What can I do about possible merit abuse?

[DdmrDdmr]

The logical path would seems to be that of manually screening the candidates that meet the requirements, by cherry picking those that seem free of suspicion (looking over post history and merited posts). That is certainly time consuming, but since merits (and quality) is subjective, there is no other way to assert that the candidate’s merits are "legit".
 
There are a few other small things that may be considered at some point during a campaign design process, but that require a bit of additional information to be gathered.
For example, the preliminary number of merits to require can take into consideration the current stance on earned merits over 120 days per rank (in order to decide, for example, if placing the number of earned merits at one level or another could have enough potential candidates to start with). This is the distribution of earned merits over the 120 days (22/11/2018 .. 22/03/2019):



Ideally, if merits were to become a widespread use in campaign candidate selection processes, it would be nice to count on inner merit stats to facilitate the selection of the cut-off limits to use.

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[LoyceV]

The logical path would seems to be that of manually screening the candidates that meet the requirements, by cherry picking those that seem free of suspicion (looking over post history and merited posts). That is certainly time consuming, but since merits (and quality) is subjective, there is no other way to assert that the candidate’s merits are "legit".

By setting a minimum Merit requirement, you already get rid of most of the spammers, which makes a campaign manager's life much easier. For the remaining accounts you still can't rely on Merit only, but all it takes is a quick check to see if they really qualify.
I've seen the last-minute Merit sales before from campaign participants. You can't absolutely prove it, so I wouldn't do anything more than reject and blacklist them.

[dothebeats]

If accounts received just enough merit to satisfy the campaign requirements and their earned a bulk of it within the last minute, I'd say that's a solid proof that something fishy happened in the background and is grounds for blacklist/rejection but then again, no one can prove it quite exactly and correctly. Post history and quality is still something that should remain superior in accepting candidates IMO, with merit requirement being secondary as again, there are loads of really good posts out there in the wild that rarely gets the attention--not that I'm saying that merit requirement should be ditched all in all.

But it will be entirely on your discretion as a campaign manager to reject or accept. Merit earned in the last 120 days is just as good as merit earned IMO, but then again, it's entirely up to your judgment.

[cryptohunter]

The logical path would seems to be that of manually screening the candidates that meet the requirements, by cherry picking those that seem free of suspicion (looking over post history and merited posts). That is certainly time consuming, but since merits (and quality) is subjective, there is no other way to assert that the candidate’s merits are "legit".
 

BINGO

Actually relying on any subjective metric that you can NOT provide a compelling case to demonstrate is not unfair, untrustworthy and shady leaves you open and the project open to serious and damaging criticism.

If you want clarity on what I mean there then just ask.

Manual review is the only way. If i were a project I would be very careful about the kind of subjective/misleading metrics  .
my campaign manager used as thresholds for entry.

It should be first come first served unless you can provide clear case that stands up to scrutiny why the person should not be allowed. Anything else could destroy the projects/your rep for good.

Campaign manager is a precarious position and one that needs to be squeaky squeaky clean. You also need a very credible and compelling case that will appear fair and trustworthy to present as the basis for every decision you take.

[Quickseller]

At the end of the day, there isn't really anything you can do. Officially, "merit abuse" is not against the rules. You can decide to ban the person from any of your campaigns if you wish, although I would first ensure their post quality is reflective of what you do not want in your campaigns.

Merit abuse is against the rules on same cases in fact theymos remove manually merit sometimes like here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5114714.msg49936656#msg49936656.

That was to reverse the effects of a merit source sending merit for reasons theymos disagreed with.

The question is another one, in this case, is or is not redtrust worthy? for sure is an untrusted behavior since they did for bypass a rule.

It was allegedly done to bypass an arbitrary rule, and I do not like arbitrary rules. There are many posts that are not objectively "high quality" (the intended purpose of the merit system) that receive merit. Campaign managers should stop being lazy and should review post quality of their applicants themselves.

While one might conclude this was 'abuse' based on the information in the OP, I don't think this is proven.

[Hhampuz]

Thank you all for the insight, it is much appreciated!

I never look at the merit earned as a definitive factor when accepting participants, I do check their post quality too (you'd be amazed at the shit I see), sometimes I just want to get more in touch with what the community thinks and  that's why I created this topic since there's always room for improvement on my end as well.

You've all given me a few things to think about and I'll probably start reporting the possible merit abuse that I see from now on. Honestly I've never really bothered with it before.

[asche]

Not much you can do against the accounts themselves.

• Of course don't accept them
• If you have the time, check if you can proove that merit sender and receiver are alt accounts
• Alternatively you can ask someone to look into it. There are some pretty smart "detectives" around
• Participate in the SMAS blacklist. Lutpin used to use it with the previous bitblender campaign - LINK
• If the merit abuse is blatant, cf the example for the sales thread, tag them read, or highlight me, I will happily oblige

[Lucius]

Now to the issue, more than once (both previously and right now), I have people applying in my Campaigns and when I go to check their merit received I can see that they just received enough merit to hit the requirement, in some cases it was done just minutes before they apply. Now, this is probably merit abuse as I don't buy that it happens as a coincidence. However, how can I prove it? Do I just deny these people due to the fact it's just assumption, do I take any other action against it? It happens with accounts in good standing too, green trust & very active users so I'm a bit torn.

What you have noticed is a clear example of merit abuse, and you should not accept such users in the campaign. First for the reason that they are using alt accounts to merit their other accounts, and second because they think that you will not notice it.

I think campaign managers should set even higher demands when it comes to merit, 5 or 10 earned merit is actually a very small and insignificant number, very easy to reach for merit abusers.

Most simplest solution that I can suggest you to change the requirement as below.
"You have earned "X" amount of merit in last 120 days but merits gained after publication of this OP will not be counted "

This is also a good advice, with this rule you can prevent merit abusers to adjust number of merits for new announced campaigns.

[suchmoon]

Hhampuz, please consider adding a neutral rating for users you suspect of merit abuse. This would help enormously when they inevitably get themselves into other shady dealings down the road.

[asche]

Most simplest solution that I can suggest you to change the requirement as below.
"You have earned "X" amount of merit in last 120 days but merits gained after publication of this OP will not be counted "

This is also a good advice, with this rule you can prevent merit abusers to adjust number of merits for new announced campaigns.

However impossible to follow practically when new users are required if the campaign does last over 120 days.

If one participant drops out of the campaign after 4 months (ie 120 days) the amount in the last 120 days, before publishing the thread will be 0 for everyone

However as said before, it has to be handled on a case by case basis, and since HHampuz was thorough enough to spot these abusers, I trust him to be as thorough in the future as well.

[Hhampuz]

Hhampuz, please consider adding a neutral rating for users you suspect of merit abuse. This would help enormously when they inevitably get themselves into other shady dealings down the road.

Will do, no harm with a neutral and if it's not true they are free to present their evidence to me. Thanks!

[The Cryptovator]

Any others action isn't requir for them although they abused merit system. Admin don't like to tag this kind of merit abuse if really there is no any strong evidence of merit sales. From your site you should deny them from your campaign. On the other hand you can blacklisted them from your future signature. Maybe others managers will not accept them as well when they will on your blacklist.

Since it's not appropriate to tag this kind of abuser so we can make a list with name of this users who had abuse merit system for join signature. I have seen few similar case on some signature campaign. So you can give a name of your blacklist and others managers also could report to thread if they found similar case.

How it will be if you give name " Signature Campaing Blacklist of Merit abuser" . Just make a thread with list so that other managers could see and report as well.

I don't think they deserve tag for this behaviour. Blacklist will be best solution in my opinion.

[Daboy_Lyle]

I guess it will be better not to allow them to apply on your campaigns if you feel that the account is abusing merit. When the requirement is Earned Merit  in just 120 days then I should sughest not to count the 10 days before you launch a campaign. Example the requirement for member rank is earned a total of 10 merits then a user applying has 20 merit and the 8 merits is just received on that day then you should not accept that user rather report it for abusing (buying or begging)

[TMAN]

Threads like this from a DT-1 user are proof that the new system works and that snowfucker is a good choice for DT.

Personally I would tag them, guilty to proven innocent and all that, but I have the patience of a fly and couldn’t do your job. Seriously though a 60 second look through posts would give you enough info to tag or not buddy

[r1s2g3]

Most simplest solution that I can suggest you to change the requirement as below.
"You have earned "X" amount of merit in last 120 days but merits gained after publication of this OP will not be counted "

This is also a good advice, with this rule you can prevent merit abusers to adjust number of merits for new announced campaigns.

However impossible to follow practically when new users are required if the campaign does last over 120 days.

If one participant drops out of the campaign after 4 months (ie 120 days) the amount in the last 120 days, before publishing the thread will be 0 for everyone

However as said before, it has to be handled on a case by case basis, and since HHampuz was thorough enough to spot these abusers, I trust him to be as thorough in the future as well.

No, In this case you will start counting 120 days , when you open a new opening. Why you will stick to OP when you have already recruited all the participants against that requirement?

[malikusama]

Either it can be merit abuse or may be a coincidence that a person just received enough merits to meet the requirement of your campaign soon after announcement or just before applying, if you are not sure than leave/ignore it.
However if the applicant have received merits on some useless or non-constructive posts just before applying than surely he/she is abusing the merit system, so you can point it out (or tag them) using reference.

[Quickseller]

Hhampuz, please consider adding a neutral rating for users you suspect of merit abuse. This would help enormously when they inevitably get themselves into other shady dealings down the road.

Will do, no harm with a neutral and if it's not true they are free to present their evidence to me. Thanks!

I am assuming Yatsan is the person you suspect is abusing merit.

I am not sure if he received merit from his alt account, or if he purchased the merit, perhaps from this guy. I looked through his merit history, and I am not quite sure what to make of it. He has received merit from a number of people that I don't think are selling merit, although this is based on their reputation from my perspective, and I did not look at their merit history. Most of the merit he received is from his various WTS threads.

I noticed he also received merit from Distinctin for a post that I do not believes deserves merit on a reasonable basis. Going down the rabbit hole, I looked at Distinctin's merit history, looked at the last 8 posts he sent merit to, and believe at most one of these posts reasonably deserves merit, and most are the only post on the page/thread with merit.

Back to Yatsan, on Feb 19, he received 2 merit from Distinctin (for a questionable post -- see above), and the next day he applies for a campaign (run by Hhampuz) with merit requirements, although only 10 merit were required, which he already met (the recent merit could have helped his application as it would have implied he made good post(s) recently).

I think there is at least a 60% chance Distinctin is either selling merit or giving merit to his alts (I think the former is more likely), and at least a 51% chance Yatsan recently purchased merit. Assuming Distinctin is selling merit, everyone he sent merit to did not necessarily purchase merit because there may be some false flags. Obviously both 60% and 51% is far from certain, and I would not say any of the above proves anything.

[mikeywith]

increasing merit requirement specially for higher ranks will help you filter merit abusers, having 5 or 10 merit for as a requirement is as good as useless, those a few merit can be easily obtained by many "abusive" ways, plus it only makes sense that if someone has a hero rank for example and have not earned 50 merit for example then probably his/her posts are pure shit which you wouldn't want to have in your campaign.  

[FontSeli]

Alright so, I'm a campaign manager and whenever I launch a new Campaign I usually have merit requirements. Lately I've switched over from "Merit Earned" to "Merit Earned in the last 120 days" as I do want high quality people in these campaigns.

Now to the issue, more than once (both previously and right now), I have people applying in my Campaigns and when I go to check their merit received I can see that they just received enough merit to hit the requirement, in some cases it was done just minutes before they apply. Now, this is probably merit abuse as I don't buy that it happens as a coincidence. However, how can I prove it? Do I just deny these people due to the fact it's just assumption, do I take any other action against it? It happens with accounts in good standing too, green trust & very active users so I'm a bit torn.

Any insight is appreciated!

You can see how often a person received merit. If the merit is received 1 time in the required amount just before the application, then it is really suspicious.

[Hhampuz]

increasing merit requirement specially for higher ranks will help you filter merit abusers, having 5 or 10 merit for as a requirement is as good as useless, those a few merit can be easily obtained by many "abusive" ways, plus it only makes sense that if someone has a hero rank for example and have not earned 50 merit for example then probably his/her posts are pure shit which you wouldn't want to have in your campaign.  

Although I can agree to some extent you should see the amount of people that apply in my campaigns with 0 or just a couple of earned merits during their entire stay here. I always check their posts and you'd be amazed at how many of these people actually post some good shit but more often than not they post it in the "wrong" sections where the merit is not flowing as much. A lot of them perhaps never visit Meta, never pursue any scams/abusers or never posts any guides while still holding a good tone and adding to the discussion.

Everytime that I'm counting posts in my Campaigns I'm wishing that I'd be a merit source so that I could award these people a few merit (and I try, believe me), but with a balance of 10-20 merit at any given time I am very limited in what I can do. I also usually have different requirements for different campaigns as if I were to set it at 50 I'd hardly get any applications as most people with 50 or more earned merits are already in some other Campaign.

My beliefs are that if someone is here, actively participating in discussions and trying to make the community better they deserve to get a chance to earn off of it just like everyone else.