So I read
the first topic that was open by bitmover about this idea. There are mostly 3 issues that were raised against a "quality over quantity" system:
1/ Merit doesn't come easy. Sometimes you don't get merit for a while. Sometimes I just can't understand why some posts get so much merits. I don't think ANN and bounty thread should earn merits at all. Those are marketing, not valuable information for the community. There is clearly an improvement that must be made about merit's distribution, but again, the system is quite new, and I believe it is possible to make it work.
What about specific section of the forum where merit could be earned ? Maybe we could just exclude ANN and bounty section from merit distribution section ? Seems easy enough, and that could limit the problem. We could also limit the number of merit per post per person ? 50 merits from 1 person for 1 post seems ridiculous to me. Anyway, there are plenty of things we can do to improve it. And it always come back to the same thing: much less posts would make it easier to read and to reward interesting posts. Plus in proportion, there would be more merits per post, so it should be easier to earn.
2/ It will encourage merit trading. I don't think this would be a big issue, because cheaters will run out of merit. In a matter of fact, they already do. Unless of course there is a merit's source involved. So we just have to check the way merit's source distribute merit. And even if it comes to merit trading because some can't earn their merits honestly, I believe the price could quickly become high enough to dissuade cheaters anyway.
3/ Less exposure for startup. Again, to me this is a fake problem. If we talk about bots, so yeah, they will read less posts overall, and record less signatures. But if we speak about humans, then no, it wouldn't change a bit. Here is the thing: 1 merit per week would reduce
drastically the amount of (bad)posts on the forum.
So let's say for example, right now you write 10 posts a week for a campaign, out of a hundred posts on the whole forum. Your signature is exposed on 10% of the forum's posts.
Now, you write only one good post, and get your merit. 1 post out of 10 posts on the whole forum. Your signature is still exposed 10% of the time.
So, not only the exposure on average stays more or less the same, but peoples would also READ the forum (not just scroll down), because post would be interesting, and accessible (read not lost in 50 pages of bad posts).
This is a very simple example, but I am pretty convince that it wouldn't hurt ICO marketing in anyway.
I have thought of limiting the registrations here in this forum, can that be done without sacrificing what Bitcointalk should be? There are a lot of newbies that just post one-liners just to make their ANN updated or go to the top.
They also have the hard time to get merits because of the possible posting quality that they have. If you think about it, you can get merit relatively fast. It should just relate to the topic and not just keep on repeating what a lot of people have already said.
I think it's difficult to limit registrations. But as Paxmao said, a 1 merit requirement to become Jr. member could help a lot.
I think something could be done with the way signature campaigns are handled.
In most of them, you can only post a certain number of times in local boards.
That forces non-English speakers to go elsewhere and unfortunately post unreadable or useless stuff in order to reach their weekly minimum.
If they could make all their posts in local boards, that wouldn't happen and we wouldn't have to read them.
And it wouldn't be such a bad thing for projects. As an example, in the French section most people chose a signature that doesn't require them to post elsewhere. As a consequence, everybody has the same signature and many other projects stay unknown to the community.
If BMs could change the way they do things, I believe it could benefit the projects (more exposure) and the forum as well.
That's a very good point. Added to the list.
I can't clearly understand the red part, correct me if I'm wrong; If a bounty participant is a signature wearer, all he have to do is make a constructive post in a week and he will automatically get one merit?
What I'm saying is: In order to get your stakes every week, you would have to earn 1 merit per week instead of having to write 15 posts per week. So, no you wouldn't automatically get merit, but I believe it would be easier to get some, while improving this forum A LOT at the same time.
But if we have to get one merit from a random user, there would likely be 2 options for a bounty participant:
1. Keep on posting.
2. Stop joining signature campaigns. - this will likely be my option, I will only stick to social media campaigns.
People would keep on posting, because there is money involved. As simple as that. You wouldn't be forced to write lot's of useless posts, but a few interesting posts instead.
I saw you've got some pros & cons on your topic. But I like the idea. Some merit's source might find it convenient to go through a list of potentially "rewardable" posts. Added to the list.
