Greeting to you all my fellow bitcointalk members. This thread was as a result of what i have observed on the forum so i do not know if something similar has been discussed about before. However, i used the search button and could not find anything of this kind.
It has discussed many times on the forum, topic title would different but not sure why have you failed to find through the search button.
As we all know, bitcointalk is one of the oldest cryptocurrency forums, and over the year the forum has developed systems to reduce spam, scams, plagiarism, and low quality discussions. while these changes have helped improve the quality of the forum, i sometime wonder whether the forum has also become more difficult for genuine beginners.
Probably difficult for newbies, not for genuine newbies. A newbie really doesn't need ranks or merits to learn from the forum and contribute to the forum as well.
Well, i am still new to the forum just a year plus, but as history has it. Years ago, ranking up on the forum was not really as difficult as it is now, back them ranking up was mainly based on activity, but today merit plays the major role in ranking up, and this have changed how users interact on the forum.
Merits are reward of your contribution and recognition to the forum. Still you can learn, engage on discussion or ask questions out of the ranks.
The merit system was introduced for a good reason because many users were making meaningless posts, low quality post and even spamming only to join signature campaigns. and without the system who knows what the forum could become by now.
Those intended to earn quick money from the forum, they think for quick rank up. Rather a newbie should focus to engage discussion, learn and contribute.
Perhaps from a beginner's perspective things may look different. A newbie can spend weeks, months making posts on the forum without receiving a single merit. sometimes the newbie may even have useful opinions but struggle because they do not know how to structure quality discussions or older members may ignore their post due to low rank.
Doesn't matter older users ignore a post, there are a lot of merit source they might notice. Otherwise there are couple of merits threads where newbies could raise there post to draw attention from the merit sources.
Frankly speaking, all these things sometimes can make genuine newbies to be discouraged quickly and began to feel that ranking up depends more on recognition than efforts and that's how i see the forum now. Personally, i would say that this frustration sometimes can push newbies towards copy pasting, Ai generated content, account farming and so on just to survive on the forum. So, please older users not only merit sources should have rethink genuine newbies are struggling to grow on the forum.
It's true newbies would have to struggle to build their profile here, but genuine newbies achieve their goal end of the day. So it's challenging for newbies to become a genuine newbie.
