Alternative to merit system

[Prodigye]

The Problems with the Merit System

The merit system is flawed in my opinion, not enough people are willing to give out merits because if they do then they lost some of their own merits. Which leads to only a small amount of people managing to increase their rank on the forum, there is no clear guideline on how to earn merits and the supply of merits is unclear. Therefore it doesn't increase meaningful discussion or give recognition to any good content.

The Solution

In order to solve this issue and allow people who post good content to get recognition a new system must be put in place, I suggest a system similar to Reddit's karma system. You can name the points anything like Satoshi points but the fundamental function is the same, all users on the platform are given the power to upvote or downvote posts depending on the quality of it. This is a better system than the merit system because people will be more willing to upvote/downvote because they don't lose anything themselves, so it will increase engagement on the forum. People will be encouraged to post higher quality content as well since there is a reward for it.

Regulation

Obviously, the new system will require new rules to allow it to function properly. I suggest banning users who beg for upvotes on top of the current rules for low-quality posts such as spamming. Topics can be upvoted but so can replies, leading to higher quality engagement. A new section should be added to display the most upvoted posts for different time frames so people can view high quality content.

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[electronicash]

its not a bad idea but where is the part where those detective guys find out who's alt's alt? this i think isn't the original idea of merit system but it is the idea now. look at how much users with alt got busted with the use of merit system? a lot. which means the merit system worked not just for those who posts shits but also to cheaters.

[P_percy]

The Problems with the Merit System

The merit system is flawed in my opinion, not enough people are willing to give out merits because if they do then they lost some of their own merits. Which leads to only a small amount of people managing to increase their rank on the forum, there is no clear guideline on how to earn merits and the supply of merits is unclear. Therefore it doesn't increase meaningful discussion or give recognition to any good content.

The Solution

In order to solve this issue and allow people who post good content to get recognition a new system must be put in place, I suggest a system similar to Reddit's karma system. You can name the points anything like Satoshi points but the fundamental function is the same, all users on the platform are given the power to upvote or downvote posts depending on the quality of it. This is a better system than the merit system because people will be more willing to upvote/downvote because they don't lose anything themselves, so it will increase engagement on the forum. People will be encouraged to post higher quality content as well since there is a reward for it.

Regulation

Obviously, the new system will require new rules to allow it to function properly. I suggest banning users who beg for upvotes on top of the current rules for low-quality posts such as spamming. Topics can be upvoted but so can replies, leading to higher quality engagement. A new section should be added to display the most upvoted posts for different time frames so people can view high quality content.

I believe too that the merit system is flawed and moderators need to do something about it.
The person who started early have lots of merits and if someone starting new or just started isn't getting any merits as per their posts.
And few people who owns most of the merits don't seem to care much to give merits either so in this situation getting merit is tricky day by day.

[mdayonliner]

... if they do then they lost some of their own merits.

Wrong, you do not loss any merit.

not enough people are willing to give out merits

Wrong, I see people are spending their sMerits generously if a post is merit worthy.

Which leads to only a small amount of people managing to increase their rank on the forum

Those deserves ranking up they are ranking up eventually. It's healthy for the forum.

there is no clear guideline on how to earn merits

This should be enough for everyone (for me at least it's enough)

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you

the supply of merits is unclear.

True however I guess it is relatively enough. I have seen merit sources are struggling to find merit worthy posts. So, you can not actually say that supply is not enough.

it doesn't increase meaningful discussion

Wrong concept. Merit should not be the motivation for meaningful discussions.

In order to solve this issue and allow people who post good content to get recognition a new system must be put in place

This new system IS merit, I don't see anything wrong. It was introduced to improve the post quality plus to stop ranking up for those shitposters.

Obviously, the new system will require new rules to allow it to function properly. I suggest banning users who beg for upvotes on top of the current rules for low-quality posts such as spamming.

You are talking about same stuffs like merit system except it's not related to ranking up. Merit was needed to stop raking up for the shit posters / spammers. Merit abusers are getting red tags.

[mocacinno]

--snip--

the supply of merits is unclear.

True however I guess it is relatively enough. I have seen merit sources are struggling to find merit worthy posts. So, you can not actually say that supply is not enough.
--snip--

this ^^.
I'm not a merit source, but i have tons of smerit on my account... However, i can't find <Hero members that make half decent posts. I refuse to give out merit to posts that don't deserve it, and 99% of the lower ranked members are just spreading FUD, posting news articles, spew out utter nonsense, make unreadable gibberish sentences,...

The result is that more than half of the merit i DO give out is to members that don't actually need it...

[Jet Cash]

Yawn - not this tired old stuff again. Another unmerited poster to ignore.

Instead of complaining about a great system that has helped the forum, please try to be constructive, and rebuild the forum into the great resource that it was before the bounty spammers.

[lukeburchill]

I think this only frustrates because you have almost as a Sr.Member activity but your rank is still Jr. Merit makes a broken your life.

You talk about post quality but you never do it

[mdayonliner]

The result is that more than half of the merit i DO give out is to members that don't actually need it...

I know, same happen with me too although I do not have tons of sMerits. I also end up giving merit to members posts those are actually earning merits quite often. Actually these people deserve it.

My merit giving standard is not relatively very high. To me if a post is just good enough then I give merit (If I have available sMerits ofcourse). I believe everyone should get merit to rank up.

[Foxpup]

Everything in this post proceeds from a false premise:

if they do [give out merits] then they lost some of their own merits.

This is completely untrue; meriting another user's post does not cause you to lose merits. You would know that if you had bothered to find out how the merit system actually works before spamming the forum and wondering why you aren't getting any merit. There is also absolutely no shortage of merit being sent:

16929 merit was sent in the last 30 days

The reason you haven't seen any of those merits is because you are a spammer whose post do not deserve merit. You've nobody to blame but yourself.

[Jet Cash]

I've got so many sMerits to award that I've started to stuff them under the cat's hat.

Have a look at the FtT project that Dr Gomez used to post on the political board, and see what that earned him. I'm surprised that nobody else has had a go at submitting a post. It must be a lot less effort than making complaining posts that just get you put on ignore.

[nngella]

The Problems with the Merit System

The merit system is flawed in my opinion, not enough people are willing to give out merits because if they do then they lost some of their own merits.  Which leads to only a small amount of people managing to increase their rank on the forum, there is no clear guideline on how to earn merits and the supply of merits is unclear. Therefore it doesn't increase meaningful discussion or give recognition to any good content.

I am not fully in favor with the merit system but your assumption is wrong.  When someone sends a merit, that someone will not lose a merit, he will only lose his SMerit.  The recipient will receive 1 merit and 0.5 Smerit.  You cannot lose your Merits.  Every time you merit someone you are just losing SMerits which is not for the ranking system.

[hilariousetc]

The alternative to the merit system is removing signatures completely. Tell me how quickly you'd disappear if that ever happens? As people have already mentioned you are not sending merits but sMerits. They're different and you don't lose merits by giving people sMerits. Having anther system where everyone has an unlimited amount of merits or karma or likes to send would be useless as people would just merit/like/karma their own alts or "friends" accounts until they've ranked up. You're not going to get merit because aside from this thread all of your posts are generic one/two liners. You're going to have to start contributing more here if you want to move up ranks and that's how it should be. In fact, I think we should get even stricter and remove the ability for Junior Members to even have a signature at all until they've received a certain amount of merit (at least one). Far too many people are coming there to spam or copy on their 20 Junior accounts each and this needs to change.

[mu_enrico]

<...>
The merit system is flawed in my opinion, not enough people are willing to give out merits because if they do then they lost some of their own merits.
<...>

Nope, this is wrong, It's just merit is so scarce that many users really take this "job" seriously. I mean they really assess whether a post deserves merit or not.

<...>
I suggest a system similar to Reddit's karma system. You can name the points anything like Satoshi points but the fundamental function is the same, all users on the platform are given the power to upvote or downvote posts depending on the quality of it.
<...>

I used to think that Reddit's karma system is better than BTT's merit system, but I change my mind after knowing a bit more about this forum. In Reddit, there's no such thing as sigcamp to earn money, therefore users are not incentivized to create a lot of alt accounts. Sybil attack is still possible but not enough incentives. I guess it's just for shaping public opinion.

Meanwhile here, Sybil attack will be heavily incentivized if we use such system. Can you imagine if more karma equal to level-up? Alts upvote the main account, then level-up, then earn more from sigcamp. Then create another alts, etc. As I often said, this merit system sucks, but it's the best system to date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

And we don't want this for sure..

The alternative to the merit system is removing signatures completely.
<...>

[seoincorporation]

The Problems with the Merit System

The merit system is flawed in my opinion, not enough people are willing to give out merits because if they do then they lost some of their own merits. Which leads to only a small amount of people managing to increase their rank on the forum, there is no clear guideline on how to earn merits and the supply of merits is unclear. Therefore it doesn't increase meaningful discussion or give recognition to any good content.

I do concur with you about the people conserving their smerits. I think we maybe need to calm down in our standards and see the global user, meaning: if the guy has a pretty decent post history, if you can see that he/she is trying hard, well, this one should be able to earn merits. But let be honest here. Most of the people don`t get the point, they prefer to quote whatever massive thread they found with nonsense lines which help in nothing to the poster or that have been already said many many times in the same thread. I think you need to understand that, quoting in mega threads is not giving you any chance of earning merits, for those threads are not even read, the people use to just take a look at the title and then run into an answer, without reading the full thread, without adding anything.
Just try to avoid these ones, and to engage conversations that are actually being interesting. I guess you are from China, many of us are interested in the Chinesse political-social circumstance so, for instance, you can write about that in the Politics and Society board and see what happens. Besides, think about your own skills, and how can you become an important part of the forum here, what kind of information do you have that, and how to spread this.

Now, regarding the Karma system, it is impossible to implement in here. This is a very competitive place, and given the number of users coming here just to earn something, well, merits are needed to stop the spammers in their ranking path. Notice that being a spammer is just to post garbage, to do infinite reply to megathreads, et al. Just try to understand the forum spirit and you should be able of doing it nice, and, probably, you will get why the merit system actually matters.

Just change a little your mindset, man.

[rhomelmabini]

If there should be an alternative way to merit system that would be giving some distribution to forum. This merit system is proven and this is the only way to solve spam posting and blatant unrelated shitposts.

The thing is most are complaining rather than taking responsibility on how they could earn it (merit).

[The Cryptovator]

This is a better system than the merit system because people will be more willing to upvote/downvote because they don't lose anything themselves, so it will increase engagement on the forum. People will be encouraged to post higher quality content as well since there is a reward for it.

I am not aware what will lose if merited other ? Nothing ! If you can make higher quality post still you can earn merit. On the other hand if you send merit to other there nothing you will lose. So it's similar upvote and downvote. Just here is no downvote. You can say indirectly also downvote here. Downvote means not merited. Almost similar, so I don't think so should be implement new system. It's look merit system working fine.

[Findingnemo]

Nothing in this world is perfect,if this is the rules then find the ways how to earn merits and do some research before making some suggestions to the people rather than spilling some words in english.But the merits were shared highly in some sections like technical discussion and I am not good at those things so I will not spam anything over there for just getting merits,only I read the replies in those sections and improving my knowledge.Maybe we need some tweaks in the system or distribute the merit sources in all the sections of our forum for good good circulation of merits all around.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I refuse to give out merit to posts that don't deserve it, and 99% of the lower ranked members are just spreading FUD, posting news articles, spew out utter nonsense, make unreadable gibberish sentences,...

I agree, and good for you for being picky.

I would have given OP merits for writing a fairly well-written post, except it's a post bitching about how the merit system needs to be replaced.  Not gonna happen, especially when he doesn't understand the difference between sMerits and merits and when his proposed solution would do nothing to solve the spamming problem here.  If nothing else, the merit system makes it much harder for shitposters to rank up. 

Yawn - not this tired old stuff again. Another unmerited poster to ignore.

Yep.

[krishnaverma]

The thing is most are complaining rather than taking responsibility on how they could earn it (merit).

Actually most have accepted it, if we compare it to the number of threads posted against merit system when it was launched.

By now, they must have realized that the decision is not going to be taken by admin. If you see the people complaining now, they are mostly new members and this realization will also come to them gradually.

[barsharkol12]

the merit system aim to make this thread more useful at the same time more knowledgeable to those people who are engaged in this industry. this system has lessen the spammers and other shit posters. but on the otherhand a lot of people compalin about this system because they thik that thier post must be given a merit. let's continue making this thread professionally and more helpful to others dont mind the merits it just a rules that can be followed.