Merit & new rank requirements

[JayJuanGee]

Merit offering is relative to the total market cap of the cryptocoins!
I guess it makes sense since a lot of people came here to make easy money last year and while the prices are falling and their money have gone to smart people, they're starting to leave the forums.

Most of them were spammers and didn't affect the merit system anyway, but still a lot of free sMerits were given to these people when the system first went into effect. Some other newbies had to be good fellas too, worthy of merit! (statistically speaking)

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.   

[1714600738]

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[1714600738]

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[TheBeardedBaby]

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.  

If we get rid of the spam / or reduce it significantly/ then maybe the good posts will rise up and get what they deserve. Now is more like  looking for a needle ^[1] in a haystack so people give up or give the merit to the "usual suspects".

[1] ...

[JayJuanGee]

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.  

If we get rid of the spam / or reduce it significantly/ then maybe the good posts will rise up and get what they deserve. Now is more like  looking for a needle ^[1] in a haystack so people give up or give the merit to the "usual suspects".

[1] ...

Yes.  It seems that we cannot just simplify the explanation for smerit distribution, but I do recall a kind of 2-3 month surge in the distribution of smerits that seems to have dried up a lot because it seems likely that regular (non-sources) folks do not have a lot of merits to give out (or perhaps they are budgeting their use of them). 

I will concede that it can be quite a bit of work to read posts every day and to give out smerits, and maybe some of the sources feel somewhat burdened in that regard, and are NOT really giving out their smerits.  Surely it is an administrative decision for theymos to consider whether he wants to increase the number of merit sources or to reassign merit source status to some members who will be a bit more willing to give out smerits.

I agree with you that it still seems quite possible to receive merits for decent posts.

When I scout out some threads, one of the problems that I see with posts is that frequently members do not even seem to be reading various posts in the thread.  The read the OP or they read the title of the thread, and then the spout out some superficial points that have either already been made or that don't really contribute much value to the thread.  I actually believe that it is NOT problematic to repeat some points, but anyone who is really contributing is going to attempt to say the same points in a way that is personalized, and perhaps even provide some evidence or logic or even some personal experiential points that allow the post to be meritorious.  I have no problem giving merits to members who have mediocre points as long as there is some meat in their posts - which frequently is lacking with one liners.... yet I may merit one-liners too, if either the person has provided substantive points in the past or there is some kind of humor in there that captures a decent amount of meaningful sentiment. 

Contrary to me, it seems that some members seem to require too much quality from posts before they find them to be meritorious. - but I do understand that non-source members are going to want to budget their smerits, so my criticism about some of the aspects of stinginess of smerit distribution seems to go to some of the sources who don't seem to be spending their smerit because if there is really 19,500 worth of smerits that are generated every month, then it seems fairly convincing that a smerit distribution that is approaching 3k per week (which would be about 12k per month) indicates that merit sources are not spending their source merits... so a lot of source merits are seeming to be left on the table.. perhaps evidence of 1/3 or more.. and maybe administratively it would be better to attempt to get that number below 10% and to assign source status to members who are largely spending their smerits.... and surely those kinds of tools are in hands of theymos to be able to determine whether there is a pattern of non-spending of smerits from designated merit sources (also based on the level to which they receive smerits, each month).

[Jet Cash]

I've got a few hundred sMerits that I can award, but only 9 of those are source merits at the moment. I do try to award source merits as soon as possible, that maintains the merit flow.

I'm on the netbook right now, but later I'll use the notebook and revive Talk Merit to see if I can unload a couple of hundred merits. The easy way for people to get some of those is to support some of the Fit to Talk English projects. They help Bitcoin Talk as well as the posters themselves. I've been awarding merits to senior members recently, and this is because of the difficulty in finding good posts by junior members. It isn't that they aren't making them, it's just that they get drowned out by the bots and bums.

[TheBeardedBaby]

@JayJuanGee
All is very true.
Keep in mind that during those months now people are most of the time away, busy with their IRL activities like holidays, house maintenance, traveling etc. soon comes the winter /well, talking about the northern  hemisphere, of course/ and things will change, people prefer to stay home in the winter, and they are often less busy, so maybe we will see some changes soon.

I have given all my 200 smerit and trying to have as less as possible. Few day ago I had 0 for the first time since the merit came / normally I keep 2-3 in case I see something extraordinary / now I got filled up again and I'm distributing it as usual, so from my side I've done what I can.

[LoyceV]

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.  

In the past week (from Friday to Friday), 3481 Merit points were transfered. That's 3481/7*30=14918 per 30 days.
It would be interesting to see how many of those came from Merit sources, who generate up to 19500 sMerit in the same period. But since not all Merit sources are known, I won't try to get the number.
I've still never been able to empty my source sMerit, and "my own" sMerit has now piled up to exactly 300. From now on, I'll try to keep my source sMerit under 10 (and 0 would be fine too). If it's higher (as it is now, I'll Merit more posts.

I've started this right now, meriting 8 different posts in 2-3 seconds (yes, I try to break my record ).

[cryptofarid10]

please say  how many days later Activity is updated

After 14 days you will get 14 activities. see the activity update system.
Activity Update Date 2016 to 2060

[markiz73]

The crypto-currency sector is experiencing a huge decline. The merit system creates a huge advantage for previously registered participants of the forum and creates many obstacles for the forum novices.
I believe that you need to enter 2 types of ranks.
This is the rank for activity on the forum and the rank for useful posts on the forum.

[JetAid]

I don't believe that the crypto-currency sector is in decline, quite the reverse in fact. It is going through a period of consolidation, and a lot of the scammers are being shaken out. It may not be too long before ICOs are regulated, and that will probably be a good thing. The next thing will be for bounty managers to be forced to declare their payments, so that the recipients can be taxed. That will be another beneficial shakeout.

[cryptofarid10]

I fill a problem. I can't find my profile link. please help me. How to find my bitcointalk profile link.

First go to your profile. then click (Account Related Settings)

now chek URL code I mine search box. Search  link is your profile link.

now coppy your link. I think you understand.
Thank You.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I think there may be a mismatch in the data in the excel, probably because two weeks were very similar in terms of sMerit:
27/08/2018 .. 02/09/2018 -> 3.186 sMerits
20/08/2018 .. 26/08/2018 -> 3.763 sMerits
13/08/2018 .. 19/08/2018 -> 3.767 sMerits

The reading is still the same regardless: New all-time minimum and a decreasing trend...

[JayJuanGee]

I've got a few hundred sMerits that I can award, but only 9 of those are source merits at the moment. I do try to award source merits as soon as possible, that maintains the merit flow.

I don't see anything wrong with hoarding regular smerits, within your personal discretion.  On the other hand, if you are a merit source, then it seems that you have a responsibility to attempt to spend your source merits, and even having a cushion of 9 smerits in your source does not seem to indicate that you are hoarding source smerits.  It seems to me that sources are going to come to differing judgements about how many source smerits that they might keep, and even though theymos may want to give them a lot of discretion in terms of the spending of source smerits, he may also consider that if a source is not spending smerits on a monthly basis that is approaching their source level - let's say within 70% ish, then perhaps he (theymos) should reduce their source smerit monthly level and give those source smerits to someone else (whether an already designated merit source or to designate some new merit source)?

I'm on the netbook right now, but later I'll use the notebook and revive Talk Merit to see if I can unload a couple of hundred merits.

If you really believe that it is necessary for you to unload some of your smerits, then so be it.   let them fly.   

The easy way for people to get some of those is to support some of the Fit to Talk English projects. They help Bitcoin Talk as well as the posters themselves.

Sure, I have noticed that some members have created focus areas that they want to support people (by giving them smerits) who support certain focus areas, and surely, that has created a few interesting threads after the implementation of this new merit system.

By the way, sometimes the forum does seem to need some improvements in english abilities, but surely sometimes creative and interactive thinking is needed too (whether that is with good English or broken English).  Sometimes, I find that members post their one-liners, and then another member will ask them questions about points of their post, but that initial poster is never to be seen again... The problem in those kinds of instances remains a lack of interaction rather than whether their post had been well formulated in English.  Sometimes, if the member interacts better, then their English can be improved, but also their point(s) can be better understood, too, but instead they devolve into missing in action (which may be a personal problem that they are NOT following through or sure it could just have been that the poster was a bot, rather than a human? perhaps?)

I've been awarding merits to senior members recently, and this is because of the difficulty in finding good posts by junior members. It isn't that they aren't making them, it's just that they get drowned out by the bots and bums.

Sometimes I try NOT to  merit members who I have recently merited in order that I can spread out the merit love a bit better, but I have found that sometimes there is a certain high level of output that comes from established members, and it becomes irresistible to merit their posts.. In that regard, I might read a series of posts from a member, and it is bam, Bam, BAm, BAM, BAMM.... and I just have to give in and merit the greatness.  hahahahahaha   

On the other hand, I don't shy away from meriting newer members because I want to merit them, but sometimes, it is difficult to find good points, and then they also might not interact when the time comes which I was on the verge of meriting them, but their lack of interaction loses the merit opportunity (if they had wanted a merit, they lost it by not responding).

[JayJuanGee]

@JayJuanGee
All is very true.
Keep in mind that during those months now people are most of the time away, busy with their IRL activities like holidays, house maintenance, traveling etc. soon comes the winter /well, talking about the northern  hemisphere, of course/ and things will change, people prefer to stay home in the winter, and they are often less busy, so maybe we will see some changes soon.

Perhaps.. but we still have a range of a down trend, and I take seasonal arguments with a considerable grain of salt whether we are referring to bitcoin price action or we are talking about posting activity on bitcoin talk.

Believe me, I am familiar with a certain level of bitcoin despair and lack of posting, and I recall being quite lonely in my posting activities during 2015... depressed posting times, indeed.

I have given all my 200 smerit and trying to have as less as possible. Few day ago I had 0 for the first time since the merit came / normally I keep 2-3 in case I see something extraordinary / now I got filled up again and I'm distributing it as usual, so from my side I've done what I can.

Hopefully, theymos is considering you as a potential source, and surely in my earlier post(s), I am referring to my perception of the stinginess of merit sources, and I believe that regular (nonsource) merits have a lot more discretion regarding the degree to which they believe merit stinginess is what they want to do for reasons or for no reasons at all.  Regular members have no real obligation to spend any of their merits whatsoever; however, some regular members might find out that others discontinue to give them merits because they do not seem to be a reciprocating kind of person (there are some folks who show their personalities in that regard).

[MagicSmoker]

Although it might be heresy for you bitcoin maximalists, the altcoins/mining subforum does have a surprisingly high signal-to-noise ratio. Here's a post from a 16 activity newbie that I just merited (and whose post history suggests more good things to come): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5024771.msg45483725#msg45483725.

Of course, when I go slumming in the altcoin or bitcoin discussion subfora I never see a post worth meriting (but plenty of posters who get reported for plagiarism) so if those are the only subfora you frequent then pickings are slim, indeed.

[JayJuanGee]

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.  

In the past week (from Friday to Friday), 3481 Merit points were transfered. That's 3481/7*30=14918 per 30 days.
It would be interesting to see how many of those came from Merit sources, who generate up to 19500 sMerit in the same period. But since not all Merit sources are known, I won't try to get the number.

Perhaps through inference some of that could be determined, but there still remains a bit of difficulties to infer the level of source for each source member who had been inferred to be a source.

Many of us recognize the saying that a house of cards built upon inference built upon inference built upon inference has some difficulties standing.   

Surely it seems to be a reasonable inference that a decent amount of the drop in the smerit spending amount is likely coming from the fact that regular members have largely spent their initial distribution (those active members who were inclined to spend their smerits), and likely another reasonable inference is that not all the smerits are coming from sources - perhaps 15% or more are coming from non source members.

I've still never been able to empty my source sMerit, and "my own" sMerit has now piled up to exactly 300. From now on, I'll try to keep my source sMerit under 10 (and 0 would be fine too). If it's higher (as it is now, I'll Merit more posts.

I've started this right now, meriting 8 different posts in 2-3 seconds (yes, I try to break my record ).

It seems to me that one of theymos's more recent disclosures about the replenishment of source merits does seem to provide an incentive for merit sources to spend their source smerits sooner rather than later, because they replenish 30 days from the time that you spend them.  So that is a nice little built in incentive for any merit source (who likes being a merit source) to readily and eagerly spend his/her source merits.

Again, regarding your non-source smerits, it seems completely in your discretion whether you want to keep 100 of those or 300 or 500 or some other number or even to NEVER spend them.  I would be against theymos creating any kind of decay rule regarding those nonsource smerits; however, I would have NO objection if he were to figure out some kind of incentive system to get folks to spend some of their nonsource smerits.  I am not sure what that would be, but with things like smerits it seems that carrots would be psychologically better than sticks... especially for any of the libertarian minded members, which there are some of those in bitcoinlandia, including this forum, as you likely have realized ...  you might be inclined in that direction, yourself? 

[cryptofarid10]

Although it might be heresy for you bitcoin maximalists, the altcoins/mining subforum does have a surprisingly high signal-to-noise ratio. Here's a post from a 16 activity newbie that I just merited (and whose post history suggests more good things to come): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5024771.msg45483725#msg45483725.

Of course, when I go slumming in the altcoin or bitcoin discussion subfora I never see a post worth meriting (but plenty of posters who get reported for plagiarism) so if those are the only subfora you frequent then pickings are slim, indeed.

may be. he have good skill and out knowledge Or there have another account. That's why he is experienced, and for this reason he got 18 Merit in his 16 posts

[coinlocket$]

<...>

I think there may be a mismatch in the data in the excel, probably because two weeks were very similar in terms of sMerit:
27/08/2018 .. 02/09/2018 -> 3.186 sMerits
20/08/2018 .. 26/08/2018 -> 3.763 sMerits
13/08/2018 .. 19/08/2018 -> 3.767 sMerits

The reading is still the same regardless: New all-time minimum and a decreasing trend...

Fixed, the hope is that after the summer the sources that are now inactive return active, many of them unfortunately, probably for various reasons, are not using the merits and the forum suffers.

The reasons can be differents:

- Busy in real life
- They dont care about it (some of them are merit sources without asking from initial airdrop period)
- They don't find posts where use Merit.

[pcatalin93]

<...>

I think there may be a mismatch in the data in the excel, probably because two weeks were very similar in terms of sMerit:
27/08/2018 .. 02/09/2018 -> 3.186 sMerits
20/08/2018 .. 26/08/2018 -> 3.763 sMerits
13/08/2018 .. 19/08/2018 -> 3.767 sMerits

The reading is still the same regardless: New all-time minimum and a decreasing trend...

Fixed, the hope is that after the summer the sources that are now inactive return active, many of them unfortunately, probably for various reasons, are not using the merits and the forum suffers.

The reasons can be differents:

- Busy in real life
- They dont care about it (some of them are merit sources without asking from initial airdrop period)
- They don't find posts where use Merit.

Anyone is busy in their real life and in my opinion this is the only plausible reason. The fact that they don`t care is even worst. And the one that they don`t find posts to deserve Merit is also wrong ( not my case ) ). I looked over the last 2-3 pages of this topic and in about 15-20 minutes i kinda learn a lot of thing about this system ( with mention that i was out of crypto for few months) . So to be back, a lot of usefull posts ,very well structured and well explained.

Maybe an automatic rule should be made regarding the forum : the merit sources which are not using them to be excluded as a merit source. There are a lot of people willing to be MS and being online and helpfull to the comunity.

[RivAngE]

Although it might be heresy for you bitcoin maximalists, the altcoins/mining subforum does have a surprisingly high signal-to-noise ratio. Here's a post from a 16 activity newbie that I just merited (and whose post history suggests more good things to come): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5024771.msg45483725#msg45483725.

Of course, when I go slumming in the altcoin or bitcoin discussion subfora I never see a post worth meriting (but plenty of posters who get reported for plagiarism) so if those are the only subfora you frequent then pickings are slim, indeed.

I know what you're saying, but as someone who's interested mostly in a few (very few) altcoins and the altcoin miners, most of my knowledge spans around this subject and I can be more helpful with my posts in this subforum. Most of what I'd post in the Bitcoin subforum would be considered "unnecessary" or "spam" by many because I don't have deep knowledge of the Bitcoin itself.

Also it saddens me that merit sources are probably prejudiced against everyone who use signatures, even legit people like myself. For example look at this post just above us (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg45458026#msg45458026), JayJuanGee, a very respectable and old member received a merit for quoting my post and enriching my point with some comments. That's all good, but on what ground was this post merit-able and mine wasn't? What set us apart?

This is only an example and please don't take me wrong, I have nothing against JayJuanGee, on the contrary even! But it makes me wonder... if a respectable legendary member with no paid signature and a newbie with a signature were to write the exact same post with the same wording... would merit sources and other members be fair?

I guess I shouldn't complain, I have been given 52 merits even though I'm always taking advantage of a paid signature (why wouldn't I? I'm not posting to get paid; I get paid for posting) but I'm sure without a signature I would have reached 100 merits by now.

[MagicSmoker]

...
Also it saddens me that merit sources are probably prejudiced against everyone who use signatures, even legit people like myself.

I dunno about that. Both of us joined here around the same time (last December), and while I've never worn a signature, am a native English speaker (to you being Greek) and have posted almost twice as often as you, we've both received merits at approximately the same rate: 1 for every ~16 posts. So I'd say you are doing quite well, all things considered (or I am doing quite poorly!  )

I also haven't really seen a prejudice against giving merits to people wearing signatures, but there is a definite reluctance to dole them out to people whose post history has a sizeable number of bounty reports (something I happen to agree with).