[MERIT][NSFN] We're destroying more merits than we're sending. Like, way more.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Just restrict signatures to members and above.

Or restrict lower ranked signatures to just one line of text - no formatting.  That is a traditional signature.

I don’t think that’s a good idea because when the merit system was implemented, juniors weren’t able to have clickable signatures, but they still had non-clickable ones, and many spamties campaigns were paying them to post crap with those signatures.

I agree with hilariousetc that signatures must be restricted to members and above.

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[LoyceV]

Has anyone worked out how much merit is available and waiting to be awarded?

Theymos airdropped about 600k sMerit, sources create 23k sMerit per month (but don't use all of it), 250k sMerit has been rewarded (which created another 125k sMerit), and some sMerit holders must be banned by now. My estimate would be that at least 500k sMerit (twice as much as has been rewarded until now!) is available.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>Has anyone worked out how much merit is available and waiting to be awarded?

If we add up all forum member accounts, there are at least 34k unspent sMerits, originated in the halving process that are ready to be awarded. That is based on the positive aggregate for all users of: floor(Received merit/2) – Sent smerit.

Nevertheless, there is much more as we know, since the initial sMerit airdrop was of 600K and so far, the total amount awarded is of 245,5K. On top of that, there are the up to 23k monthly sMerits in the Merit Source pool.

[Harlot]

This could either only mean that we are sending merits to the wrong people or people who have farmed accounts are sending merits to their alt accounts. So many wasted merits but we cannot stop them all as they have the whole control on who will be the receiver of their own sMerits, this could drastically change if people know how to read the rules and mainly stop plagiarizing and start doing their own creative post. This thing is really avoidable if people are willing to learn they know what they will post on their own.

[suchmoon]

This could either only mean that we are sending merits to the wrong people or people who have farmed accounts are sending merits to their alt accounts. So many wasted merits but we cannot stop them all as they have the whole control on who will be the receiver of their own sMerits, this could drastically change if people know how to read the rules and mainly stop plagiarizing and start doing their own creative post. This thing is really avoidable if people are willing to learn they know what they will post on their own.

In the grand scheme of things we aren't sending that many merits "to the wrong people":

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsendban

~300 on average per month although these are just the top senders. But even if it's ~500 per month that's still just a drop in the bucket. And the farms will eventually dry out - there is no feasible way for them to replenish their banned merits.

[The Cryptovator]

Those are getting ban with merits, I believe there are more than 50% merit abuser. Most of ban are happening for plagiarism. I don't believe they have earned merits by quality post. Most of them has abused by trading or buy.

On the other hand, I noticed from my experience that most merit abuser has got red tagged previously. I have found few case that they are tagged before abuse. Most likely they sold merit. Especially after implement new merit system lately. It's become much difficult to prevent. Because those are already tagged they never care about rules and didn't worry about new tag.

[jcriss]

Where do you guys find all these stats? I'm still new but like to see stats of before and after the rule change.
I'm looking for the pre-change stats most of all of how many members in each rank.
verus
after change rank standing
SORRY for the off topic
Thanks

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Where do you guys find all these stats? I'm still new but like to see stats of before and after the rule change.
I'm looking for the pre-change stats most of all of how many members in each rank.
verus
after change rank standing
SORRY for the off topic
Thanks

Don't worry. It's related to the topic. I'm also curious btw, I'm not sure if they gather all the data from bpip.org.

[Armagh1234]

This is good. Merit is going to be hard to find after some point. I have two very important and ideal suggestions to combat this issue:

My suggestion #1:
After sometime, let's fork the merits into MeritPrivate. 
These are merits that you can send and receive without any public log.
And at the fork time we send 1-1 MP (MeritPrivate) to everyone who has at least 10 merits on their account.

My suggestion #2:
I see that a lot of Legendary/Hero members are not very generous regarding sending merits to other users. They LOVE receiving merits but they do not care enough to send merits.
I suggest every member who has spent less than 10% of their sMerits get a "DICK" badge under their username.

But jokes aside, I know this is not related to the topic but what truly intrigues me is that 4 legendary members got nuked/banned during the past three weeks. Who are these accounts for? Why would they get banned after becoming a legendary.

[suchmoon]

Where do you guys find all these stats? I'm still new but like to see stats of before and after the rule change.
I'm looking for the pre-change stats most of all of how many members in each rank.
verus
after change rank standing
SORRY for the off topic
Thanks

I don't have much info beyond recent bans but there are some threads in Meta that deal with ranks:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4850225.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037073.0
etc.

Don't worry. It's related to the topic. I'm also curious btw, I'm not sure if they gather all the data from bpip.org.

I'm scraping myself because I'm not aware of any other source for aggregated merit+ban data.

I suggest every member who has spent less than 10% of their sMerits get a "DICK" badge under their username.

That's sexist. It needs to be "CUNT" printed in TMAN's accent.

But jokes aside, I know this is not related to the topic but what truly intrigues me is that 4 legendary members got nuked/banned during the past three weeks. Who are these accounts for? Why would they get banned after becoming a legendary.

Plagiarism most likely:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=485194
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=369702
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=207818
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=255259

And 3 more have been banned since last update:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374823
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=61208
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=513294

[suchmoon]

Bump - updated for a full month.

[DdmrDdmr]

It would be interesting to have a breakdown of the bans per generic reason (i.e. plagiarism, etc.), although since that information is not reflected on the modlog I guess there is no way of deriving it. The OP serves as a warning to rule breakers, and the numbers are not small, affecting all ranks when one would expect that Sr. Members and above would know better. Shame that many will not even see this kind of post and reflect upon it.

[suchmoon]

It would be interesting to have a breakdown of the bans per generic reason (i.e. plagiarism, etc.), although since that information is not reflected on the modlog I guess there is no way of deriving it. The OP serves as a warning to rule breakers, and the numbers are not small, affecting all ranks when one would expect that Sr. Members and above would know better. Shame that many will not even see this kind of post and reflect upon it.

I'm sure plagiarism is the main reason. At least 3400 (of the 6700 total) have been banned after a plagiarism report. However:

 - I have no way of knowing if the report was the cause for the ban (likely though).
 - There is a good chance that many of the other 3300 bans also resulted from plagiarism.

[William8062]

Where do you guys find all these stats? I'm still new but like to see stats of before and after the rule change.
I'm looking for the pre-change stats most of all of how many members in each rank.
verus
after change rank standing
SORRY for the off topic
Thanks

I don't have much info beyond recent bans but there are some threads in Meta that deal with ranks:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4850225.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037073.0
etc.

Don't worry. It's related to the topic. I'm also curious btw, I'm not sure if they gather all the data from bpip.org.

I'm scraping myself because I'm not aware of any other source for aggregated merit+ban data.

I suggest every member who has spent less than 10% of their sMerits get a "DICK" badge under their username.

That's sexist. It needs to be "CUNT" printed in TMAN's accent.

But jokes aside, I know this is not related to the topic but what truly intrigues me is that 4 legendary members got nuked/banned during the past three weeks. Who are these accounts for? Why would they get banned after becoming a legendary.

Plagiarism most likely:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=485194
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=369702
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=207818
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=255259

And 3 more have been banned since last update:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374823
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=61208
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=513294

Hello suchmoon


I can't send you a private message since i am now a newbie.

But this is what i wanted to send you :

hello,

As a result of you report i got banned.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5042503.msg46930137#msg46930137


I am the User 207818 whose alias is guigui371

I was just wondering if you didnt do a mistake ?

I've been around for quote a while, not posting much and no spaming.
See the full list of my message for the past 12 months

i've have started a topic in Meta to seek the reason why of my ban.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5056278.msg47213355#msg47213355

would you be able to give more information about the reason behind your reporting.

I would have imagined that being a lengendary, and having some quality post and even a tutorial on my local board (french) about how to use VanityGen to generate personalised BTC addresses would not make me someone that get ban in a whip.


Have a good day

[Goodvalony]

16,224 sMerit is held by autobanned users (including the initial sMerit).

I believe those account are ban they are also merit abuser. Especially newbie and Jr. Members. Because a quality poster shouldn't ban.  Those are baned obviously they are connected with corruption somehow. So it's not bad corrupted and abuser got ban. Never mind few merit are decay, they didn't used their smerit on good post. Here is merit source to recover it. I think smerit limit should increase for merit source.

Not all banned accounts are merit abusers. Not all newbie  and Jr.Members abused Merits. it is clearly stated that members should abide by the rules and regulation of the forum in other earn Merits. yes, Every New member in the forum aims to get merited from posts or comments either by hard-work or by crook which leads to ban if discovered.
A friend got Banned for making inquires of his previous Banned account.
 the Forum administrator can derived a means to retrieve sMerits from accounts BEFORE BANNING. my opinion to reduce Merit lost.

[LoyceV]

the Forum administrator can derived a means to retrieve sMerits from accounts BEFORE BANNING. my opinion to reduce Merit lost.

Forum Admin can create as many Merit as he wants. Merit isn't scarce.

[suchmoon]

A friend got Banned for making inquires of his previous Banned account.

That sounds like grave injustice. What's your friend's name?

[JayJuanGee]

the Forum administrator can derived a means to retrieve sMerits from accounts BEFORE BANNING. my opinion to reduce Merit lost.

Forum Admin can create as many Merit as he wants. Merit isn't scarce.

Based on your characterization of the situation, LoyceV, I hate to observe that smerits seem to be based on a system that is resembling ethereum than bitcoin - which is that the forum system can print smerits as liked - so forum members  (or even members of the public) are never going to know how many smerits are going to be in existence - for example, 10 years from now?   


By the way, I agree with the overall point, that even though there can be aspects of decentralization in a forum like this,  with current systems, it would be quite imprudent (and perhaps irresponsible) for any owner to completely decentralize such a system.

[Iconiq5]

Nice statistics breakdown of merit source and abusers. Now before earning a merit, you've to clarify in all reasonable doubt that your post worth it. I believe someday I will earn more merits like you bosses

[stompix]

Wouldn't it be more like NSFP (plagiarist) or NSFAF (account farmers)?

I used to have a spreadsheet with the users I was reporting and I was closing on 3000 merits destroyed based on their rank but I gave up since ironically I had to do a lot of copy paste to keep track of copy-pasters.

16,224 sMerit is held by autobanned users (including the initial sMerit).

Would be interesting to find out how much sMerit they've sent before getting banned if possible...

I'll try to come up with some charts after a couple of months but we can already see where this is going. We will have all merited users banned eventually and only zero-merit users will be roaming the post-apocalyptic ruins of Bitcointalk.

I'll lurk in the shadows till very end, to witness the moment when Theymos bans Satoshi for plagiarism and then nukes his own account