Newbie, Jr Members, Members suffering from merit-phobia: Explanations and Advice

[amishmanish]

I am a little late to join the party of people making posts about "merit". I recently saw a post asking forum members to treat the non-english speakers less harshly.

There are other constant posts about how its impossible and it will harm the forum, how the system is gamed against junior members etc. etc. A lot has been said and explained about this. There are a lot of newbies who are still trying to paint this as some form of injustice/ unfair system. When all else fails, they come up with the non-english speaker excuse.

So for those of you still confused, uncertain, angry (because you are a alt-spammer and this is troublesome to you), I will attempt explaining this disdain for the shitposters. I hope by the time I finish, you will be convinced that the disdain for the typical non-english spammer/ Bounty hunter is justified.

Lets begin with the profile of your typical bad-english spammer. This guy's profile has the following qualities:
1. Joins 10 bounty campaigns at the same time.
2. Has a fake 5000 friends facebook & 4000 follower twitter account for the above.
3. Has a FB/ twitter timeline with a deluge of ICO related posts.
4. Has a post history mainly made up of "Report submissions" or "Your idea is great sir and I think it will sure be more success buddy" kindda posts.
5. Posts in 100th page of a dead beat topic like 'Will bitcoin reach 30K?", "What did bitcoin give you?" "Is it possible to earn in ICO?"
6. Constantly uses unnecessary salutations "Dear Manager, Respected Manager, or my favorite Lauda Sir ".
7. Profusely apologises after every sentence. "Sorry if I am wrong", "Sorry again if i hurt someone". All of this with accompanied by the constant disebowelment of English is enough to irritate the hell out of most normal people.

Now, What is their not to hate in such a person??

 Some of these people have reached "Hero member" and even "Legendary" with this shit. They are all going to get whats coming for them.

But hey, you are not going to be one of them right. If you are a "poor-english", new guy here then let me give you some advice on how to become a valuable person on the forum and make it worth your while.

Step 1: Ask yourself why you are here. If you were here only for earning easy money by making referrals on the fake facebook wall then that won't be possible any more. List out things you can do to contribute to the forum as well as to bitcoin.

Step 2 Realize that nothing in life comes free. That time is over. You may still do that by scamming innocent people but that tainted money will never serve you well. On the other hand, the knowledge gained from this quest will be a strength for all your life.

Step 3 Understand what bitcoin is. Why Satoshi and the core developers spent thousands of hours on this piece of code? One of its main purpose was to enable people to directly trade with each other without worrying about third parties. This can serve well for exchange of services across borders and for exchange of goods within borders.

Step 4: If you are an ICO lover, then realize that as one of the first participants in this new phenomena, you are providing legitimacy to the future economic activity and potential gains this will generate. If you support all ICOs blindly, just to earn some worthless tokens, it will not only be a waste of your time but it also destroys the legitimacy of the better projects and makes everyone suffer.

Step 5: If your English is not good, Start with doing something valuable in your local forum. There will surely be some good users in all local forums who will help out. If there are none, then take command in a professional way of your forum. Learn about bitcoin and engage with other members like a man of knowledge. Alternatively, in your local forum, you could:

---> Translate some of the better posts from here (after taking due permission from the original poster)
---> Engage in discussion about setting up the infrastructure for bitcoin within your community. Like local groups, meetups etc.
---> Persuade people to actually care about the goal of financial access and equality for all and the importance of adoption.
---> Inform yourself about the scaling debate and be warned about the false marketing from other people making wild claims.
---> Inform yourself about Lightning Network, SegWit and encourage its usage.

Step 6 (Most Important): Do all of the above with a sense of purpose and interest rather than just money as your sole motivator. For money, get a real job. We are still far from changing the banking and economic system.


I will stop with some parting thoughts about some of the contentious issues regarding regionalism etc.

1. East vs. West
It is a common impression that most of the people spamming or shit-posting are from the low income countries in the eastern hemisphere. Indian, Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines, Vietnam etc. To people from these countries, I'd say that its our own mistake that the west sees us as incompetent and lazy when we write incoherent sentences.
By showing our willingness to spend our time on making 1000 useless posts, we confirm that we are in fact useless. Its then natural to have disdain for such actions. Accusing the other person of racism then is no defence. If you really want to mount a defence, then do some real work and prove your worth.

This constant trend to use salutations  (Sir, Dear, Respected) is also a cultural difference. To you, it maybe normal to show respect to someone in a position of power over you, but as far as netiquette and western work culture is concerned, this is considered sycophancy/ ass-kissing. This is considered the hallmark of an incapable, scheming individual and not of respect. So avoid this like a plague. Instead, address people with a normal Mr./ Miss

English Sentences

I have noticed the typical sentence construction of people who are considered bad posters. They use long sentences without proper punctuation and paragraph separation. Some tips:

1. Use small sentences. 7-8 words should be enough.
2. Press "Enter" to create space between your paragraphs.
3. Decide on your content and basic point. Do not stretch it by saying the same thing over and over.

Well. That is all for now. I hope this helps someone. We are all here for learning and taking part in this new phenomena. We are still early. Imagine if you had a computer at your home back in 1995. It was a big deal for most eastern hemisphere homes I believe. But it was an opportunity to learn.

It is extremely hard for us to reach the same level of proficiency as the people who were here since the beginning. But we can try. Apart from the technical aspects, we can try to make the social and economic aspects of bitcoin be felt within our own communities for real. Not just in this virtual space and on meaningless facebook walls.

I request the old local board members in particular to take charge of their boards in a positive spirit. Lets all learn and work according to our abilities. Learning is the best form of income you can get from this forum. Your future generation and your societies will be much better served by your knowledge than by some extra money.

Well, this took long. Time for a Goodnight!

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[jackg]

It's not just the East that are assumed to be incompetent spammers. Young people as well (like me when I started) are unable to work for a good amount of time unless they do it freelance. I joined this forum with a hope of earning Bitcoin actually and for the first 6 months I think I was spamming a bit. Once you get beyond member/full you start to withhold on posting as often as you would and actually try to start writing constructive ones like this OP. I have to say, the merit system might help with this a bit as you can't advance without writing well.

If you make a 1 sentence post that's of high quality, it is better and more likely to be merited than a long post that could be summarised by 1 sentence. Also, for me, I'd be more inclined to merit users I have seen frequently make good quality posts.

[amishmanish]

Once you get beyond member/full you start to withhold on posting as often as you would and actually try to start writing constructive ones like this OP. I have to say, the merit system might help with this a bit as you can't advance without writing well.

Exactly. We all should feel this responsibility to contribute to the ecosystem rather than just milking others' ignorance.

People should divide their time professionally on the forum. If you want to discover alt-coins then spend some time really analyzing them. Too many scams and pump and dumps are harming the whole space.

Earlier the forum used to be a place for discussion on how to improve and make bitcoin reachable for more and more people. We should try going back to that state. Merit system is a good start.
If the newbies start focusing on learning rather than just earning, we will have a much better situation.

[allahabadi]

7. Profusely apologises after every sentence. "Sorry if I am wrong", "Sorry again if i(1) hurt someone". All of this with accompanied by the constant disebowelment(1) of English is enough to irritate the hell out of most normal people.

Now, What is their(1) not to hate in such a person??

 Some of these people have reached "Hero member" and even "Legendary" with this shit. They are all going to get whats (1) coming for them.

It is a common impression(2) that most of the people spamming or shit-posting are from the low income countries in the eastern hemisphere. Indian, Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines(1) , Vietnam etc. To people from these countries, I'd say that its our own mistake that the west sees us as incompetent and lazy when we write incoherent sentences.
-snip-
Accusing the other person of racism then is no defence(1,3) . If you really want to mount a defence, then do some real work and prove your worth.

1. For someone asking others to improve on their grammar, you too need to work on your Grammar and Spellings too.

2. It's a fact and I agree.

3. But if the disdain takes the form of blatant name-calling and racial overtones (not undertones), I believe it is an explicit form of RACISM; eg. 3rd world monkeys, pajeet, etc.

I'm not defending those who are criticizing the merit system simply because it is not allowing them to earn Bounties. They should realize that shit-posting won't pay anymore. I don't expect people to pay me for shit-posting too, but there are a lot of issues in the current system too and to have a high-level of arbitrariness seems awful. The irony of having a Centralized forum to host discussions primarily focused on a Decentralized system is amusing in itself.

I personally feel that any hierarchical system, should be done away with, be it the merits or the ranks. All Bounty Managers should individually access the participants and pay them on the basis of their posts (just like in an article campaign). I have seen Legendary posts worth shit and they are still paid twice simply because they joined it early.

My 2c.


P.S. Trusts should, however, stay and be more rationalized, you cannot simply neg someone for supporting a counter viewpoint and Trust should only be based on trading issues.

[Jet Cash]

Also, for me, I'd be more inclined to merit users I have seen frequently make good quality posts.

This is something that I've thought about, and I've started to give a merit to members who make a number of "useful" posts, but no single one that is outstanding. I feel that the steady support of reliable and honest members is as valuable, as that of the member who has the odd flash of brilliance.

[ajmapalo22]

The reality is, merits are not for longest post you can construct, rather its for ideas that are useful to readers especially to those who already know what cryptos is all about and just looking for additional information.

[cryptonandi]

There are so many posts and topics in the alt coin section as a Newbie who wants to learn , I am getting all confused and messed up as in which all topics to start with in alt coin. I know about these scammers and pumpers, they are always sending me msg in telegram, have started to understand them, but they are getting better everyday. The other day one scammer sent me an email which masked email of a known crypto youtube reviewer, but i was able to see that he masked that email....Problem is every time someone starts a new topic it goes in the top and then starts to get buried. Need some one who knows which topic to read to make a list. That would be real awesome!

[Jet Cash]

Alternatively, you could leave the alts alone and learn about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has become such a sophisticated system, that it is worth serious investigation as the unique product that it has become.

[darklus123]

I am one of those who are actually not a perfect english poster. Basically I have to admit it. Some newbies could really get stock to being a newbie because of that same reason that they are not helping at all. Tho you can't blame a newbie most of them are here to get an easy extra amount of money.
The crucial part would always be the later part of their being a newbie. Some would realize what they are doing is wrong and try to improve. While some don't who keeps on complaining.

We all have to admit that most of us who started here were doing the same mistake but some realizes and improves while some don't.  That is the main purpose of being a newbie from the world itself.

[athanz88]

snip

1. For someone asking others to improve on their grammar, you too need to work on your Grammar and Spellings too.

2. It's a fact and I agree.

3. But if the disdain takes the form of blatant name-calling and racial overtones (not undertones), I believe it is an explicit form of RACISM; eg. 3rd world monkeys, pajeet, etc.

I'm not defending those who are criticizing the merit system simply because it is not allowing them to earn Bounties. They should realize that shit-posting won't pay anymore. I don't expect people to pay me for shit-posting too, but there are a lot of issues in the current system too and to have a high-level of arbitrariness seems awful. The irony of having a Centralized forum to host discussions primarily focused on a Decentralized system is amusing in itself.

I personally feel that any hierarchical system, should be done away with, be it the merits or the ranks. All Bounty Managers should individually access the participants and pay them on the basis of their posts (just like in an article campaign). I have seen Legendary posts worth shit and they are still paid twice simply because they joined it early.

My 2c.


P.S. Trusts should, however, stay and be more rationalized, you cannot simply neg someone for supporting a counter viewpoint and Trust should only be based on trading issues.

What do you suggest then for the bolded word? Do you think the forum comes without a price of paying a hosting job or maybe they even make their own server, fees for admin and moderator, energy and time to maintain it? Then amuse us how to make a forum? A decentralized one where people can make money from it without giving any cent to the forum.

Making the manager do all the work is kinda amuse me. How come you want to work to a place or person but you dont have any CV? in my personal newbie opinion, your rank, merit, and old posts are your CV here.

[amishmanish]

1. For someone asking others to improve on their grammar, you too need to work on your Grammar and Spellings too.

Thanks for the corrections. Learning is a constant endeavour.

3. But if the disdain takes the form of blatant name-calling and racial overtones (not undertones), I believe it is an explicit form of RACISM; eg. 3rd world monkeys, pajeet, etc.

I'm not defending those who are criticising the merit system simply because it is not allowing them to earn Bounties. They should realize that shit-posting won't pay anymore. I don't expect people to pay me for shit-posting too, but there are a lot of issues in the current system too and to have a high-level of arbitrariness seems awful. The irony of having a Centralized forum to host discussions primarily focused on a Decentralized system is amusing in itself.

The racial overtones you refer to have surfaced on the forum very recently. A lot of people spent their time and energy in making this forum what it is. Moderating, writing FAQ's, Beginner guides and what not just to ensure that forum quality is maintained.

While most people will agree with your views on the need to cut back the name calling, I think it is simplistic to take the moral high ground on this. Its not like the people indulging in this behaviour don't know what they are doing. They are running sophisticated spamming and alt-account farming campaigns. No problems gets resolved unless you identify and accept it. The name calling doesn't fix it but does the job of calling out these people.

I personally feel that any hierarchical system, should be done away with, be it the merits or the ranks. All Bounty Managers should individually access the participants and pay them on the basis of their posts (just like in an article campaign). I have seen Legendary posts worth shit and they are still paid twice simply because they joined it early.

My 2c.

We'd all like the situation to be perfect with complete decentralisation of the forum but it's not feasible. We may find it ironical or amusing but unfortunately, that's where the usefulness of this realisation ends.
Completely agree with you that a lot of Bounty Managers need to get their act together. In fact, if the bounty managers were made a bit more responsible for the actions of their participants, the situation would be greatly improved.

P.S. Trusts should, however, stay and be more rationalized, you cannot simply neg someone for supporting a counter viewpoint and Trust should only be based on trading issues.

Again, it's easier said than done. Negging someone on the basis of constant spammy behaviour should be fine. I am yet to see many examples of people being negged due to a counter viewpoint.

[allahabadi]

-snip-

What do you suggest then for the bolded word? Do you think the forum comes without a price of paying a hosting job or maybe they even make their own server, fees for admin and moderator, energy and time to maintain it? Then amuse us how to make a forum? A decentralized one where people can make money from it without giving any cent to the forum.

Making the manager do all the work is kinda amuse me. How come you want to work to a place or person but you dont have any CV? in my personal newbie opinion, your rank, merit, and old posts are your CV here.

Paying for the maintenance of the forum can be done by making it decentralized too. It's not the first suggestion of it's kind.

The second sentence is slightly difficult to comprehend, but I think you are ignoring the fact that the rank and old posts and activity count ain't sufficient for a good CV and so the merits were introduced. Also, any good manager should check the quality of the posts, so it's not too much that I'm asking.

-snip-
Again, it's easier said than done. Negging someone on the basis of constant spammy behaviour should be fine. I am yet to see many examples of people being negged due to a counter viewpoint.

Possibly a glance at Lauda vs QS would help. It's more often than not, a clash of senseless and counter-arguments.

[Cobalt9317]

Very well said.

Being in a different parallel universe I was able to comprehend your thread.
It might seem that I'm not the only one experiencing the Mandella Effect.

too bad merit is a false memory in this parallel I can't give you some 
and upon checking it was really used.

[amishmanish]

Possibly a glance at Lauda vs QS would help. It's more often than not, a clash of senseless and counter-arguments.

QS has been making shady deals on the forum for a long time now. He makes baseless accusations against people he want to bring down. Lauda on the other hand has done more than any other moderator in the past few months to try and restore some semblance of sanity in the forum.

Its hardly "senseless arguments" when long-standing, impartial members like @Vod have left feedback to QS for scammy-behaviour as far back as 2015. 

I saw your post history. Let us not continue the argument further if you don't wish to contribute something useful to the original post and its intent. Surely you could contribute a lot more if you had the motivation to.

[belyaevi]

It is good that you are suggesting members to improve their writing skills and grammar. I see it in a different way. Most of us had different upbringings, we got different type of schooling , guidance and friends. Most of this was not under our control and our learning of everything (including English) was affected by this. I am fine with people being able to convey their message even if there are minor mistakes in the content. I consider myself as no expert either and it took me a lot of effort to reach current level. Everyone who has a positive attitude can improve their writing skills to some extent but drastic change is impossible.

[tekusa]

The reality is, merits are not for longest post you can construct, rather its for ideas that are useful to readers especially to those who already know what cryptos is all about and just looking for additional information.

That reality is as per your perception. Different members have their own criteria while giving merits. Some might be giving merits to the posts they just agree to . Some may have asked an urgent query and if some member helped them with the response in very less time, they might consider the activeness while awarding merit.

Most of the members here already have all the basic information about bitcoins. Those who have no idea, join as a newbie after finding this forum through search engines. Even if thyer find your ideas useful, they have no merit to give to you.

[Rath_]

Alternatively, you could leave the alts alone and learn about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has become such a sophisticated system, that it is worth serious investigation as the unique product that it has become.

Most people became interested in Bitcoin not because they believe that it has a chance to become much more widely used in the future, but because they think that they still can become millionaires thanks to it. If you were them, you wouldn't bother with understanding something that would take them a lot of time to study.

I have to admit that merit system motivated me to read more "serious" sections and try to help others. Even though, merit system was introduced week before I was supposed to rank up to Full Member, I was not complaining at all. In fact, now I'm thankful to whoever came up with this idea (can't remember if it was Theymos). We can't prevent some things from happening e.g. selling merit, but it should be less common in the next months.

[allahabadi]

-snip-
I saw your post history. Let us not continue the argument further if you don't wish to contribute something useful to the original post and its intent. Surely you could contribute a lot more if you had the motivation to.

Lost you completely and ofc if you want to judge me by looking at my post history, you are free to. I did make a few points regarding the post and also suggested the important role, bounty managers will have in this; but like most people, apparently you want to stick to your points and not accept any counter views.


P.S.: I suggest you open a self-moderated thread in some other board, so that you can conveniently delete the posts which are not aligned to your thinking.

Most people became interested in Bitcoin not because they believe that it has a chance to become much more widely used in the future, but because they think that they still can become millionaires thanks to it. If you were them, you wouldn't bother with understanding something that would take them a lot of time to study.

I have to admit that merit system motivated me to read more "serious" sections and try to help others. Even though, merit system was introduced week before I was supposed to rank up to Full Member, I was not complaining at all. In fact, now I'm thankful to whoever came up with this idea (can't remember if it was Theymos). We can't prevent some things from happening e.g. selling merit, but it should be less common in the next months.

Wise words and very true of most of the people regarding any tech innovation or investment. This is not something confined to cryptos alone, every investment/ monetized innovation has this, even Apple had a CEO who was ex-Pepsi and barely knew anything about computers.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, I'm glad you brought up the East vs. West thing here.  The constant "sir, sir, sir, sir" thing is just plain fucking annoying.  Even more annoying (to me at least) is when members address other members as "dear"--and I don't mean greetings like "Dear sir".  They just call each other "dear".  

I'm of the opinion that people who can't write proper English should stick to their local boards, like they would normally do if they weren't getting paid to post here.  I don't think of Easterners any less because they post here--they just shouldn't be posting here.  There's too much of a language barrier, never mind the culture clash.

[jackg]

-snip-
Again, it's easier said than done. Negging someone on the basis of constant spammy behaviour should be fine. I am yet to see many examples of people being negged due to a counter viewpoint.

Possibly a glance at Lauda vs QS would help. It's more often than not, a clash of senseless and counter-arguments.

My first three negs are also a good reference point for this.
From useless users who are unhappy that they either can't get a good acceptance in the forum, are having a bad day or can't seem to sell their domain they wanted $300 for (where it really wasn't worth that value).

It is good that you are suggesting members to improve their writing skills and grammar. I see it in a different way. Most of us had different upbringings, we got different type of schooling , guidance and friends. Most of this was not under our control and our learning of everything (including English) was affected by this. I am fine with people being able to convey their message even if there are minor mistakes in the content. I consider myself as no expert either and it took me a lot of effort to reach current level. Everyone who has a positive attitude can improve their writing skills to some extent but drastic change is impossible.

For a native English speaker (like me) it's very easy to see what people write - especially since I spend time around young children and have to try to interpret what they write. Bad spelling and grammar comes more of an issue with other languages, if you get your word order wrong in English, for a lot of sentences, it can be inferred what you are saying. For people in another native language, it's probably more difficult to try to translate as English is a fairly forgiving language in itself.

I would personally have no issue in people who don't speak native English therefore to post in both langauges while they are still trying to perfect their English skills and it can then be translated from the original verson or someone could offer constructive critiscism on some of their spellings (and I doubt a moderator would delete such a post if someone has at least attempted to write the English version above - I've written in two languages before and it's not been deleted by a moderator).

OP, I'm glad you brought up the East vs. West thing here.  The constant "sir, sir, sir, sir" thing is just plain fucking annoying.  Even more annoying (to me at least) is when members address other members as "dear"--and I don't mean greetings like "Dear sir".  They just call each other "dear". 

I have no idea what you're suggesting "dear".
Someone to include the word "dear" is a bit different from someone writing random gobbledygook that makes sense to nobody.

I, personally, find "dear sir" much more aggrovating than "dear".