Merit giveaway: is it a good idear?

[mocacinno]

I'm writing this topic after responding in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276103

The OP of this thread is giving away merit to newbies that promise to abide by the forum rules and copy/paste their favorite rule in said thread. I can only imagine it takes a newbie less than 30 seconds to rank up this way, 0 effort needed. I quickly noticed two of the recipients were on my ignorelist. These 2 ignored members have now ranked up, and can add a signature and have more lenient posting restrictions in general.

This means they now have an opportunity to partake in sigspamming, or they can now make money by selling the ranked-up account. Neither of these options is very appealing to me.

People that know me a little bit probably know i'm not a big fan of ignoring people. I always try to stay friendly and helpfull. I don't ignore people all that often. I value opinions and try to stay away from drama as much as possible (sure, we're on bitcointalk... 100% drama avoidance is very, very, very hard... If not, impossible). As a matter of fact, i basically have to notice a certain username multiple times when they're actively posting crap before i'm tempted to read their post history. And only if their posthistory shows they continuously post utter garbage they'll end up on my ignorelist. Just to say that today, 2 crapposters got ranked up...

This topic is NOT pointed towards the OP in the linked thread, but merely to discuss the general stance of other members towards merit giveaways. AFAIK, the OP in above thread is trying to do some good for newbies, and others have done merit giveaways long before he started his thread.

I think there's a fine line between merit giveaways that are beneficial, and merit giveaways that are toxic.

I've seen OgNasty give away merit to people that have mastered the technical details of signing a message. I've seen people that allow newbies to highlight merit-worthy posts... I think these forms of merit-giveaway are fine, since they at least require a minimum amount of effort of the participant.
But on the other hand, any giveaway that can be claimed with less than 15 minutes of work might do more harm than good (IMHO).

I'm sure we'll see a lot of different opinions on this subject tough

[1715201416]

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[1715201416]

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[LoyceV]

In general, I think users who aren't Merit sources shouldn't have a hard time finding good enough posts on their own. Merit giveaway threads often receive Merit, so that might be a reason to start one.

See theymos' post on the subject

[Upgrade00]

I think there's a fine line between merit giveaways that are beneficial, and merit giveaways that are toxic.

I agree. The thread starter may have had good intentions with the giveaway, but the rules used allows it to be exploited easily. An extra point like; going through the post history of applicants to find merit worthy posts would help give a idea of the users being ranked up.

Merits should be reserved for quality content imo. Knowledge of the rules and application of it is great, but shouldn't be a criteria to rank up. A member should not need an incentive to read the rules of a forum they have been in for a couple of months or years.

Except a user has large lumps of smerits to dump or wants to generate interest for an activity, I would rather they give out merits naturally as they come across deserving threads/replies.

[mocacinno]

In general, I think users who aren't Merit sources shouldn't have a hard time finding good enough posts on their own. Merit giveaway threads often receive Merit, so that might be a reason to start one.

See theymos' post on the subject

I hadn't seen that post (yet), and it does show how Theymos looks at the "issue".
That being said, I do think there's a big difference between reviewer threads and thread that give away merits for completing menial tasks.

Personally, i think even reviewer threads are a grey area... I feel like they increase the odds of ranking up for shitposters that made only a handfull of usefull posts in a sea of "garbage".

--snip--
I agree. The thread starter may have had good intentions with the giveaway, but the rules used allows it to be exploited easily. An extra point like; going through the post history of applicants to find merit worthy posts would help give a idea of the users being ranked up.

Merits should be reserved for quality content imo. Knowledge of the rules and application of it is great, but shouldn't be a criteria to rank up. A member should not need an incentive to read the rules of a forum they have been in for a couple of months or years.

Except a user has large lumps of smerits to dump, I would rather they give out merits naturally as they come across deserving threads/replies.

I actually PM'd the OP of said thread... And i'm 100% sure he had the best intentions and just didn't think his giveaway trough completely (something we all do from time to time). I was listing his thread as an example tough

[ImThour]

Hey,

I am the thread creator and I literally didn't realized at first that this is going more in a negative way rather than positive for the community.
When I understood point made by mocacinno, I locked the thread and I am sure there is no way I can take back the 6 sMerit I gave to the users.

This is my mistake and I am sure everyone of you might have done something like this in past, so I would request to forgive this time and I will make sure to not create any stupid Merit giveaway thread.
Thank you so much for explaining and helping me understand this whole system and I completely agree that this would have lowered the bar and the whole purpose of Merit.

Also, thanks to @Timelord2067 for helping me find posts and threads where people actually deserves Merit. I will be looking in them and helping the community in a positive way.

Regards,
ImThour

[Casdinyard]

I'm writing this topic after responding in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276103

The link and the thread are already locked and even the subjected OP already had apologized for his actions.

But then you're right, Merit Giveaways are fine if and only if the people to be merited are really that worth it and not just because they've copy and pasted the rules then saying that it was their favorite one. Better if the OP of that giveaway made a challenge where as all newbies must read all of the forum's rules and explain it with either 500 words or point certain ideas and explain it thoroughly - that would be a giveaway with a much sense. Also, there are a lot of users out there that giveaways merit but if the users replies with their recent good topics or replies that they think are worth to be merited. Which is also a good and fine idea.

Afterall, merit must only been given to newbies that one would think are worthy.

Personally, i think even reviewer threads are a grey area... I feel like they increase the odds of ranking up for shitposters that made only a handfull of usefull posts in a sea of "garbage".

You've had a great point. But I think the issue is closed after the accused merit giveaway maker locked his thread. If the ideas and opinions have already met your queries, better lock this as well.

[mocacinno]

@Casdinyard: well, actually i'm trying to have a broader discussion... I merely listed the thread as an example, but i'd rather see if there is a community consensus on where to draw the line next time there's a giveaway.

Sure, this specific case has been sorted. IMHO there wasn't even a need for the OP of said thread to apologise... But what are we, as a community, going to do the next time a thread similar to this one pops up? Are we going to tell the thread starter his actions are frowned upon, are we going to ignore him, are we going to encourage him???

[HeRetiK]

While I think that merit giveaways based on newbies highlighting good are a positive thing; handing out merits for little to no effort just so brand new accounts can move up the ranks is rather detrimental and kinda runs against what merits are for.

As long as it's not turning into a trend I don't really see it as a problem though, since any outlier doing this will run out of smerits soon enough.

[friends1980]

I don't think his way of giving Merits away was the best of ideas, but in the end, he deserved his sMerits in a fair way I suppose, so he can do whatever he feels like with them. Better than selling them or sending them to alt accounts.

We're already having a hard time enforcing the existing rules, so it would probably be a bad idea to add new ones...

Again, I'm not saying his idea was a splendid one, but let's get rid of spammers, scammers and shitposters first, and successfully enforce the existing rules first, before we start inventing even more rules.

[tranthidung]

I wrote about this in my interview. I know some people might not like my opinion but it is mine and it will be a lie if I say different than what I thought.

In 2018, I struggled to earn my first merit and it is truly a big challenge to rank up to Full member rank. Things change (as it always changes in life), nowadays it is easier to earn merits especially if we're mentioning about newbies.

Merit sources are easier to dump their sMerits on posters. I'd not say what they are doing is wrong. Being a merit source is a non-salary work but "Do all receivers of such huge sMerit dumps deserve from their contributions?" Some do deserve whilst some don't for such over-give merit (theymos' words). I know what theymos said about his opinion on it but there are open gates for shady abuse and I expect to see some receivers will demote to low quality posters again. It destroys what merit system is created for.

There are some factors for this trend:

• Less total merit sources
• Higher monthly smerit allocation for each
• Less time to scan around the forum to find good posts that easily to be covered by shitposts
• Less observers on merit distributions (abuses)

5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns?  Do they harm the forum?
Merit system works perfectly. It works as it was planned to do. I do see chances to earn merits recent months are easier than the past. Newbies should take it as motivation reward and keep up working, keep the forum clean.

theymos

If they complain about amounts, tell them to complain to me. 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.

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

Aside from that, if people complain about whether things deserve merit at all, then that's something to perhaps think about, but if you conclude that they're wrong, then that's that. You don't need to stress about it or defend yourself constantly. It's conceivable that someday you and I will end up disagreeing too much about this stuff and I'll remove your source status, but it's really not a big deal.

The topsendban list is just a first indication of abuse, and many excellent people are on it. Your place on there acts as a sort of benchmark: eg. chandra12 has a similar score there, but whereas you are an extremely active merit-giver with a diverse selection of posts merited (most of which anyone would agree with), chandra12 only has two large merit sends. His behavior in comparison to yours while having a similar topsendban score is what creates a strong abuse impression.

I appreciate the work of you and other sources who take it seriously!

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.

[mocacinno]

Well... I'm not looking for new rules per se... I'm just polling if there's community consensus on how to respond to such threads.

The thing is: we're batteling scammers and spammers and account farmers, but if we only focus on the accounts themselfs, we're doing nothing about their influx. But if we stop these people from ranking up, they'll never be able to wear a signature, sell their accounts, have less time between posts, have a rank that makes them more trustworthy in the eyes of their victims.

I'm not looking for a ban on merit giveaways, i'm defenatly not looking at attacking giveaway thread starters in any way... I'm looking at some community vetted ground rules, some guidelines on how to proceed if you want to give away your merits.

[stompix]

But on the other hand, any giveaway that can be claimed with less than 15 minutes of work might do more harm than good (IMHO).
I'm sure we'll see a lot of different opinions on this subject tough

Not so sure about the different opinions 

OP probably has thought of doing something good, making newbies read the forum rules, but he indeed set the bar way to low.
The responses which got merited were just 2 extra seconds fo work from #proof of authentification, copy paste a text and get merited, he could have at least asked them to comment why they thing one rule is a net positive or why they disagree with another rule, force them to think at least for a few seconds and write something on their own.

But, I doubt it will cause anything significant, even if he wouldn't have stopped or a few others try to copy him, a few 10-20 users getting one merit is nothing, one rogue legendary could have made more damage with a single dormant account and his airdropped merit.

I'm looking at some community vetted ground rules, some guidelines on how to proceed if you want to give away your merits.

And what would the community be able to do with the set rules?
Tagging users for abusing merit would never work, theymos was against it, adding them to the distrust list means nothing, so...as long as you can't enforce them there is no point having them at all.

[Casdinyard]

Well... I'm not looking for new rules per se...  I'm looking at some community vetted ground rules, some guidelines on how to proceed if you want to give away your merits.

Why such irony? Even if such rules were to be made nor to be clarified for a pending new rule about such giveaways, like stompix have said, what would it do to the community? Maybe better try thinking of rules that regards with making merit giveaways, then have you think that it answers a problem? Or rather better ask first, is such problem do really exist? Other than ImThour's merit giveaway, what are other giveaways that you can say having a low bar to the standards of merit system?

TBH, I don't found any problems with the current giveaways by other users. And I also see that the users that giveaways merits with their programs or any other activities they require would not violate nor contradict the main reason why the forum implied merit system.

Furthermore, I still understand why you wanted this discussion to be tackled, and I guess it is because to prevent further newbies to rank up still being not worthy at all. But still, consider thinking about my previous questions.

[mocacinno]

Why such irony?

Where? It would be ironic if i wanted to discuss stricter giveaway rules whilst at the same time giving my own merit to spammers... But...
I don't think i'm giving away my merits to people that don't deserve them. If anything, i should probably merit MORE newbies, but i think i might be a bit to strict when giving merits.

Even if such rules were to be made nor to be clarified for a pending new rule about such giveaways, like stompix have said, what would it do to the community? Maybe better try thinking of rules that regards with making merit giveaways, then have you think that it answers a problem?


Or rather better ask first, is such problem do really exist? Other than ImThour's merit giveaway, what are other giveaways that you can say having a low bar to the standards of merit system?

A quick search resulted in loads of merit giveaways... A small section (just the first page of search results):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5177856.20
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2828412.0
https://https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5200267.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5124596.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5177856.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239568.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5271955.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5195943.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5137880.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215727.40

Now, don't get me wrong... I didn't look into these links, so i have no idear how high they set their bar... But with so many giveaways, do you think none of them are ranking up shitposters, scammers or account farmers? So, is it so bad to discuss this? If you think everything is fine and nothing should be discussed, i'm afraid this thread is not for you.. You're welcome to stay and discuss tough...

TBH, I don't found any problems with the current giveaways by other users. And I also see that the users that giveaways merits with their programs or any other activities they require would not violate nor contradict the main reason why the forum implied merit system.

Furthermore, I still understand why you wanted this discussion to be tackled, and I guess it is because to prevent further newbies to rank up still being not worthy at all. But still, consider thinking about my previous questions.

Everybody is free to do with their merits what they want to do...
However... I remember a time when account sales were pretty common. Sure, they were frowned upon a little bit, but no negative trust was given for them. There were some DT1 members that were specialised in account sales.
If nobody started discussing account trades, it would still be common practice...

But back to the subject matter... Yes, i want to prevent SOME newbies from ranking up... On the other hand, i'd like to see more newbies that actually want to be a member of our community ranking up. That's an other side to this discussion... On the one hand, i think there should be community guidelines (as there are for altcoin giveaways, account sales, doxxing) that outline expected behaviour in case of a merit giveaway. On the other hand, there should be more initiatives to filter out people that actually belong in this community and merit them.

But i get the feeling nobody else thinks this is worth discussing... So i might aswell close this topic in a couple of hours...
 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I always try to stay friendly and helpfull.

You sound like you're both of those things, and I say that sincerely

but:

People that know me a little bit probably know i'm not a big fan of ignoring people.

You're not going to offend anyone by putting them on ignore.  And I would suggest that if you see a member write an extremely low-quality post (and I'm talking about the typical bounty hunter/sig spammer "bitcoin has a bright future" shitpost, put that member on ignore with no hesitation.  You can check their post history, but it's almost a certainty that they're going to keep dropping shitposts until they get banned/bored/whatever.

And I don't know why ImThour created that thread--I don't usually take members at their word unless I trust them when they say things like they're trying to help newbies on their journey or whatever.  I think it was a pretty bad idea to do that, though.  The members who received merits didn't make quality posts, and that's what you're supposed to do to earn merits.  It makes me wonder if those members were his alts or friends or who knows what--I'm not accusing ImThour, just voicing my cynical thoughts.

At least he locked the thread, but he probably ran out of sMerits anyway.

[Little Mouse]

I always feel the necessity of having more smerits to spend on posts which deserve merit. I have earned 314 merit which means 157 smerits which is far bigger than linked OP or some other merit giveaway thread starter but I have no smerits at the moment.
Moral of the story, if merit is used as per its purpose, no one will have hard time to spend their merit, then why we need to create a giveaway even? I think there should be no giveaway allowed regarding merit. There is a thread where people can post or posting quality posts which lack of merit. So, there should be no gap between quality posts and merit given. From that point too, there's no need of merit giveaway.
The purpose of most of the giveaway is simple though (give and take). Some people merit such giveaway threads which is the main reason of production of such giveaway threads.

[suchmoon]

I think there's a fine line between merit giveaways that are beneficial, and merit giveaways that are toxic.
[...]
But on the other hand, any giveaway that can be claimed with less than 15 minutes of work might do more harm than good (IMHO).

As long as it's for an actual post (and not e.g. "you get a merit if your username starts with an 'm'") and the post isn't blatantly useless (not like e.g. "good project") then I think it's a waste of time to police it. I mean you can point it out to the person doing it, and in this case it worked, but generally speaking merits are not moderated and I've seen too many cases where this kind of thing resulted in red trust when it shouldn't. A certain number of merits will always be sent to users who seemingly don't deserve it. It just doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes plagiarizers get one. Or scammers. Or people who spell "idea" with an "r". Shit happens.

That's not to say we should knowingly send merits to people who are perhaps attempting to farm accounts etc. But I also don't think we have to come to some sort of universal consensus as what's acceptable as a criteria for "good post" or what kind of rules giveaways should have etc. Sounds like an unenforceable drama-inducing setup.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

I made a post about such merit giveaways over a year ago (Random merit giveaway threads. What do you think about them?) and some members put in their thoughts there. You can read through

In away some of the merit giveaways don't make sense at all. If someone has 20 sMerits, What is so hard with looking for 5 merit worthy posts around the forum and hand them 4 merits each? Some of the members claim they are so active around the forum but can't even hover around the forum to spend just 20 sMerits.

I think some account farmers have used such merit giveways to their advantage as i suggested back then

When I look at such threads, I think the merit system is getting played in the canny way.

1. Merit Farming: Starter of the thread expects members to support him and award him more merit for starting a merit giveaway thread which is pointless in my opinion. This is nothing to do with contributing to the forum. I mean someone just has only 7 sMerit but can't even make a few clicks on different boards to look for merit worthy posts and there they are that telling newbies to post their merit worthy links in their threads.

2. A way to Meriting Alts without getting detected: Very easy to do. Culprit starts a thread with his main accounts that has a few sMerits, maybe 10 and then posts different links from his alts and boom, all alts get merit. The process of account farming goes on an on

[Lucius]

There have been similar discussions before about whether such things should be done or avoided, and I know that at one point the B&H board was cleared of merit giveaway (most of them is moved to Off topic). At the time, it seemed to me that it was not disputable to distribute merit in this way, but that it was only disputable where such threads should be published.

I have a somewhat divided opinion on whether this way of rewarding merit is good or bad. On the one hand, it is good that someone who really deserves it will get a reward because they will draw attention to themselves, and the one who rewards will not waste time looking for good posts. It's not really controversial if someone wants to share their merits, but it's a little unusual for me to see someone open a thread to share 5 merits - and there are so many good posts that deserve to get merits, and I'm sure anyone can find them without spending too much time.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I was also surprised by such a generous distribution of merit. And, of course, I was wondering who got them. In my observation, someone who had alternative accounts was able to take advantage of this. I don't really believe in coincidence, but two alternative accounts took advantage of this.
Another point is interesting. Looking at the history of the distribution of merits to the OP, I realized that for some reason he kept them and did not give them out earlier. And then the day came, which was called the “action of generosity.”
I can't believe the Merit Holder hasn't found a single worthy post before. Therefore, I would like to wish everyone who keeps their merits,  that in the future there will be no such incidents, and the merits were distributed really for their intended purpose to those who are trying to create useful content for the forum.