[Proposal] Enable sending of less than a full sMerit / Gold and Silver merits

[d5000]

This proposal is not completely mine; it was inspired by a post of another user in the German forum. I am also not sure if it wasn't proposed here already.

I propose to allow to send less than a full sMerit point, for example half a merit, or 0.1 or 0.3 merit points.

The reason: Lower-ranked users have often very few sMerits to give away. But many of them want to participate and say "thank you" to other users even if they wouldn't send them one of their scarce full sMerit points they own. In fact, this is one of the more frequent complaints I read about the Merit system.

So if they could send less than a full merit, lower-ranked forum members could rate other users more often. This could increase the acceptance of the merit system (which I consider a very positive initiative) among this large user group, and make it less "elitist".

Alternative / simpler proposal: In addition to the "full Merit points", create a lower category of merit points - for example "silver merits" that are valid 0.1 full merit points, and full merit points would then become gold merits. That would essentially have the same effect - lower-ranked users would be allowed to participate more frequently in the merit system.

Technically, this shouldn't be a problem. The only possible disadvantage I see is that merits could, in certain circumstances, circulate slower if high-ranked members chose to give away silver merits or fractional merits instead of full merits. That could be prevented if, for example, the sending of fractional/silver merits is restricted to users that have less than e.g. 50 available sMerits.

[Loveboard]

Decimal points sound like a huge headache when it comes to merits. I mean, so it's like higher ranked members can send full integer merits.

Lower ranked members can only send decimal merits... so if someone gets decimal merits, they have to feel stressed out wishing more newbies sent them decimal merits in order to make them worth.

Gold and Silver merits are the same way. They devalue merits in a way such that you'd need more from newbies or jr members to make the lesser valued merits worth something.

But I like your idea, just needs some tweaking. Like maybe instead of decimals, u could just do 1/2 merit or 1 merit.

[IsuruMaduranga]

This may be a solution for reduce the difficulty of getting merits.

But sadly many members in the forum do merit sharing now. So the most of merit deserving posts get nothing.Simply look merit histories of some low rank members. You will understand what i said. There should be a some way to stop the merit sharing.

[Jet Cash]

Well half a merit is already there, but I tried to use it, and it didn't work.

[d5000]

Decimal points sound like a huge headache when it comes to merits.

Yep, I understand that, it's not the best solution in terms of usability. That's why I liked the idea of gold and silver merits. Your idea of ...

[...]instead of decimals, u could just do 1/2 merit or 1 merit.

... is also something I considered, however, I think at least there should be the possibility to send a value as low as 1/4 (0.25) merit to give some "usage opportunities" to people that own, let's say, 10 full sMerits.

In the end, I believe a "minor range merit" (1/4, 1/10 or silver merit) should feel like a "Facebook Like", only that it should be at least a bit scarce to discourage account farming.

Another possibility to get rid of decimal points would be to multiply merit scores by 10; so the value of a current "full merit point" increases to 10 merit points, and the minor merit point would be worth 1 merit. This could be combined with two one-click buttons (+1 and +10) to improve usability.

Well half a merit is already there, but I tried to use it, and it didn't work.

Are you sure? Or do you mean the "half sMerits" you get when receiving a full merit point? Just tried to use 1/2 when meriting Loveboard's post, but it didn't work for me either. When I put 1/2 in the merit field, it gives 1 full point. I can try with 0.5 though ...

[nc50lc]

Silver and Gold Merit doesn't sound right for a must-be-simple system like Merit.

Enabling decimals they said is a headache, yes.
In addition, imagine the Merit History of every members that made it through Hero by receiving 0.1 merit each, it will reach the Moon!

[sncc]

Well half a merit is already there, but I tried to use it, and it didn't work.

Are you sure? Or do you mean the "half sMerits" you get when receiving a full merit point? Just tried to use 1/2 when meriting Loveboard's post, but it didn't work for me either. When I put 1/2 in the merit field, it gives 1 full point. I can try with 0.5 though ...

While you do receive 0.5 sMerit when you receive 1 Merit, the minimum value of sMerit in the current system which you can send to someone is 1, not 0.5.  Also, in the theymos' thread,

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

which implies that they do not show the decimal of your sMerit balance as you cannot send 0.5 sMerit.

[d5000]

Silver and Gold Merit doesn't sound right for a must-be-simple system like Merit.

It could be implemented in a way that is simpler than today - a +Silver and a +Gold button, both one-click.

However, at this moment I like the proposal of a +1 and a +10 button (multiplying current merits by 10) a bit more, as there would be no decimal places at all.

In addition, imagine the Merit History of every members that made it through Hero by receiving 0.1 merit each, it will reach the Moon!

Merit History is a minor feature, it normally doesn't get visited often, and so it shouldn't consume much resources (attention and computing power). In addition, not everybody would give only 0.1 merits. So in my opinion that is not a real disadvantage.

(BTW: I think I understood Jet Cash's joke now. Sometimes I'm a bit slow )

[OgNasty]

Less than a merit?!? I can’t find enough helpful posts to give away the sMerits I have now.

[LeGaulois]

The set up is currently fine. To enable less than 1 will just create a weakness to the system, and people will jump immediately on it to abuse the system, which so will become not effective as it supposed to be.

 

ut many of them want to participate and say "thank you" to other users

This is where members are confused. It's not a Facebook "Like" button l. The merit points are supposed to be given to posts you think "merit" some points. It is different than a post you like.

I prefer to give some points to members who I think comment perfectly on a point, even if I disagree with their opinions. Instead of giving points to a member who comments with "to the moon sir" even if I agree/like with him/the post.

if you make the system to allow for example half a merit, or 0.1 or 0.3 merit points like you propose, I am going to tell you, in 3 months people will ask for 0.00001 and so on.

And to be honest, in my opinion, people who aren't happy with how it is today should blame their buddies, cousins, mother, father wife, grand ma' etc for abusing the forum during a long time.

[d5000]

Less than a merit?!? I can’t find enough helpful posts to give away the sMerits I have now.

That's because you're a Legendary and surely one of the top-1% of this forum when it comes to Merit.

The set up is currently fine.

I like the current system, too, but I try to understand the perspective of lower-ranked users, and one of the most convincing complaints I've heard from them was to almost not being able to participate because of the scarcity of sMerits.

I know that scarcity is a feature of the merit system; so the calculation formula (number of full points having to be reached to rank up) should not be touched, to not enable abuse and account farming. But sending merits with lesser "weight" seemed like a good idea.

To enable less than 1 will just create a weakness to the system, and people will jump immediately on it to abuse the system, which so will become not effective as it supposed to be.

I don't see how it can be abused easier if fractions of sMerits can be sent, can you clarify? It could become more difficult to check the merit history, that's the only possibility I see that could enable a (very) small abuse vector.

This is where members are confused. It's not a Facebook "Like" button l. The merit points are supposed to be given to posts you think "merit" some points. It is different than a post you like.

I prefer to give some points to members who I think comment perfectly on a point, even if I disagree with their opinions. Instead of giving points to a member who comments with "to the moon sir" even if I agree/like with him/the post.

There are different opinions on this. Myself I use sMerits in a similar fashion than you - I try to give them to posts that are interesting, educational or have some other outstanding quality, even if it's only a creative sentence that made me laugh. But I know that there are many different ways of "meriting" posts here. Often it is, de facto, similar to a Facebook Like, even if that maybe wasn't theymos' intention.

I agree that a full merit point should feel much more scarce than a Facebook Like, but a silver/minor/0.1 merit could be something you give away more lightly. For example, in this thread, most of the replies would be worth a minor/silver merit as they bring in different aspects that have to be taken into account.

if you make the system to allow for example half a merit, or 0.1 or 0.3 merit points like you propose, I am going to tell you, in 3 months people will ask for 0.00001 and so on.

It is not my intention to allow arbitrary fractions of a merit. The number of merits that can be sent should have a clear lower limit. My proposal would be to use 1/10 of a current merit point as the lower limit, although I would already be happy with 0.25 (1/4 merit). This limit should not be changed afterwards.

And to be honest, in my opinion, people who aren't happy with how it is today should blame their buddies, cousins, mother, father wife, grand ma' etc for abusing the forum during a long time.

Here you may be right. 

By the way, I'm not going to insist with this proposal if it hasn't ample approval, and I like the merit system as it was implemented now. I just picked up the idea in a thread and thought it was worth a discussion.

[Vod]

I propose to allow to send less than a full sMerit point, for example half a merit, or 0.1 or 0.3 merit points.

Bad idea.  

[vlom]

i would change it like that.
after you receive 1 merit and you can sent 1 merit.
now you need to receive two merits to have 1 merit than can be sent.

[d5000]

Bad idea.  

I would have loved at least a minimal explanation from a high-profile forum member like you, but OK.

after you receive 1 merit and you can sent 1 merit.
now you need to receive two merits to have 1 merit than can be sent.

No, that's not a good idea, in my opinion. Merits would be less scarce and it would be again easier to farm high-ranked forum accounts. There is a reason why you get half a sMerit for each merit you receive.

[1020kingz]

This proposal is not completely mine; it was inspired by a post of another user in the German forum. I am also not sure if it wasn't proposed here already.

I propose to allow to send less than a full sMerit point, for example half a merit, or 0.1 or 0.3 merit points.

The reason: Lower-ranked users have often very few sMerits to give away. But many of them want to participate and say "thank you" to other users even if they wouldn't send them one of their scarce full sMerit points they own. In fact, this is one of the more frequent complaints I read about the Merit system.

So if they could send less than a full merit, lower-ranked forum members could rate other users more often. This could increase the acceptance of the merit system (which I consider a very positive initiative) among this large user group, and make it less "elitist".

Alternative / simpler proposal: In addition to the "full Merit points", create a lower category of merit points - for example "silver merits" that are valid 0.1 full merit points, and full merit points would then become gold merits. That would essentially have the same effect - lower-ranked users would be allowed to participate more frequently in the merit system.

Technically, this shouldn't be a problem. The only possible disadvantage I see is that merits could, in certain circumstances, circulate slower if high-ranked members chose to give away silver merits or fractional merits instead of full merits. That could be prevented if, for example, the sending of fractional/silver merits is restricted to users that have less than e.g. 50 available sMerits.

you have a good idea but in the current system it is hard to use some decimals like 0.1 and other decimals aside from 0.5 or half merit which is implemented now, but i guess the best solution for these is to increase their smerits, example:
junior: 3 smerits
member: 5 smerits
full member: 7 smerits
and so on and so forth..
its only my idea though to be able to circulate more smerits aside from the smerits we can receive from merit sources.

[vlom]

Bad idea.  

I would have loved at least a minimal explanation from a high-profile forum member like you, but OK.

after you receive 1 merit and you can sent 1 merit.
now you need to receive two merits to have 1 merit than can be sent.

No, that's not a good idea, in my opinion. Merits would be less scarce and it would be again easier to farm high-ranked forum accounts. There is a reason why you get half a sMerit for each merit you receive.

yes, this could be possible. the merits would be ping-ponged between accounts. i did not take this into accounts.
but how to achieve that merits are scarce AND something that is sent by people that dont have a lot of them.

i cant be that only high ranked members that started with a "lot" of merit are sending them. 

[d5000]

but how to achieve that merits are scarce AND something that is sent by people that dont have a lot of them.

i cant be that only high ranked members that started with a "lot" of merit are sending them.  

That's exactly the goal of my proposal: to achieve a higher participation of lower-ranked accounts in the "merit circulation" without sacrificing the scarcity of merit points - merit scarcity is not debatable because it's part of the anti-spam/anti-account-farming strategy of the merit system.

But the proposal seems to have, unfortunately, not much support. I can understand that there is fear of a worse usability (and thus, lower participation), but I thought they would be solvable with UI improvements (e.g. with a "silver merit" or +1/+10 buttons). I'll leave the topic open a couple of days more and then perhaps close it if there is no interest.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

This isn't a horrible idea, though it's kind of late to implement something like this now.  In the spirit of bitcoin it would have been kind of cool if merits were divided down to 0.0000000M places.  But then there would be the decaying problem, where 1 meritoshi would have to be divided in half and that wouldn't work.

It's working just fine so far, so it doesn't need to be tweaked like you're suggesting.  It took an act of congress just to get some change on bitcointalk to address the spam problem.  If we have to deal with whole merits, that's not a big deal.

[timerland]

I'd say that have the accuracy of smerits down to .5 smerits just like Loveboard suggested, because that's the amount of sMerit you get for each merit. Some lower ranked people may only have very little smerit to give away, or even just half that they want to give away.

But it doesn't really make sense to have it down to .1 or .3 sMerits. That's way too confusing.

Again, imho the silver/gold merit proposal just makes the already confusing merit system even more confusing.

I like the idea of increasing participation of lower ranked members in the merit system for sure, though. But honestly I'm happy with the merit system as is, and implementing such change will probably take time and re-education.

[maeusi]

Great idea. Let's make "meritoshi"  or fork sMerits .As we saw on 1. April, many additional "currencies" can be implemented.