POLL: Initial merit provided to older established accounts

[webtricks]

When merit system was introduced, I never thought it would gain so much importance over time. I thought it would simply act as an additional barrier to rank up just like activity and people won't care much about it. But as time progressed, merit talks came up as the hottest topic on forum. Many users are maintaining interesting merit data in Meta section. In nutshell, merits earned by a user has become status symbol and often regarded as a synonym of how constructive and quality poster the user is.

So in such scenario, it is wrong that all accounts from pre-merit era have been awarded merit points according to their ranks. I would have better liked the system if all users retained their pre-merit ranks but initial merit count for everyone shall be zero. So if someone is Hero Member before merit system, his starting rank shall be Hero but he needs to earn 1000 merits (not 500) to become Legendary.

[bonesjonesreturns]

Most of the contributions to this forum prior to 2013 are immeasurably more valuable than what passes as a contribution today.

Correct, but those contribution authors usually actually earned merit! See my proposal:

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).

Your proposal is garbage for the reasons I already posted here.
Why are you proposing it again.

Should confirmed scammers have all merits deleted?

I think so.

As I have said  and as OG has  said many pre merit legends or posters made contributions that are worth billions of merits if measured against the 1000s of cycled merits these new retarded sig spamming fools are rewarding each other in colluded chipmixer credits or political pal points.

Delete the entire garbage and start again. Think it out a bit more


Range 1 to 3 max.  50 is crazy. You get idiots like lauda and atriz sending each other big chunks
Some algo so narrow cycling is not so obvious with people with 1000s of merit losing 80% if you take away 20 pals cycled collusionary contributions to each other.
Sensible time limits between leaving merit so you dont get foxpup timetravel 0.01 second between meriting 20 different posts from his pal pharmacist
Max merit per month to one member max percent total from one member when you have 100s

Most of all though as suchmoon says with no objective enforced criteria then " good post"  and "bad post" are meaningless concepts.
I agree with him.

If you are unable to enforce objective standards for merit that introduce meaning then you must reduce the incentive and benefits of having merit. While merit gets you anything more than a good post or bad post score. If you monetize something you will bring huge determination to corrupt and game it for financial reward. It will then certainly have nothing to do with good post bad post scores it will be about a group of people giving it to each other that best suits their selfish gain.

Therefore i will support the scrapping of airdropped merit if there is a serious attempt to make merit a valuable tool. If i was sure merit would be a meaningful measure of a posts objective value.

If not then no. Delete it all and start again where it could have meaning and value  or leave it as the divisive damaging and broken mess it is. Only those wishing for centralized control want obviously to control all of the merit floating around out there.

[FIFA worldcup]

You can add Legendaries to your ignore list. If you don't feel that their posts are worth reading, then just ignore them - no need to change the system for some subjective opinions.

Although I come into being when the merit system was introduced, but this does not mean that the old high rank accounts merits should be erased.
I think those who have been on the forum from 2013 onwards diverse to be on the rank on which they are and most of the good trusted users are role models for the newcomers.

[NotATether]

Most of the contributions to this forum prior to 2013 are immeasurably more valuable than what passes as a contribution today.

And that's why I don't particularly care whether or not they deserved the merit. Older accounts made 5 years ago which spent enough time to post things that brought up their activity are old members anyway, and the merit they got airdropped could be considered a reward for hanging out here early. Just like users who have Donator/VIP badges.¹

People here seem to be concerned that there are a lot of inactive accounts who got airdropped merits. Well if they are inactive then in most cases they can't be abused for bounties since they aren't posting in the first place. A rare exception would be if an inactive account is hacked to start posting spam for money but that is usually caught quickly because of the password change notices displayed in their Trust page. Seriously if you were a shitposter in 2014 would you have kept making 1000 posts for money for more than three years given that you did not forsee a merit system? Most of them would have given up the site by then.

As for how we will be able to tell how much merit users actually earned, that's not a problem. BPIP and LoyceV's trust pages already have this information.

¹Although some of the worst scammers of the history of bitcoin are VIPs, so there will always be anomalies that can't be distinguished by a script in charge of classifying users by badge rank, say for a sig campaign. Those outliers can always be booted off manually, get red tagged and other disciplinary measures designed for mischief-makers.

[OgNasty]

People here seem to be concerned that there are a lot of inactive accounts who got airdropped merits.

I think that's just what they say to hide their truth.  Most of them are newer users (after the 2013 bubble) who came to this community seeking riches and are power hungry.  They want to appear as though they are above other members and the best way they've found to accomplish that is to try and tarnish the reputations and diminish the contributions of those who came before them any way they can.  This is just another attack angle to do so.  The truth is, it is likely Bitcoin wouldn't have seen near the early adoption or success it did without people like Gavin Andresen and Roger Ver pushing things forward in the early days.  The thought that users like that don't deserve their airdropped merit is sickening and shows the ignorance that has befallen the community today.

[so98nn]

The change is very important as time flies.

Just take an example this thread itself, it has made you think about the merit system in different way today. A debate, or discussion is held as to whether the merit system was fair for oldies and new one's equally?

Now here is whats happening . .

1) Many of them are agreeing to the merit system's existence.
2) Some of them are disagreeing to it.
3) Go through the thread and you will read most of them were actual contributor to the forum in the long journey of forum.

Additionally,

Many account farmers are around the forum, they are reduced in numbers OR can be caught very easily if they try to do merit farming.

**If by any means these farmers had legends, hero etc accounts earlier (before 2018) then I am 100% sure that they will now fail to achieve enough Merits as they are most probably shitposters thus making their accounts baby-corn!


Taking the first & second part in mind, I guess merit system is fair enough and it was OKAY to have pre-merits to oldies.

[akhjob]

I personally don't really care, but I believe that some members who were spamming the forum since the beginning for bounties/giveaways don't deserve to have merits. This is an online forum, let's not complicate things further. The current merit system is doing good with the original intention of curtailing new users from spamming, let the merit system be as it is.   

[Pmalek]

The way the airdropped merits were given out is the only objective way to do it. Had theymos picked which users to award and which ones not to award, it would have created controversy. People would have argued that it was a subjective selection. Many users were undeservedly awarded with a lot of airdropped merits but since when is life fair?

[malevolent]

Correct, but it was applicable as soon as it was introduced. There is no way that the forum was better off in January 2018 than 2013 in regards to shitposters. Even to this day, it remains a huge issue. You are right about the giveaway threads, I had forgotten about that one. It was quite the issue.

Both years had huge Bitcoin & altcoin rallies which attracted tons of newcomers, but the one in 2017/early 2018 was obviously greater in magnitude (and being more recent it stands out more). I just wouldn't hold an average Hero Member from those days in too high a regard seeing how easily and quickly some of them were able to achieve their ranks in the pre-Acitvity level days.

[ibminer]

Yes, most of them contributed good content and initial merit is deserved
18 (31.6%)

No, most of them were bad/shit posters and did not deserve initial merit they received
17 (29.8%)

Undecided
4 (7%)

I don't really care
11 (19.3%)

Other (explain)
7 (12.3%)

Total Voters: 57

I've locked the poll. Thanks to all who participated and for the comments!

The "Yes"'s ended up with a slight edge. I do personally believe, for the most part, enough users before the merit system do actually deserve their initial merit, and the quality of posts was better back then or at least easier to come across among the noise... although clearly there are some who did not really deserve it.

I realize the forum's perspective on it, and the intents behind it. I was just trying to get an idea on the perspective of other members and how they saw most of the posters from the past (before the merit system) and whether they saw them as deserving their initial merit, wasn't my intent to start a debate on how the system was created nor to give the impression I had some sort of "issue" with it. Obviously some people had opinions they wanted to get out about it, which I'm fine with, just wasn't my intent.

I'll lock this topic for now but if anyone has a reason for me to unlock it, let me know.