Merit awarding as an alternative to posting.

[Welsh]

I've personally merited posts which I outright disagree with, and have even merited posts which are wrong. However, if there's a good argument or at least some effort was applied then it doesn't matter whether they get their facts a little skewed. Whoever you are you are not going to have all the answers, and especially when discussing technical aspects of Bitcoin. My merit rewarding system is all about effort, and quality rather than being factually correct.

Of course, if they're spewing total nonsense which makes little sense then that's not likely to get a merit, because its likely not constructive, and a quality post to begin with. An example would be discussion of the conspiracy theory that certain people on this earth are lizards. Even though I think that's batshit crazy if they bring some quality discussion, and reason to believe that then I'll likely reward them for that even though I'm totally against the suggestion as long as effort has been applied, and its of high quality regardless of the subject.

[LoyceV]

I've personally merited posts which I outright disagree with

I do that sometimes, but it confuses people:

@LoyceV, meriting/agreeing to the OP from trusted device but disagreeing from non-trusted device  

Most people have been conditioned by large corporations to use "Like" and "Upvote", and they're used to it. Merit is different, but it doesn't show when you're meriting a post. Users won't know the difference if they don't read about it on Meta.
I'd say Bitcointalk needs a small explanation on how to use them ("merit good posts") on the "Merit a post"-page.

[Jet Cash]

@jetty, does this come with stock smf (the out-of-the-box kind)? I saw it on fittotalk and a couple of your forums and I'm wondering if that's an extension or comes with smf?

It's a standard plugin. I added it as a bit of fun, rather like the shop and the currency. Fit to Talk is a fairly friendly site fortunately, so there isn't the bitching and flaming that happens here. If Theymos ever decided to add the feature, I would suggest that he only allows the likes, and doesn't include the dislikes. I've seen that on several sites, and it does seem to work without too much trouble.

[iamsheikhadil]

In my opinion, a merit is better representative of your affirmation to a post than posting "yes I agree, *add a description of the post further*" definitely. If there's nothing substantial or contradictory to add, like, "I agree with your posts partially except for...", then sending a merit would be the best way. But, again, there are a lots of posts you might "just agree" with, if you are going to send to every of them, you will have to earn them at bullet speed (unless you are merit source). So, sometimes, I refrain from posting into those threads