So I had a person send me a pm to beg for merits.

[philipma1957]

The person did not offer money. They just asked for some free merit.

So a how to report this?

Am I required to report it?

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[Plaguedeath]

The answer is up to you.

You can report the user in Reputation section for begging, other DT members might leave negative feedback to the account or you can do that by yourself.

You can also report his PM as unsolicited message, click "report to Admin".

Am I required to report it?

Not required, but encouraged.

7. No begging. [5]

[philipma1957]

The answer is up to you.

You can report the user in Reputation section for begging, other DT members might leave negative feedback to the account or you can do that by yourself.

You can also report his PM as unsolicited message, click "report to Admin".

Am I required to report it?

Not required, but encouraged.

7. No begging. [5]

I could reply to him with a link to this thread.😀

[stompix]

Am I required to report it?

Nobody is demanding anyone to report a thing here and I would say just ignore him!
If he is farming accounts he will just get a 7-day ban at maximum on that one while spamming the forum with other accounts, is just a whack-a-mole thing at this point.

7. No begging. [5]

That rule is for money, not merit!

[Zaguru12]

The person did not offer money. They just asked for some free merit.

So a how to report this?

Am I required to report it?

This is personally down to you, if you don’t like what he did and would wish others to be wary of him then it is your choice to create a report which I think will lead to some DT tagging him. Or you can just ignore his posts, PM and probably reports his PM again as unsolicited.

I haven’t read about a laid down punishment for this act just account buying it is frowned upon and the punishment to the offender lies on your own hands.

7. No begging. [5]

That rule is for money, not merit!

Here is theymos’s own link warning against it

Do not beg for merit excessively.

[digaran]

Lol he said "do not beg for merits excessively" which means  there are some rooms for begging.  I think you are mature enough to let such actions slide as if they are some cheeky neighborhood kids running around asking for some candy from time to time. IMO, you should let everything slide unless it's something causing damage to you or other people.😉

I like their style though, "free" some people want everything to be free, as if they would give anything out for free themselves.

[LoyceMobile]

It doesn't happen often, but when I receive such a PM, I leave neutral feedback.
Example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3579580

[nutildah]

Kind of happy I don't get these DMs, at least not more than 1 per year. I think its because people don't want their alt accounts found out. 

Lol he said "do not beg for merits excessively" which means  there are some rooms for begging. 

I suppose everyone gets one free beg in that case... two if you play your cards right.

I like their style though, "free" some people want everything to be free, as if they would give anything out for free themselves.

This is true, they would not. They'd sooner have to earn their own merit than give something away for free.

It doesn't happen often, but when I receive such a PM, I leave neutral feedback.
Example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3579580

There's a 50% chance its the same person under a different account.

[Majestic-milf]

 This goes to show some users don't bother to read some rules a oit the forum before beginning their journey, they just dive in and when they get stuck they begin creating threads to solicit help from others and it seems the user who PMed you must have tried all means possible and decided to try that out.
Honestly even without reading the rules and regulations in the forum, I don't thing you need someone to tell you it's improper to beg for merits. What happened to making good posts and contributing to the forum? Well I doubt there'd be a need for that if we all begged our way through to where we are now, right?
 Well if you ask me I'd suggest you let the matter slide, try to observe if such will repeat itself again, because if you report the account and it gets banned or tagged, who knows how many alts the user has.
I wonder if there's a way to know when such useless PMs are being sent so that you can easily delete before reading. Maybe this is where attaching a title to your PM comes in handy.

[Pmalek]

I remember that I received at least two such PMs by merit beggars in the past, but I didn't do anything about it. Just ignore them. I would only take action if they became annoying and sent multiple PMs asking for the same thing over and over again. I think that in my case, both users were bounty hunters looking for one merit to upgrade their account to Jr Member, which was probably a requirement to take part in another bounty campaign. A quick post history revealed hundreds of bounty reports.

[joker_josue]

The person did not offer money. They just asked for some free merit.

So a how to report this?

Am I required to report it?

Ultimately it depends on your personal decision.

There is no specific rule for this type of case. Just some recommendations, for those thinking about asking for merit, nothing for those who receive the requests. Furthermore, I think that this type of request should not lead to any type of punishment. There are worse things than asking for merits.

There are users who like to be asked for merits, they even create topics for these requests. Others prefer not to be bothered about this matter.

Therefore, ignoring these requests may be the best solution. But if they really become bothersome, then there are already valid arguments for reporting - not for the request, but for bothering.

[Pmalek]

There are users who like to be asked for merits, they even create topics for these requests.

That's different. I had such threads as well, and the rules clearly state don't PM me asking for anything in private. So if I see someone who is not only incapable of receiving the one merit they need/want and can't even bother to read my thread to understand how to apply, it makes me angry. I don't feel like talking with that individual at all, let alone help them.

[hugeblack]

I receive some of these messages, but I look at the user’s posts. If they look like account farming, I add them to the ignore list. If they are a beginner, I will inform him nicely or send them some Merits with a warning.

I don't know, but I fail to read the rules in other forums, and therefore we all make mistakes in the first days, so it is varies from one case to another.

[PytagoraZ]

The person did not offer money. They just asked for some free merit.

So a how to report this?

Am I required to report it?

Of course you know better what to do, but if I may give an opinion, it's better for you to tell him that asking for merit is prohibited, or just ignore him. But if he asks multiple times, maybe you can create a thread on the reputation board

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Kind of happy I don't get these DMs, at least not more than 1 per year. I think its because people don't want their alt accounts found out. 

Funny you should bring that up; ever since I announced that I'm no longer including the gambling section in my post history review offer, I've been getting way fewer requests--and the reason I'm excluding posts there is because I strongly suspected I was doing reviews for a bunch of alt accounts even though I don't have enough proof to connect them.

OP, if I got a PM just asking for merits without having to look at the member's posts I might report the PM to the mods depending on my mood (which has been as sour as a rotten lemon as of late).  But if I were to take the high road, I'd just put that member's PMs on ignore and be done with it.  If he's PMing you, he's probably PMing other members and somebody's likely to report him anyway. 

Looks like merits are becoming more popular than they seem to have been for the past year or so.  I was beginning to wonder why members weren't as obsessed with ranking up like they always were.

[Rikafip]

Looks like merits are becoming more popular than they seem to have been for the past year or so.  I was beginning to wonder why members weren't as obsessed with ranking up like they always were.

I think that members finally realized how easy is to farm merit after theymos did merit readjustment ~2 years ago (before that it was much harder to get merit) so they started creating alts and submitting their "work" in those merit topics on a more massive scale than before.

[ABCbits]

So a how to report this?

You can report with reason such as "unsolicited/unwanted PM". If that user send such PM to many user and he got reported by few users, it's likely he'll get temporary ban.

[nutildah]

Looks like merits are becoming more popular than they seem to have been for the past year or so.  I was beginning to wonder why members weren't as obsessed with ranking up like they always were.

Maybe a new generation is discovering how to make some easy BTC or BUSD here and the competition is getting a little bit more fierce. But not too much though...

I have been seeing a lot more bought accounts waking up to participate in certain campaigns that I guess are deemed lucrative. I don't know when or how they were acquired by their new owners, but a lengthy pause followed by an abrupt change in writing style is often a good indicator.

[sheenshane]

Am I required to report it?

IMO, not required but it's up to you.

I also received a PM similar case in the last few months, ain't sure it was begging merit but as I understand it was asking merit of the shitpost he made.  I quickly checked his post history but I found he is not worth having even a single merit.

I simply declined the request in a polite manner and explained to him how merit distribution works which is only for a quality post.
I told him that one day when I find something worth it from his post or a quality post I'll not hesitate to give him a merit once I see it improves.

I think they might be confused about the merit system since they're new in the forum and how to get it (I assume they're new in the forum, not those account farming).  So give them a chance and explain to them politely the right thing to do.

You can ignore the request or decline the request, it depends on you aside from leaving neutral feedback.
As commented above, I tend to agree that reporting as an unsolicited PM might accurate one.

[Lucius]

The person did not offer money. They just asked for some free merit.

If someone just asks merit without any further explanation, then I would personally report such a message to the administrators, if nothing else then that user should get at least a temporary ban and that way a message is sent to him that what he is doing is not something people on the forum approve of. As far as can be seen from the answers in this topic, the majority have not done anything or will not do anything, and this only encourages those who want to get the merits the easy way.

Of course, there are also users who have publicly offered to send them requests in which they then check the post history of a user and assign merit to the posts they consider worthy of it. This means that there can be two approaches of those who send such PMs, some are ordinary beggars, others still want someone to look at their post history.