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Did you ever find yourself thinking: that user just sent me x merits, I will go through his/her post history and find something to merit? That thought has often popped into my head, and I have indeed done it a few times myself.
When you merit someone who just merited you, do you feel good doing it?
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I do not feel either good or bad about how I give merit. The only criteria is that the post must be of quality, helpful, well-thought, etc. The thing is that people who give merit are usually those that also do good posting, and that is possibly why they have merit to give away. I also run through some postings story often, as some members tend to give consistent quality and great information.
I certainly do not feel obliged to it.
I do understand that it may look like exchanging merit, but it is not. Nobody ever asked me to merit back nor I sell or otherwise trade with merit. If anyone considers that I overlooked their posting they can drop me a line and I will happily review their posts.
Also, I give plenty of merit to people who do not merit me or even disagree with my views, even across full threads and even the threads that I start which may look like incentivising, but again, it is not, it is simply because I do bother to read the answers and it is inevitable that I will find posts that are good enough for at least one merit and sometimes many of them.
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I agree that 50 merits for a single post is too much. If there were a lifetime cap though, it wouldn't matter so much and would eliminate a serious problem.
Only 2 merits on a post seems a bit low to me. Some posts, like my escrow, nastyfans, minted seats, and green energy mining threads have led to years (soon to be decades) of work and tens of millions of dollars exchanged (billions of dollars in BTC at current USD/BTC rates). Limiting those posts to only 2 merits seems a bit strange. A lifetime merit limit addresses the issue of merit cycling forever, but a per post merit limit does what exactly?
I am strongly against any limit per user life, etc... There are two particular users that I am aware I am meriting a lot, but they have earned every point and I am willing to defend any merit I have ever given. Except one time in which I accidentally merited with the trailing default 0 by mistake.
I am of course happy to consider how to reduce merit abuse, other than the existing 50 maximum per month to one user, which by the way i reached once.
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A lifetime merit limit addresses the issue of merit cycling forever, but a per post merit limit does what exactly?
Unless one of the cycling members is a merit source, the merit decays (you get 2, you give 1). If they just cycle, it won´t go far.
The problem is that doing a proper merit control job is a huge task. You would actually need to read the posts and find clear examples in which a shitty post is merited clearly too much.
My preference would be that a user can only merit a post once with not more than just two merits (which would enable the recipient to on send one merit to the next user).
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I have found numerous posts that deserve much more than 2 merits. If limited, it would not make sense to make great posts that do require knowledge and time and thus are worth more than 2.
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As a proud (and first) member of
the Foxpup Merit Cycling Club, and a Merit source with a load of sMerit to get rid of, I must say I'm sometimes "guilty" of checking someone's post history to Merit post. For instance when they only need 30 to ranking up, or just because the user got on my radar.
I don't think that's a bad thing, and since I'm still a Merit source after sending
19265 sMerit, Admin seems to agree.
I get that many users "return the favour" for Meriting them, and I'm pretty sure people have Merited me just because I merited them. But that's also quite natural to do. As long as it's not
excessive, I don't really mind.
That is exactly right, people who post quality tend to do it often and consistently so is not only that make meriting easier, it is also that they are worth being read. And +1 on your view on using common sense and do not abuse same-member merit and back-meriting.
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