Is there some sort of Godfatherism in the forum?

[nutildah]

Thank you for the compliment, I think. I do my best to strike out, you already read all my posts, you will be seeing more of me

Did you miss the part where he called you a fake newbie? OK well those are more my words than his. I'm calling you a fake newbie.

[1714855918]

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[1714855918]

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[Charles-Tim]

---Snipped---

This is psychological, if you send someone 2 merits, the person will have 1 smerits. If someone do you a favour today, will you not remember the person? Meriting someone's post is like you did the person a favour, infact, it is a favour, but yet having quality posts. I hope you see the reason I first implied that it is psychological. What you should comment more about are people sending merits to low quality posts, if you find anyone like that, you can report the person, not reporting someone reciprocating by sending merit to quality posts. You can give merit back to anyone you like, so far the post is of high quality.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Well Jack is helpful on the tech boards, and he knows more about crypto than I do, so I expect he will put the 25 smerit to good use.

Just to point something; you aren't meriting someone for his future sMerit usage, but for his quality content. I could send you 50 merits which would then end up to Jack which would then end up back to me. That would be an abuse, even if you, Jack and me merited objectively, because we'd all increase our merit count for no particular reason.

Or to put it in another way. We, the merit sources, could come into an agreement that we will send each other 50 merits once a month. We'd continue to merit objectively (or at least try to), but we'd already abused the system.

[Pmalek]

I agree with most of the posts and think you are looking at it wrongly. Just by looking at the merit history, you might get the feeling these members are collaborating and intentionally meriting each other to benefit. 

If you look past that and research where and how they post, you might see why they have such high amounts of merits. Go and check out who are the members who are the most active in the Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support sub forums for example. Look for those providing the best answers to questions and helping with problem-solving.

Several names will catch your eye. Let's say there are 15 of them. So you have 15 members with the same interests, knowledge, and experience, spending most of their time in the same sections. That creates a small group of people who constantly come across each other, read each other's posts, and like what they see because they solve problems. It then becomes natural that those people merit each other without there being a malicious system behind it.

Consider also the following. If a person is always nice to you, gives you compliments, and creates a positive atmosphere when you are around that person, you will remember the name and feel like you should return the favor. It's human nature to want to feel appreciated and show appreciation to others. The next time you see that person, you will gladly say or do something nice. It's the same thing with merits. 

[Magicalking]

Thank you for the compliment, I think. I do my best to strike out, you already read all my posts, you will be seeing more of me

Did you miss the part where he called you a fake newbie? OK well those are more my words than his. I'm calling you a fake newbie.

No I didn't miss it. I didn't miss your opinions either. You're Legendary and therefore your words hold more waters than mine.
You have been here longer so much so you can detect fake newbies in a blink of an eye. There is no substance to your claim except bitterness. Maybe this post offended you idk and sincerely I will continue to be my original self regardless of how you feel about me. I'm not the type to cower to cyber bullies. This isn't high school

[Lucius]

I gave Jack 50 merits to stimulate this thread.

@jackg can be happy that you have such a high opinion of him, and this is clearly seen from the fact that you have sent him more than 200 merits so far. I honestly don't care what you do with your merits, but I'm of the opinion that it's better to reward 50 people or maybe 25 than to act this way, and in the end, you didn't prove anything, except that you have your top merit fan.

Well Jack is helpful on the tech boards, and he knows more about crypto than I do, so I expect he will put the 25 smerit to good use.

Unfortunately, it would be good if @jackg is at least half as generous as you are, but he doesn't think it's necessary to reward good posts.

[LoyceV]

I believe most will agree with me that there is a high probability factor that people give merit to those who merited them in the past

I've Merited many people who Merited me. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the posts deserve it. It still worries me though, when I notice someone Merited me right before I Merited them. It's a risk when you sent out lots of sMerit, but I still try to avoid it (meaning I won't Merit a deserving post if that user just Merited me).

I think this is misused by those farming accounts.

It happens indeed, but people are also free to spent their sMerit the way they want. If it's abusive, they risk getting tagged. If they're Merit sources, they risk losing their source.

Account farming is a hard thing to tackle imo and was the original reason for the merit system.

At least it's a whole lot more difficult now. There used to be account farmers with tens or hundreds of high-ranking accounts, and that's completely impossible to do now.

You can check and create list of backscratchers and backstabbers of merit (LoyceV has it for custom trust list).

Actually, I made this for Merit:
Merit Backscratchers: who scratched who's back the most?
[parody] Merit Backstabbers: who stabbed who in the back the most?
It's been a year, so I'll update these topics.

I don't see a problem with LoyceV and fillippone sending a lot of merits to each other (if they have, I haven't checked), for example. Putting a cap would distort the system.

I've received 195 sMerit from fillippone, and returned 123 or less (I'm not in his top 10).
If there's no cap on good posts, there shouldn't be a cap on Merit to send.

[Philipma1957cellphone]

Thank you for the compliment, I think. I do my best to strike out, you already read all my posts, you will be seeing more of me

Did you miss the part where he called you a fake newbie? OK well those are more my words than his. I'm calling you a fake newbie.

Well to be fair my older brother has zero interest in btc.

But he is very smart and an excellent writer.  If he came to this website he could do the same quality posting and in chinese along with  English .

So op could be a.smart person that finally got interested in btc.

There are times I would not mind having a second account to not be looked at like there is phil he posts too much or whatever.

[Jet Cash]

I didn't realise that I had given Jack so many merits, but if you look at the awards I think you will see that most of them are for helping people with tech problems.
I'm a bit of a loose cannon with merit awards. I even give merits to people I don't like if I think their post is worth it. Or if it suits one of my political purposes.

[nutildah]

There is no substance to your claim except bitterness.

That's where your wrong.

Does this really seem like something an _actual_ newbie would say? Think about it:

OP you're on the right track, quality posting isn't determined by the length of the post. This misconception has led newbies astray they post truck load of junk on a thread where a few lines would carry the information.

You're a newbie. Did you forget that? And quite honestly your posts aren't that good, so who are you to tell other newbies what they should be doing?

With your very first post, you're sucking up to Ratimov for a merit, and it got deleted, probably marked as spam.

And let's revisit this ass-kissing bullshit:

Congratulations OP, I'm new to the forum and haven't made much of a contribution yet. I have mostly been reading what high ranking members like yourself have been posting and trying to learn how all this works. So far I have learnt how to sign a message thanks to @OgNasty. I spent more time reading scam accusations and reports and now I can say for a fact that I am invisible to scammers and their tricks thanks to @Coolcryptovator, @Ratimov, @lovesmayfamilis, @igehh and other scam busters in the forum. There are things I still want to learn like understanding blockchain technology, Nfts, how to spot good coins to buy ( the information in trading section is so diverse and often contradicting which leaves me confused)  and so on. I hope you all can assist me in my journey ahead. Thank you. Once again congratulations to you OP

How would you even know they're called "scam busters?" Don't tell me because you spent a lot of time lurking before you wrote this.  

I'm pretty sure this account is also you:

As a newbie, I read many posts that has quality. After reading the posts I'll feel like to merit the post, but as a newbie, I might not have a sendable merit, I will have no option than to slide on.
Assuming there is an alternative to merit just like "Facebook like" along side merit, it would favour me.

Atleast if I don't have merit to give, I will just click like and move on pending when I'll have merit to award the user.
This proposed "like" might likely not be used by admins, or neither shall it determine ranking, but it should just be a mere appreciation for a quality post when merit is lacking.

You do the same inconsistent line spacing thing:

I have been a member of the bitcointalk forum since June 16. I must confess the forum is very addictive. I find myself reading up all I can to improve. As I result I post less and read more but this comes at a cost and a disadvantage because of my post history my activity is low.  Even though I have a merit I remain a newbie.
 understand the merit system and appreciate the wisdom behind it. The activity period however promotes spamming at beginner level because of the need to rank up. I humbly suggest that the activity system should be reviewed, instead of counting the number of post per activity period it should be the amount of time invested in the forum. Thank you

I would like to create a poll for this. Please how do I do that?

- You're both big on ass-kissing using the "@soandso" thing
- KingsDen opened 27 threads in less than 2 months, you've opened 7 in 3 weeks
- You both love talking about how you're a newbie

As a newbie it can be exhausting and most of us don't get to enjoy the ride to Legendary.

As a newbie, on my first post I was advised to research about Bitcoin in order to make some quality posts.

Also, neither of you are newbies.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I'm pretty sure this account is also you:

<snip>

You do the same inconsistent line spacing thing:

- You're both big on ass-kissing using the "@soandso" thing
- KingsDen opened 27 threads in less than 2 months, you've opened 7 in 3 weeks
- You both love talking about how you're a newbie

Also, neither of you are newbies.

I think you're spot-on, nutildah.  And of course, there's the "king" part of each one's username, which is the straw that crippled the camel as far as I'm concerned.

The only way OP could know about all of the stuff he's talked about is if he lurked for a while before registering, but I seriously doubt many people do that these days (like I did in 2014).  When confronted with the accusation, OP didn't mention anything of the sort but instead just denied it.  True, he doesn't owe anyone an explanation, but if it was a simple one like being a lurker and learning about all the personalities and whatnot that way, why wouldn't he just say that?

Ultimately I think OP thinks we've never seen this trick pulled before and that skeptical members are just going to take him at his word.  Not gonna happen, OP.

[nutildah]

I admit sometimes I can come across as a bit overzealous.

Its just tiresome seeing the same 'ol threads about merit from ""Newbies"".

And then we're supposed to just chow down on this artfully plated bullshit they've prepared for us.

Newbie OP could post in any section in the forum about anything and he spends half the time posting about merit, waiting to be cyberbullied apparently. Reminds me of a meme I saw the other day.



For the record, one account I may very well have wrongfully accused of being a Fake Newbie is arbiter5.

He was a little too enthusiastic for my liking so I slapped him with a neutral (basically what happened), but as time went on I found his story that he was a crossover from Reddit more believable, and realized I had potentially made an error (accusing him of being a fake newb), so I removed it.

Edit: I mean if you think about it, none of this matters. None of this means anything. Have a terrific day.

[fillippone]

I haven't much to add to this thread, I was summoned by mentions, but had some real-life vaccination mishap that hindered my ability to post.

Merit system had the main purpose of limiting spam and account farming. I joined the forum after this change, so I haven't a clear idea of how messy the situation was before, but judging from the tons of deleted posts I bump into from time to time doing my meta-analysis, I guess it was pretty dramatic.

Of course, I was pretty successful in gathering merits, and I explain my view here:

Ranking up is possible! 2900 Merits earned in less than 12 months! My 11 Hints!.

I merited every single post in this thread (a little bit of merit trolling like @Jet Cash did) as I think the contributions were of utter quality. Many accounts were already merited by me in the past, and also merited me back, some of them were new to me, some of them, I couldn't merit as I already hit the 50 merits/mo that currently is the only limit to full discretionality in merit distributing.

As a merit source, I tend to distribute merits in the best possible way: post content, post quality, the ability of the receiver to send merits in his turn, are all factors I try to ponder while spreading merits. I do agree with @theymos when saying you should merit a good post I don't agree to.

The proof is the OP: there is no godfatherism in the merit system, and this critique from a "new" account is even more suspicious. I am wondering which real account is hiding behind this name, and why he's afraid to use his real name...

[The Sceptical Chymist]

as time went on I found his story that he was a crossover from Reddit more believable

Yep, that's another way a very knowledgeable newbie could appear to be an alt account--but as I said, if you're accused of faking your newbie status here, why would you not just say you learned all about bitcoin/whatever on another site like Reddit?  It would save the accused a lot of hassle, and it's at least believable. 

What isn't believable in this case is that KingsDen/Magicalking knows a lot of stuff about members of this forum, and that isn't information you could easily gather unless you've been a lurker before registering--and I'd think that you'd have to lurk for a fairly long period of time in order to become familiar with the biggest personalities on bitcointalk. 

I lurked for months in 2014 and I still wasn't familiar with most members when I joined, because I was paying more attention to what was being written than who wrote it.

Edit: I mean if you think about it, none of this matters. None of this means anything. Have a terrific day.

I think it does matter, but it's not exactly earth-shattering stuff in the grand scheme of things.  That's why I wouldn't even bother to leave a neutral trust on someone suspected of lying about their origin.  There would be enough reasonable doubt in my mind that I wouldn't feel right doing that, and I'd prefer to discuss it with the member in question like we're doing now. 

And to that point, it'd be nice if KingsDen/Magicalking would address the question of how he came to know so much about the forum when his rank would indicate that he shouldn't have so much knowledge.

[Magicalking]

That's where your wrong.

Does this really seem like something an _actual_ newbie would say? Think about it:

We have successful digressed from the discussion to me. Okay, I mentioned right there in the post you quoted that I spent time reading scam accusations. They are names that stick when you browse each board. Those users have made contributions that are visible to the blind. You have not been a newbie in ages. In one of my other posts I made a joke about being addicted to the forum. I have been browsing the boards months before I decided to open an account.  I do not have any affiliation with the user kingsden or any of the other newbie accounts you have linked me to. I chose a username that wouldn't require numbers. The line spacing is coincidental. My thoughts are mine and no one else's. Lastly I originally posted in beginners and help but was advised by DdmrDdmr to move the topic to meta which I did. I saw this thread fit for meta that's why it is here. I did not forsee this becoming a problem. Am I wrong to post in meta? I don't suck up to anyone. I follow the rules, I say what's on my mind. If I don't know about what's being discussed I stay clear of the comment box. My posts are personal and come from the heart. I am my best critic I go back to every post I make and think of better ways to make it better

[Fivestar4everMVP]

@op, from my own personal experience here, I don't think there's any God fatherism here, if you find people meriting those that merited them in the past, it might be a mere coincidence, and besides, its never a rule here that if you find a merit worthy post from a user who merited you before, you shouldnt merit them just because they've merited you in the past - No - you are free to merit anyone as long as their post is worthy of it, the merit system, as we all know, was put in place to combat spam and shit posts on the forum, this has helped to create a cleaner and a more healthy environment for crypto discussions and also helped those new to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to get help easily, one rule on merit is that, it is forbidden for anyone to sell it, some forum users have in the past broken this rule and those caught were severely punished.

[GeorgeJohn]

This is a real misconception, because we all know vividly that their is no Godfatherism in this community, so let newbies have it in their skull, ranking up or awarding merit to someone does mean that the higher rank user is piloting or making the lower rank user to be elevated immediately with a collaboration, we have to understand this concept that, if someone subsequently meriting a particular person, that doesn't mean is the Godfather here, because this community accommodate different set of people from different denominations and secondly, for somebody to be meriting someone frequently that shows that the methods of the user composition of text is suit or suitable to the person...so let us not reason contrary or negatively about awarding a user merit like three consecutive time's.

[nutildah]

K bud, whatever you say.

You're free to have all the fun you want doing this little dance; as I mentioned before it's kind of entertaining and who am I to stop free entertainment.

[KingsDen]

Though the Op is objective.  But I honestly think that in terms of meriting a post, what should be great concern are;
1. Is the post being merited a quality one? Even at that I understood that quality is in the beholder's eyes. What appeared to me as quality, may appear to another as non quality. So, it is purely discretional.
2. I think in the forum, there is no alternative to appreciation. Merit is an appreciation. Will it not be wrong that someone who might not even be a merit source gives me 4merits and I will be unable to return even 1 smerit to him?
3. Merit is psychological. Immediately you always agree with ones opinion, it appears that you guys reason alike, you will naturally see yourself meriting the user severally because you are psychologically attached to him.
So, the cycle of merit should not be a problem in as much as there are merit sources available to always distribute merit randomly.
Thanks!

[aysg76]

I don't think there is any favourism of merit circle on this forum as you will probably see that quality posts have been receiving merits from the members but if you are talking about reciprocal merits then ofcourse you can see if one member giving merit to another but if the posts deserve it to be.For all the merit sources that I know are actively engaged in giving smerits to all the good and constructive posts that come under their witness and sometimes theh give say many merits to each other but it's not that they are abusing the system because sometimes they run out of smerits and they can give it to each other so that members are able to receive them when needed.The circle revolves the same way because when a merit source is receiving merits from another source it will distributed among all the posts that deserves to be merited.So there is no such thing in the forum according to me.