100 Days of Merit

[tranthidung]

zentdex always creates an informative analysis regarding the merit system.
Some of his works that I like are the following;
10 Basic Info about Merit
3 Merit Stat After a Month of Merit
Merit Stat from theymos data
Where the Merit Pours?
I am pretty sure that this will be not the last. Thank you very much for all the information.
This is easy for us to understand the Merits system thoroughly. Keep the excellent work OP.

Firstly, thanks zentdex for publishing such informative, helpful thread on merit system and its circulation in the forum almost 4 months after its start.
Secondly, I highly appreciate if zentdex publish those datasets which he used for those analyses.

Boxplots should be taken into consideration next time. 

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[jakoylantern]

For me, the graph before and after is excellent and you can notice that merit system is impeccable to prevent the spammer and alt accounts. Decreasing on the newly created users by 36% after merit's implementation within 100 days is very significant. We can say that merit system is really reducing the multiple accounts of people or spammers and focusing many members on creating a good quality post. On the last figure (ranking hindrance), you can see that most of the members need to obtain the required merit in order to rank up compared to those members that lack of activity if you use the old version of the ranking system. By the way overall excellent work zentdex.

[tranthidung]

It is likely that merit system has made significant impacts on account farmers. Something like they stop attention to make new alt-accounts.
Furthermore, several account farms have been detected and got punishments from moderators. This is another good impact of merit sytem in terms of cleaning the forum a bit.

Decreasing on the newly created users by 36% after merit's implementation within 100 days is very significant.

It is just a theory, but you maybe right.

We can say that merit system is really reducing the multiple accounts of people or spammers and focusing many members on creating a good quality post.

[coin5haker]

Thank you zentdex for another brilliant topic. Merit circulation continues to decrease, this is worrisome for people wanting to rank up. For me, this is the indication of bar raised too high. See how few are struggling to get Sr. Member rank. Most of the crowd are stuck on the road to Full Member. If the goal is to prevent keep as few as possible to reach high ranks, merit system doing its job pretty well. It cut the amount of account farming though, which is the good thing.

Looking at the Merit Sent Moving Average, it almost decreases 1% every day. It would take an estimate of 252 Days before the average merit sent per day go below 100.

This quote is alarming. It's like when data scientist (zentdex) is telling to CEO(theymos) that something goes terribly wrong.

[Lakai01]

I believe that merit will not be (at least very minimum) distributed at some point/time after i see the chart of merit declining. It is like a natural selection from there. The forum will see which member who still contributing even if they dont get merit as much as he/she deserved, and who stays on doing it.

Definitly, yes. I think we are not too far away from that point though. Its very hard to earn a single merit now, just due to the fact that you need 2 merits to be able to spend 1, so available merits are slowly fading out (except merit sources, ofc.).

[Dilemmaremma]

I'm not sure if I quite believe that the merit system is reducing new account creation. While it would appear that way given the first chart provided, it seems to be a case of correlation not necessarily meaning causation. I believe the price of bitcoin itself is the only contributing factor to new accounts, especially because most newbies don't know about or understand the merit system. When you compare the peak dates on the merit implementation chart, they align rather well to bitcoin price spikes. We'd need another huge bull run with the merit system in place in order to come to the conclusion that it's clearly making a difference with new accounts. I don't necessarily mean to say it doesn't have an impact on the way people rank and the quality of posts from people who are looking to increase their ranks, but I don't believe it was implemented to impede account creation nor do I think it has a significant impact on that factor.

Seems obvious to me that this doesn't represent distinct entities but rather just new accounts--multiple accounts of people.

What would the goal have been for multiple accounts prior to the implementation of the merit system? If people were encouraged to post on a single account to rank up via activity alone, what would they have obtained from spreading the activity across multiple accounts? I wasn't around then so I'm not sure how the system may have been abused though there seems to be more potential in merit sharing across multiple accounts currently. I am missing some information to draw that conclusion so your input is appreciated. 

[seoincorporation]

Even with the lack of merits to give I do still think that there is no need to add more merit-sources for now as we still need more time for the merit system to do its thing which is to reduce spam and create more sensible post.

Well, I have to disagree. We often forget about the local boards, in where there's a lack of Merit Sources, I'm afraid. Also, the decay in the merit distribution can discourage good posters to keep going with their amazing activity.
I think we need more Merit Sources, trustful ones (maybe the own mods) to encourage good posters to keep going. This is kind of unfair to make a real effort and can't rank up due to the lack of merits, either in your local board or in the English one.
The graphics are clear about that: the merit given-away are less and less every day, and even if it is based on the decreasing activity of farmers, the collateral damage is kind of dangerous, for it can discourage amazing posters to keep going.

[TheQuin]

What would the goal have been for multiple accounts prior to the implementation of the merit system?

Why claim a bounty once when they can claim it 10 times or 100 times? Abuse of signature campaigns and bounties by multi-accounting has been going on for years here. Merit simply means that these new accounts will not be able to rank up.

[Dilemmaremma]

Why claim a bounty once when they can claim it 10 times or 100 times? Abuse of signature campaigns and bounties by multi-accounting has been going on for years here. Merit simply means that these new accounts will not be able to rank up.

Right, but many campaign managers still come across multiple accounts and ban them from participation as a result regardless of rank.

[Laeltin]

Frankly, the work done with all these graphics is just amazing.
For me, it just lacks a graph with the places of the forum where merits are most given.
Let me explain, there is some local (where people speak little or bad English, like me), where the merits have all been given for over a month already and where it becomes difficult to win again .

[yojodojo21]

The  Real evaluation of the merit feature would be after six months, However it is already obvious that merit is helping. Good thing exist because of bad things. many spammers get tagged and banned day by day after merit was implemented so it was really good. and base on my own evaluation, boards with shit threads are getting lesser. In reality, Don't give merit when the supposed to be receiver is not deserving, that's all. be fair and square.

[TheQuin]

Why claim a bounty once when they can claim it 10 times or 100 times? Abuse of signature campaigns and bounties by multi-accounting has been going on for years here. Merit simply means that these new accounts will not be able to rank up.

Right, but many campaign managers still come across multiple accounts and ban them from participation as a result regardless of rank.

And many campaigns don't. That's the cause of a lot of the problems. All they care about is page impressions for their signatures and bumps for their threads. It is easier to run a bad campaign than a good one.

Higher ranked accounts can make more from their signatures so there were a lot of account farmers building up accounts to sell on mass. That at least is a lot more difficult now and probably does account for a fair bit of the reduction in new account creation.

[Jet Cash]

I wonder if my experience may be trypical. I started off with 80 sMerit to award, and I was fairly active in hunting for good posts, and I started quite a few threads about merits and posting. As a result of this, I was awarded 333 merits. and this gave me an additional 166 of sMerit to award. I spent a substantial amount of time in my quest to help the forum by awarding these merits. I must have got something right, because Vod gave me a positive trust rating for my efforts. However, recently I've felt myself becoming increasingly abrasive as a result of the difficulties presented by the current posting habits. I'm awarding very few merits now, although I still have some left in the bank. It's also some time since I received any merits, and I look on that as an indication of the fact that my posting now has a lower value for the forum. As a hero that doesn't promote bounties, I have everything I need in privileges, so merits are now not an incentive for me, but they are a recognition of public opinion about my posting, so I need to reconsider my attitudes here.

I have also read that several merit sources are not receiving their expected quotas of source merits, so perhaps Theymos is hoping that merit starvation will help to improve the quality of posting. It does seem to have had the reverse effect though, with many members frustrated by the difficulty in gaining merits, and making posts and starting threads in the hope of gaining a few. I suspect that we may see some more changes to the forum policies on posting, and I hope they will include the creation of some starter boards, and further control over the activities of the bounty spammers.

[krishnaverma]

I am happy to see that newbies are also getting good number of merits. They need it the most. If I have to choose one post with equal weightage to merit, I will give it to newbie over an old member.

Regarding the merits for staffs, that figure appears very low. Does it include the merits they got on official thread like one related to merit system itself  ?

[iillaa]

Why claim a bounty once when they can claim it 10 times or 100 times? Abuse of signature campaigns and bounties by multi-accounting has been going on for years here. Merit simply means that these new accounts will not be able to rank up.

People should  understand  the benefit  of merit   :
For bounty hunters  less competition  so more rewards .
For the forum   reduce the spam and increase the  number of high quality  topics  .

So it's a win win game  for real people using the forum  while it's  bad for those that use dirty ways to achieve their goal ( $$ ) .

[Dilemmaremma]

And many campaigns don't. That's the cause of a lot of the problems. All they care about is page impressions for their signatures and bumps for their threads. It is easier to run a bad campaign than a good one.

It's unfortunate that it falls onto the responsibility of the mods to create systems around campaign managers not performing their duties properly. It only harms the campaign when one person claims to be doing the work of multiple people. I'd think ICOs would have to address this issue over time if BTT didn't intervene, possibly by prompting a new branch of community services to develop ranging from self proclaimed bounty police to independent bounty auditing services.

Higher ranked accounts can make more from their signatures so there were a lot of account farmers building up accounts to sell on mass. That at least is a lot more difficult now and probably does account for a fair bit of the reduction in new account creation.

This makes more sense to me now, thanks for the clarification!

I still think that while this may have had an impact on a few hundred, the biggest factor is bitcoin price in terms of new account creation. The late 2017 bullrun had a huge impact on the variables and we can't compare the results to today or any period after merit was introduced unless we experience a similar situation in the future, so I remain skeptical of the numbers that average half a bullrun pre-merit and a bearish market post-merit.

As an example, here's what I'm seeing;
Prior to merit - From 1/16/18 - 1/22/18 on the 'New Members per Day Chart' there are roughly 5000 new accounts created each day(super rough numbers) and the price of bitcoin was averaging 11.4K USD.
Post merit introduction - we're still seeing between 4000-4500 new account creations per day around price spikes of ~11K

I believe the actual impact is a lot less of a reduction than the suggested 36% average because of these variables and I'd like to see data with similar conditions. Could we possibly get these numbers with December/January eliminated to see the lower average result?

[lynx_]

A lot of work has been done, you're done. From the article it is clear why some high ranks use their sMerits! In the end, sMerits will be spent and then what?

[Emilyearl]

The introduction of the merit system has to some extent helped maintain decorum in the forum. Looking at your analysis, the reduction of the influx of new members only tells one thing. The inability to rank up again based on post and activities counts weakened those creating new accounts because they know, that they will always remain in the same rank forever.

[r1s2g3]

5152 new users daily before the merit system was introduced?  Holy shit!  Seems obvious to me that this doesn't represent distinct entities but rather just new accounts--multiple accounts of people.  I wonder how many separate people this actually reflects.  My guess is maybe 200 or so, if that.  Still, it's good to see that number dropped considerably post-merit introduction and hopefully it'll keep dropping.  I'm not saying new users is inherently a bad thing, but I think a lot of noobs are just here to participate in bounties, have zero interest in crypto or bitcointalk, and are going to be lazy shitposters.

Nice data presentation, OP.

I think it has nothing to do with Merit. It is due to the record high of $19K  USD price of bitcoin.
If you all recall correctly "Bitterex"  suspended account creations and people are  selling bitterex account at 1 ETH to 1 BTC . Binance suspended for a couple of week.
Cryptopia suspended Doge and LTC trading and other exchanges are also going offline as they are not able to handle the traffic.

[TheQuin]

I still think that while this may have had an impact on a few hundred, the biggest factor is bitcoin price in terms of new account creation. The late 2017 bullrun had a huge impact.....

That's is certainly a factor. You can look at the Google search stats to see there is always more interest during a bull run, the same thing happened in 2013. I don't think it possible to put a definitive split as to how much effect that had on sign-ups versus how much effect putting account farmers out of business had. There were people farming hundreds of accounts at the same time. It took a year and a half to build an account up to Hero when they could sell it for several hundred dollars. These people were signing up tens of accounts every week each.