One fault with the merit system

[Jet Cash]

There is one obvious failing in the current system, and that is the decaying of unawarded smerits given to sources. There are three reasons that sources award merits, and these are - to encourage members who are beneficial to the forum, to indicate approval of a good post or thread, and to help new members and alts to rank up. When there is a paucity of good posts or good posters, then it is harder to award merits, and this can lead to fewer merits being available in the future. Alternatively, if you are awarding merits for ranking purposes, then it is far easier to find suitable posts, and this can lead to an expansion of the merits available for this section of the forum. Bearing in mind that each source smerit can generate an extra merit in the rewarded community, then this can lead to future distortions in the quality of posting and thread topics.

Does anyone else believe that this is an issue we should be considering?

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[jackg]

Is smerit source merit or sendable merit in your context?

Is there a current rollover with merits? Once might be helpful or Theymos might increase merits available based on new user sign ups? If we get busier than we currently are he might have some formula to ensure qualifying newbies are still able to get the merits they need - until then the remedy would just be asking Theymos for more source merits if you run out...

[suchmoon]

The "decay" does not lead to fewer merits in the future. You're still getting your merit allocation replenished as usual. It's like a bucket being filled at a constant rate... if you don't empty it - it may overflow and that part gets lost but it doesn't reduce the fill rate.

Unless you're talking about the changes in source allocation that theymos does once in a while. This can reduce your allocation if your average merit sending is low.

Solution to both issues - send more merits per post, or lower your standards.

[Coyster]

Imo, the opposite looks the case to me as I think the "decay" of source merits is actually a good thing. If you don't spend it, it decays, it kind of encourages MS's, as long as they are active and have enough time to spend here, to try as much as possible to empty their monthly source allocation before it gets "decayed".

[Jet Cash]

lower your standards.

That is the point I am making. That leads to lower standards in the forum.

[suchmoon]

lower your standards.

That is the point I am making. That leads to lower standards in the forum.

How about "broaden your horizons"? "open your mind"?

Think of it this way: if you had a magic algorithm that sorts all posts by quality, would it be ok to merit top 10% of that list? That's a huge pool of posts, several thousand per month at least. Surely you could find something worthy there. The absence of such magic algorithm hinders the process a little bit but you don't really have to read everything. It's safe to ignore the bounty boards for example.

Or just send more merits per post.

[Smartvirus]

I'm not quite sure the burning of unused merits is a fault in itself @Jet Cash. I guess it was made that way in other that, to prevent hoarding and encourage rewarding of quality posts without hesitation once one finds one and to prevents users from being picky in terms of awarding merits, making it circulate just fine. Perhaps, merit give away saves you a few of the stress of searching, no doubt all could be trash though.
I don't know the duration for which, smerits might be held to consider it long enough to be burnt but then, from personal experience, I've held smerits for at list 3weeks and still, it wasn't burnt off. Perhaps I sent one or two within those weeks I can't really recall but, I believe the time frame before smerits are been burnt is quite enough for a user who navigates through at least every board in the forum, touching one or two of it's sub-boards and reading the comments and articles posted is most likely to see a good one, worthy of awarding. You most'nt necessarily give all you've got away, by giving a little, you save the others to give some other user when a quality post comes up.

[sheenshane]

Just my two cents!

A Merit system has a good impact on the forum, it was totally eliminated account farmers and stop ranking those bounty hunters that might also account farmers that cause massive abuse. This system was designed regarding that matter and it was totally effective per see.

Through the statistic given by @LoyceV's weekly update of merit data analysis and also merits stats given by @tranthidung threads, I dont see that there is possible "decay" in the future. Merit sources allocation was always refilled by Theymos and I think they did great on their job upon distributing on it based on the data analysis I indicated above. This merit system was doing fine and I don't see any fault. Lazy members will not get even single merit to rank up if their sole purpose is to spam the forum. If all MS were lower their standard is a good sign too that decaying merit will not happen in the future, IMO.

For the non-merit source members also I see that they don't usually hoard smerit (like me), they spend this to continue the merit cycle in the forum.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Imo, the opposite looks the case to me as I think the "decay" of source merits is actually a good thing. If you don't spend it, it decays, <snip>

Except that the sMerits don't decay if you don't send them.  As alluded to by suchmoon, Theymos might start decreasing a merit source's allocation if that source isn't giving out a lot of merits, but sources don't start losing what they've already got if that's what you mean.

A Merit system has a good impact on the forum, it was totally eliminated account farmers and stop ranking those bounty hunters that might also account farmers that cause massive abuse. This system was designed regarding that matter and it was totally effective per see.

I think I agree with what I think you're saying, and that's one of the reasons I'm proud to be a merit source--because I believe in the system and I believe it has indeed helped with those things you mentioned.  I have good months and bad months as far as how many merits I give out, but I do my best.

I'm not quite sure the burning of unused merits is a fault in itself @Jet Cash. I guess it was made that way in other that, to prevent hoarding and encourage rewarding of quality posts without hesitation once one finds one and to prevents users from being picky in terms of awarding merits, making it circulate just fine.

Did I miss something about unused sMerits being "burned"?  I've been around since the beginning of the merit system, and I don't think I've ever had any of my unused sMerits taken away from me.  If I haven't missed something, then perhaps Smartvirus might not know what he's talking about....?

[suchmoon]

Did I miss something about unused sMerits being "burned"?  I've been around since the beginning of the merit system, and I don't think I've ever had any of my unused sMerits taken away from me.  If I haven't missed something, then perhaps Smartvirus might not know what he's talking about....?

Regular (earned/airdropped) sMerits don't decay or burn or otherwise disappear. Source sMerits kinda sorta do, by not being replenished 30 days later, if you didn't send them out 30 days earlier.

[tranthidung]

You asked and I listened, then worked. Please check (click on quote link to see full details).  

It is not a correct comparison but you can take figures and compare them.

• 21171 smerits per 30 for all 97 merit sources
• Median of monthly merit is 21289, interquartile range is from 18592 to 23482. See details with the newest update for monthly merit
• Last month (2020m9, September)
  
  • 19821 smerits were distributed from merit sources and non-merit sources
  • 1030 members have sent merit transactions
  • 74.2% of 1030 senders sent out 1-10 merit in September *
  • Senders (less than 7%) in groups from 31+ are mainly merit sources
  • From all available data, non-merit source members actively sent out their sMerit but of course they did not empty all of their sMerits
• As per Pareto principle, top-20 merit earners earned ~88% of total earned merits on the forum (data is outdated). If you are high quality posters, you earn it, earn a lot!

*

Code:

Categorisat |
     ion of |
      total |
    monthly |
    sendout |
      merit |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          1 |        263       25.53       25.53
        2-5 |        343       33.30       58.83
       6-10 |        158       15.34       74.17
      11-20 |        107       10.39       84.56
      21-30 |         55        5.34       89.90
      31-50 |         39        3.79       93.69
     51-100 |         25        2.43       96.12
    101-200 |         23        2.23       98.35
    201-500 |         11        1.07       99.42
       501+ |          6        0.58      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |      1,030      100.00

Chronological changes of top 200 merit receivers / senders since Jan 2018. Merit sources do their works well since beginning and they increase their sendouts (in values, and intensity) after the reallocation last year.

The first plot for 5 groups shows the fact well and you can see more detailed fact in the top 10 senders (note that not all 10 members are merit sources). I've not yet make plot for all 97 merit sources and don't see reason to make it (5-group plot is enough).

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I don’t think unused source merit is the issue. I always use mine, every single time I use whatever I have. For me the issue is top posters who are also merit sources not being able (or refusing) to use up the merit they receive from others (sMerit) which can really build up.

The issue is probably more prevalent with high merit earning posters who ALSO receive a high amount of source merit from theymos, they earn merit so quickly they can’t get through all their source merit to get it to 0 so they can start handing out merit from their sMerit balance. Essentially their sMerit balance builds uncontrollably as they’re not getting through enough of the source merit to get started on it.

In my opinion, in the scenarios above it’s THAT merit, unused from their sMerit balance that should be decayed/removed, not their source merit.

[Charles-Tim]

All I can Comment for now is that merit system is really helping the forum, it helps the posts quality. And, there is nothing yet wrong with the merit system for now, let us leave this to the future if the merit system will continue working good, but as to what will happen, the merit system will always be working good as merit sources are giving only high quality posts merits.

About the issue of smerit being decaying, this is very good in my opinion, there are lots of posts that are worthy of merits that the smerits can be used for instead of letting it decaying.

Merit sources need to check their standard, it should not be too high in a way 10 or less out of 100 quality posts will be merited, and the standard should not be low in a way that low quality posts sould be given merit at all, but out of 100 quality posts, nearly all should be awarded merits in order to strengthen the good posters to post more quality contents, and I believe this will neither harm the merit system nor the forum.

[Welsh]

The merit system might not be perfect, and in many peoples eyes it isn't, but I think the vast majority of users here will agree that its had a largely positive effect on the community, and the forum as a result. However, you bring up valid concerns, but I would argue that allowing merit sources to stockpile merit would mean they aren't spending it in the first place, and might not justify being a merit source. Ignoring the last few months, as I would assume during the pandemic, that merit source spend has been greatly reduced (although, I haven't looked at the statistics to back that up) I know from a personal stand point, my merit spend has been much, much lower due to my time being sapped up by work. If a merit source isn't spending a great deal of their merit source allocation, there might be an opportunity for someone else to replace them that would without creating endless amounts of merit within the system.

With any system, balance is important. We want it to be achievable to rank up, but we don't want it to be so easy that any old dribble gets through the cracks. We want some sort of standard, and merit to mean something. My question would be, do you think earned merit is of substantial value right now? Are there many users, who aren't ranking up? I think, there's a few individuals that probably deserve more merit in comparison with the rest of the community, but either already are top ranks, or are slowly making their way up the ranks. They aren't going to be subjected to lower ranks, as long as they continue posting the quality content they already are.

[Findingnemo]

lower your standards.

That is the point I am making. That leads to lower standards in the forum.

IMO, the standard has been already lowered because we can see more distribution of merits in the recent months compared to previous years when people hardly ranked up and got more technical knowledge to be honest.Theymos himself stated that merit sources try to reach their full quote of distribution if possible even if you can't find the good worthy posts just spend them on the fewer posts you see.So don't lower your standard guys, just be more generous when you see good posts.

[iamsheikhadil]

I don't think this is an issue because we really don't know the time when paucity of good posts are being posted and when there is huge number of good posts being posted.

Decaying of smerits which are unawarded is a good thing because, it serves really no purpose to have smerits in account when they are simply inactive or don't wanna give it away for so long of time.

Merit sources however are really generous and take their time to observe the whole forum and giveaway merits to good posts regularly, so I believe there is always good posts in the forum without any scarcity. However, if smerits were not decayed when they were not sent for a long time, that will lead to overflow of smerits and merits as this forum is continuously growing!

[Jet Cash]

Regular (earned/airdropped) sMerits don't decay or burn or otherwise disappear. Source sMerits kinda sorta do, by not being replenished 30 days later, if you didn't send them out 30 days earlier.

Exactly - and I believe that that encourages the awarding of source merits to lower quality posts if there is a bit of a drought in quality posting. A merit source is not a paid position, and they shouldn't be pushed into lowering their standards, or forced to spend time om boards that may not be of interest to them. I guess it depends on the priorities of the forum, do you want more new members to rank up as long as they can produce adequate posts, or do you want to use the merit system to improve the quality of posting to attract more serious members.

[NeuroticFish]

A merit source is not a paid position, and they shouldn't be pushed into lowering their standards, or forced to spend time om boards that may not be of interest to them.

Imho nobody forces merit sources do anything special. Neither be more active, nor visiting other areas or lower standards.

I'll go by @suchmoon example with the bucket. Imho the merit source system tries to make sure a merit source has "a bucket" of sMerit to send every month. If it "overflew" and some sMerit was lost, no biggie, he still has one full bucket to use.
Theymos did write that sMerit is not for hoarding, right? And if merit sources would get to "infinite buckets" then it can lead to (probably not intentional, but still) sMerit hoarding.

[Jet Cash]

Well the bucket analogy is not completely true, as the bucket starts off full, and as it is emptied, it is refilled. Extra sMerits are not added unless Theymos run a recalculation, and I understand he does this at regular intervals. The bucket can never overflow. but shrinks as 30 day old sMerits evaporate.

Somebody suggested that I should expand my interests, and part of my difficulty is that the Kung 'flu mismanagement, and changed in macro-economics have expanded my interests. If you couple this with the rise of serious virtual assets alongside Bitcoin, and the implementation of DeFi projects, then there is a lot that we should be researching and discussing at the moment. It is not wasy to do this in the Bitcoin Talk forum, and you only need to look at the blinkered attitudes of the vaccinators and monkey mask wearers to see this.

Another poster stated that the forum membership is expanding, and this may well be true, and could be contributing to the problem as I see it. We have lost some quality long term members, and some have left in a flurry of frustration, but many others have just drifted away, presumably as they find fewer topics of interest.

Over the last few months I have joined several other forums to discuss issues of interest to me. These include hardware and operating system discussions, and forums with political and macro-economic boards. I am grateful to members such as Carlton Banks and LoyceV for their comments in my EXT4 thread, but wouldn't it be better to have a board for these discussions to provide a reference point.

I love Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Talk forum, but I feel that it is still drifting away from being a forum for help and discussion, and it is still encouraging volume posting to display paid signatures.

[NeuroticFish]

I love Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Talk forum, but I feel that it is still drifting away from being a forum for help and discussion, and it is still encouraging volume posting to display paid signatures.

This is not that far from truth, especially in the case of Bitcoin, and it's quite normal. Many possible problems users can have were already answered and I expect search engines point them directly to the answer to their problem. This leads to smaller number of legitimate questions, smaller number of users really needing help.