Forum Improvement - My Wild Idea/Suggestion.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Please permit me to begin by showing my shiny teeth (^{I am actually laughing.})

My Disclaimer
First of all, I will like to acknowledge that I know that, this is one I believe not many users will agree to, most especially, those who have a hard time earning merits due to too much shitposting or reasons best know to this forum, but be it as it may, I am still going to suggest it any way.

About This Idea
It's a wild, adventurous idea, a crazy one, but with lots of benefits to the forum, it will definitely contribute to the overall good of this great community in the long run.

What Is This Idea?
The idea is simple, reconfigure the forum, as well as the merit system, reconfigure it so that if a user does not earn atleast 1 merit in 120 days, that user drops he's current rank for the lower one, and if in another 120 days, the user still does not earn 1 merit, he or she again drops the current rank for the one lower, just like that until that user is back to newbie... This can only apply to  junior Members rank and above.
Merit Score:
Merit score doesn't have to be affected, Infact, it is very important to keep the user's merit score intact so as to show that such user was once at a certain rank, but dropped due to lack of Merit to keep maintaining that rank or move higher.

Example 1:
UserA earned 1 merit and attained the junior member rank.
If in 120 days, UserA fails to earn at least 1 merit again, his/her rank drops back to newbie while maintaining the 1 merit earned in the merit score board, to show that userA was once a junior member.

Example 2:
UserB earned 1000 merit and attained the rank of a legendary member, to continue to keep that legendary rank, UserB must make sure to earn atleast 1 merit in every 120 days.
- If 120 days passed and userB didn't earn at least 1 merit, userB rank drops to Hero member^{while keeping his merit score intact} and he will be required to earn 500 merits to become a legendary member again.
- If in another 120 days, userB still does not earn at least 1 merit to maintain his now hero rank, he drops to Senior member rank, now, he will be required to earn 250 merits to become a hero member and another 500 merits to reclaim he's initial rank of legendary member.
- if in another 120 days, userB still does not earn at least 1 merit to maintain he's now senior member rank, he drops to full member, now  he will need 150 merits to become a senior member, and 250 merits to become a hero member, and 500 merits to reclaim he's initial rank of legendary member.
- if in another 120 days, userB still does not earn at least 1 merit, he drops from full member to member rank.
- if in another 120 days, userB still does not earn 1 merit, he drops from member rank to junior member.
- if in another 120 days, userB still does not earn 1 merit, he drops from junior member and finally is back to newbie, now, this is a newbie with 1000 earned merit, and to rank up again, userB has to start earning merit as it is needed for each rank until it reaches 1000 merits earned to reclaim he's once lost legendary rank, if he doesn't put in the effort, he will remain a newbie or end up on one of the lower ranks - in correspondence with the level of his effort.

How Will This Idea Help Improve This Forum?
1. It will drastically reduce shitposting
2. It will install a sense of seriousness in the minds of every user, especially those that wouldn't want to loss there current rank.
3. Even in the absence of signature campaigns, this will encourage all users to stay active and post frequently, as no one wants to drop in this ladder of ranking.
4. Even in the Altcoin board, those participating in Altcoin signature campaigns, instead of spamming the altcoin board, will have no choice but to start adding some quality to their posts, in other to earn merit that will enable them to at the least, keep their current rank intact.
5. Dormant accounts/alt accounts/accounts that are placed for sale will start loosing their rank if their owners don't start making quality posts from those accounts to earn merits.
6. This will discourage alt accounting/account farming since it will be difficult to keep them all active at the same time making quality posts to earn merit to keep the ranks intact.
7. Accounts that only make posts for the sole purpose of meeting their post quota, will now have to look beyond their signature campaign.
8. 1xshit will have no choice but to leave bitcointalk for good, since in the long run, they will have a bunch of newbies as their promoters, as all their promoters will all loose their ranks to bacome newbies, and newbies don't wear signatures right?  

The benefits and improvements this will add to the forum is endless, but I just can't mention all, but like I said earlier, it's a crazy idea which not many people would agree to, most especially, those that have hard time earning merits because of lack of quality posts.

Contributions please....  

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[NeuroticFish]

The idea is simple, reconfigure the forum, as well as the merit system, reconfigure it so that if a user does not earn atleast 1 merit in 120 days, that user drops he's current rank for the lower one

At the first look, it seems a great idea (I think I had or agreed a pretty similar idea sometime in the past too, but I won't search now for that topic).
Unfortunately, at a second look, it's no longer that good imho, since this ignores the fact that some smart and worthy people may have a life outside the forum and will punish them for that. Or it ignores the fact that forum users did and will pass away and it will look ugly/strange to see this or that user has became newbie again, somehow ignoring his achievements.

[Charles-Tim]

What Is This Idea?
The idea is simple, reconfigure the forum, as well as the merit system, reconfigure it so that if a user does not earn atleast 1 merit in 120 days, that user drops he's current rank for the lower one, and if in another 120 days, the user still does not earn 1 merit, he or she again drops the current rank for the one lower, just like that until that user is back to newbie... This can only apply to  junior Members rank and above.

Never mind my comment about this, but it is the truth. Not good at all, it can never be implemented. All ranked members that are not posting again would be demoted to newbies.

[skarais]

The forum's user base since the introduction of the merit system has dropped to lesser levels although in recent periods the bitcoin price hike has invited several waves of new users. You don't have to think too hard about the merit system because in fact the current merit system has made forum look better than they were before the system was introduced.

Your suggestions will leave this forum behind especially since not everyone cares about the merit system. Many users will be downgraded because of that and if in August you see there were 9584 users using the forum for 196.280 posts, then maybe in October the number was only 5000 and it will decrease every month.

[knowngunman]

The benefits and improvements this will add to the forum is endless, but I just can't mention all, but like I said earlier, it's a crazy idea which not many people would agree to, most especially, those that have hard time earning merits because of lack of quality posts.

on the contrary, the detriment is immeasurable because you're encouraging spamming since everyone will be looking for a way to earn merit in a hard way thereby making countless of posts and on the other hand you're also encouraging merits trading unknowingly. As beneficial your wild idea seems, the harm it can cause weigh higher. My thoughts thou.

[Charles-Tim]

The forum's user base since the introduction of the merit system has dropped to lesser levels although in recent periods the bitcoin price hike has invited several waves of new users. You don't have to think too hard about the merit system because in fact the current merit system has made forum look better than they were before the system was introduced.

Yes

Ever since I joined this forum, it has been one of the best I have known. As people are posting that before the introduction of the merit system, that posting quality of most members are of low quality, but the merit system helped a lot. Merit system may not be perfect, but at least, it helps in quality posting.

On each posts, there is a report icon, which means any spam and unworthy posts can be reported to moderators as a suggestion for deletion which is also working effectively. Spams are reported, plagiarism are reported, many other unworthy posts are reported in a way this forum is keep clean from poor posters to a large extent.

Some people could suggest a way merit to be received could be hard, but what happened was that theymos increased the merit sources and yet the forum continue to be good as it was when I joined after the introduction of the merit system. Now it is about a means a good poster can just leave this forum for whatever reason and later have a newbie rank. That is very unnecessary in my high opinion. It would do bad than good is all I could think.

[_BlackStar]

Good idea ^{[at least than nothing],} but you only talk about the positive impact you expect from implementing the idea but you don't explain what the negative impact will be on the forum and users. Do you positive impact is more dominant than negative impact?

The benefits and improvements this will add to the forum is endless, but I just can't mention all, but like I said earlier, it's a crazy idea which not many people would agree to, most especially, those that have hard time earning merits because of lack of quality posts.

I hope you don't take this too seriously since you've thought about it, so on this I'm in opposition to your idea. But in fact your idea didn't get much approval from some of the better users than me. See first, second and third responses. But I wonder, does the report posts to moderator feature not help you reduce spammers and prevent them from being ranked?

[Sandra_hakeem]

Op, what if this rule is implemented and someday, sometime you realise a good job in real life that doesn't give you time or maybe you run into some exigencies that made you go away for a while and you came back one day just to realize that you've been demoted to BRAND NEW, how will you feel? Happy?
After all the years of stress and commitment , huh?

I was actually laughing when I read this write up. Anyways, kudos for the stress.

Sandra 👩‍🦱

[jackg]

5 and 8 are the only benefits I actually see from this and the forum administration already doesn't care about those/have a policy to enforce anything against either.

Some of your benefits aren't benefits at all. If you're legendary and become hero again, is there an incentive to become legendary, would it matter to anyone?

Equally if you were legendary and cared about the rank you earnt, when you went away for a year and become a full member again would you bother posting at all and not just leave for somewhere like stackoverflow?

[PowerGlove]

I like the general shape of the idea, but this particular implementation is a bit too drastic, I think. Are you trying to disincentivize low-quality posts or inactivity? I'm not sure members should be penalized for not posting, especially if you're trying to raise post quality.

Assuming that most low-quality posting is due to signature campaigns, I think you could retain quite a few of the proposed benefits of your idea without punishing for inactivity and without slowly eroding earned ranks by simplifying it to: A member's ability to wear a signature should be both tied to their rank (like it currently is) and depend on their merit/posts ratio.

For example, if a member can't average (let's say) 1 merit per 20 posts, then their signature should be disabled until their ratio climbs back above 0.05.

[AnotherAlt]

- If 120 days passed and userB didn't earn at least 1 merit, userB rank drops to Hero member^{while keeping his merit score intact} and he will be required to earn 500 merits to become a legendary member again.

Huh?
I like the overall idea to reduce the shit posts. But, I was not too fond of the requirement to get the rank back again.

Problem:
A few quality posters don't even wear signatures, and they are not too active. They will be disappointed to see this. Think about yourself. Suppose You were too busy with your personal life and are a legendary member. You came back a year later and noticed you are now a Sr. Member. Wouldn't you be disappointed? Don't you think it's unfair to you? After all, You have to earn another 500+ Merits to regain your rank.

Solution:
Instead, I would suggest a Legendary should earn another 50 Merits to regain his rank in the next 120 days. If he can gather those merits in 10 days, he should regain the rank immediately. If he is a shitposter, He wouldn't be able to earn more than 10 merits like some stake.com signature participants (Not everyone). 1xCraps will be very disappointed.

[Little Mouse]

I don't think it would be a fair system. Rank shouldn’t be taken down by any chance. Imagine, satoshi not having a single merit (he is not active, though he gets a lot of merit). What would happen? He would be a Newbie account someday? What would happen after he reach newbie? Brand new? Kidding. Imagine this exact scenery for satoshi and then the whole system will look like pointless. There are a lot of old Legendary members (who I consider the true Legendary) who aren’t active anymore. It’s hard for them to get merit if they don't post. Why would you want to take their rank down?

[stompix]

Unfortunately, at a second look, it's no longer that good imho, since this ignores the fact that some smart and worthy people may have a life outside the forum and will punish them for that. Or it ignores the fact that forum users did and will pass away and it will look ugly/strange to see this or that user has became newbie again, somehow ignoring his achievements.

OP's idea is not entirely new, we have discussed a lot the possibility of merit burning if not for earned merit at least for the ones given by default at the start of the system and it's a simple solution for protecting the older inactive accounts, only count the days for which the user has been active and has made at least one post. Anyhow, not going to happen, and what's worse it will create a flood of merit phishing topics so that legendary accounts used only for farming bounties are kept on that level.

How Will This Idea Help Improve This Forum?
1. It will drastically reduce shitposting

No, it will make all the ones that want to protect their account spam the shit out of this forum with fake stories, it will probably flood the WO with memes for merit begging, and many more.

2. It will install a sense of seriousness in the minds of every user, especially those that wouldn't want to loss there current rank.

Yeah right, it will just make them think about getting merits, creating another account to store recycled merits, and many more stupid ideas, the first thing people think when encountering a system is how to cheat on it, don't fool yourself this will be different.

6. This will discourage alt accounting/account farming since it will be difficult to keep them all active at the same time making quality posts to earn merit to keep the ranks intact.

On the contrary, it will encourage them to create fake newbies accounts that will beg or do simple tasks for merit in those topics we have around and then recycle those 0.5 of  smerit back to their may account.

8. 1xshit will have no choice but to leave bitcointalk for good, since in the long run, they will have a bunch of newbies as their promoters, as all their promoters will all loose their ranks to bacome newbies, and newbies don't wear signatures right?  Roll Eyes

Do you think a business that scammed thousands of $ and bought tens of accounts here won't afford to buy 20 merits a year for 10 accounts? 

[Awaklara]

if implemented maybe the forum will look more active. it would even look like a marathon running competition to stay in the same rank, or higher.

however, rules like this will not be fair to forum members who have contributed a lot and have to temporarily leave the forum. slowly their rank will drop.

rank, not just for active forum members. those who are part of the valuable history of the forum are also worthy of maintaining their rankings.

I think the rules used by this forum are very good. gives members the freedom to choose their path.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

It would cock-up my whole calculus on the Merit Dashboard for the Initial rank for accounts. That alone plays against me seeing the idea with a shine … (kidding – a bit).

In general terms, people are used to the concepts of ranks, and the possibility of reaching them in life or getting stuck where they are. What has a different tone is the concept of being de-ranked, be it in life or on a forum, and although that’s part of the idea behind the proposal, having a ranking-system should, in my opinion, play trying to incentivise reaching higher ranks (if that is one’s game), showing the carrot if you will, but not waving the stick.

I figure that the main practical use for ranks is to participate in campaigns. I haven’t looked at them in detail lately, but I believe many decent enough campaigns play around with the idea of earning a certain amount of merits in a given period of time to participate. That kind of does the trick, leaving out those who, merit wise, are at the end of the food chain, whom may be relegated to lesser campaigns which may consider them, if at all. There will be of course the chance to join campaigns such as those mentioned in your eighth point, but it seems like an overkill to implement a de-ranking system because of that.

It would be better to, let’s say, subject signature bearing on the whole to earning at least x Merits in the last y days, leaving the ranks be, although there are still plenty of drawbacks, especially for those that are not active or roam boards that are not often merited.

Edit:

<...> instead of X merit in Y days, I would make it X merit in Y posts. That way, you're not penalized for low activity and you can't spam the forum hoping that some small fraction of your posts will get merit.

It would need to take into account created posts and not consider deleted posts though, to avoid rigging the system.

[Pmalek]

While returning from holiday with my beautiful wife, I have an accident on the slippery road. We hit a tree. My wife dies on the spot and I spend months in physical recovery with internal bleeding and serious fractures. I lose the will to live and need months of therapy to return to my old self. I finally find the strength to look at Bitcoin again so I log in to the forum only to see that I am now a Jr. Member. Thanks a lot Fivestar4everMVP! Don't take it personally.

How Will This Idea Help Improve This Forum?
1. It will drastically reduce shitposting

Not necessarily. Good posters won't have problems getting 1 merit per month. Many don't have difficulties earning 1 merit/week/day right now. So they wouldn't be affected anyway. Who would be affected? Shit posters who barely made it into the next rank or those who rely solely on their airdropped merits. Now they have to step up and earn at least 1 merit/month to not lose their forum rank. That will result in an increase in shitposts with a hope that at least one of them gets merited.

4. Even in the Altcoin board, those participating in Altcoin signature campaigns, instead of spamming the altcoin board, will have no choice but to start adding some quality to their posts, in other to earn merit that will enable them to at the least, keep their current rank intact.

If you are a bounty hunter with nothing constructive to say, that won't change if what you are proposing gets implemented. The only thing that will change is that they will start spamming other boards with low-quality/low-effort posts trying to find that 1 merit lifeline.

5. Dormant accounts/alt accounts/accounts that are placed for sale will start loosing their rank if their owners don't start making quality posts from those accounts to earn merits.

That's true, yes.

[PowerGlove]

It would be better to, let’s say, subject signature bearing on the whole to earning at least x Merits in the last y days, leaving the ranks be, although there are still plenty of drawbacks, especially for those that are not active or roam boards that are not often merited.

Yep, that is a much better approach and basically what I suggested a few posts up.

Except, instead of X merit in Y days, I would make it X merit in Y posts. That way, you're not penalized for low activity and you can't spam the forum hoping that some small fraction of your posts will get merit.

[Synchronice]

What Is This Idea?
The idea is simple, reconfigure the forum, as well as the merit system, reconfigure it so that if a user does not earn atleast 1 merit in 120 days, that user drops he's current rank for the lower one, and if in another 120 days, the user still does not earn 1 merit, he or she again drops the current rank for the one lower, just like that until that user is back to newbie... This can only apply to  junior Members rank and above.
Merit Score:
Merit score doesn't have to be affected, Infact, it is very important to keep the user's merit score intact so as to show that such user was once at a certain rank, but dropped due to lack of Merit to keep maintaining that rank or move higher.

As far as I guess, ranks mostly matter for the signature campaign on this forum and the problem is that spammers are spamming the forum for money. But your "solution" can make things worse and let me explain what would I do if I were a spammer

1. People, who don't care about signature campaigns, may not spam this forum and probably don't care much about their rank. We both agree that people in this category aren't a problem. So, this solution doesn't improve anything for them, instead, it may push them to post more than usual to keep their rank.

2. If I am a spammer and my intention is to earn money from signature campaigns and I know that if I don't get 1 merit in 120 days means that I'm fucked, then I'll post as much as possible because higher the posts, higher the chances of getting at least on merit. I think if this is the source of money for spammers and I'm a spammer, then I'll create alternative accounts for more profit and feed, keep my ranks with each other. Even me as a spammer, I'll put an effort at least once in a year and get 1-2 merits on my accounts. Then I'll spam and spam. I know that I can't get merits because of my spam posts but I have five accounts that are five source of profit, so, lets count:
Accounts: A, B, C, D, E. Imagine I have 1-5 sendable merit on each of them and it's the time when if I don't get merits soon, my account rank will decrease, so this is what I would do:
1. Send merit from A account to C
2. Send merit from B account to E
3. Send merit from E account to A
4. Sent merit from C account to D
5. Send merit from D to B.

This lets me to continue spamming for another 120 days and the higher number of alternative accounts will make tracking hard for you because more accounts = more combinations to hide traces.

[ABCbits]

It would be better to, let’s say, subject signature bearing on the whole to earning at least x Merits in the last y days, leaving the ranks be, although there are still plenty of drawbacks, especially for those that are not active or roam boards that are not often merited.

Yep, that is a much better approach and basically what I suggested a few posts up.

Other modification of this suggestion already mentioned some times. Few similar discussion in past,
Reducing (removing) airdropped merits for those who didn't earn 1 single merit
[Proposal] Tackling the spam

Except, instead of X merit in Y days, I would make it X merit in Y posts. That way, you're not penalized for low activity and you can't spam the forum hoping that some small fraction of your posts will get merit.

It's interesting idea, although member who only post at board with low merit circulation is at disadvantage.

[Benkbeny]

Your Idea appeared good but in another way it's not.
I will rather suggest that, an account that are not active or long login should be deactivated and logout by Forum moderators and such user's shouldn't be granted an access to the account again.