Many things have changed with bitcoin since I first joined this forum in 2014. I have however been using the forum consistently with a spotless record.
Since 2014, I've been associated with a
bitcoin-accepting business, Piiko, a cryptocurrency accepting mobile topup service that is offering services to 137 countries.
More recently, I founded
BountyPortals. One of the early bounty management agencies, where automation was offered for the checking of tasks. Our platform's innovative service alleviated the need for users to post reports of their work and posts in the forum, this way easing the clutter the forum was taking. Bounty Hunters of bounty portals get their work on social media automatically tracked, as of other tasks we have reporting via forms so users don't need to post reports via each bounty's thread.
BountyPortals was utilizing anti-spam policies even before the forum enacted a rule for
"low effort tasks" posting. And still, in our bounty posts, a warning is included citing this rule to ensure participants aren't spamming the forum. Maintaining the forum's authenticity is a concern of the bountyportals team, so we're trying to do out part by reducing unnecessary bloat in our threads. Unlike some of our competitors, we've never attempted forcing users to posts about easily reported tasks via the forum to gain more visibility.
BE CAREFUL
The Bitcointalk forum is a great utility to me and my business. It's brought me in contact with excellent professionals in the space all over the world, and allowed me to expand my network and maintain a business. I respect this forum for all the utility and opportunity it has offered. I wish more people would have this opportunity to expand their knowledge in cryptocurrency and network through it if they are inspired enough to start a business. And that bring me to the reasons as to why I'm looking to become a merit source.
In my daily interactions with people that are using cryptocurrency, I've noticed that the merit system has been acting as a barrier of entry for new participants in this community. While the system is built on great principles, it has it's shortcomings. With more and more people taking to the forums to learn about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, bitcointalk is no longer as welcoming as it used to be. In this state, bitcointalk, the forum founded by the founder of bitcoin, has been losing its traction as a cryptocurrency community. Communities on non-crypto friendly social media and/or other websites with ulterior motives that might not be beneficial to bitcoin are heading the race in being more user friendly to crypto newbies.
Bitcointalk still attracts many users thanks to opportunities it offers for crypto users to earn tokens by providing their services to promotional campaigns. From my experience, this has been a large part of the forum's traffic from 2017 to now. What's unfortunate though, is that (in my view) the forum isn't doing a great job in picking out the best of those users, and providing them with opportunities to utilize the forum better. The merit system largely favored older members. Merit sources also tend to be older members, which might correlate to some favoritism towards older, more experienced users. In my view, somebody would have to look out for newcomers following the right steps towards becoming better contributors in this forum. And that's because even though so many new comers are continuously rushing in the forum, the merit system puts the majority of them in a deadlock. But they can't all be bad apples!
I personally try to give out my merit to new members that appear to be positive towards the forum, but my points are running out. Even if someone comes in this forum for earning extra income, I believe that there's still hope in them becoming valuable forum members and crypto believers.
Rewards systems in business administration have been proven to promote improvements in the environment of any space by growing the reach of an organic culture, by rewarding desired behaviors. Under this principle, I believe that even the newest members in this forum deserve attention and rewards for their good efforts. Small rewards are appreciated, and the potential for someone in this forum seeing his account rank up can be great motivation.
The forum sections members of my team and I are mostly spending our time on tend to be forgotten by merit sources. That's something I'd like to see changing and I'm willing to lead by example. In doing that, I'm hoping to promote good behavior in the sections of the forum I work with, hoping that good actors will also ascend to fully utilizing the forums' toolset and potential for networking opportunities.
