[Merit] Legendary To Newbies Distribution Concern & Problem!

[Rikafip]

Lowering some standards doesn't necessarily entail meriting bad posts; rather, it just means that you shouldn't evaluate new posts in the same manner as legendary ones. Various knowledge levels are present.

I don't think that double standards is the real solution for the lack of merits shared to Newbie members.

Tagging a newbies posts as merit fishing attempts is another problem 

Real problem is that we have so many Newbies writing merit fishing posts and not the other way around. How would you characterize all those posts written by newbies giving advice to other members how to behave on forum or how happy they are that they found this forum? Real reason why we get so many of those is because standards were so low that those kind of posts used to get a lot merit and now people simply call them out which is a step in the right direction.

[Poker Player]

look at the case of n0nce for example.

They're a outlier, so it's not fair to compare them to the average user.

Yeah, well, that's the most extreme example but there are many who are not nearly as good and yet receive merit. In my case, I received merits when my rank was lower, as I said before:

Mind you, when I was a lower ranked member I did receive many merits from higher ranked ones.

And I don't even come close to n0nce's shoe.

Maybe the admin should have created the merit system in such a way that it prevented Legendary from getting merits from the same rank, or the max amount of merits should have been set to 1000, although that would have opened some other issues in the distribution of merits.

Since theymos is an avowed ancap, I doubt that such an idea even crossed his mind.

[Igebotz]

What’s happening now was, You can’t get a enough merit if your field of expertise is not about Bitcoin technicalities or in Meta which most of the merits distributes.

So where are the merit applicants who applied to concentrate only on B & H? I wouldn't expect a person with no football expertise to distribute merits on the betting board.

Maybe the admin should have created the merit system in such a way that it prevented Legendary from getting merits from the same rank, or the max amount of merits should have been set to 1000, although that would have opened some other issues in the distribution of merits.

Very good point. I agree with the idea of setting a merit cap for legendary members because these days it seems like everyone is competing to have the most merits. Let's ignore any potential issues and concentrate more on the advantages.

The above means that, as soon as somebody ranks-up a level, his account will drag the merit data to his new Rank. In the cases being deal with here, Legendary ranks may receive a newcomer or two per week (Hero-> Legendary), but Newbie accounts subject to ranking up a level should be greater in volume and speed. The shorter the timeframe chosen, the more accurate the data since there are less people ranking-up than in a wider timeframe.

I initially had problems with this, which is why I limited the data collection to the year 2022 and onward. I knew there would be some random errors due to daily rank up, but the charts still contain an atom of truth.

What are your suggestions?

Apply for a merit source status so you can focus on Newbies. Or even better, focus on Newbies in Altcoin section.

Not a bad idea but my focus would be more on gambling discussion board, that's where home is.

[tranthidung]

Even so, for the sake of seeing the magnitude of the effect:

The Merit Dashboard shows an all-time historical (more prone to Rank distortion) aggregate of:
Legendary-> Legendary: 538.953 (58,05%)
Legendary->Newbie: 33.230 (3,58%)

From the 01/07/2022 until the 08/07/2022 (small Rank distortion):
L-> L: 3042 (56,68%)
L->N: 223 (4,16%)

Percentages are more or less in the same magnitude.

Yeah minor changes as I expected. In a whole picture, things don't change much (minor ones) but in local pictures, there are. However, if a whole picture is good enough, the forum is fine.

• Personally, I don't expect to see any big change with such things.
  
• Generally, the overall distribution of merit between members and member ranks won't change much

[n0nce]

look at the case of n0nce for example.

They're a outlier, so it's not fair to compare them to the average user. I mean, even if they posted in the Altcoin section, at the same quality they'd get a decent amount of merits, albeit not as much as they have, but they would've been recognised for sure. 

However, the Altcoin section doesn't have that. Honestly, I think chopping up the section a little more, i.e having a technical discussion area for Altcoins, would really help the section. It would allow to sift through some of the junk, but also for those that are only interested in emerging technology, and technical discussions could just go there.

I'd like to see us moderators getting on top of the spam problem a little bit more, and better categorisation of the whole section.

Categorization sounds great to me! I've wanted to talk about some Monero aspects and privacy characteristics of other Altcoins, even though I'm not interested in them directly; just in learning about the technicalities to see what may make sense to get incorporated in (or built on top of) Bitcoin.
However, I know that even if I write a good post in there, on one hand the people who are able and willing to talk about these concepts don't frequent the board due to its spam / scam problem, and on the other hand it will quickly be pushed down to later pages by aforementioned spam.
Therefore, a technical Altcoin and Layer-2 board would be extremely helpful, where anything non-technical can just be reported and subsequently deleted or moved to the right board / subsection.

I guess it could also help anyone mainly interested in (legit) Altcoin discussion who wants to give helpful contributions (and thus obviously deserves merits), but so far has no real chance to have such discussion.

As for Altcoin boards, the forum long ago admitted defeat regarding spam and scams in that part of the forum, and I'm just one of many who don't want to participate in it, at least by rewarding newbies who hunt for bounty prizes there. I hope that we send the message so clearly, and some who understand it will be rewarded for it in other parts of the forum where they can actually learn something and become part of the community.

Then how about a board not in the Altcoin section, but in the Bitcoin section; something like 'Altcoin concepts', a place to discuss specific concepts / aspects of certain Altcoins that could be interesting for Bitcoin?
Whereas discussions about Altcoins themselves can stay in the Altcoin section?

I don't think the 'Altcoin section spammers' will be interested in visiting that section since there won't be any airdrops, any Altcoin announcements, bounties or giveaways (or whatever else they offer in that board that seems like quick, easy money at first and ends up as a scam).

[crwth]

Recognising a newbie as a way to help them! Is that to say users looks at the ranks before dishing out merits? I greatly doubt that.

Isn't that the point of the topic here? Because the Legendary to Newbies distribution is really low and it's only cycled with the Legendary ranks themselves? What do you doubt about that?

Despite the experience one might have from being involved on other platforms or in the crypto space, forum wise, the rank you bear being newbie places you as that.

I didn't say anything about making it about rank. I said that it's hard to merit newbies because they don't know yet how to post "meritable posts" here.

The posts gets the merit and not the account.

What the f*ck do you mean? I didn't say anything related to merits being given because of the account. It's the quality of post. Then the post gets the merit and it goes to the account. There are some kind of bias when it comes to seeing posts with rank and lower rank.

Although, the rank might lead to some compromise as to standard but even intelligent questions gets merits too.

This isn't about how users get merits, it's about the "Legendary To Newbies Distribution Concern & Problem!" As the title suggests.

[KingsDen]

When a good post is coming from a higher rank member, you know that he is not fishing for merit

Merit fishing is a phrase coined to wicked lower-ranked members. Since my newbie days till today, I am yet to understand why the so called merit fishing is a problem.

What is not acceptable in the forum is merit begging, but I don't know the place of merit fishing and importantly, why it is used mainly for lower-ranked members. I have seen countless times posts that are tracking the merit status of high and reputable members. EG, posts that tracks first to reach 10k merits. Tbh, those posts are merit fishing posts, even if they were not created by the people concerned. Such posts indirectly biase the minds of merits senders (sources), either to increase the rate of meriting a particular account to enable him reach a merit goal or reduce the rate of meriting another in order to slow his rate of reaching a certain set merit target.

When I was in high score my lecturers said I beg for score while writing exams and that is why I was always the best. I do not practically ask them to score me high marks, but my points and method of presenting them begs for marks on my behalf. Why didn't my lecturers fail me and tag my answers as score fishing?

Well, if there is anything like merit fishing and should dwell in this context, I would say that everyone in the forum fishes for merit, the difference is while higher ranked members fish in the high sea, the lower-ranked members fish in a shallow water and that is why they are always seen and accused.

If a user sees a post that he doesn't like, it's better to skip rather than accusing the op of merit fishing. This act has denied many newbies their first merit and more.

[Coyster]

Merit fishing is a phrase coined to wicked lower-ranked members. Since my newbie days till today, I am yet to understand why the so called merit fishing is a problem.

I'm yet to understand the 'divine powers' with which some users use to categorize a post that is merit fishing, sometimes it looks to be more of what is not of their own taste, what i mean is, when they like a post, it is a good one, when they don't, then it becomes merit fishing, as far as i am concerned a user can never know the intent as to why a post is made by someone else, thus when a post is called out for merit fishing it is just their own personal speculation which should not be taken seriously at all. I'd rather ignore a thread i do not care about, that call it out for merit fishing when i am not sure of myself.

[The Cryptovator]

There is no concern, to be honest. Merit deserve on the post, doesn't matter the poster rank. Spreading merits better than hoarding. Newbies have to struggle to familiarize themselves with the forum. It's not possible to come to the forum and earn merits. As a merit source, I always like to send merit low ranks members. But sometimes post forced me to merit high-rank users. I am very soft when sending merits to low ranks users. Because merit is more important than a user who really needs it. High ranks don't need much merit unless there are campaign requirements. But newbies or low ranks users must need at least a good post, not spam at all to earn merits.

[Smartvirus]

Ranked accounts meriting themselves is a trend in which, any involved forum user is sure to notice if he or she is observant enough. This could result from the fact that, ranked users are more versatile with the forum, makes more posts per day and are more knowledgeable on the subjects to the discussion than most newbies or beginners. We have some really good beginners too and am sure you won't find those complaining except for the multitude that just comes to the forum with there stiff ideas and aren't open to learning new things. Another thing is, merits often finds its way back to the meriter and with newbies not earning more merits and consequentlynot  having smerits to send often, they unfortunately fall short on the trend.

Be that as it may, there is really no point hodling smerits as though they were bitcoins that would be valuable in the nearest future. The smerits have got nothing to add to your account nor take from you so, its best you give it out whenever and wherever you find a merit deserving post. Making sure your not abusing it just because, you wish to boost newbies. It would be sad to have a ranked up user that acts and comments like a newbie. No, that won't be good, we need users to rep the ranks they bare!

Instead of hodling smerits, learn to hodl them precious bitcoin/sats!!!

[n0nce]

Ranked accounts meriting themselves is a trend in which, any involved forum user is sure to notice if he or she is observant enough.

Honestly, I merit based on content and when reading a thread, often don't even look at the usernames / profile pictures to the left.

When I check from time to time (e.g. in my merit page), I do notice that I give a lot of merits to Legendary and Hero accounts. Unfortunately, that means that those users simply write good posts that match my personal criteria for distributing my sMerits.
Which are amongst others, how interesting, helpful and thoughtful the post is.

Sometimes I send someone merit and afterward notice it's a new user, which leaves me positively surprised, other times I read really trash posts (both in writing and content); I check and see a Hero or Legendary account. Both exist, to be honest. I wouldn't give the latter user merit, no matter the rank.

[philipma1957]

When a good post is coming from a higher rank member, you know that he is not fishing for merit

Merit fishing is a phrase coined to wicked lower-ranked members. Since my newbie days till today, I am yet to understand why the so called merit fishing is a problem.

What is not acceptable in the forum is merit begging, but I don't know the place of merit fishing and importantly, why it is used mainly for lower-ranked members. I have seen countless times posts that are tracking the merit status of high and reputable members. EG, posts that tracks first to reach 10k merits. Tbh, those posts are merit fishing posts, even if they were not created by the people concerned. Such posts indirectly biase the minds of merits senders (sources), either to increase the rate of meriting a particular account to enable him reach a merit goal or reduce the rate of meriting another in order to slow his rate of reaching a certain set merit target.

When I was in high score my lecturers said I beg for score while writing exams and that is why I was always the best. I do not practically ask them to score me high marks, but my points and method of presenting them begs for marks on my behalf. Why didn't my lecturers fail me and tag my answers as score fishing?

Well, if there is anything like merit fishing and should dwell in this context, I would say that everyone in the forum fishes for merit, the difference is while higher ranked members fish in the high sea, the lower-ranked members fish in a shallow water and that is why they are always seen and accused.

If a user sees a post that he doesn't like, it's better to skip rather than accusing the op of merit fishing. This act has denied many newbies their first merit and more.

Okay I got 1000 airdropped and earned over 3500.
I don’t ever need another merit yet I like getting them whenever I do.
In fact sometimes I make a very good post and will guess if that post will earn more than 10 merits.

So am I merit fishing technically yes as I am efforting to write a quality post to a thread.
But I don’t earn from my signature and simply don’t need the merits.

Newbies generally need merits. They are not fishing for sport like I am doing with this post.
I have given hundreds of merits to newbies. I also have tried giving rank up points to jr members and full members and senior members.

It can be a bummer to follow a newbie that posts well and then they get caught for cheating earning a ban.
I have been following majestic-milf

liked the name he or she has been a good poster I hope they continue to do well.

I am now debating to delete this or post it.
I write over 100 posts a month that I never post.

I am going to post it.

I am also going to check on majestic-milf posts.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3454941

so m-m was new on march 9 2022

earned 60 merits and posted 140 times.

now a member

got many merits in first month as a newbie and now none of those merits count as legendary to newbie

much like loyce mentions.

So the real way is not legendary to newbie but legendary to member or at legendary to 120 day or less fourm member.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

C'mon lower some standard while meriting newbies.

Oh, hell no.  There's no way I'm going to lower my standards, because if every merit source did that and just started handing out merits for mediocre or even shitposts, the merit system wouldn't function as it should.  It's not supposed to be easy to earn merits.  Never was, and that's the way it should be.  By making members work harder to rank up, forum post quality has gone up significantly (IMO) since 2018, and account farming has been decimated.

This is far from a life-or-death issue, so I don't see why merit sources (or anyone else) ought to lower their standards.  It isn't as if there's been a massive outcry from the community about the merit system being an impossible barrier to ranking up.  If you don't up your rank on a discussion forum....it ain't a big deal, really.

What about the merits source, which ignores B&H and Altcoin discussion boards?

I've got both of those sections on ignore, and I'm not apologizing for that.  I don't have time for all the B&H bullshit, and though altcoins interest me, the few threads I've created to ask for information have fallen flat.  That's likely because bounty hunters and assorted shitposters don't have any incentive to give thoughtful responses--and so my threads kept getting buried under a mountain of threads like "ETH or BTC???".  Fuck that. 

Besides, the altcoin sections are the main hangout for bounty hunters, who are the least deserving of merits, hands down.  Again, I don't hear a lot of complaints about a lack of merit distribution in the altcoin boards, so let 'em rank up when they rank up.  It may take years, but they'll probably have moved on to other money-making schemes by then anyway.

[TheUltraElite]

I can say with a degree of certainty that if we have a 100 newbies sign up on the forum, 99 are bounty hunters recycled accounts. That one genuine user who understands how to game the system eventually ends up as a "Newbie in the spotlight" in the forum. But dont let my thought cloud your optimism because some of these "low quality" posters eventually become worthy of their rank and that will lead to merits being awarded to their posts.

There is also a lot of problem in the viewership of posts. Often good posts get buried in the flood of shitposts.

A highly merited post will get merited even more reducing the number of merit received by other well written or well though out posts. Such problems I believe are a design flaw of the system and cannot be corrected or mitigated at this stage.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

There's a flaw in these statistics: Newbies with Merit don't stay Newbie for long.

So the real way is not legendary to newbie but legendary to member or at legendary to 120 day or less fourm member.

This changed the whole thing. I would like to see the comparison for account older to 120 days vs Legendary. Hopefully we will not see much difference and there will be no concern too.

I am now debating to delete this or post it.
I write over 100 posts a month that I never post.

I never looked at your post number. It just got my attention, 39396 is a crazy number 🙄

[Lucius]

Maybe the admin should have created the merit system in such a way that it prevented Legendary from getting merits from the same rank, or the max amount of merits should have been set to 1000, although that would have opened some other issues in the distribution of merits.

Very good point. I agree with the idea of setting a merit cap for legendary members because these days it seems like everyone is competing to have the most merits. Let's ignore any potential issues and concentrate more on the advantages.

I think now is too late for such a change, I was just thinking in the direction in which the merit system should have been designed before it came into use. While it is obvious that there is no point in freezing the current merits of all Legendary, but it is possible to prevent them from exchanging merits with each other - although I personally do not believe that any changes to the merit system are possible. If that were to happen, you and I would become very unpopular members of the forum because we broke the merit cycling club

Then how about a board not in the Altcoin section, but in the Bitcoin section; something like 'Altcoin concepts', a place to discuss specific concepts / aspects of certain Altcoins that could be interesting for Bitcoin?
Whereas discussions about Altcoins themselves can stay in the Altcoin section?

"Altcoins that could be interesting for Bitcoin"? Do you think that something like that makes sense at all, given that the vast majority of altcoins have no purpose and that they generally do more harm than good for the entire cryptosystem? If the Terra/Luna fiasco hasn't taught us anything, then we're really in big trouble.

I've got both of those sections on ignore, and I'm not apologizing for that. 

The man with the most ignore boards on the forum - if you only got 1 satoshi every time you wrote that, you'd be a rich man

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The man with the most ignore boards on the forum - if you only got 1 satoshi every time you wrote that, you'd be a rich man

Lol, I didn't think I mentioned it that often but apparently since you noticed it, I'll probably not write about it again.

Don't most members here have a lot of sections on ignore?  Maybe I browse the forum differently, but I've been doing it the same way since I registered--my main page for browsing threads is "Show unread posts since last visit" link.  If I didn't have 98% of the forum on ignore, I'd be seeing threads in many different languages and all sorts of stuff I don't want to see.  As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think I've gone full retard.  How do the rest of you browse the forum without ignoring a bunch of sections?

I can say with a degree of certainty that if we have a 100 newbies sign up on the forum, 99 are bounty hunters recycled accounts. That one genuine user who understands how to game the system eventually ends up as a "Newbie in the spotlight" in the forum.

I think you're spot-on about that, because I've noticed some of those spotlight newbies who make a splash very quickly after they become members of the forum.  You can tell they put in a good deal of thought into what they're posting, and generally they know how to write. 

Most newbies who post in the main English-language sections clearly don't have a good grasp of grammar, spelling, sentence construction, and all of that's on top of the fact that their posts are devoid of anything interesting and usually are very short.  That's kind of a dead giveaway that they're just here to earn money.

[Coyster]

How do the rest of you browse the forum without ignoring a bunch of sections?

I do not have any section on ignore, well that could be because i browse the forum normally/different from how you do, i do not use the "show unread posts since last visit" option, i just browse from the forum main home page, thus any section i do not like i just do not open it nor go there, while the sections i visit regularly are the ones i go to immediately i am active on the forum. So technically i "ignore" boards i do not like by simply not going there bro.

[Lucius]

The man with the most ignore boards on the forum - if you only got 1 satoshi every time you wrote that, you'd be a rich man

Lol, I didn't think I mentioned it that often but apparently since you noticed it, I'll probably not write about it again.

It was not malicious, but just an observation given that you often mention it

Don't most members here have a lot of sections on ignore?  Maybe I browse the forum differently, but I've been doing it the same way since I registered--my main page for browsing threads is "Show unread posts since last visit" link.  If I didn't have 98% of the forum on ignore, I'd be seeing threads in many different languages and all sorts of stuff I don't want to see.  As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think I've gone full retard.  How do the rest of you browse the forum without ignoring a bunch of sections?

This way of browsing explains why you have to make such a strict selection of boards that interest you, although I remember that you admitted several times that because of that you missed some important or interesting topics. I'm not inclined to browse forums like that, I simply visit various boards, although I don't write anything in some because I don't think I can contribute to the discussion.

I think that the majority have similar criteria on how they browse the forum, but that the criteria of those who are merit sources are still the most important - because they are the ones who have the most sMerits and have the most influence on the distribution of merits.

[Rikafip]

Don't most members here have a lot of sections on ignore?

Nope, I don't have any section on ignore at the moment, even those that I never visit. I did try it in the past but I felt like something was missing, even though I didn't check those boards before ignoring.

Maybe I browse the forum differently, but I've been doing it the same way since I registered--my main page for browsing threads is "Show unread posts since last visit" link.  If I didn't have 98% of the forum on ignore, I'd be seeing threads in many different languages and all sorts of stuff I don't want to see.  As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think I've gone full retard. 

If that's the way you browse the forum, it definitely makes sense to ignore as much boards as possible.

How do the rest of you browse the forum without ignoring a bunch of sections?

For start, I don't use "Show unread posts since last visit" option at all and instead I just browse the forum for interesting topic in boards I usually visit. That's pretty much the way I browse all other forums so when I  joined bitcointalk I just continued doing the same.