Help the Forum Admins = Get Merits as Incentive

[denis-z12]

I am not sure if there has been a similar proposal so I apologise if there has.
Since merits seem to be on everybody's mind, has the forum administration ever thought about giving users an incentive to help with everyday moderation tasks and in return earning a few merits.

The forum is huge, the admins/mods have a lot of work to do, why not make it a bit easier and get some help in finding rule breakers.
New users keep opening threads "how to earn merits", "please give me merit" etc. If there is an incentive to help out with different tasks around the forum maybe it would be good for the entire community.

Here are some examples:

Find proof of merit selling/buying = get rewarded with 1 merit.
Find 5 members posting low quality "thank you", "great project", "this project will have success" type of posts and other spam = 1 merit
Find phishing links, malware, links to viruses, illegal content = 1 merit
proof of account sales/offers to buy/sell accounts - 1 merit
bumping services, illegal ANN/Bounty bumps - 1 merit
Trolls, referral links, url shorteners etc - 1 merit

Basically it can be anything that the Mods do as well, anything that is against the forum rules.
I am aware that this might create a lot of false accusations and even spam if such a topic is created but if implemented in the right way it helps the entire community.
The admins get fresh eyes who are looking for rule breakers, users finally have a way to earn merits by doing community work which will limit merit begging/opening threads/PM and begging for merits and similar activities and improve the overall quality of the forum.

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[mdayonliner]

No thank you. Merit is here to award it for quality posts only. You might want to read this post to see the possible outcomes of the idea you are talking about. We have talked about this several times by the way.

.... I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

[Cosette]

Find proof of merit selling/buying = get rewarded with 1 merit.
Find 5 members posting low quality "thank you", "great project", "this project will have success" type of posts and other spam = 1 merit
Find phishing links, malware, links to viruses, illegal content = 1 merit
proof of account sales/offers to buy/sell accounts - 1 merit
bumping services, illegal ANN/Bounty bumps - 1 merit
Trolls, referral links, url shorteners etc - 1 merit

and then people try to make an alt account and do one of these or probably all of it and then the main account start to report them and boom easiest merit of my life!
no offens but this will not work in my opinion.

[denis-z12]

Find proof of merit selling/buying = get rewarded with 1 merit.
Find 5 members posting low quality "thank you", "great project", "this project will have success" type of posts and other spam = 1 merit
Find phishing links, malware, links to viruses, illegal content = 1 merit
proof of account sales/offers to buy/sell accounts - 1 merit
bumping services, illegal ANN/Bounty bumps - 1 merit
Trolls, referral links, url shorteners etc - 1 merit

and then people try to make an alt account and do one of these or probably all of it and then the main account start to report them and boom easiest merit of my life!
no offens but this will not work in my opinion.

I didnt take that option into account and you are right that could be a way to abuse the system.
But there can a rule that states a user reporting an account, created after a certain date will not get rewarded with any merits.
For example, if this suggestion is implemented today 25.07. any reports of accounts created on 25.07 and after this date would not be accepted. Its not he best solution but at least you couldn't be awarded by reporting your own alt accounts unless they were created in advance.    

[Jet Cash]

No. please don't do this. We need more quality posts and stimulating discussions, and merit was created to encourage this. Theymos has a better idea. Award medals for helping with the administration of the forum. I'm sure that if this catches on, then he will be pleased to create some additional advantages for medal holders.

I'm going to take a different approach. I'm going to start creating SMART ( Self-Moderated And Rewarded Threads ), and hopefully this will allow me to take responsibility for threads that I create, and reduce the workload for the mods.

[TheUltraElite]

As time passes on people seem to forget the real objective of the merit system. Merit was introduced to award the "posts" (and not reports) that help others in getting answers in their doubts and to award posts that are worth reading and knowledgeable.

It was NEVER supposed to be an "incentive" for doing something on forum. That should come to you involuntarily being a part of this community and not by  any power hungry soul. It is the duty of each and every member to help the moderators by reporting stuff and likewise.

Stop making such useless threads. You are not getting any merit from me.

[qwk]

No thank you. Merit is here to award it for quality posts only. You might want to read this post to see the possible outcomes of the idea you are talking about. We have talked about this several times by the way.

And you've locked the corresponding thread

I personally award certain efforts on the part of users to help "keep the forum clean" with merit.
Not being a moderator myself, I obviously cannot (and probably would not, anyway) award a simple click on the "report" button.
What I (better: a certain part of the German community) do is, we have a thread for reporting a specific kind of spam (google translations).
If you find some google translated garbage, you're encouraged to a) report it and b) make a post about it in a certain thread, preferably in a somewhat standardized form.
You will then usually receive merit for that post from me.

Why do I do this?
Because I can and it works.
Google Translator Spam seems to be on the decline in the German board.
It's a lot of work for the users to check for google translations and make a "report post" about their report.
This work aids the "betterment" of post quality directly.
I think it's fair to assume that this work is in accordance with the goals of the merit system in general.

.... I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

The posts I merit in this case are definitely not "high quality" in themselves. The work behind these posts is.

In conclusion, I obey the spirit of the merit system, if not the letter


For reference, our "report thread" is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415262
(don't discuss anything there. Also, if you're not German yourself, don't bother reporting anything there, you most likely won't receive merit)

[diodorako]

Would you like some cash reward as well for helping the mods ?

[Cosette]

Would you like some cash reward as well for helping the mods ?

If we apply this, it will be new generation of 3rd world posters, it is 3rd world reporters!

[fomiche]

If you want to help the mods or this forum, it should come from inside. An incentive will not make this successful in long run.

[hilariousetc]

People have suggested awarding merits for helping out amongst other things before. The trouble with awarding some sorts of merits automatically is people will probably just abuse it to game the system. Farmers and sig spammers are already using bots to post, so they'll probably just create more spam bots just to report them with other bots and get the merits to rise through the ranks. Users do give out merit for finding things like merit abuse or sig campaign abuse etc so you can post your findings and hope they do, but merits shouldn't be expected or given out automatically for this and should be taken on a case by case basis.

[Jet Cash]

In conclusion, I obey the spirit of the merit system, if not the letter

No you are not even thinking of the spirit of the merit system. If fact, I don't think you even understand the concept of merit for posting.

We don't want a hampster wheel of rubbish posters and merit hunters, we want quality posts and threads. You can bet that the bounty spammers are onto the idea of begging for merits by reporting posts that have probably already been reported.

[True Vozer]

Find 5 members posting low quality "thank you", "great project", "this project will have success" type of posts and other spam = 1 merit

There hundreds of spam posts like these on the forum everyday. If apply this, it begin to easy to earn merit and it makes Merit become meaningless.

[denis-z12]

No thank you. Merit is here to award it for quality posts only. You might want to read this post to see the possible outcomes of the idea you are talking about. We have talked about this several times by the way.

And you've locked the corresponding thread

I personally award certain efforts on the part of users to help "keep the forum clean" with merit.
Not being a moderator myself, I obviously cannot (and probably would not, anyway) award a simple click on the "report" button.
What I (better: a certain part of the German community) do is, we have a thread for reporting a specific kind of spam (google translations).
If you find some google translated garbage, you're encouraged to a) report it and b) make a post about it in a certain thread, preferably in a somewhat standardized form.
You will then usually receive merit for that post from me.

Why do I do this?
Because I can and it works.
Google Translator Spam seems to be on the decline in the German board.
It's a lot of work for the users to check for google translations and make a "report post" about their report.
This work aids the "betterment" of post quality directly.
I think it's fair to assume that this work is in accordance with the goals of the merit system in general.

.... I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

The posts I merit in this case are definitely not "high quality" in themselves. The work behind these posts is.

In conclusion, I obey the spirit of the merit system, if not the letter


For reference, our "report thread" is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4415262
(don't discuss anything there. Also, if you're not German yourself, don't bother reporting anything there, you most likely won't receive merit)

That is a good example. The reports are not high quality but the work behind it is and why not reward such work with merits or like JetCash said with some other type of reward like medals.
The types of posts that would get rewarded could be limited to certain rules only.

No. please don't do this. We need more quality posts and stimulating discussions, and merit was created to encourage this. Theymos has a better idea. Award medals for helping with the administration of the forum. I'm sure that if this catches on, then he will be pleased to create some additional advantages for medal holders.

Thats right, but limiting the useless posts and spam makes it easier for you to find quality posts that you could merit instead of going through "when lambo, great project" type of posts and there are so many of them.
Users still dont understand how to earn merits and a lot of spam is created for the sole purpose of getting visibility on the forum and hoping someone gives them a merit because of that. With a program like this they could get a way to earn a few merits and help cleaning the forum. Its not what the merits where intended for, i know, but things change and develop and this can be a new way for some to get a couple, thats all.

[qwk]

We don't want a hampster wheel of rubbish posters and merit hunters, we want quality posts and threads.

What we really want is a better quality/shit ratio over all posts.
Preferably 100/0, but that's highly unlikely to achieve.

How do we get there?
Encourage quality posts and at the same time discourage shitposts.

If you personally only work one part of the problem, that's okay with me.
I work both.

You can bet that the bounty spammers are onto the idea of begging for merits by reporting posts that have probably already been reported.

And why wouldn't they?
Let's assume for a moment that I could write a piece of software that were able to detect shitposts with high accuracy and automatically report them.
Would you want me to use that software?
What difference would it make if I didn't actually write a software, but rather created a kind of "mechanical turk", powered by a bunch of human agents that scanned the posts manually?
What if the end-result were an almost instant, highly accurate spam filter for new posts?
Would that be worthy of some kind of payment/compensation?
I personally think it would.

Lacking other means, compensation in the form of merit is appropriate.
Of course, automatization of that kind of compensation is prone to abuse, why I would definitely advise against it.

[simonova]

If you do all that you mentioned in your post, you will automatically get merits from other members.

Also, in the long run if you show your dedication on this forum, you may be considered for some work by the admin in future if necessary. I am not sure that if it is something you want or not but all members are not here for that thing. Regarding giving merits for this work, in the official thread, nothing of that sort is mentioned from what I interpret.

[orions.belt19]

I get that you think this will help improve the forum if more people will participate however, this opens an opportunity for merit farming. People could just easily create alt/fake/spam accounts then spam all over the forum, then they themselves will report these accounts so that they get the credit or merits.

Have you heard about how a village tried to eliminate snakes by giving money to those who could kill snakes and bring them to the village leader. Instead of eradicating the snakes in the village, the number of snakes actually increased. You know why? People started to farm snakes because of the money.

Don’t introduce a snake pit into this forum.

[Joel_Jantsen]

No thank you. Merit is here to award it for quality posts only. You might want to read this post to see the possible outcomes of the idea you are talking about. We have talked about this several times by the way.

Not really! I have a thread started a thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2971165.msg30527846#msg30527846 where I gave merits for finding alts, connecting accounts etc. a similar approach to OP's idea. I don't think everybody is capable of writing "great posts" and that shouldn't stop them from ranking up on the forum. Obviously, by this, I don't mean they should continue spamming the forum. There should be an equal opportunity for them to rank-up. Although this shouldn't be done officially, it can be subjectively done depending on how one would like to spend their s-merits.

[Welsh]

Not really! I have a thread started a thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2971165.msg30527846#msg30527846 where I gave merits for finding alts, connecting accounts etc. a similar approach to OP's idea. I don't think everybody is capable of writing "great posts" and that shouldn't stop them from ranking up on the forum. Obviously, by this, I don't mean they should continue spamming the forum. There should be an equal opportunity for them to rank-up. Although this shouldn't be done officially, it can be subjectively done depending on how one would like to spend their s-merits.

That's what the merit system was introduced for though. Demonstrating the quality of someones posts. I'm not personally against rewarding merit for those who find alt accounts or bust scams, because it takes some investigation work, and as long as they show that its very likely going to be a quality post. 

[denis-z12]

If you do all that you mentioned in your post, you will automatically get merits from other members.

Also, in the long run if you show your dedication on this forum, you may be considered for some work by the admin in future if necessary. I am not sure that if it is something you want or not but all members are not here for that thing. Regarding giving merits for this work, in the official thread, nothing of that sort is mentioned from what I interpret.

No that is not something I want. I have a 100% report rate because I report stuff i find inappropriate either way.
This was a suggestion how to involve those who have the time and are willing to participate because they see rule breakers and spam all around.

I get that you think this will help improve the forum if more people will participate however, this opens an opportunity for merit farming. People could just easily create alt/fake/spam accounts then spam all over the forum, then they themselves will report these accounts so that they get the credit or merits.

Have you heard about how a village tried to eliminate snakes by giving money to those who could kill snakes and bring them to the village leader. Instead of eradicating the snakes in the village, the number of snakes actually increased. You know why? People started to farm snakes because of the money.

Don’t introduce a snake pit into this forum.

I understand what you are saying. People abuse and will always find a way to abuse the system, thats the way it is. Everything gets abused in life.
You can farm snakes to get more money but can you train your snakes not to bite your child, parent or relative?

There is no perfect system. Merits are not perfect either and they get abused like everything else.
We have a system where we stake our BTC address on this forum and in case our BTT account gets hacked we have to sign a message with that address but if you think about it that is not perfect either and can be abused. I am not gonna say how though. There is also a saying that goes something like between two evils choose the smaller evil.