Merit source observations

[tranthidung]

Many months ago, on 24th January 2018, merit appeared in the forum, as airdropped merits (and sMerits) for grandfather accounts, then it has become a gift for good posters.
There is no benefits to beg for merits as well as merit sources, because merit beggars might get negative trust or bad feedback in return.

In the thread, I publish observations on merit source growth over months.
For more details, there are some threads to read:
Merit & new rank requirement
Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements
One year anniversary of merit system
Merit source growth history, if you know it, please help me (I appreciated all kindly help from users in that thread).

Merit source stats page

{list} Open Merit Source Applications,waiting list.
{LIST}of the Merit Sources asking for more smerit. Done! Thank you theymos. (locked for now but @iasenko might reopen it anytime later).

Some helpful opinion of theymos on merit sources:

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

Merit sources are free to reveal their source amounts, though I think it may be a bit unwise. While it will eventually become obvious roughly what the source amounts are from the stats, there's a huge difference between showing up in a "list of probable merit sources" and having a quote out there of you basically saying "I'm a merit source, come beg me for merit, complain about every merit I send, and accuse me of being part of the anti-X/pro-Y conspiracy."

Notes:
- Update will be made in last post, not in OP.
- If you find something, or discover incorrect data, please let me know.
- Date presents in the format: dd/mm/yyyy.
- Dates present in the dataset might not exactly the day when total merit sources reach those figures, they are just dates recorded arbitrarily by users.
- The first datapoint (24/1/2018), I got the smerits at 8125 smerits (it might be incorrect), from that post

Each source has a different limit per 30 days. The current average is 185, and in total up to 8125 merit could be created per month.

Nevertheless, I think it is correct, because about 4 hours after that post, theymos made this one, in which we see there was still 35 total merit sources

I added stats pages:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats
And per-user summary pages like:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=35

Dataset:

Code:

. list id day month2 year date meritsource smerit, abb(30)

     +-------------------------------------------------------------+
     | id   day   month2   year        date   meritsource   smerit |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  1. |  1    24        1   2018   24jan2018            35     8125 |
  2. |  2    26        1   2018   26jan2018            49     9025 |
  3. |  3     1        3   2018   01mar2018            57    11975 |
  4. |  4    12        3   2018   12mar2018            77    17650 |
  5. |  5    22        3   2018   22mar2018            80    17800 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  6. |  6    18        5   2018   18may2018            80    18500 |
  7. |  7     6        7   2018   06jul2018            82    18900 |
  8. |  8    11        7   2018   11jul2018            83    19100 |
  9. |  9    17        9   2018   17sep2018           120    23045 |
 10. | 10    17       11   2018   17nov2018           119    22045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 11. | 11    22       12   2018   22dec2018           120    22055 |
 12. | 12     5        1   2019   05jan2019           123    20735 |
 13. | 13     6        2   2019   06feb2019           122    20835 |
 14. | 14    15        3   2019   15mar2019           130    20605 |
 15. | 15    27        6   2019   27jun2019           131    21045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 16. | 16    30       10   2019   30oct2019           130    20895 |
 17. | 17    14       11   2019   14nov2019            90    18821 |
 18. | 18    15       11   2019   15nov2019            98    21671 |
     +-------------------------------------------------------------+

Time series plots

Combined plot
Note:
- To make combined plot looks better, I created a new variable, meritsource100, that equals meritsource * 100

[1713307155]

1713307155

[1713307155]

1713307155

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, this is good data to see, but I'm confused as to whether the sMerit is what's held by the merit sources or what the sources have distributed.  I looked for the answer to that in your post but perhaps I'm missing something.

Looks like Theymos hasn't been adding a lot of new merit sources in the past year--I sort of figured as much, since I hadn't seen that many applications and hadn't heard about new sources being added.  But at least there are more now than there were last September, and since Meta hasn't been flooded with "how I earn meritz" threads lately, I'm assuming the situation isn't too bad.  When newbies are constantly whining about how they're not earning merits, you know there aren't enough being circulated.

Might be good to overlay those graphs as well, but either way props for posting the data.

[tranthidung]

OP, this is good data to see, but I'm confused as to whether the sMerit is what's held by the merit sources or what the sources have distributed.  I looked for the answer to that in your post but perhaps I'm missing something.

My dataset only presents total merit sources and total smerits allocated to all those sources per each 30 days.
You can observe it there: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources. For now, we have:

Code:

There are 131 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 21045 sMerit per 30 days

For your question, I do think @DdmrDdmr can give you an answer, but I don't know it will satisfy your curiousity or not. Because I believe he might only give you raw figures, and of course not exactly what you wanted.
He can give you total merits/ smerits earned, and distributed of each sources, but it is difficult to screen and differentiate between smerits get from earned merits and smerits get as sources from theymos.
Even DdmrDdmr can get it, he might not publicly disclose because core ideas of theymos is not give merit beggars more details to annoying begging merit sources.

Looks like Theymos hasn't been adding a lot of new merit sources in the past year--I sort of figured as much, since I hadn't seen that many applications and hadn't heard about new sources being added.  But at least there are more now than there were last September, and since Meta hasn't been flooded with "how I earn meritz" threads lately, I'm assuming the situation isn't too bad.  When newbies are constantly whining about how they're not earning merits, you know there aren't enough being circulated.

As I know of, theymos pay more attention on merit source application in local boards, recent months.

Might be good to overlay those graphs as well, but either way props for posting the data.

I actually made it with an initial OP, but there are huge gaps between to variables, meritsource and smerits, in hundreds and thousands, so combined plot looks not good.

Ok, fine!
Note:
- To make combined plot looks better, I created a new variable, meritsource100, that equals meritsource * 100

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

I don’t really keep track of who the Merit Sources are, although @Coin-1 does a pretty good job to identify the majority of them in his thread (see [TOP-200] The most generous users giving merits). Not all have been detected though (specially the smaller or most recent additions that earn merits per se).

I therefore do not track nor try to infer each one’s allocation and how much of it they spend, although on an individual basis, you can get a rough idea by taking a look at their Sent Merit on the Personal Summary (simply type the username and press enter).

[tranthidung]

I don’t really keep track of who the Merit Sources are
< ... >
I therefore do not track nor try to infer each one’s allocation and how much of it they spend, although on an individual basis

Thank you for your reply, that gives detailed answer for @The Pharmacist's question, but honestly I don't have interest about those things. Because it is not my business, and I think we just let merit sources do their works. There is no good reasons to follow their works as sources, because they actually good users / sources, and know how to do their works, and months passed since the last remove of merit sources (one or two) due to abusements or misuses of merits from sources; not from their own request like @Vod.

Dataset in OP is good enough to give us an overview on merit sources and available smerits from them per month.
With current statistics:
- Total users (includes inactive ones too) at 2659437, due to Statistics center
- Total smerits for all sources per 30 days at 21045

There are 131 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 21045 sMerit per 30 days

It means within each 30 days, one user can get around 0.008 merit.

Code:

. di 21045/2659437
.00791333

However, if we assume that there are only 1 percent of those users ( ~ 26595 = 2659437/100) are active and good ones, each of them will get nearly 0.8 merits per 30 days from all sources.

Code:

. di 21045/(2659437/100)
.7913329

Yes, this is estimated one good users can get from merit sources, but they can earn more from non-merit-source users (with above assumptions). I don't believe the forum has around 27k active and good users.
If you can, please scrap figure on total active merited users last 30 days (active merited means receive above 2 merits).

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> If you can, please scrap figure on total active merited users last 30 days (active merited means receive above 2 merits).<…>

Active is subject to multiple definitions. For example, @vod makes it 149.405, being that of the count of all profiles that have logged in within the last three months.

Your definition would be that of merited >= 2 merits gained in the last 30 days, and results in 1.145 distinct profiles (31/07/2019 .. early morning of 30/08/2019), with the following distribution:

Code:

nMerits nUsers
1 727 (not included in the 1.145 above reported total)
2 285
3 148
4 91
5 93
6 45
7 48
8 33
9 28
10 31
11 16
12 20
13 21
14 20
15 23
16 11
17 11
18 7
19 9
20 7
21 10
22 8
23 7
24 5
25 9
26 3
27 6
28 3
29 6
30 6
31 6
32 6
33 3
34 5
35 8
36 7
37 3
38 1
39 3
40 1
41 3
42 3
43 2
44 3
45 1
46 6
47 5
48 3
49 5
50 3
51 2
52 1
53 2
54 3
56 1
57 3
58 1
59 1
61 1
62 1
63 2
64 2
65 1
66 1
67 3
69 2
70 1
71 1
73 1
78 1
79 1
80 1
81 2
83 1
84 1
85 2
89 1
90 1
92 1
99 1
100 1
105 1
111 2
114 1
116 1
117 1
118 1
119 1
145 1
155 1
176 1
186 1
187 1
222 1

[tranthidung]

Active is subject to multiple definitions. For example, @vod makes it 149.405, being that of the count of all profiles that have logged in within the last three months.

Your definition would be that of merited >= 2 merits gained in the last 30 days, and results in 1.145 distinct profiles (31/07/2019 .. early morning of 30/08/2019), with the following distribution:

It is just an assumption to see how merit circulated in the forum, and do current smerits allocation to merit sources per month enough for active and good users or not. Sticking with this assumption, and your simple analysis result, we can see that there are around 18 merits for each active and good users per 30 days, only from 131 merit sources. Some users might earn more than 18 merits per month, some others might earn less. It is not correct estimation, because there are so many bias factors, but at least from the estimation, I do think current sMerit supply from merit sources is enough for good users to rank up. The rest thing totally depends on their works.

Code:

. di 21045/1145
18.379913

Interesting finding that with the assumption (actively posting, and received >= 2 merits per 30 days), there are only 0.43% of forum users (at 2659437) are active, and good ones.  It makes me shocked, honestly.

Code:

. di 1145/2659437*100
.04305423

[tranthidung]

Update:

I don't know which day it happened but today, the forum has only 130 merit sources in total. One merit source was removed.
I believe it happened within last few days.

There are 130 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 20895 sMerit per 30 days

Updated data:

Code:

. list id day month2 year date meritsource smerit, abb(30)

     +-------------------------------------------------------------+
     | id   day   month2   year        date   meritsource   smerit |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  1. |  1    24        1   2018   24jan2018            35        . |
  2. |  2    26        1   2018   26jan2018            49     9025 |
  3. |  3     1        3   2018   01mar2018            57    11975 |
  4. |  4    12        3   2018   12mar2018            77    17650 |
  5. |  5    22        3   2018   22mar2018            80    17800 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  6. |  6    18        5   2018   18may2018            80    18500 |
  7. |  7     6        7   2018   06jul2018            82    18900 |
  8. |  8    11        7   2018   11jul2018            83    19100 |
  9. |  9    17        9   2018   17sep2018           120    23045 |
 10. | 10    17       11   2018   17nov2018           119    22045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 11. | 11    22       12   2018   22dec2018           120    22055 |
 12. | 12     5        1   2019   05jan2019           123    20735 |
 13. | 13     6        2   2019   06feb2019           122    20835 |
 14. | 14    15        3   2019   15mar2019           130    20605 |
 15. | 15    27        6   2019   27jun2019           131    21045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 16. | 16    30       10   2019   30oct2019           130    20895 |
     +-------------------------------------------------------------+

Last time when theymos removed one or two merit sources, he added dozen of new merit sources (some months ago). Good luck for all merit source applicants.

[Quickseller]

Update:

I don't know which day it happened but today, the forum has only 130 merit sources in total. One merit source was removed.
I believe it happened within last few days.

There are 130 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 20895 sMerit per 30 days

Assuming that exactly one person was removed (in theory, two people could have been removed, and one added, or whatever), the person removed had a monthly source of 150.

This might allow someone to look at sent data and narrow who was removed.

[tranthidung]

Assuming that exactly one person was removed (in theory, two people could have been removed, and one added, or whatever), the person removed had a monthly source of 150.

This might allow someone to look at sent data and narrow who was removed.

You are right.
I usually check merit stat page every day but sometimes I forget to check it daily, so that change assumed to happen very recently.

[suchmoon]

I don't know which day it happened but today, the forum has only 130 merit sources in total. One merit source was removed.

Could be this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196076

[Quickseller]

Assuming that exactly one person was removed (in theory, two people could have been removed, and one added, or whatever), the person removed had a monthly source of 150.

This might allow someone to look at sent data and narrow who was removed.

You are right.
I usually check merit stat page every day but sometimes I forget to check it daily, so that change assumed to happen very recently.

I would not be surprised if theymos were to add a replacement merit source at the same time a merit source resigns/gets fired. I believe theymos added multiple merit sources when Vod resigned from being a merit source.

In all likelihood, this was only Vadi2323 being removed as per the thread suchmoon posted above.

[tranthidung]

Update:

I don't know which day it happened but yesterday (I did check the merit source stat page recent days), the forum has only 90 merit sources in total (from the previous figure at 130). 40 merit sources were removed. The last time we saw such very low total merit sources is at 11/7/2018 with 83 merit sources in total. Simultaneously, the total sMerits allocated to merit sources decreased to 18821

Fortunately, today, the forum has 98 merit sources in total (from the previous figure at 130) and the total sMerits allocation for each 30 days increase to 21671 (from the previous figure at 20895).

• Total merit sources: decrease 24.6%
• Total sMerits allocated each 30 days: increase 3.7%

Code:

. di (130-98)/130*100
24.615385

. di (21671-20895)/20895*100
3.7138071

It is a big move!

There are 98 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 21671 sMerit per 30 days

Time-series plot:

Updated data:

Code:

. list id day month2 year date meritsource smerit, abb(30)

     +-------------------------------------------------------------+
     | id   day   month2   year        date   meritsource   smerit |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  1. |  1    24        1   2018   24jan2018            35     8125 |
  2. |  2    26        1   2018   26jan2018            49     9025 |
  3. |  3     1        3   2018   01mar2018            57    11975 |
  4. |  4    12        3   2018   12mar2018            77    17650 |
  5. |  5    22        3   2018   22mar2018            80    17800 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
  6. |  6    18        5   2018   18may2018            80    18500 |
  7. |  7     6        7   2018   06jul2018            82    18900 |
  8. |  8    11        7   2018   11jul2018            83    19100 |
  9. |  9    17        9   2018   17sep2018           120    23045 |
 10. | 10    17       11   2018   17nov2018           119    22045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 11. | 11    22       12   2018   22dec2018           120    22055 |
 12. | 12     5        1   2019   05jan2019           123    20735 |
 13. | 13     6        2   2019   06feb2019           122    20835 |
 14. | 14    15        3   2019   15mar2019           130    20605 |
 15. | 15    27        6   2019   27jun2019           131    21045 |
     |-------------------------------------------------------------|
 16. | 16    30       10   2019   30oct2019           130    20895 |
 17. | 17    14       11   2019   14nov2019            90    18821 |
 18. | 18    15       11   2019   15nov2019            98    21671 |
     +-------------------------------------------------------------+

Last time when theymos removed one or two merit sources, he added dozen of new merit sources (some months ago). I would go crazy if theymos adds 32 new merit sources in a row when merit system has been in very stable operational phase. Anyway, good luck for all merit source applicants.

For theoritical increase of 30-days sMerits for each source, let assume each source receive same sMerits before and after the latest changes.

Code:

. di 20895/130
160.73077

. di 21671/98
221.13265

. di (222-161)/161*100
37.888199

From the above calculation, each source was allocated 161 and 222 sMerits before and after the latest changes, respectively. So it means each source theoritically received around 61 more sMerits or 38-percent of increase for their 30-days allocated sMerits.

You wrote this

Mine was increased as well. The adjustment is based on the last 6 months of sMerit sent including both source merit and personal merit and the amount was multiplied by 175%.

So the assumption above is wrong, it is just for fun to give us a kind of estimation.

[hugeblack]

Fortunately, today, the forum has 98 merit sources in total (from the previous figure at 130) and the total sMerits allocation for each 30 days increase to 21671 (from the previous figure at 20895).

I think what happened is a modification of the algorithm for selecting Merit sources to be somewhat automated. @theymos calculated numbers based on spending during the last 6 months with the deletion of inactive sources and the distribution of sMerits to the rest of the sources.

However, if this would've caused you to have a source merit of less than 10, then you were removed as a merit source

In short, inactive sources were deleted and 8 new members added.

[logfiles]

I don't know which day it happened but yesterday (I did check the merit source stat page recent days), the forum has only 90 merit sources in total (from the previous figure at 130). 40 merit sources were removed. The last time we saw such very low total merit sources is at 11/7/2018 with 83 merit sources in total. Simultaneously, the total sMerits allocated to merit sources decreased to 18821

Wooow that was some huge number of removed merit sources. I think their inactivity explains why there was a very low supply of Merits in the past few months.

It also beats my understanding why someone who go through the trouble of applying to be a merit source, yet they very well know that they are not going to be active in the forum. It would be understandable if it was a handful of chaps but 40 inactive merit sources is a huge number.

Hopeful the double allocations to active merit sources will try to solve the problem

[Welsh]

Wooow that was some huge number of removed merit sources. I think their inactivity explains why there was a very low supply of Merits in the past few months.

It also beats my understanding why someone who go through the trouble of applying to be a merit source, yet they very well know that they are not going to be active in the forum. It would be understandable if it was a handful of chaps but 40 inactive merit sources is a huge number.

Hopeful the double allocations to active merit sources will try to solve the problem

Most of those merit sources were probably assigned the role at the start of the merit system. Not everyone had to apply to become a merit source. I'm not sure what the criteria was to become a merit source at the beginning, but it seems to me that theymos wants to keep around 20,000 merit each month in circulation, and will not add anymore merit sources until there are inactive users. That's just based on my observations the last few times merit sources have been added, and removed. 

[LoyceV]

Inactive Merit sources got removed, so there's no loss there for the amount of Merit being distributed by sources. The active sources got an increase (and some were added), so in total I expect the (lower number of) Merit sources to distribute a higher amount of Merit. We'll see in the coming weeks.

[tranthidung]

Long time and I don't update it. Here you go:

• Total merit sources: 97
• Total monthly merit generation: 21171

OP will be update later.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources

One merit source left his position in May 2020: I've quit my volunteer merit source status

I knew it because fillippone made that one One merit source has just been demoted? so thank you so much fil.

[tranthidung]

Here you go with an update

• Total merit sources: 111 (14 additional new merit sources from 97 previously)
• Total monthly merit generation: 34139 (from 21171 previously) that equals to 61.3% increase.
• Congratulations to new merit sources
• I hope that theymos did not increase sourced merits for merit source that is out for personal interest

[fillippone]

Here you go with an update

• Total merit sources: 111 (14 additional new merit sources from 97 previously)
• Total monthly merit generation: 34139 (from 21171 previously) that equals to 61.3% increase.
• Congratulations to new merit sources
• I hope that theymos did not increase sourced merits for merit source that is out for personal interest

Any hint on who the new merit sources are?
I saw one of them confessing on another thread. So at least 13 missings (assuming Theymos didn't demote anyone).