Re: LoyceV vs theymos (and get your own Merit graph: up to 20 users per graph)

[fillippone]

I have to admit I am impressed myself.
But rest assured I put A LOT of effort in what I did in my past months in the forum.
No need to bring up my infamous merit thread here (I am not even bothering to link it here, as you probably know what I am referring about), but rest assured I actively tried to raise the quality of my threads lately (the futures one, or the stock to flow on- again, no link here). Why? Again, bitcoin is difficult and I want to learn a lot and there is no better way to learn something than trying to explain it.
 
Of course being around a lot in the forum and hanging a on the WO thread helped a little bit, but I think that numbers ("There are lies, damned lies and statistics" as ddmrddmr likes to remember us) can demonstrate, I got the vast majority of merits outside WO posts or generally low efforts (read: memes/one liners/jokes posts). Not I am disowning those posts: I am an human and I like also to laugh a little bit after the hard work.
So yes: ultimately I can say this flippening is due to hard work, but I don't think I deserve to be a case study.

 

[mikeywith]

but I don't think I deserve to be a case study.

Praise yourself dude, most members struggle to earn 100 merit, earning more than a thousand of them in such a short period of time is one hell of an achievement if you ask me, nobody can deny the efforts put into such a journey, i know exactly how it feels when you take this forum very seriously and spend time and effort to provide quality content, so in my honest opinion you do deserve to be studied at length.

[Welsh]

@ LoyceV I'd like to compare those that are in the Chipmixer campaign with over 1500 merits total:

First graph:
84521
2033515
2143453
579628
487418
465017
85033
787736
1582324
359716

2nd graph:
1188543
140827
234771

(Its a shame there's more than 10 users so they don't fit on one graph)

All reasons mentioned by you are Loycev make a lot of sense, but based on my personal experience it's mostly "where" you post that makes the big difference, if i take myself as an example

I would say that where you post, and at what times matters, but I wouldn't say its the biggest cause. To be able to find a cause we would likely have to do a case study of over a thousand users. and ideally more  to have any sort of accuracy. A interesting statistic to cough up would be to determine how many merits per post since the introduction of the merit system users get. This would be able to help determine whether its a matter of activity versus where you post.

For example, I've pretty much always posted in the same sections since the merit introduction, but I haven't always been actively posting. Active on the forum yeah, but not posting. You can probably check this via the chipmixer campaign spreadsheet where I would have 0 posts some weeks. This is a mixture of reasons, but getting used to moderating, and trying to improve the way I moderate definitely had an impact. Some of you may have noticed that my public activity has been much greater recently, and as a result I've seen quite a growth in my merits. I'm sure LoyceV or someone else would be able to pull up a graph showing how I've stagnated for a little while, and having exponential growth when coming active again.

I think its become quite obvious that a lot of users are bruteforcing the merit gain, and although honestly I think their posts are decent enough to gain merit a statistic showing how many merits per post made would likely be a better indication of someone's overall quality. Of course, this can be inaccurate as well as there's no standards for awarding merit.

These are my observations (which may be inaccurate, and just personal opinion); Certain parts of the forum yield a much greater chance of merit not because of activity or the topic subject, but because there's almost a little mini community within Bitcointalk in certain sections. The collectible section, and the wall observer thread in my opinion are these little mini communities where it seems there's a lot of "back scratching". Although, I'd like to make it clear I'm not implying that the back scratching is unjust or wrong I've just made the observation that it's definitely easier to earn merit in these mini communities when considering the post quality. These are users that are not shitposting either, and in fact many of the users there are very good posters.

[mikeywith]

I would say that where you post, and at what times matters, but I wouldn't say its the biggest cause.

After giving it a second thought, and after having checked my topic which I started 8 months ago, I found out that I did earn pretty much the same merit every 4 months or so, but I have also been a little bit more active in the last 8 months, my posts quality never changed, but where I mainly post changed after the first 4 months.


While I still earned almost the same merit being in boards where earning merit is more difficult, it's mainly due to being more active than before, while there is no guarantee that I would have earned more merit being active in boards where I could likely get more merit, I think more studies as you proposed would really give us a more accurate view.

[LoyceV]

Since tinypic.com has ceased operations, I've created a new graph for the OP. And it was time to change the title.
I made another small improvement:

NEW: To make the legend in the graph easier to read, I'll sort them by earned Merit.

@ LoyceV I'd like to compare those that are in the Chipmixer campaign with over 1500 merits total:

First graph:
84521
2033515
2143453
579628
487418
465017
85033
787736
1582324
359716
1188543
140827
234771

I feel left out

(Its a shame there's more than 10 users so they don't fit on one graph)

Sorry for the delay, this required a bit more time: I've increased the maximum to 20. Just prepare for a messy graph. Adjusting the table was much more work than expected, it's kinda big for the spreadsheet.
Here you go:

I'm sure LoyceV or someone else would be able to pull up a graph showing how I've stagnated for a little while, and having exponential growth when coming active again.

See above

I think its become quite obvious that a lot of users are bruteforcing the merit gain, and although honestly I think their posts are decent enough to gain merit a statistic showing how many merits per post made would likely be a better indication of someone's overall quality.

I made a topic for that too: Percentage of Merit received on old posts, deleted posts, and average per post
From what I've seen, anything less than 0.02 Merit per post is a very bad sign.
You could argue I'm bruteforcing my Merit too: there are users who earn much more per post, and if I would post 10 times less, I would earn much less Merit too. Therefore, I think bruteforcing Merit is only a problem when users are posting hundreds of low-quality posts just hoping to earn a single Merit. But then the problem isn't the bruteforcing, the problem is they're borderline spammers.

These are my observations (which may be inaccurate, and just personal opinion); Certain parts of the forum yield a much greater chance of merit not because of activity or the topic subject, but because there's almost a little mini community within Bitcointalk in certain sections. The collectible section, and the wall observer thread in my opinion are these little mini communities where it seems there's a lot of "back scratching". Although, I'd like to make it clear I'm not implying that the back scratching is unjust or wrong I've just made the observation that it's definitely easier to earn merit in these mini communities when considering the post quality. These are users that are not shitposting either, and in fact many of the users there are very good posters.

I think you forgot the blue word, am I right?
I've noticed this too, but since Merit was introduced to stop spammers from ranking up many accounts, and the users in WO or Collectibles aren't the problem there and don't spam other sections either, I don't think it's bad at all.

[Welsh]

I feel left out

We can't have you embarrassing us now can we? Nah, honest mistake. Somehow missed you.

Yeah, I'll fix the "not" bit. I guess I must have been really tired when I wrote this! I think largely the merit system has been effective, but there are definitely users posting content which honestly isn't that useful, but still know that it will get merit.

Anyway, what's interesting to me on that graph is; as predicted many of its users are having very sharp gains in merit received, which also indicates that they are either posting very good quality or posting a lot. I might take a look at the amount of posts per week on the Chipmixer spreadsheet, and see if we can get interesting observations from that when used in conjunction with this data.

Unfortunately, the recent art contest merit dump is going to hit the merit received per post all out of whack for certain users. That could be something else to look into. How many users gained a lot of >20 merit in the art contest, but received 0 before that.

Thanks for the graph!

[fillippone]

I think its become quite obvious that a lot of users are bruteforcing the merit gain, and although honestly I think their posts are decent enough to gain merit a statistic showing how many merits per post made would likely be a better indication of someone's overall quality. Of course, this can be inaccurate as well as there's no standards for awarding merit.

These are my observations (which may be inaccurate, and just personal opinion); Certain parts of the forum yield a much greater chance of merit not because of activity or the topic subject, but because there's almost a little mini community within Bitcointalk in certain sections. The collectible section, and the wall observer thread in my opinion are these little mini communities where it seems there's a lot of "back scratching". Although, I'd like to make it clear I'm not implying that the back scratching is unjust or wrong I've just made the observation that it's definitely easier to earn merit in these mini communities when considering the post quality. These are users that are not shitposting either, and in fact many of the users there are very good posters.

I don't know if you are referring to me, but I think I could fit into that category.
First of all I would state that I am writing it for the sake of confrontation and exchange of ideas: I am now way offended/annoyed/irritated by your comments.

I have said how I feel about my merit history in a post a few row above.
I belong to one of those communities, WO thread namely (the hat might be an hint of that), but (it's a feeling, not based on numbers, even though it would be easily checkable) i am pretty sure that I gained the vast majority of those merits outside the WO.
So yes, I understand what you are saying, but "bruteforcing" seems quite a "strong" statement, considering you recognised the quality of post are "decent enough".

I feel left out

I think my graph would nicely fit in the void between the two groups! 

[Welsh]

I don't know if you are referring to me, but I think I could fit into that category.
First of all I would state that I am writing it for the sake of confrontation and exchange of ideas: I am now way offended/annoyed/irritated by your comments.

Nah, I wasn't referring to you. I'm not even that familiar with your merit history honestly, but I have seen you starting to adventure out in other sections of the forum recently. I don't tend to spend a lot of time in the WO thread. Its a little bit too wild for me.  Let me try, and make it clearer. I think a lot of low quality replies get merited in the WO thread that otherwise wouldn't be merited in other sections. However, the bruteforcing I'm referring to is the users that are creating a load of threads, because they've identified that they get more merit from a individual thread rather than contributing to others. These posts are the ones which I consider decent enough in terms of quality, but its fairly obvious that these posts can be condensed into a singular thread. Its not a criticism per say, its more of a observation that has been made by myself. Although, I think there's a few users here that have made similar observations.  Everyone knows that posts in Meta also get a lot of exposure, and a lot of merit for example. So, my observations aren't criticisms its just identifying that what Mikey said earlier in the thread is definitely true to some extent. It does help to post in certain sections of the forum. Although, I also wanted to bring up that its a combination of things such as activity of the user, and various other things.

[mikeywith]

Kindly requesting.

Code:

2143453 
2033515

Just a refresh to this

@LoyceV if you don't mind I would like to request mikeywith vs 1miau
Thanks for the (free) graph.
Still a few Merits ahead  

It seems like I have been beating 1miau for a while now, nearly a 100 merit ahead (enough room for me to relax  ). Just kidding of course, beating your a** is not my primary goal despite the fact that I actually do enjoy it.

[LoyceV]

Code:

2143453 
2033515

Here you go:

[Baofeng]

Me and my homies in the Pilipinas thread  

Code:

984384 
1605387 
888099 
1239188 
1179651 
821689
1164368

[1miau]

Just a refresh to this

@LoyceV if you don't mind I would like to request mikeywith vs 1miau
Thanks for the (free) graph.
Still a few Merits ahead  

It seems like I have been beating 1miau for a while now, nearly a 100 merit ahead (enough room for me to relax  ). Just kidding of course, beating your a** is not my primary goal despite the fact that I actually do enjoy it.

Well, it seems.  
Don't relax too much, "nearly 100 Merit" ist not much (or at least it's not much left from these 100 Merit anymore).  

But we lost fillippone, he earned way too much Merit since our last update. ^^

[fillippone]

But we lost fillippone, he earned way too much Merit since our last update. ^^

Battling with another user distract you from the real target of merit system: writing good posts!

Just kidding:it’ because of my merit bracelet

[dragonvslinux]

Code:

1170966
1094569

If it'd be possible to have the time-frame to include a few months in the future, that would be great. Any trendlines appreciated  
I realise you probably referenced this in 1 of the last 8 pages, but is this for total merit or earned merit? Guess I'll find out though 

[LoyceV]

Me and my homies in the Pilipinas thread  

Code:

984384 
1605387 
888099 
1239188 
1179651 
821689
1164368

Here you go:

Don't relax too much, "nearly 100 Merit" ist not much

All you need for 100 Merit is one good post

Code:

1170966
1094569

And here you go too:

If it'd be possible to have the time-frame to include a few months in the future, that would be great. Any trendlines appreciated  

Sure, what can go wrong

I realise you probably referenced this in 1 of the last 8 pages, but is this for total merit or earned merit? Guess I'll find out though  

It's only earned Merit, that's why all graphs start at 0.

[dragonvslinux]

Sure, what can go wrong

I realise you probably referenced this in 1 of the last 8 pages, but is this for total merit or earned merit? Guess I'll find out though  

It's only earned Merit, that's why all graphs start at 0.

Cheers, nice trend-lines by the way, that's what I was looking for 

[dragonvslinux]

I was curious to see how this looked  

Code:

1235090 2004043 1137750 1001712 2649358 2550169 1280964 2449551 1166480 516296 978945 974724 1016829 1285294 1136961 1938519 366233 1025965 856233 1170966

As well as these  

Code:

364237 905442 2483286 1099980 1108331 1107844 806196 182284 1711582 1117066 511692 129764 950662 1808705 374628 1903411 990983 1795724 95019 822485

And those  

Code:

904524 1304130 1237156 154539 557989 975910 1580039 803757 509189 846936 1762404 1894120 408367 225292 1164368 1094195 765632 844914 1283017 878630

Thanks in advance

Reference.

[LoyceV]

Code:

1235090 2004043 1137750 1001712 2649358 2550169 1280964 2449551 1166480 516296 978945 974724 1016829 1285294 1136961 1938519 366233 1025965 856233 1170966

Code:

364237 905442 2483286 1099980 1108331 1107844 806196 182284 1711582 1117066 511692 129764 950662 1808705 374628 1903411 990983 1795724 95019 822485

Code:

904524 1304130 1237156 154539 557989 975910 1580039 803757 509189 846936 1762404 1894120 408367 225292 1164368 1094195 765632 844914 1283017 878630

My spreadsheet had a hard time making this

[fillippone]

Nice graph.
A few fast earner here: some streak were really impressive.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Nice graph.
A few fast earner here: some streak were really impressive.

Mate, I don’t think anybody has stacked Merit at your rate over the last 18 months. You must be in the top 3-4 in that time period.