Attention Theymos: This is a sMerit holdup! Hands in the air!

[Onuohakk]

I used to think every smerit sources had a constant particular merit allocated to them evenly well correct me if that is wrong?  If your smerit is increased it will affect the balance of distribution no matter how many smerit you are giving if you want to use them up quickly you would still do that. Well the best is to work on your allocation of distribution

[1715651678]

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[Harkorede]

if you want to use them up quickly you would still do that. Well the best is to work on your allocation of distribution

Merits isn't and should never be about how quickly they get used, but rather how well they're used. Would you say If a post is obviously merit worthy it shouldn't be merited simply because you're going to run out allocation ?
Looking at The Pharmacist merit history for the past 120 days he has merited over 200 posts (I lost count at 200) and has only given a maximum of 3 merits to Just only 8 different posts and has only given out a max of 8 merits a single day, he'd mostly given out 1 or 2 merits to post which in my opinion connotes that he'd prefer to have it widely spread so as a worthy post would not have to miss out. How else do you think it could have been more wisely/fairly used ?

[Findingnemo]

I had seen on few occasions that other merit sources complaining that they are not getting enough good post to complete their merit quota of that period,even though theymos said them to send more amount of merits to the merit worthy post if you can't see much worthy post.

But @TP here asking for more merits to give the generous amount of merits to the HQ post,well deserved to be a merit source.

I am sure theymos will consider about this. He already did.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

in my opinion connotes that he'd prefer to have it widely spread so as a worthy post would have to miss out.

I'd love to be able to give out 5-8 merits to some exceptional posts (but I would reserve such a large grant to ranks lower than Hero), but previously there was no way I could do this and still have enough sMerits left over to merit all the other good posts I see.

Thank you for checking my meriting history for the last 120 days.  I haven't even been a merit source for that long--I think it was at the end or middle of september when Theymos added that batch of 36 new sources.  I've been trying to spread out merits to deserving posts (and NOT just the really good posters on Meta who don't need them to rank up) but always ran out of sMerits even when I became a merit source.  That's why I had to ask Theymos for this favor, which I'm grateful for, as well as for his reply here.  I may disagree with some of his administrating tactics, but he's no dummy and I've seen worse administrators. 

I'm on the hunt now mainly in Economics/Speculation, Meta, and Reputation, though occasionally I stray far from my usual sections.  Yes, I definitely do have a lot of sections blocked, but that's because there are only so many hours in the day to read and write on bitcointalk, and I just find some sections too spam-infested to even bother with.  I would be tickled pink to be able to merit a good post by a Newbie in Bitcoin Discussion, but trying to find one of those is incredibly difficult just by searching and reading through posts--that's why there needs to be some sort of reporting mechanism.  The individual threads don't seem to be effective.

I will say this again:  ***If you're a lower-ranked member and think you or someone else has made or found a post that's gone unmerited, drop me a PM and I'll take a look.***  I've made the offer in other threads, but got zero takers.  In the PM, just write something like "Merit?" and then a link to the post.  I'll either merit it or I won't, but you can be guaranteed I'll look at the PM, the post, and most likely the member's post history as well.

[bones261]

I'd love to be able to give out 5-8 merits to some exceptional posts (but I would reserve such a large grant to ranks lower than Hero), but previously there was no way I could do this and still have enough sMerits left over to merit all the other good posts I see.

Thank you for checking my meriting history for the last 120 days.  I haven't even been a merit source for that long--I think it was at the end or middle of september when Theymos added that batch of 36 new sources.  I've been trying to spread out merits to deserving posts (and NOT just the really good posters on Meta who don't need them to rank up) but always ran out of sMerits even when I became a merit source.  That's why I had to ask Theymos for this favor, which I'm grateful for, as well as for his reply here.  I may disagree with some of his administrating tactics, but he's no dummy and I've seen worse administrators. 

I'm on the hunt now mainly in Economics/Speculation, Meta, and Reputation, though occasionally I stray far from my usual sections.  Yes, I definitely do have a lot of sections blocked, but that's because there are only so many hours in the day to read and write on bitcointalk, and I just find some sections too spam-infested to even bother with.  I would be tickled pink to be able to merit a good post by a Newbie in Bitcoin Discussion, but trying to find one of those is incredibly difficult just by searching and reading through posts--that's why there needs to be some sort of reporting mechanism.  The individual threads don't seem to be effective.

I will say this again:  ***If you're a lower-ranked member and think you or someone else has made or found a post that's gone unmerited, drop me a PM and I'll take a look.***  I've made the offer in other threads, but got zero takers.  In the PM, just write something like "Merit?" and then a link to the post.  I'll either merit it or I won't, but you can be guaranteed I'll look at the PM, the post, and most likely the member's post history as well.

  If you are looking for newbies to merit, the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board as well as the Bitcoin Technical Boards are a good place to start. Some newbies come up with some really good questions and answers.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Merit Sources have a personal assigned sMerit quota, which differs from one source to another (the smaller Merit Sources may have a 30 day quota in the lower two digits, whilst the top Merit Sources may have a quota near 1K). They are given all their allocated sMerit on the first day they are appointed/upgraded, and have 30 days to award it in (unawarded sMerit is "lost").

The sMerit quota is replenished exactly 30 days after every single spent sMerit, and mirrors the last 30 day spending behaviour. So say a Merit Source has a total allocated quota of 50 sMerits per 30 days, and awards 10 sMerits on the first day he is appointed a Merit Source, 20 on the second, none on the third and 30 on the fourth. He will then (in this example) be out of merit for the following 26 days.
Exactly 30 days(*) after he sent his first 10 sMerits, his balance will be replenished with 10 additional sMerits, the following day he will see an additional 20 sMerits on his balance, the following day will not have an increase, and on the day after that he’ll receive another 30 sMerits.

(*) It’s a bit more complicated, since it really considers exactly 30 days. Down to the minute and second (I believe).

[The Sceptical Chymist]

If you are looking for newbies to merit, the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board as well as the Bitcoin Technical Boards are a good place to start. Some newbies come up with some really good questions and answers.

I don't doubt you at all.  The problem is that I can almost guarantee that most answers would be over my head, technically.  I might be able to tell whether a post is a shitpost or not, but I don't trust my technical knowledge enough to know a good answer from a bad one.  Still, I'll keep that in mind.  

This has been mentioned before, but remind me:  Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?  That's a section I have on ignore, but not because of the quality of posts.  It's because of my own ignorance.  All of my education has been in fields having little to do with computer science, and when I see people incorporating a lot of tech jargon in their posts, my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.  

I'll keep an open mind on this one and un-ignore that section for the time being.

Edit:

I don't think so. Plus ETFbitcoin became a merit source just now and he's hanging out there a lot.

Alright, that's reassuring.  I'm still going to un-ignore the tech sections for now and see if I can do a little reading and hunting. 

You would think that Bitcoin Discussion would be the place where most merit-worthy posts get made, since this is Bitcointalk, but it's the exact opposite.  Yet it makes sense that the technical sections would be places where the shitposters don't go, because they can't get away with having their shitposts hidden in an ocean of similar vacuous nonsense, nor can they simply tap out a generic statement about how bitcoin has a bright future and is increasing day by day and expect it to fit in with the members who really know what they're talking about.

[bones261]

If you are looking for newbies to merit, the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board as well as the Bitcoin Technical Boards are a good place to start. Some newbies come up with some really good questions and answers.

I don't doubt you at all.  The problem is that I can almost guarantee that most answers would be over my head, technically.  I might be able to tell whether a post is a shitpost or not, but I don't trust my technical knowledge enough to know a good answer from a bad one.  Still, I'll keep that in mind.  

This has been mentioned before, but remind me:  Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?  That's a section I have on ignore, but not because of the quality of posts.  It's because of my own ignorance.  All of my education has been in fields having little to do with computer science, and when I see people incorporating a lot of tech jargon in their posts, my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.  

I'll keep an open mind on this one and un-ignore that section for the time being.

  Many of the answers are over by head too, TBH. However, if someone is spouting an error, it's pretty common for others to quickly point it out. Also, the questions and answers sometimes inspire me to go out and do my own research. I don't believe that the two boards are particularly under-merited. However, if you ever grow weary of trying to hunt out newbie posts by sifting through a great deal of muck, there is much low-hanging fruit to be picked in those two boards.

[suchmoon]

Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?

I don't think so. Plus ETFbitcoin became a merit source just now and he's hanging out there a lot.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?

According to DdmrDdmr's data Development & Technical Discussion has fewer overall merits than many other boards (~7k in 10 months, compared to 12k for Bitcoin Discussion, 27k for Meta, and 22k for Economics). However, it has the highest merit-to-post ratio at 0.566, which is around 2x Meta, 10x Economics and 20x Bitcoin Discussion. So although posts there are generally the highest merited of anywhere on the forum, I still think there are some posts that are under-merited for how good they are.

However, if someone is spouting an error, it's pretty common for others to quickly point it out. Also, the questions and answers sometimes inspire me to go out and do my own research.

Definitely agree here. I very rarely comment in Technical Discussion, but I read it a lot. Some of the content, particularly from users like gmaxwell and Coding Enthusiast, are way above my level of knowledge, but I figure if you never read things you don't understand/challenge you, then you'll never learn more, and learning more about the technical side of bitcoin is something that I think is good for everyone in this space.

I would be tickled pink to be able to merit a good post by a Newbie in Bitcoin Discussion, but trying to find one of those is incredibly difficult just by searching and reading through posts--that's why there needs to be some sort of reporting mechanism.

I was thrilled to find one just yesterday (here if you are interested). It reminded me the initial reason I started trawling these threads was in search of good posts and not just to mass report spammers, which unfortunately seems to be what the majority of my time in that board is spent doing.

[ABCbits]

This has been mentioned before, but remind me:  Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?

Used to be, but recently it's not anymore.

That's a section I have on ignore, but not because of the quality of posts.  It's because of my own ignorance.  All of my education has been in fields having little to do with computer science, and when I see people incorporating a lot of tech jargon in their posts, my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.  

You can start by only merit question/answer that you can understand, i also use this method

You would think that Bitcoin Discussion would be the place where most merit-worthy posts get made, since this is Bitcointalk, but it's the exact opposite.  Yet it makes sense that the technical sections would be places where the shitposters don't go, because they can't get away with having their shitposts hidden in an ocean of similar vacuous nonsense, nor can they simply tap out a generic statement about how bitcoin has a bright future and is increasing day by day and expect it to fit in with the members who really know what they're talking about.

Besides, i read all thread on those section (since usually there's only 3-10 bumped thread everyday) & i report all recent spam/plagiarism, so there's no way shitpost exist on recent threads.

Still, there's few spammer who throw jargon (such as using SHA256 to encrypt data) and think no one would notice

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I was thrilled to find one just yesterday (here if you are interested).

Did you pat that motherfucker down for explosives?  That post was written on a different website, albeit by a person with the same user name.  I don't even know if that's considered plagiarism, but the post I linked to was obviously written before the one you merited and no source was given.

Is the Bitcoin Development & Technical Board a section that tends to be under-merited?

According to DdmrDdmr's data Development & Technical Discussion has fewer overall merits than many other boards (~7k in 10 months, compared to 12k for Bitcoin Discussion, 27k for Meta, and 22k for Economics). However, it has the highest merit-to-post ratio at 0.566, which is around 2x Meta, 10x Economics and 20x Bitcoin Discussion. So although posts there are generally the highest merited of anywhere on the forum, I still think there are some posts that are under-merited for how good they are.

That is fantastic data, and I'm glad you summarized and posted it here, because apparently I missed it.  I'm actually surprised that many merits are given out in Bitcoin Discussion, and I'm wondering how many of them are people genuinely liking other members' posts as opposed to merit-swapping.

Besides, i read all thread on those section (since usually there's only 3-10 bumped thread everyday) & i report all recent spam/plagiarism, so there's no way shitpost exist on recent threads.

Good, glad to know you've got it covered.  Very glad you got made a merit source, too.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Did you pat that motherfucker down for explosives?

Oh, god damn it. Just when I thought I had found a genuinely good newbie...

I did review his post history, and found another post by him on Technical Discussion that was quite good, and so thought he deserved a merit. He also didn't seem like a shitposter. I would have given him a pass on the post you linked, since the usernames are the same, but on closer inspection this post is a direct lift from here.

Reported for a ban. Sigh.


Edit: Banned

[suchmoon]

Oh, god damn it. Just when I thought I had found a genuinely good newbie...
[...]
Reported for a ban. Sigh.

I had a genuine LOL about this. Sorry.

I've done this numerous times, particularly in Off Topic and BD - see a non-shitty post, sounds too good to be true, let's google around - end up reporting the whole farm. That's a big reason why I'm so salty when someone starts harping about mysteriously unmerited great posters hiding somewhere... I really can't see that happening to any appreciable extent when there's 100+ sources looking for them.

[Saint-loup]

The number of merits sent per month has declined to 15k

Where we can see this figure please?

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

15234 merit was sent in the last 30 days.

The bump (or more like re-balancing) seems to be having an effect - it was ~14900-ish just a few hours ago.

You get a fast response to PM's if it's a genuine thing.

It's just stupid to make threads about this sort of trivial stuff. I get that he's worried that theymos wouldn't read the PM's but theymos normally does. The PM's theymos doesn't respond to see the spammers that contribute nothing to the forum, the pharmacist would be listened to by theymos (the first time I pmd theymos, I thought it'd tske ages for him to reply, in truth it was probably between 5 minutes and half an hour - my reply took longer than his)...

Yeah but then we wouldn't know who's to thank (or to blame) for the merit source changes

Thank you suchmoon

[o_e_l_e_o]

I had a genuine LOL about this. Sorry.

Glad my misery amuses you.

That'll teach me to try and do something nice. Off to report 100 shitposters in a fit of rage to let off steam.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Reported for a ban. Sigh.

That's OK, because hopefully you'll know now that when you see a new account like that making an excellent post, always check for copy/pasting, text-spinning, or translation plagiarism.  You wasted some merits but a greater good came from it--hopefully he'll get banned and you'll be as chary as I am when meriting noobs.  It's sad that we have to be this way, but we do.  

That'll teach me to try and do something nice. Off to report 100 shitposters in a fit of rage to let off steam.

Everyone makes mistakes, doc.

[Harkorede]

EDIT:
in my opinion connotes that he'd prefer to have it widely spread so as a worthy post would NOT have to miss out.

I'd love to be able to give out 5-8 merits to some exceptional posts (but I would reserve such a large grant to ranks lower than Hero), but previously there was no way I could do this and still have enough sMerits left over to merit all the other good posts I see.

The exact point I was trying to explain. I missed out "NOT", which gave the post a different meaning.

I've made the offer in other threads, but got zero takers.  In the PM, just write something like "Merit?" and then a link to the post.  I'll either merit it or I won't, but you can be guaranteed I'll look at the PM, the post, and most likely the member's post history as well.

I have seen LoyceV's and one other thread with such offers, but it is rather too bad there have been next no application on those threads, at least the good side is that there have been a reduced threads of users ranting about not getting merits.

[khaled0111]

...
I've done this numerous times, particularly in Off Topic and BD - see a non-shitty post, sounds too good to be true, let's google around - end up reporting the whole farm.
...

In fact, this is a good approach.
Instead of looking for shitposts and reporting them, look for good posts (too good to be true). Shitposters changed their "modus operandi" because it is not working any more because of the merit system and the increasing number of reporters.

They are too smart in fact, one of their tactics is to use alts, one asks a question and the other answers with a pre-made answer. The problem is that you know what they are doing but it is hard to prove it.

[jackg]

@the pharmacist and o_e_l_e_o. In reference to your post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093301.msg49087575#msg49087575.

Technical boards are quite under merited because it's normally newbies coming along and saying they have an issue with their client software. These newbies are either one hit wonders or people who are really legendaries here or at least of a high rank who don't want to admit they can't fathem the software... Thus a lot of people on those boards (not just me) barely scrape any merit while those like suchmoon and vod who stay quite a lot on meta along with you both and jet Cash seem to rake in the merits.

Of course it's fine for the likes of me because I don't actually need any merit (unless a new rank gets made) but someone like tryninja or bob could do with a showering of merits for their work. (I'm trying not to be hypocritical but I'm also not very good at it myself).