Your merit will find you!

[The Cryptovator]

I am quite soft for newbies about sending merits. Because once a time I was a newbie and I know how hard it to earn merits. But, its true earning merits isn't too hard for true contributors. When I assume someone hunting merits by creating already discussed topics, then I just skip there from sending merits.

Hello sir I am new hear. I got to know how we get merits but I had seen such account whose account has 1000 activities but it has got 0 merit.
Is this possible to get 0 merit in such big activities. I am little confuse over this point.

Merits aren't related to the activities. Users earning merits based on their contributions. If someone made 1 billion posts on bounty reports, then he shouldn't receive merits for that. Even you can earn merits from a single post if the post is considered useful or constructive. As a merit source, when I send merits for newbies, I just look for a good post. I am not looking for the best post from newbies.

[rat03gopoh]

I just shared my experience which I got. If these are boring so soon I will start the good topics.

Oh no, so far I see you've created 12 topics some of which you've left out.

You should at least be the most active in discussing the threads that you make yourself. I understand that the 8 merits you've earned are from your new topics and maybe that's what you think is a good opportunity, but you need to know that creating many topics is also a little annoying for some members (including me) and they'll tend to ignore you.

[JeotQ]

That's true, you can make a good post today and get merit some weeks later or even months, quality posts will never go unnoticed, people are too focused on making more merit and creating unnecessary posts and topics in return, making contributions and keep focusing on that will eventually rank you up faster, don't keep your mind on how to make merits but focus on contributing and helping those that lacks behind.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Activity is, in its simplified form (there are some additional complexities that need not be brought up now), derived from the number of posts you make within each 2 week window, with a max. of 14 per window.

A person with 1K activity could have generated all/part/some of that Activity before the Merit System kicked-off, and therefore a bunch of his posts would typically not have postulated to being merited. More typically though, you’ll find that such 1K Activity 0 Merit type accounts are busy bounty hunting, and the derived posts are therefore not merit worthy.

I doubt you'd find many accounts created after the Merit System kick-off ,with 1K Activity and 0 Merits, that do not fall into the bounty hunter spectrum.

[Stedsm]

I think they are being given "false advices" by some people or even newbies themselves, maybe the ones who bring them here - setting a formula, a plan that they execute simply to get merits. Some newbies will come here and say "Hey you, you're already a Legendary so you won't understand the struggle of a newbie". TBH, I do understand them because I myself don't get too much merits but I'm fine with it, I don't write for merits and so I don't expect them (has no relation to what my rank is). New people nowadays have stopped checking the old threads and represent the already answered question in such a fashionable way that they either get merits or even if they don't, their threads are flooded with extremely non-sense replies later after the first ones where they have already found their answers.

[btcwish1]

To be brutally honest, This 'merit' system is completely flawed!( IMHO)

I can provide thousands of very helpful posts by some users without any merit given to them. On the other hand someone with lot of merits, gets merit for posting any useless posts from their fellow forum friends. I am shocked and saddened when I see a user doesn't get any merit for posting an initial thread, but someone gets merit for simply replying to that thread even if they simply replies  such as 'yes it's correct or I agree in this point bla bla'.

Moreover, 'Useful' is a relative term. What is useful to some one may not be same to others. 

Current Merit system works same as 'Rich gets richer and Poor gets poorer'. ( IMHO)

When a newbie joins  the forum all they are told 'You need to make yourself useful to earn merit'. This a vague statement.

Here is my suggestion:

On a weekly basis, moderators can check how many posts ( non spam) a user has posted and rank them higher based on post ( no spam) count.

[decodx]

Here is my suggestion:

On a weekly basis, moderators can check how many posts ( non spam) a user has posted and rank them higher based on post ( no spam) count.

This is a good suggestion, but I think it would put too much workload on the moderators. And they've got their hands full by fighting spammers and ban evaders.
I believe that the Merit system was meant to be as decentralized as possible, just as is the case with Bitcoin.

[longlivecapitalism]

To be brutally honest, This 'merit' system is completely flawed!( IMHO)

I can provide thousands of very helpful posts by some users without any merit given to them. On the other hand someone with lot of merits, gets merit for posting any useless posts from their fellow forum friends. I am shocked and saddened when I see a user doesn't get any merit for posting an initial thread, but someone gets merit for simply replying to that thread even if they simply replies  such as 'yes it's correct or I agree in this point bla bla'.

Moreover, 'Useful' is a relative term. What is useful to some one may not be same to others. 

Current Merit system works same as 'Rich gets richer and Poor gets poorer'. ( IMHO)

When a newbie joins  the forum all they are told 'You need to make yourself useful to earn merit'. This a vague statement.

Here is my suggestion:

On a weekly basis, moderators can check how many posts ( non spam) a user has posted and rank them higher based on post ( no spam) count.

In my opinion, there is no perfect system but you have to admit that before the merit system the situation had gotten out of hand with people trying to rank up by literally spaming every part of the forum. Yes, certain good posts are being ignored and other, maybe less deserving posts, are getting more merits but it's better than the previous system.

[erikoy]

In my opinion, there is no perfect system but you have to admit that before the merit system the situation had gotten out of hand with people trying to rank up by literally spaming every part of the forum. Yes, certain good posts are being ignored and other, maybe less deserving posts, are getting more merits but it's better than the previous system.

Merit system is effective in my opinion. I even rank up after shitposting in the forum before as a new member. However, after some time that I can participate in a good discussion this somehow I start to do some research especially on how to contribute in the forum. Luckily I was able to rank up. My only problem is that when you go to next rank you need to be patience because it will take some time before it could be reach depending also on how good you are in contributing the forum and earning merit.

[sheenshane]

Current Merit system works same as 'Rich gets richer and Poor gets poorer'. ( IMHO)

In my opinion, there is no perfect system but you have to admit that before the merit system the situation had gotten out of hand with people trying to rank up by literally spaming every part of the forum. Yes, certain good posts are being ignored and other, maybe less deserving posts, are getting more merits but it's better than the previous system.

I tend to agree, this is how the merit system works, to eliminate and filtering newbies to rank up if they are here just to keep spamming.  I think the requirement of a newbie to rank up in Jr. Member rank is just to earn single merit, just 1 merit need to earn.  By that stage, if you didn't even get single merit within a week or let say a month, you're just literally not contributing to the forum. 

We should be thankful for the merit system that has been implemented, there's no account farming and spamming in the forum.  Everyone does their best and contributing to the forum and hoping that one-day merit sources or any merit sender will find their constructive post.

In my own experienced, yes, I'm poor and had a bad English writing skill, IMHO, the merit system helped me to improved myself and motivated me to push and do research before dropping a relevant post with correct information and willing to accept mistakes if there is.  Your merit will find you if are doing a constructive and helpful post.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> Here is my suggestion:
On a weekly basis, moderators can check how many posts ( non spam) a user has posted and rank them higher based on post ( no spam) count.

Ranks, as we know, have the Activity component. Even if that counter were to be solely taken into account (alongside your mod suggestion), checking every account every week would be pointless, since an account only postulates to change rank when a given Activity threshold is surpassed. Therefore, to be more efficient, the revision would have to be performed just when the account met the Activity required for his next rank (as opposed to every week; bear in mind that, currently, roughly 56k posts are created of the forum per week).

Fine, let’s continue. A moderator, who probably has a busy window to deal with reports, would also need to set time aside to go over a whole load of posts for a potential new-rank-to-be type account, and decide, as per his own and singularly unique criteria, if a postulating account ranks-up or not. If he doesn’t, then there is all the related drama that is foreseeable, coming as a tidal wave to Meta. When the account keeps posting, and reaches the next rank potentially as per his new Activity, could he actually postulate now, having being rejected on the prior rank?

It’s a lot more complicated than it seems, and it centralizes the ranking-up process way more. The Merit System does have many flaws, but it is potentially way less biased than having a single person having to decide if a given account’s rank-up. And that is not even considering the mod time factor, which is currently diluted amongst a bunch of volunteer (or such) people awarding this Merit thingy in their free time.

[decodx]

The Merit System does have many flaws, but it is potentially way less biased than having a single person having to decide if a given account’s rank-up.
<...>

Accounts rank-up should be handled by artificial intelligence. Judging by the amount of posts currently on the forum, I believe it would be possible to set up a machine learning algorithm to assess the quality of each individual member. For example, we have members who write 99% of their posts in bounty sections. Their activity on the forum should not have any impact on rank-up, IMHO.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Accounts rank-up should be handled by artificial intelligence. Judging by the amount of posts currently on the forum, I believe it would be possible to set up a machine learning algorithm to assess the quality of each individual member. For example, we have members who write 99% of their posts in bounty sections. Their activity on the forum should not have any impact on rank-up, IMHO.

A somewhat strange assumption. Do you think that if AI is in charge of rating posts, then those who, in your opinion, write reports on awards will not understand that they just need to move on to other sections?
Set an example in which the most common bounty hunter is suddenly promoted. Surely for this, he applied at least a minimum of his actions.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> I believe it would be possible to set up a machine learning algorithm to assess the quality of each individual member. <…>

We could implement some sort of ranking algorithm to determine which posts are important. I'm not sure how we would enforce it, though. So far, the forums have been very lenient on new members. That means I have to ask, who is worth my time? I would like to be able to give a recommendation.

In the future, we could potentially extend this process to have a more comprehensive list of what is important to each member, with the ability for members to vote and help make decisions based upon their opinions. This might sound really awesome in theory, but there are just too many variables that can affect how people rate content on Bitcointalk.


The above cursive text of mine is not a great content from my point of view, and it’s a bit weird to me. While being comprehensible in wording, it is not so much in the underlying key idea it is trying to state, and its relation to your comment is not that direct. It actually does not differ too much, from what other people may write here, and in general terms, an account with such type of posts may, in a more discrete board, pass-off inadvertedly. AI could even consider it count worthy towards ranking … despite the fact that I generated it through a random AI content page generator (the second one I tried).

AI, were it to be a feasible ranker (with an 'r', not a 'w') would, in any case, be a centralized criteria. I think that the grace of the Merit System is to have diverse criteria, although I’m all in for it to be even more diverse than it currently is.

[Coyster]

For example, we have members who write 99% of their posts in bounty sections. Their activity on the forum should not have any impact on rank-up, IMHO.

Users who post LQ posts and by extension fill up the bounty section with all of their posts wouldn't rank up and no matter how much activity they have, would struggle to even earn more than one merit (cross Jr member rank), so their activity is still inconsequential and it shows that the merit system is working and there is no need for AI to assess users posts.

Accounts rank-up should be handled by artificial intelligence. Judging by the amount of posts currently on the forum

This system will still be criticized, it's somewhat not possible to find a system that wouldn't be scrutinized, the current system that has to do with merits for users before they rank up is the best imo, there's no need to hand the power over to a bot or a machine, it'll be complicating things too much, if you're a poster and you construct HQ posts, you'll definitely rank up, that means there's no need for change.

[skarais]

Accounts rank-up should be handled by artificial intelligence. Judging by the amount of posts currently on the forum, I believe it would be possible to set up a machine learning algorithm to assess the quality of each individual member. For example, we have members who write 99% of their posts in bounty sections. Their activity on the forum should not have any impact on rank-up, IMHO.

I'm not sure that's needed now and in the future. Although some people feel that this merit system does not reflect justice for every user but it is almost impossible for the merit source to miss user quality post and if any then they still have a way of distributing it via report on a special thread. Post quality is a requirement to earn merit and move up the ranking. Quality assessment is done manually and also objectively, it's up to you where to post it. As long as it's a quality post then you'll likely get what you want sooner or later.

This forum is a place of learning devoted to bitcoin and other cryptocurrency lovers. As usual in the real world, not all student will be high achieving student when they graduate from school and this is also the case on bitcoin forum. I think there is a clear correlation between the real world and forum, we are different but both are the people who are helping this technology to develop. You have to realize that in order to move up the rank you need to have more effort than now, I don't think reason after reason can help achieve all of this. We can become quality poster and move up the rank, but we can't achieve all of that until we start. Do it now.

[yemight600]

A question arose that probably worries many here.
I want to appeal to newbies, where did you get the idea that by creating a topic, you will do something useful to the forum?
Recently, this is very striking. Each time you enter this section, one may wonder how smart our newcomers have become. They create many tutorials for beginners.
And then I ask myself, wise or cunning?
Today our newbies need everything at once. Those who have been on the forum for years understand what they need to go through to raise their rank.
Some of them decided that everyone has a responsibility to help, and the more generous this help, the sooner they will have their dream of participating in bounty campaigns or subscription campaigns come true.
I remember that such questions have already been raised. To prevent newbies from starting threads, and I understand this is somewhat unfair, but could there be some way to regulate the questions they ask?

Does this account motivate someone? What is this for?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5299618.0

Further
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298792.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298497.0

Another sly one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5298713.0
He wants to know about bitcoins and blah blah.
What about the forum itself? After all, to answer this question, you can rewrite the entire forum.

All this is what, beginners today figured out a good formula for themselves. You create a theme, you get the merit.
How can you limit this business? Otherwise, such topics really appear with questions like
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5299049.0

How to convey to newcomers that they will still get their merits, a good post will never go unnoticed. You don't have to be so rushed.
And you don't have to create a bunch of identical themes for that.

I never knew I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Before i give my opinion, i think i should commend the moderator for tirelessly working just to keep making the forum a great place to be.

Newbies probably want to acquire everything at a time so to make this happen, they have to be recognized (by creating topics). Their are several topics on the forum which still means the same thing. Most especially "how to increase rank". Limiting newbies chances of creating post won't be good enough but i think moderators should start deleting topics which is related to an already existing topic in the forum.

[decodx]

… despite the fact that I generated it through a random AI content page generator (the second one I tried).

If we start getting more and more posts like this from your example, maybe AI is just what we need. You know, fight fire with fire.  

AI, were it to be a feasible ranker (with an 'r', not a 'w') would, in any case, be a centralized criteria. I think that the grace of the Merit System is to have diverse criteria, although I’m all in for it to be even more diverse than it currently is.

Centralized? Yes. This forum is centralized, too. As long as the AI was neutral and objective, I wouldn't have any issues with it. People are rarely neutral or objective.

I'm just saying you, with the pace of technology advances, I doubt that this forum can survive in this form as it is now.

[hatshepsut93]

To be brutally honest, This 'merit' system is completely flawed!( IMHO)

Merit system helped deal with the signature spam problem. In the past, a huge number of new was only coming here for ICO bounties, and ICO scammers were hiring people regardless of rank, because it hosted them nothing to pay people with tokens printed out of thin air. If theymos didn't invent merit system, he would have no choice but to remove signatures and kill signature campaigns.

Merit system is not perfectly objective in every case, but it doesn't need to be, as long as it works on a large scale, it has served its purpose.

[Alucard1]

Beginners are still beginners, we became beginners as well so we should understand them by creating such not that so useful topic, some of them including thinking that creating a topic will have the advantage of gaining merits, that is my way of thinking before until one person give me some realization with it. You don't need to create a topic, no one requires you to do so, if you cant create a quality topic then you may do replies for some topics that you understand, that way you can create a good post and gain merits.