Why are there people with 1000 merits?

[BlackHatCoiner]

I see a lot of them, especially on my board. Why do they have 1000 merits? I guess that once the merit system was introduced, lots of users' merit score was set to 1000 by default, I just don't get why. Probably, because they had already a high rank and it would not be good if they suddenly get lower?

[1713874242]

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[1713874242]

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[1713874242]

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[ranochigo]

Correct.

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

Those who attained their rank before the introduction were given the amount of merits that is required to attain their rank.

[isaac_clarke22]

I see a lot of them, especially on my board. Why do they have 1000 merits? I guess that once the merit system was introduced, lots of users' merit score was set to 1000 by default, I just don't get why. Probably, because they had already a high rank and it would not be good if they suddenly get lower?

Theymos mentioned it in here:

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Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

~

If I can recall correctly, Jr Members before required 0 merit but then it was updated to be at least 1 merit causing a lot of existing JR Members with no merits to be demoted to Newbie.

Edit 1:

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~

Sweet! All crystal clear now for me on what happened.

[tranthidung]

If I can recall correctly, Jr Members before required 0 merit but then it was updated to be at least 1 merit causing a lot of existing JR Members with no merits to be demoted to Newbie.

Please see details in History of bitcointalk.org's rank system. What you mentioned is the demotion on old-era Junior members when enhanced merit system was kicked off.

More details on the evolution progress of merit system:

• The merit system was fixed with some bugs
• Adjustment on Hero members for their airdropped sMerits
• Changes with the enhanced merit system.
• See more in One year anniversary of merit system

Quote for important details

The exact formula was:

Code:

yearActivity = activity in the last ~year, max 378
freeMerit = the merit (not sMerit) you started with
modifier =
  0.1 if member
  0.2 if full member
  0.25 if sr member
  0.35 if hero
  0.4 if legendary

return (yearActivity/378) * modifier * freeMerit

So the most you could get is if you were a Legendary who maxed out your activity points in the last year, in which case you would get 1 * 0.4 * 1000 = 400 sMerit.

Note that I later made an adjustment giving 500 extra merit to some hero members, but no extra sMerit was given here.

I'll probably publish a dump of the initial sMerit at some point.

I decided that the previous allocation was too unfair in this area, so everyone with activity >= 775 got 500 more merit if they didn't already have 1000 merit (and also Lutpin). No extra sMerit, though.

[icopress]

The airdrop/merit is meant to highlight the contributions of users prior to the introduction of the new system. Anyone who has been active for a long time but missed the last few years would be very disappointed if they log in again and see the rank change. And it makes no sense to equal shitposters that managed to increase their rating only due to their activity. Two years later, the share of merit that falls on such "pseudo-rating" accounts is extremely small ...

In the end, don't forget that the contribution of one constructive poster is much more valuable than a thousand bounty hunters 

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you install the BPIP browser extension ([β] BPIP Extension: user info & extra features add-on/extension, Firefox/Chrome), you can choose to show an additional line under "Merit" under everybody's name entitled "Earned Merit", which only shows the merit each user has earned, as opposed to the "Merit" number which includes the 10/100/250/500/1000 they were airdropped at the launch of the merit system. You can even choose to hide the "Merit" field altogether and only view "Earned Merit".

It's usually obvious the people who have never earned any merit since they are on one of those exact round numbers, but even some of the worst spammers have been able to trade or buy a few merits. There's a big difference between someone who earned 1003 merit from scratch, and someone who was airdropped 1000 and has only earned 3 merit in 3 years.

[DooMAD]

There have been numerous discussions about the possibility of decaying the airdropped merits over time.  The tricky part is all the accounts from the early days of Bitcoin which are no longer active.  The contributions people make to a project in its infancy often has a larger impact than someone contributing to a well-established project.  Some of those users, due to the nature of network effects, did more for Bitcoin adoption than any user could ever contribute now, so it would be disrespectful to deprive them of their rank.  

If we did implement decay of airdropped merit, I think it would have to be tied to activity.  For example, if an account is completely inactive, there should be no decay.  They would effectively have an honourary rank.  But if an account's activity is increasing, then airdropped merit can decay over time.  It's the only way to do it fairly.

[mk4]

I guess that once the merit system was introduced, lots of users' merit score was set to 1000 by default, I just don't get why. Probably, because they had already a high rank and it would not be good if they suddenly get lower?

If I remember correctly the sort of "reasoning" would be that it would be unfair for the people that have contributed since the early days. Though even the spammers themselves managed to take advantage of it, it's still a fair excuse in my opinion. What's important is that it's already implemented and the succeeding spammers after the merit system implementation would have a really hard time ranking up.

[iamsheikhadil]

Yes, that's the reason, and I kind of support it as well, I know it's kinda weird to see many members with only their airdropped merits and not earning a single merit after that because of their bounty hunting but, those are exceptions, if everyone were just demoted after introduction of the merit system, it would just lead to much more spam, complaints, merit-trading etc.