Is it time for them to get a higher rank?

[ShowOff]

Today theymos publicly announced a raw list for forum contributors willing to report spam posts or low-quality posts for to be removed by mod. They are users who actually care quite a bit about the quality of this forum and they have also filtered hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of posts in the last year to report. That's pretty awesome and they seem to work pretty hard every day or every time they do activity on the forum.

From the names on the list that theymos announced, I found that some of them had not earned enough merit to rank up to become Members, Full Members, Hero, and Legendary. I don't know if all of them are quality posters or not. But regardless of how quality their posts have been so far, their contribution to keeping the forum clean of spammers and low quality posts should be greatly appreciated. So do the names I mention deserve more merit as a condition to move up to a higher rank from now on for their hard work so far?

In my opinion, to appreciate their contribution to the good report in the last year, the names of the contributors in the list below should be appreciated with some merits from you. But that doesn't mean users with high "Legendary" ratings don't deserve a lot of credit for their contributions.

List of contributors "Low Rank"

|	Username	|	Current Merit	|	Current Rank	|
|	bluspirit	|	3 Merit	|	Jr. Member	|
|	miner29	|	59 Merit	|	Member	|
|	colires	|	63 Merit	|	Member	|
|	RickDeckard	|	335 Merit	|	Sr. Member	|
|	alucard20724	|	259 Merit	|	Sr. Member	|
|	UnclWish	|	253 Merit	|	Sr. Member	|
|	UserU	|	328 Merit	|	Sr. Member	|
|	Barcode_	|	553 Merit	|	Hero Member	|
|	eaLiTy	|	824 Merit	|	Hero Member	|
|	friends1980	|	816 Merit	|	Hero Member	|
|	Csmiami	|	774 Merit	|	Hero Member	|
|	Mbitr	|	578 Merit	|	Hero Member	|

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[Igebotz]

Merits is earned!!! Yes, we can all agree that they did a fantastic job, but giving them merits wouldn't make a difference in the long run. Perhaps a badge for the top reporter at the end of the year would suffice. That's just my opinion.

[ShowOff]

Merits is earned!!! Yes, we can all agree that they did a fantastic job, but giving them merits wouldn't make a difference in the long run. Perhaps a badge for the top reporter at the end of the year would suffice. That's just my opinion.

Maybe you're right, but at least the merit will help them rank up for their contributions to the forum. Reporting posts to mods may be done secretly without many people knowing unless the user is willing to make it public themselves such as acmyname or the list is made by the admin. Forum badge? Yeah, that seems like a good idea igehhh. But I think it will cost some money.

[Csmiami]

No, they shouldn't pump the ranks of those of us that are not there yet. The only people that care about rank are usually low value contributors that care only for bounty campaigns.

[isaac_clarke22]

~

Maybe you're right, but at least the merit will help them rank up for their contributions to the forum. Reporting posts to mods may be done secretly without many people knowing unless the user is willing to make it public themselves such as acmyname or the list is made by the admin. Forum badge? Yeah, that seems like a good idea igehhh. But I think it will cost some money.

Most of the members mentioned in the OP would just rank up in no time based on their merit history in the last 120 days. Forum badge is sufficient enough as what igehhh mentioned.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

No, they shouldn't pump the ranks of those of us that are not there yet. The only people that care about rank are usually low value contributors that care only for bounty campaigns.

I agree that those top reporters don't deserve merits for their effort, because that isn't what the merit system is for--but as I said in Theymos's thread, I do think they deserve some sort of recognition beyond having their names mentioned publicly.  That's up to Theymos himself, though.

I disagree with your second statement about rank, because there are certainly members who've cared or do care about their rank who aren't bounty-hunting shitposters.  Having a rank of Hero or Legendary is a source of pride for some members, because it shows how much the forum means to them--whether they're getting paid to post or not.

[NeuroticFish]

I agree, they did a great job and they should be proud. But that doesn't make them good posters.

If it would be to rank them up, Theymos could just "airdrop" them some merit, I guess. But just meriting some "random" posts for that... it's not OK.
Or they can get some sort of badge. Maybe better stats could come first and then the badge will come just natural.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Instead of just giving them merit for been such good reporters, why not suggest their post history get review. We have so many descents posters that their posts don't get merited and that's not because they're not worth it but they haven't been seen by users having smerits to spare and most of them don't even care because they didn't join the forum for the rewards and virtual recognition it brings.

Also merits earned are more appreciated than those gotten without meriting them. I'm pretty sure there would be some decent posts within this users that needs to be highlighted.

[ShowOff]

In fact I've guessed that not all of us have the same idea of ​​how contributors should be rewarded like "merit or badge" for their contributions to the forum. I don't expect you all to agree with my idea and that's not the main point of the question I'm asking. Here I just want to exchange opinions with most of the forum contributors and all of you so that we can really interact well with each other, appreciate user contributions and others. I agree that forum badge are great for them and it's probably one of the brightest ideas I've ever heard after they announced the names of contributors on the list.

I just think that if users who contribute a lot for good reporting get badge, then I also hope users who contribute a lot as scammer hunters or cheat hunters and other contributors who support this forum to stay clean should also get badges. It shouldn't be a bad idea, but in the end the admin will decide everything.

Instead of just giving them merit for been such good reporters, why not suggest their post history get review.

Because we are not alone here, then someone or some of us can do it for them. That's the reason why I link all the username in the list directly to their profile so people can review that user's post history if they want.

[Upgrade00]

Promising merits to reporters could potentially be problematic as it could attract users spamming reports and overloading the mods in an attempt to get some extra merits. A user can simply go to a spam mega thread with lots of meaningless messages and drop reports there to boost their report statistics while making mods waste their time on low priority cases.

Badges is a good suggestion and is a sufficient reward in my opinion.

[Coyster]

Because we are not alone here, then someone or some of us can do it for them. That's the reason why I link all the username in the list directly to their profile so people can review that user's post history if they want.

The thing is, if other users or maybe even merit sources are going to review their post histories, then it should only be cause the said users make quality posts and are maybe undermerited or maybe just a few merits short of a new rank, and not cause of how effective they have been making good reports, if that's to come to play, then what they deserve is a reporters badge; that's exactly what other users above are trying to say.

I just think that if users who contribute a lot for good reporting get badge, then I also hope users who contribute a lot as scammer hunters or cheat hunters and other contributors who support this forum to stay clean should also get badges. It shouldn't be a bad idea, but in the end the admin will decide everything.

Don't you think this could be a very good reason why Theymos has applied the brakes on creating a reporters badge, cause forum users could start requesting badges for absolutely (m)any thing(s).

[RickDeckard]

I was a bit hesitant to reply to this thread since I'm one of the users that got to be mentioned on theymos list and my username also appears on your list, but I guess I'll share my opinion regarding your idea : While I understand your point of view - and thank you for the detailed thread information - I would much prefer that users don't end up meriting other users just because they've appeared on some list (even if that list contributes to the overall wealth / balance of a website). This is mostly related with four arguments:

• I've been reporting without any hope of it being recognized and I'll continue to do so- I don't have particular good skills that can help the forum directly - I don't code (at least not as the likes of TryNinja for example) so I can't make awesome tools, and I don't consider myself to be very "design" orientated. So by reporting threads/replies I feel like I'm contributing to the forum in the most direct way that I can, and the reward is almost immediate - to see that my report has gone from unhandled to "good" is an awesome feeling (and that, by itself, is already great!)
• Being a good reporter doesn't directly correlates with generating useful / contributing / high-quality posts - "I" (as a figurative example) can be an awesome user in detecting users breaking forum rules but at the same time my contributions to the forum may not be up to the standards that it should be. This can have a multiple of reasons - from simply not wanting to post detailed replies, or to don't have the "time" to help whoever is in need of help. And that is OK to be honest, I guess each of us has a role within the forum and as long we're doing our part without disrupting the overall quality of it, that's good. In this case one user can't simply just merit random threads/replies simply because the user got mentioned elsewhere. That would make new users (that already have their share of issues with the merit system) simply look into those "no content" replies and have more arguments to say - "Oh no, merit system is broken, this reply wasn't high-quality (debatable) and it got 5 merits!". I'm sure that we got a fair share of users like my example, we don't need to give them even more wood for the fire...
• We would be acting against one of the main reasons the merit system was created - As theymos[1] puts it:
  

  I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
   - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.

• Whoever reports on a daily basis, doesn't look at their overall merit score a.k.a isn't in need to rush "Legendary" status - This doesn't mean that one simply doesn't care about it, I would say instead that the users aren't "obsessed" with it. I'm most certain that all the members that aren't Legendary and are on that list will eventually reach there - If they care about the forum to have such an active role in reporting and cleaning up threads, I'm sure that they don't worry too much about their "daily" merit KPI and they'll eventually contribute to the forum in ways that will allow them to reach upper classes.

As for me, I am already way overwhelmed by the recognition and that is already the best "present" that I could have. I'm a sucker for badges[3](my pie badge failed )  though, so I wouldn't say no to them - even though I do believe it would be unfair for users of past years, that I'm sure that also did a tremendous job. Perhaps making badges for certain level as it has been suggested[2] in the past?

As a final note, on a more not-so-serious level, even though my report numbers aren't high, I guess I could say that:


[1]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0
[2]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4742257.0
[3]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5315458.0

[Igebotz]

A similar badge

Merits is earned!!! Yes, we can all agree that they did a fantastic job, but giving them merits wouldn't make a difference in the long run. Perhaps a badge for the top reporter at the end of the year would suffice. That's just my opinion.

Maybe you're right, but at least the merit will help them rank up for their contributions to the forum. Reporting posts to mods may be done secretly without many people knowing unless the user is willing to make it public themselves such as acmyname or the list is made by the admin. Forum badge? Yeah, that seems like a good idea igehhh. But I think it will cost some money.

Something like that wouldn't cost anything, but I believe Lovesmayfamiliis deserves some sort of recognition from theymos for her dedication to discovering scam projects and reporting scammers and spammers on a daily basis; I doubt she'd be interested anyways. She adores the forum

[examplens]

Promising merits to reporters could potentially be problematic as it could attract users spamming reports and overloading the mods in an attempt to get some extra merits. A user can simply go to a spam mega thread with lots of meaningless messages and drop reports there to boost their report statistics while making mods waste their time on low priority cases.

Badges is a good suggestion and is a sufficient reward in my opinion.

this is the point. Reporting posts had nothing with merit and cannot be a reason for that kind of rewarding.
nutildah pointed vareole from "top reporter" lists, users with many scam accusations and active flags against them. perhaps the next suggestion might be to remove negative ratings on his profile due to a high number of good reports.

[Upgrade00]

<snip>

Exactly, good reports would only be effective in choosing moderators or patrollers in various boards.
If someone knows how to report effectively, they would possibly also know how to discern how to handle reports. I believe this was how the current moderators were chosen.

[PrivacyG]

I agree with Upgrade00.  Incentivizing reports will overload the mods with bad reports.  May be a better idea to eventually incentivize top reporters based on both number of good posts and percentage of accuracy?  But even then, spam still happens.

Earning a badge is better for everyone overall.  It keeps the spammers away as there is no way to profit from this, signature campaigns and bounties do not accept users based on non-rank badges.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[UserU]

I'm surprised that my name even made it to the list, but I agree that we don't need to incentivize reports with any Merits. All it takes is just a two clicks and voila, one report.

A badge would be nice though.

On a side note, I do care about my report accuracy since mine's been hovering around 99% for a long time so I won't be those that make the mods flip their tables

[Poker Player]

I agree with most of the responses that merit, which should be earned by posts alone, should not be mixed with reporting. Aside from a badge or something else that could be awarded to recognize their work, I understand that when there is a moderator position, the amount of correct reports of the person who applies is taken into account, which is a way of recognizing their good contribution as well.

[actmyname]

If you start meriting users for their contributions by report numbers, then you invite a corrupting incentive. Some call it a 'cobra effect'.

Imagine a user trying to stay ahead of the metric, "most good reports" by creating spam to easily report, thereby making reporting worse off entirely. Considering the financial association with rank, signatures, and merit, you're tempting the devil indeed.

[Apocollapse]

Halab aren't wrong...

It has been requested, but not sure that all top reporters want to be exposed publicly. And if it turns into a dick contest like merits...