Here Is One Reason Why Legendary Members Get So Many Merits

[Pmalek]

Oh God, another thread about merits? Yes! But I promise. This one will be a bit different.

Many times, we have heard the accusations: merit cycling clubs, merit gangs, legendary members giving merits to their legendary friends, etc.

I believe that Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support are this forum's cream de la creme. These sub-forums are the sections where issues about the Bitcoin network are raised and solved. When users experience particular problems or have questions, the members in those subs take care of them. 

But who are the users that help newbies and everyone else to solve problems?
More precisely, what rank to they belong to?
That is precisely the reason why I decided to create this thread. On 27 August, I took a screenshot of the two mentioned sub-boards to check what ranks are the members who reply to threads there.

I checked 5 threads in each section.
In the tables below, I have listed the titles of those threads. You can see the number of legendary users who have replied there. Besides that, I have written down the number of times a legendary user was the first to respond after a thread was created, and how many replies there were in total per thread.

What is the purpose of all this?

My hypothesis is that legendary members get so many merits because they are usually the first to reply and offer advice. They are the most frequent posters in the mentioned sub-forums, and their posts are simply the best ones.

Let’s now take a look at the stats and see if I am right or wrong:

Bitcoin Technical Support

|	Thread Title	|	Total Number of posts	|	Number of Legendary replies	|	Was a legendary the first to reply?	|	Percentage of legendary replies	|
|	What info can be gathered using my receiving address btc	|	5	|	3	|	Yes	|	60%	|
|	*[Aug 2021] Mempool empty! Use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs!	|	19	|	15	|	Yes	|	78.9%	|
|	FindBTC TOOL help	|	19	|	3	|	Yes	|	15.78%	|
|	Umbrel - Discussion, issues, solutions	|	13	|	7	|	Yes	|	53.84%	|
|	Possible download block chain for air gapped linux from windows?	|	13	|	9	|	Yes	|	69.23%	|

*I looked at posts only from page 23.

Development & Technical Discussion

|	Thread Title	|	Total Number of posts	|	Number of Legendary replies	|	Was a legendary the first to reply?	|	Percentage of legendary replies	|
|	Curve point divided by integer - is it possible?	|	18	|	3	|	No	|	16.66%	|
|	*Pollard's kangaroo ECDLP solver	|	20	|	0	|	No	|	0%	|
|	BIP0062 and reduction s - problem ?when use.?	|	6	|	1	|	No	|	16.66%	|
|	**Why doesn't bitcoin have a "freeze" function?	|	20	|	10	|	Yes	|	50%	|
|	**A. Antonopoulos’ Take on Seed Splitting and Bruteforcing	|	20	|	16	|	No	|	80%	|

*I looked at posts only from page 105.
**I looked at posts only on page 1.


In summary

These 10 threads had:

-   153 posts in total.
-   67 (or 43.79%) of those came from Legendary members.
-   Legendary members were the first to reply in 6 from the 10 checked threads.


This is just a small sample that shows that legendary members receive plenty of merits for a reason. So the next time you think how the world is unfair or that the powerful are only helping the powerful, remember this thread and try to improve and do better. 

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[kaggie]

Very nice data.

One might theorize this, but it's good to have the data to support it.
* Legendary members have already shown a commitment to the forum over a long period of time, so they are the most likely to be committed to the future of the forum over a long period of time.
* Legendary members have read the forum for a long period of time, posted, corrected others and been corrected themselves, so are the most likely to have a better understanding of underlying concepts.
* Legendary members are also very recognizable, both for their status but also because they have been regular members for so long
so are more likely to receive merits for those reasons.

On might theorize the opposite, if one thinks that they are the most likely to leave, having tired out on repetitive topics, simply getting older, or moving onto other things. But it's possible that those second class of legendaries and others have already left, so it has a 'founder' bias. As long as there is a sufficient trickle of new legendaries to replace old ones (who can stop posting for any number of reasons), then it's likely that your post will always be the case.

You can imagine new users as little bursts of energy that burn out quickly, where older members are the 'engines that could' or consistent and steady performers.

edit:
* LM have more access to merits, which causes the reciprocal action of others giving them merits
* LM are more likely to be online to address topics higher in a thread

[actmyname]

On might theorize the opposite, if one thinks that they are the most likely to leave, having tired out on repetitive topics, simply getting older, or moving onto other things.

The metrics that lead one to the rank of Legendary include activity and merit. Users would have to have posted actively in at least 56 separate activity periods - a range spanning 2 years' worth of time.

If you're someone who receives merit, you are more likely to be someone who is active than not, and you are more likely to be someone who gains merit: conditions required for ranking up.
There is an implicit bias for the posts of high-ranking members to have higher rates of merit, since it's the high amount of merit that causes them to be high-ranking.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Many times, we have heard the accusations: merit cycling clubs, merit gangs, legendary members giving merits to their legendary friends, etc.

I haven't heard those accusations in a while, but as far as the "merit cycling club" goes, that's Foxpup's exclusive club and there's no conspiracy behind it to give merits to anyone in particular--and that includes Legendary members, other members of the cycling club, or anyone else.  The only merit gangs I've ever encountered were usually newbies with multiple alts or friends and/or account farmers.  Legendary members don't need merits to rank up, so they're probably the least likely to want them.

My hypothesis is that legendary members get so many merits because they are usually the first to reply and offer advice. They are the most frequent posters in the mentioned sub-forums, and their posts are simply the best ones.
<snip>
This is just a small sample that shows that legendary members receive plenty of merits for a reason. So the next time you think how the world is unfair or that the powerful are only helping the powerful, remember this thread and try to improve and do better. 

Agreed, and I also think that the Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support boards are indeed two of the finest sections this forum has.  I rarely post in either one, as anything I write would probably be interpreted as a shitpost--those boards really are for the true bitcoin experts and yes, they're dominated by Legendary members who deserve merits.

There are some lower-ranked members who are working their way up the ladder right now who deserve all the merits they've gotten--and you can check my merit-giving history to see some of them--but it is absolutely the case (as a general rule with some exceptions) that older members tend to put more effort into their posts and display a better understanding of both bitcoin and how the forum operates.  Good analysis, OP.

[Charles-Tim]

What I have noticed is that newbies aways have this kind of wrong thinking, bringing up what is not, they know nothing yet or do not fully understand how the forum is perfectly and accurately operating but like to post shit contents. Some will bring up matters that have been frequently treated, some just like low quality posts to be merited which is quality enough for them but actually not quality enough for the experienced members of this forum, and merits are only distributed accurately by experienced members. But the newbies that understood how this forum works, they will find no problem to post and receive merits for their quality work on this forum.

[NotATether]

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

[icopress]

My 2 cents ... By my own example, I can say that when reading the first post of any thread, I subconsciously ponder what I would like to add. Further, before answering, I briefly read at least the first page of the answers, and as I read it, I mentally edit my supposed answer since there is no point in resorting to taftology. Therefore, your statement is correct ... the first answers get more merit than the others for the reason that there is nothing to add to them.

[DaveF]

... Legendary members don't need merits to rank up, so they're probably the least likely to want them....

Or just to have them to give out. I admit I am way to stingy giving them out. But those who do give a lot, need to get some to give more. Unless they are a merit source.

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

With the above statement that I am stingy with them, I do give out a lot of the time for the "huh, I didn't know that" too.


I also think a lot of the merit giving is because these are the people helping out others, not just recycling old discussions time and time again just for the sake of posting.

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

If you're someone who receives merit, you are more likely to be someone who is active than not, and you are more likely to be someone who gains merit: conditions required for ranking up.
There is an implicit bias for the posts of high-ranking members to have higher rates of merit, since it's the high amount of merit that causes them to be high-ranking.

If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system.

If you have received a lot of merit in the past, you are likely to receive a lot of merit in the future, assuming you maintain your posting habits.

If you have received a lot of speeding tickets in the past, you will likely receive an elevated number of speeding tickets in the future.

There may be other issues with the merit system.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Obviously the one imparted solid topics and helpful post iwll get a lot of merits. Regardless of rank however, we can see that even though higher ranks or legendary members have attained their ranks they keep and continously posting good one so its not shocking that those cotnributed are from the higher ranks.

I salute those guys whom keep making useful thread example of this is @DdmrDdmr and many more.

[Pmalek]

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

You only merit people in those boards if they help you personally? What if they help other members or post something that can be of benefit to everyone, even those who don't seek help?
You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

[icopress]

[...] You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with his statement, since this is not a forum for philanthropists. The purpose of the dissemination of merit is to make the forum more useful in the context of the extracted knowledge by one person, all merit sources are autonomous and have a volume of sMerit that, within their worldview, they can distribute at their own discretion.

And as far as I understand, NotATether meant not what you emphasized .. in the context of solving personal problems, he probably meant either the current usefulness of the message or usefulness in the foreseeable future, (because everything is relative). In addition, if all m'sources begin to care first of all about others, and not about themselves, then the forum will certainly be imbued with the spirit of communism.

[Daniel91]

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

You only merit people in those boards if they help you personally? What if they help other members or post something that can be of benefit to everyone, even those who don't seek help?
You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

Each of us has a different mindset and attitude about merits and that is normal.
First of all, each of us has different interests and follows different parts of the forum.
Also, each of us has a different definition of what kind of post or content on the forum deserves merit.
I believe NotATether didn’t express himself best in the post above and that he probably meant to say that he rewards posts and forum content that help him and others.

[PrimeNumber7]

[...] You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with his statement, since this is not a forum for philanthropists. The purpose of the dissemination of merit is to make the forum more useful in the context of the extracted knowledge by one person, all merit sources are autonomous and have a volume of sMerit that, within their worldview, they can distribute at their own discretion.

I don't think it is appropriate for merit sources to only give merit to those that help them specifically. Merit sources should be giving merit to high quality posts, and should be encouraging people to make more high quality posts.

The term high quality post is subjective, but it reasonably should not be limited to those that help the merit source.

[icopress]

[...]

If you want to quote me, quote in full, or do not quote at all, as I don't really like it when my thought is taken out of context. But if we continue to talk about evaluating quality posts, then I like the methodology of one of the merit sources, (although I do not remember who it is). The source simply edited his settings in such a way that he does not see signatures or avatars, and focuses solely on the quality of the messages and not on the popularity of a particular user.

[Trojane]

Oh God, another thread about merits? Yes! But I promise. This one will be a bit different.

Many times, we have heard the accusations: merit cycling clubs, merit gangs, legendary members giving merits to their legendary friends, etc.

I believe that Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support are this forum's cream de la creme. These sub-forums are the sections where issues about the Bitcoin network are raised and solved. When users experience particular problems or have questions, the members in those subs take care of them. 

But who are the users that help newbies and everyone else to solve problems?
More precisely, what rank to they belong to?
That is precisely the reason why I decided to create this thread. On 27 August, I took a screenshot of the two mentioned sub-boards to check what ranks are the members who reply to threads there.

I checked 5 threads in each section.
In the tables below, I have listed the titles of those threads. You can see the number of legendary users who have replied there. Besides that, I have written down the number of times a legendary user was the first to respond after a thread was created, and how many replies there were in total per thread.

What is the purpose of all this?

My hypothesis is that legendary members get so many merits because they are usually the first to reply and offer advice. They are the most frequent posters in the mentioned sub-forums, and their posts are simply the best ones.

Let’s now take a look at the stats and see if I am right or wrong:

Bitcoin Technical Support

|	Thread Title	|	Total Number of posts	|	Number of Legendary replies	|	Was a legendary the first to reply?	|	Percentage of legendary replies	|
|	What info can be gathered using my receiving address btc	|	5	|	3	|	Yes	|	60%	|
|	*[Aug 2021] Mempool empty! Use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs!	|	19	|	15	|	Yes	|	78.9%	|
|	FindBTC TOOL help	|	19	|	3	|	Yes	|	15.78%	|
|	Umbrel - Discussion, issues, solutions	|	13	|	7	|	Yes	|	53.84%	|
|	Possible download block chain for air gapped linux from windows?	|	13	|	9	|	Yes	|	69.23%	|

*I looked at posts only from page 23.

Development & Technical Discussion

|	Thread Title	|	Total Number of posts	|	Number of Legendary replies	|	Was a legendary the first to reply?	|	Percentage of legendary replies	|
|	Curve point divided by integer - is it possible?	|	18	|	3	|	No	|	16.66%	|
|	*Pollard's kangaroo ECDLP solver	|	20	|	0	|	No	|	0%	|
|	BIP0062 and reduction s - problem ?when use.?	|	6	|	1	|	No	|	16.66%	|
|	**Why doesn't bitcoin have a "freeze" function?	|	20	|	10	|	Yes	|	50%	|
|	**A. Antonopoulos’ Take on Seed Splitting and Bruteforcing	|	20	|	16	|	No	|	80%	|

*I looked at posts only from page 105.
**I looked at posts only on page 1.


In summary

These 10 threads had:

-   153 posts in total.
-   67 (or 43.79%) of those came from Legendary members.
-   Legendary members were the first to reply in 6 from the 10 checked threads.


This is just a small sample that shows that legendary members receive plenty of merits for a reason. So the next time you think how the world is unfair or that the powerful are only helping the powerful, remember this thread and try to improve and do better. 

I have seen instances that newbies like me or Jrn members reply first,second and even third in a post like that but won't be given any merit no matter how reasonable the information looks ..
Sometimes i use to feel bad and ask different questions in beginners and help to know if people that deserve merits are people that have them already ?
Seriously, i mean no disrespect but it is what i have seen several times and it sucks
I am not saying these to gain merit to myself Earnestly, but this is what i feel..
What you have analysed now should be the normal thing to be done because no body has the time and strength to review several pages just to see everyone's opinion except in rear cases.
Please, no offense legends
But lets be FAIR
This forum and the world of bitcoin would be a better place tomorrow..remember,people are still joining day by day ..LEGENDS REMAIN THE GRANDMASTERS HERE AND SHOULD ACT LIKE ONE
Trojane

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

You only merit people in those boards if they help you personally? What if they help other members or post something that can be of benefit to everyone, even those who don't seek help?
You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

Each of us has a different mindset and attitude about merits and that is normal.
First of all, each of us has different interests and follows different parts of the forum.
Also, each of us has a different definition of what kind of post or content on the forum deserves merit.
I believe NotATether didn’t express himself best in the post above and that he probably meant to say that he rewards posts and forum content that help him and others.

Exactly brother.
We all know that the truth is sometimes bitter.
Nobody started a hero member or legendary
Everyone started from the scratch and most legends were supported to the toll of 1000 merits depending on their post and activity when merit was invented.
If you are a merit source, i wouldn't tell you what to do with it but whatever you do,always remember to do the right thing and make the right judgments..these is not about your presumptions
Try to encourage any newbie,not just me because i know how excruitiating it feels when you read very well just for a topic and you finally get nothing for your reasonable opinion but will see people getting merits for just one line of rigid statements just because he has the tag ''legendary" lets grow beyond these ..
I mean no disrespect at all
Trojans

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[DdmrDdmr]

To shed some numerical context here, it seems that absolutely every rank favours the content created by Legendries, being Legendary the rank that receives a higher percentage of the sMerits awarded by every single rank.

The following is the layout of the number and percentage of Merits sent (horizontal rows) and received (vertical columns) for the current month (up to last Friday):

https://public.tableau.com/shared/NFQQH5BMR?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Now numbers are often poor storytellers, as they frequently do not depict the why’s. Numbers do not speak-up for content, promptness, focus, knowledge, favourisms, subjacent skills, trust, and so forth. They are though excellent indicators to things to look into to better understand, thus the need for threads such as this one.

Note: Changes in rank within the period of time considered in the data, drag all data to the new rank.

[suchmoon]

If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system.

Nonsense. Airdropped merit was given even to the shittiest shitposters and it means nothing. As evidenced by the fact that median earned merit among Legendary members is 19. Goes up a notch to 34 if we take only ones still active this year. >80% of active Legendaries have that title only because of the airdrop.

Merely being a Legendary has no relevance to post quality. You'd think you would know that what with all the account farming.

[NotATether]

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

You only merit people in those boards if they help you personally? What if they help other members or post something that can be of benefit to everyone, even those who don't seek help?
You are a merit source, so I guess you were joking with the statement above.

Easy there, you basically highlighted the catch-all criteria in bold ("give me some helpful guidance").

Most of the time what I think is beneficial by my own standards is also helpful to the vast majority of other readers, because I have really high standards to what I consider helpful guidance vs. tripe that's just been recycled in dozens of other threads (including in Dev&Tech), e.g. you should not place money in exchanges because they are risky; we already know that exchanges are a bad place for that (and I could give you more examples like that) so there's no need to merit another answer that just mentions that again, and I think that is the view that most other merit sources share as well.

e.g. I sent 20 merit to garlonicon the other day because his post had a breakdown about multiplication and addition results that other devs (the key word here being "other") can benefit from for testing their own implementations with.

edit:

I'm not sure where you got the "personally" part from but I never wrote that.

[Pmalek]

I have seen instances that newbies like me or Jrn members reply first,second and even third in a post like that but won't be given any merit no matter how reasonable the information looks ..

There are no rules to what is worth meriting and what is not. What you consider reasonable and merit-worthy, I might not, and vice versa. The fact that you replied first doesn't put you in a better position to be merited compared to someone who replied after you.

Seriously, i mean no disrespect but it is what i have seen several times and it sucks😑
I am not saying these to gain merit to myself Earnestly, but this is what i feel..

There is a thread where you can add links to posts you believe deserve merits. It can be your own posts or those of other members. [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source. Feel free to use it. You can even PM me when you do and I will take a look and see if I like what you shared.
A couple of suggestions. Don't quote the entire OP when you are replying to someone. There is no need for it. The fact that you are writing a post in this thread is enough for me and others to understand that you are somehow contributing to this discussion. Take a look at how long your post is because you quoted my entire OP. I would appreciate if you could remove the quoted part because it looks bad. It's especially irritating to quote posts that contain a lot of images. When you quote, you can leave only the part you are replying to from someone's post. Just like I did with your post.

Another thing is double-posting. It's against the rules. If someone were to report your second post, it would be merged with the first one or deleted by mods. Usually, the first option happens.

Most of the time what I think is beneficial by my own standards is also helpful to the vast majority of other readers, because I have really high standards to what I consider helpful guidance vs. tripe that's just been recycled in dozens of other threads (including in Dev&Tech)

I was sure that I just misunderstood you because your merit history shows one thing and here you are saying something that to me sounded you merit only those that are helpful to you.

I'm not sure where you got the "personally" part from but I never wrote that.

From the bolded part of your post which is about solving a problem you have and offering guidance to you. Like I said above, a misunderstanding of what you were trying to say.

[PrimeNumber7]

If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system.

Nonsense. Airdropped merit was given even to the shittiest shitposters and it means nothing. As evidenced by the fact that median earned merit among Legendary members is 19. Goes up a notch to 34 if we take only ones still active this year. >80% of active Legendaries have that title only because of the airdrop.

I think we both know that the majority of merit received by legendary members is not received by those with 19 or 34 merit. The overwhelming majority of merit received by legendary members is received by those with a lot of merit.

When presenting numbers, I would suggest that you understand the context of the data you are presenting. You should also work to remove your own personal bias when presenting information. You should not look to data in order to confirm what you want to argue, but rather you should look to data in a neutral way, and form conclusions based on said data.

[aysg76]

My hypothesis is that legendary members get so many merits because they are usually the first to reply and offer advice. They are the most frequent posters in the mentioned sub-forums, and their posts are simply the best ones.

Nice analysis and you are right in this manner and we can have a look around merit distribution easily.The legendary members get more merits because they are providing more relevant and useful information to the members in detail which is needed to be deemed as quality post.I have personally merited legendary and hero members because i found their post more useful and giving the correct information in detail like providing links and explaining with images to newbies to help them.

If i found something unique and quality post made by some newbie or low rank members i visit his profile to check what kind of posts he is making and if any good and quality posts are found merits are delivered to them by many members which is aim for the merit introduction system.But you will see very few obliging to this quality posts sigma rule and then complaining that merit system is being abused but that's not true.Legendary members are making notes and spending time to write their posts with proper information so that right information is delivered to members but on other side newbies are not reading any rules and making mistakes and saying we were not aware to gain merits.

You will see many topics such as will btc grow,is btc dead,I lost my keys, bitcoin vs altcoins and many crap topics which have been discussed many times but still newbies are making such posts and think they will get merits for the same.Give forum your time as legendary members were once also newbies and they have gained knowledge and learn a lot and reach that rank which they deserve.So keep up your work and you will also gets merits with effective post contribution.

[suchmoon]

If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system.

Nonsense. Airdropped merit was given even to the shittiest shitposters and it means nothing. As evidenced by the fact that median earned merit among Legendary members is 19. Goes up a notch to 34 if we take only ones still active this year. >80% of active Legendaries have that title only because of the airdrop.

I think we both know that the majority of merit received by legendary members is not received by those with 19 or 34 merit. The overwhelming majority of merit received by legendary members is received by those with a lot of merit.

When presenting numbers, I would suggest that you understand the context of the data you are presenting. You should also work to remove your own personal bias when presenting information. You should not look to data in order to confirm what you want to argue, but rather you should look to data in a neutral way, and form conclusions based on said data.

Your assertion that "If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system" is highly misleading, especially when followed by "If you have received a lot of merit in the past, you are likely to receive a lot of merit in the future, assuming you maintain your posting habits" because the airdrop was not given for post quality and the vast majority of those airdropped legendaries are not likely to receive a lot of actual earned merit. That's all what the data shows.

I don't have a personal bias against legendaries, just stating the plain fact that most of them are shit. Sorry this hurts your fee-fees.

[libert19]

There is also a psychological thing, when one has good number of merits up his sleeve you are more likely to reward them, recognition helps too.

[aysg76]

Your assertion that "If you are a legendary member, you need to have received a lot of merit, 1000 if you are a new era newbie, or a minimum of 500 if you created your account prior to the implementation of the merit system" is highly misleading, especially when followed by "If you have received a lot of merit in the past, you are likely to receive a lot of merit in the future, assuming you maintain your posting habits" because the airdrop was not given for post quality and the vast majority of those airdropped legendaries are not likely to receive a lot of actual earned merit. That's all what the data shows.

I don't have a personal bias against legendaries, just stating the plain fact that most of them are shit. Sorry this hurts your fee-fees.

You are just spilling out the facts and there is nothing like getting hurt in it man.For instance i have come across many senior,full,hero and even legendary members who have not received single merit in the past 120 days or even from the introduction of the merit system.The reason behind this is simple they have not made any quality post and are simply running in sheep race of shitposting or spamming up.The merits are simply awarded to you for your effective contributions to the forum and quality posts and sooner or later you realise this fact the forum would be witnessing more ranked up members.

But still lot are lagging behind it and simply want to complete their signature campaign requirements and writing up anything without reading above discussion and just want to write what is in their mind and think they would be awarded with merits which is wrong pre-assumptions.Simply treat this as discussion forum and learn from it and reflect the same in your posts.

There is also a psychological thing, when one has good number of merits up his sleeve you are more likely to reward them, recognition helps too.

No doubt when you have good amount of merits and some name on the forum you could help it into getting more merits but if you look closely at the post history of that members you would come to know they are already making up some quality posts on thr forum.How do they get up such merits like 3000,2000,6000 and even 8k merits on the account and are recognised by every member of the forum? The answer to this is simple that they have made best and useful contribution to the forum in past and currently also which has helped them to reach that levels.You would not merit any post if there is nothing much of important in it so human nature of exchanging merits is fine because they are going to the deserved ones.

[Charles-Tim]

I don't have a personal bias against legendaries, just stating the plain fact that most of them are shit. Sorry this hurts your fee-fees.

This is absolutely right, I believe this forum will be more full of spam when the merit system has not been introduced, only just activities will count for ranking, and smerits were given to each members according to their ranked after merit system was introduced, some members will even abuse the airdrop merit given at the time. I have seen many lendary and hero members that were giving the merit airdrop but just at exactly 1000 and 500 merits respectively till today and nothing more. Yes, it is very obvious to see some accounts that are here just for bounties and shit posts.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Here's a great example of why Legendary members receive more merit: this post, made by stompix, was the only one in that thread about El Salvador citizens protesting the legal tender status of bitcoin.  The thread was started by a Jr. Member and in the OP he said this:

I thought there will no bad news from El Salvador to Bitcoin, but I'm wrong I'm really shocked when I see a news talking some veteran, pensioners, and workers from El Salvador protest against Bitcoin as legal tender. The most shocked thing is their opinions about Bitcoin, all is bullshit!

That's part of the long post he wrote, but his thinking shows a clear lack of understanding of other people's point of view, and to me it just sounds like a blindly pro-bitcoin stance.  And if you read the other replies in the thread, most of the replies made by members below Legendary adopt the same "those protesters are wrong" attitude.  And there's this part of the post made by Ucy, which baffled me:

Well, extreme price volatility is not frequent, but if he's talking about mere volatility, that can also be seen in any fiat currency.

That statement is almost elegant in its symmetry of wrongness; bitcoin's volatility is frequent, though perhaps not in the last month, and fiat currencies are so much less volatile than fiat that the comparison is just ridiculous.  Ucy makes some good posts, but this one is just....wow.

I tend to think lower-ranked members are younger in general, and that might not be a really bad assumption.  Higher-ranked members  have been on the forum longer, and they were obviously younger when they registered.  The older you get and the more experience you have with bitcoin, in life, and on the forum, hopefully the more insight your posts will have--and I think that's true in a lot of cases.  But for lower-ranked members, I don't think they have as much experience in those areas in general (and I stress that, in general), and their posts reflect that. 

Add to that the fact that most newcomers only want to use the forum to make money (in general), and you get the result that most of their posts are made with minimal effort and thought.  Hence, they don't earn as many merits.

[Magicalking]

I think Legendary members get more merits than newbies because of their posts and replies are more constructive, solution oriented and carries the needed information. The replies from high ranks are constructed with the OP in mind. Legendary members know which boards has the highest merit circulation to post, for instance the discussions in Btcoin technical support, Development & Technical Discussion board, Mining board is very technical and it is not easy to participate in it, and many newbies do not have the technical knowledge of crypto to publish in the technical boards and therefore you will find many merits going to senior members, hero and Legendary members.
This is why merit threads to help newbies rank up are appreciated by members.

[KingsDen]

Who is a Legend?

Merriam-webster dictionary defined a Legend as "a famous or important person who is known for doing something extremely well".

Oxford concised dictionary says "a Legend is a very famous person, especially in a particular field, who is admired by other people ".

With the above two definitions, we should be convinced that.
1. Legends receiving the highest number of merits is normal, besides they also give the highest number of merits.
2. Legends always answering the first question is normal because they are most knowledgeable about crypto and also the forum experiences. They do it extremely well according to Webster.
3. According to Oxford, Legends are admired by other people. How can you admire someone without meriting him?

I said it before that anything to be asked for is consideration or mercy,(which some Legendary members are doing, by deliberately giving more merit to lower-ranked members). If due process is followed, more than 50% merits will always go to the Legends and it's normal. It should be a motivation for me and other lower-ranked members. Yes, because if senior members for instance recieve more merits than Legendary members, no one will practically work to earn a Legendary rank. The highest should remain the best.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I said it before that anything to be asked for is consideration or mercy,(which some Legendary members are doing, by deliberately giving more merit to lower-ranked members). If due process is followed, more than 50% merits will always go to the Legends and it's normal. It should be a motivation for me and other lower-ranked members. Yes, because if senior members for instance recieve more merits than Legendary members, no one will practically work to earn a Legendary rank. The highest should remain the best.

Everything is rightly said, and very beautiful. But all good deeds, the proverb says, must begin with us. But why, in your statistics of donated merits, over the past six months, I have not seen single merit given to the newcomer?
Does it seem someone has already asked this? No?
Sometimes our good thoughts and aspirations go against our actions, unfortunately. It's bad when words are not on friendly terms with deeds.  

[KingsDen]

I said it before that anything to be asked for is consideration or mercy,(which some Legendary members are doing, by deliberately giving more merit to lower-ranked members). If due process is followed, more than 50% merits will always go to the Legends and it's normal. It should be a motivation for me and other lower-ranked members. Yes, because if senior members for instance recieve more merits than Legendary members, no one will practically work to earn a Legendary rank. The highest should remain the best.

Everything is rightly said, and very beautiful. But all good deeds, the proverb says, must begin with us. But why, in your statistics of donated merits, over the past six months, I have not seen single merit given to the newcomer?
Does it seem someone has already asked this? No?
Sometimes our good thoughts and aspirations go against our actions, unfortunately. It's bad when words are not on friendly terms with deeds.  

I cannot tell if you replied based on what you conceived in your mind or you replied to what I posted. If it's the former, your reply is fine and beautiful, but if it's the later, it's either you didn't read the post or you deliberately tend to off point.
When I opened the thread NEWBIES! Earn your first MeritI didn't believe how you tackled that thread and I was forced to lock it. Coming here to speak on same matter is a gross hypocrisy.
However, my pattern of giving merit has not defeated the forum rules and besides I am a new Eva newbie striving to grow. You are an established member and well known in the forum. How much have you helped NEWBIES? We have seen the threads of many Legendaries like @Ognasty @Ratimov @DdmrDdmr @The Pharmacist @CryptopreneurBrainboss, the likes of @Pmalek @LoyceV @Fillippone to mention but a few helping newbies. But I couldn't find any of yours.
I went through your merit status and I observed you only give merits when any of  three things happens. But I'll reserve that for now.
So, you are in a better position to help newbies. Do it now and wait for me to grow to atleast Sr. Member and see what I will do.
Just a few newbies I merited, @Ratimov listed my name with them suspecting they are my alts. This cannot happen to you no matter how many newbies you merit. It's a clear indication that you are in a better position to do so than myself. Thanks!

[lovesmayfamilis]

So, you are in a better position to help newbies. Do it now and wait for me to grow to atleast Sr. Member and see what I will do.
Just a few newbies I merited, @Ratimov listed my name with them suspecting they are my alts. This cannot happen to you no matter how many newbies you merit. It's a clear indication that you are in a better position to do so than myself. Thanks!

Therefore, I do not shout at every corner how to treat newbies correctly. On the contrary, I am always very skeptical about them, as I see a lot of deception. There are far fewer newbies to the forum than alternative accounts. If you have "checked" my story, you will easily be convinced of this.

[aysg76]

Here's a great example of why Legendary members receive more merit:
That's part of the long post he wrote, but his thinking shows a clear lack of understanding of other people's point of view, and to me it just sounds like a blindly pro-bitcoin stance.  And if you read the other replies in the thread, most of the replies made by members below Legendary adopt the same "those protesters are wrong" attitude. 

The most of the threads are shilled with the same magical thoughts and such threads are filled with spam posting and keep repeating the same content sometimes even in same words.The main thing is you don't need to write long wall of plain text which have not any relevant information about the post by @OP and just want to complete signature campaign requirements but even if you write up quality post in 3-4 lines only then it's merit worthy.The legendary members are doing the same thing like they are providing you with the correct information summarised in short not posting anything without any valid proofs so they got merits for it instead of newbies.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

This might just be my reason but I think the merits been distributed on the boards you highlighted like Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support are just (actually don't know the word to use that will be appropriate) but let me try explaining. I visit there often and I must say some users contributing on the board are exceptional but some posts gets lots of attention (merit wise) that aren't worth it. Repeated discussion ongoing yet the reply get flooded with merits like they're actually new thoughts and those benefiting are the higher ranks.

Back to topic, Legendary don't always get merited because they deserved it. You can see a reply from two different ranks which the lower rank was before the higher rank yet the high rank gets merited and the lower rank gets nothing. I'm not assuming, evidence are all over the forum. Experience is what is helping some high ranked accounts here and not because they're as smart as they look. The questions/discussion repeat themselves which offers a second chance to look smart and the old users capitalized on this. Maybe we should stop looking at how posts are been structured to look quality and actually look at the content of the posts, you'll realize the newbies are quite smart in their reasoning.

[Pmalek]

I visit there often and I must say some users contributing on the board are exceptional but some posts gets lots of attention (merit wise) that aren't worth it. Repeated discussion ongoing yet the reply get flooded with merits like they're actually new thoughts and those benefiting are the higher ranks.

I think I know what you are saying. People come and ask similar questions and have the same problems as other members had in the past. Those who know how to solve them offer some guidance and are rewarded with merits. Although the problems are somewhat similar, those who ask the questions and need help, still expect and hope someone will help them. It's an ongoing process and I don't think those individuals shouldn't be rewarded with merits just because 5 months ago someone else had that same problem. If merits were to be awarded only for brand-new ideas and thoughts, we would hardly see any kind of distribution.

Back to topic, Legendary don't always get merited because they deserved it. You can see a reply from two different ranks which the lower rank was before the higher rank yet the high rank gets merited and the lower rank gets nothing.
...
Maybe we should stop looking at how posts are been structured to look quality and actually look at the content of the posts, you'll realize the newbies are quite smart in their reasoning.

I guess many people distrust newbies. They think they are alt accounts of other members or maybe banned members who came back. It's strange to see that someone who says he is brand-new to crypto knows some peculiarities about the forum from a few years ago, understands trust, the merit system, etc. That's one reason why the things you mentioned might be happening.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

If merits were to be awarded only for brand-new ideas and thoughts, we would hardly see any kind of distribution.

Well I'm not proposing that this should be the criteria for handling out merits but I mean the way the board is been hyped you'll think everyone contributing there are some genius and with the amount of merits you see thems recieving from the board you mightn't think otherwise meanwhile if you look dipper what you highlighted is what's ongoing.

I feel like users putting in similar efforts as others on other boards are getting more appreciated on the board, same as higher ranks generally on the forum which shouldn't be the case. I understand that we're trying to push the ideology of getting involved in more Bitcoin related discussion but don't you think the playing field should be fair to all. I don't understand why similar discussion with same relys have to be over merited over and over again.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

If you are an expert in a field you work in, you will establish a reputation in the community. If you know how to solve technical problems, you deserve to be rewarded. On this forum, that reward is merits. It's not a monetary reward, but a sign of recognition and gratitude.

Every person is different I guess. I can sleep safer at night knowing that if I have certain doubts or questions, the likelihood that I will get the help I need in those sections is high. I think that is more important than anything else this forum has to offer. Not because I am planning to mess things up or because I am careless, but bad things happen sometimes. But that's just me. You might have other priorities.

It would be great if more sub-boards had that importance. But it's not my fault they don't. Look at the crap being discussed in the Altcoin Discussion board or most of the topics in Bitcoin Discussion.

[The Cryptovator]

As we know merit doesn't deserve the rank or user. Merit deserves only the post we have been creating. So I want to add 'contributor' after the Legendary. This means all Legendary hasn't been receiving merit, we might say Legendary contributors have been receiving merits more than lower rank comparatively. Yea, OP already mentioned the reason. Legendaries are more experienced and they help others quite faster than lowers ranks in the right way. It's a natural procedure of merit circulation. So at the end of the day, good contributors will receive merit based on their contributions. We shouldn't blame for that, rather than it will be wiser to inspire ourselves from them to contribute to the forum.

Nice explanation by the way.

[BD Crypto]

Legendary Member Ranks are really doing their jobs perfectly.But as a Member rank there are many users who trie to help others as much as they learnt.
Hope One day I will be a Legendary in Forum.
Again I want to give respects to hard working and helpful Legendary ranks from the core of my heart.

[Pmalek]

Here is a good example of the difference between experienced users who pay attention to what is written and provide quality answers, and those who just post for the sake of posting and other ulterior motives.

How to recover my account with my coins
To sum up:

• OP lost his phone where he had Trust Wallet installed.
• He purchased a new phone and reinstalled the Wallet.
• He tried to recover his account by entering his seed, but once restored, his Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash didn't appear in the balance.

After that, you have two normal and helpful comments from high-ranked users. Below that, you can find things like:

Which wallet did you used?

This is explained in the OP.

You must contact the exchange where you are using and want to restore your account. It used to take time. Because your complaint will go into the queue. But, usually it will still be processed and you will get your account back.

This dude is talking about contacting the support of "the exchange" he used to help in the restoration of his account.

I deliberately removed the names of the users who wrote those two posts. Although, they can easily be found in the thread. The intention was not to shame them, but to show that everyone has a choice. You either approach a problem the right way, and offer help and feedback (if you can), or you don't. In this case, the legendary members did so, those of lower ranks failed. 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Which wallet did you used?

This is explained in the OP.

You must contact the exchange where you are using and want to restore your account. It used to take time. Because your complaint will go into the queue. But, usually it will still be processed and you will get your account back.

This dude is talking about contacting the support of "the exchange" he used to help in the restoration of his account.

Those kinds of posts drive me nuts, and I put both of those members on ignore.  One of them is even a Sr. Member from 2015, and taking a look at his post history, he has a habit of posting absolute crap.  He probably could have become a Legendary member had he just posted more after he registered, in which case he'd be an exception to the "rule" being discussed in this thread.

There are far fewer newbies to the forum than alternative accounts. If you have "checked" my story, you will easily be convinced of this.

I totally believe that, and I think that's been the case for a long time now--with the exception of 2017, perhaps.  There was a large influx of new members because of bitcoin rising in price so fast, and many of those accounts have become dormant since then.

[aysg76]

~snip~

This is one of the most obvious reasons for which many newbie lacks merits because they are not getting into depth of the topic and posting irrelevant content or simply ignore what the topic is about and keep repeating what other above Posts have said whether they ar wrong or not.I can also quote many such replies where you will find similar craps.Like in one LN threads if you are discussing about channels and different wallets but some members will be posting like you need to consider the transaction fees as they are high and all other garbage stuff.So undoubtedly they are writing up with zero intent of knowing what the thread is about.So no merit for them.

There are many threads in bitcoin discussion section like in which @OP has said something else but the replies are generally off topic and you will find one or two legendary members giving the correct answers.So what do they think that do they deserve merit or legendary member who is appropriately answering to the doubt.

[hugeblack]

Can someone tweak the stats a little by deleting legendary members with signatures? Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns?
These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.



Also, some merit sources give it to Legendary members because they don't need it and will therefore redistribute it instead of beginners who may not know what to do with it.


Generally all of the above are observations and cannot be relied upon as reasons.

[Pmalek]

...Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns?
These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics posts per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.

ChipMixer has no minimum post requirements. In theory, you would get paid for writing only one post per week, but that's surely not something that works in their favor. 50 is the upper limit, you are right about that. BestChange pays up to 25 posts weekly, and if I remember correctly from my brief spell in that campaign, there is a minimum requirement of 10 posts.

But other campaigns have a 25 or 20 posts minimum requirement meaning you need to fulfill that to get paid. Hence, that can't be the reason why most or why the best replies are from CM and BC members. 

[Igebotz]

Can someone tweak the stats a little by deleting legendary members with signatures? Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns,

It's tough to distinguish between those who wear sigs and those who don't, but do Chipmixer participants have more merits? Yes, (96% are merit sources, so getting some is simple), but I can't say the same for Bestchange participants.

[Coyster]

Can someone tweak the stats a little by deleting legendary members with signatures? Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns?
These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.

I don't think this can be said to be a valid reason why such legendary members earn the amount of merits that they do. Even if we're to take frequency of posting into account, I think there are quite a lot of lower ranked members who post quite a lot as well, some of them are on one bounty campaign or the other, but what they come up with is more often than not, shitposts, and they earn zero merits for their 'efforts'.

And then again, there are also legendary members who make a lot of posts, but earn little or no merits, what matters is what is being posted, it is the quality that counts, so I think that is what should be highlighted, rather than how many times they post, cause many a user (notwithstanding the rank) can post as many posts as they want per week without earning a single merit for it.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Can someone tweak the stats ...

Can somebody also provide us with stats of individually earned Merit after recently accepted members (maybe last 10 members) got accepted to Chipmixer and Bestchange campaigns. I haven't noticed much about bestchange but that of chipmixer has to be obvious that after you gain enrollment into the campaign, you tend to get merited more and most times the high ranked members are the benefactors.

I understand that different worthy reasons could be the cause for the increase of merits for this newly accepted users like their posts now getting the exposure it deserves for its quality etc but I'll just love to see that stats and if possible differentiate the ranks.

[Halab]

but do Chipmixer participants have more merits? Yes, (96% are merit sources, so getting some is simple), but I can't say the same for Bestchange participants.

Wow, I almost fell out of my chair when I read this. 96% of CM participants are merits sources ?? I'll have to check that.
So of the 55 participants of the CM campaign, 28 (5 of which are Staff members) are indeed merits sources.
Of the 25 participants in the Bestchange campaign, 6 are merits sources.
You can deduce what you want from these numbers, but you have to take into consideration that the CM campaign is 137 weeks longer than the Bestchange campaign. Probably a small insignificant detail.

[Pmalek]

...but do Chipmixer participants have more merits? Yes, (96% are merit sources, so getting some is simple), but I can't say the same for Bestchange participants.

Here is another thought. Users don't get more merits because they got accepted in the ChipMixer or BestChange campaigns. They got accepted because of their merits, which are tied to the quality of the posts they make. Better posts = more merits. Everything else, such as becoming a merit source is just a natural sequence of events.

On the other hand, participants of spam and scam campaigns, such as that of 1xBit, don't care about the quality of their posts. Hence, they aren't awarded the same way. You also wouldn't expect them to become merit sources.   

[icopress]

Wow, I almost fell out of my chair when I read this. 96% of CM participants are merits sources ?? I'll have to check that.
So of the 55 participants of the CM campaign, 28 (5 of which are Staff members) are indeed merits sources.
Of the 25 participants in the Bestchange campaign, 6 are merits sources.
You can deduce what you want from these numbers, but you have to take into consideration that the CM campaign is 137 weeks longer than the Bestchange campaign. Probably a small insignificant detail.

I think this is just a coincidence, since DS_ selects users in such a way as to make the most extensive and high-quality advertising coverage, including local sections. And of course, users who are active in the appropriate sections and who were accepted into the campaign sooner or later think about becoming a m'source (well, or submitting an application). Moreover, I would not include the forum staff in this statistician, since they have become the default m'sources.

[Pmalek]

Moreover, I would not include the forum staff in this statistician, since they have become the default m'sources.

Now when you mentioned it, does anyone know how many of the current staff members are merit sources? Those who are active anyways. Based on the names under the sub-boards, only MiningBuddy seems inactive for a long time. The rest seem to be around on a regular basis.

[Daniel91]

~snip~

This is one of the most obvious reasons for which many newbie lacks merits because they are not getting into depth of the topic and posting irrelevant content or simply ignore what the topic is about and keep repeating what other above Posts have said whether they ar wrong or not.I can also quote many such replies where you will find similar craps.Like in one LN threads if you are discussing about channels and different wallets but some members will be posting like you need to consider the transaction fees as they are high and all other garbage stuff.So undoubtedly they are writing up with zero intent of knowing what the thread is about.So no merit for them.

There are many threads in bitcoin discussion section like in which @OP has said something else but the replies are generally off topic and you will find one or two legendary members giving the correct answers.So what do they think that do they deserve merit or legendary member who is appropriately answering to the doubt.

I completely agree with this.
In fact it seems to me that many newbie members come to this forum with the intention of trying to earn some btcoin but unfortunately know almost nothing about it.
It's very difficult to participate in a discussion about something you know nothing about and can't contribute anything useful to.
That's why many newbie members repeat things already said or write nonsense, but unfortunately there is no help here because this is a rare forum where you can make money by writing and many don't want to miss such an opportunity.
Such members will not get merits, of couse, but may be able to enter into a less demanding signature campaigns, which is most important to them.
Merits are a good decision from a forum administrators because it separates quality members, who contribute to this forum, from members who are here only for earning money, and can't contribute anything useful to this forum or community.
Of course, there are also newbie members who work hard, have the right attitude and over time have a chance to become respected members of this forum and get merits for their contribution to the forum, and even eventually become legendary members.

[Pmalek]

In fact it seems to me that many newbie members come to this forum with the intention of trying to earn some btcoin but unfortunately know almost nothing about it.

But doesn't Bitcoin come to you by itself? it's magic money, you click a button and you generate some Bitcoin. Rinse and repeat until you are rich.

Such members will not get merits, of couse, but may be able to enter into a less demanding signature campaigns, which is most important to them.

Maybe an altcoin bounty campaign. It's going to be hard for someone whose knowledge is equal to 0 to get into a bitcoin-paid campaign. Especially with no or a single merit received God knows how.

Of course, there are also newbie members who work hard, have the right attitude and over time have a chance to become respected members of this forum and get merits for their contribution to the forum, and even eventually become legendary members.

Check out n0nce. I think I spelled the name correctly. He is active in the technical bitcoin sub-forums. That user became a Jr. Member recently but he has over 300 merits which would make him a Sr. member if he had the required number of activity points.

[illiki23]

Adding 'merit modeling' to one of our tasks (bitcointalk visualization and analytics).

It is great because it gives us a solid labeled dataset regarding what people like about posts. 

There is a problem in that how do you filter out 'merit farms' from actual meritous posts so we could use things like Ranking to choose our sample for modeling. 

I wonder what the model would tell us about merit givers...  I am sure there will be clusters of merit providers who are interested in different types of merit...

[Sayeds56]

eh, the only reason why I send out merits there is when they help solve a problem I have, or offer a suggestion, or give me some helpful guidance (or maybe they developed some useful software).

True. I have also observed during my short experience on forum that Legendry and hero members show their appreciation by giving merit when somebody helps out fellow members on this forum. Secondly, since this Forum is associated with Bitcoin so any good quality post about Bitcoin price prediction, it adoption by institutions also attracts attention and gets good merits.

[ifarted]

I see the point. I know that newbies tends to hate above ranks like legendaries because they get more merits compared to them. Some newbies even make it look like legendaries stole the opportunity for them to earn merits and because of that newbies hates legendaries.

For that reason, they would try and drag down legendaries because they knew that they aren't capable of the things that legendaries are.

Honestly, i myself have been wondering why legendaries get so many merits before when i started but because i understood why, i did not think that it was unfair since they are good at making high quality posts and that most of their post can help others effectively.

Newbies should learn to respect above ranks because they have been commited to bitcointalk for a long time and they are more knowledgeable. They are veteran who helps other users to come up with a solution to a problem encountered. Newbies should focus on studying to become better instead of complaining because it's a waste of energy. Nothing is unfair, legendaries work so hard too and they deserved it if they are given a lot of merits.

[aysg76]

Legendary member get more merits because they know what they are doing. To be a legendary member of Bitcointalk you need to have a thousand merits plus an equal amount of activity. This takes approximately a year and half to reach that status. After working to get the first 1000 merits I do not think getting more merits is difficult for them. 

Legendary members only require 1000 merits to achieve this status but not equal amount of activity is needed and you need 775-1030 activity as there are some legendary members who have more than 1000 merits but with only 800-900 activity.

The required scores are:

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

So this is table points which determines activity and time required to achieve each rank on the forum for better understanding.

Code:

 1 X 14 = 14
2 X 14 = 28
3 X 14 = 42  ---  Junior. Member (1.5 month)
4 X 14 = 56
5 X 14 = 70  ---  Member (2.5 month)
6 X 14 = 84
7 X 14 = 98
8 X 14 = 112
9 X 14 = 126  --- Full Member (4.5 month)
10 X 14 = 140
11 X 14 = 154
12 X 14 = 168
13 X 14 = 182
14 X 14 = 196
15 X 14 = 210
16 X 14 = 224
17 X 14 = 238
18 X 14 = 252 --- Senior Member (8.5 month)
19 X 14 = 266
20 X 14 = 280
21 X 14 = 294
22 X 14 = 308
23 X 14 = 322
24 X 14 = 336
25 X 14 = 350
26 X 14 = 364
27 X 14 = 378
28 X 14 = 392
29 X 14 = 406
30 X 14 = 420
31 X 14 = 434
32 X 14 = 448
33 X 14 = 462
34 X 14 = 476
35 X 14 = 490  ----  Hero Member (1.3 years)
36 X 14 = 504
37 X 14 = 518
38 X 14 = 532
39 X 14 = 546
40 X 14 = 560
41 X 14 = 574
42 X 14 = 588
43 X 14 = 602
44 X 14 = 616
45 X 14 = 630
46 X 14 = 644
47 X 14 = 658
48 X 14 = 672
49 X 14 = 686
50 X 14 = 700
51 X 14 = 714
52 X 14 = 728
53 X 14 = 742
54 X 14 = 756
55 X 14 = 770
56 X 14 = 784  --- Legendary rank (2 years) 

I see the point. I know that newbies tends to hate above ranks like legendaries because they get more merits compared to them. Some newbies even make it look like legendaries stole the opportunity for them to earn merits and because of that newbies hates legendaries.

I know human nature that we sometimes envy those who are making progress ahead of us and same way newbies see legendary members of the forum but they need to know we all have to make our way up the ladder and there is no favourism in this and the only way you could do it is by making effective contributions on the forum and writing quality posts.You would not find any legendary abusing the merit and if there is discussion going on legendary who have accurate knowledge will provide the correct answer whether short or long but if newbies making very low or off topic discussion are not eligible for merit at all.You can see the clear difference between it yourself.Envying or blaming is easy but when you do the research you will find proofs for them as this thread discuss in detail.

For that reason, they would try and drag down legendaries because they knew that they aren't capable of the things that legendaries are.

There could be some members who are into this practice but most of the legendary and high rank members motivates the newbies and low rank members to achieve high rank with hard work and best contributions so that's why they have made multiple merit giveaways thread but those who are completely into spam posting will ignore and other's who will try to make analysis will find their way to rank up.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Can someone tweak the stats a little by deleting legendary members with signatures? Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns?
These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.

Say what?  I can't speak for Bestchange's campaign, but as far as Chipmixer goes, it's got a reputation as one that's extremely selective as far as accepting only members who have a proven history of making posts of above-par quality--not the other way around, i.e., its members don't make better (or even more) posts because they're in the Chipmixer campaign. And believe me, there's no forcing of anything going on.  Some members consistently make fewer than 50 posts/week, and other members who make way more than they'd get paid for.

It is great because it gives us a solid labeled dataset regarding what people like about posts. 

You think?  I'm not so sure, because people give merits for a wide variety of reasons and even from one merit source to the next there are different standards as far as what constitutes a merit-worthy post.  The only consistent criterion I could see would be length, with a well-answered question (of any length) coming in at a close second.

[illiki23]

It is great because it gives us a solid labeled dataset regarding what people like about posts.  

You think?  I'm not so sure, because people give merits for a wide variety of reasons and even from one merit source to the next there are different standards as far as what constitutes a merit-worthy post.  The only consistent criterion I could see would be length, with a well-answered question (of any length) coming in at a close second.

Any labeled data is better than unlabeled!  To be fair I did mention right after this one potential issue of how people give merit for different reasons, and then literally how it might be neat to model and mine out why users give merit.  We do have the data on who gives merit to who and the information within those posts...

But just as a general mining project the model should still be able to tell multiple stories.  There was a paper and then  this old data mining challenge on Kaggle regarding the 'random acts of pizza' subreddit in modeling altruism, that is what it was about certain posts convinced people to buy or not buy someone a pizza.  We found various factors within the result model such as politeness, gratitude, and so on.  

We might just end up with a decision tree which basically has a branch for each reason someone gives merit including 'fake merit/merit farming' where people give a shill account merit..

Edit:  Also we are data mining so noise/variance within individual posts kind of doesn't matter.  We are looking for general trends in big data and the techniques we use let them bubble up from the natural messy and varied nature of the individual post subsamples.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Can someone tweak the stats a little by deleting legendary members with signatures? Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns?
These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.

Say what?  I can't speak for Bestchange's campaign, but as far as Chipmixer goes, it's got a reputation as one that's extremely selective as far as accepting only members who have a proven history of making posts of above-par quality--not the other way around, i.e., its members don't make better (or even more) posts because they're in the Chipmixer campaign. And believe me, there's no forcing of anything going on.  Some members consistently make fewer than 50 posts/week, and other members who make way more than they'd get paid for.

If we remove all the legendary ranks and ranks of heroes that participate in the signature of companies with payment in bitcoin, then there are those who like to write about the Wall Observer, and very rarely go beyond it. There, too, if you noticed, there is an active exchange of merits for ordinary communication.
And another part of the legends, these are participants, most likely with purchased high-ranking accounts, participating in the signature of companies with payment in altcoins. It is there that such a "fantasy" is raging that the posts are literally similar to each other, with the same idea, for example, Bitcoin is the father, and Ethereum is the mother of cryptocurrencies. And so in each topic a hundred times.
When comparing, of course, the merits are received not by human robots, who have 6 accounts and write nonsense, but by those who answer the topic and have a reasonable conversation, and most of them are participants in expensive signature companies.

[Igebotz]

Most of them are from Chipmixer and Bestchange's campaigns, and some of them are from the rest of the campaigns? These campaigns force members to create 50 or 25 topics per week, so the frequent posting will make them get merits regardless of the topic.

I disagree with the idea that frequent posting will get you merits; instead, it all depends on the quality of your postings, not the amount; I've seen users with 10 merits in their first three posts, as well as those with over 2000 posts with zero (0) merits. It would have been different if campaign members were required to earn at least 5 merits per week in order to remain in the campaign, rather than a weekly post count.

[ifarted]

---Snip---

There could be some members who are into this practice but most of the legendary and high rank members motivates the newbies and low rank members to achieve high rank with hard work and best contributions so that's why they have made multiple merit giveaways thread but those who are completely into spam posting will ignore and other's who will try to make analysis will find their way to rank up.

You are right, i mean not all newbies drag legendaries down by making them look bad. Some newbies sees legendaries as their inspiration to motivate themselves, to do their best at making quality post, earn merits from it and to also reach high rank position.

Legendaries gives a lot of impact on the newbies, jr. member, member and other users out there that are influenced by them (legendaries). That is why i am thankful for those high ranks users that made giveaway merits thread to help the newbies like me (before) to earn merits.

[Etranger]

Many times, we have heard the accusations: merit cycling clubs, merit gangs, legendary members giving merits to their legendary friends, etc.

......

This is just a small sample that shows that legendary members receive plenty of merits for a reason. So the next time you think how the world is unfair or that the powerful are only helping the powerful, remember this thread and try to improve and do better.
 

I am a newbie here, but I have already heard people of my rank talking about how unfair this merit system is. Honestly, I don`t understand, how someone could think that he would just come to the forum and immediately begin to receive merits. First you need time to learn something, at least to find out, which threads you are interested in and what you can say about some issues. Of course, LM and HM will receive more merits, because they know how the things are done, they have already put a lot of affort to become who they are. Low rank members are only making their first steps, and you can`t read a book if you don`t know alphabet first. Nobody would give merits for learning letters, but you need just keep trying your best, and if you really want to learn something, you will eventually aim your goal.   

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

You don't start a new job in a brand-new industry and ask why you can't be the CEO or have the authorization and salary of the CEO. You start at the bottom, maybe as an intern, and you slowly work your way to the top as you learn the ins and outs and gain experience.

There are so many positive examples of members registering here, starting from scratch, and growing their accounts to the highest ranks. We have examples of members having merits fitting for a hero or a legendary, but the activity points of a member or sr. member. So the system works.

[Pmalek]

Bump after a long time.

[Sandra_hakeem]

Bump after a long time.

Do we still really have to talk about this ?💅🙀

Well, haven't said anything here previously... The point is:
 I overcame my worst fear! Not totally anyways but atleast I have -- to some point -- began to realize that some legends that's HODL Smerit or some merit-source ain't getting petty sentiments into the merit system as others do. Some are treacherously biased. They could just keep meriting famous,top merit-earners even if they posted some crap, funny isn't it?

Yeah, I understand that it's fine to have a meriting standard, everyone does. But when your habits isn't corresponding with the prioritized intensions of its Creation, is it UNETHICAL?  ( That's meant to be a rhetoric)
Alot of legendary members receive merits for the already-proven fact above, yeah but, sorry to say, sometimes it turns out a political affair - where only the FAMOUS ones are scouted - I have seen alot (don't wanna mention names) alot that can't make good sentence structures yet, vets merited for a post I barely understood.

Legendary members are legends and that can't be compromised so, what makes a legendary member SOMETIMES - take it if you want - to receive alot more merits is because they're Legends. Not because they post what most senior members don't know or they make Better conjugations than some full members.

I mean no disrespect, I'm being real here .
Sandra 👩‍🦱

[JayJuanGee]

Bump after a long time.

Do we still really have to talk about this ?💅🙀

Well, haven't said anything here previously... The point is:
 I overcame my worst fear! Not totally anyways but atleast I have -- to some point -- began to realize that some legends that's HODL Smerit or some merit-source ain't getting petty sentiments into the merit system as others do. Some are treacherously biased. They could just keep meriting famous,top merit-earners even if they posted some crap, funny isn't it?

Yeah, I understand that it's fine to have a meriting standard, everyone does. But when your habits isn't corresponding with the prioritized intensions of its Creation, is it UNETHICAL?  ( That's meant to be a rhetoric)
Alot of legendary members receive merits for the already-proven fact above, yeah but, sorry to say, sometimes it turns out a political affair - where only the FAMOUS ones are scouted - I have seen alot (don't wanna mention names) alot that can't make good sentence structures yet, vets merited for a post I barely understood.

Legendary members are legends and that can't be compromised so, what makes a legendary member SOMETIMES - take it if you want - to receive alot more merits is because they're Legends. Not because they post what most senior members don't know or they make Better conjugations than some full members.

I mean no disrespect, I'm being real here .
Sandra 👩‍🦱

Of course there is variance in the posting qualities of members who have achieved varying ranks, including legendary members who had already reached their legendary rank prior to the implementation of the merit system (prior to January 24, 2018). 

Overall if your merit keeps up with your activity level then you will rank up at the same rate as the pre-merit system.  You cannot really rank up faster than your activity level advances - even if you earn more merits. 

Personally, I am more sympathetic to sending smerits when members write within bitcoin threads in a personalized and intelligent way and it seems that they are interested in bitcoin and backing up their points, and I am not so inclined to visit shitcoiny parts of the forum - although sometimes there is a bit of coincidence in terms of which areas of the forum that any of the more active members might visit.. and then some days there is not enough time to read posts or to appreciate the contributions of other members, and also I am less inclined to send merits in the meta sections.. but I would expect that members who have been around more would know more about things that are happening and/or how to write posts that make sense, as you mentioned Sandra.. it is helpful when the posts make sense, but then also sometimes the posts make sense but they still might be lacking in substance.. so personally, I try NOT to get too overly critical of other members if they seem to be making some kind of contribution and backing up their information and maybe even pointing out sources or other places in the forum that related information might have been posted...

Not that newer members cannot end up getting involved in meta matters, but sometimes they might need to figure out how much they are able to contribute.. I sometimes feel like I don't want to chime into threads that are based on personalities that I don't know and then sometimes it can take a long time to figure out where some members are coming from in terms of their motivations, and maybe folks will tend to send merits based on some sense of contribution or even if they got to know various members in other threads, in the event that paths are crossing in the same threads, too.

[Falconer]

Overall if your merit keeps up with your activity level then you will rank up at the same rate as the pre-merit system.  You cannot really rank up faster than your activity level advances - even if you earn more merits.

You're right, but the more merit they get that may outweigh the activity points then they tend to be safer rank up than higher activity points than merit. I was one of the majority of users who when the merit system was introduced stuck at Hero rank, because I didn't have enough activity so I didn't get the 1000 merit airdop as one of the Legendary requirements.

You forgot to mention that you are actually a merit contributor who has a distribution history of 70% - 75% of the total merit you submitted (18K+ merit) on economy board, while you only have 9% - 14% distribution on the bitcoin board (3K+ merit). Then in Meta, you have send 1817 merit or 7.49% all the time but it will probably increase over time. I can find all that data on the merit dashboard.

One other fact, you have send 17,728 merit for the Legendary rank.

[JollyGood]

Thank you for the graph.

The actual number of merits as a comparator from this demographic would be interesting: non-merit source Legendary to Legendary vs merit source Legendary to Legendary

To shed some numerical context here, it seems that absolutely every rank favours the content created by Legendries, being Legendary the rank that receives a higher percentage of the sMerits awarded by every single rank.

The following is the layout of the number and percentage of Merits sent (horizontal rows) and received (vertical columns) for the current month (up to last Friday):

https://public.tableau.com/shared/NFQQH5BMR?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Now numbers are often poor storytellers, as they frequently do not depict the why’s. Numbers do not speak-up for content, promptness, focus, knowledge, favourisms, subjacent skills, trust, and so forth. They are though excellent indicators to things to look into to better understand, thus the need for threads such as this one.

Note: Changes in rank within the period of time considered in the data, drag all data to the new rank.

[JayJuanGee]

Overall if your merit keeps up with your activity level then you will rank up at the same rate as the pre-merit system.  You cannot really rank up faster than your activity level advances - even if you earn more merits.

You're right, but the more merit they get that may outweigh the activity points then they tend to be safer rank up than higher activity points than merit. I was one of the majority of users who when the merit system was introduced stuck at Hero rank, because I didn't have enough activity so I didn't get the 1000 merit airdop as one of the Legendary requirements.

You forgot to mention that you are actually a merit contributor who has a distribution history of 70% - 75% of the total merit you submitted (18K+ merit) on economy board, while you only have 9% - 14% distribution on the bitcoin board (3K+ merit). Then in Meta, you have send 1817 merit or 7.49% all the time but it will probably increase over time. I can find all that data on the merit dashboard.

One other fact, you have send 17,728 merit for the Legendary rank.

Yes.  You are referring to data that you got off of DdmrDdmr's merit dashboard.. 

Maybe I had gone off topic a bit when I was responding to Sandra_hakeem when she seemed to be hitting on topics about the receipt of merits overall, and even her suggestions that there might be a bit of an insider's club going on, abuse of merits and members who do not seem to deserve their rank.

Of course, we cannot necessarily even describe the receipt of merits in terms of soley being a product of good and substantive contributions to the forum, because there remain subjective components in sending smerits and there are also members who likely receive more smerits because they are able to send more smerits. 

I guess that I was attempting to focus more on the dilemma and frustrations that some members seem to have in terms of ranking up, and in that regard, there seems to be a need to look at the merit system from where they are at rather than potentially getting worked-up because some members may have reached their merit status and even rank through other means.. and prior to the merit system.. and that was part of the motivation for my remark about the fact that if you are earning merits at the same pace of your activity level, then you are not really disadvantaged by the merit system in terms of making rank on the same kind of timeline as forum members who were here prior to the implementation of the merit system. 

Sure members who were here in the forum prior to the merit system did not have to earn merits in order to rank up, but to me that seems like a BIG so fucking what?  That's my less nice way of saying it, even if that might not have been amongst the points that Sandra_hakeem was touching upon.

In life, there are all kinds of areas in which at some point we are newer to that particular circle, and if we stick within the circle we become older (or veterans) or receive rank within the circle. 

There are similar kinds of concerns about people who want to get into bitcoin, and they might truthfully reveal that they just heard about bitcoin and at the same time proclaim that the whole bitcoin system is NOT fair because some people have 10s of bitcoins and others have hundreds and others have 1,000s of bitcoin, and they do not even have enough spare cash to buy a whole bitcoin.  But, they still have to start building from where they are at rather than getting worked up about their thoughts that some people who have bitcoin don't deserve their bitcoin.  Bitcoin is not going to give any shits if the bitcoin newbie does not start to act upon their having just had learned about bitcoin and if they decide to be resentful about their not having any bitcoins or the means to get very many bitcoins rather than trying to work from the position that they are at in terms of figuring out and strategizing regarding whether they might start to accumulate $100 per week in bitcoin or if they are ONLY able to put enough cash aside to accumulate (buy) $10 per week, and it may well make a difference 5-10 years down the road regarding if they took the matter seriously and started to act right now or if they just whined about the matter of the bitcoin accumulation levels being unfair and even questioning the initial bitcoin distributions and the methods of the earlier distributions.  It seems to me that there are a lot of advantages in starting early, but there are still ways to catch up, too.. because incumbents are not always working hard on keeping and/or advancing their position, but the newbie might take years and years to reach 10 bitcoins that the incumbents had bought for a few thousand dollars in 2015. 

Even if the exponentials differ from system to system, we might consider the forum ranking systems in similar ways, but maybe even easier than the exponentials that likely exist in bitcoin that should inspire earlier involvement in bitcoin because the damage to future potentials are likely to be greater than they are within linear systems (and the forum seems to be way the hell more linear than the bitcoin system is quite likely going to continue to be exponential).

[Pmalek]

Maybe I had gone off topic a bit when I was responding to Sandra_hakeem when she seemed to be hitting on topics about the receipt of merits overall, and even her suggestions that there might be a bit of an insider's club going on, abuse of merits and members who do not seem to deserve their rank.

I don't know if she had some specific names in mind when she said that or what makes her think there are actual merit cycling clubs. I can't speak for others, so I can only talk about my own distribution. It's very simple. I send merits to people who write quality posts in the topics I am interested in. Wherever I read and post at that moment is where my source merits go. The thing is, if the same people keep showing up in the same threads, it's only logical they have a bigger chance to be on the receiving end than those that don't. 

If you want to get merited, show up. That's the first thing. Do we have to drag you out and force you to post so we can merit you?

[Sandra_hakeem]

@JayJuanGee,
Note: these isn't about me alone, I believe I'm speaking in favour of other low-ranking members.

I saw your feedback right from the same night you posted but, I'm having some drastic network misconduct lately. (Maybe due to climate change or something)
I am Sandra and I liked speaking for myself; but after sometime, I could perceive that there are likely alot more of the same MIS-hap (my previous point) in ALMOST everyone's (low-ranked members) angle.

These whole story ain't really COMPATIBLE to the point you made above JAY -- about how early HODLers had a good chance of buying btc, bla bla bla.......... Buying or HODLing BTC doesn't seems to be a good example to the merit system; bitcoin is an investment that propagates cash capital overtime and doesn't have any FORMAL RANKING (people are interested in making money &/ owning an asset at the end of the day SO NOBODY CARES IF THEY'RE LATE OR NOT in as much as there are still many more coin to HODL). Bitcoin forum is just a discussion forum that doesn't pay anyone directly.it has legal/formal ranks that anyone should attain if they'd really wanna join a signature to make few bucks for themselves. We  have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

Why is bitcoin HODLing not compatible -- Incase you couldn't decipher my extended appraisal -- to bitcointalk forum? It is because in HODLing, ranks are unnecessary and all you need to do is gather up funds to stackup like others do.
BUT,
In bitcointalk forum, ranks are necessary not funds. To achieve these ranks,you need merit --this something that you cannot give to yourself-- Infact, WITHOUT the rank, it doesn't make requal-sense to get stuck in here then, to a point, you'll get tired. Very few people don't care about ranks. Majority does.

JAY, lemme make you understand that a couple of times, people have confessed that the merit system ain't PERFECT, alright? So you shouldn't preclude every single fact that makes it IMPERFECT which -- the same point I made above -- is one of the facts &/ factors of it imperfections.

Now, back to today's point. I didn't say that I was bothered about the airdropped merits or peeps that had 'em (please, don't misquote me). My main emphasis was on today's EVALUATION. Why are we still having some silly-head legendary shit-posters merited, even after the airdrop disaster (I call it so for those that don't fit it)? Isn't this the adversely the same reason it was created?

Look, lemme keep it real with you. Even if, I were a legendary, I'll still be against it. Let's call a spade by it's name. Haven't I seen a thousand times, in some thread that most users get merited for popularity or familiarity? You can't get that justified JAY. To the point that someone was doing a merit give-away? Is that still the actual reason why the system was created or does that make the merit system PERFECT?
I don't even care about any cycling club thing as the sceptical chymist has said there's nothing behind the foxpup stuff so I'm fine with that.

@Pmalek
I respect your appraisal but, I'm afraid, it's not to my intended point.
Is there a day I don't come active on the forum since my being active 3months straight? I make post everyday and as you can see,I'm not one of the shit posters- that's justifiable.

Malek, I'd love you to deep some thoughts into this whole insinuation. Then ask yourself why the chymist, fillipone, the Thick-skinned gang leader, Ddmr, JAY, Ratimov, vapourminer, BitcoingirlClub and the rest have taken upon themselves to put the system in it proper function? You'll understand my whole point clearly.

These isn't to disrespect anyone. Don't take anything I said personal. It's just my appraisal.
I hope the merit system changes for good.
Cheers,

Sandra 👩‍🦱

[Pmalek]

Bitcoin forum is just a discussion forum that doesn't pay anyone directly.it has legal/formal ranks that anyone should attain if they'd really wanna join a signature to make few bucks for themselves. We have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

And everyone can attain those ranks with time. You need both merits and activity to get there. The spamming and shit posting got so bad a few years ago, that the admins had to do something. Hence, the merit system was introduced.

We have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

If you believe that to be the case, please take advantage of the Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source thread. Someone with enough source merits can take a look at those posts and merit them if they feel they deserve some. The Pharmacist has also written more than once that people can PM him and ask him to check their post history and he will merit those posts that deserve more merits. There is also Ratimov's Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank initiative. 

JAY, lemme make you understand that a couple of times, people have confessed that the merit system ain't PERFECT, alright?

Of course it's not perfect. Nothing is. But it's good. It has stopped shit posters to rank up just by posting meaningless posts and it has killed the black market for account sellers.   

Why are we still having some silly-head legendary shit-posters merited, even after the airdrop disaster (I call it so for those that don't fit it)? Isn't this the adversely the same reason it was created?

I would really like to know who those are? Who are the legendary shit posters who get merited and who does the meriting? If for some reason you don't feel like discussing it in public, PM me a few names. I am curious if your assessment of a shit poster is the same as mine.

Haven't I seen a thousand times, in some thread that most users get merited for popularity or familiarity?

The thing is, there are no rules for meriting posts. There are only the rules you create and your subjective opinion about a post. Merit sources aren't allowed to sell their merits. That's it. That's where the rules stop. If I thought a post of yours was funny, I can merit it if I want to. Humor gets merited as well. Regarding the popularity and familiarity part, remember what I said previously about seeing the same group of people hanging out in the same boards. It becomes a habit seeing them there. You learn what they are all about and you understand what quality they can bring to the table. If you have a group of let's say 20 people with similar interests who write and discuss the same things and all of them are capable of participating in a quality discussion, merits start going back and forth. If you like being on the receiving and, you want to give other people that same feeling. That's natural and human wouldn't you agree? If someone does something nice to you, you feel like you need to reciprocate in some way. Maybe that's why you think of it as merits for popularity or familiarity. But you are wrong if you think it's some kind of close circle of friends working together and tapping each other on the shoulders. Do the things that the best forum users do and if you aren't appreciated or merited properly, then we can discuss what is going on. This is more of a general message, not directed towards you personally because I am not that familiar with your posting habits.

Is there a day I don't come active on the forum since my being active 3months straight? I make post everyday and as you can see,I'm not one of the shit posters- that's justifiable.

I really don't know how active you are. But I don't see you around the same boards or threads where I see many other people. If I don't see you there, others don't see you there either. But what I do see is that you have a decent merit to activity count. But even with 1000 merits to your name, you need the activity points. There is no ranking up without them. 

Then ask yourself why the chymist, fillipone, the Thick-skinned gang leader, Ddmr, JAY, Ratimov, vapourminer, BitcoingirlClub and the rest have taken upon themselves to put the system in it proper function? You'll understand my whole point clearly.

I am not following sorry. It's time for my nap, maybe that's got something to do with it. When you say they have taken it upon themselves, are you talking about them being merit sources who get to decide who gets merited and who doesn't? Merit sources get selected by theymos or they apply to become one. They are picked based on the admins' criteria and whether or not he believes they can be trusted to do the job properly and not abuse the system. Just like in all segments of life, you select the best when it comes to more responsible positions, right?   

[Z-tight]

I am not following sorry. It's time for my nap, maybe that's got something to do with it. When you say they have taken it upon themselves, are you talking about them being merit sources who get to decide who gets merited and who doesn't?

Hey Pmalek, i don't think that is what Sandra is talking about, hey Sandra you can correct me if i got it wrong: What i think she is talking about is that she thinks those members she called their names, whom are mostly merit sources, are amongst the 'best merit givers' in her own opinion, and by 'taking it upon themselves' i think she put it that way because some of them have probably started merit give-away topics to help lower ranked members, Fillippone is the latest to start that kind of thread to help members here: share your best posts/threads with Fillippone to be merit assessed, and The Pharmacist has also asked member's to feel free to PM him for their post history to be reviewed. TL;DR she thinks those users she called are great merit sources.

There is also Ratimov's Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank initiative.  

That initiative is no longer running.

I hope the merit system changes for good.

Sandra, many people don't think the merit system needs a change, because honestly where again do we go from here, it may not be perfect, nothing is, and it is a bad thing to try fixing what's not broken, and i think the merit system is far from being broken. But if you think it needs to change for good, you can propose your suggestion to Theymos in a new topic in meta, let's hear what you think.

[JayJuanGee]

@JayJuanGee,
Note: these isn't about me alone, I believe I'm speaking in favour of other low-ranking members.

Sure.   I would not expect the substance of your post to be merely about you especially since we are in a public thread - and several of the themes that you touched upon are not really new and/or innovative themes either.   Maybe for the sake of this thread, there may be some tendencies to attempt to talk about the ideas in regards to how they relate to Legendary members, since that's the topic of the thread.. and maybe another dynamic is that even if the earlier topics related to merit system might have not so much focused on Legendary members - but in the passage of the last 4.5 years (since the merit system went into effect), the relatively lack of turn-over in merit sources, and even the lack of greatly increasing the number of merit sources, the merit sources have largely become Legendary members.  Even though there is no exact list of merit sources (Coin-1's thread has always done a pretty decent job to infer who the merit sources are), I doubt that there there any merit sources who are not Legendary members at this point.

I saw your feedback right from the same night you posted but, I'm having some drastic network misconduct lately. (Maybe due to climate change or something)
I am Sandra and I liked speaking for myself; but after sometime, I could perceive that there are likely alot more of the same MIS-hap (my previous point) in ALMOST everyone's (low-ranked members) angle.

These whole story ain't really COMPATIBLE to the point you made above JAY

I was not expecting to even come close to addressing the whole story.. I was just giving a passing opinion, so yeah, I could ramble on the topic quite a while too if I wanted to pursue such a topic, and it is really not the kind of topic that I get too excited about (not that it is not an important topic to some people).. that's probably why my post ended up devolving into making bitcoin comparisons, which surely is the area I prefer to talk about.

-- about how early HODLers had a good chance of buying btc, bla bla bla.......... Buying or HODLing BTC doesn't seems to be a good example to the merit system; bitcoin is an investment that propagates cash capital overtime and doesn't have any FORMAL RANKING (people are interested in making money &/ owning an asset at the end of the day SO NOBODY CARES IF THEY'RE LATE OR NOT in as much as there are still many more coin to HODL).

We can agree to disagree.  I still like my example, and you seem to not like it.  Sure, it may well not be exhaustive, but what example is going to be exhaustive?

Bitcoin forum is just a discussion forum that doesn't pay anyone directly.it has legal/formal ranks that anyone should attain if they'd really wanna join a signature to make few bucks for themselves. We  have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

I don't necessarily buy the premise that "without rank, you are nothing."   But, we can see that so far you have been a good enough poster to earn more merits than your activity level, so by keeping a similar pace of earning merits (which does not really seem to have been any kind of major problem for you so far), you are not going to be negatively affected by the merit system.  I already made that point.

In regards to your concerns for other members who do not seem to be earning enough merits to keep up (and they might be being held back from ranking up because of the existence of the merit system, sure some members do not receive very many merits, and maybe they either bad posters or they might be in threads in which not very many members with smerits participate or maybe they are overlooked.

You were suggesting earlier that there might be some kind of an obligation for merit sources to get out to threads that they do not frequent and get to know the people more?  or what is the solution that you are suggesting?  I know that many times there have been suggestions that there should be more merit source members and even a turn over in merit source members, and in theory that sounds good.. but surely can be a lot of work for theymos or whoever he might have in charge of merit systems (like if he were to create a merit system Czar - and I doubt that he wants to do anything like that)

Why is bitcoin HODLing not compatible -- Incase you couldn't decipher my extended appraisal -- to bitcointalk forum? It is because in HODLing, ranks are unnecessary and all you need to do is gather up funds to stackup like others do.

We seem to be making different points.  I was suggesting that ranking up in the forum is way easier than failing to stack up with bitcoin in terms of the linear rather than exponential.. in that you would likely be more prejudiced if you failed/refused to stack sats as compared to failing to post/participate in the forum which caused you to fail to rank up.

In regards to bitcoin, I do otherwise agree with you that even late comers to bitcoin can still profit stupendously by getting into bitcoin late, even if they might not be able to receive the same magnitude (and compounding effects) of the earliest of adopters.

BUT,
In bitcointalk forum, ranks are necessary not funds. To achieve these ranks,you need merit --this something that you cannot give to yourself-- Infact, WITHOUT the rank, it doesn't make requal-sense to get stuck in here then, to a point, you'll get tired. Very few people don't care about ranks. Majority does.

I might be wrong, but personally, it seems to me that you are describing a problem that largely does not exist, at least when it comes to the ability to rank up for those who want to participate in the forum and who want to and are able to provide substance.   It seems to me that the forum has gone down the path of taking away automatic ranking up - which seems to have been meant to be a way to combat spammers rather than to punish regular members.. or to make it difficult for regular members to rank up as you seem to be suggesting that the merit system is unduly burdensome on some members. what the shy ones?  The good people lurkers?  Sure there are a lot of good people in the world, but you don't make rank in these parts without contributing and getting noticed... and yeah, sometimes it can take a while..   Even though my times were different, I recall my first year or two on the forum, and many times people (other members) ignore newbies.. even when "we" think we are making decent and good posts... It can take a while to get noticed (and appreciated).

JAY, lemme make you understand that a couple of times, people have confessed that the merit system ain't PERFECT, alright? So you shouldn't preclude every single fact that makes it IMPERFECT which -- the same point I made above -- is one of the facts &/ factors of it imperfections.

I doubt that I am anywhere close to suggesting that the merit system is perfect.  Maybe you need to make some specific suggestions regarding how to fix it and if you think that theymos will go along with it or who else would you need to convince?  Sure if you get the members worked up about something, then some times theymos will make changes based on his perceptions of popular demand (or at least I imagine that he accounts for what members think to the extent that it does not interfere with the "freedom" values of the forum)

Now, back to today's point. I didn't say that I was bothered about the airdropped merits or peeps that had 'em (please, don't misquote me). My main emphasis was on today's EVALUATION. Why are we still having some silly-head legendary shit-posters merited, even after the airdrop disaster (I call it so for those that don't fit it)? Isn't this the adversely the same reason it was created?

There is no objective merit sending requirements, which means that members can send merits for any reason or no reason at all.. and if you identify some kind of a corrupt purpose then there would be some burden to show .. which is not really easy to do.. Of course, merit sources are not able to "sell" their merits, so there is that additional requirement on merit source members... otherwise they do not necessarily have any obligation to seek out objectively good places to use up their smerits.. and also theymos seems to appreciate that sometimes it can be a whole hell of a lot of work to spend smerits on a regular basis... (yes first world problems).. so in that regard, he has even stated that he would prefer that merit source members error on the side of spending their smerits rather than not spending them prior to their 30 day expiration date...

Look, lemme keep it real with you.

You seem to be presumptuous if you are thinking that you know what is more "real" than either me or anyone else here.  Sure.. you have a perspective that might be different or better than some of the other members based on your different set of experiences.. but I doubt that your idea of "real" really adds up to what you are making it out to be.

Even if, I were a legendary, I'll still be against it.

Like I said, you are on time to make rank.  Your merits outpace your activity.  Are you suggesting short-cuts towards getting to legendary more quickly beyond the activity levels?  Activity level suggest around 2 years to get to Legendary. .in the fastest of scenarios based on activity.. are you suggesting changes to that?

Let's call a spade by it's name. Haven't I seen a thousand times, in some thread that most users get merited for popularity or familiarity? You can't get that justified JAY. To the point that someone was doing a merit give-away? Is that still the actual reason why the system was created or does that make the merit system PERFECT?

I am not conceding that any of what you are describing is wrong or against the rules.  Members have come up with all kinds of ways (is it "creative" or corrupt?) to send out smerits, and maybe you are suggesting that to be a kind of "selling" that would be against the rules?    If you believe that a member is being corrupt or that there should be a new rule for merit source members, then you would need to convince theymos to add such a rule, it seems... or maybe you convince other members here, and we all complain until we get a rule change?

It seems that the merit system was mostly made to keep spammers/bots from ranking up, and if you think it is being used in corrupt ways, then spit it out.  What you are describing does not seem to be prevented, even though I understand that there can ber some self-aggrandizing aspects, and maybe there needs to be more rotation of merit sources but that is also a lot of work for theymos.. you going to get him to do it or to get his merit czar (if there were one) to do it?

I can again proclaim that I am not saying that the merit system is anywhere close to "perfect," but maybe you, Sandra, may well be seeking higher levels of perfection where it may well be difficult to achieve in the whole balancing of matters regarding the extent to which merit sources might be unfairly benefiting from the merit system or that there maybe practices that fail to sufficiently circulate smerits.. so that only the small circles receive smerits.. which seems to be part of your accusations about "getting real."

I don't even care about any cycling club thing as the sceptical chymist has said there's nothing behind the foxpup stuff so I'm fine with that.

I never really understood that. .I thought that it was a kind of joke... but I hardly have any clue any of the specifics.
 

.... ask yourself why the chymist, fillipone, the Thick-skinned gang leader, Ddmr, JAY, Ratimov, vapourminer, BitcoingirlClub and the rest have taken upon themselves to put the system in it proper function? You'll understand my whole point clearly.

You seem to be implying a nefarious system... bad motives and colluders.. and even that we are just giving merits to each other without spreading the love (smerits) sufficiently.

I hope the merit system changes for good.

What's your proposal?  Completely getting rid of it?  Rotating smerit sources out?  Adding more merit source members? Having fewer?   Of course, there is way more data to complain 4.5 years after the merit system has had opportunities to play out versus the complaints about it within the first year of its implementation.. We have also gotten used to it as compared to when it first launched.

[Sandra_hakeem]

I don't have any Smerit left for JAY. I would merit him too cus I don't wanna make it look BIASED.

I'm happy for all the response I've got. Good or bad.
Especially when JAY assumed my points as NOT 'innovative', makes me wonder what anyone expects from an argumentative dialogue between an old-guru coach and a juvenile on Woods borough basketball pitch.
I know you'd love me to make more specificities or would rather wanna get grounded by your points over mine, but I'm afraid, the well has gone dry.
JAY,  
It saddens me that the more I try to make-out points Crystal clear to you, the more it seems to get deluged by some of your MIS-interpretations. That's not encouraging, coupled with the fact that you've acknowledged my points as "not innovative", secondly,that's UNRULY. I'm not gonna make any points -- furthermore-- regarding this topic.
Maybe, points from feminine gender ain't really complimented ??

Z-light has atleast, a glimpse of the whole theory. Now I understand why it is said that "people in thier shoes knows best where it hurts 'em " I respect everyone for having diverse perspectives of thinking. Infact, that's what makes everyone different.
We have digressed alot from the subject matter and it ain't supposed to be so. I wasn't planning to make these an argument so it's high time I drew it to a close on my side.

Malek, I wouldn't wanna make people behind those accounts feel bad so I'll prefer letting the sleeping dog lie. Let's maintain the peaceful pseudonymity.  What you Term as a "shitpost" doesn't have any difference with what any anyone knows as one, neither does it have any difference to what Jolly is tagging most peeps for.
I'm grateful for every contributions from everyone and for the fact that atlesast, JAY understands that I have no problem getting merits or ranking up either.

If this issue has been deliberated countless times -- over the years -- and has been resolved already, whatsoever, I think we draw this to a close EXCEPT ANYONE HAS A REASON NOT TO.

Cheers,
Sandra 👩‍🦱

[JayJuanGee]

I don't have any Smerit left for JAY. I would merit him too cus I don't wanna make it look BIASED.

It is understandable that you might not have enough of a merit reserve to merit all of the posts that you would like, and I think that lot of the regular and active posters in this forum recognize that there are a lot of ways that members can either appreciate another member and/or acknowledge his/her points without using the forums merit sending function... responding to the post is one of the ways.. for sure..

I'm happy for all the response I've got. Good or bad.
Especially when JAY assumed my points as NOT 'innovative', makes me wonder what anyone expects from an argumentative dialogue between an old-guru coach and a juvenile on Woods borough basketball pitch.

You may be taking my framing a bit more personal than necessary, even if you are acknowledging that the information that you are working with may well be a bit less than the information that I have in my head by going through the experiences.  At the same time I am not trying to dominate the conversation merely because I was involved in a lot of earlier conversations or even knew that a lot of similar arguments had been being raised earlier on.. I would not even claim that my memory is correct or even my opinion is necessarily correct on those topics.. I may well be quite rusty, and it is possible that you could be more polished on the topic than I am acknowledging to be the case.

I am trying to suggest that the topic had been so beaten up already, so it may well be a better idea to look into those matters, but you are free to approach the topic however, you like while maybe appreciating that you had been getting some push back from me and even some hostility from me because I had been reading some of your comments as having already been beaten to death....

At the same time, I am just one person, so even if I perceive that several of your arguments had been beaten to death, it does not preclude you from raising them or even attempting to push them to new territories (if possible?/feasible?).

I know you'd love me to make more specificities or would rather wanna get grounded by your points over mine, but I'm afraid, the well has gone dry.
JAY,  

Even if you might have considered my tone to have been a bit hostile, I am not going to proclaim that my arguments were complete or sound, and in some regards, there can be some value in attempting to either acknowledge or address some of the points that I made... otherwise, or maybe acknowledge if there might be some truth to them or some real obstacles in attempting to make some of your proposals actionable.. like o.k.. if we first of all trying to figure out if some of the parts that you explained were a problem, and then if we get over that hurdle, then what actions (or rule change proposals or whatever) could be made and would those actions even be very feasible or likely to lead to success.. .. do we want success or change or not?  Or we are just discussing some problems that we perceive to exist, but we don't have any proposals regarding how they might be addressed and even if they cannot be fixed, maybe they could be made less of a problem?  Is that possible?

It saddens me that the more I try to make-out points Crystal clear to you, the more it seems to get deluged by some of your MIS-interpretations.

I am not "misinterpreting" on purpose, if that is what I am doing.  There might be some aspects that I do not understand, and I provide some observations that I believe to be materially important, and it could be that we measure what is relevant in different ways.  You have rights to your views on the various points, and I have rights to disagree, and I am not trying to stop you from disagreeing or expressing your points even if I might use strong language.. for example, if I assert:  "that's bullshit", then I might be proclaiming that in a vague but strong way that either I do not agree with your presented representation of the facts, or I don't agree with your logic or I don't agree with the conclusions that you have reached based on the facts and logic.  Hopefully, I would have explained enough so that you would understand why I stated my disagreement, but it is not always the case that any of us are going to be clear and sometimes ideas might get lost in translation. .and there may be needs for repetition in order for the points to get across and to make sure that we are at least understanding each other.

That's not encouraging, coupled with the fact that you've acknowledged my points as "not innovative", secondly,that's UNRULY. I'm not gonna make any points -- furthermore-- regarding this topic.

It's your choice about whether to continue to engage or to try to overcome any points that I made or to state why some of my points are either wrong or not relevant or maybe that I gave too much or too little weight to certain points.

Maybe, points from feminine gender ain't really complimented ??

Do we really know gender on the interwebs (besides that you have a female name?)?  From my point of view, unless you make it an issue, I cannot even determine if you are a cat.

Members are going to vary in the ways that they present themselves, and sure in the technical areas of the web (and likely even bitcoin/crypto) circles it is likely that there are more men than there are women.. but still we are not really going to know, and if you say that certain ways that I am presenting information is different than your ways of thinking about matters, and some of that might be gender/culture or whatever, then sure, there might be some truth to those kinds of assertions, but then wouldn't it be up to you to point that out, and point out some kind of specific argument that I am making or some point that I made that needs to be considered from another perspective, and you might not need to completely lay out the argument in order to at least point out that there are deficiencies with some way that I have framed my answer or my assessment of the situation being discussed.

When you mention gender, is there anything specifically that you are referring to?  If you are saying that merits are being shared amongst a kind of "boys club" but still those are vague accusations, and they might need to be outlined a bit better.  If you say that a lot of the members on the forum are making gender based jokes that make a hostile environment for women, and then they are sending merits to reenforce those kinds of values, then o.k.  What can be done about it?  If you make a suggestion of some kind of change, then it may or may not be acceptable, and yeah, maybe too much power is in theymos's hands in order to set forum policies but what can be done about that?  I think he tries to make it open, but he is likely a he, even though we cannot really be sure about that either, even if there is information out there about theymos too - not that it should really matter very much.. but to some people those kinds of identity politics do seem to matter more than to other people... Are we hostile here to identity politics?  Maybe? Maybe I am, but I am just one person.  

Z-light has atleast, a glimpse of the whole theory. Now I understand why it is said that "people in thier shoes knows best where it hurts 'em "

Sure there is always going to be some truth regarding people having self-interests, but I doubt that your implications in regards to my own self-bias are as strong as you are making them out to be... and hey, you can view the world however, you like in terms of which members here have abilities to attempt to appreciate a variety of circumstances/situations in better ways than others.. it is up to you to make those kinds of assessments and to engage or not based on if you believe that your point of view is getting a "fair" shake.

I respect everyone for having diverse perspectives of thinking. Infact, that's what makes everyone different.

It should be expected that our views are going to differ depending on the topic., and we also might believe that we directionally agree on a topic, but then the more we get into details, then we may well end up diverging.. so then there may well be a choice about whether to continue to pursue the topic or to move onto other topics.  When push comes to shove, I doubt anyone wants to be told what to think, even if they might be willing to go along with some of the ideas up to a point.

We have digressed alot from the subject matter and it ain't supposed to be so. I wasn't planning to make these an argument so it's high time I drew it to a close on my side.

Yes.. we might have diverged a bit much... but still there is some relation to the topic, especially if there is kind of an underlying theme that if there are concerns that Legendary members might be abusing their merit source positions, and that does seem to be more and more a topic about Legendary members as the merit sources, especially since it seems that not very many new merit source members have been appointed (selected) in recent times.

Malek, I wouldn't wanna make people behind those accounts feel bad so I'll prefer letting the sleeping dog lie.

It would likely be a rare event that any of us are going to end up feeling bad in regards to various points that you raised, even if there may be some truth that some merit source members are taking short-cuts in regards to how they are spending their smerits, but no one is likely going to perceive themselves as a villain in their own story and likely each of us (even if we were to be a villain) may well likely be considering that we are doing the best that we can under the circumstances that we are presented, so we are not even going to perceive ourselves as bias in any kind of bad way, even if you are pointing out evidence that shows ways that we may well be more bias than we believe ourselves to be.

Should all merit source members resign their posts and force theymos into picking new ones?  Rotate us out or cut our merit source supplies and give other members opportunities to partake in the source merit spending obligations and benefits?

Let's maintain the peaceful pseudonymity.  What you Term as a "shitpost" doesn't have any difference with what any anyone knows as one, neither does it have any difference to what Jolly is tagging most peeps for.

The shitpost label has objective and subjective attributes.. so of course, there might be some posts that everyone (or nearly everyone) agrees to as shitposts, and others are more ambiguous, and even others might not be shitposts, but some members might still call them shitposts because they disagree with them.

I'm grateful for every contributions from everyone and for the fact that atlesast, JAY understands that I have no problem getting merits or ranking up either.

If this issue has been deliberated countless times -- over the years -- and has been resolved already, whatsoever, I think we draw this to a close EXCEPT ANYONE HAS A REASON NOT TO.

Cheers,
Sandra 👩‍🦱

New facts might cause an issue that we thought to be previously resolved to be reopened or in need of consideration, and it may well be the case that this system is currently broken, but not broken enough in order to take any steps to make it less broken.. or any steps to take to make it less broken might not necessarily be helpful to make it sufficiently less broken in order to make the change...not that we have gotten into any specifics of changes that should be made, even if we were to concede that aspects of the current system has broken aspects to it.

[Sandra_hakeem]

Jay  
Are you a magistrate in real life? Cus seriously, you're a die-hard eristic or -- say -- a logical comrade ☺️ I really like that part of you JAY.
I'd love the members in circulation of merits in this forum to be kept, just as they are. They're doing thier jobs and if we can agree, it's based on the forums criterion that they all were chosen. It is imperative that if we'd tackle problems from the outside -- which seems to be giving much weariness and setbacks -- then solving and inward problem isn't a hard knot to untie.

Right now I'm thinking -- thinking of how we could overcome this Craig of a guy and his Entourage (if he has one). I understand we should make appropriate conclusions on these immediate complaint but, the best immediate advancement should be : adding a handful of merit-sources but that's not gonna cut it cus I'm not even seeing much peeps that fits for now -- except for a few that I know personally -- which might not be an exact figure in THEYMOS heart to fix up i.e if he craves for the idea in the first place -- that's the whole point in here .

A little diverging : won't you wear the current avatar that has escalated this days for the cleansing of FAKEtoshi's plague?
That's exactly the point I was trying to make earlier - that, that's prolly one of the ways we could save our ass out here. We wouldn't be debating whether or not to solve a fringe problem - sort of merit sending - when the whole system has been overtaken by these imposters? Or are we? You see the problem now?.. I'm just waiting for my rank up tonight so I'll wear the avatar ASAP.

About my gender, look JAY, believe what you want  . I don't have to convince you for that cus I'm not gonna be paid to do so. Let's keep it at whatever you choose cus it's not important and that shouldn't be a problem.

I'd even advise that Theymos does less to the previous appeal, if there was any. Lets focus on the cleansing for now until everywhere is calm and the dove can perch on its twig. I'm still gonna come back to this if JAY has something else to propose.

Cheers
Sandra 👩‍🦱

[JayJuanGee]

Jay  
Are you a magistrate in real life? Cus seriously, you're a die-hard eristic or -- say -- a logical comrade ☺️ I really like that part of you JAY.

I had to look up "eristic"... hahahaha

It is a word.

I am not going to say my real life more than I already disclose from time to time through my posts.... and yes, I have more experience in regards to presenting ideas rather than my technical skills which are quite a bit weaker.. though sometimes I will present math ideas.. which might be more like statistics and accounting ideas rather than deeper kinds of math.

I'd love the members in circulation of merits in this forum to be kept, just as they are. They're doing thier jobs and if we can agree, it's based on the forums criterion that they all were chosen. It is imperative that if we'd tackle problems from the outside -- which seems to be giving much weariness and setbacks -- then solving and inward problem isn't a hard knot to untie.

I don't know.  It seems as if no member is really precluded from making suggestions in the event that there might be some practical and reasonable way forward, and maybe there is a bit of a threshold concern regarding how much would the proposed change likely to improve any matter and could theymos just wait until the next time that he tweaks the merit system to make such changes (if he is going to do it).  

There were quite a few suggestions in the form of complaining regarding the implementation of the merit system in early 2018, so during that first year, theymos made several tweaks and regularly added merit source members to advance from his initial assignment of around 35 merit source members thereafter expand the number of merit source members to reach around 130 within about the first year while stating his expectations that he would continue to review the merit system on about a yearly basis, and he made a few tweaks to it in order to remove the merit source members who were not spending their smerits to both add replacement merit source members and to increase the number of smerits that the then assigned merit source members were able to spend during each of the 30--day periods that their source merit allotment refreshes.

I am pretty sure that even now there are ways that the merit system could be tweaked and some rotation of merit source members, but I get the sense that theymos does not want to make those kinds of global shufflings too frequently because there can become some feelings of disruptions when they are made (and sometimes drama too), and the tweaks that he has been making have seemed to have been fairly non-interventionalist through the years.. so in that regard, he surely has some data that is easier for him to see (and perhaps some of the moderators also get exposure to some of the complaints and reports of abuse of the merit system data), and a lot of members here seem to have gotten used to the various aspects of the merit system.  Perhaps there might be some justification for theymos to juggle again on a regular basis.. but my informal records show that he has been pretty infrequent with anything major to the extent that his initial implementation on 1/24/18 and supplemental adjustments on 9/6/18, 1/14/19 and 7/5/22 may well have been the more substantial changes to the smerit system, but still overall those changes have been pretty infrequent in their occurrence and maybe having a bit of an increasing time frame between their being made.. whether or not the increased time between changes may or may not be sustainable.. depending on how much interventionalism might seem to have potential value... .. or maybe he just has a tentative idea at a time that he might make changes in the future, such as 6 months from now or some other seemingly random date that he does not want to telegraph in advance.

We likely realize that there can be some advantages in regards to NOT making too many changes too frequently, even if there might be some ongoing existing unfairnesses contained within the currently existing system.. including that maybe  members get kinds of used to the system, and the shocks of any jugglings / shuffling of the members or the quantity of their smerits will be easier to adapt to in the event that it is NOT being juggled/shuffled too frequently.

Right now I'm thinking -- thinking of how we could overcome this Craig of a guy and his Entourage (if he has one).

That's getting further from the topic.  Most of the BSV discussion seems to be contained in certain threads, but of course members here might have varying opinions, and it seems to me that theymos is inclined to error on the side of allowing for areas to discuss that shitcoin or any other shitcoin, and sure sometimes shitcoins discussions will get into bitcoin threads, and I am not sure whether any of us will really agree about which shitcoin is less shitty (or which one is more shitty) (or which one is more of a threat to/attack on bitcoin), so one of the compromises does seem to be having areas in which various shitcoin topics can be discussed, and of course, there could be (and seem to be) some threads  that specifically have allowances to talk about shitcoin's relations to bitcoin or vice versa, so in that regard, there might just be disagreement sometimes about the extent to which some deviation from any stated topic might be allowable within a thread.. but any of those topics seem to be allowable so long as they are encapsulated by the title of the thread.

I understand we should make appropriate conclusions on these immediate complaint but, the best immediate advancement should be : adding a handful of merit-sources but that's not gonna cut it cus I'm not even seeing much peeps that fits for now -- except for a few that I know personally -- which might not be an exact figure in THEYMOS heart to fix up i.e if he craves for the idea in the first place -- that's the whole point in here .

Members are allowed to submit there own application, and I am sure there are probably hundreds of members that would be able to fall into place and carry out the merit source duties (once they are assigned),...and I have a quite a bit of sympathy for the idea of either rotating merit source members and/or adding more merit source members to bring up the number of merit source members.  However, I can also appreciate that either adding merit source members or rotating merit source members does have a likelihood of causing a lot of work for theymos - especially during the initial adjustment periods. So there is likely a bit of a dilemma between keeping the merit source members the same, increasing/rotating the merit source members, creating a merit source Czar (or assigning one of the mods to help with carrying out such duties) which has its own potential challenges.

A little diverging : won't you wear the current avatar that has escalated this days for the cleansing of FAKEtoshi's plague?

Yes... some people/members wear those.. and there are a variety of ways that members/people will show their support or even exercise their support in regards to various levels of passion that they might have for any particular cause or how they want to spend their time. .or if they have time to dedicate for one cause or another..   I don't necessarily want to defend why I take or don't take any particular action, especially if we are not in a thread that is on that topic.... and you likely realize we are already deviating quite much from this thread's topic, and we may well wear out our welcome at a certain point.... .

That's exactly the point I was trying to make earlier - that, that's prolly one of the ways we could save our ass out here. We wouldn't be debating whether or not to solve a fringe problem - sort of merit sending - when the whole system has been overtaken by these imposters? Or are we? You see the problem now?.. I'm just waiting for my rank up tonight so I'll wear the avatar ASAP.

Seems to me that people/members have varying approaches and perspectives in regards to what they perceive to be possible "problems" and how much time they have or want (or is the phrase ready, willing and able?) to spend on various problems that the might see in the world including their own taking care of their daily living issues.. depending on where they are at in life in terms of what kinds of obligations that they might already have.. or maybe their various fun versus work balances, too?

About my gender, look JAY, believe what you want  . I don't have to convince you for that cus I'm not gonna be paid to do so. Let's keep it at whatever you choose cus it's not important and that shouldn't be a problem.

I only brought it up because you brought it up... I choose to believe that you are a cat.  So there you have it.  

I'd even advise that Theymos does less to the previous appeal, if there was any. Lets focus on the cleansing for now until everywhere is calm and the dove can perch on its twig. I'm still gonna come back to this if JAY has something else to propose.
Cheers
Sandra 👩‍🦱

There are always various battles going on in the world, even during periods in which we might also believe there is calm and stability. Of course, getting involved in bitcoin would not necessarily take care of all of the problems, but we have an area in which we can talk about various problems from a forum perspective, and we might have other ways in which we are acting in our respective real world matters too.. and some of that might involve chaos and challenges and other interactions might involve non-conflict, and I would not even say that any one approach would be preferable, but sometimes any of can get ourselves into fairly prolonged battles that might relate to our relationships, or our financials (abilities to make a living), ways that we wish the world to be, various aspects of our physical security and sense of belonging and other matters that we might believe to be in front of us - including where we might perceive ourselves to be in terms of satisfying ourselves on the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs pyramid.  I have to attempt to figure out where I might perceive myself to be in terms of addressing what I might believe to be pressing in my life.  It is not necessarily a static situation including that if any of us might feel that we are in a comfortable place in our home, but then we find out that a bad person has moved in next door, and then we might become more worried about how to deal with such a change that happened in our lives, and we did not foresee the change coming... but some times there may be changes in our lives that affect how we spend our mental and/or physical time and change our priorities until we might feel that we have sufficiently/adequately addressed the new development matter(s).

[UmerIdrees]

This is just a small sample that shows that legendary members receive plenty of merits for a reason. So the next time you think how the world is unfair or that the powerful are only helping the powerful, remember this thread and try to improve and do better.  

This is a secret that you have revealed. The more you are helpful to people, and resolve people's queries you will automatically get merits.
One thing I disagree with is that Legendaries are getting merits by helping in these threads, You can be helpful on any board and you will get the same results.
If I tell you about  myself, I have been very helpful and kind to my local community and people will reward you with merits if they find your posts useful.

[philipma1957]

Bitcoin forum is just a discussion forum that doesn't pay anyone directly.it has legal/formal ranks that anyone should attain if they'd really wanna join a signature to make few bucks for themselves. We have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

And everyone can attain those ranks with time. You need both merits and activity to get there. The spamming and shit posting got so bad a few years ago, that the admins had to do something. Hence, the merit system was introduced.

We have a couple of good posters that are lacking merits to rank up and WITHOUT THE RANKS, YOU ARE NOTHING!

If you believe that to be the case, please take advantage of the Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source thread. Someone with enough source merits can take a look at those posts and merit them if they feel they deserve some. The Pharmacist has also written more than once that people can PM him and ask him to check their post history and he will merit those posts that deserve more merits. There is also Ratimov's Help newbies and those who have a little left to the next rank initiative.  

JAY, lemme make you understand that a couple of times, people have confessed that the merit system ain't PERFECT, alright?

Of course it's not perfect. Nothing is. But it's good. It has stopped shit posters to rank up just by posting meaningless posts and it has killed the black market for account sellers.  

Why are we still having some silly-head legendary shit-posters merited, even after the airdrop disaster (I call it so for those that don't fit it)? Isn't this the adversely the same reason it was created?

I would really like to know who those are? Who are the legendary shit posters who get merited and who does the meriting? If for some reason you don't feel like discussing it in public, PM me a few names. I am curious if your assessment of a shit poster is the same as mine.

Haven't I seen a thousand times, in some thread that most users get merited for popularity or familiarity?

The thing is, there are no rules for meriting posts. There are only the rules you create and your subjective opinion about a post. Merit sources aren't allowed to sell their merits. That's it. That's where the rules stop. If I thought a post of yours was funny, I can merit it if I want to. Humor gets merited as well. Regarding the popularity and familiarity part, remember what I said previously about seeing the same group of people hanging out in the same boards. It becomes a habit seeing them there. You learn what they are all about and you understand what quality they can bring to the table. If you have a group of let's say 20 people with similar interests who write and discuss the same things and all of them are capable of participating in a quality discussion, merits start going back and forth. If you like being on the receiving and, you want to give other people that same feeling. That's natural and human wouldn't you agree? If someone does something nice to you, you feel like you need to reciprocate in some way. Maybe that's why you think of it as merits for popularity or familiarity. But you are wrong if you think it's some kind of close circle of friends working together and tapping each other on the shoulders. Do the things that the best forum users do and if you aren't appreciated or merited properly, then we can discuss what is going on. This is more of a general message, not directed towards you personally because I am not that familiar with your posting habits.

Is there a day I don't come active on the forum since my being active 3months straight? I make post everyday and as you can see,I'm not one of the shit posters- that's justifiable.

I really don't know how active you are. But I don't see you around the same boards or threads where I see many other people. If I don't see you there, others don't see you there either. But what I do see is that you have a decent merit to activity count. But even with 1000 merits to your name, you need the activity points. There is no ranking up without them.  

Then ask yourself why the chymist, fillipone, the Thick-skinned gang leader, Ddmr, JAY, Ratimov, vapourminer, BitcoingirlClub and the rest have taken upon themselves to put the system in it proper function? You'll understand my whole point clearly.

I am not following sorry. It's time for my nap, maybe that's got something to do with it. When you say they have taken it upon themselves, are you talking about them being merit sources who get to decide who gets merited and who doesn't? Merit sources get selected by theymos or they apply to become one. They are picked based on the admins' criteria and whether or not he believes they can be trusted to do the job properly and not abuse the system. Just like in all segments of life, you select the best when it comes to more responsible positions, right?  

Here is a lucky 7 merits not be because I agree with you but I do think you believe what you say.

I can honestly tell you I should have received 2000 or maybe 3000 airdropped merits not 1000.

But pre merit world 🌍 was way different then now.

I do thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of posts.

I posted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of how to videos.

I also give lots of merits newbies jr members members

and I deliberately post in poor grammatical style as I never under stood james joyce’s style of writing.

along with not appreciating andy warhols campbell soup artwork.

in my old age of 65 i now think joyce and warhol rock 🪨

and your repost to this thread got you 3 more points

[Agbe]

You have spoken well. Legendary Members really help other ranks to answer questions in a very simple way. But not all the legendary rank does that. As for me I classified the legendary members into three categories

• First Class
• 2nd Class and
• 3rd Class

The first class legendary members are the one answers when a legit question is asked. They tell you what to do, provide links for the person.

The second class legendary members are the moderate ones. They support the first class legendary members in any argument. They also give good answers to a question.

The third class legendary members are the ones that are not too knowledgeable to contribute to knowledge so most times they are frightened to even answer a question. They answered questions if the question is not twisted (very simple) questions.
Therefore, the 1st and 2nd legendary members gives merits to themselves base on the answer given.

[rat03gopoh]

in my old age of 65 i now think joyce and warhol rock 🪨

Omg, you've consistently been here since 10 yrs ago who might have left this place if it was me. You enjoy the "twilight" in this cozy place.
You deserve even 10k merits. 

BTCitcoin Legendary indeed...

[The Sceptical Chymist]

If you want to get merited, show up. That's the first thing. Do we have to drag you out and force you to post so we can merit you?

Chuck D say: Word Up. 

There are so many factors that determine how many merits any given member will earn over an arbitrary time frame, but it is of fundamental importance that you post relatively frequently if you expect to get noticed--and then of course on top of that, your posts have to somehow stand out from the typical excrementitious posts that might sandwich said posts so hard that readers can't scroll fast enough to get past the stinkers.

In Sandra_hakeem's case, she's been here almost a year but hasn't even made 120 posts.  That just isn't going to cut it--if you're looking to rank up, that is.  Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything.

I've always bought into the notion that higher-ranked members tend to earn more merits, because it seems almost self-evident to me.  Older members have a lot more invested in the forum, are likely more knowledgeable (except for goobers like me), and know what kinds of posts are worth it to make.  Newbies....who the hell knows?  They don't have a good history on bitcointalk, that's for sure.  But there are always a bunch that keep at it, keep climbing the ranks, and end up becoming established members of our fine forum.  They're just rare, that's all.

[Pmalek]

In Sandra_hakeem's case, she's been here almost a year but hasn't even made 120 posts.  That just isn't going to cut it--if you're looking to rank up, that is.

In one of her previous posts in this thread, she mentioned that she has been active every day for the last 3 months. I thought she joined the forum 3 months ago. But after reading your post and taking a quick look at her profile, I just noticed the registration date.

Quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, but if you manage to combine those two elements, you are more likely to get showered with merits than someone who isn't here that often. People read what is current and you should be part of it somehow for optimal results. Since you brought it up, Sandra hasn't made 120 posts in the whole year, but there are members that write 150+ in a month. 

[JayJuanGee]

Sandra hasn't made 120 posts in the whole year, but there are members that write 150+ in a month. 

me, me, me..


hahahaha

I have too many posts..

When I first started on the forum I tried to pace myself to try to ONLY make 1 or 2 posts per day, and maybe that lasted for a few months until my own activity became more and more self-contagious and watching more and more threads.. and surely in the beginning no one seemed to pay any attention to hardly any post that I made or any time that I tried to chime in.

It was like writing into a dead vacuum for the most part, but after a while people get to know you, and maybe at first they call you names, and then some of them start to like you.. even the members who had previously been calling you names start to warm up, sometimes,.. interesting like that.. and sure we will resort back and forth to name calling from time to time, and I am sure that The Pharmacist is not exactly good buddies with me at the moment.. so if we are around long enough and spend enough time interacting with other members, we will have some of our ups and downs, agreements and disagreements.. and sometimes get mad at one another.....

[Falconer]

Since you brought it up, Sandra hasn't made 120 posts in the whole year, but there are members that write 150+ in a month.

Pmalek and JayJuanGee, let me show you the rankings post for this month for both of you. But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

Code:

1. ChartBuddy [680]
---
22. Pmalek [260]
---
65. JayJuanGee [156]

I have too many posts..

I don't think so, you're still behind another 64 users per September 29, so I guess there's a lot of users who already have 250+ by now. Lol
I just have 104 posts (including this one) and am at rank 300. They all have a lot of posts, awesome especially those who are able to maintain the quality.

[Z-tight]

But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

You can't tell me that guy doesn't use some bot to post those charts about bitcoin price every 1 hour in the wall observer thread, surely he will be number one, the reason why post quantity with no quality is useless.

[Oshosondy]

I've always bought into the notion that higher-ranked members tend to earn more merits, because it seems almost self-evident to me.  Older members have a lot more invested in the forum, are likely more knowledgeable (except for goobers like me), and know what kinds of posts are worth it to make.  Newbies....who the hell knows?  They don't have a good history on bitcointalk, that's for sure.  But there are always a bunch that keep at it, keep climbing the ranks, and end up becoming established members of our fine forum.  They're just rare, that's all.

This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.

But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

You can't tell me that guy doesn't use some bot to post those charts about bitcoin price every 1 hour in the wall observer thread, surely he will be number one, the reason why post quantity with no quality is useless.

ChartBuddy is a bot.

[JayJuanGee]

Since you brought it up, Sandra hasn't made 120 posts in the whole year, but there are members that write 150+ in a month.

Pmalek and JayJuanGee, let me show you the rankings post for this month for both of you. But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

Code:

1. ChartBuddy [680]
---
22. Pmalek [260]
---
65. JayJuanGee [156]

I have too many posts..

I don't think so, you're still behind another 64 users per September 29, so I guess there's a lot of users who already have 250+ by now. Lol
I just have 104 posts (including this one) and am at rank 300. They all have a lot of posts, awesome especially those who are able to maintain the quality.

Even though there is some validity in short-term numbers, I had been also thinking about longer term numbers too.. total number of posts for my whole forum history, which would be posts per day over a longer term period.

Of course, trends for number of posts per day would likely change over time. 

On a personal level I think that my number of posts per day have been increasing overall, but also my time spent on the forum has been additionally incentivized to go higher time spent since when theymos assigned me as a merit source, and then over time his having had increased the number of source merits that I was given to spend..  Overall is it considered a gift or not to receive so many source merits to spend?  One will wonder.. .. I am not sure if I am complaining or not because some member might consider my description of being lured into spending more time on the forum as a "first world problem" (meaning not really a serious problem.. or a problem that other members would not mind having)..

I do recall a couple of months ago comparing my overall posts per day to Philip's and his was something like 11 per day and mine was something like 8 per day.

Chart buddy is around 24 per day.. even though CB did take a break for a few years while his handler (Richy T) was on strike from the forum and had decided to take his marbles and go away.. hahahahahaha.. but then he decided to come back, so gotta give Richy T some credit for coming back even though some of us did kind of tease him (or would it be harass him) for the (Big blocker nonsense and supposed censorship baloney) reasons for his having had left (took a break) from the forum in the first place.

Don't get me wrong.. I still like Richy T (and his CB companion - who is likely more neutral on these issues) in spite of his BIG blocker history, and surely some of the guys who are inclined towards shitcoins and shitcoin talking points are not necessarily going to concede all of the arguments, even if they might concede on some points.. .. and for sure it is better that we do not always agree on all points, and sometimes some of the old battles can reemerge and start to rear their ugly heads, because issues will sometimes reemerge but then also there can be differences of opinion regarding what caused the issue in the first place and perhaps even what might be the solution.. and whether something might be wrong with some bitcoin code divergences or sometimes there are differences of opinion regarding bitcoin governance matters.

But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

You can't tell me that guy doesn't use some bot to post those charts about bitcoin price every 1 hour in the wall observer thread, surely he will be number one, the reason why post quantity with no quality is useless.

In the wall observer thread, almost everyone wants CB... Sure there are a few members who complain about CB, but overall CB is a preferred feature of the WO thread, and maybe even special to the whole bitcoin space.. and gotta thank Richy T for that for sure.. because even when Richy T was gone from the forum for more than 3 years or whatever it was, there were several times in which several members had wished for CB to come back or for another forum member to program such a bot such as ChartBuddy 2.0 or to name it something else, but no one did it... even when Richy T came back, he was pretty damned reluctant to reactivate CB, until several of us harassed him to near death to reactivate it... (o..k. .I might be exaggerating a wee bit.. but whatever)...

But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.

I doubt that anyone ranks up merely because they end up agreeing with the older members, but it is quite likely that after spending quite a bit of time on the forum (or even in bitcoin) there is a lot of learning that goes on, including even better abilities to express arguments and presentations.. and like you said earlier in your post, there is a kind of learning that comes from the back and forth battling, even when you perceive it to be something like a 2 on 1 ganging up. and  there are two members agreeing on one side and you are presenting opposing arguments, and after a while you realize either they were right or you have to come up with better arguments and/or better evidence in order to overcome some of the points that they had been makings..

....so you are not necessarily always going to lose against the more senior members, but sometimes, they are already going to have seen your various arguments, so in in order to convince them to move off of some of their conclusions, then you have to better account for both what you are saying and what they are saying and to see if there might be some room to make progress... and hopefully both sides will learn in the process.   Does not always happen, but hopefully all sides (even the audience) is learning in the process (to the extent anyone else might be reading the back and forth arguments?).

[Inwestour]

This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.

Yeap, it happens that I can go to the forum several times a day, read topics, find answers that interest me, but at the same time I have nothing to write, because I found a question that interests me and I also found an exhaustive answer to it. At the moment, I understand that I'm just learning and my knowledge is very often not enough to answer how old ranked members do it.

Therefore, it is clear to me why old ranked members write more posts and get more merit for their posts. They share their knowledge with the society, they are useful for the forum and it is clear that the society thanks them for it. I see how many active forum users get a lot of merit, it inspires me, because I understand that it is possible, but I also see what kind of knowledge you need to have for this, and this is not an easy job and this is a well-deserved result.

[Upgrade00]

I see how many active forum users get a lot of merit, it inspires me, because I understand that it is possible, but I also see what kind of knowledge you need to have for this, and this is not an easy job and this is a well-deserved result.

I do not tend to get a lot of merit or consider myself to be very knowledgeable, especially about the technicalities of Bitcoin, but I would say that users do not get merits for any particular type of knowledge. There's no blue print on what you should know or how you should write; we have members here who focus on the gambling board, or economics, or mining, or trading and get merits there, while sharing useful information on topics they are interested in.

My point is, do not post a certain way inorder to fit in, particular when that topic does not interest you. Find your niche and grow your knowledge in that particular area. Wish you best of luck on your learning journey.

[JayJuanGee]

This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.

Yeap, it happens that I can go to the forum several times a day, read topics, find answers that interest me, but at the same time I have nothing to write, because I found a question that interests me and I also found an exhaustive answer to it. At the moment, I understand that I'm just learning and my knowledge is very often not enough to answer how old ranked members do it.

I think that you would be surprised by the potential greater level of your ability to contribute and even to have various different opinions, if you were to write out your answer/response before reading the responses from other members,  and you will start to notice that if you write out your response(s) prior to reading the responses of other members, the way that you answer the questions/issues might not be exactly the same as the more senior member.

Of course, it is up to you regarding how much you want to participate or interact, and it seems to me that there can be additional value with interacting that contributes towards a more active form of learning.. even though it takes more time to interact.. and in the interacting direction, I would suggest that it might be a good practice to write out your answer before reading the responses from other member, so that when you read the responses from other members, you would thereafter be able to see how much your way of expressing yourself is exactly the same or the extent to which your perspective is different.. which may also add some value, too...

You may well be surprised the extent to which your opinion still might be different from the more senior members, even though you have some overlapping areas of agreement with them, so when you read those further responses of the more senior members (and sometimes not so much more senior.. just peers), you can also decide whether to additionally respond to their points but not necessarily remove the areas of your already composed post in which you agree with them.

Therefore, it is clear to me why old ranked members write more posts and get more merit for their posts. They share their knowledge with the society, they are useful for the forum and it is clear that the society thanks them for it. I see how many active forum users get a lot of merit, it inspires me, because I understand that it is possible, but I also see what kind of knowledge you need to have for this, and this is not an easy job and this is a well-deserved result.

There is not any better way to do it, so the question remains up to you in regards to how much you want to use the forum as a way to interact with other members and to learn through such interaction or as a way to passively read posts... the choice is yours, for sure... but I would imagine that you will learn more by interacting even though it is more time consuming, yet a side benefit is that you will likely earn more merits.. even when you are making almost the same points or even if you end up writing out your response and you thought that you agreed, but by the time you write out your response, you realize that you disagree on some of the points that had already been made in the thread.

[Sandra_hakeem]

In Sandra_hakeem's case, she's been here almost a year but hasn't even made 120 posts.  That just isn't going to cut it--if you're looking to rank up, that is.

In one of her previous posts in this thread, she mentioned that she has been active every day for the last  3 months. I thought she joined the forum 3 months ago. But after reading your post and taking a quick look at her profile, I just noticed the registration date.

Quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, but if you manage to combine those two elements, you are more likely to get showered with merits than someone who isn't here that often. People read what is current and you should be part of it somehow for optimal results. Since you brought it up, Sandra hasn't made 120 posts in the whole year, but there are members that write 150+ in a month.  

No. You misunderstood me.
Infact, that was why I coined those words "three-month straight" . I may not have alot of post, why?

Lemme bring these to your notice (people in dev/tech board know already) that I left my account for almost 6 months -- if not more -- for some reasons I'm gonna tell you. I was terribly sick (I dunno if feminism has anything to do with that though) but it took sometime for my recovery. After my recovery, I won't just jump in and start posting.

* Sometimes, I spend more that 5 hours on the net ( that's not exaggerated) for my research so o could make-up extra schemes as I'm organizing pre-degree/internship and mentorship classes for a handful of people -- say 19 -- that I had convinced and I'm still scouting for more. Note: This classes are free of charge.
 Out of the time I spend on the net, I dedicate - sometimes - 2 hours or more depending on my mood -- if I'm not tired and sleepy from the day's stress-- on Bitcointalk.

* Since everything has been reinstated, I am currently tutoring kiddies in a commercial school. That's alot of work for me too. Moreover , I log on to bitcointalk most times just to find myself lost in the midst of uninteresting topics. I DON'T MAKE SHIT POST and I dunno how to start that; if ,I don't have anything contributive to say, I'll simply shut my ass up.

Chymist, I hope yunno that making some cumbersome, long, boring and falsified post (sometimes unknown to the reader) doesn't guarantee passing an authentic information? If so, coupled with the ailments that I left for a while to clear up, you should understand that it wasn't my fault neither was that intensional.

Jay, I don't think making mockery outta the whole scenerio will solve any problem. I came to stay and that's the points here . Well not to worry, I love one fact about you -- that you like keeping things real,  just the way it is --  so when you came in new to the forum ,some people looked at you in disdain? 😹 wonderful... Who knew that you'll become an old-guru one day? With almost 8 thousand merits and a healthy reputation? You see....

Chymist said that users with good potentials that finally rank up to legendary, just like MALEK, himself and the rest of you are rear; which means he doesn't believe in us(the knowledgeably-authored grown-ups to be?)??
I guess he doesn't wanna be specific but , TIME WILL TELL.

Furthermore, I reserve the right not to release any private info to convince anyone , henceforth. We all need some privacy, don't we?

Edit: hey philipma 1957, sorry I left you out, I was really in a hurry when I posted this.
Thanks for the merit and I guess you were tryna say that you appreciate my writing style - if I'm correct-? Yeah, many people do and that makes me confident enough. Thanks once again great one🌹
I'll be celebrating my new rank. , See y'all out there!!!

Cheers ,
Sandra 👩‍🦱

[JayJuanGee]

Jay, I don't think making mockery outta the whole scenerio will solve any problem. I came to stay and that's the points here . Well not to worry, I love one fact about you -- that you like keeping things real,  just the way it is --  so when you came in new to the forum ,some people looked at you in disdain? 😹 wonderful... Who knew that you'll become an old-guru one day? With almost 8 thousand merits and a healthy reputation? You see....

I try to NOT let any posts on the interwebs cause me to become upset, but surely, to the extent that any of us is real (humans, or at least sentient beings), we have emotions, so sometimes each of us might be bothered about something that someone said on the internet.

When someone posts as much as me, s/he does not necessarily gain friends, merely from the quantity of posts.

To the extent that you care, you can go back to some of my earlier posts, and there were times in which several members would proclaim that I should not post anymore because "no one likes you here."  Largely those kinds of posts did not bother me, and sometimes it would be fun to respond, and sometimes for sure any of us might want to post to make it appear that we are mad, and we are not really mad, but instead we are posting a negotiation position (maybe even laughing in the background (without showing it) about how ridiculous go the direction of some conversations).

Sometimes there are needs to be stubborn and other times there are needs to be humble or admit being wrong.. so if we have a lot of posts, we know that sometimes we do not get things right.. but then we can also sometimes say, "I used to think this, but now, my thinking has changed.  I think more like this.. [and then explain to the extent helpful]", and it could be a total reversal or it could be a modified version of the original with a few modest changes that can be described, to the extent anyone cares.

[Inwestour]

I think that you would be surprised by the potential greater level of your ability to contribute and even to have various different opinions, if you were to write out your answer/response before reading the responses from other members,  and you will start to notice that if you write out your response(s) prior to reading the responses of other members, the way that you answer the questions/issues might not be exactly the same as the more senior member.

Of course, it is up to you regarding how much you want to participate or interact, and it seems to me that there can be additional value with interacting that contributes towards a more active form of learning.. even though it takes more time to interact.. and in the interacting direction, I would suggest that it might be a good practice to write out your answer before reading the responses from other member, so that when you read the responses from other members, you would thereafter be able to see how much your way of expressing yourself is exactly the same or the extent to which your perspective is different.. which may also add some value, too...

You may well be surprised the extent to which your opinion still might be different from the more senior members, even though you have some overlapping areas of agreement with them, so when you read those further responses of the more senior members (and sometimes not so much more senior.. just peers), you can also decide whether to additionally respond to their points but not necessarily remove the areas of your already composed post in which you agree with them.

Therefore, it is clear to me why old ranked members write more posts and get more merit for their posts. They share their knowledge with the society, they are useful for the forum and it is clear that the society thanks them for it. I see how many active forum users get a lot of merit, it inspires me, because I understand that it is possible, but I also see what kind of knowledge you need to have for this, and this is not an easy job and this is a well-deserved result.

There is not any better way to do it, so the question remains up to you in regards to how much you want to use the forum as a way to interact with other members and to learn through such interaction or as a way to passively read posts... the choice is yours, for sure... but I would imagine that you will learn more by interacting even though it is more time consuming, yet a side benefit is that you will likely earn more merits.. even when you are making almost the same points or even if you end up writing out your response and you thought that you agreed, but by the time you write out your response, you realize that you disagree on some of the points that had already been made in the thread.

I understand what you are talking about, I myself thought about it, and I understand that during communication you can better understand the very essence of the issue. And of course I like to participate in discussions more than just reading. Already in communication with you, I realized that it is worth joining the discussion before I re-read all the answers, I received this understanding precisely in communication, so this is already bearing results.

I also agree that it is during communication the opportunity to receive merit will increase, which I can also track by my activity on the forum when I communicate and not just read. This is an experience that is acquired over time, everything becomes easier when you begin to understand simple things, that you did not notice before.

[philipma1957]

I've always bought into the notion that higher-ranked members tend to earn more merits, because it seems almost self-evident to me.  Older members have a lot more invested in the forum, are likely more knowledgeable (except for goobers like me), and know what kinds of posts are worth it to make.  Newbies....who the hell knows?  They don't have a good history on bitcointalk, that's for sure.  But there are always a bunch that keep at it, keep climbing the ranks, and end up becoming established members of our fine forum.  They're just rare, that's all.

This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.

But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.

You can't tell me that guy doesn't use some bot to post those charts about bitcoin price every 1 hour in the wall observer thread, surely he will be number one, the reason why post quantity with no quality is useless.

ChartBuddy is a bot.

We need to give him some time off as he will soon pass me by.

I don’t feel like posting 30 days in a row and doing 30 posts a day which won’t make me strech the lead much at all. it would be 900 to 720 and far too much work.

[aysg76]

We need to give him some time off as he will soon pass me by.

I don’t feel like posting 30 days in a row and doing 30 posts a day which won’t make me strech the lead much at all. it would be 900 to 720 and far too much work.

You can't compete with CB in the terms of active posting and he usually makes the high amount of posts with his automatic chart posting about bitcoin prices :

By far the most active member is a bot named ChartBuddy with 728 posts written during July, which is almost a double more than a 2nd most active member wrote. I will just share here top 10 and you can  find the rest at ninjastic.space

Code:

1. ChartBuddy [728]

So yes he is unmatchable in the term of posting and can overtake many if others remain less active and I also can't post each day due to some work but still try to give my best to the forum and learn from it

[LoyceV]

Can somebody also provide us with stats of individually earned Merit after recently accepted members (maybe last 10 members) got accepted to Chipmixer and Bestchange campaigns. I haven't noticed much about bestchange but that of chipmixer has to be obvious that after you gain enrollment into the campaign, you tend to get merited more and most times the high ranked members are the benefactors.

I have individual graphs here, see if you can find a correlation with the campaign they joined.

I understand that different worthy reasons could be the cause for the increase of merits for this newly accepted users like their posts now getting the exposure it deserves for its quality etc but I'll just love to see that stats and if possible differentiate the ranks.

Another reason could be they try even harder to make good posts, knowing they are being watched.

You got me, I thought your post was made today, but it's exactly one year old.

[philipma1957]

We need to give him some time off as he will soon pass me by.

I don’t feel like posting 30 days in a row and doing 30 posts a day which won’t make me strech the lead much at all. it would be 900 to 720 and far too much work.

You can't compete with CB in the terms of active posting and he usually makes the high amount of posts with his automatic chart posting about bitcoin prices :

By far the most active member is a bot named ChartBuddy with 728 posts written during July, which is almost a double more than a 2nd most active member wrote. I will just share here top 10 and you can  find the rest at ninjastic.space

Code:

1. ChartBuddy [728]

So yes he is unmatchable in the term of posting and can overtake many if others remain less active and I also can't post each day due to some work but still try to give my best to the forum and learn from it

Sorry I was being a bit playful.

Even if every deleted post I did was added back I would be in the 42k post range over the last 122 months

That is only 350 posts a month. say 11 or 12 a day.

chart buddy does 1 an hour. or 24 a day about 720 each month.

I can not pace that high. It would mean I need to double the posts far too much work.

I am stretched to thin with what I post now.

[nutildah]

Even if every deleted post I did was added back I would be in the 42k post range over the last 122 months

That is only 350 posts a month. say 11 or 12 a day.

chart buddy does 1 an hour. or 24 a day about 720 each month.

I can not pace that high. It would mean I need to double the posts far too much work.

I am stretched to thin with what I post now.

You need to make a bot to automate your posts for you... maybe have it make all the posts in a special Off-Topic thread.

Maybe have it make AI-generated posts based off the last post. For example, this is generated in Sassbook AI Writer off the text quoted above:

And if you can't get much more than that into your posts, do it with a heavy dose of sarcasm. This is really the only way to make a post go. You're making me chuckle, so I'm not going to let you down. (This is actually really true, and I don't mean to offend anyone.)