Is the Merit System Generating Enough Merits?

[elena_rose19]

I think the current system is serving its purpose. With the system we have, ranking up requires real hard work and creativity. Anyone can contribute their knowledge but nt everyone will be rewarded with merit so members need creativity in posting, something that will catch the attention, answer queries and share knowledge.

[romanovst]

I think the current system is serving its purpose. With the system we have, ranking up requires real hard work and creativity. Anyone can contribute their knowledge but nt everyone will be rewarded with merit so members need creativity in posting, something that will catch the attention, answer queries and share knowledge.

We should the positive side of merit system:

1) First of all, you are right that it has resulted in competition among the members here. This is good for the forum as all members will compete with each other for making quality posts here.

2) Another thing that I really like about the merit system is the excitement it brings for the members. Every time I login here and I see some merits on my profile, I get really happy.  I check the post that got merited and than try to make my future posts similar to that. It has thus motivated me to contribute more here.

[flashmark]

Whether the math in the OP is correct or not, I'd offer this counterpoint:

If we had reset the boards completely and started everyone from newbie status and 0 activity at the moment merit was implemented on 24th Jan, there are plenty of users who would have received sufficient merit to be Members, or even Full Members, but it actually would be the Activity preventing them from attaining that rank.  This alone makes me think we've got the balance correct.

Yes. I agree with your argument.

[rhamzter]

First of all I wanna thank zentdex for his great analysis about how many merits each rank - on average - gains a month. I used some of the data he provided in his post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3015036.0

Now to my point:
I took my time to do the math and see how many members can the current merit system sustain and here are the results:

SUMMARY

https://imgur.com/a/snYsn




First of all let me remind you of rank requirements:

Newbie:           1 activity                   and     0 merits
Jr. Member:      30 activity                 and     0 merits
Member:          60 activity                 and     10 merits         needs 2 months to get the activity
Full Member:    120 activity               and     100 merits       needs 4 months to get the activity
Sr. Member:      240 activity               and     250 merits      needs 8 months to get the activity
Hero Member:   480 activity               and     500 merits      who knows?    around 12 months
Legendary:       775 - 1030 activity     and     1000 merits




There are currently - at the time of this post - 57 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 11975 sMerit per 30 days. Those are the merits generated by sources only, and given that a member can send half the merits he receives and imagining the best case scenario where every member sends all the merits he receives, the total amount of merits generated by the system would double to 23950 sMerit per 30 days. So, roughly 24k sMerit per month.

Now to the boring math:

Based on Zentdex's analysis the 24k merits are distributed between ranks in the following manner:
Legendary: 8%
Hero: 8%
Sr. Member: 14%
Full Member: 16%
Member: 19%
Jr. Member and Newbie: 23 + 11 = 34%


So...
Legendary members get 8% x 24k = 1920 merits which they don't need to rank up.
Hero members get the same amount 1920 which is enough for 1920/500 = 3.84 members to rank up every month. The No. of Hero members the system can sustain: 3.84 x 12 = 46.08
Sr. members get 14% x 24k = 3360 which is enough for 3360/250 = 13.44 members every month. The No. of Sr. members the system can sustain: 13.44 x 8 = 107.52
Full Members get 16% x 24k = 3840 which is enough for 3840/150 = 25.6 members every month. The No. of Full members the system can sustain: 25.6 x 4 = 102.4
Members get 19% x 24k = 4560 which is enough for 4560/90 = 50.67 members every month. The No. of Members the system can sustain:  50.67 x 2 = 101.34
Jr. Members and Newbies get 34% x 24k = 8160 which is enough for 816 members every month.

The time needed to rank up is easily acquired by dividing the amount needed to rank up by the average merits gained per month.

Conclusion (my opinion):
The amount of merits produced by the system is too very low, as we've seen that it would take an average member 3 to 5 times the time it took him to rank up in the previous system, I know that the purpose of this system is to create a better forum with better members but just imagine yourself a full member needing almost 2 years to get to senior. Is that fair? How frustrated you'd be?
Not to mention that I described the best case scenario and didn't go into calculating all the sMerits that are horded and not used and the merits that are sold on black markets.

Good analysis. I believe the merit system is still too young and it will be needed some time to all users to get used to it. Now, everyday I read publications abput how to get merit (mostly made by newbies), but I understand even in the higher ranks now it is really difficult to rank out, for example from hero to legendary.
Due to the preocupation rising here in the forum about merits, I feel this is the right time to begin a campaign or something, a kind of contest, where people can participate and the better publications earn some merits. I think this will encourage people to write about important stuff rather of asking or begging for merits. What do you people think about?
It is time to create a kind of Merit-contest?? We can pick a topic and let the people talk about it, and see what happens...

You know what you have a point with that computation, which make me to admire you because I think you are best mathematics. But I guess you can't get the point the simple logic made by "theymos" it is not about the merit you earned or the spendable merit it's about how they can help each one to be matured in digitalization world. They trying to wake up in the reality of modernization, try to look first the present before you looked in the future.

[Oulay]

You know what you have a point with that computation, which make me to admire you because I think you are best mathematics. But I guess you can't get the point the simple logic made by "theymos" it is not about the merit you earned or the spendable merit it's about how they can help each one to be matured in digitalization world. They trying to woke up in the reality of modernization, try to looked first the present before you looked in the future.

Sorry for messing the point and commenting on your English but you should really think of improving it.
I read some of the posts in your history, I'm not a native English speaker but I can tell you this:
After "to" and "can/can't" you should use the infinitive form of the verb. In your current post you should've said: "trying to wake up", "try to look first at the present"
There is much more for you to improve but I don't feel like I'm qualified enough to give you more suggestions, but I would suggest for you to go take a look at this thread and post in it if you'd like, I'm sure the people there would be of much more help than me: The english language improvement thread   

[Oulay]

I don't know if it is as a result of this thread or not but it looks like theymos agreed that there wasn't enough Merit. There has been an update to the Merit Sources.

Merit sources
There are 57 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 14750 sMerit per 30 days

The same number of sources but more sMerit.

I don't think this was because of my thread. I believe that Theymos is closely monitoring the merit system and would know if there isn't enough merits. He probably was waiting for the default merits to dry up before increasing merit generation.

[guschin]

I don't think this was because of my thread. I believe that Theymos is closely monitoring the merit system and would know if there isn't enough merits. He probably was waiting for the default merits to dry up before increasing merit generation.

We will be able to connect the dots only after seeing the future changes. But I must say that it must have took a lot of time for him to plan all this. Many people are worried about loopholes being exploited (like members being able to send merits to alt account) but I think this is all intentional on his part. It would be interesting to see the future announcement he is going to make regarding this. It should happen within 1-2 months as per my expectations.

[Vod]

I think the issue is that on some forums lots of merits are given out - eg posting on Meta.

On other forums hardly any merits are given out (speculation, trading, altcoins and bitcoin discussion).

That means that if you want merits you need to post exclusively in Meta.

The answer is simple.

Stop giving merit to posts in Meta.  

Stop nitpicking about the forum, and just use it.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I also think the system is not generating enough merits but, in my case, I’m not worried about ranking up. What I miss is the possibility of giving more merits for good posts.

I think the system would be improved if everybody above a certain rank would get some merits at the beginning of the month, like merit sources do. Not many, but maybe 5 for members 10 for full members and so on.

It’s happened to me some times, and I think to many people, that I would have liked to give merit to a certain post but I couldn't.

[galkina]

I also think the system is not generating enough merits but, in my case, I’m not worried about ranking up. What I miss is the possibility of giving more merits for good posts.

I think the system would be improved if everybody above a certain rank would get some merits at the beginning of the month, like merit sources do. Not many, but maybe 5 for members 10 for full members and so on.

It’s happened to me some times, and I think to many people, that I would have liked to give merit to a certain post but I couldn't.

Better option is to increase the  merits allotted to merit sources. I am not in favor of default merits or any automatic merits given to members every month. Most of them will be abused as it is happening currently. Even some senior rank members did this which is pathetic. If we increase the merits for merit sources, it is safer. This is because only trustworthy people are selected for that role. It will also solve the problem that you mentioned. Since these people will have more merits to give to all rank members, the members receiving those merits will also get Smerits for spending.

[DaftAjax]

~snip

~snip

You know what you have a point with that computation, which make me to admire you because I think you are best mathematics. But I guess you can't get the point the simple logic made by "theymos" it is not about the merit you earned or the spendable merit it's about how they can help each one to be matured in digitalization world. They trying to woke up in the reality of modernization, try to looked first the present before you looked in the future.

He did say that, "may not be so accurate..." didn't he? So that means that he's not the best mathematician (BTW not mathematics). I'm not saying that its worthless, in fact its great, its just that he already claimed that its not that accurate.

He's simply reflecting that in those times it is possible that you may earn specific number of merit(s). Because in those times I'm sure you may improve to eventually make quality posts.

He has the same point of view as you are, you just don't realized it.

[TheQuin]

I don't know if it is as a result of this thread or not but it looks like theymos agreed that there wasn't enough Merit. There has been an update to the Merit Sources.

Merit sources
There are 57 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 14750 sMerit per 30 days

The same number of sources but more sMerit.

I don't think this was because of my thread. I believe that Theymos is closely monitoring the merit system and would know if there isn't enough merits. He probably was waiting for the default merits to dry up before increasing merit generation.

I get the impression that the initial allocation of merits is pretty well all spent at this time. Also another increase in sources, 20 new sources added.

Merit sources
There are 77 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 17650 sMerit per 30 days

[Theb]

You forgot one big factor that will actually affect the duration of ranking up. And that is Merit Sources increasing, as of posting this we now have 77 merit sources which is 20 more compared to the 57 we have last time. And now Merit Sources can generate up to 17650 sMerit per 30 days which is a big number.

Assuming that 17650 merits is being given per month. Half of those will be sendable by the receiver of the sMerits which is 8825, adding with some positive assumption those receivers can create a ripple effect of new sMerits to give as you will always receive .5 per every sMerits you receive. Hopefully with an addition of 20 new merit sources other members would be generous of sending their merits now.