Request: Disable merits in the Wall Observer thread

[joker_josue]

At the beginning when the merit system was new it stopped the account farmers for a while. I'd say the forum gained a couple of spam-free years because of it but since they figured out how to game it, yes that time is over.

This is a point that I still haven't been able to understand, how is the system manipulated?

- Is someone taking money to give merit? As far as I know, this is prohibited. Anyone who knows this is happening should report it.
- Does anyone always give merits to the same people? I don't see this as system manipulation, but rather as normal. If someone identifies more with a particular user's opinion, it's normal for that user to receive more merits.
- Are more merits given in local tabs than in other tabs? I doubt this is some kind of manipulation. If someone spends more time in a certain section of the forum, it's normal for them to give more merits there.

Let me give you an example. Note that 60% of my posts are in the local tab. It's normal for more than half of my merits to be used there. Of course there are posts outside the local tab, which I would easily give merits to, but unfortunately I haven't gotten to them yet - maybe unfortunately I won't even get there. In turn, in the last 3 months, I received more merits outside my local tab than inside it.

OK, it might be true that in some cases, some people receive merits for simply saying "Hi." But honestly, is this considered a merit scheme? We can't forget that leveling up isn't just about merits; it requires activity. Don't tell me that just because someone receives a few dozen merits on posts that we all agree are of poor quality, they're going to move up a level.

In turn, the problem isn't the merit system, nor is it who receives merits; at the very least, it's who gives them. But this system is free for everyone to use as they wish. Do you want to lose that freedom just because of the bad behavior of a few? This is what I see more and more in everyday life, and then people complain that they are losing their privacy and freedom of choice.

[JollyGood]

I am not advocating an increase in merit source members because that compounds the two-tier issue. As the merit system currently stands, it is a two-tier system consisting of a group that are merit source and another group that are not. With all of the perceived benefits some members might conclude that merit source have brought to the forum, it excludes factors that are hardly mentioned: corruption and manipulation.

The word "worthy" is subjective without doubt, nevertheless the deliberate avoiding of giving merits to a worthy post purely based on the fact the author is disliked, is an inappropriate use of the system. As is the over meriting of a post on the basis of having somewhat of a rapport with the author. The latter is commonly glossed over by merit sources citing a quote from theymos that stated it was better to use the allocated merits per month merits rather than not. That has given a free hand to some merit source members to justify their merit giving.

All of this is happening in an environment where merit sources can act with complete impunity and without having to justify their actions if some (or most) of their merit history is examined and questions raised. That is part of the reason why a two-tier system is not conducive to community cohesion.

What I am advocating is an overhaul of the merit system. How exactly that overhaul would manifest itself after a transformation is something I would invite members to suggest, if they believe it is the way forward.

For sure, the merit system is not without tradeoffs, but you might need to be more specific in what you are suggesting, since it surely would be nice if theymos would increase the number or merit sources rather than reduce them, as seemed to have had happened in his last somewhat global changes.  He went from something like 130 merit sources down to 88.. so he seems to be working in the opposite direction of your suggestion.

Another thing is that overseeing the merit system is likely a lot of work that theymos does not really want to do, which seems to be more apparent from his actions rather than anything specific that he has said in recent times on the topic.

Perhaps he needs a merit czar, but the person would need to be someone he trusts to follow the spirit of what he wants, which seems to be mostly a hands off kind of a system (maybe a person who is already on the staff that he has already screened for the characteristics that he considers good for a person carrying out such oversight duties - to the extent that he has not already created such position without saying anything since it might not need to be publicly known who such person is - even though there is value in some level of openness too in regards to some kinds of things, even though I doubt it is known exactly how some of the administrative matters are decided).

In any case, I am having trouble getting away from your observation of a two-tiered system that is currently existing.. yet maybe there could be a way to expand the merit source members and to cut back on the quantity of smerit sources per member.. so maybe no member has more than 210 smerits per 30 days, for example (that would be on average of 7 per day - those seem like reasonable top end numbers).. but then there might be members with various lower levels of smerits in their monthly source.. maybe starting out at 15 per 30 days)... but if there were too many merit source members, such as more than 2,100 (work up from 88 to 210 and maybe see how that goes before trying to add another 100 or 200 and then see how that goes - so yeah my random number of 2,100 might be too many), then that would likely lead to abuse of too many smerits, and take us back to pre-merit spamming days... which would keep the merit czar overly busy in the kinds of work that theymos would likely prefer to avoid drama and work and perhaps avoid too much change.

I would not claim to have enough information to know any kind of possibly balanced solution that would be clearly better than the sttus qo, even though my sense is that it is difficult to get completely out of two tiered, even if there could be some attempts at leveling out the matter, but that tends to take work. and maybe theymos has to learn to trust some one with such oversight  duties... There's gotta be someone who is somewhat compatible with his views on the topic, yet at the same time capable of helping in the oversight of such merit system matter (while being more help than hinderance)..    

I get the sense that theymos is viewing the matter more closely to a kind of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kind of a view, even though surely there are some members who are somewhat reasonably discontented by the current way merit systems are... and yeah, I agree overall witht he idea that the number is too high. I doubt that a two-tiered elimination and/or meaningul reduction is going to be possible, even though there probably could be some possible ways to expand the merit source members to a level that might be a goal of reaching a few hundred rather than the current less than 100 count.

[mindrust]

At the beginning when the merit system was new it stopped the account farmers for a while. I'd say the forum gained a couple of spam-free years because of it but since they figured out how to game it, yes that time is over.

This is a point that I still haven't been able to understand, how is the system manipulated?

...

Well, it is not rocket science.

If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.

You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.

[JayJuanGee]

I am not advocating an increase in merit source members because that compounds the two-tier issue. At the merit system currently stands, it is a two-tier system consisting of a group that are merit source and another group that are not. With all of the perceived benefits some might member conclude that merit source have brought to the forum, it excludes factors that are hardly mentioned: corruption and manipulation.

I was considering that to resolve the two-tiered system in the way that you were suggesting would either be 1) to completely get rid of the merit system (which seems to bring us back to a system that had already been in place, yet with the baggage of 7.5 years of prior existing merit system) or 2) to expand the merit sources to such a level that everyone or almost everyone were a merit source.

I suggested some kind of compromise of the second with the use of a merit czar since there would likely be a certain amount of work to oversee that abuses might not be getting out of hand if the merit sources were to be expanded to levels that are quite higher than thaey are now.. and yeah, theymos may have already experienced problems with having more merit source members which is part of the reason that merit source members are currently down to 88-ish.

The word worthy is subjective without doubt nevertheless, the deliberate avoiding of giving merits to a worthy post purely based on the fact the author is disliked, is an inappropriate use of the system.

There isn't a current standard of even requiring posts to be worthy in any objective sense, and the only restriction is really on merit sources to not be engaged in quid pro quo kinds of arrangements, and yeah, maybe there might be some unwritten rules regarding merit source behavior that might cause theymos to remove such members as merit sources - not spending their source smerits seems to be one of the unwritten rules that might cause a merit source member to lose his source..
 

As is the over meriting of a post on the basis of having somewhat of a rapport with the author. The latter is commonly glossed over by merit source citing a quote from theymos that stated it was better to use the allocated per month merits rather than not within the stipulated month. That has given a free hand to some merit source to justify their merit giving.

Yep.  I saw that post by theymos, and I think that he stands by his statement which communicates quite a bit of liberty to merit source members and harder to criticize members who might ongoingly max out their smerit sending to certain other forum members every 30 days, and theymos does not seem to have problems with those kinds of smerit spending/distribution ideas (50 smerits to any particular member every 30 days).

It seems that many times other forum members, including author of this here OP tend to be inclined to want to impose smerit sending standards on source members and those standards do not exist and theymos does not seem to be in agreement with such standards.
 

All of this is happening in an environment where merit sources can act with complete impunity and without having to justify their actions if (some or most) of their merit history is examined and questions raised. That is part of the reason why a two-tier system is not conducive to community cohesion.

Are these questions being raised in public ways and about specific conduct of specific source members?  Or is the conduct being reported and itemized within private reports to forum admins.

Sure I know from time to time some members will be put under scrutiny for their conduct, but it is not generally only about smerit sending, even though in some bad cases smerit sending might be part of the package of wrong doing of specific member that might be targeted, but it still seems to be fairly rare, at least I have not seen too many of those kinds of threads that might attempt to review various source merit members.

What I am advocating is an overhaul of the merit system. How exactly that overhaul would manifest itself after a transformation is something I would invite members to suggest if they believe it is the way forward.

That is still pretty vague.  You seem to be suggesting democracy (like commentary and perhaps voting) and/or a committee, and members have already commented on these ideas for years.. yet sure, maybe there could be a thread that is specifically on the smerit system reform topic.  Perhaps?  If theymos were to give guidelines on such a topic or maybe if someone could reasonably infer what his guidelines might be, then maybe some useful suggestions could come through such a thread.  The idea of disabling smerits on the WO thread does not seem productive at all, even though surely there is some relevance in looking at threads such as the WO in terms of the large quantity of merits that are given out (or distributed and/or redistributed) through that thread.

[Edited out]

[edited out]

Well, it is not rocket science.

This usually not a good way to start out a post in regards to a topic that includes controversy and a variety of potential solutions.

.... here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

I am not sure if you have enough information to proclaim that the merit system is completely unmoderated, and sure maybe you consider more and/or better moderation of the merit system.  The devil is in the details regarding how additional moderation might be applied and what might be the guidelines for such better moderation. or maybe if it is not moderated, but merit source members might rotate, but that would be a lot of work.  Theymos would have to do it or delegate some or all of the duties in regards to how rotation might take place.

[SmartGold01]

Well, it is not rocket science.

If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.

You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.

As far as I know meritocracy has helped the system a lot to clean it from spammer, and of course some lazy fools aren't here anymore when they sees that the forum is becoming more strict and harder to scale through they all ran away without forging ahead. Usually, Forum is a place to discussed about bitcoin and other life related discussion, so people can share merits to whatever post they found interesting, and that doesn't mean it is baseless or worthless.

For WO, well, I do not regularly visit that board and even if I visit sometimes, I do not comment rather I stick to reading things that are being shared over there, basically I go there to source information and whenever I read things that are worthy I goes off from there, but of course there are newbies or people who are going to source for merits with the intention that merits usually flow there.

So, at somehow, I don't think that section should be disabled about merits because there are people who only base there and they don't have time posting outside of that WO, and if you look them they don't have time or interest to build their account only those who are wanting to build their account and join signature are the people who are that busy spamming that section in the name of seeking for merits.

[mindrust]

Well, it is not rocket science.

If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.

You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.

As far as I know meritocracy has helped the system a lot to clean it from spammer, and of course some lazy fools aren't here anymore when they sees that the forum is becoming more strict and harder to scale through they all ran away without forging ahead. Usually, Forum is a place to discussed about bitcoin and other life related discussion, so people can share merits to whatever post they found interesting, and that doesn't mean it is baseless or worthless.

For WO, well, I do not regularly visit that board and even if I visit sometimes, I do not comment rather I stick to reading things that are being shared over there, basically I go there to source information and whenever I read things that are worthy I goes off from there, but of course there are newbies or people who are going to source for merits with the intention that merits usually flow there.

So, at somehow, I don't think that section should be disabled about merits because there are people who only base there and they don't have time posting outside of that WO, and if you look them they don't have time or interest to build their account only those who are wanting to build their account and join signature are the people who are that busy spamming that section in the name of seeking for merits.

I never said the topic should be flagged or deleted or something. I don't even agree with the topic title. I am just pointing out what has been happening ever since the introduction of the merit system.

If I had to describe these chain of events with one word, I would call it "entropy"

It is irreversible. Given enough time every system eventually collapse and that's exactly what we are seeing here.

[SmartGold01]

Well, it is not rocket science.

If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.

You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.

As far as I know meritocracy has helped the system a lot to clean it from spammer, and of course some lazy fools aren't here anymore when they sees that the forum is becoming more strict and harder to scale through they all ran away without forging ahead. Usually, Forum is a place to discussed about bitcoin and other life related discussion, so people can share merits to whatever post they found interesting, and that doesn't mean it is baseless or worthless.

For WO, well, I do not regularly visit that board and even if I visit sometimes, I do not comment rather I stick to reading things that are being shared over there, basically I go there to source information and whenever I read things that are worthy I goes off from there, but of course there are newbies or people who are going to source for merits with the intention that merits usually flow there.

So, at somehow, I don't think that section should be disabled about merits because there are people who only base there and they don't have time posting outside of that WO, and if you look them they don't have time or interest to build their account only those who are wanting to build their account and join signature are the people who are that busy spamming that section in the name of seeking for merits.

I never said the topic should be flagged or deleted or something. I don't even agree with the topic title. I am just pointing out what has been happening ever since the introduction of the merit system.

If I had to describe these chain of events with one word, I would call it "entropy"

It is irreversible. Given enough time every system eventually collapse and that's exactly what we are seeing here.

Yes, I do not also said that as well. And of course you are right.
Things are changing and most times the system that was implement could like change due to some compromise, that section has been information and disable merits in that section would make no addition just as other section are permitted for merits distributions. Of course, the system has helped a bit even though it's roughly seen this way at least spammers have no place over here because no reasonable person would go waste their merits on those profile. Of course I do not give because someone gives or some people are dumping a known profile due what they said.

[joker_josue]

At the beginning when the merit system was new it stopped the account farmers for a while. I'd say the forum gained a couple of spam-free years because of it but since they figured out how to game it, yes that time is over.

This is a point that I still haven't been able to understand, how is the system manipulated?

...

Well, it is not rocket science.

If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.

You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.

I understand what you're saying, and I realize that it might even work to a certain extent, but I have some reservations about whether it's really a big problem or just one or another more publicized case.

Or maybe I'm just being very naive and don't understand the scope of this whole "macabre" scheme.

A user has three alt accounts in addition to their main one. They collect merits from their main account, which they then redistribute among their alts. (At this point, if someone is caught doing this, they can be reported, I think it wasn't the first time it happened.) But, he doesn't get caught and continues.

If the main account earns 30 merits, it distributes 10 merits to the 3 alts.
Each alt will have 5 merits to give. If everyone gives to the main, he will have 7 merits to give.
It returns 2 merits for each alt account.
These alts return to giving 1 merit to the main, and have 1 or 2 more merits to give.
In the end, each high received about 12 or 13 merits throughout this process.
He has to do this scheme about 10 times for an alt to reach Full Member. Added to that, each alt has to have an activity of about 200.

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that with just this scheme (have 1 or more alts) the account will level up.

I still remember the effort involved in leveling up and earning merits, and I find it hard to believe it's that simple. Yes, I probably also earned some merits with little effort, for posting in a few threads. But I also know it was never a significant amount, maybe 10, 20, a little more. That doesn't get you very far.

I see it as somewhat difficult for someone to farm merits using only these resources. Maybe they're being naive... but I think it's difficult.

[mindrust]

I understand what you're saying, and I realize that it might even work to a certain extent, but I have some reservations about whether it's really a big problem or just one or another more publicized case.

Or maybe I'm just being very naive and don't understand the scope of this whole "macabre" scheme.

A user has three alt accounts in addition to their main one. They collect merits from their main account, which they then redistribute among their alts. (At this point, if someone is caught doing this, they can be reported, I think it wasn't the first time it happened.) But, he doesn't get caught and continues.

If the main account earns 30 merits, it distributes 10 merits to the 3 alts.
Each alt will have 5 merits to give. If everyone gives to the main, he will have 7 merits to give.
It returns 2 merits for each alt account.
These alts return to giving 1 merit to the main, and have 1 or 2 more merits to give.
In the end, each high received about 12 or 13 merits throughout this process.
He has to do this scheme about 10 times for an alt to reach Full Member. Added to that, each alt has to have an activity of about 200.

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that with just this scheme (have 1 or more alts) the account will level up.

I still remember the effort involved in leveling up and earning merits, and I find it hard to believe it's that simple. Yes, I probably also earned some merits with little effort, for posting in a few threads. But I also know it was never a significant amount, maybe 10, 20, a little more. That doesn't get you very far.

I see it as somewhat difficult for someone to farm merits using only these resources. Maybe they're being naive... but I think it's difficult.

You don't need to feel bad about what I said, nobody should. I probably got like at least 30% of my current merits in WO when I was an active poster there. So, by all means I am not pointing any fingers at anyone. It might look like it but I am not doing it.

Campaign managers tend to not like accounts that farm their merits that way (I think I heard it from the chipmi*er's manager when he was around, but it is common knowledge nowadays anyway) so if a high ranking account with good reputation does the WO/pushup merit farming, it is probably because he doesn't care what the campaign managers think about him ( probably not carrying a *paid* signature too)

If the ranking is high but the repuation is shaky, there is a chance that he is running an alt farm. Again, not pointing any fingers. Just my guess.

[Satofan44]

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that with just this scheme (have 1 or more alts) the account will level up.

That is just one scheme, a naive one. What is more likely (among other things) is that they have managed to get one or several of their colleagues promoted to merit sources which now support the farming. Do you not read stories of organized scam centers in third world countries? That is how it works. They have groups and do this together. Even if all the accounts involved are not yours it is still abuse. Further, you can make it seem more legitimate by having a strict rule of not giving merit to your own accounts across the group. In that case they would only give merit to the accounts of their conspirators and never to their own account.

You earlier mentioned subjectivity as an argument, which I strongly reject. The problem with subjectivity is that they can and already are using it to conceal their organized farming. One example: Make nice artwork thread similar to the Pizza Day contest in a local section as a merit source, and you can give a lot of merit to all the people in the farming group at the same time without it looking too suspicious. Subjectivity has its place, but the intent is what matters. If merits are easily earned in a local section for low effort contributions, after which the user proceeds to shitpost in other sections for campaign money, the intent is clear from the start. Of course this is extremely hard to prove compared to direct alt abuses, but you can spot some patterns because of the low quality of posts.

Like I said previously, a system that rewards quality contributions must over time naturally increase the average quality of the contributions assuming that it works. According to mindrust there was a period in which this was the case, and this empirically supports this argument. It seems that the system needs new tweaking to function again. I always through that a demerit function within such systems would be nice, but it requires more oversight as it can leads to gang behavior and significant abuse.

[Vod]

Merit farming in the WO thread has gotten way out of hand.

Your poll was over 2 years ago.   You should lock this one and start a 2025 version to see how things have changed.     The sources will obviously vote no, but there are more recipients to vote yes.

[nutildah]

Your poll was over 2 years ago.   You should lock this one and start a 2025 version to see how things have changed.  

You're right, I could do that, but honestly I find it effective to just berate or shame merit farmers right in the thread itself. Or like the above-instance that persuaded me to reopen this thread, leaving them a neutral tag over the matter seems to be at least somewhat effective.

Also, and somewhat contradictory to my suggestion, I spend a decent number of merits in that thread, although I will seldom give them to new, new-ish accounts, or accounts I suspect are one of many in a farm.

Finally, there are some longtime WOers that I respect that don't have a problem with the whoring. They are unbothered and just choose to ignore them without even putting them on ignore. Mind over matter, or something.

[joker_josue]

You earlier mentioned subjectivity as an argument, which I strongly reject. The problem with subjectivity is that they can and already are using it to conceal their organized farming. One example: Make nice artwork thread similar to the Pizza Day contest in a local section as a merit source, and you can give a lot of merit to all the people in the farming group at the same time without it looking too suspicious. Subjectivity has its place, but the intent is what matters. If merits are easily earned in a local section for low effort contributions, after which the user proceeds to shitpost in other sections for campaign money, the intent is clear from the start. Of course this is extremely hard to prove compared to direct alt abuses, but you can spot some patterns because of the low quality of posts.

Like I said previously, a system that rewards quality contributions must over time naturally increase the average quality of the contributions assuming that it works. According to mindrust there was a period in which this was the case, and this empirically supports this argument. It seems that the system needs new tweaking to function again. I always through that a demerit function within such systems would be nice, but it requires more oversight as it can leads to gang behavior and significant abuse.

Maybe it's the size of my local tab; I don't know what the others are like. But frankly, this kind of pattern is easier to spot in a local tab than in global tabs. If this type of behavior exists in some local tabs, it is almost certainly detected by the main and biggest users of those tabs.

One of two things. Either all the experienced users of these tabs are participating in this conspiracy. Or all the merit sources in these tabs don't know what they're doing and are completely clueless about how the forum works and what merits are for.

In turn, the problem ends up being in the local tabs and not in global topics like WO.

Furthermore, if campaign managers allow low-quality users into their campaigns, they are seriously undermining their work! It's not enough to say that they only accept posts with more than x characters, they should blast those who frequently make short posts.

In the end, what I see is not a problem with the merits, but rather with the benefits that some users with low-quality posts have in campaigns here on the forum. Perhaps what we should be discussing is how managers analyze their user choices and retain those users in campaigns.

[Xiestar]

Your poll was over 2 years ago.   You should lock this one and start a 2025 version to see how things have changed.  

You're right, I could do that, but honestly I find it effective to just berate or shame merit farmers right in the thread itself. Or like the above-instance that persuaded me to reopen this thread, leaving them a neutral tag over the matter seems to be at least somewhat effective.

Also, and somewhat contradictory to my suggestion, I spend a decent number of merits in that thread, although I will seldom give them to new, new-ish accounts, or accounts I suspect are one of many in a farm.

Finally, there are some longtime WOers that I respect that don't have a problem with the whoring. They are unbothered and just choose to ignore them without even putting them on ignore. Mind over matter, or something.

Why not let’s cut the root that cause this situation?

All this account farmer aim to join on signature campaign while there’s only few active campaign manager right now that accept participants.

Since they are considering merit counts on accepting members why not establish a rule that merit gathered through this method merit jerking, spam thread and other merit sharing thread(except merit source thread) shouldn’t be considered.

If campaign manager will just based on post quality only, all this merit whore will be ignored. Bring back the old way that campaign manager check post quality instead of merit. It’s funny that some campaign manager give priority to user that gain most of merit from these questionable thread that is not related to the project they are promoting and keep ignoring those user that regularly contribute on discussion to the board which their project is suitable.

We should accept the reality now that merit is not always the right basis to consider a user as constructive poster especially for those new account that rapidly rank up due to this merit farming through their merit butt buddies.

[stwenhao]

The sources will obviously vote no, but there are more recipients to vote yes.

I wouldn't be so sure, that sources will vote "no". For me, if there would be less places, where you could get merits, then it would make it easier to get even more merits, than I received. For example, if only topics from Development & Technical Discussion will be allowed to receive merits, then I could get much more, than when they can be sent everywhere.

[JollyGood]

I was considering that to resolve the two-tiered system in the way that you were suggesting would either be 1) to completely get rid of the merit system (which seems to bring us back to a system that had already been in place, yet with the baggage of 7.5 years of prior existing merit system) or 2) to expand the merit sources to such a level that everyone or almost everyone were a merit source.

I suggested some kind of compromise of the second with the use of a merit czar since there would likely be a certain amount of work to oversee that abuses might not be getting out of hand if the merit sources were to be expanded to levels that are quite higher than thaey are now.. and yeah, theymos may have already experienced problems with having more merit source members which is part of the reason that merit source members are currently down to 88-ish.

After introducing the functionality of merits and allowing members to use it for a number of years and then to remove it (because a better alternative was not found), seems to be not only a waste of resources but also a waste of opportunity to rectify something that already has a structure in place but would work better for the forum members with modifications.

For the latter, making all members merit source effectively means removing the merit-source tag and giving all members 'x' amount of merits each month to distribute. Theoretically, that was something that could have been implemented in the first place. Rather than the completely biased two-tier system that is in place now that theymos appoints/remove any member as he deems appropriate, it could have been a more metric based system on either higher rank equates to more monthly merits to give or maybe receiving 'x' number merits equates to distributing double merits.

These are mere limited examples and not an exhaustive list of every option or permutation.

There isn't a current standard of even requiring posts to be worthy in any objective sense, and the only restriction is really on merit sources to not be engaged in quid pro quo kinds of arrangements, and yeah, maybe there might be some unwritten rules regarding merit source behavior that might cause theymos to remove such members as merit sources - not spending their source smerits seems to be one of the unwritten rules that might cause a merit source member to lose his source..

That conduct is precisely the reason why I stated there was no discussion of corruption and manipulation because merit source were being blindly trusted by theymos without any credible checks and balances in place thus allowing merit sources to operate with complete impunity.
 

Yep.  I saw that post by theymos, and I think that he stands by his statement which communicates quite a bit of liberty to merit source members and harder to criticize members who might ongoingly max out their smerit sending to certain other forum members every 30 days, and theymos does not seem to have problems with those kinds of smerit spending/distribution ideas (50 smerits to any particular member every 30 days).

It seems that many times other forum members, including author of this here OP tend to be inclined to want to impose smerit sending standards on source members and those standards do not exist and theymos does not seem to be in agreement with such standards.

In that case, we are once again talking about theymos unilaterally taking those steps. I think the forum has grown to a point where there are enough members that care about the forum enough to be able to contribute to a decision making process. It would not be practical to have an all-inclusive debate for every single issue to the forum but where it affects the forum to the degree that merits and merit sources do, maybe having the unilateral approach is no longer appropriate.

That is still pretty vague.  You seem to be suggesting democracy (like commentary and perhaps voting) and/or a committee, and members have already commented on these ideas for years.. yet sure, maybe there could be a thread that is specifically on the smerit system reform topic.  Perhaps?  If theymos were to give guidelines on such a topic or maybe if someone could reasonably infer what his guidelines might be, then maybe some useful suggestions could come through such a thread.  The idea of disabling smerits on the WO thread does not seem productive at all, even though surely there is some relevance in looking at threads such as the WO in terms of the large quantity of merits that are given out (or distributed and/or redistributed) through that thread.

It was deliberately left vague as I did not want the first suggestion that started the debate to be mine.

I will add this, I had never contemplated the implementation of a czar but after your suggestion it does seem to be a workable idea. I think implementation of a function that stops any merit source from distributing merits with impunity is an excellent idea. The fact a merit czar (as you stated) could remove/replace a merit source is an excellent idea but on its own does not solve the issue of a two-tier system not being conducive to community cohesion.

Another suggestion could be rotating merit source automatically on a monthly basis similar to the manner DT rotation takes place, is another idea that could be implemented. It would be better and more inclusive to the two-tier merit source system currently in place. A merit czar could be overlooking how these rotated merit source are giving merits and hold them to account. If merit abuse collusion is discovered, the merit czar can permanently ban that member from being rotated on to merit source again.

As far as suggestions are concerned, the debate is there for those that want to contribute with suggestions/ideas and I hope they do.

[Little Mouse]

There’s a lot of this user enrolled on Rollbit campaign that allow new bloods user that obviously farm merit through this board and other mega spam board that merit is flooded either from merit source or their merit circle.

Hhampuz last accepted users in Rollbit Solana campaign on August 24. Unfortunately, his latest acceptance proved you wrong. He didn't accept the most merit earned applicant.

[Xiestar]

There’s a lot of this user enrolled on Rollbit campaign that allow new bloods user that obviously farm merit through this board and other mega spam board that merit is flooded either from merit source or their merit circle.

Hhampuz last accepted users in Rollbit Solana campaign on August 24. Unfortunately, his latest acceptance proved you wrong. He didn't accept the most merit earned applicant.

Yes it’s not the highest but still they are one of the highest merit count than most of the participants

It proves me right, Check those accepted members merit history. Does the thread where the merit acquired looks familiar to you in relation to this topic?  

Extra: those that applying typically just the merit jerker buddies. They just recycling merit through themselves on merit thread. Notice that these guys rarely send merit out of their circle.

I’m too tired to fight this merit jerker. Merit system is now use to carve an easy path for a guaranteed signature campaign spot for farmer since normal user that using forum having a hard time to
get merit without merit buddy unless they are initially good on Bitcoin technical discussion while this jerker just post hype bitcoin post and received tons of merit.

[Satofan44]

Yes it’s not the highest but still they are one of the highest merit count than most of the participants

It proves me right, Check those accepted members merit history. Does the thread where the merit acquired looks familiar to you in relation to this topic?  

Extra: those that applying typically just the merit jerker buddies. They just recycling merit through themselves on merit thread.

Look at the quantity of merits that this thread got: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5542027. It is much less than D5000 posts often get. It is not even a substantial thread.   Most of that user's posts are shit, it is clear that they helped him rank up fast to join campaigns. This doesn't mean that he wasn't better than other applicants though, I have not looked into that. That's besides the point anyway.

Notice that these guys rarely send merit out of their circle.

For reference, from the whole list of merit senders in the example thread only Halab sent me 2 merits once. Some forum data magician could probably do a good analysis of these claims, but the results would upset a lot of people. LoyceV?  

In the end, what I see is not a problem with the merits, but rather with the benefits that some users with low-quality posts have in campaigns here on the forum. Perhaps what we should be discussing is how managers analyze their user choices and retain those users in campaigns.

Sure, there are only two ways of going about it. At the merit source level or at the campaign level. I don't mind your suggestion either. However, I can already foresee some people giving excuses how managers can do whatever they want and whatnot. A fairly sized block of DefaultTrust members could solve this situation in a few days. However, it seems primarily to me that network aims to preserve the status quo and tries to avoid making changes policy. The lies that we tell ourselves about allegedly decentralized systems are just sad.

I’m too tired to fight this merit jerker. Merit system is now use to carve an easy path for a guaranteed signature campaign spot for farmer since normal user that using forum having a hard time to
get merit without merit buddy unless they are initially good on Bitcoin technical discussion while this jerker just post hype bitcoin post and received tons of merit.

Some would argue that it is a supply and demand problem, but that is a symptom not a cause. Yes, managers need more quality posters to employ in their campaigns but they are not available. This is where this user makes a good point. When the situation is like this, it is hard for normal people to earn merit if they are not able to provide very substantial contributions or very technical contributions. Their contributions have to be several magnitudes better than the shitposters from these circlejerks to earn the same quantity of merit. Their decent posts get hidden in the crowd, and they have to make extra effort to try to earn some merit such as applying in those report your posts threads.

Both ways of approaching the problem will have their respective downsides. For example, if you push the campaign managers to reject all these posters then there will be a period during which they will not be able to fill their campaigns.

Another suggestion could be rotating merit source automatically on a monthly basis similar to manner DT rotation takes place, is another idea that could be implemented. It would be better and more inclusive to the two-tier merit source system currently in place. A merit czar could be overlooking how these rotated merit source are giving merits and hold them to account. If merit abuse collusion is discovered, the merit czar can permanently ban that member from being rotated on to merit source again.

I understand the issues that you are trying to solve, I just don't see how your ideas would help for the other issues such as the one that I am writing about. If anything, making everyone a merit source would amplify the power of the abusers and the farmers. I think that such a system would need much more oversight and require frequent and severe punishments to have any chance of deterring cheaters.

[joker_josue]

Sure, there are only two ways of going about it. At the merit source level or at the campaign level. I don't mind your suggestion either. However, I can already foresee some people giving excuses how managers can do whatever they want and whatnot. A fairly sized block of DefaultTrust members could solve this situation in a few days. However, it seems primarily to me that network aims to preserve the status quo and tries to avoid making changes policy. The lies that we tell ourselves about allegedly decentralized systems are just sad.

I think it is more relevant to analyze the level of campaigns than the merits.
Because merits is a system that involves technical characteristics, more complex and time-consumindo. Changing the way campaigns capture users and manage them is simpler to do.

Of course, maybe managers prefer not to change.
Others think it's okay.
Some think that everything is fine, or that everything is bad.

But, we can still put the moderators on the question. Are they managing to clean up all the low-value posts?
Do they simply ignore some boards?

In the end, we all like to have our status. Now this should not be higher than the whole community.
Looking at my experience, I think most of the time it's more personal disagreements than something so global.


Honestly, I would like to see more complex cases of how these schemes work and actually work.
Can anyone point out a Hero/Legendary user, who has reached that level, for having used this type of scheme?