I'm curious About this

[Lordsilvabtc]

I'm curious about the developers feelings on merit sharing system.

During my cause of study on this Bitcointalk forum, I've learnt a lot from various sections of the platform, but I'm struck in thoughts and imagination about higher rank members of the forum who haven't been active for the past 4 to 6 years. And I'm wondering what's really the issues. Now considering the following

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

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[ABCbits]

I'm curious about the developers feelings on merit sharing system.

Who exactly do you mean by developer? If you mean developer who create/manage merit system, IIRC Theymos is the only developer.

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

It's possible, after all merit is just number on centralized database.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

Keeping account as in not deleting post/thread from inactive account? In short, historical purpose. Some old discussion (such as running old wallet) could be really useful for certain people.

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

No, but there are few member who keep track of such number. But if you want to see statistic/history shown by this forum, check https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats.

P.S. This thread should be moved to "Meta" board.

[Lucius]

The merits system was introduced during 2018, and everyone kept the rank they had then, and all those who were inactive in the period after that remained at their current ranks if they lack activity points, regardless of the number of merits they received.

The forum does not delete members' accounts and they do not represent any problem - I see no reason why you consider it a problem at all? Merits are not something that is limited and should be taken away from inactive members, because there are members of the forum who are merit sources and they receive certain amounts of merit from the forum which they then distribute.

Also, for each merit that someone sends to someone, 0.5 sMerits are created, which means that when you get 2 merits, you can send one to someone. If you want a little more information about merits, I suggest you visit -> Bitcointalk Merit Dashboard

[rat03gopoh]

Maybe you haven't studied this thread well, especially this snippet.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

If you have, then you will understand that draining sMerit from inactive users is useless.

[jackg]

Yep draining merits and redistributing them is quite useless because of the sources who get a certain amount of merit to send over a specific amount of time - it then refreshes after that time has passes or they can ask for more source merits to be able to spend.

There's no point in deleting old accounts too, what if someone has registered one to use later on or what if someone has an account they use to just read threads (or receive certain notifications from) - there's people who haven't posted here that linger as guests, there might be a lot of accounts that look to have not been used that get used for other things. Also why reclaim their username for someone else just to take it? One extra person having that name is going to leave another person wanting it and not being able to have it - what if it becomes a contest too after those 4 years have passed to see who can register the name first? And then what do you do with the threads and posts of people who's profiles have been inactive (the guest title stands out a lot on old threads) and if you're banned, I don't think you should get chance to recover your profile that username should be gone with the ban..

[Charles-Tim]

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

If an account is banned on this forum, there are instances you will still see their merit, but merit is completely removed to zero on some banned accounts, especially those with ban evasion (I mean accounts that evade ban)

Assuming if someone's account is no longer active, his merit remain intact and nothing would happen to it. The person can come back at anytime he wants.

Or are you misinterpreting smerit as merit?

[UserU]

Who exactly do you mean by developer? If you mean developer who create/manage merit system, IIRC Theymos is the only developer.

Most likely he is referring to the one(s) managing the forum's backend (i.e. has the access to the plugins and databases).

[Frankolala]

I'm curious about the developers feelings on merit sharing system.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

Nobody knows why the account is inactive maybe the user doesn't have interest on signing into the forum anymore,it is useful to keep the account for record purpose. It is just like a bank,the moment you have an account with them it can not be deleted or let me say other social medias. Inactive users account can be use to learn more on bitcoin based on some questions asked in the past are still the some questions people asks presently which gives answer to the question.

For merits it depends on the decision of the management whether to drain it for a particular reason best known to them

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

As a preamble, I’m assuming that we’re not mixing Merits and sMerits (Sendable Merits) here. They’re two different counters. Bear in mind that sMerits are what you award, not Merits. That’s to say, when you "merit someone", you’re really sending from your available sMerits, which will decrease, and incrementing the recipients Merit counter, which will never decrease (unless he’s been really naughty).

Having said that, there is no point in eliminating Merits from inactive accounts. What’s more, it would do nothing other than mess-up all the ranking system, bearing in mind that it derived from a combination of Merits and Activity (i.e. it would lead to de-ranking accounts).

sMerits from inactive accounts could at some point decay, although if it hasn’t happened by now, there doesn’t seem to be much point in it. It has been discussed before whether remaining unused airdropped sMerits should still remain, and whatever the opinions expressed, they still remain unaltered. They are not really a limited resources (from a forum’s perspective), so there is no need to recollect them in order to redistribute them in any way.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

It’s part of the history and discussion on the forum. Deleting accounts would likely also require either deleting all the account’s posts, or assigning them to an anonymous account. The former would create gaps when reading through threads, and the latter wouldn’t do any good either.

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

Merits yes: Some forum members keep track of this information through a range of solutions (webs, dashboards, files).
sMerits no.

[decodx]

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

It’s part of the history and discussion on the forum. Deleting accounts would likely also require either deleting all the account’s posts, or assigning them to an anonymous account. The former would create gaps when reading through threads, and the latter wouldn’t do any good either.

I'd like to continue arguing in favor of leaving history on the forum intact. If we delete a user's account and its past posts, then we not only run into issues with referencing those past posts but also with preventing the community from viewing and accessing any questions that were answered by them. As such, admins should only delete a user's account in the case of extreme misconduct; deleting them simply because they left the community is not grounds for removal.

[Mpamaegbu]

but I'm struck in thoughts and imagination about higher rank members of the forum who haven't been active for the past 4 to 6 years. And I'm wondering what's really the issues.

Life happens. Sometimes, death can cause a user to be inactive. In fact, that's the most scary part of my thought whenever I notice a user has been inactive that long. Otherwise, I don't think anyone who was here before Bitcoin became popular would want to go cold now that it's gathering momentum. There are users who have ceased posting here but they're still active reading comments here. For those who have stopped posting and reading here, there's certainly something wrong.

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

There wouldn't be any need for that since merit doesn't have any monetary load on it. Theymos can send as many of it as he wants to merit sources to distribute and redistribute. No big deal.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

There was argument against that in the past. Now, sense of reason prevails that doing such would be erasing important posts and insights those users might've shared here. Knowledge would've been lost.

[YOSHIE]

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

No, achievements/merits don't work, if an account has been blocked, you can do nothing but reflect on the mistakes and achievements that go with the blocked account.
You can no longer distribute to anyone, active or not.

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

You mean 'save' then, who keeps accounts that have been inactive for years here, no, we here have a count of what's called: newcomers, dead accounts and active accounts, no storage.

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

Now this question, who knows is @theymos, we don't know it's the 'amount' of merit, just ask @theymos, he can make thousands or maybe millions.

[imamusma]

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

As of Oct 28, 2022, the number of merit distributed on the forum is 1,330,884 from 158,908 users to 24,639 users. In addition, the total merit generation of up to 33989 sMerit per 30 days is among 110 merit source based on statistic merit and merit dashboard.

What you need to know is, the number of merit distributions will increase over time, from user to user. But I'm not sure if the total merit generation for 110 merit sources will increase per month or will stay the same. If it's going to add up, then I'm sure you'll find out from the source too.

Source:
1. Merit Dashboard
2. Merit Stats

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

If you seems to have forgotten the reason why the merit system was initiated, then i will love to remind you that  feature was added to differenttiate betweenn two set of people  "shit poster and quality poster", (I.e people who add value to the forum from people who just come to spam). Because whoever you see today who has more merits, is simpIy because they had earn it by either contributing or providing valuable contents. And thou they may not have been active for some years, but for the fact that they were once active is a legacy that lives on

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years.

Yes..Because thou the user may be dead, but the content never dies. I.e quality contents never dies

• Is there a track record of the total number of Merit available on the platform, just curious to know

Yes. There is s total track on all merit sents, received monthly and even a total number of merits received by each rank

[Igebotz]

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

If you seems to have forgotten the reason why the merit system was initiated, then i will love to remind you that  feature was added to differenttiate betweenn two set of people  "shit poster and quality poster", (I.e people who add value to the forum from people who just come to spam). Because whoever you see today who has more merits, is simpIy because they had earn it by either contributing or providing valuable contents. And thou they may not have been active for some years, but for the fact that thereeeeee once were active is a legacy that lives on

Can we really use merit as a metric to distinguish between good and bad posters? I doubt it because it is easily manipulated; we have tons of shit posters with a bunch of merits and some quality posters with a small amount of merits; if the system was designed to automatically award quality posts, one could argue that those with merits are quality posters; however, because it is an M2M (member to member) system, this argument falls flat. It's more of a privileged and the rate of merit distribution on the board you're posting on. There are a lot of good posters on the altcoin mining and discussion boards who have little or no merit because the merit distribution is low in comparison to other board

[tranthidung]

Beyond the merit stats page that was given above by others, if you can play with data, you can use merit data dump each Friday

• Forum's merit data dump: https://bitcointalk.org/merit.txt.xz
• theymos' merit raw data (extracted by LoyceV): http://loyce.club/Merit/merit.all.txt
• theymos' data (including usernames and post titles): http://loyce.club/Merit/merit.html
• earned_merits: username: http://loyce.club/Merit/usernames.txt
• UserIDs, sent Merit and earned Merit: http://loyce.club/Merit/userID_sent_received.txt

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The forum does not delete members' accounts and they do not represent any problem - I see no reason why you consider it a problem at all?

And they shouldn't be deleted--ever.  This forum is a huge part of bitcoin's history, and can you imagine if all of Satoshi's posts were deleted just because they're old?  Also, if any of you have never browsed threads from back in the early days, I'd strongly suggest you do so, because they make for some very interesting reading.  I've spent hours getting lost in the topics that were relevant in 2010-11.

Regarding merits that inactive members have: It's not a problem at all, since there are merit sources constantly distributing merits, and those sources get new sMerits on a monthly basis, i.e., there's no issue with a shortage simply because some members are never going to send their sMerits. 

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

• Assuming their Accounts were banned from the platform, is it possible for developers to drain their merit bags and redistribute it to active users.

If you seems to have forgotten the reason why the merit system was initiated, then i will love to remind you that  feature was added to differenttiate betweenn two set of people  "shit poster and quality poster", (I.e people who add value to the forum from people who just come to spam). Because whoever you see today who has more merits, is simpIy because they had earn it by either contributing or providing valuable contents. And thou they may not have been active for some years, but for the fact that thereeeeee once were active is a legacy that lives on

Can we really use merit as a metric to distinguish between good and bad posters? I doubt it because it is easily manipulated; we have tons of shit posters with a bunch of merits and some quality posters with a small amount of merits; if the system was designed to automatically award quality posts, one could argue that those with merits are quality posters; however, because it is an M2M (member to member) system, this argument falls flat. It's more of a privileged and the rate of merit distribution on the board you're posting on. There are a lot of good posters on the altcoin mining and discussion boards who have little or no merit because the merit distribution is low in comparison to other board

But wait. Who is a quality poster? A quality poster is someone who can contribute meaningfully to a particular topic of discussion. And no doubt, we have lots of them on the forum, but it's never there fault if a member is been knowledgeable on a board that is least visited by most members and merit source on the forum just llke "altcoin mining", because I'm sure not only I alone who believes that altcoin mining is a complete waste of time, and so should others, which is why most post which you think seems to be quality don't receive much merit. And thou, merits can be manipulated, but In most scenario, merit is one major criteria to determine a quality post (i.e post that solved a problem or add value to people)

[libert19]

• Apart from Satoshi, Are there any importantance of keeping dead and inactive accounts of over 4 to 6 years...

Who knows if they ever come back? History is what makes bitcointalk whole, any change would cause disturbance.

Such change would likely fuck up things than help with anything.

[krishnaverma]

The forum does not delete members' accounts and they do not represent any problem - I see no reason why you consider it a problem at all?

And they shouldn't be deleted--ever.  This forum is a huge part of bitcoin's history, and can you imagine if all of Satoshi's posts were deleted just because they're old?  Also, if any of you have never browsed threads from back in the early days, I'd strongly suggest you do so, because they make for some very interesting reading.  I've spent hours getting lost in the topics that were relevant in 2010-11.

Regarding merits that inactive members have: It's not a problem at all, since there are merit sources constantly distributing merits, and those sources get new sMerits on a monthly basis, i.e., there's no issue with a shortage simply because some members are never going to send their sMerits. 

There are many other reasons also why forum owners cannot just delete a member profile and remove all his posts. Like, it is very bad from SEO point of view and will result in Google penalty on the forum causing the organic traffic to shutdown. Suppose, someone has shared the post on another forum and now it is deleted and when new people come through that shared post, they see nothing. What impression will it give about this forum to them ?