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sncc (OP)
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March 01, 2018, 04:47:15 PM
Last edit: May 12, 2018, 04:21:28 PM by sncc Merited by Vod (10), DarkStar_ (8), dbshck (5), EFS (3), EcuaMobi (2), Tyrantt (2), dillpicklechips (2), LFC_Bitcoin (1), malevolent (1), LoyceV (1), coinlocket$ (1), bitmover (1), elma (1), marlboroza (1), sapta (1), Linuld (1) |
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Update: 2018/05/09The tables below are updated to include the most recent transactions, while the graphs and numbers are kept as the original post. Link to tables
Merit raw data is now available: Here you go: https://bitcointalk.org/merit.txt.xzSimilar to trust.txt.xz, it'll be updated weekly. It will show only the last 120 days of data; someone else should archive the old ones if you want them. I am especially interested in analyses of this data which could point to sub-communities where the initial sMerit is exhausted and new sources are necessary, and people who might be good merit sources. Edit: Note that for a little while I had user_to and user_from as names, but I decided to change it to IDs.
By using the data, I created a histogram of the distribution of the number of users who sent 1-50 sMerits: https://i.imgur.com/tliiyaH https://i.imgur.com/kLJYU5e
Clearly, 1 Merit is the most popular choice, but it is interesting to see that the histogram is not monotonically decreasing. Top 10 amounts of sent merits are as follows: | Amount | # of Users | | 1 | 26035 | | 2 | 4939 | | 5 | 2156 | | 3 | 1485 | | 10 | 866 | | 4 | 750 | | 6 | 245 | | 20 | 216 | | 7 | 138 | | 50 | 102 |
On the other hand, no one sent 37, 46, 47 Merits, two of which are prime numbers, presumably implying that people un/consciously do not like big prime numbers and prefer good cut-off point.
In total 85524 sMerits have been sent. This number is much larger than 11975 sMerits, which are currently created by 57 merit sources per month. The sMerits created by 57 merit sources are not sufficient and most of used sMerits were initially assigned ones. This fact suggests that we need more merit sources and/or more sMerits per source.
We see that there is a peak at the upper limit of 50 Merit, some of which may be abuse of merit. For those who want to check them, I created a clickable table of all transactions more than 40 sMerits. Update: 2018/05/0950 Merit transactions
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"There should not be any signed int. If you've found a signed int
somewhere, please tell me (within the next 25 years please) and I'll
change it to unsigned int." -- Satoshi
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sncc (OP)
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March 01, 2018, 04:48:03 PM
Last edit: May 09, 2018, 08:39:26 PM by sncc |
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50 Merit transactions (continued)49 Merit48 Merit46 Merit45 Merit44 Merit43 Merit
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sncc (OP)
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March 01, 2018, 04:48:51 PM
Last edit: May 09, 2018, 08:42:07 PM by sncc |
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Naitik
Member
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Activity: 714
Merit: 11
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March 01, 2018, 04:54:40 PM Merited by sncc (1), jerry29@ (1) |
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It shows that everyone is preserved about giving merit points. And some of them getting good merit points as they probably making A++ posts.
But if you can give us the link of 50 merited posts as you have researched. It will be helpful for us, we will learn from that posts. Thus improving ourselves for the good posts. May be we will be listed in that 50 merited points next time.
But in a nutshell its a great research.
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krishnaverma
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March 01, 2018, 05:54:09 PM |
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Posts getting more than 20 merit points from a single member need to be checked. This will involve a lot of work though. First we will have to consider that some of the threads might be exceptional and those merits points are justified for them. Secondly, very few members will be able to understand the content in local sections. Thus, members should observe such posts in their respective local board and report it in threads like : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2896910.0. |
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coinlocket$
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 2352
Merit: 1512
#1 VIP Crypto Casino
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March 02, 2018, 01:10:49 AM
Last edit: March 02, 2018, 01:28:12 AM by coinlocket$ |
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I was looking for this to check sMerit sellers/sent to alts, is easier to track now as you can see there is no reason at all why some posts are rewarded with 50 point. This one is an example https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=166677Received in the last 120 days January 25, 2018, 12:30:50 PM: 43 from thresher for (Deleted/Off-limits/Ignored) January 25, 2018, 12:25:58 PM: 41 from trollercoaster for (Deleted/Off-limits/Ignored) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=221867Sent in the last 120 days January 25, 2018, 02:15:51 PM: 50 to gruve_p for [ANN][GRS] Groestlcoin | Segwit activated | Adding Segwit to all our platforms Received in the last 120 days January 25, 2018, 02:17:17 PM: 26 from gruve_p for Re: [ANN][GRS] Groestlcoin | Segwit activated | Adding Segwit to all our platforms Well with this 3d, we can report a ton of this things. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=990983https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=822485https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=511933proabalbly alts |
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treatWy
Jr. Member
Offline
Activity: 308
Merit: 5
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March 02, 2018, 01:22:57 AM |
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The users didn't give 50 merit because it might be questionable in the sight of many. Merit so far is always the issue to the concern participants but not to those who aren't.
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lamlaicuocdoi
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 57
Merit: 0
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March 02, 2018, 03:18:45 AM |
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Interesting, but please tell me how to get those raw data from the forum. Thank you.
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alisafidel58
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March 02, 2018, 03:41:00 AM |
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Interesting, but please tell me how to get those raw data from the forum. Thank you.
If you just read carefully you can find it on the OP, but since you ask for it rather than looking here you go.
Im pretty sure that a lot people have been downloading that file for the sole purpose of an in depth investigation. Goodluck to the ones investigating.
 You cant escape the eye of Sauron |
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F2b
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March 02, 2018, 08:10:13 AM |
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The users didn't give 50 merit because it might be questionable in the sight of many.
That's the problem: it shouldn't be the case. If people find that suspicious, so why continue to allow it? Why not simply forbid giving more than X Merit at once (X being whatever value you want, but less than 40 or 30)? In the other hand, people find this suspicious mainly because there are very few sMerit in circulation, so people are not supposed to give 50 Merit at once, since it is an incredibly high value for any member. In fact, the people that gived dozens of Merit like that are mainly high-ranked members that were given a lot of sMerit at the beginning ; they didn't know Merit would be so rare so they spent it like it should be: generously. There is currently around 15000 sMerits given to the merit sources each month. Maybe giving 50 Merit to someone would be far less souspicious if the number of Merit given to the Merit sources (that give them to members other than legendaries, obviously) was 20 or 30 times bigger. |
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romanovst
Member
Offline
Activity: 98
Merit: 13
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March 02, 2018, 08:15:29 AM |
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The users didn't give 50 merit because it might be questionable in the sight of many. Merit so far is always the issue to the concern participants but not to those who aren't.
We have to consider a lot of aspects before punishing those members. First is the members who did it one or two days after the merit system might be testing this function. They might not have understood that merits are limited and thus one should not give more than 5 merits per post. Another thing to consider here is that some genuine posts might be deserving. For instance, the official thread regarding merit system received a lot of merits from different members. But it deserves those merits as all members are affected by that decision. |
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guschin
Member
Offline
Activity: 84
Merit: 12
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March 02, 2018, 09:34:31 AM |
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The users didn't give 50 merit because it might be questionable in the sight of many.
That's the problem: it shouldn't be the case. If people find that suspicious, so why continue to allow it? Why not simply forbid giving more than X Merit at once (X being whatever value you want, but less than 40 or 30)? Following can be the reason behind this: 1) Admin wants all members to spend their default merit points before introducing further changes. He may be interested in finding some alt accounts through this merit system. Those members giving 50 merit points for a single post can be easily identified. The particular merit spending can then be analyzed and members involved with merit abuse can be punished. 2) Admin might not be expecting members to make such foolish mistakes. I really sometimes laugh at members doing this even after many such similar abuse cases had been recognized. |
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sncc (OP)
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March 02, 2018, 12:47:19 PM |
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It shows that everyone is preserved about giving merit points. And some of them getting good merit points as they probably making A++ posts.
But if you can give us the link of 50 merited posts as you have researched. It will be helpful for us, we will learn from that posts. Thus improving ourselves for the good posts. May be we will be listed in that 50 merited points next time.
But in a nutshell its a great research.
I wanted to agree with you and to be optimistic about these transactions, but after checking some part of the 50 merited posts listed above, it seems to me that most of them are questionable ones, namely either of 1. would-be exchange between alt accounts 2. transaction at early stage of her/his sMerit history when s/he did not know how merits are rare / how many merits are reasonable to send for each good post 3. merit for very old posts e.g. by satoshi As people get used to the system, I expect at least type 2 transaction should decrease. To draw some lesson for good quality posts, it would be more helpful to look at posts received many merits but not too many, e.g. 20 or 25, which can be easily tractable from the data, as well as posts received small amount of merits from many users, which requires some work with the data to identify. While they should still include the above three types, I presume their percentages are lower than those for 50 merited posts. |
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sncc (OP)
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March 03, 2018, 12:53:02 PM
Last edit: March 03, 2018, 01:22:59 PM by sncc |
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This approach, listing up all transactions of large amount of merits, should be regarded as the first step, as it omits cases such as multiple transactions with e.g. 20 merits between the same users.
It is also helpful to check users who send merits back and forth among particular closed users, which are most likely merit farmers.
To detect such abuses, we need more careful investigations by taking into account not only sent merit amount but also user data.
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romanovst
Member
Offline
Activity: 98
Merit: 13
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March 03, 2018, 01:44:54 PM |
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1. would-be exchange between alt accounts
2. transaction at early stage of her/his sMerit history when s/he did not know how merits are rare / how many merits are reasonable to send for each good post
3. merit for very old posts e.g. by satoshi
1. That is about 70-80 % of these cases and should be strictly dealt with. I think those members have already spent their merit points (50 merit points are maximum I guess which one got by default). 2) There can be few of such cases but we need to carefully examine them as well. For instance, observing the login times of both accounts can give some idea whether it was intentional or just for testing the feature on a random account. 3) I do not think any one gave 50 merits points for his posts. If you are talking about those posts getting 50 points in total, that is allowed in my opinion. |
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TheQuin
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March 04, 2018, 11:07:12 AM |
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This approach, listing up all transactions of large amount of merits, should be regarded as the first step, as it omits cases such as multiple transactions with e.g. 20 merits between the same users.
It is also helpful to check users who send merits back and forth among particular closed users, which are most likely merit farmers.
To detect such abuses, we need more careful investigations by taking into account not only sent merit amount but also user data.
Another suggestion as what to look for: Accounts that suddenly received the required amount of merit to rank up. Like this one that took only 13 days to get the 150 merit required to go from Full Member to Sr Member. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3052556.msg31426338#msg31426338I have no idea how easy that is to write a script to spot, but it is an obvious giveaway. |
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hurry_hore
Member
Offline
Activity: 294
Merit: 13
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March 04, 2018, 12:21:43 PM |
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This is good data to go for further step, creating standardized high posting. I need to explore further these data to classify standardized posting to sharpen a real high quality posting and the objectivity. If this standard available, at least below can be served :
1. Increasing the objectivity of merit sending
2. Build and increase the accountability and responsibility to send merit
3. Help newbie particularly and also some member to train good and high quality posting, so this is some kind of training and lesson for this forum.
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hurry_hore
Member
Offline
Activity: 294
Merit: 13
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March 04, 2018, 12:25:46 PM |
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This approach, listing up all transactions of large amount of merits, should be regarded as the first step, as it omits cases such as multiple transactions with e.g. 20 merits between the same users.
It is also helpful to check users who send merits back and forth among particular closed users, which are most likely merit farmers.
To detect such abuses, we need more careful investigations by taking into account not only sent merit amount but also user data.
Another suggestion as what to look for: Accounts that suddenly received the required amount of merit to rank up. Like this one that took only 13 days to get the 150 merit required to go from Full Member to Sr Member. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3052556.msg31426338#msg31426338I have no idea how easy that is to write a script to spot, but it is an obvious giveaway. That is the one important thing to start creating a standard for merit reward so every member will be responsible for their reward to other member. There is a thread for beginning to create a standard posting : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3010719.0. |
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TheQuin
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March 04, 2018, 12:34:16 PM |
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That is the one important thing to start creating a standard for merit reward so every member will be responsible for their reward to other member. There is a thread for beginning to create a standard posting : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3010719.0. I think you failed your own criteria here. This is completely off-topic in this thread. |
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LoyceV
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 3290
Merit: 16556
Thick-Skinned Gang Leader and Golden Feather 2021
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March 04, 2018, 12:59:14 PM |
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In total 85524 sMerits have been sent.
This number is much larger than 11975 sMerits, which are currently created by 57 merit sources per month.
The sMerits created by 57 merit sources are not sufficient and most of used sMerits were initially assigned ones.
This fact suggests that we need more merit sources and/or more sMerits per source. Although I agree that we need more Merit sources, it can't necessarily be concluded from this. Many users * distributed Merits to their alt-accounts, and this should end when their initial free Merits dry up. * From the Top-merited users, recent merit, many users have red trust for Merit trading (from the first 10: 452: pitipawn, 283: RichDaniel, 251: saulzaents and 151: niknik1966), and many are suspected to have traded Merit (such as Chachacoin17). It's even more suspicious if they stop getting new Merit right after they've reached the rank requirement. |
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