Yeah, I would like hear off Xandry if possible as I don't want anything to be lost in translation as well as have any bias. Although, I do appreciate the effort of translating the post, and linking that thread.
I don't think people should be getting merit for every report or something, but I don't see a problem with those who help out by making posts that help moderation etc.
Like I said I've got mixed feelings about it, although merit wasn't introduced for the purpose of offering a reward for reports, and as we've all mentioned before how it's easily abused. I've not got a problem with rewarding people who make the effort to report at it's very definition. It's the possibilities of users making alternate accounts, and posting nonsense just to report it which not only is abuse, but leads to more spam, and workload for the legitimate reporters as well as staff members.
I'm not accusing anyone of doing this so far, and as far as I can tell it's had a positive impact of a few members judging by the amount that they've reported, and I'm sure the possibility of receiving merit as contributed a large amount to that. Now that's public though there by me a few opportunistic individuals that abuse it.
I'm going to reiterate my point that Xandry
should not be punished or removed as a merit source as a result of this, but should probably consider stopping it or at the very least keep a eye out for any abuse.
As you've mentioned yourself reporting is a pretty thankless job, and can sometimes be extremely tedious, and time consuming. But, I don't think I agree that merit is the way to go about it. Plus, it's not too different to the topics that certain members have posted in the Meta section, and I think I've noticed a few members doing it in hopes of earning merit rather than just simply reporting the post.
I don't think adding some sort of criteria would be of benefit either such as x amount of reports gets you 1 merit as fundamentally that's not what the merit system was implemented for. Merit was introduced to encourage users to post high quality content by rewarding them with merit, and putting certain restrictions on users who haven't hit certain thresholds. This is mainly why a merit source dishing out merits for reports doesn't quite sit right. A merit source is appointed because of their capabilities to pick out good quality posts. Offering merit points for reports isn't encouraging
quality content makers, but those who report. Yeah, I know it more reports is a good thing, and the people who regularly report should probably be noticed, and rewarding, but the merit system isn't really for that. I've received a few messages off moderators, and an admin in the past thanking me for reporting, and I'm sure that's enough of encourage for most users.
Anyway, I'll stop banging on about this. I don't think it's a major issue until the potential abuse kicks in, but then again I think Xandry is intelligent enough to determine what's abuse, and what isn't so it's probably a non issue.
If you follow your logic -
there should be 3924 merit points. In reality I see 80 merit from xandry.
Don't you think you're wrong somewhere again?
It's probably not a problem currently. Although, I would be worried that the account farmers would of noticed this, and start reporting in a way to rank up. 80 merits is probably worth a lot to them. I'm guessing this is your report stats, nice one!
The only saving grace I think we have is this is in a local board, and will limit the amount of abuse.
