idea: Merit source could have a negative smerit balance

[LoyceV]

@theymos are there any plans to make an exponential increas on merits?

I hope not
Last time, theymos increased all sources with 175% of the sMerit they sent in the 6 months before the change. That was a big increase for active Merit sources, but at least it's applied manually.
A monthly 10% increase would quickly spiral out of control, I'd be looking at 10 times more source Merit to spend in 2 years.

It looks like there are enough threads of sources having issues of running dry of merits

I've been a source for 20-ish  months now, and my amount was increased several times. I've never been out of sMerit, and yet, it keeps going up. If sources are doing a good job, I assume theymos keeps an eye on their needs once in a while.

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[shield132]

Since I became a merit source I am trying to spend all my smerits, using 2-4 to good posts.
I am lacking smerit now.

As a source, I think it would make sense to have a negative smerit balance until the next cycle. For example, if I receive 200 smeirts per month, it would be nice to be able to "borrow" about 100 smerits. This way I could spend 300 and I would pay those when my source merit is refilled.

Because I found good posts now, which I can't merit. :/

According to your statistics, it seems that in overall you sent 287 smerits in last 120 days, roughly 72 smerit per month.
For more accurate report:
1st Month - 25 Smerit (From 27 Sep to 27 Oct).
2nd Month - 111 Smerit (From 30 Oct to 29 Nov).
3rd Month - 64 Smerit ( From 1 Dec to 28 Dec).
4th Month - 87 Smerit ( From 4 Jan till now).

From all of these you sent:
1 smerit to 189 user
2 smerit to 68
3 smerit to 14
4 smerit to 13
6 smerit to 2
9 smerit to 1

In October you were very inactive but you become hyperactive in November, then you get in normal shape. Debt isn't a solution, to my mind you have to either send more 1 smerti than 2 or send merits on higher quality posts (on more upper level). If you need to borrow smerits and hope you'll pay it later, then what about if forum sees increased number of quality posts than it was before? You'll need even more debt, so that's not a solution.

[tranthidung]

As a source, I think it would make sense to have a negative smerit balance until the next cycle.

How about the threshold of borrowable sMerits?

But even there is threshold for it, I don't think it is a good approach.

First, I could be wrong, but from my perspective and my understandings on how merit system works and the active operations of merit sources, sometimes good posters have to wait for days, weeks, or longer to see sMerits rewarded to their good posts. If a post is a good one, it might be missed today, next weeks, but at the end, someone will see it and merit it.

I know, merit sources don't have time to scan around the forum, to find good posts and merit them immediately. If they don't merit good posts instantly, they might forget because lack of bookmarking. It will cause some kind of unfairness for good posters with some of their good posts (not all, definitely).

Another disavantage of the suggestion is the ability to self-control meriting behaviours from merit sources who want to borrow sMerits before their smerit pool refilled. Naturally, when more sources are available, it will somewhat result in more easily meriting activities. That is what we have witnessed so far. Before the increases of 30-days smerit pool to all merit sources, some sources usually give away 1 sMerit to 1 good post, but now they easily to give away 2 or 4 sMerits to 1 good post. I don't say it is wrong but if the smerit pool increases 4 times, they will send 4-fold amount of sMerits to the same post, or different post with same level of post quality. In the long run, it will reduce the level of post-quality of merited posts, IMO.

I meant, one year ago, a good poster has to make more than 100 good posts and need at least 100 of those good ones to be merited with at least 1 merit per post to earn 100 merits. Now, they have to make around 50 good posts or 60 ones, and will be rewarded 100 merits, with 1 or 2 merits per post.  

The last one is good postes have to practice for their patience. They need to be as patient as possible, and focussing on their post quality, and contributions, patience will help them in the long journey.

[DdmrDdmr]

I don’t favour getting into debt, although the idea in the OP would be a debt against oneself, which seems a complication from the implementation point of view that may result in perpetuating a self-debtor status.

I don’t know how often that happens, and how frequently it may happen in the opposite situation (lots of available sMerits, but not enough posts/time to award them). One could conceptually device a means of transferring sMerits between Merit Sources (exclusively) without those transfers affecting the Merit counter of the recipient, giving way to a solution where both counter situations are approached (perhaps with limits in relation to the allocated amount). Still, this latter idea (enclose within this paragraph) seems like overly complicating the system (and the supervision of it).