sMerit Senders & Receivers – Weight of top 100 and 200 weekly contributors

[DdmrDdmr]

1. Introduction:
The initial Merit spirit I believe is that of a decentralized system, where many members are responsible for meriting other user’s posts. I started to get the feeling that Merit was getting more concentrated over time, in terms of who is awarding it, so I went on to see just how concentrated it was, and if the ratios steepened as time goes by (as it turns out,  they do).


2. General summary:
Total sMerit:   201.035 sMerits have been awarded in total.
Total Txs:         90.737 distinct transactions.
From:              15.980 members have awarded at least 1 sMerit.
To:                  18.292 members have received at least 1 sMerit.

That gives us the broad picture of how many forum members are in the Merit game of awarding or receiving, not too large a scope in relation to all the Bitcointalk number of members, but considering the amount of spam that the forum has, it even seems surprising that 18.292 forum members have been merited.
This is nothing really new so far though, since we’re a few that report this data on a weekly basis. It does serve us though as a context to the following sections.


3. Top 200 Senders
This is where it starts to get interesting. What I’ve done here is, for each natural week (Monday to Sunday), aggregate the amount of sMerit sent by the top 200 sMerit Senders, and calculate the percentage it represents out of the total sMerit awarded for the given week.
Weeks are numbered 4 onwards, relating to the natural calendar week (4 is therefore 22/01/2018 .. 28/01/2018, and so on). I’ve use the week number and not the full week date interval due to a better representation on the charts.

Bear in mind that the top 200 Senders are different each week, and are not a fixed set. For example, I’m computed in the top 200 Senders on 17 of the 28 weeks, but I did not qualify for all the weeks. In the top 200 we’ll likely include all Merit Sources (84 now) as well as other members.

The overall average sMerit that the top 200 Senders have awarded is 58,99% of the total sMerit, but this varies from week to week as can be seen on the following graph:


The vertical bars represent the total sMerit awarded by the weekly top 200 Senders. The line chart represents the % of the total sMerit for the given week. Both of these data numbers figure in the table at the bottom of the graph. The yellow bar is last week, which is incomplete due to data (merit.txt file) being published on Fridays.
What we can see is the evolution: the top 200 Senders started off being behind the mid-forty percent range of total sMerit during the first few weeks. The tendency has slowly evolved and is now days in the 75-80% range. That’s a 30 point increase since the beginning!


4. Top 100 Senders
Likewise, the top 100 Senders (a subset of the above) has the following trend line:

The evolution for the top 100 Senders started off being around 30% of total sMerit during the first few weeks and is now in the 60-65% range. Here again we have the 30 point increase comparing to the beginning.
The overall average sMerit for the top 100 Senders is 45,21% of the total awarded sMerit.


5. Top 200 Receivers
Similarly, the top 200 Receivers has the following trend line:

The top 200 Receivers started off being around 50% of total sMerit during the first few weeks, but has slowly moved into the 60% range and lately boosting a bit into the 70% area.
The overall average sMerit for the top 200 Receivers is 53,67% of the total awarded sMerit.


6. Top 100 Receivers
Likewise, the top 100 Receivers (a subset of the above) has the following trend line:

The top 100 Receivers started off being around 35% of total sMerit during the first few weeks, but has slowly moved into the 40% range and lately boosting a bit into the 50% area or above (partial week though still in yellow).
The overall average sMerit for the top 100 Receivers is 39,35% of the total awarded sMerit.


7. Conclusion
Concluding numerically is simple: As time goes by, there is more concentration of sMerit sent by the top group of sMerit Senders and Receivers, although more pronounced on the Senders side of the scale.
This is likely due to an increasing importance of Merit Sources as times go by. Now I would venture to say that this was not the initial intention of the Merit System, but rather an organic sway from a more distributed system to an increasingly more concentrated system. This I figure puts extra pressure on current Merit Sources, as a large portion of the Merit System now depends heavily on them (bare in mind though that amongst the top 200/100 percent there are also non merit sources too as I said in the previous sections).
Maybe adding more merit sources would be a means to at least having more pairs of eye in the meriting awarding process, even if the total overall amount of sMerit assigned to them doesn’t budge at all.

On the receiver’s side, I find it difficult to conclude objectively. Concentration is rather heavy too, that is obvious. Subjectively nevertheless, I find my Merit Network (those I award sMerit to) growing at a very slow pace, since the members I merit tend to be the best and, once added to the network, new member addition seem difficult due to post quality of others by comparison, or by the spam forest blockage effect.

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[mdayonliner]

To:                  18.292 members have received at least 1 sMerit.

Let's assume we add more 20% with this number 18,292 to have a fair number.
18,292 + 20% of 18,292 = 18,292 + 3,658 = 21,950 the quality numbers

Once I mentioned on a post that, it's better to have 1 quality member than 100 spammers.
According to Vod's bpip the active member are 460,948 in total which means 4.76% users are actually making good posts. Not bad IMO.

Maybe adding more merit sources would be a means to at least having more pairs of eye in the meriting awarding process, even if the total overall amount of sMerit assigned to them doesn’t budge at all.

I guess a lot of us also think the same. We need more merit sources to make the whole system decentralized. Somewhere I have seen someone proposed an initial target is to have 200 sources and then gradually the number can be increased.

The main challenge for theymos would be the selection process. It's very hard to pick a good merit source I guess although we already have few applications are pending. For some reason we are seeing theymos is a bit quite here, possibly his hours are already booked with some other tasks. It's really not easy to manage a community of 460,948 active members. I wonder how he keeps himself calm. 

[joniboini]

-snip-
I guess a lot of us also think the same. We need more merit sources to make the whole system decentralized. Somewhere I have seen someone proposed an initial target is to have 200 sources and then gradually the number can be increased.

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit, probably to start their own merits giveaway thread. Or, there is no more good post to be awarded from their POV.

[seoincorporation]

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit, probably to start their own merits giveaway thread. Or, there is no more good post to be awarded from their POV.

I haven't seen recently a merit source application for the Indonesian board, hope it will be recognized as necessary.
Yep, also agree with you. Even tough mi local (Spanish) is not too bad about merit, I still think that most all the merited people have 1 or 2 merits as much per post, even if it is amazing. That`s a huge problem related to centralization, for this is going to be difficult for them to rank-up beyond member just because they can`t speak English.

On the other hand, I see every single day people like Jet Cash trying to work harder in their merit source task, but it doesn´t seem to go anywhere: most of the users are not deserves, for they are spamming the forum. There are also initiatives, like the "DMerit", proposed by JC, in which the creation of a "merit team" is proposed, meaning that we can implement a new system in where the merit sources can merit to some other legendaries or people they trust with a different kind of merit, so a team can be created and the merits can go to the locals.

Whatever, this is a problem in crescendo. From my perspective, maybe this is time for the people to change a little their mindset. I mean: those having smerits shouldn`t keep them as a "precious" treasure, and, in general, perhaps this is time to low down a little our standards: if a user has a pretty decent post history and if it is obvious that the user is trying hard, well, why don`t give this guy/girl more than one merit.

Anyway, it is happening. Suchmoon, for instance, has increased the number of merits he`s giving per post, as well as other people, taking a look at the post history and giving merits by the "general behaviour" of a user, instead of giving a single merit by post. I think this is a great mindset we all can have in mind when awarding someone: to check the history and to give merits based on that.

Now, the situation is pretty dramatic also. If we take a look at the beginner's board, for instance, it has been polluted with a lot of bounty threads, meantime the users are complaining about merits. Bounties or infinite guidelines are not very merited by now, for I think we all are quite tired of that. That`s why I come to conclude that the JC idea, the Merit Team is one of the best in the forum. I think there are enough merit sources by now, but badly distributed, maybe by the creation of a team, it could be fixed.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>
According to Vod's bpip the active member are 460,948 in total which means 4.76% users are actually making good posts. Not bad IMO.
<...>

From a forum’s point of view, it is kind of bad really. If you turn the numbers around, it reads that 95,24% are spamming or not posting anything too remarkable….

It would be nice to know the definition of “active member”. When dealing with a large quantity of users, I often create a “state machine” where one user evolves/regresses between states over time and events.
For example (simple cases):
-   Active Heavy poster: At least 5 posts per day on average over last month.
-   Active Mid poster: At least 1 post per day on average over last month.
-   Active Low poster: Less than 1 post per day on average over last month.
-   Dorman Heavy poster: Was a heavy poster a month ago, but has stopped posting since.
-   <etc.>.
The states help to get a general picture of the user base and their profiles. State evolution can be monitored and events triggered (in general) depending on the user state.

<...>
I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit, probably to start their own merits giveaway thread. Or, there is no more good post to be awarded from their POV.

I’ve just looked over my local board after being away for a few days, and there’s nothing new recently worth meriting. Good posters there are rather scarce, and concentration of merit is really natural due to this factor (although it is also a concern, and often people pull the handbrake there for the same reason).

Also, awarding merit takes time, so playing the merit game for long may not be in line for everyone, and could decline overtime for lack of incentive from the awarder’s point of view.

I still think that there are quite a few that don’t know the difference between Merit and sMerit, believing that awarding substracts from your merit counter. I can’t put a figure to that, but I’ve encountered it often enough (although mainly with lower ranks).

[seoincorporation]

I’ve just looked over my local board after being away for a few days, and there’s nothing new recently worth meriting. Good posters there are rather scarce, and concentration of merit is really natural due to this factor (although it is also a concern, and often people pull the handbrake there for the same reason).

I don`t know what`s before in this case: the chicken or the egg. I`ve seen that the Spanish board is slowly being full of nonsense posters polluting some good discussions without even giving a thought to the opening thread; or by threads that are just a link to another source (these ones I rarely read, I find kind of annoying picking some mysterious link in order to understand an OP`s contribution).
In general, the Spanish mean has, as much, 10 good posters, and some of them are moving to the English one, due to the lack of quality in the local, I included.
But this is happening because it is easier to get merits on the English one? Or because of the lack of interesting posts? Are we losing our very best posters on the Spanish just because there is nothing for them in there anymore? And, do you think merits are related? Meaning: on the Spanish local the merited ones are always the same (because there are few good ones) but it can be uncomfortable for them, given all the Inquisitorial processes we have had. I don`t know, but maybe the locals are just disappearing into a centralization force because, given the lack of merits awarders, they prefer to receive merits from others, or because they prefer to contribute in some substantial discussions instead of the ones having a place now in the Spanish.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I'd say that all the factors you mention combined are what’s going on our local board. There aren’t too many people active lately, and those that are good enough in English do tend to post more often away from the local board. Actually, most of these members conform the nucleus of good posters with only a couple of exceptions posting exclusively on our native local language.
We don’t really even have too many spammers (yet) in comparison to other sections, so there is an issue of overall activity, which is way less than I’d expect for one of the most spoken languages in the world. I doubt that merit is the cause behind, since that would imply researching before joining which I figure seldom happens before joining.

[Jet Cash]

I'm seriously considering the reverrse of my ignore list - a list of members that are worth checking for meritable posts. Obviously this will lead to further centralisation of merit circulation. At the moment I've got over 200 sMerit to award, and that's after I gave away a few this morning. I started a couple of threads which I hoped might create some decent replies, but this is a bit of a thankless task, as they usually sink to the secondary pages under the weight of bounty spam and other rubbish by those desperate to increase rank.

If I get time, I spend an hour or so going through the 4th and 5th index pages looking for decent posts. The pickings are richer there, as all the low lifes tend to keep the rubbish floating on the top.

[mdayonliner]

From a forum’s point of view, it is kind of bad really. If you turn the numbers around, it reads that 95,24% are spamming or not posting anything too remarkable….

I am an affiliate marketer so I do build my email list. Normally on a list when you blast an email, 3 to 5% click thorough rate¹ considers a healthy rate. Depending on the marketing skill and managing the  email list a person can increase it to huge level. I have seen 89% CTR for an email list of over 400K emails.

I understand activities for an email list and for a forum is not something that you can compare however looking at the ratio from your data - it seems to me that no matter what platform you are in, a community tends to follow a rule of 3 to 5% response rate.

¹ _{Number of clicks you receive on a link that you have on your email.}

[LoyceV]

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit

I don't merit posts because I care about the people posting, I merit them because I care about the forum. I've just merited your post, but I don't know you, so why would I care about you as a person? But, you made a valid point and a decent post. By rewarding that, I help improve the forum.
Meriting people you care for could easily become merit abuse.
I think it's safe to say most users don't really care for the forum, other than using it as an ATM.

Anyway, it is happening. Suchmoon, for instance, has increased the number of merits he`s giving per post

I still give only 1 Merit most of the time. I just did the math: I've only given 92 more merit than I would have been able to give without being a source. I've never been able to completely empty my source merit pool. Even worse: I've received more Merit than I've sent! I'm slowly catching up though.
I'm pretty sure theymos increases a source's merit supply if he spends them all (wisely).

<...>
According to Vod's bpip the active member are 460,948 in total which means 4.76% users are actually making good posts. Not bad IMO.
<...>

From a forum’s point of view, it is kind of bad really. If you turn the numbers around, it reads that 95,24% are spamming or not posting anything too remarkable….

I don't think the 460k "active" members are all that active, and many will be alt-accounts. But on the other hand, this also counts users who only received 1 Merit in half a year, including Merit trading and merit alt-accounts. The sad truth is that most users post crap, but we knew that already, and that's why Merit was introduced in the first place.

It would be nice to know the definition of “active member”.

At bpip.org, hover over the number. Active Profiles: "Profiles that have logged in within the last three months". That includes for instance my LoyceBot-account, which I barely use nowadays.

At the moment I've got over 200 sMerit to award,

Me too, it keeps piling up, and I haven't even touched my earned sMerits since May 17.

If I get time, I spend an hour or so going through the 4th and 5th index pages looking for decent posts.

That's admirable, but I don't do it. I only Merit posts I stumble upon anyway. You should probably do the same, considering how much frustration it gives you searching for that rare good post.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others.

Yep.  Some people just don't care about the merit system, and others may not even know that much about it--it depends on how much bitcointalk means to you and why you're here.  And then there's the people who have sMerits and sell them or give them to their alts or friends.  I suspect the former group of members isn't trivial.  Those are the people who know how valuable merits are to people and mean to profit from it, and they're the ones who don't give a shit about the merit system except to the extent that they can make money.

You don't see threads here offering merit for sale, but I've heard it happens off-site, and we've certainly seen threads naming merit sellers and traders here, so I know it's happening. 

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>
At bpip.org, hover over the number. Active Profiles: "Profiles that have logged in within the last three months".
<...>

Right, thanks for that. I often switch between IPad and Laptop and it is as you say on the Laptop (IPad doesn’t).
By the way, it’s really great how data gets update on the BPIP site on-the-fly. I was checking the mouse-over feature and some data on my merit data was updated on the BPIP that wasn’t even on my Bitcointalk session like a minute before.

[LoyceV]

By the way, it’s really great how data gets update on the BPIP site on-the-fly. I was checking the mouse-over feature and some data on my profile was updated on the BPIP that wasn’t even on my Bitcointalk session like a minute before.

Vod uses Recent merits to update on the fly.

[suchmoon]

Centralization of senders is kind of expected. ~80 merit sources (if they're all doing their jobs) would be spending 50%+ of merits by definition.

Centralization of receivers is a bit worrying. I'm trying to send merits "blindly" without looking at the person's name/avatar/etc and it seems to be working well (500 or so distinct users merited so far) but that's still just a drop in the bucket.

Suchmoon, for instance, has increased the number of merits he`s giving per post

To clarify this - there is no great strategy here, it's just math on how many posts I have time to read and how many sMerits I have available. Theymos has strongly suggested to not hoard them so out they go.

I'm pretty sure theymos increases a source's merit supply if he spends them all (wisely).

That appears to be the case, yes.

[Piggy]

-snip-
I guess a lot of us also think the same. We need more merit sources to make the whole system decentralized. Somewhere I have seen someone proposed an initial target is to have 200 sources and then gradually the number can be increased.

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit, probably to start their own merits giveaway thread. Or, there is no more good post to be awarded from their POV.

This i believe is happening in each local section on a different scale, in the Italian one we have a lot of legendary users which are probably sitting on ~400 sMerit each, but right or wrong that it is are not giving them away and there are plenty of chances or reasons to do it imo.

[joniboini]

I think there is another problem. Some users who have smerit doesn't care about others. This is clearly evident in my local section. Most of the time the mods are the one who gives merits to members, and after that, it stopped. They save their smerit

I don't merit posts because I care about the people posting, I merit them because I care about the forum. I've just merited your post, but I don't know you, so why would I care about you as a person? But, you made a valid point and a decent post. By rewarding that, I help improve the forum.
Meriting people you care for could easily become merit abuse.
I think it's safe to say most users don't really care for the forum, other than using it as an ATM.

I think you misunderstood what I mean by "care". What I really wanted to say is that even though there are a lot of good posts, most of the time they just read it and don't give a damn about meriting those posts. Another problem that I just realized recently is they're afraid of merit abuse accusations because the members who deserved merits at the moment are limited (probably around ~60). Basically, it is impossible to avoid reciprocal merits in my local section IMHO. Which is why Indonesian members rely on their mods to get some merits as they're the only sources at the moment.

-snip-
You don't see threads here offering merit for sale, but I've heard it happens off-site, and we've certainly seen threads naming merit sellers and traders here, so I know it's happening. 

I saw them in Telegram group for bounty hunters, many times. Sometimes I got a pm asking to trade merit for money, or asking to give them some smerit that I have to help them rank up. They're seriously sick.

 

[LoyceV]

Another problem that I just realized recently is they're afraid of merit abuse accusations because the members who deserved merits at the moment are limited (probably around ~60). Basically, it is impossible to avoid reciprocal merits in my local section IMHO.

Merit trading accusations shouldn't just be based on the transactions without checking the actual posts. As long as the posts are worth it, that doesn't matter. My name has been on lists of accounts sending reciprocal merits too. Check BPIP: I've received 25 Merit from Vod, and sent back 12. I don't think that makes us alts or Merit traders

[Jet Cash]

This i believe is happening in each local section on a different scale, in the Italian one we have a lot of legendary users which are probably sitting on ~400 sMerit each, but right or wrong that it is are not giving them away and there are plenty of chances or reasons to do it imo.

I created a board that was designed to help Italian members to produce posts that were worthy of merit on the international boards here. I did this because there were complaints that the Italian members were being under-merited. I had absolutely no interest, so I have now removed the board. We are now in a global world, and, whilst it is important to preserve national sovereignty and identity, it is equally important to be able to communicate internationally. Like it or not, English is the only possible lingua franca, and it is the language of the Eton/Oxford created Deep State elite.

[Harlot]

I guess a lot of us also think the same. We need more merit sources to make the whole system decentralized. Somewhere I have seen someone proposed an initial target is to have 200 sources and then gradually the number can be increased.

200 merit sources is a lot and is more than double than the current number of merit sources (84) we have and I do think this will give more harm than good to the merit system. With these number we can expect that the 18,292 receiving with at least 1 merit be more than doubled if that happened. Still with the process we have via screening I don't think we need to jump in that kind of number as we still need to know who is deserving to become a merit source as we cannot really put the role as a merit source to who can abuse the system.

[LoyceV]

200 merit sources is a lot and is more than double than the current number of merit sources (84) we have and I do think this will give more harm than good to the merit system. With these number we can expect that the 18,292 receiving with at least 1 merit be more than doubled if that happened.

The average Merit source has 2785 Merit per year to spend. That's only enough to give a few people a high rank, and a large part of the available Merit goes to users who don't need it to rank up.
I don't think more sources will be a problem, Merit isn't supposed to be a restriction for people with good posts.