Has the Merit faucet dried up? Solutions?

[Joel_Jantsen]

This is the main reason why people aren't getting their posts merited--the only good sections of bitcointalk IMO are Meta and Reputation.

That is bad. Meta and Reputation are the boards where most of the forum politics, bitching takes place. I'm surprised you called them good sections because it dissolves the entire point of running a bitcoin forum. Most happening topics in those boards revolve around leaving feeback back to each other and how untrustworthy someone is.

 Everything else is just a spam-fest,

Excluding Development & Technical Discussion/ Technical support sections.

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[The Sceptical Chymist]

Excluding Development & Technical Discussion/ Technical support sections.

OK, you got me there.  I made a statement that was overbroad--it's the main sections (B.D., A.D., Economics, Trading Discussion, Speculation) that have been overrun with spam.  I still find things useful in Exchanges, and I'm sure the mining section isn't bad. 

I think the reason I like Meta as much as I do is because it naturally draws people who actually care enough about the forum to talk about it--or to engage in its politics, as you stated.  From my experience some of the most capable writers tend to post there, whereas the illiterate shitposters flock to areas like Bitcoin Discussion.  You're right, it should not be this way but it is.  I think shitposters want to post in spam megathreads because they know their posts are diluted with 1000 other shitposts and therefore they won't get reported--and they're right! 

[OgNasty]

I'm sure the mining section isn't bad. 

I've found the mining section to be moderated very well and full of helpful and knowledgeable individuals that support each other's efforts. 

[DdmrDdmr]

I think we all kind of see that there seems to be a lack of merit sources (*) and perhaps a need to find placements for them in specific board sections/subsections. Apart from the voluntary personal postulation to become a merit source, we’ve also suggested ways to help locate these potentials (i.e. through the sMerit network size, as discussed some weeks ago) and thus allow for the Forum to proactively ponder the selection process in a proactive manner.

Regardless I believe that there is also a need to consider the ranking-up numbers which, are a derivative of the matter. A key (business) question is what is a healthy rate of ranking-up forum wide (per rank level) in a given period of time for the system to be considered as going well? That constitutes a business goal and governs the flow of merit that should circulate in the system in order to fulfill these goals.

Looking at the ranked-up members with the merit system so far on the Dashboard, we seem to have so far:

  8 Sr. Members to hero
  37 Full Member to Sr. Members
  56 Members to Full Members
 24 Jr. Members or less to Full Members
1819 Jr. Members or less to Members

Whether those numbers are ok or low depends on the objectives, and these have to be placed in such a way that the model works without dying from starvation.

(*) merit sources pump newly created merit into the system, but are also making up for the mass of airdropped initial merit which has not even started to see the light (600k initial sMerit airdrop and only 171k merited in txs - and from that we should substract the part that came from merit sources and halved merit, so at least 450k roughly is static).
Perhaps the initial projections have not been met, since most of the airdropped sMerit has not been placed into it’s initial run, and thus merit sources are relied upon to make up for it with an overhead in work.

[funsponge]

(*) merit sources pump newly created merit into the system, but are also making up for the mass of airdropped initial merit which has not even started to see the light (600k initial sMerit airdrop and only 171k merited in txs - and from that we should substract the part that came from merit sources and halved merit, so at least 450k roughly is static).
Perhaps the initial projections have not been met, since most of the airdropped sMerit has not been placed into it’s initial run, and thus merit sources are relied upon to make up for it with an overhead in work.

That is the merit sources job though they are the ones which should be actively looking for posts to reward. Anyone else who earns sMerit or has their initial sMerit might not have the time to merit so that 600k will not be fully used.

Merit sources are selected because they are active and know how what is a good post and what is not. The majority of us who have the initial sMerit either do not have the time or only look at certain boards where there is not that many good posts.

[pugman]

I kinda like this. The higher the standards the better contents we will see in the future. throwing up 50 merits for a single line post seems very annoying and it happened a lot at the early stage of merit introduction.

Anyway whatever happens, it's actually pretty clear that we need more merit sources. I hope theymos has the same idea in mind or may be a better one.

Exactly, the frequent posters of meta like having this high standard thing whereas most of them who post in the spam boards don't. The rest already have enough merits or they don't care.

People, the few non-spammers that don't post in such sections at all but post in the spam boards, unfortunately don't get merits, because other people have given up on reading anything there. 

This is the main reason why people aren't getting their posts merited--the only good sections of bitcointalk IMO are Meta and Reputation.  Everything else is just a spam-fest, and even if you wanted to post in sections like Bitcon Discussion, there's no point.  Anything you post is just going to get buried within seconds.  I posted a question about Changelly dropping Dash in Altcoin Discussion, and I actually wanted someone to answer it.  Guess what happened?  Nobody answered, probably because nobody even saw the question.  It was only after I started a new thread in Exchanges that someone answered it.

There's not enough merit sources to be sure, but I think the awarding of merits tends to poop out near the end of each month.  If I'm not mistaken, merit sources get new allocations of smerits at the beginning of each month.  They probably use them up before the month is over. That's my guess, anyway.

No they don't. I had come across somewhere that not all merit sources spend their entire source merits. So that goes away.

The standards of people giving merits are so damn high. People don't merit normal posts,they merit high quality posts.

Agreed. I try to "lower my standards", especially for Newbies. Of course quality posts should be merited a lot, but just regular good posts are already far above the spam for which the Merit was introduced.

So did I. Well, look at my merit history and you'll see that lowering standards won't work if you don't find good enough posts. Also when I do, the post is plagiarized.

It took me more than 3.5 months, almost daily bumping, and many "vouches" in the thread to get processed. I haven't seen any sources added since.

So it will take me a year atleast to become a merit source. Nice.

[funsponge]

So it will take me a year atleast to become a merit source. Nice.

Not really 4 months is not even half of the year and I would think that looking in depth in someones merit history to determine whether they are meriting to the standard of the other merit sources is a pretty time consuming thing to do. theymos probably checks for several other factors too.

[suchmoon]

It took me more than 3.5 months, almost daily bumping, and many "vouches" in the thread to get processed. I haven't seen any sources added since.

So it will take me a year atleast to become a merit source. Nice.

I have a feeling that 80 is the limit for now. When the number dropped to 79 LoyceV got approved quite quickly.

[pugman]

Not really 4 months is not even half of the year and I would think that looking in depth in someones merit history to determine whether they are meriting to the standard of the other merit sources is a pretty time consuming thing to do. theymos probably checks for several other factors too.

I hate when people don't get sarcasm. Let me tell it out loud, THERE WAS SARCASM IN THAT POST!

Obviously, I know theymos checks other factors, he wouldn't be an admin if he won't do his own research. Come on, man..

It took me more than 3.5 months, almost daily bumping, and many "vouches" in the thread to get processed. I haven't seen any sources added since.

So it will take me a year atleast to become a merit source. Nice.

I have a feeling that 80 is the limit for now. When the number dropped to 79 LoyceV got approved quite quickly.

Oh.. Thanks for the encouragement. Really helps. Really..Loyce V, you should thank digaran if that's the case. I am waiting for him to accuse you, that, you paid theymos to make you a merit source and also that you wanted to use your merits to give it to your chipmixer alts.

[interna]

I agree that this problem exists. One suggestion I would to add here is that staff should use some accounts from newbie status and post in different sections to realize the depth of the problem themselves. I know this will consume some time but will benefit the forum with accurate evaluation of current situation.

[Welsh]

That is bad. Meta and Reputation are the boards where most of the forum politics, bitching takes place. I'm surprised you called them good sections because it dissolves the entire point of running a bitcoin forum. Most happening topics in those boards revolve around leaving feeback back to each other and how untrustworthy someone is.

Can posts that identify others as scammers not be high quality posts? There's several threads within the reputation thread which have gone into depth, and investigated their claims quite thoroughly. These investigations take time, and effort. Just because there is a lot of bitching that goes on within that section doesn't take away from the fact that there's some genuinely good posts in there.

There's also a few bitching that goes on within the Development & Technical support sections. Although, I'll admit to a much lesser degree. But, I've seen a few posts which attack each other for no real reason other than they disagree with each other. In fact a few members like to push their agenda against achow101 over there for whatever reason.

I also enjoy some of the discussions that come out of Meta, and although there's been a massive up rise in shit posts here recently its not all bad. For example, recently there's been some pretty good suggestions regarding moderation, and how to identify, and deal with the current problems of the forum.

[Piggy]

Maybe a solution for this issue would be to:

• select a few merit sources that are interested in these topics and regularly posts there for a better distribution of merits
• have something like a "Rank-o-Thon" (similar to Hackathon   ) where a list of users would be selected and the merit sources would go to their posts and merit whatever they find good

What do you guys think?

I had made this tool indeed to respond to something similar: "knowing which people are more active distributing merits in a particular section of the forum" so ideal candidates to become merit sources:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4393868

In some cases is evident who could be appointed, hopefully somebody will have a look at the names showing up and consider if making them merit sources.

[digaran]

We'll have a problem when people see that administration doesn't really care about everybody equally, if you see that nobody cares whether you are being abused by some people or not, you'll automatically stop caring yourself.

Personally I do still care about this forum and I still want to become a source in order to distribute them on many boards and not just one board like meta.
I'd like to suggest theymos to replace inactive merit sources with new ones. it doesn't matter if I have negative trust or not, I'll help if it is needed.
However what I want is more than 200 sMerits per month to distribute, this time I'm not going to resign though.
Now come on theymos make me a source again, note that if I become a source I'd have no other choice than canceling my services on service section because I don't want to be treated differently, if you notice people who are merit sources or DT members get special treatment from others, so I'll cancel my services to avoid receiving any special treatment from people.

@Puggy, you should also merit the posts you have included on your application, don't wait for theymos to give you source merits.(come on man merit my post number 5 in your application thread already. lol.)

[vlad230]

Wow! I have read every single post in this thread and was not expecting such a high interest in it. Although I may not agree with some of you, I appreciate the time taken to comment and your thoughts. Thanks!

To be fair your merit received is a little inflated due to Searings merit on your post review thread so it would be a little unrealistic to expect 0.5-1 merit everyday.

The initial idea when the Merit System was implemented, was that everyone who was creating decent posts (not spam - the thing merit was intended to fight) would get 1 merit per day, thus aligning with the 1 activity/day you were already receiving and not blocking you to rank up.  

You should be happy you got 50 merits for literally doing nothing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3212390.0). Yes, you did merit me because you felt my post deserved it but do you think you deserved those 50 merits.

Both of you guys don't have a clue on the amount of time needed to review hundreds of applicants and not only review their selected posts but also their post history.    I did all of this for FREE, to do my part in trying to stop the spam and making people read the forum rules.

Remember that review thread, as well as others I have created overtime, were not post & forget. They were constantly maintained and researched. Take a look at the mining guide or other threads I have created, these are months worth of work and research to provide a good research for people who enjoy mining like I do.

Probably your first solution will be useful in the future, but the second solution is similar to ranking up based on the user activity.

Nope. With the second solution the human factor would be in play and no one who isn't deserving to rank up would. The old system was automated and you would just rank-up automatically.

I think a good start to creating the lists of users that the merit sources would review would be people whom already got the activity but are missing the merits. I think I saw a list about that in some merit analysis thread.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>
I think a good start to creating the lists of users that the merit sources would review would be people whom already got the activity but are missing the merits. I think I saw a list about that in some merit analysis thread.

I figure you mean missing only a "few merits", not merits in general, since that list would be long and ever increasing is size.

I just checked on the Merit Dashboard, to see how many would be on such a list. If I go to the Ranking-up Pipeline Tab, and select Sr. Members for example, there are 500 who could have ranked-up (they have enough activity), but have not due to lack of merit.
Out of those 500, 6 are in the [80%..100%) range of their merit goal to reach Hero Member, 39 are in the [60%..80% range) and 455 are in the [40%..60%) range.
The 6 should probably get there soon with no additional help, the 39 would need to be analysed to see how they are evolving, and the 455 have barely advanced since the initial airdrop.

If you go down a rank, there are 2.022 Full Members that have enough activity but not enough merit.

I can’t quite see how these lists would be managed in an even manner without favoring a subset such as "the least needed" or "the most needed". Regardless, the lists are easy to draw if needed.

[vlad230]

I just checked on the Merit Dashboard), to see how many would be on such a list. If I go to the Ranking-up Pipeline Tab, and select Sr. Members for example, there are 500 who could have ranked-up (they have enough activity), but have not due to lack of merit.
Out of those 500, 6 are in the [80%..100%) range of their merit goal to reach Hero Member, 39 are in the [60%..80% range) and 455 are in the [40%..60%) range.
The 6 should probably get there soon with no additional help, the 39 would need to be analysed to see how they are evolving, and the 455 have barely advanced since the initial airdrop.

Yes, you are correct, there are a lot of users and this would only emphasize that the number of merit sources is too low. We do need to start from somewhere as the current system is clearly not working as intended.

BTW, if I remember correctly I've seen those stats in one of your posts Good job!

[Strufmbae]

Regarding to the cause of why merit was implemented, scammers go over around the forum looking for people to devour and as i have read some threads most complains about merit was/were. "it is unfair", "it is so difficult to have even just one" , "there are abusers"... etc. And most of the complainants are jr. Members, members,  full members, who does not have good english ( fluency.) Some are posters from a thread which has 10 pages and up.

[VolkoB]

Merit definitely improves the quality of the forum. But getting it task is not easy. Align this situation could be through regulation (Merit for the time of activity on the forum). What do you think?

[DdmrDdmr]

Merit definitely improves the quality of the forum. But getting it task is not easy. Align this situation could be through regulation (Merit for the time of activity on the forum). What do you think?

No way! There are many crappy posters on the forum that just lurk around and post detritus all day long because they have nothing better to do. Activity, or the amount of time active in the forum (which is what I guess you mean) has nothing to do with posting by good standards, and therefore should not be rewarded as an automatism.

[funsponge]

Merit definitely improves the quality of the forum. But getting it task is not easy. Align this situation could be through regulation (Merit for the time of activity on the forum). What do you think?

This would defeat  the purpose of having the merit system in the first place. Before the merit system this is how ranking worked through activity. It is suppose to be not easy to get merit as it is suppose to promote good quality posters and reward them for that.