I've still got 80 sMerit to give away.

[SayNumo]

People begging for merits are just asking for not being given any. It's very tempting to throw in a request for merits after you've taken the time to write a good quality, helpful post, but man — don't invoke the power of reverse psychology here. Even if you are hoping for merits deep inside (most here probably do, it's human nature to want a reward), keep it to yourself. Just leave your post as is and let it speak for itself.

[1713560369]

1713560369

[1713560369]

1713560369

[Gusbaaa]

I do not think it is appropriate to be a rating tool. I believe this is a tool to improve the quality of forums. It's really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of writing. So far it seems to be used to "appreciate" ghosts in the past, and to help sig campaign members to "rank" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think the good points can only be given alone, which reduces a bit of the offense. Merits will cause nothing but problems for forum users and admins. We have allready seen members being accused of selling merits to other members. When I used to run forums (not crypto forums) I tried the merit sytem out and the emails from users claiming that this person or that person sold merits got so bad I disabled it in

[Jet Cash]

I do not think it is appropriate to be a rating tool. I believe this is a tool to improve the quality of forums. It's really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of writing. So far it seems to be used to "appreciate" ghosts in the past, and to help sig campaign members to "rank" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think the good points can only be given alone, which reduces a bit of the offense. Merits will cause nothing but problems for forum users and admins. We have allready seen members being accused of selling merits to other members. When I used to run forums (not crypto forums) I tried the merit sytem out and the emails from users claiming that this person or that person sold merits got so bad I disabled it in

I'm leaving myself open here to another attack by you-know-who.

This is my account on another forum. Every member has the ability to "like" a post, and he can like every post on the forum if he wants to, but that wouldn't really be productive. If I analyse my likes, it gives me a very good idea of public opinion and approval in the forum. Because a member can only give one like to a post and it is public, it gives me a lot of encouragement to make what I consider to be helpful and informative posts, especially when the like comes from a senior and experienced member.

[tententen]

I do not think it is appropriate to be a rating tool. I believe this is a tool to improve the quality of forums. It's really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of writing. So far it seems to be used to "appreciate" ghosts in the past, and to help sig campaign members to "rank" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think the good points can only be given alone, which reduces a bit of the offense. Merits will cause nothing but problems for forum users and admins. We have allready seen members being accused of selling merits to other members. When I used to run forums (not crypto forums) I tried the merit sytem out and the emails from users claiming that this person or that person sold merits got so bad I disabled it in

I'm leaving myself open here to another attack by you-know-who.

This is my account on another forum. Every member has the ability to "like" a post, and he can like every post on the forum if he wants to, but that wouldn't really be productive. If I analyse my likes, it gives me a very good idea of public opinion and approval in the forum. Because a member can only give one like to a post and it is public, it gives me a lot of encouragement to make what I consider to be helpful and informative posts, especially when the like comes from a senior and experienced member.

http://cryptobounty.com/posting-images/domain-likes.jpg

I've contributed nothing but shitposted tons.   I've been shitposting for days now, never got any merit, so I think this system is working well. 

I suppose you would need a dislike button to really gauge public approval.  What you're proposing with the "likes" is sort of like only being able to long an asset.  To get the true prevailing bias you need to be able to short it as well.

[etherflip]

If anything, find some board that has low usage, but is of quality topics, and inform users that you will be looking for quality posts in that board in a more popular board such as Meta. This will encourage more users in said board, and will also award those with quality posts. Win/Win

[Jet Cash]

If anything, find some board that has low usage, but is of quality topics, and inform users that you will be looking for quality posts in that board in a more popular board such as Meta. This will encourage more users in said board, and will also award those with quality posts. Win/Win

I tried that with the serious discussion board, but it didn't really work. I suspect this is becuse posts don't increase post count, and sigs aren't allowed.

[Vod]

It's quite a bit of work hunting for people to award sMerit, and it seems you don't get much thanks for it. I'm starting to understand why sMerit holders just dump their merit on out of date posts. If there was any indication that there would be a penalty for not allocating sMerit, then I would dump them immediately.

I agree with you on this.

However, I'm enjoying myself.  I often LOL at things I read, or find them valuable.  Most often I don't want to leave positive trust, and leaving a few merit points to appreciate a good post goes just as far as the trust.

[siekeheros]

Basically the aim of sMerit is to motivate users to post higher quality content with the aim of ranking up, is a good logical measure to combat spam, however there is a direct correlation between the boards with the highest spam rate and the merit these posts have.

As an example, "Economics" is full of spammers asking the same question over and over, although your post there and you have a decent quality I'm pretty sure you have a lesser chance of being merited just because serious people with some background will most likely avoid these boards, and if they don't they will search for very specific topics (at least what I would do).

Maybe merit sources could have different amount of sMerits to grant in different boards, that would keep the posting competitive pretty much everywhere, and that can be based on the amount of threads being created on each board.

[Jet Cash]

The merit system seems to be settling down, and I think that broadly it is a reasonable concept, and a useful addition to the forum. The only thing I would change is the maximum award per member per post. I think it should be reduced to 2. I suspect that the pattern of merit awards will be considered, and there will be some changes in the methods of creating sMerits and merit faucets. For example, if people are abusing their ability to award sMerit, then they should be deprived of that ability. It may also be useful for some members to receive one sMerit for every merit they receive if they are using the sMerits wisely.

 I would also like to see an end to begging for merits via the soup kitchens and food banks. A better solution is the closing of spam threads, and the merging of others, this would allow members to find interesting threads in the swamp. Moving other threads to more relevant boards like speculation, beginners, and political would probably help as well.

Another useful change would be a cap on the size of images. I've closed several threads because of oversized images, and this isn't fair to the posters with comments following the image.

[al1n]

There are some unfortunate side effects however (at least in some subforums).
You can receive merits ONLY from other people. But if these people never give merits, no matter what, what can you do about that? Currently nothing.
My example is the romanian subforum. Nobody is giving merits there for anything. Maybe they are not aware about the new system, but I highly doubt that.
So, if you are romanian and your english skills are not that great, you are screwed and you will never rank up.
How such an issue can be solved? Currently the guys that offer merits will not bother with non english subforums.

[Sagaris]

This system is more necessary for another point system. He does not encourage himself to write good messages alone.

[Jet Cash]

So, if you are romanian and your english skills are not that great, you are screwed and you will never rank up.
How such an issue can be solved? Currently the guys that offer merits will not bother with non english subforums.

It's not that we don't bother with the boards, in my case I couldn't contribute, and I couldn't evaluate posts. The answer is for bilingual members to frequent the boards. Alternative a Romanian merit source could evaluate the posts.

Part of the problem may be that some of the alternative language boards are being reported as low value spam areas ( I don't know if this is relevant to the Romanian board ). If this is the case, then the members of that board should endeavour to clean up the posting.

[al1n]

No, the forum is fine. Occasional spam, like anywhere i guess, but otherwise normal topics (help, discussions etc).
Lack of merit points however.
I understand why you personally (or others non romanian speakers) would/could not evaluate the topics from there, that's normal.
But I would expect each language forum to have at least one native merit source admin/moderator.

[sncc]

It's quite a bit of work hunting for people to award sMerit, and it seems you don't get much thanks for it. I'm starting to understand why sMerit holders just dump their merit on out of date posts. If there was any indication that there would be a penalty for not allocating sMerit, then I would dump them immediately.

I agree, if there are many unused sMerits, this system does not make any sense.  I think that is the reason why theymos wrote

"There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future."

You can check this sentence when clicking +Merit link.  As far as I know this is not written anywhere else but maybe it is good to share this information to encourage people to use sMerit more.

[Gintron]

As a new comer I now realize how hard is it with this merit system to get the next rank.
I feel that I do not have the knowledge to join a serious discussion and I do not want to give
misinformation. It was fun actually before the merit system to join a campaign and see my rank going up
with just posting. Generally I do not think that merits are a bad idea I think it will stop the ones who are posting
shit posts.

[Hero of Legendary]

It's not about what your thoughts are it's what's at play right this moment. Merits are determinants of ranks now. To achieve a new rank, your merit point has to be same with the rank post count requirements.

Merit doesn't determine rank, activity does that. Merit just blocks promotion for spammers who gained activity by abusing the forum.

This clear my unsettled thought about merit. Glad I found it here, I did make a lot of reading for this.

[Jet Cash]

This clear my unsettled thought about merit. Glad I found it here, I did make a lot of reading for this.

I gave you a merit for that post, and I suspect this will be another controversial award by me, so here is my justification.

The award was not really for the post, although it was precise and free from bloat. The award was for the fact that you had done some research before you made the post, and hopefully it will encourage others to do the same.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I’ve got 187 left (used my allowance for the month as a merit source though)

[Jet Cash]

I've just awarded a point to a new(ish) member who posted in the beginners board. I decided to look through page 4 of that board, and I only found one post that I liked. Am I being too severe, or is it just that there are too many repetitive and thread bloating posts still?

[Vod]

I gave you a merit for that post, and I suspect this will be another controversial award by me, so here is my justification.

The award was not really for the post, although it was precise and free from bloat. The award was for the fact that you had done some research before you made the post, and hopefully it will encourage others to do the same.

You realize that was just a garbage post, right?  Like this one?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2700855.msg28672524#msg28672524