While your intent seems constructive, the application of this would be a logistical and ideological nightmare. One thing I have learned over the decades of being on the internet is some times the most important things people need to hear are often the most unpopular. Creating a system to allow people to hide unpopular information would be a massive problem. I will let you fill in the blanks with hypotheticals. I am sure the
trust system debacle serves as a good example of how that might go...
I 100% agree with you there. However I consider the current system to be already doing this to a large degree. This system would I hope prevent this and reverse this completely. I am only trying to propose an entirely fair and objective meritocracy as far as we can create it.
Would not the thrashing out of the criteria for a valuable post inhibit unpopular and popular being relevant . I mean surely if we drill down enough on the criteria - then there s no longer room for subjectivity and something either does add new relevant factual information or highly probable correct information in light of presented corroborating supporting observable events or not. I mean if you drill down enough with criteria a post will either be a net positive logical contribution toward finding the optimal solution or truth or not.
We need to drill down and down until only objective analysis of posts all measured to the same criteria is used to generate a score. Actually as score will then be subjective so perhaps we need to make it either merit worthy or not merit worthy that will perhaps be easier. So no score just yes positive or not positive according to the exhaustive criteria we can come up with as a community. Merit worthy or not merit worthy. Valuable according to the criteria or not valuable.
In highly complex discussions with many layers and each layer having multiple factors of influence so that there is no correct answer perhaps that we can discern easily (perhaps things like broad topics on economics/politics etc) then still there can be logic and reason separated from groundless opinion and "ideas" that are popular or unpopular. The detail is the important thing.
I certainly would never want a system that prevents "unpopular" ideas being silenced because quite often those are the most sensible, reasonable and logical ideas promoting fairness and a real meritocracy.
Now of course you will create situations were some merit sources believe the criteria is met and other will not feel the criteria is met. So eventually you will need to only have merit sources that can clearly and logically present a case for merit or non merit. Gradually over time the merit sources themselves will be drilled down until you have a group of persons that are well suited to analysing posts and picking them apart for real objective value or filler that sounds like it has value. To merit posts you of course need persons that are capable of demonstrating clearly why they meet the criteria for a valuable post if challenged.
You could have a variation on this with merit sources being able to actually remove merit ( 1 vote per post) they feel does not meet the objective criteria.
I'm sure most merit sources will stick to the criteria or else just replace with people that will stick to the criteria.
There can be small margins of error where some of the criteria is met but for posts where none of the criteria are met then they get a couple of chances making such an error and then they are replaced with somebody else who is able to match posts to the criteria consistently.
Ctrl+F "Merited by"
This is what I do, especially in threads with lots of replies, like 20+ replies.
The problem with sorting by merited is that Bitcointalk doesn't work like Reddit for example, where you can sort by upvotes and understand the discussion. In Reddit there many parallel discussions on the same topic, and those are sorted by upvotes
In Bitcointalk the discussion usually goes in a linear chronological order of the posts, so you cannot just swift a merited post to the top, it will break the chronological order and may not make sense.
This could be the case so this is why you would jump to the post with the next valuable post button and you can look for the context. However since it should be largely on topic and relevant to the OP and also they usually quote what they are responding too then it should still work well.
There will be times when reading the entire thread is more useful though. However that should mean there are lots of valid points being made frequently. I mean imagine there are zero valuable posts at all after the op until page 4 then skipping to it immediately should not result in you not having a clue what the post is about because the posts are supposed to really be relevant to the OP and not go meandering off topic. However, yes if you did not understand why this post has value in the context of the OP then you will need to trace back. I do not think this would happen too often if the criteria is held too strictly.
