Merit source observations

[JayJuanGee]

No, I'm not deleted, I just stopped distributing merit on my own initiative. At the moment my status is active:

Is it because of a lack of activity and time or what led you to the decision to stop meriting other posts? It seems quite easy to do it in the discussions you participate in without having to go on a merit hunt elsewhere. Are you planning to get back to doing the things you did so far or are you considering leaving the forum?

What happens if a merit source stops meriting posts? Are they booted out? Because i feel as a merit source it is a duty to you to merit posts, if you are a member that is not a merit source then that is different, you might not give out any merits and it would not be a problem, only that members may not merit you too as you are not involved in the system, but as a merit source deciding to stop meriting posts sounds like 'quiting your job'.

hahahahaha

That is a decently fair way of framing the matter, and sure you have a right to quit your job and even perhaps to be a bit lacking in your job, but it is still up to the boss (the delegator) to decide whether such withholding of labor (spreading of the merits) rises to the level of derelict of duties that might either cause a firing  or maybe a reduction of the quantity of allocated source merits.

Merit sources are doing free meriting jobs but they have to spend their time to do it. So there is no pressure from theymos I think. A merit source is granted if theymos considers that member is a quality member and has ability to clarify bad and good posts, trusted enough to not sell sourced merits to get money etc.

You are partially correct, but you also seem to be partially incorrect.

Sure being a merit source is voluntary, and some of us did not ask to be a merit source, but there is also a kind of consent that takes place by actually doing it.

Sure there is a bit of an informal structure, and theymos seems to have had retained complete discretion over who the merit source members are - even though maybe he might get some backlash if members believe that theymos is being abusive of his discretion in some ways.. . .. but in any event, ultimately he can take away or reduce merit source duties for any reason or no reason at all... even though he may well get some backlash if members believe that he is being too arbitrary in his treatment of merit source members.. or his ways of overseeing whether some changes to the merit source members or even to the merit source system might be warranted to be made.

This is the most stupid thing that Merit Source or any other participant can do, not give out Merit simply because someone else does not give it out either. The merit system is not barter on the basis of you to me, I to you.

I did not say the merit system is similar to a barter trade, but we would want to encourage more people to be involved in the flow, there is no need to hoard it, so i would prefer to send merits to members that are involved in the system, not members that hoard their smerits that is of no use to them, i have also seen merit sources say the same thing.

If every member hoarded merits and expect to receive from others, then who is going to rank up, everyone will be stuck somewhere, users would not celebrate their milestone merit achievements, members will not get to 10k merits, etc.

For sure historically, there have been members who stated that they hoard merits and other members who have stated that they do not want to send smerits to members who hoard merits.. so if someone realizes that a certain member is a merit hoarder, then there may be some reluctance to send any smerits to that member.  

Of course there can be a considerable amount of subjectivity in sending smerits, so some members are not going to have concerns about whether the member appears to be a merit hoarder or not.

No, I'm not deleted, I just stopped distributing merit on my own initiative. At the moment my status is active:

Is it because of a lack of activity and time or what led you to the decision to stop meriting other posts? It seems quite easy to do it in the discussions you participate in without having to go on a merit hunt elsewhere. Are you planning to get back to doing the things you did so far or are you considering leaving the forum?

What happens if a merit source stops meriting posts? Are they booted out? Because i feel as a merit source it is a duty to you to merit posts, if you are a member that is not a merit source then that is different, you might not give out any merits and it would not be a problem, only that members may not merit you too as you are not involved in the system, but as a merit source deciding to stop meriting posts sounds like 'quiting your job'.

I don't think so  Because there are merit source who did not just active everytime by sending their sMerit but still they are merit source.

Theymos can still remove them as a merit source or reduce their allocation - especially if they don't really seem to have any kind of valid reason for going "on strike" or on "slow down" (which largely might be a similar thing as going "on strike").

I would rather pass it to someone with more team spirit.

I usually call such merit sources merit abusers. Nothing personal.

Does not sound like merit abuse to me.  Sounds like reasonable discretion in which not everyone is going to necessarily agree about how to exercise such discretion.  In other words, there is a range of reasonableness that is acceptable, and each of us will likely have different balances in what we consider to be reasonable.. I doubt very many folks would consider that withholding merits in those circumstances to be abusive - even though you have reached that conclusion.. which might even put your reasonableness in to question that you would label some kind of practice like that which seems to be reasonable discretion to be abusive..

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[Pmalek]

Does not sound like merit abuse to me.  Sounds like reasonable discretion in which not everyone is going to necessarily agree about how to exercise such discretion.  In other words, there is a range of reasonableness that is acceptable, and each of us will likely have different balances in what we consider to be reasonable.. I doubt very many folks would consider that withholding merits in those circumstances to be abusive - even though you have reached that conclusion.. which might even put your reasonableness in to question that you would label some kind of practice like that which seems to be reasonable discretion to be abusive.

For the merit system to work entirely, those who are part of it should help in distributing those merits, not just receive them and hoard them forever. That's how I see it. Everyone decides for themselves. Are you in or are you out? I have no problem with user X not meriting other people. We can still talk, joke, be serious, even trade with each other or run a business. None of that requires me to reward you with a unit that you don't care about.     

If the majority of merit receivers only hoarded their merits, it would be a failed experiment, and the only way to receive merits would be from merit sources. Right now you can get merited from both merit sources and regular members who aren't and I would like to keep it that way by rewarding those who understand that. The merit economy works because people make it work. If everyone stopped caring then we can just forget about it.

[JayJuanGee]

Does not sound like merit abuse to me.  Sounds like reasonable discretion in which not everyone is going to necessarily agree about how to exercise such discretion.  In other words, there is a range of reasonableness that is acceptable, and each of us will likely have different balances in what we consider to be reasonable.. I doubt very many folks would consider that withholding merits in those circumstances to be abusive - even though you have reached that conclusion.. which might even put your reasonableness in to question that you would label some kind of practice like that which seems to be reasonable discretion to be abusive.

For the merit system to work entirely, those who are part of it should help in distributing those merits, not just receive them and hoard them forever. That's how I see it. Everyone decides for themselves. Are you in or are you out? I have no problem with user X not meriting other people. We can still talk, joke, be serious, even trade with each other or run a business. None of that requires me to reward you with a unit that you don't care about.    

If the majority of merit receivers only hoarded their merits, it would be a failed experiment, and the only way to receive merits would be from merit sources. Right now you can get merited from both merit sources and regular members who aren't and I would like to keep it that way by rewarding those who understand that. The merit economy works because people make it work. If everyone stopped caring then we can just forget about it.

I don't disagree with you, but in the whole scheme of things, there are not very many merit hoarders.. so in that sense, it probably does not matter that much if you send merits to ONLY the hoarders because there are plenty of folks who still give out smerits.. Furthermore, the opposite is true in regards to you having a strict policy that you will ONLY give smerits to those who have previously sent out smerits (the non-hoarders), and I know that even you are not taking that extreme of a smerit distribution position, but even if you did take that extreme of a position in either direction, to me it it would not seem to rise to the level of "abusive" for you to have strict standards on that point.. even more strict than your current stated views.

To me, it just seems like the wrong word to suggest that your having and practicing strict policies regarding not sending smerits to hoarders would be "abusive" absent some kind of further evidence that you had some bad motives or that you were targeting a certain kind of member for some other bad reason... your targeting hoarders does not seem abusive.. even if you are actually doing it to the extreme including if you refuse to give merits to no longer active members because of your strict rule recognizing that they would not be sending smerits out.

Absent some additional evidence the targeting and discriminating against merit hoarders or even the targeting of non-hoarders (to take the opposite extreme) does not seem to rise to the level of my idea of what would be "abusive," even if it were to be more extreme than your actual policy/practice in either direction.... but I could see that the targeting of non-hoarders might have a better chance of rising to the level of abusive rather than the targeting of hoarders for the reasons that you stated about facilitating the merit system as it currently exists.. (sorry I might have made my position even more confusing when I am trying to suggest that there is a wide range of reasonableness that merit source members have in exercising their discretion by taking extremes on various issues including something so extreme as to either merit or to not merit those members that they perceive to be merit hoarders).  

[Pmalek]

I don't disagree with you, but in the whole scheme of things, there are not very many merit hoarders.. so in that sense, it probably does not matter that much if you send merits to ONLY the hoarders because there are plenty of folks who still give out smerits.

That's true, and I am glad that's the case. Those merit checks that I mentioned earlier have become quite rare because with enough time spent on these boards, you get familiar with the users. There is no need to check the same people twice. I do a basic check only if I see a username I can't remember from before.

[DdmrDdmr]

I keep a monthly track of those that are the most generous and the meanest in terms of usage of their sMerits for my local board, with the obvious limitations related to data for airdropped sMerits and Merit Source sMerits, but if gives me a rough idea of what we wanted to see over there.The associated Google Sheet includes a second tab where I include the data for all merited profiles forum wide, and with a bit of patience, once can place filters and play around with the data.

If, for example, we set a filter for "MeritsEarned" > 50 and "%sMeritsSent" <= 25% (over earned) I get a range of 452 accounts, of which only 185 are Active/Semi-active (have at least logged-in over the past 30/90 days respectively). With this set criteria, there are two profiles that posts every now and then on my local board, and which I merit. I know that they are sMerit mean buggers, but above this lateral game, I appreciate their technical knowledge that they tend to display when helping out stray members on my local board. Other than that, I’m not really aware of other people’s meriting habits, even though I could easily check on the said list. I’ve got more merits than I tend to hand out, despite my sprees, so I’d probably only consider their meriting habits if I had very few sMerits to handout, and even then, in the big picture, it doesn’t seem like much of an issue.

[Ahli38]

I did not say the merit system is similar to a barter trade, but we would want to encourage more people to be involved in the flow, there is no need to hoard it, so i would prefer to send merits to members that are involved in the system, not members that hoard their smerits that is of no use to them, i have also seen merit sources say the same thing.

If every member hoarded merits and expect to receive from others, then who is going to rank up, everyone will be stuck somewhere, users would not celebrate their milestone merit achievements, members will not get to 10k merits, etc.

I like your way of thinking, that is your words which I have underlined.

related to your saying that you prefer to send merit to people who are not merit hoarders. it reminds me of the way I thought when I first joined this forum. and it's nice.

But this time I have a different thought, that is, this time I make things easier for me and don't want to complicate things that are actually easy. and don't want to make a broad thing seem narrow.
 I now want to make things simple. i.e. I will send smerit to anyone who makes a quality and commendable post. regardless of whether he is a merit hoarder or not. because this is a matter of who deserves to be appreciated for their efforts in making useful things in this forum through their posts. maybe everyone on this forum has found a post that is very useful (quality) and after reading it we can't help but give it smerit.

so related to merit this is a flexible thing.
everyone has different reasons. And of course we can't make everyone think the same. the important thing is that we don't do what this forum forbids regarding the merit system.

But of course several things need to be done to build a positive current in this merit system circle and encourage people to be interested in participating in running the merit system like the merit sources did and other examples like @DdmrDdmr did in his post most generous and the meanest.

and I am quite satisfied with the performance of the Merit sources. because every time I find a quality post, the source of merit is always there by giving a sign of its presence through the Merit given to the post.

in fact I've recently been looking for a post that's of decent quality that hasn't got any merit in it or that merit sources have missed. I intend to collect it in a special post to be considered for merit sources to read it, who may have missed it. But it turned out to be difficult. because the source of merit is always present in each of these quality posts.
and it's proof that this merit system is doing fine and the merit source is doing the volunteer work really well. my appreciation to all.

[tranthidung]

If a merit source isn't active, then they may not have the time that you are talking about, but they do not have to spend their time to do anything if they are active, they can send merits in the threads they participate in.

You never knows what happen with a merit source.

• If you see them inactive for a few months, this case is clear. They simply don't have time in the forum
• If you see them active (that can be just a short log in and leave), you will never knows how many time (hours) they spend on the forum. This case, you just see a vague signal about their activity

It is about activity status, other things will be whether they have time to glance around to find good posts and meriting them. To simplify merit source jobs, there are a few topics to help them.

• Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source
• Bitcointalk Ranking-up pipeline- Those close to their next rank (lacking Merits)
• [Merit] Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank

Because such an approach devalues ​​posting as such. The assessment of the post itself fades into the background, and things that are not related to the merit, such as the user's activity, to whom how much he gave what, to whom he is friends, and so on, come to the fore. This is all rubbish and should be discarded if we are talking about posting evaluation.

This is a point why we can not verify quality of two posters simply by total merit they earned. Where are they come from? Are sources of their earned merit really decentralized and come from different merit sender population or cohort. If they exchange their merit back and forth with friends, local users that can be a serious factor to decrease their quality.

In addition, merit sources will have a kind of advantage to receive more merit from forum members. Because lower rank members hope they will receive more merit from sources. Anyway, it is human nature, not serious.

Total earned merit is like a skin of your account but it does not exactly reflect your account quality in general as well as in a specific narrower area (Tech, Trading, Security, etc.)

[_BlackStar]

You never knows what happen with a merit source.

• If you see them inactive for a few months, this case is clear. They simply don't have time in the forum
• If you see them active (that can be just a short log in and leave), you will never knows how many time (hours) they spend on the forum. This case, you just see a vague signal about their activity

It is about activity status, other things will be whether they have time to glance around to find good posts and meriting them. To simplify merit source jobs, there are a few topics to help them.

• Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source
• Bitcointalk Ranking-up pipeline- Those close to their next rank (lacking Merits)
• [Merit] Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank

Looks like we've got a good list for monitoring the activity of the previously most generous merit sources on this forum. Some of them are no longer send merit for whatever reason, and this is an important thing to note. Even though the merit circulation is not disturbed much, I think some of them may have been disabled or have been replaced by the admin, we just don't know who.

Some of the thread you refer to are also great for time-saving merit sources to distribute their merit on worthy posts, but since this thread is about monitoring merit sources their activity will be noticed and possibly questioned as well. Indeed we never know what happened to them, and that's what made us ask.

[tranthidung]

Looks like we've got a good list for monitoring the activity of the previously most generous merit sources on this forum. Some of them are no longer send merit for whatever reason, and this is an important thing to note. Even though the merit circulation is not disturbed much, I think some of them may have been disabled or have been replaced by the admin, we just don't know who.

If you have time, you can read more in [TOP-200] The most generous users giving merits. I just don't have time to look at it, honestly.

In addition, it is not necessary to find out who are merit sources. theymos simply does not want to announce the merit source list publicly. Reasons are mentioned there

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.

-snip-

Do not beg for merit excessively.

[Razmirraz]

I don't disagree with you, but in the whole scheme of things, there are not very many merit hoarders.. so in that sense, it probably does not matter that much if you send merits to ONLY the hoarders because there are plenty of folks who still give out smerits.

True, so far I have found that there are so many merit sources or merit contributors who have the LOYALTY to issue sMerit to users who deserve it. Merit hoarders are only done by people who are stingy or can't appreciate the education of other users, but this case is very rare.

Merit sources that are chosen are really the right people and contribute a lot to the forum, they will always check the posts that are worth throwing sMerit. So I'm not too worried about sMerit hoarding users, because the forum still has contributors who can appreciate constructive, informative, and quality posts.

[indah rezqi]

True, so far I have found that there are so many merit sources or merit contributors who have the LOYALTY to issue sMerit to users who deserve it. Merit hoarders are only done by people who are stingy or can't appreciate the education of other users, but this case is very rare.

No, I don't think there is a specific consensus on how we rate them, which means you have the right to spend sMerit/ no spend and that's up to you. Some people are known to not care about the merit system and some may not be interested, and again that's up to them.

Pmalek had discussed this matter before, he made a topic and revealed some reasons.

Top 200 Active Members who have earned most Merits but have sent 0 sMerits

I can think of a couple of reasons:
1. They dont care about receiving/sending Merits at all and dont want to be part of it.
2. They dont understand how the Merit system works, thinking every time they send a merit, their count will decrease by one.
3. They cant find/dont think there is anything worth meriting.
4. They are afraid of sending Merits since there are many abuses and dont want to get on someone's radar.  

But I can think of another reason that might be the 5th reason and that. Forum contributors who left the forum before the merit system was introduced such as satoshi will no longer be active just to spend their sMerit.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Looks like we've got a good list for monitoring the activity of the previously most generous merit sources on this forum.

Ah, yes!!!!  Dude, thank you for linking to that, because it's a page I used to have bookmarked a long time ago (probably from whenever it was created) but somehow lost track of because of various hard drive changes and forgetting how to locate it.  Sweet, now I'm going to bookmark it again.

You'd think that for as long as I've been here, I'd know how to find my way around the forum, but....I don't.  I'd like to think it's a forum design problem, but the reality is it's more likely a my-brain-is-turning-to-hamburger issue.  I'm going to blame it on smartphones and social media, the easiest scapegoats I can think of.

And by the way, guys, keep in mind that some merit sources didn't apply for the position and I think those are the ones least likely to dedicate a good amount of time giving away merits.  Theymos tapped a bunch of members to be sources back in 2019 (IIRC), and damned if I know when the last time he accepted an application or created a new merit source.  It'd be awesome if he dumped a ton of statistics about the merit system and in particular the merit sources past and present, but I know that's not going to happen if their identities are kept confidential.  Oh well.

[philipma1957]

A lot depends on how busy you may be with real life shit.

I have about 1000 unreleased merits

I have also given about 4600 merits to people.

Since Last july the merits I have not given away are gaining..

Ie I had about 400 merits Last july 2021.

my bro-in-law developed dementia We found out on August 1 2021.

He lives 90 miles from me. A long drive as most is driving in NYC.

Say 2 ½ to 3 hours each way.

So his sister and I drive back and forth. A lot that is six hours lost to bitcointalk each time.

I say six hours because going online at his house while we are there does not happen So If I leave at 6am arrive at 9am do what is needed at his home leave at 8pm and get home at 11 pm I spent 17 hours off bitcointalk but I likely would have spent 6.  Multiply by 50 trips is a loss of 300 hours the last year on bitcointalk. 

So I built up my merits and smerits from 400 to 1000.

the next year god willing I will be able to do more here and lower my merits again.

I cant be the only merit source that got busy last year and gave less then the normal amount.

So I am just saying maybe its not much of an issue when people do this.

[JayJuanGee]

I don't disagree with you, but in the whole scheme of things, there are not very many merit hoarders.. so in that sense, it probably does not matter that much if you send merits to ONLY the hoarders because there are plenty of folks who still give out smerits.

True, so far I have found that there are so many merit sources or merit contributors who have the LOYALTY to issue sMerit to users who deserve it. Merit hoarders are only done by people who are stingy or can't appreciate the education of other users, but this case is very rare.

Merit sources that are chosen are really the right people and contribute a lot to the forum, they will always check the posts that are worth throwing sMerit. So I'm not too worried about sMerit hoarding users, because the forum still has contributors who can appreciate constructive, informative, and quality posts.

As many of us know, there is no rule against merit hoarding... but theymos said that he would keep an eye on the potential that it could become an issue.

And, merit hoarding for regular members is surely less of an issue than for merit sources, and I am pretty sure that in the first round of merit source member assignments, some of those members who were assigned as merit sources, were really stingy regarding their sending out merits, and some of them even publicly stated such.

Theymos would not even need to have had to see their posts in which they made such anti-smerit sending philosophies to be able to see whether or not they were using their smerit monthly allocations... so it did take theymos a year or maybe even two years before he really did end up reducing the smerit allocations of those merit sources and/or removing them from being merit sources...

So I do believe that it would be a BIGGER problem if merit source members were merit hoarders as compared with non-merit source members.. and the context of my above quote was attempting to focus on the dynamic of regular members acting like smerit hoarders rather than merit source members.

Otherwise I agree with your overall assessment Razmirraz that it appears that current merit source members are way more inclined to liberally send smerits as compared to either the first batch of merit source members and perhaps even the second batch.. so it may well have taken a bit more than a couple of years to get each of the incremental improvements in achieving more liberal sending of smerits from merit source members.

I surely don't feel like I have enough information to know whether some improvement could be made in terms of either rotating merit source members a bit more or if there might be some improvements if theymos might increase the number of merit source members.. because there does seem to be a bit of work in making those kinds of assessments, and surely sometimes there are likely some issues with how some of the merit source members (and not even excluding myself from the potential problem areas) are sending smerits and/or unfairly benefiting from their being assigned as a merit source member... .but likely theymos does also recognize that even if some of us might be sloppy and neglectful and maybe even deliberately bad from time to time in how we are either sending smerits or refraining from sending smerits, he likely also recognizes and appreciates that there is quite a bit of work that may well go into merit source members figuring out their own approach to the matter and then actually employing it on a daily/weekly and even monthly basis (as Philip mentioned the very issue that he has had with building up of smerits and some dilemmas regarding how to spend them in a way that is comfortable for the merit source member as well as other real life issues that s/he may well have happening)..

For example, there might be some reports that theymos and/or various admins/mods receive - and some of those reports might end up leading to something in which immediate action might need to be taken by theymos.. but then other times, it may well be that he is just making notes and accumulating a file.. to "get to" later, whether it is 1 year later, 2 years later or maybe some longer period of time so long as the accumulated notes are not really causing him a sufficient amount of discomfort in regards to just letting the whole matter just continue to run "as is" until a certain threshold of discomfort is crossed... like the breaking bellow the 200-week moving average as  BTC's price support.. and when it happens.. he says to himself "oh shit, I better do something"..... I.e... buy more BTC.. or globally tweak the forum's smerit system..

[Razmirraz]

Snip.

No, I don't think there is a specific consensus on how we rate them, which means you have the right to spend sMerit/ no spend and that's up to you. Some people are known to not care about the merit system and some may not be interested, and again that's up to them.

Pmalek had discussed this matter before, he made a topic and revealed some reasons.

Top 200 Active Members who have earned most Merits but have sent 0 sMerits

I can think of a couple of reasons:
1. They dont care about receiving/sending Merits at all and dont want to be part of it.
2. They dont understand how the Merit system works, thinking every time they send a merit, their count will decrease by one.
3. They cant find/dont think there is anything worth meriting.
4. They are afraid of sending Merits since there are many abuses and dont want to get on someone's radar.  

But I can think of another reason that might be the 5th reason and that. Forum contributors who left the forum before the merit system was introduced such as satoshi will no longer be active just to spend their sMerit.

What Pmalek discusses in this topic is only a small number of the top active users who have earned the most Merit but have sent 0 sMerits to other users, some of whom have left the forum. Without them there are still many other users with a high concern for spending sMerit where it deserves.
Those who leave the forum with the number of sMerits they have will not reduce the number of sMerit, the circulation of merits continues even without them.

[Jatiluhung]

so far since i joined this forum i found a really extraordinary level of activeness in this forum. I didn't know they were a source of merit at that time. because I didn't know there was a profession as a source of merit. But once I know that the person is a Source of merit then all I can say is that they are the right person to hold that mandate as a Source of merit. for considering their extraordinary activity. because I saw other accounts of ordinary people. hence most of them are only active about 4 hours per day. even less than that.

but the question mark for me is how can they always be active in this forum? do they not have much activity in the real world? Or are they really good at managing time?

[Pmalek]

but the question mark for me is how can they always be active in this forum? do they not have much activity in the real world? Or are they really good at managing time?

It could be any of the things you mentioned or a combination of several factors. You have to understand that not everyone works your standard 8-10 hours a day job, so they have more time during the day than the average person. Depending on where you are in the world and what your financial situation looks like, being active on this forum is a huge deal to some financially. We might have some crypto millionaires among us who no longer have to work at all and their hobby is writing on Bitcointalk. You have freelancers who only work occasionally. You have people who work in sales in certain stores that don't see much activity and they have much time to kill in between serving their customers. 

[philipma1957]

but the question mark for me is how can they always be active in this forum? do they not have much activity in the real world? Or are they really good at managing time?

It could be any of the things you mentioned or a combination of several factors. You have to understand that not everyone works your standard 8-10 hours a day job, so they have more time during the day than the average person. Depending on where you are in the world and what your financial situation looks like, being active on this forum is a huge deal to some financially. We might have some crypto millionaires among us who no longer have to work at all and their hobby is writing on Bitcointalk. You have freelancers who only work occasionally. You have people who work in sales in certain stores that don't see much activity and they have much time to kill in between serving their customers. 

Yeah my work is this forum, Ebay and hunting on a dozen sales sites online.

Plus I blog on two other sites evga.com and macrumors

So I spend 4-10 hours a day online. Along with regular visits to maintain the farm gear.

I am not the only one thats earns online on this website.

[Jatiluhung]

but the question mark for me is how can they always be active in this forum? do they not have much activity in the real world? Or are they really good at managing time?

It could be any of the things you mentioned or a combination of several factors. You have to understand that not everyone works your standard 8-10 hours a day job, so they have more time during the day than the average person. Depending on where you are in the world and what your financial situation looks like, being active on this forum is a huge deal to some financially. We might have some crypto millionaires among us who no longer have to work at all and their hobby is writing on Bitcointalk. You have freelancers who only work occasionally. You have people who work in sales in certain stores that don't see much activity and they have much time to kill in between serving their customers. 

I forgot about that. yesterday i just saw from my perspective that i have very little time outside my working hours.
I forgot that many people also work online. and also many people who have become rich and no longer work. and they do activities in this forum as a fun activity as a hobby. or to fill spare time and share information and insights with fellow forum members. conduct small discussions that sometimes relieve boredom and add experience and insight.

[Razmirraz]

And, merit hoarding for regular members is surely less of an issue than for merit sources, and I am pretty sure that in the first round of merit source member assignments, some of those members who were assigned as merit sources, were really stingy regarding their sending out merits, and some of them even publicly stated such.

Merit Sources shouldn't need to do merit hoarding, because when they make a Vision and Mission when applying to become a Merit Source, they often attach a history of their achievement statistics. Speaking of the first batch of Merit Source assignments, there are still many things that need to be addressed, maybe they are stingy because they have difficulty finding worthy users in their post history reviews to be appreciated or have other activities outside the forum that cannot be abandoned, in the end, many monthly sMerit allocations are piled up.

Theymos would not even need to have had to see their posts in which they made such anti-smerit sending philosophies to be able to see whether or not they were using their smerit monthly allocations... so it did take theymos a year or maybe even two years before he really did end up reducing the smerit allocations of those merit sources and/or removing them from being merit sources...

To reduce cases of merit hoarding on Merit Sources, Theymos should choose Merit Sources that really have high Loyalty on the forum. So far, I have found several Merit Sources (no need to mention their names here) that do their job well, some of them need to be rotated with other users or provide opportunities for non-merit source members.

So I do believe that it would be a BIGGER problem if merit source members were merit hoarders as compared with non-merit source members.. and the context of my above quote was attempting to focus on the dynamic of regular members acting like smerit hoarders rather than merit source members.

Obviously there will be BIG PROBLEMS if the Merit Source chosen by the Administrator is more stingy than the non-merit source members.
In the context of your quote above, I really understand the intent and purpose, those who hoard services are only a small number of stingy users who cannot appreciate contributions from other users.

Otherwise I agree with your overall assessment Razmirraz that it appears that current merit source members are way more inclined to liberally send smerits as compared to either the first batch of merit source members and perhaps even the second batch.. so it may well have taken a bit more than a couple of years to get each of the incremental improvements in achieving more liberal sending of smerits from merit source members.

As I explained above, there are still many shortcomings in the FIRST PRODUCT. So far what I have seen in the field, Merit Source is already on track, both globally and on the Local Board.

I surely don't feel like I have enough information to know whether some improvement could be made in terms of either rotating merit source members a bit more or if there might be some improvements if theymos might increase the number of merit source members.. because there does seem to be a bit of work in making those kinds of assessments, and surely sometimes there are likely some issues with how some of the merit source members (and not even excluding myself from the potential problem areas) are sending smerits and/or unfairly benefiting from their being assigned as a merit source member... .but likely theymos does also recognize that even if some of us might be sloppy and neglectful and maybe even deliberately bad from time to time in how we are either sending smerits or refraining from sending smerits, he likely also recognizes and appreciates that there is quite a bit of work that may well go into merit source members figuring out their own approach to the matter and then actually employing it on a daily/weekly and even monthly basis (as Philip mentioned the very issue that he has had with building up of smerits and some dilemmas regarding how to spend them in a way that is comfortable for the merit source member as well as other real life issues that s/he may well have happening)..

We never know if haven't tried it, the opportunity needs to be given to non-merit source users who are very active in distributing sMerit to other forum members. I also found some Merit Source Applications that have not been accepted, I thought Theymos should give it a try as some local councils also need Merit Source.

Changes need to be made on a rotating basis to reduce potential problems, Theymos should be more active in overseeing stingy Merit Sources and immediately rotate with new Source. I think if done like this, Merit Source will be even more active in distributing monthly sMerit allocations to deserving users (please correct if I'm wrong).