Give Moderators a "DDelete" button (Demerit/Delete)

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Do you guys really want that? Even if only mods were allowed to arbitrarily demerit posts, I think it would do more harm than good. Juicy drama being the 'harm' part.

Yeah, there would be no end to the complaints of bias and whatever else the demerited member could think of to bitch about.  And what would happen with members that have no merits to begin with?  Would they end up in negative territory? 

In any case, this isn't exactly a new idea.  The concept of having demerits has been floating around since the early days of the merit system.  You must've missed all the threads and posts discussing it--and obviously nothing ever came of the suggestions.  Theymos just isn't interested in making it harder on members to rank up.  IMO it's hard enough as it is.

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[Viper1]

I wish everyone could demerit posts as I'd demerit this one for just being.. silly.. The entire merit system sucks. It hasn't solved the issue at all and instead has created even more IMO with people posting just to farm merit now, not just trying pad post count/activity/ It's also spawned a whole "industry" of worthless threads/posts all about compiling info about merit and discussions about it. At this point I'm starting to think this was the entire purpose. Create more "traffic" that doesn't add any value to the forum at all.

As long as there are signature campaigns that pay out money based on post counts, there will be "spam", along with a whole lot of people that are here for no other reason and add zero value to the forum at all since they rarely if ever post in any actual coin threads. Deal with the root of the problem instead of tacking on other things to try clamp down on it which in this case at least, has just added to it. Either way, I don't see any way to effectively deal with it as long as the core cause remains as is.

[tranthidung]

As long as there are signature campaigns that pay out money based on post counts, there will be "spam"

Most of spammers come from signature campaigns that pay through altcoins, tokens, not bitcoin or from bounties (spam report posts for Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. bounties).

If there are things necessary to do:
- Disallow campaigns/ bounties that pay through tokens/ altcoins
- Charge fees on companies that run campaigns (pay through bitcoin) in the forum.

[Coyster]

Did you forget that almost every user on this forum, even the best of posters usually have posts of theirs deleted, sometimes users have multiple posts, even those made a very long time ago deleted my moderators.

I see no connection between posts deleted and demerit options, sometimes a post could be good to others, but not to a moderator and the post could be deleted, other times a post could be deleted simply because there have been numerous threads about it already, just like yours here. So I do not see how deleted posts should correlate with the user losing a merit in the process, if the user was a terrible poster then they wouldn't earn any merit to lose in the first place.

[DiamondCardz]

I think a lot of people who have replied haven't really read this thread. Replies which criticise the idea but have read the thread, I'm perfectly okay with, but I'm not okay with people skimming the title, popping off a reply based on that, and then moving onto the next thread.

First of all - I said the option to demerit, and not that every post deletion would result in a demerit, so all of the people who have said "posts can be deleted for reasons other than spam" - you clearly have not actually read my post. I explicitly said in the OP that there would be a Delete option for posts which are deleted for reasons other than spam, and that DDelete (Demerit/Delete) would be for spam, breaking forum rules, etc.

Secondly - I explicitly wrote moderators both in the title and the OP. So the fact that some people are saying "but people can delete posts in self-moderated threads so we can't do this" is completely ridiculous. I can't figure out how you could possibly read my post and say that still.

Some replies to people:

And what would happen with members that have no merits to begin with?  Would they end up in negative territory? 

Obviously you wouldn't be able to go below 0 merit.

Not earning merits doesn't logically mean the user is spamming on the forum or doesn't add value to the forum and his rank should be demoted for it. It sounds more stupid to give this power to just specific peoples ( Mods here ), which would generate obvious drama.

This is irrelevant to my thread, and I assume you're trying to address it to my idea as you say it's stupid to give delete/demerit power to mods. But nothing in my post implied that not earning merits makes you a spammer. I assume that you were trying to address this to the person who suggested merit decay and tried to tie it into the OP to keep it on-topic and messed up.

• If the whole thread gets deleted, the quality posts get deleted too
• If the post reply you were replying to, gets deleted, your post can get deleted too
• Post from a self moderated thread can be deleted irrespective of the post quality, etc.

Obviously for someone to be demerited their specific post would have to be removed by a Moderator using DDelete. Again, the thread does make explicitly clear that this is not a "-1 merit whenever a post is deleted", it's more nuanced than that. Also see above - moderators have this option, so posts from a self moderated thread deleted by the OP could never result in a demerit.

Possibility for a generic shit post to get merit is merely less and even if they found doing it too often or many times then they will surely get under the radar of spam/scam busters and will be tagged for merit abuse this is the reason why theymos not interested on implementing demerit button which was proposed many times already.

Haven't read my thread at all, as this is not a "demerit button"

Demerit aims at deleted posts (for whatever reasons posts deleted, by OPs of self-moderated threads or by moderators or by users themselves) will cause massively complicated problems: for users, for moderators, and for the forum.

See my complaints above. Discussion in this thread should be about moderators having the option to deduct 1 merit when they delete a post. Other forms of demerits are irrelevant.

I wish everyone could demerit posts as I'd demerit this one for just being.. silly.

This is probably top reason #1 that users can't demerit posts as I can't imagine a worse reason to demerit a post than "I disagree with it".

Thanks all. I'm out of energy to keep responding for now. If I feel like this topic just ends up being spammed up by people who haven't read the thread I'll just end up locking it rather than let non-constructive discussion fester.

[Viper1]

This is probably top reason #1 that users can't demerit posts as I can't imagine a worse reason to demerit a post than "I disagree with it".

You mean as opposed to giving merit cause they "agree" with it (and especially in the case of pissing matches where each side merits their sides posts) as opposed to expected use of it as "posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with". It's already a failure so let everyone go after each other with demerits.

[DiamondCardz]

This is probably top reason #1 that users can't demerit posts as I can't imagine a worse reason to demerit a post than "I disagree with it".

You mean as opposed to giving merit cause they "agree" with it (and especially in the case of pissing matches where each side merits their sides posts) as opposed to expected use of it as "posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with". It's already a failure so let everyone go after each other with demerits.

I merit posts that I don't agree with regularly, as long as they put effort in their arguments, or if they make me re-think my position even a little bit.

We can't simply write the whole system off because there are a few people who abuse it, and we definitely shouldn't just say "to hell with all of it, let's make the problem 10x worse". If you think the system is messed up, why don't you suggest improvements?

My hope is eventually people will agree on an improvement together and it will be implemented. It might not be this one but that's okay.

[Viper1]

- Charge fees on companies that run campaigns (pay through bitcoin) in the forum.

That's certainly an option but I don't see how that would help at all. They can already get banned for letting things get out of control.

[Viper1]

This is probably top reason #1 that users can't demerit posts as I can't imagine a worse reason to demerit a post than "I disagree with it".

You mean as opposed to giving merit cause they "agree" with it (and especially in the case of pissing matches where each side merits their sides posts) as opposed to expected use of it as "posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with". It's already a failure so let everyone go after each other with demerits.

I merit posts that I don't agree with regularly, as long as they put effort in their arguments, or if they make me re-think my position even a little bit.

We can't simply write the whole system off because there are a few people who abuse it, and we definitely shouldn't just say "to hell with all of it, let's make the problem 10x worse". If you think the system is messed up, why don't you suggest improvements?

My hope is eventually people will agree on an improvement together and it will be implemented. It might not be this one but that's okay.

It's more than just "a few". When the people that are mods/staff/DT/Merit Sources etc abuse it in that fashion it's a problem. Not to mention all those that use it to "suck up" to those sorts.

The "spam" problem previously existed for rank, activity, bumping, sock puppet "promotion" and the like. Now merit farming has been added on top of that. So which problem do you think needs to be solved?

Rank/activity/merit is mostly related to signature campaigns. Go at the source of the problem. It's not the posters. It's the campaigns themselves that create the issue. The entire premise behind signature campaigns is to "spam" posts so people can see the "ad". There is no "solution" to the problem. As long the forum continues to allow them, there will be spam. So you either ban them outright or you limit them severely and then live with the remaining spam. Until everyone starts to look at the core problem, there can be no discussion of how to solve it.

As long as I've been here people have been crying about post spam. Nothing at all has been "fixed" with merit.

[Deathwing]

This is probably top reason #1 that users can't demerit posts as I can't imagine a worse reason to demerit a post than "I disagree with it".

You mean as opposed to giving merit cause they "agree" with it (and especially in the case of pissing matches where each side merits their sides posts) as opposed to expected use of it as "posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with". It's already a failure so let everyone go after each other with demerits.

I merit posts that I don't agree with regularly, as long as they put effort in their arguments, or if they make me re-think my position even a little bit.

We can't simply write the whole system off because there are a few people who abuse it, and we definitely shouldn't just say "to hell with all of it, let's make the problem 10x worse". If you think the system is messed up, why don't you suggest improvements?

My hope is eventually people will agree on an improvement together and it will be implemented. It might not be this one but that's okay.

It's more than just "a few". When the people that are mods/staff/DT/Merit Sources etc abuse it in that fashion it's a problem. Not to mention all those that use it to "suck up" to those sorts.

The "spam" problem previously existed for rank, activity, bumping, sock puppet "promotion" and the like. Now merit farming has been added on top of that. So which problem do you think needs to be solved?

Rank/activity/merit is mostly related to signature campaigns. Go at the source of the problem. It's not the posters. It's the campaigns themselves that create the issue. The entire premise behind signature campaigns is to "spam" posts so people can see the "ad". There is no "solution" to the problem. As long the forum continues to allow them, there will be spam. So you either ban them outright or you limit them severely and then live with the remaining spam. Until everyone starts to look at the core problem, there can be no discussion of how to solve it.

As long as I've been here people have been crying about post spam. Nothing at all has been "fixed" with merit.

"spam" posts so people can see the "ad". There is no "solution" to the problem.

I don't think this is the right mindset to have. Signature campaigns aren't just made for spam. It's all about the management of the signature campaign. Merit system has been useful for signature campaigns too. I merit every post that I seem to be "deserving" merit, if they have worked on the topic, if it has a good amount of spent time. It'll receive a merit from me. But I will not deny your words about potential abuse with the merit system. Merit sources and DT members -if they want it- are able to abuse the heck out of it. But would they? It would most likely ruin their reputation on the forum. You can think of the trust system when it was introduced, some people were giving each other trust just because they like it, people were giving their alts trust so that they could scam people.

There is a solution to the problem as opposed to what you're saying. It's proper management. It's proper punishment. DiamondCardz's idea is really, really well put. When you report a shitposter, moderators delete the message. That's a fact, but if they were to have a demerit option while doing this, that would be the punishment for that shitposter. Regarding the management, that is up to the campaign owner and the campaign manager. It's a sad thing that most campaign managers do not really have power over who pays them, the owners. But they are at least hard-working to keep spammers off of the forum. You can clearly see this on Cryptotalk's signature campaign. In the first few weeks, there were a lot of necrobumpers, spammers, shitposters, people saying "thank you" or barely even one sentence to 5 threads in a row. They're all gone. People are actively reporting them to Yahoo, the campaign manager. And this is on a campaign that merit is not even used. It's just "you got the rank? 'kay you're in." if the campaign had utilised merit since the beginning I believe that Yahoo's problems would be at least cut in half.

[hacker1001101001]

Not earning merits doesn't logically mean the user is spamming on the forum or doesn't add value to the forum and his rank should be demoted for it. It sounds more stupid to give this power to just specific peoples ( Mods here ), which would generate obvious drama.

This is irrelevant to my thread, and I assume you're trying to address it to my idea as you say it's stupid to give delete/demerit power to mods. But nothing in my post implied that not earning merits makes you a spammer. I assume that you were trying to address this to the person who suggested merit decay and tried to tie it into the OP to keep it on-topic and messed up.

I don't know how talking about demerits being useless in a thread related to demeriting is irrelevant.

Also provide people with a better metric to measure spam than simply "deleted posts" (as posts can be deleted without necessarily breaking forum rules).

You implied getting DeMerit's as a metric to measure spam.

I was addressing this directly to the OP and didn't messed it up FYI.

[DiamondCardz]

I don't know how talking about demerits being useless in a thread related to demeriting is irrelevant.

You implied getting DeMerit's as a metric to measure spam.

I was addressing this directly to the OP and didn't messed it up FYI.

You said that not earning merits doesn't mean a user is spamming. I never said that it did, so I'm not sure why that's relevant. A user who doesn't spam and just posts 'meh' posts all the time, that don't break forum rules but aren't particularly amazing, would never gain or lose any merit even with this system. Their rank would remain the same.

If someone is having posts deleted by a moderator for breaking forum rules - then yes, they deserve a demerit. The demerit's purpose isn't as a metric to measure spam, it's a punishment for them spamming.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

A significant amount of active accounts haven’t earned a single merit so far (they have at best the initial airdropped merits, in accordance to their rank). That would mean that, potentially, these accounts would be on the verge of demotion for the deletion of a post through the DDelete option (at moderator’s discretion). It would not really be rare at all to see accounts being deranked after applying a DDelete; the new forum drama that would be endless, whilst attributing moderators a role directly both in the ranking game, and in campaign hygiene (by subjectively having to discern the intent behind the post – quotas and such).

This has been discussed on a few occasion before, in the context of a general merit decay (i.e. one per couple of months), and/or alongside eradicating airdropped merits altogether. The former at least would be rather more objective, detached from mods having to intervene. The latter would suit the likes of many, but throw under the bus those that post occasionally or do so in sections that are not frequently merited.

Ranks are a on some levels a profit-related feature, and on others play statuary role (alongside with the account build-up through posting content itself). Once a rank has been obtain through whatever set of game rules applied at the time, de-ranking through the introduction of new mechanisms, especially if not done on a very low scale, can become more of a global hazard than a corrective by example mechanism.

[tranthidung]

Demerit aims at deleted posts (for whatever reasons posts deleted, by OPs of self-moderated threads or by moderators or by users themselves) will cause massively complicated problems: for users, for moderators, and for the forum.

See my complaints above. Discussion in this thread should be about moderators having the option to deduct 1 merit when they delete a post. Other forms of demerits are irrelevant.

It is unncessary. An off-topic post does not equal to helpless post. It is off-topic, and deserves delete from moderators, I agree with this solution, but sometimes an off-topic post still is helpful for some readers who find given information that is helpful for them. Readers initially don't visit thread and read that post for such information (that is off-topic) but when they read that post they might retrieve something they've never known of. For such situation, demerit is not fitted.
Most of cases, off-topic posts are shit ones but it is not true for all cases.
If a demerit button activates, it should be used very flexibly (as same as way we use the merit button).

[TGD]

OP idea is brilliant if merit can be earned when you reach good quality post quota for a certain timeframe just like the old way of gaining activity but with good quality posting quota. But considering the current rules on merit gaining which is purely the judgement of merit source taht didn't cover all post in every section of forum, Then demerit is not quite necessary since merits is not that easy to earn. Spammer already punished once there post was deleted and obviously those spam post will not gonna give them any merits or gains on there signature campaign. So basically it's useless to demerit spammers that gaining nothing. It's better to increase forum moderators so that there will be an eye in the forum 24/7 in every section to delete spam post. And also set a limitations for a number of spam post that got deleted and once reach then ban that user.


The real pain in the ass is the merit farming issue.