Is there some sort of Godfatherism in the forum?

[Magicalking]

I have gotten accustomed to the bitcointalk forum to certain degree since my time here. I have noticed something in the forum, I won't be pointing fingers at anyone but 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, therefore creating a merit ring. You can easily discover such people from their merit summary. This could simply be a coincidence or I'm just imagining things. But if this is true, then such individuals are cheating the system and us unfair to others who take time to put in the work to develop good discussions and topics. Reading this there is no clear or postulated rule that credits a post merit worthy. The system only demands quality spots, and quality posts is subjective to the reader. I think this is misused by those farming accounts. Without the merit system, I can't imagine what the forum would look like. There won't even be any interesting subjects to talk about just shit posts flooding every board.

[1714044744]

1714044744

[1714044744]

1714044744

[1714044744]

1714044744

[Upgrade00]

If you suspect a user is farming accounts, you could avoid sending merits to them to not support them, but besides that, it's no longer a major forum issue. Such members would eventually run out of merits to cycle as it progressively decays.

About meriting someone that merited you in the past; users are free to use their smerits the way they please, as long as it's not sold, they are not cheating the system.

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Reading this there is no clear or postulated indicator that credits a post merit worthy.

That thread is clearly an exception. The merit system was just introduced and the readers earnt some merits that they instantly spent. That's my guess. I haven't seen such thing again so intensively.

This could simply be a coincidence or I'm just imagining things.

Can you share us some merit transactions that do what you wrote?

The system only demands quality spots, and quality posts is subjective to the reader.

The system demands meaningful posts, not necessarily high-quality. A funny and one-line post may be merited, but it can't be considered high-quality.

[jackg]

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

Familiarity and appreciation could also bread positive feedback to a user. For example: user A gets merited by user B so user A naturally obtains a more positive affinity to user B and enjoys their content more. This may be an unintended consequence of the merit system (but it might also serve to increase engagement and quality discussion).

There's going to be a fuzzy, hard to detect line between the above and account farming, especially on local boards or smaller communities - which are generally good to keep active to show new users from those countries that (1) they're welcome in the crypto community and (2) they have a way to get a fast, public response from people.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I have noticed something in the forum, I won't be pointing fingers at anyone but 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, therefore creating a merit ring. You can easily discover such people from their merit summary.

Yeah, if you look at my merit history you might think I'm trading merits with quite a few members--but I'm not.  I've never asked anyone to merit me, or to trade merits, or indicated to anyone here (or elsewhere) that I'd accept anything in exchange for merits.  Some people have found my posts good enough to merit, and sometimes they happen to be the same people I've merited.  But I generally don't often look at where my own merits are coming from, and it wouldn't matter anyway.  As a merit source, I've given merits to a lot of different members.  Some of them I've given quite a few--and in a bunch, too--because they've asked me to review their post history.  I don't know if that looks suspicious or what, but that's the reason for it.

That said, I was only talking about myself.  I can't speak for anyone else, and I'm pretty sure there is some merit trading going on here on bitcointalk.  Sometimes it's blatant, and in the past members would get tagged for obvious merit abuse.  That stopped a while ago when Theymos gave the community his opinion on the matter.

Without the merit system, I can't imagine what the forum would look like. There won't even be any interesting subjects to talk about just shit posts flooding every board.

LOL.  You should have seen it here prior to Jan. 2018 when the merit system was rolled out.  It was non-stop shitposting, and no sections were exempt from this.  And after the merit system was introduced, there were so many threads in Meta about merits started by low-ranked members it was ridiculous.  All the account farmers and those who thought they'd be able to easily maximize their earnings through sig campaigns had their dreams go up in smoke overnight.  It was beautiful to behold.

[rhomelmabini]

I agree with you that I may have merited others in the past and may still merit them in the future but that doesn't conclude that we have a merit circle. The thing is that we may have boards that regularly visits or a favorite thread to follow. Your sMerit, your choice who to send to. From the last sentence of your post I guess you're in good terms with the way merit was introduced, correct me if I'm wrong.

LOL.  You should have seen it here prior to Jan. 2018 when the merit system was rolled out.  It was non-stop shitposting, and no sections were exempt from this.  And after the merit system was introduced, there were so many threads in Meta about merits started by low-ranked members it was ridiculous.  All the account farmers and those who thought they'd be able to easily maximize their earnings through sig campaigns had their dreams go up in smoke overnight.  It was beautiful to behold.

The merit system was the way to clear them up. It was a real mess during that time and when the system was introduced these spammers, activity farmers, and account farmers got messed up too.

[suchmoon]

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, therefore creating a merit ring. You can easily discover such people from their merit summary. This could simply be a coincidence or I'm just imagining things. But if this is true, then such individuals are cheating the system and us unfair to others who take time to put in the work to develop good discussions and topics.

Merit data is public so you can go ahead and prove it instead of speculating. However: merits are not scarce and the way the system is set up each individual merit sender is supposed to exercise their subjective judgement as to what is a good post, which given hundreds if not thousands diverse merit senders makes it extremely unlikely that "good discussions and topics" would get cheated out of merits. If you do have such examples you can bring them up in the merit sorcery thread or directly to theymos so that he could appoint more merit sources in certain areas.

I wouldn't hold my breath that some complicated rules would be established as to who can send merits to whom and for what.

[NeuroticFish]

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, therefore creating a merit ring.

This may easily happen indeed. Just imho the reason is not friendship or whatever strange relationship you'd think, it's more like certain people discuss mostly on certain boards and that's where they give and receive merit. Clearly they'll give and receive merits from other people with similar interests.

But if this is true, then such individuals are cheating the system

While it can easily happen that some would cheat the system here and there, I don't think that it can happen at a large scale, since people will notice more clearly and the scammers would get tagged.

there is no clear or postulated indicator that credits a post merit worthy

You're right. And this makes more wide the reasons people would merit a post; some would merit even a post for being funny, for example. But the main reason for merit remains the usefulness, which also may be seen different by different people.

Without the merit system, I can't imagine what the forum would look like. There won't even be any interesting subjects to talk about just shit posts flooding every board.

Not all spammers care about merit though. Hence we still have a fair amount of spam/garbage.


You are imho too focused on what others do, while your goal seem to be to receive yourself more merit. And then I'd say that you may be doing it wrong.
Posting more useful stuff - from tutorial to spot-on answers to people needing help - could get you more merit than threads like this. But you have only 43 posts, so there's still plenty of time to improve.
The forum is not perfect, but it's great. Enjoy your ride!

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

It’s not always that easy to determine whether reciprocal merits is something that takes place in order to farm accounts, or whether there are closer circles of content and/or social affinity, or small sized community subsets. The merit numbers serve as indicators, but the interpretation should be derived from the content of the merited posts, and the context where they are posted (and even so, it’s not a trivial task, and often non-conclusive). In addition, Merit sources tend to be some of the better posters, and often cross paths, which leads to them meriting each other.

On a smaller scale, take for example the Spanish Local board (which you also roam). There are say 10 more or less active posters there that provide content, and most of them know how to post fairly well. The local community, being small, will inherently tend to merit each other due to two factors: some merit sources roam the local board (which is pretty essential), and the content is provided by a small selection of people, meaning that there is not much competition.
The above has personally made me wary at times, and I’ve often refrained from providing more merits in the past due to this fact. Now if we take a look at the content of the posts, a fair share of the merited posts would be postulants to merit on any of the general boards, probably with higher rewards. Nevertheless, I believe people there are rather more focused on trying to keep the board alive and kicking through providing content than anything else.

Small time farmers may be easier to spot, and often merit acts as a lead, and the content leads to making connections. Again, easy to suspect, but not so much to prove.


I used to have a Tab on the Merit Dashboard that indicated everybody’s reciprocal merit with every other account, but I deleted it due to it slowing down the Dashboard (Cartesian product stuff). Alternatively, this view is interesting, and can be used to see:

-   How much one account has contributed to the merit of all other accounts (parametrize From User Name).
-   How much other accounts have contributed to our merits count (parametrize To User Name)

https://public.tableau.com/shared/R8SXH8PMG?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

[crwth]

You could look at it in two ways.

• There is a merit ring
• The ones being merited are awesome posters

Obviously it's the latter on it. You don't need to point any fingers because everything can be seen here and you would notice that a lot of receivers have great quality of posts. If you find some kind of suspicious activity like someone unexpectedly receives high merit with a shit post, then there could be something.

You just answered your own post in a way. There was a time where merit was non-existent and there are still campaigns that accepts newbies. Those are a couple of years ago and the forum is better with it.

[hugeblack]

Without having s a merit source in this circle, getting a huge number of sMerits requires creating high quality posts. Believe me, most of those who sell these accounts are for low quality accounts and you probably won't get the chance to participate in a good signature campaign.

In general, unless the case with hundreds of merits, scam, spam, banned accounts and others all you can get is a negative trust or red flag against them. create a topic  and some trusted members may interact with you.

[Jet Cash]

I gave Jack 50 merits to stimulate this thread.

Now I need to look and see if he has ever given me any merit.

[nutildah]

LOL.  You should have seen it here prior to Jan. 2018 when the merit system was rolled out.  

Who's to say they weren't... New accounts that spend 50% of the time fishing for merits and the other 50% telling senior members what they should be doing just strike me as odd. There's at least 3 different people that keep coming back under new accounts and posting way too much in Meta (not including QS). The first two are pretty easy to spot but the third is a bit more clever.

[NeuroticFish]

I gave Jack 50 merits to stimulate this thread.

Now I need to look and see if he has ever given me any merit.

Although I find 50 a too big amount, I do appreciate the humor behind your gesture 

[RapTarX]

May be you are true. Probably most of the high quality posts are generated by them and there's nothing wrong with meriting such post regardless who is the poster is. Nevertheless, merit data is available to everyone. You can check and create list of backscratchers and backstabbers of merit (LoyceV has it for custom trust list). That would differentiate abusers and/or if someone is trying to achieve something which community didn’t see.

[philipma1957]

I have gotten accustomed to the bitcointalk forum to certain degree since my time here. I have noticed something in the forum, I won't be pointing fingers at anyone but 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, therefore creating a merit ring. You can easily discover such people from their merit summary. This could simply be a coincidence or I'm just imagining things. But if this is true, then such individuals are cheating the system and us unfair to others who take time to put in the work to develop good discussions and topics. Reading this there is no clear or postulated indicator that credits a post merit worthy. The system only demands quality spots, and quality posts is subjective to the reader. I think this is misused by those farming accounts. Without the merit system, I can't imagine what the forum would look like. There won't even be any interesting subjects to talk about just shit posts flooding every board.

  Nah the problem is your interpretation.

 I have been here since 2012 I know a few hundred posters very well.  I don't know you very well at all.

So if I see your name I won't go to click on you. Unless the thread title looks interesting.

I clicked here today because the title caught my eye.

This thread is short right now and I can tell you I know 85% of the posters on it.

They know me and if they like what I say I will get a point/merit. I could not care less about merits anymore I have 1000's of them.  Many earned. Plus 1000 given since I was here a long time. I know I write good posts. So if it was always a merit system from 2012 I would likely have earned 2000 not the 1000 they gave us. legendary members. I liked the title enough to give you a merit. SO I will now read your posts and see if you should get more points.  Its hard to catch my eye if you are a newbie but if you look you will see I gave more than 100 newbies their first  merited

Edit: I just read all 43 of your posts.

You write really well.
So well I would say you are an alt and not  a newbie.
But I did promise you a merit for the title of this thread. So I gave it to you.


And checking the posters here I know 8 of them I know they effort good work and I know that I have given all of them a merit or 2.

I also know they have given me merits.
As for the op your english posts are really good.  and my wife helped me with your spanish posts.  You do a lot of quality posts. Really good ones. I will be looking for your name the next few weeks.

[OgNasty]

It is insane that there is no lifetime cap on merit you can send to someone. There are users here that have literally traded hundreds of merit with each other. The fact these people are typically the ones trying to destroy the reputations of others with flimsy accusations of bad behavior and you see exactly what sort of system has been created here. Something should definitely be done to address it, but good luck getting people who surround themselves with ‘Yes men’ to take any action that wouldn’t benefit themselves.

[Jet Cash]

Although I find 50 a too big amount, I do appreciate the humor behind your gesture 

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.

[Magicalking]

@Jetcash completely obliterated the argument with a single blow. At first I thought "what just happened" but then I got the message. @DdmrDdmr comments about how a close community or can affect merit ratio made me rethink my stance on the matter and see reason. Its not as difficult for users to cross paths  and as @philipma1957 pointed out good posters who overtime have become a household name will get twice as much merits. I agree because I also read posts of names I am familiar with.
Thank you all for your thoughts and opinions. I got a few bruises here and there  but it was fun ( some posts cracked me up) and educational at the same time. Other users who might have previously bear the same ideas with me got their answers.
 

That thread is clearly an exception. The merit system was just introduced and the readers earnt some merits that they instantly spent. That's my guess. I haven't seen such thing again so intensively.

You misunderstood what I meant. I only referenced the thread because it is a popular thread that explains how merit system works, that's all.

Edit: I just read all 43 of your posts.
You write really well.
So well I would say you are an alt and not  a newbie.

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

[Poker Player]

It is insane that there is no lifetime cap on merit you can send to someone. There are users here that have literally traded hundreds of merit with each other. The fact these people are typically the ones trying to destroy the reputations of others with flimsy accusations of bad behavior and you see exactly what sort of system has been created here. Something should definitely be done to address it, but good luck getting people who surround themselves with ‘Yes men’ to take any action that wouldn’t benefit themselves.

I don't really know what it's all about but it sounds like a case that has affected you personally. I don't know if that is what has made you think of the lifetime cap but I don't see the point. The system is set up so that you give merit to deserving posts according to your rationale. 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.