<snip>On the other hand, sometimes I might come across posts from newbies that are on the edge of providing some meaningful information and I might consider that I want to see more than just one post, so I might create a kind of mental checklist that I am going to merit the very next decent post from such newbie.. but then I might not come across any additional posts from such newbie, so I do not end up sending that member any merit based on the first quasi-decent post that I saw or any subsequent posts because of the fact that the member had disappeared off my radar.. or we are not moving in the same circles.
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Lol, I think you're overthinking the process--but at least you're thinking about it.
I doubt that I am overthinking the matter, but you can conclude what you like.
I was merely explaining what I do, and sure, how I think about it to the extent that I do think about it.. when sending smerits there can be a decent amount of subjectivism within the decision-making but sure, if a member happens to be a merit source, that member might attempt to make greater efforts to employ even greater objectivity than such member would otherwise employ.
Members are going to vary both in terms of how they give out merits, whether they think about it and whether they attempt to explain their process.
And I sometimes have trouble giving merits to Jr. Members and especially Newbies or Brand New members, because (and I hate to say this) chances are if they wrote a valuable, coherent post there's a good chance it's plagiarized. Sometimes I'm too lazy to verify that so I just don't give any merits.
Well looks like you might be doing something very similar to me in terms of thinking about the matter and even hesitating, even though you may well be weighing different factors in terms of why you might hesitate when you come across what you perceive to be a borderline post from a newbie member.
By the way, I might even consider some level of relief when I come across a member who has already b been merited by other members, so in that sense, I might be more willing to send smerits to a member who has already received smerits from other members.. especially from members that I tend to have some trust in their judgement.
I don't know if you're a merit source or not, but if you're not then I could understand being so selective about what posts you merit. But if you're a merit source it's much less of a concern, because those sMerits get replenished pretty quickly.
That's true.. the more merits that a member has coming in, the easier it might be to send them without as much consideration.
There is a thread that theorizes about which members are merit sources. The bolded members are the ones suspected to be merit sources.
Here's the link for anyone who might not know about such thread.I should probably un-ignore Bitcoin Discussion and have a look-see and perhaps find some lower-ranked members writing some hidden gems. You never know.
Sure.. exploring about might not hurt from time to time. Sometimes I have a bit of a problem just keeping up with the threads that I follow.. so sometimes I just don't feel that there is enough hours in the day to explore... but hey I am not against exploring when feasible.
