Topic: Merit source observations - page 3. (Read 3918 times)

Indeed, it's a -1000 (there's no great mystery behind the disappearance of this MS) and a +200 (it's more a correction of an "anomaly" for this new MS).

Merit bell

The total merit sources number is still 109 but total sourced merit drops a lot from 33940 to 33140. There is less 800 sourced merit each 30 days than the last merit bell.
Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources

Merit bell

Not sure when it happened but today I saw.
1 merit source removed.
Total source merit drops from 33989 to 33940.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources

Great to see you back, Jet Cash!  Of course I always say that whenever you reappear--though truthfully if you were posting in sections like B&H I wouldn't know if you'd taken a vacation or not.  I've been meaning to learn more about using the lightning network, but I've just been too mentally lazy.

You obviously haven't been active as a merit source in the past 120 days (no criticism, just observation), and that makes me wonder how active some of the lesser-known, or completely unknown, sources are and whether Theymos is keeping an eye on things.  I'd think if a merit source isn't distributing many merits, he might want to think about either adding new ones or replacing sources that aren't active.  I don't know if 33989 merits in 30 days is good or not, though I imagine the community would make some noise if it wasn't. 

On the other hand, aside from the typical threads in Meta about how to earn merits there haven't been any real complaints that it's impossible to rank up in quite some time.  It could be that lower-ranked members have resigned themselves to staying at Jr. Member or thereabouts.  I honestly don't know what to think.

You don't have to feel even a bit guilty about this. The important things is stay bitcoiner at hearth, spending your precious satoshi where you think it is worth.
Regarding your merit source role, Theymos will eventually take action , if he is dissatisfied of what you are doing. No need to worry or to judge you.

Regarding you not recognising anyone, I don't know hat to say. Communities evolve, often in a way we didn't foresee. But rest assured bitcointalk.opg IS the best place where to discuss bitcoin.

Apart form that: ^{Did you start mining in your van?}

The stupid covid panicdemic forced me to change quite a few things. I used to spend a lot of time drinking coffee in McDonalds and using the computer. I don't go into snack bars any more, and I'm spending more time in the van next to the  sea or in the woods. It's a great life. I feel a bit guilty, as I'm still a merit source with lots to spend.. I bought a couple of classic Volvo cars amongst other things, so I'm spending a lot less time on line.

I feel a bit guilty, as I'm still a Bitcoin maximalist and hodler, and I suspect Bitcoin Talk is still the best pace to discuss Bitcoin. I've had a look round today, and I don't recognise any of the currently active posters. Hopefully I'll be able to spend a bit more time here, and I hope to start using the lightning network to spend and replenish small amounts of Bitcoin.

I checked the page today, as someone told me there were MS removals.

it says:


so no change since @Thranthidung last checked.


Am I daydreaming or there was a graph for this?

Right, I'd probably agree with that. If a merit source isn't spending the majority of their spending allocation, it's probably a good time to reconsider them as a merit source, but only really if you think someone else would be able to replace the amount they're sending, and in a somewhat useful way.

I think if we look at it at implementation, users didn't really understand the importance of merit, and there was a lot of experimenting so large amounts were thrown around initially. However, as the standards set by the community sort of came into play, so did the stinginess you talk about. Basically, merit is like bloody gold these days, and you'll find even some very good posts only receiving one merit at a time. theymos did counteract that by increasing merit source allocation though. So, the answer doesn't always have to be new merit sources, but increasing the allocation of the current merit sources. Although, currently I think we're at the sweet spot, since most merit sources are probably only just about spending their allocation every month, and any more would likely be wasted.


There's also the issue of attrition over time a certain duty might become a little less exciting to certain users, or they might feel they aren't making as big of an impact as they once were. Some will get bored of only sending merit to the same users, time over time, and get frustrated that newer users aren't popping up as often as before. I guess what I'm trying to say is natural variation will take course, and therefore habits will change over time. That either means we need to do something about getting more eyes on the forum, getting new merit sources or increasing the allocations of the current merit sources.

I think that, with current rules, merit and trust systems assolve very different functions on the forum. While merit system attains the effort put on the forum, the trust system attain “judgment” on the “trust” each one of us can put on a certain users.
As also recent event have demonstrated, the two aspects are often correlated, but can be also take opposite directions.
And the damage in the second scenario greatly overcome the benefit of a single system.

Probably it is worth repeating that the very first batch of merit source members were selected by theymos based on whatever he thought might make a good merit source.. perhaps based on their past contributions to the forum.. but a decent number of the initial selection ended up being merit hoarders... .. also the system was new, so it likely took a little bit of time to get used to the idea of sending smerits and also for theymos to see how it played out in those first couple of years.. 


Personally, I am very much in favor of the idea of increasing the number of merit source members or even rotating some of the merit source members.. I do speculate that theymos has some reservations in regards to being too rash in terms of making changes.. and a rotating system might cause a lot of work for him and a lot of frustration from merit source members.. and might even cause resentment from non-merit source members to be making changes very frequently.. so there might be downsides in terms of attempting to be very creative in the process.. but the injection of 20 to 50 new merit source members might be a good idea.. but maybe even that might not have as many upsides as it seems to have on the face of the matter.

Another possibility could be that theymos could try to delegate some of his responsibilities in regards to the whole merit source system and appoint a merit source czar that would oversee the whole system.. but that might well bring on some of its own issues.. even if theymos feels some burdens in carrying out those duties himself, too.

I recall at one point there seemed to have had been some thoughts that the merit system might be able to replace the trust system.. and then there are goals of having systems that might play out in more decentralized kinds of ways.. but then at the same time, there seems to be no real escaping some of the allegiances and alliances that form, and also sometimes the injustices that play out with some of the drama, too... even seemingly really good forum members might end up going through melt-downs of sorts.. there would likely be a lot of pissed off members if there were a discovery that the merit system would replace the trust system..


.....,and for sure, even when the merit system went into place, there were some of us who were assigned as merit source members (including yours truly) who had little to no clue that such a system was going to be going into effect, and it can seem like a kind of April fools joke to sign in and to try to figure out "what the fuck is this?" and to find out that you have been assigned as a merit source, and don't even really know what it is, yet... so knowledge does evolve on the topic and we get used to it. and sometimes the transition can be confusing, including if theymos were to proclaim that the merit system was going to be taken away.. that would likely cause disgruntled folks, too.


Yes.. some of those merit source applications seem to sit for a long time (years perhaps?) without any assignment of any new merit source member for certain areas of the forum.


Personally, it seems difficult to conclude that something "needs to be done" - if not knowing enough information regarding what problem might "need to be" solved... I am not going to proclaim to know if I do not see reports or investigations into reports... .. and, sure there might be some parts of the forum that seem to have some leaders or even more contributory members. and how might we know, or not know, if there might be some concerns about certain kinds of activities or if there might be some thoughts about various members who might be appointed as merit source members and if that might be helpful or maybe it would not necessarily be helpful to the situation in that local.. I would not really be able to globally know without having some specifics in regards to posting activities and reports at minimum.. and even some of the moderators might have some of their own views on the topic about which theymos is attempting to account for, too.


You may well know about some areas of the forum in which I have hardly any clue about the dynamics.. so sure you could be correct about the need for one or two more merit sources being needed in a certain area of the forum.. but I doubt that we can conclude that theymos is not doing enough merely based on an assertion that there might exist a seemingly obvious solution that might include increasing merit source members (or rotating merit source members or removing a merit source member) in one or more areas of the forum.

Most merit source are handpicked by theymos and send them pm to inquire about availability, and as far as I know there are only a few of that apply to be merit source which are then selectively added to the source.

I would not say that the merit source is stingy especially since it is free work for them. In the past I've complained about the consistently high post quality requirement that multiple merit source maintain on both local or global board, but this assumption was eventually debunked when I studied how the system worked. You should know that you cannot expect all merit source to have the same methods and criteria, currently 111 merit source have different criteria and this will add to the uniqueness of the system. If 1-5 source are stingy, it doesn't mean that the other 106-110 source are also stingy.

I know that adding some merit source or replacing inactive ones can improve distribution across multiple board. As one of the users who have submitted merit source applications, I have never forced the admin to accept me because I think some people are still willing to help on the local board or maybe merited some of my posts which I then distribute to the local board. But of course my contribution won't be much improvement, but at least it will continue as long as I have sMerit. Unfortunately while now it has to stop because of 0 sMerit.

Merit Sources shouldn't need to do merit hoarding, because when they make a Vision and Mission when applying to become a Merit Source, they often attach a history of their achievement statistics. Speaking of the first batch of Merit Source assignments, there are still many things that need to be addressed, maybe they are stingy because they have difficulty finding worthy users in their post history reviews to be appreciated or have other activities outside the forum that cannot be abandoned, in the end, many monthly sMerit allocations are piled up.

To reduce cases of merit hoarding on Merit Sources, Theymos should choose Merit Sources that really have high Loyalty on the forum. So far, I have found several Merit Sources (no need to mention their names here) that do their job well, some of them need to be rotated with other users or provide opportunities for non-merit source members.

Obviously there will be BIG PROBLEMS if the Merit Source chosen by the Administrator is more stingy than the non-merit source members.
In the context of your quote above, I really understand the intent and purpose, those who hoard services are only a small number of stingy users who cannot appreciate contributions from other users.

As I explained above, there are still many shortcomings in the FIRST PRODUCT. So far what I have seen in the field, Merit Source is already on track, both globally and on the Local Board.

We never know if haven't tried it, the opportunity needs to be given to non-merit source users who are very active in distributing sMerit to other forum members. I also found some Merit Source Applications that have not been accepted, I thought Theymos should give it a try as some local councils also need Merit Source.

Changes need to be made on a rotating basis to reduce potential problems, Theymos should be more active in overseeing stingy Merit Sources and immediately rotate with new Source. I think if done like this, Merit Source will be even more active in distributing monthly sMerit allocations to deserving users (please correct if I'm wrong).

I forgot about that. yesterday i just saw from my perspective that i have very little time outside my working hours.
I forgot that many people also work online. and also many people who have become rich and no longer work. and they do activities in this forum as a fun activity as a hobby. or to fill spare time and share information and insights with fellow forum members. conduct small discussions that sometimes relieve boredom and add experience and insight.

Yeah my work is this forum, Ebay and hunting on a dozen sales sites online.

Plus I blog on two other sites evga.com and macrumors

So I spend 4-10 hours a day online. Along with regular visits to maintain the farm gear.

I am not the only one thats earns online on this website.

It could be any of the things you mentioned or a combination of several factors. You have to understand that not everyone works your standard 8-10 hours a day job, so they have more time during the day than the average person. Depending on where you are in the world and what your financial situation looks like, being active on this forum is a huge deal to some financially. We might have some crypto millionaires among us who no longer have to work at all and their hobby is writing on Bitcointalk. You have freelancers who only work occasionally. You have people who work in sales in certain stores that don't see much activity and they have much time to kill in between serving their customers. 

so far since i joined this forum i found a really extraordinary level of activeness in this forum. I didn't know they were a source of merit at that time. because I didn't know there was a profession as a source of merit. But once I know that the person is a Source of merit then all I can say is that they are the right person to hold that mandate as a Source of merit. for considering their extraordinary activity. because I saw other accounts of ordinary people. hence most of them are only active about 4 hours per day. even less than that.

but the question mark for me is how can they always be active in this forum? do they not have much activity in the real world? Or are they really good at managing time?

What Pmalek discusses in this topic is only a small number of the top active users who have earned the most Merit but have sent 0 sMerits to other users, some of whom have left the forum. Without them there are still many other users with a high concern for spending sMerit where it deserves.
Those who leave the forum with the number of sMerits they have will not reduce the number of sMerit, the circulation of merits continues even without them.

As many of us know, there is no rule against merit hoarding... but theymos said that he would keep an eye on the potential that it could become an issue.

And, merit hoarding for regular members is surely less of an issue than for merit sources, and I am pretty sure that in the first round of merit source member assignments, some of those members who were assigned as merit sources, were really stingy regarding their sending out merits, and some of them even publicly stated such.

Theymos would not even need to have had to see their posts in which they made such anti-smerit sending philosophies to be able to see whether or not they were using their smerit monthly allocations... so it did take theymos a year or maybe even two years before he really did end up reducing the smerit allocations of those merit sources and/or removing them from being merit sources...

So I do believe that it would be a BIGGER problem if merit source members were merit hoarders as compared with non-merit source members.. and the context of my above quote was attempting to focus on the dynamic of regular members acting like smerit hoarders rather than merit source members.

Otherwise I agree with your overall assessment Razmirraz that it appears that current merit source members are way more inclined to liberally send smerits as compared to either the first batch of merit source members and perhaps even the second batch.. so it may well have taken a bit more than a couple of years to get each of the incremental improvements in achieving more liberal sending of smerits from merit source members.

I surely don't feel like I have enough information to know whether some improvement could be made in terms of either rotating merit source members a bit more or if there might be some improvements if theymos might increase the number of merit source members.. because there does seem to be a bit of work in making those kinds of assessments, and surely sometimes there are likely some issues with how some of the merit source members (and not even excluding myself from the potential problem areas) are sending smerits and/or unfairly benefiting from their being assigned as a merit source member... .but likely theymos does also recognize that even if some of us might be sloppy and neglectful and maybe even deliberately bad from time to time in how we are either sending smerits or refraining from sending smerits, he likely also recognizes and appreciates that there is quite a bit of work that may well go into merit source members figuring out their own approach to the matter and then actually employing it on a daily/weekly and even monthly basis (as Philip mentioned the very issue that he has had with building up of smerits and some dilemmas regarding how to spend them in a way that is comfortable for the merit source member as well as other real life issues that s/he may well have happening)..

For example, there might be some reports that theymos and/or various admins/mods receive - and some of those reports might end up leading to something in which immediate action might need to be taken by theymos.. but then other times, it may well be that he is just making notes and accumulating a file.. to "get to" later, whether it is 1 year later, 2 years later or maybe some longer period of time so long as the accumulated notes are not really causing him a sufficient amount of discomfort in regards to just letting the whole matter just continue to run "as is" until a certain threshold of discomfort is crossed... like the breaking bellow the 200-week moving average as  BTC's price support.. and when it happens.. he says to himself "oh shit, I better do something"..... I.e... buy more BTC.. or globally tweak the forum's smerit system..

A lot depends on how busy you may be with real life shit.

I have about 1000 unreleased merits

I have also given about 4600 merits to people.

Since Last july the merits I have not given away are gaining..

Ie I had about 400 merits Last july 2021.

my bro-in-law developed dementia We found out on August 1 2021.

He lives 90 miles from me. A long drive as most is driving in NYC.

Say 2 ½ to 3 hours each way.

So his sister and I drive back and forth. A lot that is six hours lost to bitcointalk each time.

I say six hours because going online at his house while we are there does not happen So If I leave at 6am arrive at 9am do what is needed at his home leave at 8pm and get home at 11 pm I spent 17 hours off bitcointalk but I likely would have spent 6.  Multiply by 50 trips is a loss of 300 hours the last year on bitcointalk. 

So I built up my merits and smerits from 400 to 1000.

the next year god willing I will be able to do more here and lower my merits again.

I cant be the only merit source that got busy last year and gave less then the normal amount.

So I am just saying maybe its not much of an issue when people do this.

Ah, yes!!!!  Dude, thank you for linking to that, because it's a page I used to have bookmarked a long time ago (probably from whenever it was created) but somehow lost track of because of various hard drive changes and forgetting how to locate it.  Sweet, now I'm going to bookmark it again.

You'd think that for as long as I've been here, I'd know how to find my way around the forum, but....I don't.  I'd like to think it's a forum design problem, but the reality is it's more likely a my-brain-is-turning-to-hamburger issue.  I'm going to blame it on smartphones and social media, the easiest scapegoats I can think of.

And by the way, guys, keep in mind that some merit sources didn't apply for the position and I think those are the ones least likely to dedicate a good amount of time giving away merits.  Theymos tapped a bunch of members to be sources back in 2019 (IIRC), and damned if I know when the last time he accepted an application or created a new merit source.  It'd be awesome if he dumped a ton of statistics about the merit system and in particular the merit sources past and present, but I know that's not going to happen if their identities are kept confidential.  Oh well.