This does not necessarily match  
Maybe in some months/years, also the "right and worthy" persons benefit directly from the Merit-system. Only time will tell 

[nascrypto]

But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .

No. 

You go ahead and do whatever soul-uplifting research you need to do, and whenever you start writing something worth reading, then you might earn some merits.  I don't hand them out to spam monkeys for free.  Do you feed your neighborhood skunks? 

Didn't think so.

Understood.... I just corrected my comment. I didn't beg for merit. My intention was that the seniors can be a bit generous with the newbie and encourage them with their initial posts.

[nascrypto]

system change is better, but it hard to newbie earn more from bounty!!!!

Every change that is made for this forum is for the better of this forum. I have not been here for long but i already seen so many spam and things, in fact i can be considered as a spammer before time, but merit changed me to level up myself. You can be like me too, everyone can, maybe even better than me.
This is a forum, treat it as a place to gather and talks among the community, and give something good for it, and then you might get a return from it like knowledge, popularity, merit and money as a bonus. In my opinion, it is not a sin if you want to earn money, but if you set it as your main reason to be here and earn it with bad tricks, then it is a big sin and you deserve hell because of it.

I agree with you but there's this uncertainty that your efforts will not be even rewarded for it. For example, you replied to a post that you're interested to participate in and you composed a post that you know for yourself that you did everything but is not rewarded for it because they just didn't give any attention to it or it has been buried because there's a lot of people posting in the thread. So it means that there no incentives will be given even if you put ample of time and effort that you can for it? I also agree with the merit system that we have not but I think there's room for improvement because what we wanted to filter out here is spammers populating the forum.

Thanks for the explanation. Yet it's very difficult for a newbie to collect merits. Still, I'll try to increase my knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. Once I gather enough information, I can start contributing with rich contents and earn merits. But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .

You were doing good till you posted the last line. Be clear what you want:

1) Learning and improving the quality of posts and earning those merits.

2) Some merits by begging.

You do not need both, believe me.

I believe what he's talking about was, there are some Sr. Members extending their hands out to newbies by giving away merits for their quality posts.
You can check it out with the link below.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2832127.0

Thanks for your support and clarification. That's partially what I wanted to say in my post. I never begged for merit. If my post/comment contains no value why should one even waste their time reading that? I just asked seniors to be a bit generous with the newbie and encourage them with their initial posts. Might be using the term merit in the last line confused some people.

[nullius]

@nascrypto, you did not mention in your posts here that you have you have multiple negative trust feedback for merit begging, e.g.:

#1587051 “nascrypto” openly claimed insufficient ability to earn merits, purported a will to learn—and then concluded, “But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .” By analogy, see how this reeks of dishonesty: “I don’t understand all the material, professor. I really want to learn. Meanwhile, you can encourage me by giving me an A. ;-)” FOR SHAME. And all the worse whereas intelligent questions rising from a *sincere* desire to learn are regularly awarded merit in the appropriate forums.

Now, observe that the following three posts are consecutive in your post history (archived snapshot):

• 2018-02-20 05:55:10Z: Archived from this thread; this is the post which caused you to be “red-tagged” by another person and by me:
  
  

  Thanks for the explanation. Yet it's very difficult for a newbie to collect merits. Still, I'll try to increase my knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. Once I gather enough information, I can start contributing with rich contents and earn merits. But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits.
  

  
  Red colour is here added.  In the post as it appears now, that text is crossed out; in the post as archived by me at 2018-02-21 06:16:51Z, it is not crossed out.  (It is good you did not try to delete it; though I infer a likelihood you knew it was archived.)
• 2018-02-20 08:44:43Z: Archived from the thread titled, “Re: 🌎 [AIRDROP] [ICO] ConnectJob - The Uber of Services 🌎”:
  
  

  Insert Quote
  #Proof of ownership:
  - Telegram: @naacrypto
  - Twitter: @nas_crypto
  - https://www.facebook.com/nas.crypto.1
  

• 2018-02-21 11:33:14Z: Archived from this thread:
  
  

  But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .
  

  No.  
  
  You go ahead and do whatever soul-uplifting research you need to do, and whenever you start writing something worth reading, then you might earn some merits.  I don't hand them out to spam monkeys for free.  Do you feed your neighborhood skunks?  
  
  Didn't think so.
  
  

  
  Understood.... I just corrected my comment. I didn't beg for merit. My intention was that the seniors can be a bit generous with the newbie and encourage them with their initial posts.
  

Your following posts consist of another post in this thread saying similarly (archived), and then another application for an airdrop (archived).

A question for you, based on reasonable inferences:  Between 06:16:51Z and 08:44:43Z today (2018-02-21), did you receive any sort of denial of eligibility for an airdrop bounty campaign (or other adverse consequence) due to having negative (red) trust?

That is a very important question.

This matter is off-topic here.  Although I do think my posting the foregoing here is a salutary instruction to others who might ask for “some free merits ”, I will not substantially discuss this further in this thread.  Should there be anything further to discuss, then I will create a thread in Reputation.

[StelioKontos]

This posts-from-the-past-scavenging thing is getting a bit out of control after the introduction of The System.

[nullius]

This posts-from-the-past-scavenging thing is getting a bit out of control after the introduction of The System.

Not that it’s relevant, but what are you talking about?  All the posts I quoted and archived were made within about the past 36 hours.  Again, not that that’s relevant.

/offtopic