Share your thoughts : sMerit Review, Rank-Up Challenge, Signatureless Campaign

[pugman]

In my opinion, "sMerit Post-Review" could be placed in META since the topic is all about the forum itself. But it is more appropriate to be placed in SERVICES since it provide review for a quality post and award the poster. I have a thread in services which awards merit to those user that can decode a given puzzle and name it Bitcoin Forum Puzzle. I can't imagine a topic that started last January 25 were just recently moved in another board.

No it doesn't belong in meta. Meta is for forum related issues. sMerit reviews are not forum related issues. They are for its users. Hence it belongs in off-topic/beginners and help.
 
And threads in services should only be related to services offered by members involving bitcoin payment.

[bill gator]

Hence it belongs in off-topic/beginners and help.

That's why my thread has been reformed and found a new home for itself within the Beginners and Help board. No more merit, just looking to help those that are interested and willing to ask for it. It gets a lot less attention, but I imagine the attention that it will receive will come with much better intentions and connotations.

threads in services should only be related to services offered by members involving bitcoin payment.

When I heard that it made a lot of sense, but then I thought to myself that there is a lot of cleaning up to do within that section with that being the case.

I don't believe that the merit 'soup kitchen' threads are a good idea

Neither do I, which is exactly why I have made the changes I feel make my thread step away from the "soup kitchen" concept. I'm genuinely more interested in helping people improve their posting habits, behavior, formulating their thoughts more clearly and expressing themselves in a way that is conducive to whatever discussion they're operating within. That being said, it seems these people are much more interested in receiving merit than actually improving themselves. This is evident through the lack of attention my new thread in getting in comparison to the old thread, with the only significant changes being the section and the lack of merit being offered as a possibility. I never gave out merit to undeserving posts, so there was no chance of my thread becoming a "soup kitchen", although there certainly was a lot of users that thought it would happen.

The merit system ws designed to address this, but it seems to have created additional difficulties.

I think the merit system is a slowly trickling solution that is killing our illness patiently. I have certainly noticed an improvement over the past few months in terms of the amount of spam threads, crap posts and irrelevant nonsense. The merit system was certainly a net-positive and it is getting better each day. We can improve upon it, but I think it's getting the job done.

[MasterNodes.Cash]

It's hard to strike a perfect balance when giving out merits. There will always be people complaining about it. It's true that the most established members post the most quality content, but low rank members should also be motivated every now and then by receiving merits for quality content. Quality posts keep this forum alive, but if only high-rank members are rewarded with merits, fewer and fewer members will be motivated to post quality content because they don't get anything in return (aside from the satisfaction of helping fellow members).