Has ai changed the way you merit?

[IjawMan]

Sending merit to AI generated post can be very painful but it does happen because it is extremely difficult to check every post before sending merits. Some AI generated post does not usually appear like AI especially when the author do some twerking to deceive readers, in such case, it becomes difficult to know that the posts were generated through AI. AI generated posts are just like plagiarism that is forbidden anywhere in the world. I remembered the case of Ratimov who later changed his name to Symmetrick, he was famous for creating very interesting topics but unfortunately, plagiarized lost of them. I'm sure people who poured merits in some of those his post regretted giving those merits but there was nothing they could do. This is the same regret anyone should feel when they merit posts that are AI generated.

You know that parable of Jesus in the Bible about not giving the children's meat to the dogs. That is exactly how I see it with AI posts when it is revealed later on that certain merits received by a particular post was in fact an AI generated post.

I do not blame the merit sender though cause they out of good will decides to reward what appeared to be a quality post they have come across, in a time when post quality reduction is becoming a nightmare for the forum.

[alegotardo]

This left me with two questions;

• If you come across a high-quality post from a lower-ranked member, do you merit it immediately or do you first check their posting history?
• Do you think looking at a user's history is a form of due diligence or should merit be based solely on the quality of the individual post?

I rarely give merits to posts outside of Portuguese local board, so I usually end up awarding them to people that I already know, people whose reputations I am familiar and whose original posts I can easily recognize. That also makes it easy to tell whether they are using AI, because I am already familiar with their usual writing style and posting habits.

But, if I see a good post outside of local board, I think it is very unlikely that I would open the author's profile to check the post history.... if the content is useful, accurate and well written, I think it deserves recognition of one or two merits, I do not think that makes much difference. Because if this person in fact using AI to write their posts, sooner or later they will be caught and any merits they previously earned will have been for nothing.