To clarify: I didn’t mean that the forum should stablish a division and those ranks should appear on the profile, or as a badge or whatever.
Even though the merit distribution is, of course, related to good posting behaviour, I do think that there are some other several factors included. For instance, it has been mentioned that the merit data analysis are the most rewarded threads. Of course, they are awesome, and I totally agree with those ones being rewarded, but I don't think there are actually a single way of determining how a poster is good or bad. Obviously, a spammer is pretty easy to detect, but there are amazing posters on other sections that probably we are not aware of and whose posting behaviour can be amazing as well.
Merits are a good way to distinguish some good from bad users, but this is not the only way, for, as I said, the distribution can be based on what is "trendy". Let's come back a little an analyze some stats by DdmrDdmr, in order to determinate which boards are actually the most merited:
4. Merit per Post RatioWith the previous data, we can derive the average merit per post for all forum Subsections. This may be useful to compare how easy/difficult it is to get merited in one section vs another.
The ratio is constructed simply by dividing the total number of posts by the total sMerits awarded to posts in the section for a given period of time (6 month; last month).
Now obviously this is not the probability of getting merit on a given post or section (as it mixed all sorts of posts with no filter), but from a macro perspective, it could allow us to compare sections based on this indicator.
For example, the Spanish Local ratio is now of 0,033, while the Italian is 0,065 and the Portuguese 0,036. This means that both the Spanish board and the Portuguese board have the same ratio of merit per post, while the Italian is nearly double. Looking further at the data on the table, the Spanish board made nearly twice as many posts as the Italian last month, and got nearly the same amount of merit (thus the ratio is half of the Italian board). Italian Posting and Portuguese are alike though in volume, but ratio is quite different between them.
This has to be taken with care, since it does not account for quality of the posts, how many are spam, etc. It is at least a curious exercise to do.
For instance, Serious Discussion is the most merited board per post. That means that conversations regarding free topics, personal opinions and some debates are getting more merits. Of course, we might include the fact that in the Serious Discussion board newbies are unable to participate -which can be pretty unfair if your idea is implemented.
Now, If we pay attention, we see that Meta follows the Serious Discussion when merit speaking. I am not surprised of that at all, for in here some good conversations about the forum are having a place. But, do you think that, in a Bitcoin-related forum, those two boards should be the most merited? Meaning: are the conversations having a place in this two even related to Bitcoin itself??
What I am trying to mean is that a good user cannot be really measured because of the merit/post count ratio. If you are in a signature, probably you will post far more, if you are engaging a technical discussion, probably the same will happen: lots of posts and no such relation between merit and post.
So, there are more factors, from my perspective, than merits to determine which one is a great user and which one is not. By establishing this banner you propose, we only will be able of seeing which one has more merits per activity, but it isn't related to the "amazinest" of the poster at all.
(Notice that English is not my first language and I suffered a lot trying to explain myself jajaj
).
