Merit & new rank requirements

[tranquynhtien]

I do agree with you that this will increase the quality posts, but it seems like not everybody is aware of the merit system. Where I think it is a good thing, I also think that it might get hard to really get your merit up high. You have to put faith in the hands of people giving you merit, where not all are aware of the merit system.. I think there could be some improvements made, Like a banner you see when logging in on bitcointalk, so it gets more known!

You should change your attitude to more positive one. If keep complaining about current flaws of merit system, you will miss magic things of the system, which can, has changed, and will change the forum forever.
Of course, this is one-month system and need to be adjusted somehow in order to make it work more smoothly, and create bigger impacts on bitcointalk users. However, I don't see any inconvenience with current system. I am not sure what you have done over the last month, but you can see that there are lots of newbies, Junior members (lower-ranked members) jumped to Meta; Beginners & help boards to discuss, to help each other. By doing this, they also increase their knowledge, skills, experience faster than ever before. Personally, this is one of magic impacts of merit system. And many things more I dont mention in the thread, and many things more will come in the future.

In merit system, I strongly believe and will go along with it.

[1713891476]

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[1713891476]

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[Lunarics]

if there are no friends here, then no one will give a merit especially to the lower ranks. It does not matter how good the answer or topic was! This is not a democratic system, when only friends are throwing each other merit

[hilariousetc]

if there are no friends here, then no one will give a merit especially to the lower ranks. It does not matter how good the answer or topic was!

You have 18 merit. I take it you sent merit to your friend krassy registered a day after you and vice versa?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1350339    Lunarics  November 26, 2017,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1352631     krassy November 27, 2017

[Lunarics]

if there are no friends here, then no one will give a merit especially to the lower ranks. It does not matter how good the answer or topic was!

You have 18 merit. I take it you sent merit to your friend krassy registered a day after you and vice versa?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1350339    Lunarics  November 26, 2017,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1352631     krassy November 27, 2017

no, this person helped me in a legal matter, I also helped him in a legal matter and thanked him.
I see when for incorrect answers give one person 30 merit, that's what this question is about and why!?

[devotional]

as you may see in this page, someone posts a happy birthday picture and gets 3 merits? in what way that is useful to users? if had posted it, would i get 3 merits?
not that i give a fuck about collecting merits but that this system is far away from any kind of objectivity and fairness.

[Deena]

Happy anniversary indeed to the Legendary and Hero gang!

[Baoo]

Happy birthday to merit system  , hope that everyone (except the scammers) will get an acceptable value of merit points in this second month. As well, for those who have received a small rate of points, they should  give more effort in the coming period and it is very important that each of them should improve their behavior.
On the other hand,  for those who always complain about this new situation (merit system) , they must  accept this update ,  otherwise the only solution for them is to get out of this forum and search for something else.
Good luck for everyone  .

[Koray55]

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.


Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.

You are right dear @theymos . I have another solution for this problem.

Most of the bounty managers wants to weekly report in  separately. It is just for the getting to top their bounty topic. However bounty topics being trash area.

May you do any restriction for this weekly reports? Some of the bounty managers need to just one post for every weekly reports and users editing this one post.

Maybe this solution good for the forum.

[Jitra]

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

After reading quite a bit about the new merit system I understand why it's being done.  In a nutshell, I guess they system is established primarily to reduce spamming, rank farming, and to encourage high quality constructive posts.  However, the system doesn't take into account the fact that perhaps a small minority simply just want to read the posts, for example, when I first signed up on this forum all I wanted to do was to read about bitcoins & cryptocurrencies in general, but I ended up being interested in providing translation services, so the merit system is not too critical for now, unless I decided to participate in say signature campaign which mostly requires the rank of member or higher.  

Nevertheless, the merit system does not reward the readers, only reward the posters.  An analogy would be sellers and buyers, say on eBay.  If eBay only reward sellers, there will be less people to buy.  It's a simple case of supply and demand.  I think merit system should also reward readers as well.  I know it is kind of hard to figure  out how to reward the readers, but perhaps through some of kind of algorithm, there is a way to establish if a reader read the posts.  Just a thought there.  Maybe if I can come out with other ideas, I will be sure to post it here.

[athanz88]

Happy anniversary indeed to the Legendary and Hero gang!

Even though you re mocking the system that grandfathered the high rank members, you still get the merits man, 37 is not that bad, why are you still put an effort to put a shame on higher ranks? It doesnt get you anywhere you know.

Meanwhile, happy 1 month merit system, i hope the purpose of merit can be achieved soon for this forum.

[Deena]

Happy anniversary indeed to the Legendary and Hero gang!

Even though you re mocking the system that grandfathered the high rank members, you still get the merits man, 37 is not that bad, why are you still put an effort to put a shame on higher ranks? It doesnt get you anywhere you know.

Meanwhile, happy 1 month merit system, i hope the purpose of merit can be achieved soon for this forum.

I'm not targeting the higher ranking members in general but rather a certain gang or clique of members that are scamming and harassing other members and spoil the entire atmosphere on this forum. With the picture I am showing the state of the forum in the present situation. I deliberately avoided attaching names to the cartoon figures, but we all can use our imagination.

[Plof87]

I do agree with you that this will increase the quality posts, but it seems like not everybody is aware of the merit system. Where I think it is a good thing, I also think that it might get hard to really get your merit up high. You have to put faith in the hands of people giving you merit, where not all are aware of the merit system.. I think there could be some improvements made, Like a banner you see when logging in on bitcointalk, so it gets more known!

You should change your attitude to more positive one. If keep complaining about current flaws of merit system, you will miss magic things of the system, which can, has changed, and will change the forum forever.
Of course, this is one-month system and need to be adjusted somehow in order to make it work more smoothly, and create bigger impacts on bitcointalk users. However, I don't see any inconvenience with current system. I am not sure what you have done over the last month, but you can see that there are lots of newbies, Junior members (lower-ranked members) jumped to Meta; Beginners & help boards to discuss, to help each other. By doing this, they also increase their knowledge, skills, experience faster than ever before. Personally, this is one of magic impacts of merit system. And many things more I dont mention in the thread, and many things more will come in the future.

In merit system, I strongly believe and will go along with it.

I am not complaining about it. Like I said, it is good for more quality posts instead of "nice project" or "I like it".. So only pointing out that it should get more known, so more people understand it, so we can move forward with this system and people can be more rewarded for their quality posts!

[Deena]

I am not complaining about it. Like I said, it is good for more quality posts instead of "nice project" or "I like it".. So only pointing out that it should get more known, so more people understand it, so we can move forward with this system and people can be more rewarded for their quality posts!

For the sake of fishing for merit points the 'I love this ICO' posts have now become 'I love the merit system' posts. Quite an improvement indeed. 

[nullius]

(Purposely quoting the whole thing, as I usually would not:)

HAPPY ONE MONTH BIRTHDAY TO THE MERIT SYSTEM!

On ante of my own merit masturbation video, I privately made a bet with myself that I could reach the “Hero” threshold of 500 merit within one calendar month of the birth of the merit system.  Alas, I failed!  I only reached 495 merit during the period from 2018-01-25 through 2018-02-24.

Unfortunately, as “nobody’s” wraith in the nym.zone, I am invisible.  Thus, the camera can’t see me.  Too bad.  I’m glad that the bet was only with myself.

Only 99% of merit Heroism within a month.  This merit system is way too hard!  All ranks will be frozen forever!  The merit catastrophe almost makes me want to curse.

The soonest I can reach the activity threshold for Hero Member will be 12 March 2019; so I suppose I have awhile to earn those 5 more merits.  Meanwhile, I will commence whining about activity thresholds.

Happy mensiversary to the merit system.

[armandoz]

some say if you become member before you don't need to gain 100 merit to become full member. now is not like that.  need more merit to promote position.

[suchmoon]

I am not complaining about it. Like I said, it is good for more quality posts instead of "nice project" or "I like it".. So only pointing out that it should get more known, so more people understand it, so we can move forward with this system and people can be more rewarded for their quality posts!

For the sake of fishing for merit points the 'I love this ICO' posts have now become 'I love the merit system' posts. Quite an improvement indeed. 

[nullius]

Y’know, I was just talking about this “ICO” thing which is so hyped “hot” nowadays...

Another area that needs a close look is the way that KYC is conducted in ICO/ITO offerings.  In my view, the risk of giving out your information to some project on the Internet is just as high, if not higher, than the risk of losing funds from the venture.

I have an easier solution:  Don’t ever do “KYC”.  Avoid anything and everything which requires it.

For Bitcoin-related purposes, I have never submitted to any “KYC” identity-rape.  No, really.  Nobody’s records show I own even a single satoshi—“nobody’s”, as in “nullius”.

Oh—you said “ICO”.  Well, those are scams which should be avoided, regardless.

Merit-sending protip:  Check post history.  If you see any non-negligible and non-incidental ICO involvement, then it’s a “no merit” decision no matter how good the post was.  There exist other, better posts by people who don’t do ICOs.  Those posts need your limited supply of sMerit.

I have also dropped my support for and/or customer relationship with companies which caught wind of the hype, decided to sprinkle some magical “blockchain” on an unrelated business, and announced a whitepaper for their upcoming ICO.  Not meritorious, in any sense.

[SevenSign]

(Purposely quoting the whole thing, as I usually would not:)

HAPPY ONE MONTH BIRTHDAY TO THE MERIT SYSTEM!

http://hecendorfer.com/upload/r/rosacinquecomwp-contentuploadsthe-100-happy-bi-happy-birthday-friend.png

On ante of my own merit masturbation video, I privately made a bet with myself that I could reach the “Hero” threshold of 500 merit within one calendar month of the birth of the merit system.  Alas, I failed!  I only reached 495 merit during the period from 2018-01-25 through 2018-02-24.

Unfortunately, as “nobody’s” wraith in the nym.zone, I am invisible.  Thus, the camera can’t see me.  Too bad.  I’m glad that the bet was only with myself.

Only 99% of merit Heroism within a month.  This merit system is way too hard!  All ranks will be frozen forever!  The merit catastrophe almost makes me want to curse.

The soonest I can reach the activity threshold for Hero Member will be 12 March 2019; so I suppose I have awhile to earn those 5 more merits.  Meanwhile, I will commence whining about activity thresholds.

Happy mensiversary to the merit system.

Belated HAPPY 1st MONTHSARY, Merit System! More power and Always God Speed on You! Have a wonderful year ahead!

[Devawnm367]

I have to google to search and i read good quality posts will give you merit, lots of replies, and even then you may not get it then i read a hero member, say just ask so i asked for merit and now these high ranking people reported me, im new im only asking, following what higher ranking official said to do in previouse topic, what will happen if i get in trouble for asking im not trying to loose my acct or rank, please inform me thanks, i have read and read havnt found the pealties for doing that said.... im only asking for help and if you post an answer please tell me what page

[Soke]

HAPPY ONE MONTH BIRTHDAY TO THE MERIT SYSTEM!

It's only been one month?  I swear it feels so much longer.  Getting a merit is like finding a bitcoin block while solo mining.