The Merit System was introduced into Bitcointalk this year, with the intent and purpose of promoting sanity and good values in the forum. Right from its inception in late January 2018 till date the Merit System has become one of the highly debated subjects on Bitcointalk.org. Forum members who are already at the upper echelon of the forum and who may have little or no need for Merits seems to generally favour the system on the grounds of spamming and junk posts by desperate lower cadre members, while most lower cadre members who need to progress on the forum are not very supportive of a Merit system which ties a member's progression on the forum to the amount of Merits earned by a member. And earning Merits isn't so easy.
Now, it is somewhat difficult to tell whose voice is louder in the debate, and even more difficult to tell who has the more valid point of view. And how about a little statistics? A nice way to evaluate the performance so far of the Merit system towards achieving the set objectives would be a measurement of the impact of the Merit system on the forum, and forum traffic is one important parameter.
An overview/analysis by Similarweb.com of total visits to Bitcointalk.org on desktop and mobile web in the last 6 months shows a steady and gentle increase from a little over 20m in Sept., 2017 to over 60m in January, 2018, and then to a sharp and continuing decline to 34.5m in Feb., 2018. This decline is not just happenstance. It perfectly coincided with the introduction of the Merit System.
See stats
https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org.
The likely implication is that the Merit system is demoralizing low cadre members who needs to attain higher levels of membership. However, some here may argue that a few meaningful member activities is worth more to the forum than much activities of little or no value. Be that as it may, we should acknowledge the fact that traffic is equally important in the web ranking and worth of the bitcointalk forum. So, I think BCT Administrators should have a reappraisal of the Merit System – carefully weighing anticipated benefits against perceived costs – and come up with a more effective, yet forum friendly solution to the problems. What do you think?