Ranking up/down

[knowngunman]

My main point here is I'm someone that surfs a lot more than I post most times a read multiple threads without making a single post and it became more often since I have to distribute merit. Now that simply means if I continue same way I'll probably be jr member in no time.... There are tons of members like this all over the forum.

No, I don't think you get him right here. Your activity and merits won't be alter if you don't make posts, it can only affect your merits after making ten posts without earning at least a single merit. As good as this sounds, I don't think it's the perfect way to combat spam, it would rather give more room to merits selling.

There is a campaign manager that make it as a requirement to earn a merit in every week you participate in his campaign in order to retain your slot. For once, I never noticed a participant was removed for failing to meet up with that requirement. People can always find their way out as long as its merit related. We can think of other alternatives but this particular one seems to be defeated imo.

[PowerGlove]

I am thinking that since the received merit is publicly available for every user, we could apply a merit/post ratio for the past 120 days and if it's not met, the rank could drop. The question with this implementation is how the "rank up again" would happen.

I don't like most approaches that are based directly on ratios (even though I've suggested them myself before), because those ratios are sometimes way off (for an example of this, consider Symmetrick, who now has a jaw-slackening merit-to-post ratio of ~23:1 over 516 posts, but, before much of their stuff was self-deleted, their ratio was closer to ~0.77:1; still good, but, ~30 times less so). Also, if you read the rest of this post, I think you'll see that I'm advocating for something that wouldn't continually force any particular "time frame" on anyone (neither in terms of real time, nor in terms of "time" that only advances by one unit when you make a post).

On the other hand, forcing merits for each ten posts really looks like a stupid idea. Sometimes even a good contributor doesn't receive merits in their ten posts. But maybe in the next post they will receive 10 merits. So forcing isn't an ideal idea at all.

Agreed. But, that's not what I'm proposing. When I say, "In effect, you'll need to earn at least 1 merit for every 10 posts you write (on average) if you wish to prevent your account from slowly drifting toward a lower rank.", what I mean is, "A system that charges you 0.1 merits for each post you make has the practical effect of establishing a rank-wise equilibrium requirement of 1 merit for every 10 posts.", but, there's nothing in what I'm proposing that can even notice when you've made 10 posts, so, really, it's all about how things go over the long term for any poster (as in, it's fine if someone makes 100 posts without receiving any merits at all, and then suddenly writes a banger that gets 10 merits [1]).

[1] The only issue around this, which I'm reluctant to get into because it's not important, is that some back-and-forth bouncing will sometimes occur when someone is near to a rank boundary.


It's clear to me (from some of the responses I've read) that I've done a poor job with explaining this idea. So, I'll take another shot at it, by way of analogy: Imagine that there's a service/website/app called Thoughts4Berries where you can submit very short pieces of original writing (as many and as often as you like) on any of a wide range of topics, and for each submission of yours that's deemed worthy (according to an algorithm that nobody seems to be able to fully figure out) you receive a prize of at least 10 berries (but you might also receive 50, 100, 250, 500, or even 1000+ berries if your submission is truly outstanding). Thoughts4Berries guarantees you that every submission received is always exposed to some chance of winning a prize (either now or in the future). So, basically, if you want berries, write something good and send it to Thoughts4Berries. You'll either get no berries for that attempt, or at least 10 berries for it. If you take the two possible outcomes and combine them with the previously-mentioned "greater-than-zero probability" guarantee, then you'll see that there's something very naive about this whole setup: the expected value is always positive. So, no matter what you submit, your berry balance will increase (not your actual balance, but the expected balance that your actual balance will tend toward over many attempts). Given the fact that the expected value of any submission is always positive, many people figure out that it's possible to farm berries by submitting lots and lots of attempts, but, if your submissions are terrible then the low chance of reward makes that a very slow process, so, a better strategy would be to submit many bad-but-not-terrible attempts. Of course, the best strategy (for everyone involved) would be to only make actually-worthwhile submissions, but, who has the time to do things sensibly, amirite? Now, let's say Thoughts4Berries comes to realize that most of what they get sent is low-effort junk that's barely worth reading. What can/should they do about that? There's a frustrated (and good-looking, too) dude working at Thoughts4Berries that goes by the name of, uh, MaxLegroom. MaxLegroom thinks that it's worth exploring the following idea: What if we extended an infinite line of "berry" credit to every user (to be offset against any prizes they might win), and then used that credit facility to charge 1 berry per submission? MaxLegroom sees that as an obvious way to reduce the amount of junk submissions by establishing a submission-wise "noise floor" that's too expensive for any rational user to keep operating entirely beneath. The only real question in ML's mind is where that cut-off should be placed (which is determined by the per-submission cost; maybe 1 berry is too much, he thinks).

OK. So. What does it look like when something like the above is applied to Bitcointalk's ranking system?

Instead of the "rank requirements" table looking like this:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr. Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	775-1030 (random)	1000

It would look like this:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit (less carry)
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr. Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	775-1030 (random)	1000

Notice that I've changed nothing except for the description of the third column, because that's really all I'm proposing. I'm saying that the rank requirements should stay the same, but, instead of the third column referring to the required amount of merit, I think it would encourage better posting behavior if that column referred to the required amount of after-carry merit (where "carry" is something that slowly builds up as you post).

Users can be de-ranked in the current system, if their posts will be removed. So, maybe it is all about reporting more posts for deletion?

I do get what you're saying. The first issue I have with that approach is that it's subjective and therefore would be unevenly applied (different mods have different views concerning what makes something low-value; if I were a mod, for example, I'd probably leave many reports in an "unhandled" state because my anti-censorship inclination is much stronger than my dislike for junk posts). My second issue with that approach is that it applies pressure to a building block of the forum that's much more crucial than "ranking up": the forum's free-speech orientation should be preserved as much as possible, IMO, and placing it under unnecessary strain is unwise, I think. The right to post is paramount, the right to rank up... not so much. My third issue with that approach is that it's inefficient compared to a systemic disincentive that attenuates the creation of junk posts. (There's a software engineering idea that goes something like: "the fastest code is the code that's never executed", or, in the context of debugging: "the easiest code to debug is the code that isn't there". Applying that sentiment to moderation would go something like: "the easiest posts to moderate are the posts that were never written".)

I once tried to explain this whole "carry" concept in a PM, and I'll quote a small piece of that because it adds to the above:

(*) I like this whole approach because, without encroaching on anybody's freedoms, you can still carefully set things up so that a (fairly large, IMHO) subset of misbehaviors that could normally only be dealt with less efficiently and very unreliably via moderation, can now be dealt with intrinsically, and in a way that's strictly more reliable (in the sense that it can absorb any amount of forum activity), strictly more fair (in the sense that it affects everyone the same way), and strictly more transparent (in the sense that misbehaviors are attenuated without any reliance on judgment calls).

I guess there are enough crawlers like https://ninjastic.space/ which will keep storing what was removed, so it will be still resistant to "censorship".

Maybe. But, it doesn't make sense to me for the forum to "outsource" something so fundamental.

Because merits likely don't circulate evenly accross the boards, I don't like and won't support a de-merit mechanism that's solely based on post count, like it's proposed here.

Let me express my interpretation of your point, as: "If the ranking-up mechanism is largely subjective, then I think it's a mistake for the ranking-down mechanism to be objective".

As in, it's unfair when the thing that lifts you up is hit-or-miss, but the thing that pushes you down always hits. I get that. It sounds very unfair. But, that conclusion depends on:

(1) How unreliable is the first thing?

(2) How strong is the second thing compared to the first thing?

To answer (1): I don't think the merit system is very unreliable. I can imagine that the whole apparatus must seem very unfair/rigged/cliquey to anyone that's struggling to earn merit, but, my own experience here has been that it's impossible not to get merited when you're actually trying to add value to conversations and you're avoiding conversations where you don't believe that you have anything valuable to say. Sure, maybe some of your really good posts will go unnoticed, but, if you keep hitting the "value" nail instead of the "quota" nail (or the "agenda" nail, or the "vendetta" nail, the list goes on), then, trust me, you'll stand out, and you'll eventually get enough merit that "activity" might become your ranking-up bottleneck (obviously, I'm not talking about you; you're already a stand-out member). I realize that I haven't answered any of your concerns around uneven merit distribution across the forum's different sections, but, I view that as an issue that would take me many posts to unpack, and one that's orthogonal to the adjustment I'm proposing.

To answer (2): I've purposely tried to make the ranking-down force weak compared to the ranking-up force (partially to address the perfectly-enforced vs. imperfectly-enforced mismatch). I don't believe it's possible to make the ranking-up force perfect without also making it unmeritocratic. But, I also don't believe that that means that the ranking-down force has to be imperfect, too. It just means that the ranking-down force has to be tuned to compensate.


There's more that I'd like to say, but, I'm in a pretty annoyed mood at the moment, and I don't think that a massive wall of text is anything that anyone wants to parse, anyway. (I've also noticed that I tend to write posts and PMs in a way where the things I've said in one part are comprehension-wise affected by the things I've said in earlier or later parts. As in, I often try to explain things conversationally, like I'm talking to a peer, rather than expositionally, like I'm talking to a student. So, the longer I make a post, or the more posts about something that I make, the more opportunity there is for unsatisfying discussion around not-meant-to-be-isolated parts of what I'm saying.)

[apogio]

I don't like most approaches that are based directly on ratios (even though I've suggested them myself before), because those ratios are sometimes way off (for an example of this, consider Symmetrick, who now has a jaw-slackening merit-to-post ratio of ~23:1 over 516 posts, but, before much of their stuff was self-deleted, their ratio was closer to ~0.77:1; still good, but, ~30 times less so). Also, if you read the rest of this post, I think you'll see that I'm advocating for something that wouldn't continually force any particular "time frame" on anyone (neither in terms of real time, nor in terms of "time" that only advances by one unit when you make a post).

But without a time-frame, I don't understand by your post how it will work. I will read the follow-up explanation you posted and if it's unclear I will ask again. 

Now from the perspective of a merit source things change based on how you receive merit after you become a source (especially if you are not in a gang circling merit).

Pun intended?  

I agree with Mia though, even though I am not a merit source. I suggest we leave it as is because the "carry" is good in theory and philosophy, but I am worried about the changes and the algorithm which decides the "rank / de-rank".

[Xiestar]

I really don't have much to say concerning the new merit system which might be implemented in the future.In my own opinion,I don't think this demeriting system would affect newbies that are spamming the forum with garbage,rather it's going to affect high ranked members that doesn't earn merits consistently.

You're right, newbies can't be affected because they don't have any merits. A lot of "high ranked members" are just bought or farmed accounts run by multi-accounters. These accounts will be affected more than people who only have 1 account because they're not used to spending the time necessary to construct good posts. If you can't get 1 merit for every 10 posts, I don't have sympathy for you.

Then how can you justify merit jerker? Obviously they are alt farm account that is done in legal way through merit system.

Applying this will just remove the old farm account which now few because they are already struggling to get merit while you are welcoming this new blood merit jerker which is the new gen alt farmer.

Maybe start cleaning first this merit jerker issue that is rampant on local board such as Nigeria, Indonesia and many more local that has high merit circulation?

[PowerGlove]

Thinking about this one some more...

(I'm going to assume that 0.1 is the right amount of "carry" to pay per post, not because I'm convinced that it is, but because it's easier to explain things with a specific number in mind.)

I reckon I made two (and a half) mistakes with what I proposed in the OP:

(1) I said that $merit - $carry should be clamped for display purposes only, but now I think that it should never be allowed to go negative. My first thought to prevent it going below zero was to add a condition like $merit - $carry >= 0.1 to the carry-transaction predicate (I'll get into my second thought on this later). I like this cannot-go-negative rule because it would have the effect of preventing anyone from ever getting themselves "in debt" (I'm specifically trying to protect new users who are still trying to find their feet on the forum). I also like it because a system that can never generate more "carry" than "merit" illuminates an interpretation of what I'm proposing that I think is easier to swallow: When you make a post and increase your carry balance by 0.1, instead of thinking of that action as you (effectively) "losing" 0.1 merit, it's actually more to the point that 0.1 merit is being converted into a form that precludes it from benefiting you in the rank-determination function (as in, you still "have" that 0.1 merit in every sense except that it can no longer contribute to your rank).

(2) I said that if someone had, for example, accumulated 100 merit and 5 carry, then their merit balance should display as "95" (as in, the amount of rank-relevant merit should be displayed). I still think that that makes sense for the merit balance that's displayed next to posts/PMs (either that, or the total amount of merit; though I think that that would be less behavior-affecting, which works against the main goal of this whole proposal). But, for the merit balance that's displayed on a user's profile page, I think that what should be shown is "95 (+5)" (as in, their rank-relevant merit balance, followed by their rank-irrelevant merit balance, aka their "carry"; of course, the sum of those two things amounts to that user's total merit).

(3) I'm being a little lazy (both in the OP and later posts) with defining what rounding should be used at the different stages of this whole idea because I figure that those details aren't interesting. For example, when I'm thinking of rank-relevant merit, and I say $merit - $carry, really what I (often, but not always) mean is something more like $merit - floor($carry). It follows that when I'm thinking of rank-irrelevant merit [1], and I say $carry, really what I (often, but not always) mean is something more like floor($carry) (and not that it has anything to do with this specific point, but, when I say $carry, what I'm referring to is the value that you would get if you summed over all of that user's carry transactions; and in case you're trying to make sense of this post without having read the others: a "carry transaction" is an additional database record that gets conditionally created each time a post is made). (Also, though I'm explaining things in a way that suggests I imagine this whole idea being implemented with floating-point arithmetic, if I were implementing something like this myself, it's likely that I would do it largely with integer arithmetic by working in a unit like "millimerits".)

[1] Just so that there's no confusion: When I say "rank-irrelevant merit", I mean rank-irrelevant in the sense defined by this proposal (that is, merit that has been converted into carry). I obviously don't mean the amount of merit you possess in excess of the maximum attainable "rank" (and obviously something similar applies to my usage of the term "rank-relevant merit").


I said earlier in this post that I had a second idea around implementing a cannot-go-negative rule. That idea would be to change the amount of per-post carry from a constant value like 0.1 to an expression like 0.1 * pow(lesserOf($merit - floor($carry), 100) / 100, 0.7). The cannot-go-negative thing falls out of that expression naturally (because as your rank-relevant merit approaches zero, so does the amount of per-post carry). And, the thing I really like about a scaled-cost expression like this, is that it would "fade in" the effect of the carry system as a new user approaches "Full Member". So, instead of saying, "In order to stay ahead of the carry system, you'll need to average 1 merit or more per 10 posts", it would be the case that that's only true after you've already established yourself on the forum to some degree, and that the number of unappreciated posts you can make before you backslide by 1 merit would look more like this:

Rank-relevant merits	Number of posts before 1 merit turns rank-irrelevant
0	None
1	~252
2	~155
4	~96
8	~59
16	~37
32	~23
64	~14
100+	10

One last thing that I think is really easy to sleep on with this whole idea:

I personally feel that two of Bitcointalk's biggest problems are that (1) its SNR is too low (which has the effect of driving away both old and new users seeking to have genuine interest-based discussions), and (2) it's an environment that's too ungenerous with new users (which has the positive effect of preventing many would-be spammers and scammers from ranking up easily, but also has the negative effect of driving away many would-be quality users). I think that something like what I'm proposing might help with both of those issues. How it might help with the first issue (the forum's low SNR) is easy to appreciate and I spoke a little about that in the OP, but, how it might help with the second issue (a generally hostile-to-newbies environment) is harder to see. My thinking here is that (ignoring the deletion of posts) the forum currently thinks of "rank" as a strictly same-or-increasing measure. So, there's a fair amount of hesitation on the part of merit-senders when dealing with unestablished accounts (nobody wants to be responsible for accidentally giving what might turn out to be the wrong kind of user a permanent leg up). But, if the system I'm proposing were put in place, then there'd be less potential harm in giving merits to accounts that you're not yet sure of, because if they do go on to contribute little of value and reveal themselves as long-term spammers, then the merits that they received in their early days will slowly be "undone" by the carry system. I don't expect many people to become more generous with new accounts out of their own comprehension of how the forum dynamics have changed in the presence of the system I'm proposing, but, if word came from on high (from theymos, basically) that it's now "correct" to be less thrifty when it comes to handing out merits to new users, then I could see the carry system supporting a significant drop in suspicion/hostility toward new users (and though I estimate that a large portion of the hostility problem has less to do with merit-starvation and more to do with overzealous/clairvoyant "scam busting", doing something to help with that component of the problem is out-of-scope for this proposal).

I know this post is already dense, but, something else occurred to me as I was writing the previous paragraph. You know how it's pretty common to find people on the forum advising someone to lock their thread (lest it develop into an over-responded-to spam topic)? Well, that's something that I personally find to be really annoying (not the unsolicited advice part, nor the obvious tell-tale sign that advice like that being common suggests that the forum really does have a serious mindless-posting problem, but the fact that it often takes me a long time to formulate a worthwhile response to a topic, and by the time that I have, it's annoying to find that the topic has been locked). One of the positive effects (provided the chosen parameters have enough bite) of the system I'm proposing would be that it would no longer really make sense to bug one another (or the mods) about locking topics, because in an environment where a small amount of your merit gets converted into a non-beneficial form each time you make a post, that "payment" is a disincentive against spam all on its own, and it should "buy" the poster the right to post wherever they choose (after all, if they're wrong too many times in their assessment that they're making a post that will be appreciated, then they'll start to slide backwards in rank which will hopefully be encouragement enough for them to re-think which topics they should be posting in).

[Ultegra134]

Oh wow, that's a huge thread with multiple wall-of-texts that I can't go through all at the moment. I don't necessarily disagree with @PowerGlove's theory that you need to still contribute after ranking up, someone who reaches Legendary ultimately doesn't have an ulterior "motive" to keep up with increasing their merit. This means that the post quality may deteriorate after ranking up, due to lack of motive. Agreeably, this is an issue, but from my perspective, is it worth addressing? What do I want to say, is the risk of losing website activity, active posters and generally creating a scene on the forum.

The merit system isn't perfect, but it's relatively adequate. This move would ultimately discourage some users who will struggle to maintain their ranks, may resort to lower traffic, less user base, and perhaps a loss in signature campaigns.

[Satofan44]

Bumping this. Did you ever get any feedback or try to get feedback from theymos? It doesn't have to be this particular proposal, but it is clear that something must be changed.

The merit system isn't perfect, but it's relatively adequate.

Nonsense, it does not work at all. It merely punishes complete strangers at the expense of those who are connected to existing users or familiar with the ways of farming merit here.

his move would ultimately discourage some users who will struggle to maintain their ranks, may resort to lower traffic, less user base, and perhaps a loss in signature campaigns.

Your course of action is: 'Because your personal earnings are at risk here, write a post that criticizes the idea and state that more spam is good and less spam is bad'. You are brilliant. If any traffic is good then we may as well let people fully automate their posting with AIs. The content of those posts would still be superior to the posts that are made by most users.

[Ultegra134]

Nonsense, it does not work at all. It merely punishes complete strangers at the expense of those who are connected to existing users or familiar with the ways of farming merit here.

Your course of action is: 'Because your personal earnings are at risk here, write a post that criticizes the idea and state that more spam is good and less spam is bad'. You are brilliant. If any traffic is good then we may as well let people fully automate their posting with AIs. The content of those posts would still be superior to the posts that are made by most users.

Lol, how are my personal earnings at risk here? You're being delusional, firstly, I'm not saying that more spam is good. The more traffic this website gets, the better it is. No one is talking about posting with AIs and there's an active movement in which I'm part of which is against them, and trust me, we've driven many AI bots away from the forum. The merit system is far from perfect but it's at least weeding out spammers who would simply post gibberish and eventually rank up to Legendary.

I'm personally receiving merit on a relatively often basis, so I'm certainly not at a risk here, you're just appearing salty about the spam, which has been greatly reduced since 2018-2019 when the merit system was introduced, but how would you know?

[Pmalek]

People don't come to Bitcointalk as much as they used to. Activity and interest is down for forums in general. I don't think we need to make it harder for those who are already here and want to stay. They have already made an effort to collect the merits they have received and to reach whatever ranks they have. They have already earned it. Even though your proposal to keep earning merits is achievable and any decent poster can collect the needed merits, I am not for making a stay on Bitcointalk any more inconvenient. 

[osasshem]

This new system will be good to maintain the standard of the forum, whereby it will be a forum for reputable high ranking members. The environment will become rigid to new users and friendly to those who are already high rank members who are focused on maintaining their ranks, and not worried with growing anymore.

Ranking will be much more difficult for new users and low ranking members, while the high ranking members will be more focused on maintaining their ranks from deranking. New users will not find interest joining the forum, due to the rigid system, the activity/traffic of the forum will reduce as well, as a result of reduced posting, in other to maintain ranks from deranking and quality posts.

With this new system, if the forum do have a total of 1000 posts a day, and 100 spam post before this implementation, the forum posts will reduce to 500 posts a day, maybe with no spam posts and the rate of merit farming will as well increase, for the reason that every posts will be merited.

Signature campaign will also be affected, the total number of posts will be reduced for every campaign, the number of participants will be reduced as well for participation, and also, the number of campaigns coming to the forum might also be affected.

[TokenTikas]

People don't come to Bitcointalk as much as they used to. Activity and interest is down for forums in general. I don't think we need to make it harder for those who are already here and want to stay. They have already made an effort to collect the merits they have received and to reach whatever ranks they have. They have already earned it. Even though your proposal to keep earning merits is achievable and any decent poster can collect the needed merits, I am not for making a stay on Bitcointalk any more inconvenient. 

One thing I have noticed since coming to this forum is that bitcointalk has been around for a long time but even though it has been around for a long time, there are no such enthusiastic members here anymore. There were many users who have become inactive and are not using their accounts. There is no guarantee that those who are here will stay for a long time but I think that according to the system that the forum has to gain talent, new users who come to this forum gradually become interested in this forum but many are not interested in these things.

Those who are interested try to gain qualifications after seeing everything on the forum but if the forum becomes more complicated then the users will become more disinterested and the number of users on the forum will decrease further. Although the discussion about bringing a new system is very good, it remains to be seen how the forum users will take it. I think the forum users will not be very interested in the new system that is being discussed.

[katanic97]

People don't come to Bitcointalk as much as they used to. Activity and interest is down for forums in general. I don't think we need to make it harder for those who are already here and want to stay. They have already made an effort to collect the merits they have received and to reach whatever ranks they have. They have already earned it. Even though your proposal to keep earning merits is achievable and any decent poster can collect the needed merits, I am not for making a stay on Bitcointalk any more inconvenient. 

One thing I have noticed since coming to this forum is that bitcointalk has been around for a long time but even though it has been around for a long time, there are no such enthusiastic members here anymore. There were many users who have become inactive and are not using their accounts. There is no guarantee that those who are here will stay for a long time but I think that according to the system that the forum has to gain talent, new users who come to this forum gradually become interested in this forum but many are not interested in these things.

Those who are interested try to gain qualifications after seeing everything on the forum but if the forum becomes more complicated then the users will become more disinterested and the number of users on the forum will decrease further. Although the discussion about bringing a new system is very good, it remains to be seen how the forum users will take it. I think the forum users will not be very interested in the new system that is being discussed.

With this system being discussed, a lot could be achieved. Spam would definitely be reduced, and many negative things, as the OP mentioned, would be prevented. On the other hand, in my opinion, it would significantly decrease the number of members on the forum, because if you already had to work hard to earn merits, you would have to work even harder to maintain your rank. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you’re not very active, and as a result, you would lose your rank. It definitely has both advantages and disadvantages.

[Pmalek]

With this system being discussed, a lot could be achieved. Spam would definitely be reduced, and many negative things, as the OP mentioned, would be prevented. On the other hand, in my opinion, it would significantly decrease the number of members on the forum, because if you already had to work hard to earn merits, you would have to work even harder to maintain your rank. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you’re not very active, and as a result, you would lose your rank. It definitely has both advantages and disadvantages.

Any type of de-meriting system can also become counter effective and actually cause more spam in certain forum boards while reducing it elsewhere. If users can lose the ranks they have achieved if they don't keep earning merits regularly, they will start writing more in sub-boards where most of the merits are issued. Why? Because they will want to earn those few merits that allow them to keep their rank until next time. You will then have spam in areas where we don't have that much of it, and you will see new names posting there and repeating like parrots what other users (better than them) already said in a hope that they will be merited.   

[Rikafip]

To be honest, I don't think this is such a good idea.

Its perfectly normal to take a break from forums from time to time, and it makes no sense to me to lose rank you achieved just because you wanted to take a break every once in a while. People take bitcointalk (and forums in general) way too seriously already and this will just add to that feeling.

[Churchillvv]

Any type of de-meriting system can also become counter effective and actually cause more spam in certain forum boards while reducing it elsewhere. If users can lose the ranks they have achieved if they don't keep earning merits regularly, they will start writing more in sub-boards where most of the merits are issued. Why? Because they will want to earn those few merits that allow them to keep their rank until next time. You will then have spam in areas where we don't have that much of it, and you will see new names posting there and repeating like parrots what other users (better than them) already said in a hope that they will be merited.   

Currently we can see how effective concretion has become in the gambling board, because every campaign is about gambling, saying this because if this demeriting is implemented according to your own perception of it, people will spam to meet up merit like they spam in the gambling board to meet up post requirement for campaigns which explains your opinion. Personally, I just noticed that there is no much spamming as before but that’s a bias maybe it’s as a result of my absence in the forum for a while now.

[apogio]

I agree with @Ultegra134 that the merit system isn't perfect, but it has ameliorated the forum in many ways.
I also agree with @Pmalek that de-merit can be counter effective, but I disagree with the "any" de-meriting system.
I also agree with @Rikafip that taking breaks is not only normal but also very likely to happen. Sometimes either for recreation, or other times for more serious reasons. I've seen many respected and well-established users taking breaks.

Having said that, I'm sure that @PowerGlove can adjust the proposed system in a way that can respect both the existing system (by making de-meriting as efficient and fair as possible), but also allowing breaks for users.

In fact, if you consider it, I'm not saying something very wise here. All I'm saying is that the system should be fair and not to judge based on users' away-time.

[Pmalek]

I also agree with @Pmalek that de-merit can be counter effective, but I disagree with the "any" de-meriting system.
...
Having said that, I'm sure that @PowerGlove can adjust the proposed system in a way that can respect both the existing system (by making de-meriting as efficient and fair as possible), but also allowing breaks for users.

I don't see a pressing need for a change. As I said, the forum isn't gaining in popularity. No forum is. Are we expecting a huge influx of brand-new users coming to Bitcointalk soon? because I am not. I don't see why you should log in to the forum one day and see 2150 merits to your name (or less) when you earned 2174 but took a break from Bitcointalk or you were sick, recovering from an accident, etc. Any problem a de-merit system is supposed to fix isn't as serious as it might have been back in the day when merits were first introduced.

[Satofan44]

I also agree with @Pmalek that de-merit can be counter effective, but I disagree with the "any" de-meriting system.
...
Having said that, I'm sure that @PowerGlove can adjust the proposed system in a way that can respect both the existing system (by making de-meriting as efficient and fair as possible), but also allowing breaks for users.

I don't see a pressing need for a change. As I said, the forum isn't gaining in popularity. No forum is. Are we expecting a huge influx of brand-new users coming to Bitcointalk soon? because I am not. I don't see why you should log in to the forum one day and see 2150 merits to your name (or less) when you earned 2174 but took a break from Bitcointalk or you were sick, recovering from an accident, etc. Any problem a de-merit system is supposed to fix isn't as serious as it might have been back in the day when merits were first introduced.

Almost nobody worthwhile is going to come to a place where 95-99% of the posts are generic junk. Chicken and egg, you got the order of things reversed. If the quality was better, there may be a chance for attracting valuable users. At the current state of things, however, there is no chance.

[apogio]

As I said, the forum isn't gaining in popularity. No forum is. Are we expecting a huge influx of brand-new users coming to Bitcointalk soon? because I am not.

Almost nobody worthwhile is going to come to a place where 95-99% of the posts are generic junk. Chicken and egg, you got the order of things reversed. If the quality was better, there may be a chance for attracting valuable users. At the current state of things, however, there is no chance.

I think you're both a bit unfair. Obviously forums aren't popular for many reasons. However:

1. I'm seeing the bullshit being posted on X, reddit and other platforms and, especially regarding bitcoin, in this forum you'll see top-notch content from several users, whereas in other platforms you'll literally see only garbage. Yes, there is lot of junk in here, obviously, but I owe a lot of my knowledge to this forum.

2. I don't think it's fair to characterize people as non-worthwile for coming to the forum. I mean, for me, even though you'll laugh, this forum is mostly entertainment. I don't think writting on X is more worthwile. I write for bitcoin because I like it, but there's nothing wrong with writting for unrelated stuff.

3. The most serious discussions for Bitcoin; I thinks I've seen them on GitHub or in some Nostr conversations. I can't compare them with this forum because this forum is called BitcoinTalk, but only one section of the forum is intended for Bitcoin. There is a marketplace, there are off-topic discussions, altcoins' discussions etc. Why there is a gambling section in a bitcoin-related forum? Because it's a forum... It's not supposed to be a place where onlyscientific papers are discussed. I don't like this fact, but I don't care too much, I'm participating where I want to participate.

To conclude: there are many valuable users in this forum from whom you can get great knowledge. It's supposed to relax us, not to make us angry, anxious or whatever.

[Satofan44]

1. I'm seeing the bullshit being posted on X, reddit and other platforms and, especially regarding bitcoin, in this forum you'll see top-notch content from several users, whereas in other platforms you'll literally see only garbage. Yes, there is lot of junk in here, obviously, but I owe a lot of my knowledge to this forum.

There is a difference. Ignoring the bots, there is simply a lot more genuine content over there even if it is bullshit or stuff like "GM" or shilling shitcoin scams like Zcash. Posts that farm engagement tend to have a much wider scope and style than posts that are trying to fill a predetermined criteria relating to the number of posts per week. I think generally the way signature campaigns are structured is making this problem worse too.

My observation leads me to conclude that we have an extreme pareto principle here, 5-10% of participants are good posters and everyone else is trash. They seem to try to create as many posts as possible with the least amount of effort -- which leads to very generic and bland posts. When you are grinding for engagement on places like X, the opposite is often true as you are essentially in a battle for attention with everyone else.

2. I don't think it's fair to characterize people as non-worthwile for coming to the forum. I mean, for me, even though you'll laugh, this forum is mostly entertainment. I don't think writting on X is more worthwile. I write for bitcoin because I like it, but there's nothing wrong with writting for unrelated stuff.

This was not my intention. People who are spamming and shitposting are not worthwhile, people like d5000 and stwenhao are worthwhile. Perhaps my choice of wording was not the best, but you get my point. We need more of the latter and fewer of the former. It is hard to get more of such users when most threads are filled with generic junk. They would have to know where to look and which threads to avoid in order to find good content that would interest them to stay here.