Suggestion: Reduce 50 merit limit per post.

[bitmover]

I still find merits very hard to earn. Many times I make good posts, which I spend lots of minutes writing/formatting etc and receive 0, or 3, etc.

However, there are sometimes merit sources or even not-sources giving 50 merit in a single post.

I believe there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of posts here which deserve not only 50 merits, but 100, 200. However, if a post is that good, it will be merited by multiple users and not 50 by a single one.

A post which few people gave 1 - 2 merits and one guy gave 50 is very unbalanced. No post deserve all that in a single transaction. This is a flaw in the merit system imo. If you take a look carefully, you will find that most of those 50 merit transactions are for bad posts, not good ones. No need to cite them here, everyone has already saw this happens many times before.

I am a merit source, but I don't find so difficult to spend my smerits. I prefer to give 3-4 per good (or above average) post than to give 50 in a single transaction. And I certainly prefer to see 50 smerits go poof than to give an overmerited stats to someone.

[1713981575]

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[1713981575]

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[1713981575]

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[Yatsan]

I think it's okay to merit someone with 50 merits, as long as it is a good post or reply. I agree with you that there's a thousand of good-post, but as long as you are meriting good-post regardless of the amount, I think it's okay.

I am not one of those meriting someone with a large amount of merit, but we have a different preference regarding sending merit if you are a merit source that is sending a small amount of merits through hundreds of users then good for you! And there's a merit source that is sending bulk merit to a limited amount of people then good for them. It's all balanced. Because some of the merit sources are sending bulk, and some are sending through a lot of users. For me, it's all balance.

Giving a large amount of merit to someone that has a good-post is just like helping them to rank up and the same as acknowledging their work for that post. So for me, it's okay, as long as it's a good post.

[tranthidung]

As for now, there is a limit on total amount of merit one can send to another one each 30 days: 50 merits per one user per each 30 days.

For the suggestion to limit total amount of merits that one post is allowed to receive, it is unfair, and unlogical in my opinion.

The forum has more than 2 millions of users so why the forum should have a rule on "First come, first meriters". Everyone have rights to merit the others.

Do you think that these threads deserve only 50 merits?

• Welcome to the new Bitcoin forum!
• Merit & new rank requirements

[Jawhead999]

I think it's okay to merit someone with 50 merits, as long as it is a good post or reply. I agree with you that there's a thousand of good-post, but as long as you are meriting good-post regardless of the amount, I think it's okay.

Yeah also i agree with @Yatsan, giving 50 merit in single time for unuseful thread/post its not fair and prohibited. But, if the thread or post have a excellent or good value , informative and meaningful its deserved to get 50 merit. Don't worry about somebody would do abuse, selling or trading their merits. I see there are so many people have good analysis and statistic about this forum. They can knowing the suspicious account who played about the merits and then solved it.  

[bitmover]

Do you think that these threads deserve only 50 merits?

• Welcome to the new Bitcoin forum!
• Merit & new rank requirements

Those threads received way more than 50 merits.  Because they were not merited by a single user.
Good posts will receive more than 50 merits anyway, because multiple users will merit it.

50 merit per transaction generates more distortions than fairness regarding meriting good posts.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Yeah also i agree with @Yatsan, giving 50 merit in single time for unuseful thread/post its not fair and prohibited.

I'm not sure Yatsan was saying any of that, nor is it prohibited to give 50 merits to a garbage post as long as you have them to give.  Frowned upon?  Yeah, probably.  Prohibited?  No.

OP, I'm kind of indifferent about this idea of reducing the max merits one can send.  On the one hand, sometimes a member like TMAN will give out a bunch of merits in a lump sum rather than going through a member's post history and meriting individual posts.  I certainly get the reasoning behind that.  There are definitely members who thus far have gone undermerited and people like TMAN (and others) like to help them out.  It's taking a shortcut by giving a single post 50 merits, but I don't see anything wrong with that.  Nor does it happen all that often.

On the other hand, if a post actually does deserve 50 merits, there's a good chance multiple members will merit it and it'll end up with at least 50 with no single member having to hand out the maximum amount.  That does happen a lot, and I'd say it's rare that someone would feel so impressed by a post that he felt it deserved 50 merits.

But I'm pretty sure Theymos did give it some thought when he set the max at 50, and unless that max has obviously caused a lot of trouble (which it hasn't), I doubt he'd consider lowering it.

[Lucius]

I still find merits very hard to earn. Many times I make good posts, which I spend lots of minutes writing/formatting etc and receive 0, or 3, etc.

You are Hero Member with enough merits to rank up, now you only need to reach activity for Legendary rank. Realistically speaking Legendary members have no practical purpose from the merits obtained (in terms of ranking), so you shouldn't be too surprised if you don't get merits for your quality posts.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think a few months ago admin is asked merit sources to pay more attention to lower ranks, and I noticed in my example that some MS no longer merit my posts, although I do not think the quality of my posts has changed in a negative way.

Giving 50 merits may seem too much in some cases, but it is a matter of personal choice for whoever chooses to do it. I think the situation would be the same if that number was limited to 25, but the system is set up in such a way and we must adapt to it until some changes happen.

[Deathwing]

I don't support this.


There are various threads that either go unnoticed or help to radically change a part of the forum. I have sent 50 merits to one thread before. The thread had consisted of a detailed introduction of the trust system for the Turkish board a few months back. This helped the board and forum overall because you can't imagine how many people did not know this feature. And I have no problem with rewarding the author for their hard work detailing it.

As The Pharmacist has mentioned, restricting merit would be restricting overall freedom. Giving 50 merits to an absolute shitpost is definitely frowned upon. Well, demerit would combat this but definitely would have side effects if introduced.

[webtricks]

I still find merits very hard to earn. Many times I make good posts, which I spend lots of minutes writing/formatting etc and receive 0, or 3, etc.

However, there are sometimes merit sources or even not-sources giving 50 merit in a single post.

I believe there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of posts here which deserve not only 50 merits, but 100, 200. However, if a post is that good, it will be merited by multiple users and not 50 by a single one.

A post which few people gave 1 - 2 merits and one guy gave 50 is very unbalanced. No post deserve all that in a single transaction. This is a flaw in the merit system imo. If you take a look carefully, you will find that most of those 50 merit transactions are for bad posts, not good ones. No need to cite them here, everyone has already saw this happens many times before.

I am a merit source, but I don't find so difficult to spend my smerits. I prefer to give 3-4 per good (or above average) post than to give 50 in a single transaction. And I certainly prefer to see 50 smerits go poof than to give an overmerited stats to someone.

We are not running any race here, nor are we competing on the basis of merits received. Merit is just a functionality to make ranking-up more reasonable. It shouldn't be consider as metric to determine the ranking of members or posts, like who's better than whom or which post is better than other (as you are implying).

Also, as far as merit abuse is concerned, it is easily distinguishable when a member is giving away 50 merits with malicious/biased intent or when he's giving on the basis of quality. So the issue of long range of single merit transaction (1-50) isn't serious one, IMO.

[LoyceV]

I am against this, even though it's sometimes abused: don't change it!
Even if it's lowered, abusers can still abuse it, but legit uses will be more difficult.

I am a merit source, but I don't find so difficult to spend my smerits. I prefer to give 3-4 per good (or above average) post than to give 50 in a single transaction.

It becomes a lot more work when your source keeps growing!
I can barely keep up with emptying my source as it gets replenished, and "my own" stash of sMerit has grown >600 again. Despite this, I am currently the "Most generous recent merit sender".

There's also this:

It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.

I wouldn't worry too much about posts that receive 50 Merit. If an abuser is buying them, it'll be terribly expensive to reach Legendary. And if it's a one-time thing, he won't reach a high rank from it.

[YOSHIE]

Sometimes humans are difficult to guess the true intention in doing something.
Give sMerit to others in large numbers, with decent posts, it is natural that the person giving it does not mind.

But for 50-100 sMerit given to inappropriate posts I think that is excessive, will have a negative effect on those who give and those who receive.
For example in discussions (Charges of fraud).

1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0

which still has many sources of sMerit, but escapes it in the fraud section, logically the topic there could save thousands of bitcointalk members from fraud, that is from the positive aspect.

However, what needs to be known is that (sMerit) is not moderated, and members who want to give freely, but it is also good to see who deserves it, not based on individual selfishness.
Maybe this can be a lesson for us all, give something good to the good, do not give the good to the bad, do not backfire for ourselves.

[Blitzboy]

I support your opinion, if a post is really worth, it should get a lot of merits from many others, a post that gets 50 merit from 50 people is always better than a post that gets 50 merit from 1 person. Reducing the limit of merit in some cases is not good, but it will certainly improve the problem of abuse, the merit system will be much more transparent.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I agree with the OP to be honest, very few posts (if any) deserve 50 Merit’s it just gives all the suspect foreign boards opportunity to abuse the system. I’ve seen it many times where for example people in the Fillipino sub are handing out ridiculous amounts of Merit to each other for bang average posts.

I certainly don’t think statistical threads in Meta deserve individual loads of 50 being sent which I’ve seen often.
50 Merit sends are for iconic threads if they have to even exist.

I think the most individual Merit transaction I’ve ever sent was 20 Merit’s which I fucking did by accident when I was on my phone trying to actually send 2

Personally as a Merit source I’d rather send 10 posters 5 Merit each than send one person 50 Merits but hey, that’s just me!

[DdmrDdmr]

I think some may have confused the context believing that we’re talking about 50 sMerits per receiving post, when were really talking about 50 sMerits per TX (it does become clear reading through the first couple of posts though).

Just to get an idea of what we are talking about here, delimiting the data from 01/01/2019 onwards (to have a more recent perspective) we’ve got:

Code:

amount              nTX                 %TX
50                  166                 0,11%
49                  5                   0,00%
48                  3                   0,00%
47                  2                   0,00%
46                  5                   0,00%
45                  6                   0,00%
44                  3                   0,00%
43                  2                   0,00%
42                  1                   0,00%
41                  2                   0,00%
40                  29                  0,02%
39                  5                   0,00%
38                  3                   0,00%
37                  3                   0,00%
36                  3                   0,00%
35                  21                  0,01%
34                  4                   0,00%
33                  3                   0,00%
32                  4                   0,00%
31                  3                   0,00%
30                  45                  0,03%
29                  10                  0,01%
28                  3                   0,00%
27                  9                   0,01%
26                  8                   0,01%
25                  74                  0,05%
24                  8                   0,01%
23                  9                   0,01%
22                  10                  0,01%
21                  13                  0,01%
20                  164                 0,11%
19                  50                  0,03%
18                  11                  0,01%
17                  19                  0,01%
16                  19                  0,01%
15                  126                 0,09%
14                  17                  0,01%
13                  30                  0,02%
12                  79                  0,05%
11                  61                  0,04%
10                  1409                0,96%
9                   272                 0,19%
8                   328                 0,22%
7                   622                 0,43%
6                   523                 0,36%
5                   4322                2,95%
4                   7372                5,04%
3                   5472                3,74%
2                   22690               15,51%
1                   102226              69,88%
-1                  1                   0,00%
-2                  3                   0,00%
-4                  1                   0,00%
-5                  2                   0,00%
-7                  1                   0,00%
-8                  1                   0,00%
-9                  2                   0,00%
-10                 5                   0,00%

Large sMerit TX (20 or above) is that timeframe represent 0,43% of the TX, which deem the problem a no problem from an overall perspective. It’s when you go on a case by case basis that you encounter cases you may not agree with.

I’m personally pretty mean, so large sMerits TXs are a stranger to me, and don’t fit my meriting pattern at all. Nevertheless, there is Merit Source diversity in criteria, and time is a factor to ponder. How one plays those elements is one’s own decision, but the overall idea should prevail to merit those posts one considers decent enough.

Note 1: Limiting TX to say 10 would not avoid someone sending 5 TXs over a period of 5 minutes. The only way to really avoid it would be to delimit the 50 sMerits/month/receiver to whatever figure is intended.

Note 2:

<…> I certainly prefer to see 50 smerits go poof than to give an overmerited stats to someone.

Never seen a 50 sMerit TX (nor even half of that) on any of my stats ..

[dzungmobile]

I have plots for it, here, but the thread was locked so I can not quote it.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215183.msg53532445#msg53532445

I am going to make plots for nmerit transactions and values of merit transactions, over groups (of amount of giveaway merits) and over last 2 years.

Excludes the most common amount, 1 and 2, there are some high figures that are favorite of meriters: 10, 20, 25, 30, and 50.

[bitmover]

You are Hero Member with enough merits to rank up, now you only need to reach activity for Legendary rank. Realistically speaking Legendary members have no practical purpose from the merits obtained (in terms of ranking), so you shouldn't be too surprised if you don't get merits for your quality posts.

I don't think that happens a lot. Merit is hard to earn, I don't think it got harder when I ranked up. This may happen, but not that often.

Note 1: Limiting TX to say 10 would not avoid someone sending 5 TXs over a period of 5 minutes. The only way to really avoid it would be to delimit the 50 sMerits/month/receiver to whatever figure is intended.

I think that is not a problem. Reducing max merit per tx to 20 for example and honest people (which all the sources are) would not abuse. If necessary reduce the max 50 per user per month to 30 or whatever.

Never seen a 50 sMerit TX (nor even half of that) on any of my stats ..

They do happen a lot, although they may not be in your stats. I don't want to mention them here because there is no reason to "point fingers" at anyone. I don't agree with this merit policy,  but it is not against the rules so there is no reason to mention and expose people who do it.

I agree with the OP to be honest, very few posts (if any) deserve 50 Merit’s it just gives all the suspect foreign boards opportunity to abuse the system. I’ve seen it many times where for example people in the Fillipino sub are handing out ridiculous amounts of Merit to each other for bang average posts.

I agree 100% to this. Even though, as @Lucius mentioned I do not need more merit to rank up, I would like more to be more recognized (in BPIP). There are benefits in having more merits and more recognition, like to enter better signature campaigns (for example). That´s not just me, and those Filipino indonesia russia etc merit abusers are doing that. Certainly there are way more merit sources there than necessary.

I certainly don’t think statistical threads in Meta deserve individual loads of 50 being sent which I’ve seen often.
50 Merit sends are for iconic threads if they have to even exist.

I agree with this as well, but although I think stats are not my favorite kind of posts, I like those posts and they certainly deserve many merits, but they are way overmerited imo.
Meta board is overmerited, maybe for a reason. Theymos want to incentive posting here, as we saw on the art contest for example.

[The-One-Above-All]

I still find merits very hard to earn. Many times I make good posts, which I spend lots of minutes writing/formatting etc and receive 0, or 3, etc.

However, there are sometimes merit sources or even not-sources giving 50 merit in a single post.

I believe there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of posts here which deserve not only 50 merits, but 100, 200. However, if a post is that good, it will be merited by multiple users and not 50 by a single one.

A post which few people gave 1 - 2 merits and one guy gave 50 is very unbalanced. No post deserve all that in a single transaction. This is a flaw in the merit system imo. If you take a look carefully, you will find that most of those 50 merit transactions are for bad posts, not good ones. No need to cite them here, everyone has already saw this happens many times before.

I am a merit source, but I don't find so difficult to spend my smerits. I prefer to give 3-4 per good (or above average) post than to give 50 in a single transaction. And I certainly prefer to see 50 smerits go poof than to give an overmerited stats to someone.

ALL of these improvements may help but not cure,  sure reduce from 50  to 3 MAX and run a bot to make the adjustments back to day one of the merit cancer intro. 1-2% of your given merits to 1 other member in a 365 day period after it is given obviously. If you can not find any other good posts from a board of millions then tough shit.

I think 3 max is more sensible.

However, after talking to some devs about this particular issue (who actually understand these types of challenges) there is NO POSSIBLE way to make merit = good post. Or rather there is NO WAY to even make the motivation for giving merit = what you think is a valuable post. Without fully removing ALL POSSIBLE implications of merit economically. 2 highly regarded developers told me the same thing. IMPOSSIBLE make that sink in.

While there is ANY other economic or any other benefit to merit other than to raise a merit score, then it will be gamed and distorted in a dangerous way that makes it net negative. No rank, no sig, no trust, no other implication other than a score that "should" give indication of prior number of great and valuable posts.

It is possible to tighten it up and remove subjectivity improving it a huge % but no making it 100% solid even from an intentional perspective. I mean peoples own evaluation will never be consistent even day to day 100% THEMSELVES. However their intent should be for good post or valuable post with NO OTHER considerations

Merit should have zero implications here, the more VALUE and benefits you allocate merit the MORE dangerous and gamed it will become. That is their own words, already this was what we suspected anyway.

Reducing from 50  to 3 max and put a % max to other member in x time, some criteria, some immediate punishment etc will all help a lot but will never fix it or even push it net positive in the full context is the opinion of those that understand these problems. Everyone else here just shouts what they think will benefit THEM the most. lol

There should be RULES for using merit scores for ANY decisions or benefits here with regards, sigs, trust etc. That is the only way to ensure people have no OTHER consideration for giving merit for a post they are evaluating.

Feel free to debunk these points.

But of course 1-50 leaves EVEN MORE room for HUGE gaming and abuse of this system and this entire board. Reduce to max 3 I would suggest 1 is even better. But MUST be retroactively adjusted else makes it even worse for those starting out now.

This post is the most valuable on this thread but will receive ZERO merit. That is a good thing because the smart reader will notice merit is gamed, political and economic weaponry that is dangerous and must be deleted or DRASTICALLY overhauled.

LFC bitchcon actually said something of value, more merit on that post please. Max 3 at a go though. Lauda must be sleeping off those last batch of vitamins hope he does not notice that or he is going to be guzzling gallons later today nom nom nom hahaha. LOL

Read, understand, accept.

[Lauda]

I still find merits very hard to earn. Many times I make good posts, which I spend lots of minutes writing/formatting etc and receive 0, or 3, etc.

Fully agreed, especially if your statement is either very controversial or on the opposite political spectrum of the people who have merits. The merit system seems to be going in a direction, but only for certain users/cases/use-cases, of support rather than assessing contribution.

[Harkorede]

I think it's okay to merit someone with 50 merits, as long as it is a good post or reply. I agree with you that there's a thousand of good-post, but as long as you are meriting good-post regardless of the amount, I think it's okay.

Yeah also i agree with @Yatsan, giving 50 merit in single time for unuseful thread/post its not fair and prohibited. But, if the thread or post have a excellent or good value , informative and meaningful its deserved to get 50 merit. Don't worry about somebody would do abuse, selling or trading their merits. I see there are so many people have good analysis and statistic about this forum. They can knowing the suspicious account who played about the merits and then solved it.  

Stop looking for non-existing abuse, when you pay more attention to the user rather than the single post that got merited, It becomes more understandable the probable reason behind the stack of merits (most times).

Most times it seems rather absurd to see a post get 50 merits when obviously the post doesn't deserve it. It is glaringly a case of merit abuse most times but then that isn't often difficult too detect. However, I've seen cases where a merit source or someone gives 50 merits at a go, not because the post is as such worthy (almost no post is worth that) but rather because the users contribution overtime is under merited. I'd rather give 50 merits to a single post of user that has contributed a lot (IMO) than spread it over 50 posts of the same user all in the name of justification.

[TMAN]

The issue is that if it’s reduced to 25 then we will have the same threads popping up moaning about 25 merit handouts as lazy fucks like me prefer to hand out all my sauce than have it disappear. Remember we will always have the moaning forks like TOAA and the pajeet bounty hunters who can’t earn 19 merits in 5 years #meritbrokemylife