POLL: Initial merit provided to older established accounts

[ibminer]

This forum has been around since November of 2009, the merit system was implemented in January of 2018.

Initial merit was provided to accounts which existed before the merit system, and merit was provided based on the rank of their account (Legendary, Hero, etc) -- Full information here.

I'm curious what everyone thinks. Should older accounts have received initial merit? Did most of them deserve it?

Note: When answering, we should hypothetically assume their ranks would have remained (Legendary, Hero, etc) even if they had 0 merit and were never provided initial merit, and that the entire forum would not have been demoted to a newbie status because of the alterations to ranking that the merit system introduced. (i.e. you need merit to get to the next rank)

I'm trying to establish whether you believe the majority of users (not *all*) before 2018 actually deserved merit or if the majority of users did not deserve it.

There is a good argument that many members who received initial merit deserved it (and maybe even deserved more initial merit), and that these initial merits are meaningful, overall.

There is also a good argument that many members who received initial merit did not deserve what they received, or that they didn't deserve any merit at all, and it makes these merits not meaningful, overall.

What is your opinion?  Try to answer objectively and please explain below.

Thank you!

[1714768302]

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[1714768302]

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[Coyster]

A quick thought on your poll, and my thought is that as many users who received airdropped merits and have continued to earn merits since then, have proved that they really deserved the merits they received; and would have ranked up even if they started from zero. But users who only have airdropped merits and have not "earned" any afterwards may actually not deserve the airdropped merits they received, and as such may need to prove that they are HQ posters/users and with or without the initial airdrop would still have ranked up.

[Apocollapse]

Well, I'm new in this forum and never know if rank up on old system only have activity requirement. After I check it, then I know.

In my opinion, if they didn't received initial merit it will make they disappointed. We should know they're the old members who have contribute this forum for 9-10 years before new merit system. And I think bitcointalk grow bigger and bigger from them. Maybe @theymos give airdrop merit to them because they're have a lot contribution in this forum for long time till 2018. It's just a reward for be loyal in this forum.

I know merit is hard to get, I also only get 2 till now (I didn't complain, but it's much easier to rank up in old system). But, we should don't forget what "they" was do in this forum. So I think they deserve the airdrop merit.

I thought it will be discrimination if airdrop system only give for few user. So, it's better to give all to old user.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

I’m not really too concerned personally on whether they deserved it or not, although the attribution behind the term "deserved" is subject to a large range of diverse criteria, the same as merit attribution is often scrutinized from heads to tail with different perceptions and sensibilities.

Having joined the forum around the time the Merit System was being brewed, I assumed that preserving ranks and the associated awarded merits was thought out to avoid disrupting the whole system retrospectively, and in a sense, it is a sort of "early bird" reward. Preserving the rank seems fit, even more so with what I express in the following paragraph.

The hypothesis in the OP does though consider that merits could have been started from scratch, whilst maintaining the rank. That is equivalent to the merit counter only representing the amount of earned merits, which is a counter I favour more than the total amount of merits (earned+airdropped). The criteria expressed in the OP would seem more fitting in my opinion, as it would give the merit counter a homogeneous meaning for all accounts (albeit the diversity in the action of actually earning each merit).

[tranthidung]

I'm curious what everyone thinks. Should older accounts have received initial merit? Did most of them deserve it?

It is only title for each user. Some users don't need a Legendary title to be a real legends on the forum, like Hal

Note: When answering, we should hypothetically assume their ranks would have remained (Legendary, Hero, etc) even if they had 0 merit and were never provided initial merit, and that the entire forum would not have been demoted to a newbie status because of the alterations to ranking that the merit system introduced. (i.e. you need merit to get to the next rank)

It is good for low rank users, below legendary but for legendary ranks and old-era legendary members, they will cause complaints from new-era users because legendary members have no higher ranks to climb, at least with the rank system the forum has as of for now.

I'm trying to establish whether you believe the majority of users (not *all*) before 2018 actually deserved merit or if the majority of users did not deserve it.

There is a good argument that many members who received initial merit deserved it (and maybe even deserved more initial merit), and that these initial merits are meaningful, overall.

There is also a good argument that many members who received initial merit did not deserve what they received, or that they didn't deserve any merit at all, and it makes these merits not meaningful, overall.

iasenko has a topic that can help you with some data or ideas. Top 1000 merit receivers who were not active the past 30 days. Some of them are users from the past and not active on the forum for too long. If you can scrape and analyse data that how many of users before 2018 who still actively posted on the forum recent months but don't earn merits (you can try with different numbers of earned merits), we will have good results on how many old-era users are valuable. I believe the percent of valuable members on the forum is not high (sum of old-era and new-era).

From my latest update in my thread - At-least-1 sent & earned merits users , excludes autobanned/ nuked. Stats!, we have something to think of, I only quote main parts:

• Number of users who only earned at least 1 merit: 18971
• Number of users who only sent at least 1 merit: 7366
• Number of users who earned AND sent at least 1 merit: 14547

For legit users only:

• Total legit users: 12040

You see it. There are 18971 users who earned at least 1 merit till the last Friday's merit data dump. After took into consideration only users who earned AND sent at least 1 merits we have 14547 users. Next, after excluding users who have been banned or nuked, we have only 12040 legit users left.
Let's make a very raw calculation to have percent of legit users on total users on the forum:

• Total users: 2775211
• Total legit users (from my definition): 12040
• Percent of legit users: 12040/2775211*100 ~ 0.43%

In addition, from my observations on weekly new legit users, the number increases very slowly weekly. Details.

In reality, the percent of total valuable members depends on our definition but I am sure that it will be higher than 0.43% if we included inactive valuable members (who likely on received but have not yet sent a single sMerit). It is worthy to note that my legit definition is too easy with AND for all four criteria:

• Not autobanned
• Not nuked
• Earned at least 1 merit
• Sent at least 1 sMerit

If we apply stricter criteria, we can see the percent of valuable members falls dramatically.

The idea has been forgotten so now it is time to bring it back to lively discussion.

This thought occurred to me recently:

If you wanted to implement Merit in a decentralized forum (ie. one in the vein of Freenet's Frost or FMS), you could do it in this way:
 - Everyone can, from their own perspective, give unlimited merit to posts, and these merit transactions are put into files which each user publishes via the decentralized system. (Like a merit.txt.xz which every user publishes.) Unlike on bitcointalk.org, you can also give people merit without an associated post.
 - For everyone who has merit, you download their merit-transactions-list, but scale down/up all of the numbers so that the total merit that they send is equal to the actual sMerit that they own. It might or might not be useful to do this via some sliding time frame scheme so that merit transaction amounts aren't just continually diminished over time as they increase in quantity.
 - Apply the above step recursively, creating a web-of-trust-style merit network

Then every user has a subjective merit score for each post (sort of like the bitcointalk.org trust system, which was inspired by FMS). And if you wish, you can assign people to be merit sources from your perspective by sending them large amounts of merit directly; these might or might not appear in the merit-transactions-list which you publish.

Bringing my request back to life too (for BPIP), with additional data, number of days since the last active day.

I am showing as DT2, but I am on DT1.  :/

Could you consider to add a raw results in the format loyce.club use, please.

Like that one, for username: loyce.club/usernames/usernames.txt

Code:

userid: username

But this time, it is for ranks

Code:

userid: userrank

So it will be something like this:

Code:

userid: userrank: nodayssincelastactiveday

[hosseinimr93]

Some users deserve it and some don't deserve it.
The merit system was implemented about two years ago. A user who has received many merits in these two years, deserve those airdropped merits as well.

A user who hasn't earned a single merit in these two years, couldn't earn any merit even if the merit system had been implemented 10 years ago. So, this user don't deserve to be a legendary member.
There are some users in the forum who deserve even much more airdropped merit.
Assume that a user has earned 4000 merit in these two years and is active in the forum since 2014. If the merit system had been implemented in 2014, this user could earn 8000 merit before 2018.
So, this user deserve even more than 1000 airdropped merit.

 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Not only did I never care about the airdropped merits, I'm kind of wondering why it would be an issue right now, more than two years after the inception of the merit system.

Theymos realized where the problem was as far as shitposting goes, which was in the lower ranks.  I don't think he wanted to penalize any members who'd already ranked up, nor was he going to spend time trying to figure out which members "deserved" higher ranks.  In other words, he did the best he could when he created the merit system.

As far as those airdropped merits go, keep in mind that there were also sMerits associated with all of them and that was necessary to jump start the system into action.  Nowadays if you're looking at who's an excellent poster based on the merit system, you'd be looking at earned merits, and anything that got airdropped can be discounted.  It really isn't a big deal, nor do I think Theymos would make any changes to what was done in 2018 based on present complaints. 

It's a non-issue.

[bonesjonesreturns]

Merit is obviously meaningless or near meaningless.

I would take loycev suchmoon pharmacist nutildah et al
Put them in several debates with monsterer, smooth, Dz, gjhiggins, cfb et al

Then ask yourselves who can really provide extremely valuable content?

Merit is good for preventing bot and slowing down account farmers. It stopped super low quality spam ( that you could avoid) and replaced it with a ton of huge and dangerous insoluble problems. Conflating it with trust was pure crazy.

So no do not remove air dropped merit

Remove the huge incentive to obsess over merit. Keep it to being the jail keeper for bots and account farmers.
Other than that forget about the largely meaningless political points that merit really has become

I would say vast majority of really high quality valuable posts were made pre merit system

[ibminer]

A quick thought on your poll, and my thought is that as many users who received airdropped merits and have continued to earn merits since then, have proved that they really deserved the merits they received; and would have ranked up even if they started from zero. But users who only have airdropped merits and have not "earned" any afterwards may actually not deserve the airdropped merits they received, and as such may need to prove that they are HQ posters/users and with or without the initial airdrop would still have ranked up.

Some users deserve it and some don't deserve it.
The merit system was implemented about two years ago. A user who has received many merits in these two years, deserve those airdropped merits as well.
--snip--

There are a lot of older members who may not post here anymore, or anywhere near the frequency they used to. I still think they would deserve merit from prior posts but most of them do not have people going back to their old posts and adding merit. Users like satoshi, Hal, and other core developers may have had other members go back and add merit to some posts, although, I still think they deserve more... and there are members who are not core developers who probably deserve merit, but nobody is going to go back and merit those posts.

Just because a user hasn't "earned" merit since 2018 shouldn't necessarily mean they didn't deserve merit for their prior content/posts.

I’m not really too concerned personally on whether they deserved it or not, although the attribution behind the term "deserved" is subject to a large range of diverse criteria, the same as merit attribution is often scrutinized from heads to tail with different perceptions and sensibilities.

Valid point. I realize it is probably more of a subjective subject, maybe not fair of me to ask people to try and answer objectively, as I had hoped it would calm that subjectivity, but I guess there isn't really an easy way to approach this objectively since some people will see posts as deserving merit, others may not.

But maybe this sheds more light on the notion that a majority of posts would be objectively considered deserving merit when you factor in the multitude of subjective viewpoints across the entire community... which sort of lends a hand in saying the majority of users "deserve" merit in one form or another, if you are going to take into account the subjective viewpoint of every other member.

--snip--

It does seem that the point of the initial merit was intended to just keep the rank, and a primary reason why I added the hypothetical statement. I'm more interested in what people think of the content from the past from their point of view. I think the majority of content from the past ends up more relevant/deserving of merit for me than most of the current stuff, so I end up leaning more towards the majority in the past deserving more merit.

[Lucius]

Some users deserve it and some don't deserve it.

That may be the best answer, because some have definitely shown that they deserved to keep their ranks because they have contributed to the forum in various ways over the years. So if someone is get 500 airdropped merits as Hero member, and today he is Legendary member, this means that he managed to get 500 merits in next 2 years. If the merit system had existed since 2016, such a member would in that case very likely have collected those 500 merits.

So, this user deserve even more that 1000 airdropped merit. 

More than 1000 airdropped merits would not make sense, because merits were tied to member ranks at that time. I think the admin has done the best that can be done, although neither system is perfect. I also believe that in the future, there may be further improvements to the system, maybe even new ranks.

[OcTradism]

More than 1000 airdropped merits would not make sense, because merits were tied to member ranks at that time. I think the admin has done the best that can be done, although neither system is perfect.

Sounds like the system works good as it was created for.

I also believe that in the future, there may be further improvements to the system, maybe even new ranks.

Please don't say about new ranks that will put me under lower position in the hierarchy of the rank system. It will take me years to have 1000 merits in my pocket.

[ibminer]

Not only did I never care about the airdropped merits, I'm kind of wondering why it would be an issue right now, more than two years after the inception of the merit system.
--snip--
It's a non-issue.

To be more clear, I'm not saying there is any issue that I have with the forum providing or not providing initial merit.
This is information I'm seeking for my own research.

And I realize some deserve it and some do not.

I guess a better way to put it is... I'm looking for whether you, as a forum member, think the majority from pre-2018 deserved it or the majority did not.
If you do not care, or it is too close to call, then that is fine too.

[JaredKaragen]

Some users deserve it and some don't deserve it.

That may be the best answer, because some have definitely shown that they deserved to keep their ranks because they have contributed to the forum in various ways over the years. So if someone is get 500 airdropped merits as Hero member, and today he is Legendary member, this means that he managed to get 500 merits in next 2 years. If the merit system had existed since 2016, such a member would in that case very likely have collected those 500 merits.

So, this user deserve even more that 1000 airdropped merit.  

More than 1000 airdropped merits would not make sense, because merits were tied to member ranks at that time. I think the admin has done the best that can be done, although neither system is perfect. I also believe that in the future, there may be further improvements to the system, maybe even new ranks.

I second this ^^^

I know I earned my rank (before the new merit system).   I developed, contributed, answered, reported, and have been an overall good contribution where I have been on this forum.  Just about everything I have done in the crypto world has been for free, for request with offer for payment or just for fun and self enjoyment; under the condition that it remains exactly that.   I believe knowledge should be shared for the betterment of everyone.

Not everyone can say: "I earned my rank" and actually have something substantial to back it up.

Seeing the merit above the "airdrop";   just is only an indicator of how active they have been compounded by the number of persons impacted by their contribution since the "airdrop".    Food for thought.

[Coyster]

There are a lot of older members who may not post here anymore, or anywhere near the frequency they used to. I still think they would deserve merit from prior posts but most of them do not have people going back to their old posts and adding merit. Users like satoshi, Hal, and other core developers may have had other members go back and add merit to some posts,

You have added a point I wanted to include in my initial post in this poll, my choice/vote in this did not include users who are no longer active or who post sparingly, not at the rate or frequency they did in the past; my choice in this poll is based on users who are still active, and posting the same way they did before the merit system. And also users you mentioned like Hal and Satoshi have "earned" so many merits, far more than a lot of users today.

[pugman]

Maybe a few users should have received more/less than what they got. Maybe there could have been an algorithm to determine the amount of merits a person deserved, based on time spent, posts made, et al. But right now it doesn't matter, cause there is no going back. Even if there is, its not worth it.

I do feel like, majority of them deserved it, a lot of people spent a lot of time getting those activity points, and waited years to get that activity, not getting that airdropped merit might have caused more members to leave, it could have become too demoralizing to be fair. I know, there are lot of shitturds out there that used their merit in not so right way, but we have to just live with it and let it go, as we don't love in an ideal universe.

[Lauda]

I have voted:

Other (explain)

However, how this was implemented is a grave mistake. This has primarily caused selling of merit and creating abusive farms. What theymos should have done is that the starting merit for all older ranking members who earned next to no merit in the following 12 months since introduction (next to no being a proportionate % limit of what they had, e.g. if they had not earned at least 10% of what they had) would have been wiped out (0, including smerits). This would have helped the forum considerably and caused next to zero damage to innocent users.

This was my thinking, and I have yet to find some use cases where this would cause more trouble than benefit. Satoshi and similar very contributing posters would be unaffected. Occasional contributing poster that is inactive for half a decade would be affected, but who cares? There is no actual damage done there (and we can resupply the cases which we find with merit afterwards anyway).

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I guess a better way to put it is... I'm looking for whether you, as a forum member, think the majority from pre-2018 deserved it or the majority did not.

Yeah, I get it but none of it was earned merit so I don't see it as an issue of whether any members who received airdropped merits were deserving of them.  It was just a mechanism to grandfather in higher-ranked members and (speaking for myself here) that initial amount of merit isn't indicative of quality posting. 

I'd say that most of the Hero and Legendary members in January 2018 were the best posters--and that's obviously comparing them to the lower-ranked ones, which is where the problem of shitposting was all along.  If I agreed that your question is one I could answer, then I would have to say yes.  There were--and are--certainly garbage posters among the higher ranks, but in general I think they "deserved" that airdropped merit.

[Lauda]

I'd say that most of the Hero and Legendary members in January 2018 were the best posters--and that's obviously comparing them to the lower-ranked ones, which is where the problem of shitposting was all along.  If I agreed that your question is one I could answer, then I would have to say yes.  There were--and are--certainly garbage posters among the higher ranks, but in general I think they "deserved" that airdropped merit.

You may be talking about the state of the forum members in January 2013, definitely not 2018. In 2018, the overwhelming majority of all ranks were shitposters (and are to this day).

[Findingnemo]

Most of them not really deserved to get such merits especially the farmed accounts but I don't care about the ranks of people, if they make a meaningful post in my point of view and they really need merit then I will give it to them. Since merit is also not moderated here then it highly subjective to the users and what they see while reading those posts.

[BIT-BENDER]

Interesting argument, to some they would feel they deserve the initial Merit while to others they would not feel they serve it.
So let see it in this way even as they got initial Merit still those that contributed and not content with just the initial Merit are the once doing well and as such still getting merit - this in a way can show does that truly worked for it even before the merit system came-

We have also seen member that benefited little or none from the initial Merit still surpassing those that did benefit @Ddmr Ddmr for example and they are respected.

Let say the initial Merit was like a bonus to early users like we see some other site or establishment do. Initial Merit aside we can see people do nasty things with merit, like giving it to those that supports their claims, trading of merit, giving Merit to there alts. but if it's not truly deserving it won't achieve much.

Those that truly deserve it would still stand out from the crowd.