A STORY OF A SELF-MADE SENIOR MEMBER
Welcome all to my topic,
Today, I will tell you my second story and give you some advice (if you not need them, just skip) for your later time spent in the forum.
More than one year ago, I felt like I will never hit the Full Member finish line, but I actually hit that line on December 13, 2018, or even some days sooner, I don't remember.
I felt happily when I hit that line. After that, I move my next finish line to Senior Member rank, and felt that journey will take around one more year.
Amazingly when after around 3 months (a little bit more than 3 months later), I hit the line.
Congratulations myself to become a new self-made Senior Member.
It is important to take a note here, do you see the image below?
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FYQfq8S8.png&t=665&c=xaXipNNSaDlZ1g)
My activity count is 406, and my merit points is 258.
With the old ranking system, to hit Senior Memer line, you should have 250 activity count.
So, the ratio between my current activity count / the required activity count of old ranking system for Sr. member is:
~ 1.6, it means that to hit the same line (Sr. member) I need to spend around 60 percent more time.
Personally, it's not too hard, not too long. It's acceptable, I thought.
![Roll Eyes](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif)
To be honest with you all, I did not imagine that I could be promoted to a Senior Member within only three months.
It is a big, very big shocking journey for myself.
Now, my story stopped there, and I will start giving you some advice if you want to move up with merit challenge.
To promote with merit system and new rank requirements, you should do following things.
(1) Never begging for meritsReasons:- Doing this will highly result in Red Trust, it is just the matter of time. Sooner or later, if you keep begging for merits, you will get Red Trust, certainly.
- Doing this don't help you to improve yourself. In long-term journey in the forum, it's not good for you, generally.
(2) Spending most of your time to read and learnOnly start composing your posts when you have something extremely constructive to discussions, topics.
Reasons:- You are noobs, newbies (lack of knowledge, and experience), so what you think are constructive most likely unconstructive in reality.
- When you actually have reasons to start composing your posts, after finishing it, please re-read again and again to check that your posts are good in grammar, vocabularies, and good enough to express most of your ideas. I wrote most of your ideas because sometimes it is difficult for non-native English speakers to write down and completely express ideas by words. It's a challenge for non-native English speakers, who don't have English as their mother tongue.
(3) Never copy and paste without links to sources, or without quotesReasons:- It is plagiarism, and punishments on plagiarism is kind of strictest ones in the forum.
Plagiarists who got permanent bans almost won't be allowed to come back.
There are new changes by @theymos, that allow perma-banned users give proofs, evidence of their contributions to the forum to come back.
But, the probabilty to have second chance is very very low.
There's been no policy change. redsn0w wasn't permanently banned due to several factors which made me think that permabanning him would be a net negative for the forum. Nobody is banned strictly because of "the rules"; it's always handled case-by-case, but almost always, plagiarists deserve to be permabanned.
If you think that a ban should be ended, make your case in a new topic from a "good for the forum as a whole" perspective.
You should not expect that chance when perma-banned due to plagiarism.
- How to insert quote, please look at the image. It is very easy, click on the quote button at the upper corner on the right side of each post you want to quote.
You need statistics on perma-banned users due to plagiarisms? There you go:
How many banned users have you merited? (by
LoyceV)
(4) Never mind of bounties, campaigns when you are noobsReasons:- Campaigns are there, open then close, then others open and close, from time to time. You should never worry that you miss this chance, that chance, this campaign, that campaign, something like this.
It is the same as merits. Lots of users complain that merits are rare, I can not get merits due to it is rare. Nope, merits (more exactly, sMerits - sendable merits) are available, everywhere in the forum. There are so many merit sources, normal users, who have lots of sMerits readily to send out. They kept them partially due to quality posts are rare, not sMerits.
- Instead of paying too much attention, and time on hunting for bounties, especially bounties that have easy rules and joinable for low rank users; you should start learning, reading, and build up your accounts.
When you hit your finish lines, it's time for you to seriously think of joining bounties.
(5) Learn from inspirational stories. Learn from merited users, topics, postsReading and learning from most merited users, and most merited topics, posts are one of the best way to improve your post quality, coherence and cohesion when you compose your posts, topics.
I have a topic on:
Inspirational stories from self-made promoted users(6) Spend your time to improve your English, especially Reading and Writing skillsReasons:- If you can not read posts or topic in English well, can not get ideas of posts' / topics' authors, it means that you have nothing to do in the forum.
Remember that you have to get their ideas well enough to not misunderstand their core ideas.
- Next, after reading good enough to catch authors' ideas, it is time for you to express your own ideas in case you have something to ask for help, something to discuss, or something meaningful to help others. This is the time you need to have good enough Writing skill.
This is why I mentioned you should improve your English skills, step by step, from Reading to Writing. Of course, you can improve both skills simultaneously.
The forum is the place almost solely for discussions via Reading and Writing.
You can find available sources for English learning in the References at the end of this OP.
(7) Don't pay your attention on post-length (Ideas that I took from theymos' Writing a welcome message)
If you make ten thousand posts in a week, your activity will be capped and you will still be a Newbie. If you make ten thousand useless posts over any period of time, you will gain zero merit and you will still be a Newbie. You can rank up only by making good posts consistently. It's quality over quantity.
When trying to write quality posts, a lot of people act as though they're writing a book report for school: putting facts that we already know into their own words. Nobody wants to read that, and you will not get merit for it. Moreover, the length of your post and the quality of your English are only minor factors. In trying to write a quality post worthy of merit, you should offer new ideas, personal experiences, or perspectives that other forum users will actually find new and interesting.
Remember that promoting with merit system is a challenge, but you can do make it.
And, when got promoted, you are different, different from airdroped users at the same rank.
It means you will become more competitive when applying to join campaigns.Now, let's get started with your own journey that lead to your finish lines!
References:The most fundamental list of guides, that you should spend most of your time to read.
Those guides are helpful not only for promotions, but also for your crypto lives in general.
GUIDES] on Bitcointalk. Index thread (until there is a dedicated subforum?) (by
LoyceV)