[Statistics] OgNasty's Merit Faucet

[OgNasty]

I personally think it was a quite good idea to distribute merits while helping newbies to learn something useful, besides OG clarified he checked the users who applied to avoid meriting cheaters, spammers, etc as much as possible, encoraging users who had a fairly chance to become good contributors of the forum, that's just my personal point of view, of course...

I thought so as well, even though I did get a ton of pushback and saw some threads making allegations that I was doing this for nefarious reasons (shocker, I know).  It isn't totally selfless though I will admit.  I've found that checking the newbies in that thread has allowed me to ignore a TON of spammers.  This pays dividends down the road as well, because those users will NEVER have the chance to get merit from me now.  Not to mention I'll never have to waste my time reading their posts.  From my perspective that's an awesome benefit and nearly worth the effort of the thread by itself. 

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[Smartvirus]

Almost two years ago the user OgNasty created a thread/topic on Beginners & Help in order to give merit to newbies and Juniors who proved to be able to sign a message with a Bitcoin address. I don't talk to OgNasty but I assume he took this iniciative to spread merits and help others to learn something new and useful within the crypto world.

-Here is the list of users that have participated so far and attempted to sign a message with their adresses:

Code:

Smartvirus

Here's the list of the active ones under the presented conditions.

Code:

Smartvirus

Wow, how long has it been, I can barely recall even though its just months ago but, it tells how far I've come. Yeah, I'm guilty as charged and i stand one of the beneficiaries of OgNasty, from that thread of years back. At a time, it was just some way to get around, trying to do something fun and earn merits too. Mostly, the merits seemed like a much enticing thing at the time. You know, when you've got just a few not numbering to 10merits on your reader, your looking up to a 100merits and you've got a thread that offers even 1 for some educative fun activity. You've got to give it a go right!

Anyway, I did and wasn't disappointed and it still was a fun thing to do at the time and still, would be a very good means to send confidential information between a pal when the time comes. As fun as it was, it did cleared certain sentiments and taught some lessons too. Like;

For Sentiments:

1. Ranking up is possible
2. Merits aren't being hold by high rank users on the forum
3. There are those who genuinely wants you to rank up

For leasons:
1. There is a reward for hardwork, learning or fulfilling a task
2. Your better off learning than having others do it for you and it's fun too
3. The importance of privacy in the cryptospace
4. How a signed message could be all you need to clarify certain truths and lies

The ills to this means of merit distribution that came with a clear part to its awarding is,
* Those who just need it to cross certain merit barriers could get away with it rather easily.

The truth is, most systems comes with a loophole and you can't really keep users from exploiting it when found. On the whole, it was agood initiative for those who realised its usefulness and truth. I am still grateful to OgNasty on those Newbie lessons.

[Hispo]

-snip-

Not to mention I'll never have to waste my time reading their posts.  From my perspective that's an awesome benefit and nearly worth the effort of the thread by itself. 

I would assume most of them stayed on the bounty section anyways.
Still, good to know some of those who participated ended up being constructive members of the forum.

-snip-
-Here is the list of users that have participated so far and attempted to sign a message with their adresses:

Code:

Smartvirus

Here's the list of the active ones under the presented conditions.

Code:

Smartvirus

Wow, how long has it been, I can barely recall even though its just months ago but, it tells how far I've come. Yeah, I'm guilty as charged and i stand one of the beneficiaries of OgNasty, from that thread of years back.

Time flies, doesn't it?
And I agree with you, there are some people here on the forum that wish others to rank up, it is not an hostile place as it may appear to be when one's a newcomer.

I suppose, there is always the uncentainly of not knowing whether one is meriting a good Newbie or a Spammer/ Plagiarist.
I have been in the position I felt like helping a new user with a merit, only to find out the got banned after some months since.

[Welsh]

I thought so as well, even though I did get a ton of pushback and saw some threads making allegations that I was doing this for nefarious reasons (shocker, I know).  It isn't totally selfless though I will admit.  I've found that checking the newbies in that thread has allowed me to ignore a TON of spammers.  This pays dividends down the road as well, because those users will NEVER have the chance to get merit from me now.  Not to mention I'll never have to waste my time reading their posts.  From my perspective that's an awesome benefit and nearly worth the effort of the thread by itself.  

The thing is, will it be abused by alternate account farmers? Undoubtedly. However, those types of accounts rarely get to rank up anyway, so whatever their objective is, which I'll be honest likely is bounty related, will be dealt with either via the trust system or moderation if appropriate. The fact that alternate farms will abuse it, means they could actually be a silver lining to it, giving us a list of accounts that could be monitored for abuse.

However, I know this wasn't your intention, and I quite appreciate the sentiment behind it. Those that will rank up anyway, get to learn something that they might not have interest in otherwise, and it'll teach them some key fundamentals about signing, verifying, as well as having a kick start into the forum. I personally don't have much of a problem with that at all.

It doesn't matter too much that the majority might not stay active in the long term, you couldn't possibly know that. Likely, these are the alternate account farmers who gave up, or simply legitimate users who don't want to participate long term in the forum, which is fine too.

Honestly, I think the damage that can be done via something like this is rather small, and it does encourage legitimate users. I don't have a problem with it personally. There's plenty of other comparable threads which offer merit for answering a question, this might even be more important, as I consider verifying signatures to be one of the most important factors, and also teaches them how to verify in general outside of Bitcoin.