Some unusual behavior with merits.

[2double0]

Firstly, I'd like to share some images below and then I'll begin.















Profile of the user: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=768660

Well, I don't know where to start from or even which place is the best to put this thread into (please move it to the appropriate area if this is not a Meta stuff). Actually, I saw some users giving merits to some posts of this member in a matter of seconds or minutes, with each user doing the same thing but with a good interval in between (in terms of dates). I don't know what brought this to my attention, but there are many users here on the forum who got merits unusually. I can bring many examples (like we saw some account farming busted in the past years).

I have no hard feelings against anybody, be it the merit gainer or the giver. I'm curious to understand what made these people give him so many merits in a row (highest was I think 50 merits spread and given by indah rezqi and The Sceptical Chymist each).

[1714642010]

1714642010

[1714642010]

1714642010

[stompix]

I don't know what brought this to my attention, but there are many users here on the forum who got merits unusually. I can bring many examples (like we saw some account farming busted in the past years).

Don't and you could have not mentioned the account farming here at all when we're talking about old users and merit sources, and you obviously know it's not the case, is The Sceptical Chymist or fillippone or our beloved AI growing any kind of accounts here?
They are merit sources, they find a good post by someone, they realize this guy deserves more merit, they go through his history and spend a bunch of merits. Nothing special.

[FatFork]

1.) It might be a good idea to reduce the size these images as they seem to be bigger than necessary for the content they display.

2.) In my opinion, it would be more fitting to move this topic to the Reputation section.

3.) Regarding the merits, on January 6th, a member imamusma made a post in this topic. This prompted some other members to review his post history and help him in reaching his next rank. There is nothing unusual about this.

[2double0]

I don't know what brought this to my attention, but there are many users here on the forum who got merits unusually. I can bring many examples (like we saw some account farming busted in the past years).

Don't and you could have not mentioned the account farming here at all when we're talking about old users and merit sources, and you obviously know it's not the case, is The Sceptical Chymist or fillippone or our beloved AI growing any kind of accounts here?
They are merit sources, they find a good post by someone, they realize this guy deserves more merit, they go through his history and spend a bunch of merits. Nothing special.

I've not pointed out The Sceptical Chymist specifically for account farming and have definitely not come here to throw any such accusations on anybody, I just watched this on many profiles so I thought to ask.

Btw, is indah rezqi a merit source too?

SNIP

3.) Regarding the merits, on January 6th, a member imamusma made a post in this topic. This prompted some other members to review his post history and help him in reaching his next rank. There is nothing unusual about this.

My bad, I didn't see that. 🙈

[LeGaulois]

I do the same sometimes.

For exemple when I see a person who is just a few merits away to rank up
When I see a person deseves more merits than what he receives.

Just a few seconds between, because we open multiple tabs and send merits in batch. To save a few minutes.
Or use Imacros, for the people lazy, like me...

Theymos told us something like: if we have too much merits, throw them away.
Mean to sent merits again, or more users to merits. Something to end up with zero merits left

[logfiles]

There's nothing unusual about this. Certain times when members or merit sources notice that one is about to rank up, they try to revisit your past posts to send you merits in a quick succession and give one a small push toward the merit amount required to rank up. It has ever happened to me too before, so this shouldn't be a big deal.

Maybe you have never experienced it before, that's why you think it's unusual behaviour.

[fillippone]

Funny thing I was summoned in this thread, when I never merited such a user. Not that I should say anything in my defence if it were a different scenario.

I see nothing wrong here

Theymos told us something like: if we have too much merits, throw them away.
Mean to sent merits again, or more users to merits. Something to end up with zero merits left

This is the main point.

[Pokapoka124]

Nothing out of the ordinary here. It would have been suspicious of the accounts were sending merits to each other, or the beneficiary of the merit thread was sending his smerits to his alts. From what I can see there is no foul play here. I guess it’s been long you visited meta, it’s no secret that The Sceptical Chymist has an open review offer for members with ranks below legendary, and lots of members flood his dm asking for reviews. I believe he gives about 50 merits per user a month.

[stompix]

Funny thing I was summoned in this thread, when I never merited such a user. Not that I should say anything in my defence if it were a different scenario.

My bad 
I mentioned you as an example besides The Sceptical Chymist because I saw your name while scrolling down on those huge images that seem to not end and I didn't realize that it was the name of the topic in which merits were sent not the sender:


So, can I have my one free summoning ticket back?   

[DireWolfM14]

imamusma seems to be making decent posts.  I don't see anything wrong with the merit distribution, or the source of imamusma's earned merits.  Although I was surprised to see TSC giving merits away in the gambling section's sports talk threads.  I didn't take him for the type.

What concerns me more is the behavior from May of 2021 when the user changed his password twice within two days, and his English got much better.  But even that isn't really a big deal to me, since the account has no trust feedback and wasn't very active before that.

Funny thing I was summoned in this thread, when I never merited such a user.

You sent 20 merits to this account back in September/October of this past year, the largest tranche was for 3 merits: https://bpip.org/smerit.aspx?to=imamusma&from=fillippone

Still a nothing burger, in my opinion.

[fillippone]

imamusma seems to be making decent posts.  I don't see anything wrong with the merit distribution, or the source of imamusma's earned merits.  Although I was surprised to see TSC giving merits away in the gambling section's sports talk threads.  I didn't take him for the type.

What concerns me more is the behavior from May of 2021 when the user changed his password twice within two days, and his English got much better.  But even that isn't really a big deal to me, since the account has no trust feedback and wasn't very active before that.

Funny thing I was summoned in this thread, when I never merited such a user.

You sent 20 merits to this account back in September/October of this past year, the largest tranche was for 3 merits: https://bpip.org/smerit.aspx?to=imamusma&from=fillippone

Still a nothing burger, in my opinion.

Yeah, those merits were sent because of his application to my post review thread.

Anyway, apparently nothing wrong both with the user and the merit sources dropping the merits, as far as I understand.

[PX-Z]

By posting this regarding the interval of giving or receiving merits means (or i assumed) that you never experienced it before. Usually merit sources or not merit sources do this. Go to user profile post history then check good posts and hit that merit button bam bam bam. I even do the same, the difference i only give 1 or 2 merit with same interval.

[noorman0]

-snip-
Btw, is indah rezqi a merit source too?

Afaik nope, just found this post history which then indah showered him many merits and someone else about a hour later. I think it's his biggest monthly merit expense and yes it's a bit unusual than the previous months. But there's nothing wrong with assuming that she was in a good mood or celebrating a special day. No big deal.

my 2 cents.

[Despairo]

Can you give me a reason why you create this thread? if you're only curious why these members did that, above users already explain it.

But if you're trying to accuse them and hope they will get negative trust because of merit abuse, well you need to exclude The Sceptical Chymist because he's completely different among the other 5 users. You can search about their connections about social medias, address, etc. If you can prove it, they might deserve for negative trust because two among them joined in the same campaign.

[yahoo62278]

Can you give me a reason why you create this thread? if you're only curious why these members did that, above users already explain it.

But if you're trying to accuse them and hope they will get negative trust because of merit abuse, well you need to exclude The Sceptical Chymist because he's completely different among the other 5 users. You can search about their connections about social medias, address, etc. If you can prove it, they might deserve for negative trust because two among them joined in the same campaign.

It's more of if he has questions, he should 1st pm the users and ask them. If he is unsatisfied with the responses, make thread. Shoot 1st ask questions later, the wild wild west we call bitcointalk.

[Pmalek]

To be honest, I don't see the point in creating a thread like this. If it were up to you, what fate do you wish for the users whose names can be seen in your OP and the ones that got mentioned along the way? Would you be happy if they got banned, received negative trust, or if theymos reverted the merit transactions? Do you want the merit sources to lose their positions? Were you cheated somehow? Treated unfairly?

There is one rule about sending merits: there are no rules!
The only one we have is that merit sources are not allowed to sell their merits. That's where the restrictions begin and end. Everything else is subjective and my good/bad nature. 

[BITCOIN4X]

To be honest, I don't see the point in creating a thread like this. If it were up to you, what fate do you wish for the users whose names can be seen in your OP and the ones that got mentioned along the way? Would you be happy if they got banned, received negative trust, or if theymos reverted the merit transactions? Do you want the merit sources to lose their positions? Were you cheated somehow? Treated unfairly?

In my opinion, there is always personal motive behind thread being created regardless of the initial reason stated. I don't wonder why someone would suspect other users especially since every user has free speech, but opening up a court table for something that can be resolved in PM I don't think is necessary.

2double0, it's okay to spend sMerit on posts you think are quality regardless of whether your intention is to help that user's ranking or just merited their thoughts. I don't think there's anything wrong here, and maybe you should just close the thread and forget about it. Also The Skeptical Chymist is a very generous merit source over the years, he has thread about his service where some users can ask him to review posts and in the past he has done that for me too.

You can probably find reason why one of them did so I guess it's perfectly fine as long as the merit they spend on quality posts even if it's subjective from one user to another.

My Countdown to Hero member Rank
Number of Merit(s) left: 136

Rather than helping you in one big bomb, I'd rather try to get 10 posts I think are good for merit. I get that after reviewing as much of your post history as I can across multiple pages, the quality of your posts isn't bad either. But anyway, no need to thank me about that because I just wanted to do what I was supposed to do. Keep it up, you will soon reach it.

My Countdown to Sr. Member Rank
Number of Merit(s) left: 26

I also helped you some, hope you will reach Sr rank soon.
I think it would be good if you increase the quality of your posts more and post more often on the higher quality boards other than on the betting board. I didn't get it after reviewing history, but I'm still getting some posts. Keep improving.

[LoyceV]

I'm curious to understand what made these people give him so many merits in a row

You shouldn't call Meriting posts "unusual" without checking the actual posts. As long as the posts deserve it, there's nothing wrong with it.

Btw, is indah rezqi a merit source too?

Unlikely. He sent less than half the Merit he received.

I do the same sometimes.

For exemple when I see a person who is just a few merits away to rank up
When I see a person deseves more merits than what he receives.

I do it too, and I always remember this post (taken slightly out of context here):

if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.

The Merit system was created to stop shitposters from ranking up. It shouldn't restrict normal users.

Theymos told us something like: if we have too much merits, throw them away.
Mean to sent merits again, or more users to merits. Something to end up with zero merits left

It's this post:

If they complain about amounts, tell them to complain to me. It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.

@OP: as a Merit source, I guess I have a slightly different perspective on Merit than most users. Source sMerit feels like a "burden", and no matter how hard I try to get rid of them, they keep coming back! I'm now at 81 source sMerit remaining, and I think that's less than the average I've had for the past 6 months. There's also a couple thousand of "my own" (earned) sMerit on top of that.

[yhiaali3]

Nothing suspicious here, member imamusma wrote a thread with a human story and it was used to increase bitcoin adoption in the local community, usually stories of this kind impress most members and they start giving merits. This is a very normal behavior that has happened many times.

Another thing I've noticed is when a prominent member of a forum gives merits to a topic it encourages the rest of the members to give the merits too and the thread starts receiving more merits from more members.

[Igebotz]

The merit system functions incredibly well when there are plenty of merits floating around because it isn't like Bitcoin and it's clearly stated on your merit page that holding it doesn't increase the value of your account. We complain when Merit Source hoards merits, and we also complain when they make it rain. The forum is a funny place. Hahahah.

If you had been the receiver, would you have complained? I doubt. .

Please if you have some merits to throw away, the Nigeria board Is in need of it