[Discussion] Bitcointalk Community Awards 🏆

[examplens]

➥ We need to discuss how sending merit affects voting.

This point must really be analyzed, and all the rules must be defined before voting begins.
And I have some ideas/suggestions, I'll keep an eye out when the debate starts.

maybe theymos could turn off the +merit link in a specific thread, thus would exclude the possibility of giving merit for voting posts. but again there is no guarantee that the merit for the vote will not be compensated through another post.
certainly, even if the voting were completely secret, it will not prevent possible abuse and secret deals. it will only be harder to expose them.

[FatFork]

I think the competition would lose its charm if the voting were to become anonymous or overly moderated. The voting process should be open for everyone to see, and there should be no hidden back rooms where decisions are made by a few people. As for merit abuse, it should be publicly discouraged and point out in the OP those who abuse the system. Abuse will always be a problem in some form, but I think that's inevitable. The competition is supposed to be fun, and if people can't see the fun in it, then they shouldn't participate.

As for the voting process, I think a simple upvote system is not enough. It would be better if there were an additional "point" system so that people could give more weight to their votes.

For example, Legendary members can give 5 points in each category, Hero members 4 points, Sr. Members 3 points etc. Members can decide whether they want to give all the points to one candidate or distribute them to several candidates. In my opinion, voting this way would be more fair because it would give priority to senior members who are more active on the forum, and at the same time it would reduce the significance of votes from alt accounts and inactive members. I know this wouldn't be perfect either, but maybe something along those lines.

[NotATether]

So, in a month this topic will become relevant again.

Cool! Looking forward to it.

➥ We need to discuss how sending merit affects voting.

I'd make it simple and add a very clear rule that meriting in the whole topic is prohibited. Any merit sent from a nominee, cancels one of their votes. Disqualifying would be too harsh, as you could misclick and send a merit once, by accident.

I agree with you. Or perhaps each merit sent in this thread (except in the OP or after the contest ends) reduces your voting power by 20%, so 5 merits sent completely neutralizes your entire voting power.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

but again there is no guarantee that the merit for the vote will not be compensated through another post.

No system can be perfect. Abusers will eventually find the hole. I think OP needs to skim all proposals about meriting and create a poll to find which have support from majority.

[joker_josue]

For example, Legendary members can give 5 points in each category, Hero members 4 points, Sr. Members 3 points etc. Members can decide whether they want to give all the points to one candidate or distribute them to several candidates. In my opinion, voting this way would be more fair because it would give priority to senior members who are more active on the forum, and at the same time it would reduce the significance of votes from alt accounts and inactive members. I know this wouldn't be perfect either, but maybe something along those lines.

I find this idea very interesting.
Since members with a lower level have fewer votes, it may be possible to demotivate attribution of merits by votes. Of course, it will never prevent the distribution of merits from happening for convenience. But at least it will minimize the situation or demotivate them.

[dkbit98]

So, in a month this topic will become relevant again.

I can't believe almost a year passed since last Bitcointalk Community Awards, but I am looking forward for new one and thanks for doing this icopress.
Better to add rules that sending merits is not allowed, or maybe theymos could maybe disable merit option for this topic all together, if that is possible.
I think I saw few topics that had merit button removed (that would be best option here) but maybe I only imagined this things

I think the competition would lose its charm if the voting were to become anonymous or overly moderated.

I agree with this, but doing voting without any rules is also not good.
Newly registered accounts and recently activated accounts should not be allowed to vote, if we want to have nearly as fair voting results.

[joker_josue]

I agree with this, but doing voting without any rules is also not good.
Newly registered accounts and recently activated accounts should not be allowed to vote, if we want to have nearly as fair voting results.

It can be an interesting idea, but at the same time it can become an unfair idea for some legitimate users.
Furthermore, a user may not be very active on the forum in posting, but be very active in observing. Soon this user could be someone good to vote for.

[shahzadafzal]

So, in a month this topic will become relevant again.

➥ I'll probably have to spam Cyrus to get him to ship the collectibles faster.
➥ I expect to find sponsors for at least 0.2 Btc, the ideal option is 1 sponsor.
➥ I again count on the help of my Romanian governess.
➥ We need to discuss how sending merit affects voting.

Peace for everyone!

Wow it's almost one year, time flies.

Yes, a very important point sending merit does affect voting but I guess this will be part of it and we have to accept it. Yes rules can placed for example not to count votes of certain users based on some xyz criteria but will this not introduce some sort of discrimination too?

[joker_josue]

Wow it's almost one year, time flies.

Yes, a very important point sending merit does affect voting but I guess this will be part of it and we have to accept it. Yes rules can placed for example not to count votes of certain users based on some xyz criteria but will this not introduce some sort of discrimination too?

I don't think it's discrimination, as long as the rules are clear and they're presented before the voting starts.
After voting begins, no changes should be made to the rules unless it is something serious that you have to do.

[Stalker22]

Wow it's almost one year, time flies.

Yes, a very important point sending merit does affect voting but I guess this will be part of it and we have to accept it. Yes rules can placed for example not to count votes of certain users based on some xyz criteria but will this not introduce some sort of discrimination too?

I don't think it's discrimination, as long as the rules are clear and they're presented before the voting starts.
After voting begins, no changes should be made to the rules unless it is something serious that you have to do.

I also do not think that this will lead to discrimination. Since this is a vote for the members who contribute the most to the community, it makes sense that only active members have the right to vote.

Last year there was a rule:

You must have 50 merit or be a full member or higher to vote

I think it would be good to expand this rule to take into account only merits earned during the current year. It does not have to be a limit of 50 merits, but maybe it could be reduced to 20 or only 10.

[LoyceV]

Yes rules can placed for example not to count votes of certain users based on some xyz criteria but will this not introduce some sort of discrimination too?

No. See Cambridge Dictionary:

discrimination

treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their skin colour, sex, sexuality, etc.:

We don't know any of these criteria. All we know, is a user's contributions to the forum.
I'm not allowed to vote in more than 99% of the countries on the planet. That's not discrimination, it's because I don't qualify.

[icopress]

Guys, GBitcoin will be here soon so greet this rascal with loud applause.

[NotATether]

Guys, GBitcoin will be here soon so greet this rascal with loud applause.

I didn't get the reference.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Guys, GBitcoin will be here soon so greet this rascal with loud applause.

I didn't get the reference.

It must be GazetaBitcoin 😉
Something is not right. The merit suckers will not going to have a good time in the season 🤣

[GazetaBitcoin]

Ladies and gentlemen,

For this year's event we decided to take into account the feedback received from various users, at the previous two similar events, and apply some fine-tuning to the existent rules. Additionally there will also be some new rules. All these will -- we hope -- bring even more accurate results!

Therefore, the following changes will apply for Bitcointalk Community Awards event 2022 edition:

1. Votes for inactive users will not be taken into consideration anymore. The event is related to the activity made by users during current year and not for the past. As a consequence, votes for users like Satoshi, Lauda etc. (with all due respect for all good things they did in the past) will not be counted. Of course, this does not mean that a user's vote will be entirely not counted, if he nominates an inactive user. Only the vote for the inactive user is not counted.

As a sum-up: if a user makes nominations of both active users and inactive ones, only the mentions of inactive ones will be not counted (in the contest's final results there will be no Satoshi, no Lauda etc.).

2. No merit sending is allowed from nominees to users which nominated them. This should improve dramatically the accuracy of results and offenders will have to support a penalty. For each merit sent, 1 vote is deducted. So for example, if in the voting topic Alice sent 5 merits to those who nominated her in any category, then we will not count these votes (but the rest of the votes that are addressed to other nominees will be taken into account). In addition, if a user voted for Alice in two categories, then the votes for each of the categories will be unaccounted for.

3. Eligibility-wise, the earlier rule

You must have 50 merit or be a full member or higher to vote ➥ Note.

will be changed to

You must have 50 earned merits to vote ➥ Note.

Remember, the contest is about having fun, not a duel for seeing who's da baws Therefore, we are encouraging you all to act honest -- in the end, this is what brings the joy of participation, right?

Cheers to all


We were also curious about how users feel about implementing a rule which would give chances to more people to win. What we were thinking about is the following: to arrange things thus the winner of a category cannot be the same person from previous contests. Or he can be, as this does not mean a ban -- but he can be with more efforts. To be more precise, all previous winners could start with a coefficient of 0.8. Attention! -- this happens only regarding the previously won category!

For example: Alice won last year in the ScamBuster category.

- For other categories, her vote strength is 1.
- For the ScamBuster category, the power of the votes given for it is 0.8.

If even with this 0.8 vote strength Alice is still this year's winner of ScamBuster category, then she will be declared winner again, no matter what.

This rule, if it'll be adopted, may add some variety. Please let us know your opinions.

It must be GazetaBitcoin 😉

You guessed well

Something is not right. The merit suckers will not going to have a good time in the season 🤣

=)))

I'll take this as a compliment! Thank you for trusting my immutable attitude toward respecting the rules -- and also, toward the spirit of the rules!

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

1. Votes for inactive users will not be taken into consideration anymore. The event is related to the activity made by users during current year and not for the past. As a consequence, votes for users like Satoshi, Lauda etc. (with all due respect for all good things they did in the past) will not be counted. Of course, this does not mean that a user's vote will be entirely not counted, if he nominates an inactive user. Only the vote for the inactive user is not counted.

As a sum-up: if a user makes nominations of both active users and inactive ones, only the mentions of inactive ones will be not counted (in the contest's final results there will be no Satoshi, no Lauda etc.).

It will be even better if you give a date/month for their latest post to be accepted them for the votes.

We were also curious about how users feel about implementing a rule which would give chances to more people to win. What we were thinking about is the following: to arrange things thus the winner of a category cannot be the same person from previous contests. Or he can be, as this does not mean a ban -- but he can be with more efforts. To be more precise, all previous winners could start with a coefficient of 0.8. Attention! -- this happens only regarding the previously won category!

For example: Alice won last year in the ScamBuster category.

- For other categories, her vote strength is 1.
- For the ScamBuster category, the power of the votes given for it is 0.8.

If even with this 0.8 vote strength Alice is still this year's winner of ScamBuster category, then she will be declared winner again, no matter what.

This rule, if it'll be adopted, may add some variety. Please let us know your opinions.

My opinion is not to limit it. Let others to beat him and be better than him. Limiting means you are going to reward someone who might done less than him but still receiving the honour that was supposed to not for him.

You guessed well

Are you telling me I am genius? 😉

[o_e_l_e_o]

Votes for inactive users will not be taken into consideration anymore.

This should be quantified ahead of time. No posts in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year? Inactive as of the start of the competition? Or what if an inactive account wakes up during the competition?

You must have 50 earned merits to vote

This feels too restrictive to me. I would have opted for a lower number, say 20 earned merits, but that's just me.

To be more precise, all previous winners could start with a coefficient of 0.8. Attention! -- this happens only regarding the previously won category!

I appreciate I am heavily biased here given I have previously won the same category twice, but I wouldn't take this approach. You could easily end up in the situation where someone is deemed to have won, but someone else would have won the "popular vote", by getting more votes which were each worth less. I can already picture the arguments which could arise, particularly if there will be prizes involved. It is also disincentivizes people from voting for the previous winner, since their vote will be less valuable than if they voted for someone else. I would either go down the route of excluding previous winners or doing nothing at all.

[Rikafip]

We were also curious about how users feel about implementing a rule which would give chances to more people to win. What we were thinking about is the following: to arrange things thus the winner of a category cannot be the same person from previous contests. Or he can be, as this does not mean a ban -- but he can be with more efforts. To be more precise, all previous winners could start with a coefficient of 0.8. Attention! -- this happens only regarding the previously won category!

Tbh I see no reason to make things more complicated and to introduce sort of handicap for the last year's winners for the sake of more different people winning the award each year. I say keep it as it was the previous years and let the best members win, no matter how many times before they won the award.

[icopress]

3 months, 6 months, 1 year [...]

I think 1 year of inactivity will be enough 

[GazetaBitcoin]

3 months, 6 months, 1 year [...]

I think 1 year of inactivity will be enough  

This is just a short note and I will return later to reply to earlier posts.

Sorry, but I thought this was clear from my post To be more precise, this part:

The event is related to the activity made by users during current year and not for the past.

I am sorry if the way I wrote it created confusion. By active users I meant users which were (or are) active during this year.

what if an inactive account wakes up during the competition?

This would mean that he, actually, is active during current year, right? And the contest addresses users with huge contributions made for this year. So, for example, if an old user wakes up this year, he can be voted, but he should also merit to be voted for something amazing done during this year. If he just wakes up but has no contribution -- as he just woke up -- he would not deserve to me nominated, right?

Anyway, these are very specific situations, which are also unlikely to happen, but even if they appear, we will treat each case based on its particularities.