This shitty Merit System has ruined Bitcointalk and made it like Facebook

[muenze]

I will reiterate my point that you've been a member since August 2017 and have made only 631 posts.  What are you expecting?  It isn't supposed to be easy to earn merits; that's the whole point of the merit system, to suppress shitposters and reward members who put in a decent amount of thought and effort into what they're writing.  I'd say you have a pretty good merit/post ratio.  I've certainly seen members with ones that are a lot less.

The question is also why have facebook-like-merits to "reward" posts when the post should speak for itself?

Like with people buying bad, cheap meat and never admitting it when asked, its pretty clear (and for example Facebook
also fully knows this, as leaked internal data has shown) people become absolute SLAVES in hunting for likes/merit for
their brains reward system.

I can see the moderators do their best to improve the forums and its always easy to complain (as I do right now)
but not very easy to offer solutions.

But without even making it a loaded question, just as a neutral question to bring the discussion forward,
do you think the merit system has actually improved the forums?

I know you have given me merit before like in the HITBTC scam thread, and I thank you for that. But I think you
were actually the only one.

So the only good thing I can see from the Merit system is you barely get any so maybe that makes people
chase it less than on Facebook. But why Facebooks system should be a good thing I dont understand?
I grew up with ircII text based, lynx text based, then BBS and forums all text based. It was good times,
why now forums (not just here) need to be facebook-itized?!

Isnt there maybe a better solution? I mean one easy fix would be to stop showing the merit on posts,
that at least would make people who post here a lot not get CONSTANTLY reminded of it by seeing it
many many times a day, right. Which automatically influences their brain (even if they dont want it)
towards merit.

Let's pretend that it's just you and me on this conversation ok mate? I'm going to tell you a secret of mine : I don't pretend/intend to run campaigns on my avatar/signature related to services (i.e casino, mixers) advertised on here.Not because I have anything against them, I would just prefer not to.

I thought so too and I signed up here for good discussions and maybe shill some projects I believe in,
and benefit bitcoin future and all that. But would you seriously give up on $1000 a month just for
posting anyways?

Can still make quality posts.

However now, you need to make merit-Posts first because only then you can get into the club,
or you buy a Bitcointalk account (which I dont want to suppot, really, but when the alternative is
posting for 8 years to gain the needed merit,......)

[Pmalek]

If you have proof of members meriting their own alt accounts, by all means, make your case public in the Scam Accusation or Reputation board. Otherwise it's just noise. 

I would like you to take a look at the following thread:
[TOP-200] Members who support newbies

Check the members and the ranks of the users who award the most merits. You were trying to say that high-ranked members don't award others with merits because they don't want to create more competition. Well, members of the highest ranks are the ones that are on top when it comes to merit distribution and awarding low ranks. If you want to believe all those accounts are awarding their own alts with merits, make an investigation and post your results in the appropriate section.

[OgNasty]

I give merit away as fast as I can find a reason to do so.  Never once does competition for a signature campaign enter my mind.  I doubt that's much of a factor for any of the merit sources.  If it looks like they're meriting each other or their alt accounts excessively it likely has much more to do with their ego and feeling some sort of validation by having a higher score than anything related to a signature campaign.

[suchmoon]

~

We're already on page 2 and you still haven't explained why you need merits and/or given us a huge list of excellent posters who haven't been merited because of some corruption or whatever you're preaching. Merits or lack thereof aren't preventing you (or anyone) from contributing to the forum. You can  even post absolute garbage and still get by - if you don't get pity merits you can buy Copper membership.

So perhaps the problem is that you just enjoy being part of it (the problem) instead of being part of a solution. Make good posts, earn merits, spread them around in a way that you think is lacking, report shitposters... too hard? Easier to whine in Meta? Thought so.

[muenze]

you can buy Copper membership.

I would definitely pay to improve my rank and to support the forum. But the copper membership
seems to be for Newbies so they can post images. Am I missing something?

Paying for a higher membership (and to support the forum) is actually a much better system
than the Merit system because it improves quality, and I doubt people who pay to support
the forum would harm their accounts by spam posting.

edit: I suppose you meant this:

https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

I think paying 50 BTC for a custom Title and VIP is a little rich for me right now. Glad its
worked out for the Forums tho and that so many BTC were HELD!

[suchmoon]

I would definitely pay to improve my rank and to support the forum. But the copper membership
seems to be for Newbies so they can post images. Am I missing something?

What do you want then? In one sentence.

[muenze]

What do you want then? In one sentence.

Support an open discussion from the best minds in crypto, security, assets, technology, not some kids
hooked on Facebook-likes-Merits to make their Signature-Campaign posts.

(I know many signature-posters still make great posts, but many do not).

[FinneysTrueVision]

Once Bitcoin started becoming popular the amount of people joining this forum started to increase exponentially. It was expected that the quality would see some decline because not everyone is a tech or finance nerd and is interested in the technical aspects of BTC. The quality of posts was already going downhill, the merit system isn't a perfect solution but it's a whole lot better than allowing any random person to easily rank up and spam the hell out of the forum.

[suchmoon]

Support an open discussion from the best minds in crypto, security, assets, technology, not some kids
hooked on Facebook-likes-Merits to make their Signature-Campaign posts.

(I know many signature-posters still make great posts, but many do not).

There is nothing preventing that from happening, certainly the merit system is not preventing that. It's not going to happen in shitcoin/bounty boards for obvious reasons, nor in Meta. Go to technical boards and have at it. And moderation there is uber-strict so no shitposters.

[HOT_HEAD]

I mean it sure did slow down the ranking progress but it kind of reduced garbage copy/paste posts slightly. I've been here for almost a week after taking a long break and I still see those generic 0% thought process siht posts almost everywhere.

I don't have a problem with merit as well, it's called merit for a reason, but imho the lack of definition on what makes a post meritable is a bummer.

Tho I'd love to see the most merited post among 20pages at the top, because if it's an answer or a solution for something, would be nice to have it at the top.

[PrimeNumber7]

Whenever I find a post worth reading, I will give it merit, if I have any.

So do I, but I'm a merit source and it's kind of my voluntary job.

I do agree with OP that the average member with very few sMerits to give isn't going to be motivated to get rid of them unless they're feeling generous, but that's why Theymos has merit sources patrolling for good posts.  The whole system would probably not work without sources for the reasons you've given.

There might be an argument that if users with <10 sMerit (or some other small amount) don't spend their sMerit within a certain timeframe, the sMerit will get distributed to merit sources.

Another possible way to improve the merit system might be to make it so that each merit source gets a percentage of a merit source pool instead of a fixed amount of merit. The size of the merit source pool could be a function of how many sMerit was sent in the preceding month (or another time period), and possibly involving the number of users who are active (by some definition) in the preceding month who have received at least x merit. This would mean that as more people who have received merit are active, the larger the target total sMerit transactions will be, and as more sMerit goes unused, the source sMerit of the merit sources will increase to encourage more system-wide merit spending.

[libert19]

People with a lot of Merit can earn $50 in BTC a week easily and more in signature campaigns.

So this is the reason? If you were to be leggy member yourself, you wouldn't be complaining here, would you?

[JaneAhonen]

That's the issue with the way that you're thinking OP. One shouldn't be hunting for merit

Says a person whose one of the firsts posts on this forum was in a merit giveaway topic
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213418.msg56053778#msg56053778


Then you make topic about other merit giveway topics . I like how you as new member give advice other new members how to get merit.That is classic merit hunting post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314054.msg56252233#msg56252233


Solid tactic,pretending not to care about merit to get more merit.

[muenze]

Solid tactic,pretending not to care about merit to get more merit.

Dont blame him. Its natural human behaviour to live in denial. In germany a huge supermarket chain (actually also popular in many other countries I guess, Lidl) after protests from farmers about low prices for meat, raised prices by 2€ per kg(2 pounds) for better treatment of animals.

These 2€ were to go to the farmers completely.

The result was it failed completely as people were not buying this meat anymore.

Despite in polls very large numbers of people like 80% say they are willing to pay higher prices if animals are raised better.
And nobody ever admitting they buy low quality/cheap meat.

That is how facebook has tricked the world and holds peoples reward system hostage. They abuse people living in denial of being
tricked, cheated and ruining the planet. Attention spans have sunk to new lows. Its very sad many forums do this too now like Facebook.

I saw in many local forums now (I wont mention names) people just keep giving each other Merit. And the more I looked into the
Merit system its a naturable behaviour. You will reward those who reward you. This does not improve forum quality at all.

Dont blame the users. Blame the Facebook-Likes-Merit system.

[PrimeNumber7]

I saw in many local forums now (I wont mention names) people just keep giving each other Merit. And the more I looked into the
Merit system its a naturable behaviour. You will reward those who reward you. This does not improve forum quality at all.

I think you are right about this. In small communities, those that you help will tend to help you, and merit will be "circled" amongst those who are 'liked' in the community. This is a difficult problem to address because communities should have merit sources to give the community merit, and overregulation of communities can cause real harm.

Increasing the total sMerit available might somewhat alleviate this problem as sMerit will be less scarce, and there will be less of an incentive to send sMerit to only your friends.

[RickDeckard]

That's the issue with the way that you're thinking OP. One shouldn't be hunting for merit

Says a person whose one of the firsts posts on this forum was in a merit giveaway topic
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213418.msg56053778#msg56053778

It is true, one of my very few posts was in a (s)Merit giveaway topic. Still, if you look to my recent ones (and in the future ones) you won't see me interacting in the same manner. Why? Because I've been following the concept that one should focus more on actually contributing positively to the forum (either by posting, making useful threads, or threads that promote organic activity). The merit that could come from those contribution is a benefit, not an end goal. Not anymore. I reckon that I'm a different person now.

Then you make topic about other merit giveway topics . I like how you as new member give advice other new members how to get merit.That is classic merit hunting post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314054.msg56252233#msg56252233

I really don't think that's a fair comparison. If you look to my thread I didn't included threads that just work on the basis of "It's my birthday, post for merit!", "I've got spare sMertis, come post and get some!", "Going to leave Bitcointalk, want to get rid of sMerits".

By contrast, each thread there OP manages to actually care about the organic growth of the forum and asks users to make something rather useful/positive either for the community or for the OP themself (learning to sign messages, learning Logic Gates and what not. Each of this actions contribute in a certain way to good posting, why it would be a bad thing?

[GazetaBitcoin]

People with a lot of Merit can earn $50 in BTC a week easily and more in signature campaigns. They have absolutely ZERO motivation to give others Merit because if anything giving others Merit will give them more competition in the signature campaigns.

I doubt that. Have you seen how many merits were sent by the most generous users? As you can see, all are top merit earners as well.

It's been a while since we've had a good anti-merit rant. Unfortunately this one isn't even that good, just the same old fake complaints.

Yes, unfortunately, this rant is pathetic, not genuine at all. I can't remember since I saw a good one. It seems that ages passed since wolwoo and the horde used to fill the forum with his rants, which were really nice to read. I was always amused when reading those posts. But OP is like a copycat.

However now, you need to make merit-Posts first because only then you can get into the club

What club is that?

the alternative is
posting for 8 years to gain the needed merit

"To gain the needed merit" - needed for what? Besides, why would you need 8 years in order to receive some merits (no matter what their purpose is)? A good poster can reach the Legendary treshold in less than a year. So why would anyone need 8 years to earn some merits?

I saw in many local forums now (I wont mention names)

Why not?

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> I saw in many local forums now (I wont mention names) people just keep giving each other Merit <…>

There’s also a bunch of contextual data to consider. I can talk for my local board (haven’t looked into others), with which I’ve been engaged with right from the beginning. Unfortunately, the active community is pretty small, with a couple of handful of regulars at best (on and off), and a few stray appearances. Those that are regular, are also generally decent posters, and help maintain the community active. In addition, most of the have no problem earning merits in the general English speaking boards.

Unfortunately for my local board posters, I’m a tad bit mean with my merits, and barely ever hand out more than 1 to those posts I merit (two is rather infrequent). Of course, I tend to posts there too, and every now and then, I receive some of those merit thingies. There we go, a potentially local board closed merit circle from an outside observer’s numeric point of view, but erroneously concluded if not contextualized as above. Actually, what would be seemingly wrong is to find profiles that go unmerited, yet post decent enough content (at least as decent as those merited).

[lovesmayfamilis]

I wouldn't argue that the merit system is like likes. Although yes, this is how I feel about her. But here on the forum, everything is much more complicated. Newbies are looking for merit, sometimes buying it outside the forum. This is more like merit being treated as a local currency. Have you seen on Facebook that people accumulate likes and then arrange distribution of likes with an important air? Here, on the contrary, very few people just give their own merits. Everyone wants "valuable" posts.

On the contrary, if many here had a simpler attitude to merit, there would be no such excitement.

But judging by your convictions, will you do the same? In your opinion, is it easier to buy an account than to try to develop it? And if the first owner turns out to be not entirely decent? Are you ready to try on his reputation for yourself? If, according to your words, give merit, then only for posts that are useful, according to your rating system. But there are no criteria for everyone. People are different, they have the right to do whatever they want with their merits.
It's like arguing about tastes.

Keep it simple. Love likes, love merit, write good posts, and don't take on the role of a judge.

[muenze]

Here is a good example. This user wrote a good review/summary of a project 2 days ago.

No interest at all.
No reply at all.
No merit at all.

Until I just saw it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5315277.msg56305712#msg56305712

Meanwhile 99% of the posts in this board are spam and 1% are good, but why bother make good post
when they just get ignored?

Bitcointalk keeps losing traffic despite getting so many clicks from CMC and other sources,
the Merit system has made it worse.