Topic: 50 Merits for bounty threads. (Read 612 times)

I don't deny that some merit abuse is happening and additional abuse is not detected, but in the end, I doubt that it justifies the implementation of a smerit decay policy...

Of course, unilaterally theymos could decide either way, and I imagine that he would be receptive to evidence that is based on both facts and logic - and such evidence would likely need to show more benefits coming from such policy than the negative aspects of taking things away.... and such evidence would likely have to go beyond the concept that there are "undetected" smerit abuse cases out there or that there might possibly be undetected smerit abuse in the future.

Whatever you do it’s bound to be controversial:

On the one hand, airdropped sMerit was created in proportion to each one’s rank and activity, and therefore was respectful with both of these concepts that one gained historically. It is each person’s prerogative how and when they decide to use them. Some accounts will possibly be inactive for a longish period of time, and when they reactivate, they could well do with some sMerits to award.

On the other hand, 15 months of not using them is a fair amount of time, and the idea is not to hoard them. As often happens, the issue is not really the non-usage, but rather the potential mal practice that could become of it. Accounts that have not set the initial sMerit airdrop in motion may not really be bothered with the Merit System, and as such, may just let it be in their accounts, … or decide to trade with it. Of course, trade likely happens with non-airdropped sMerits too, but the aggregate potential amount of airdropped-smerit that exists is large, and perhaps a potential "risk" (i.e. underground sell of sMerits or accounts with them).

Perhaps if we encounter a period of sustained multiple proven merit abuse cases, then some sort of action may be required to reduce the risk, although likely only a small fraction of the cases are detected.

I definitely appreciate your calculations, DdmrDdmr, about how many airdropped smerits likely remain outstanding. 

I both disagree with your conclusory assessments that there is a lot of abuse potential with those dormant smerits or that theymos needs to do something about those outstanding unused smerits (such as decay them)...

As far as I know, on at least, a couple theymos has already expressed a degree of reluctancy to decay unused smerits, and I doubt that use of old/stagnant smerits has yet risen to a level that such decay implementation would have become warranted.  Of course opinions are going to vary in this regard.

Looking at merits earned and merits received (airdropped) before the January 24, 2018 introduction of this new merit system are two different indicators based on different presumptions.  Of course, on a general basis there are a lot of threads and active posts that have not received merit for their posts prior to the introduction of the merit system because only a few members are going to go back and use their merits that way, and of course, some exceptionally notable historical posts have still received a decent amount of merits and attention drawn to them for such purposes too.

There is no injustice going on but just an overlap of two systems and some lack of consistencies, which is largely how th world works, anyhow.  Merits are not a reflection of objective goodness, even though there could be some of that going on, but there is also human subjective element going on too, as well as whimsical irrationality.. and sometimes not so good sides of humans shown through their use of their smerits. 

Of course, merit sources are held to a bit of a higher standard, but even then various irrationalities and whimsicality still might exist and might not go beyond theymos's level of detection or tolerance.

This is very dangerous for you because it might be possible for people to judge that you have multiple accounts in this forum. But, I believe that you make this thread means that you also object to giving that much sMerit as well as this thread becomes a clarification from you so that people don't judge you with negative things about giving that much sMerit. I hope this forum admin can help solve the problems that you get now.

This is cool but i think it could kind of be discouraging to new members unless merit circulation increases. Imagine joining as a newbie in this current situation where merit is hard to come by and you have to gather 2000+ merit to reach that rank 
Heck, i just have a little over 50 merits and i don't think i will even make it to 1000 

It’s more likely theymos will introduce a new rank than delete all Merit apart from Earned Merit.
Something like the following would be cool -

{New Rank}
Activity 2000+
Merit 2000+

Let's look back further, with Satoshi Nakamoto contributions for bitcoin in particular and for crypto in general as well as his/her/ their dissapearance years ago.
I don't think there are someone who say that contributions of Satoshi Nakomoto is small, valueless, or devalued contributions over time due to growth of crypto recent years.
Yes, I agree with your suggestion.
Simply depend on campaign managers, if they require strict rules for their participants, shitty users can not be qualified enough to apply and join.

Just because someone is no longer active or as active as they used to be, doesn't mean their previous posts or contributions should be devalued. We certainly shouldn't be looking to punish older members who took a big risk on bitcoin in its early days. Given that there have been 433 days since the introduction of the merit system, under your proposal, a member gaining maximum activity would have to have gained 216 merits just to break even, let alone thinking about ranking up. According to https://bpip.org/report.aspx?r=mostmerited, there are only 226 members who have achieved this. The purpose of merit was to stop shitposters being paid for shitposting - it wasn't meant to derank or limit the vast majority of members, which is what your proposal would do.

I still think the neatest solution is simply to change the requirement for a signature to earned merit. No one would be deranked, inactive legendaries would get to keep their legendary status, but shitposters who had their signature grandfathered in would no longer be able to get paid for their shitposting.

This is the worst defense statement. What happened to their contributing power after merit system implementation?
ok, if you want to say they are not active now (though nothing stop you to meriting old posts) but will you still agree on Activity Based Demotion i.e removal of 1 airdropped merit for 2 activity gained , after the implementation of the merit system.


I am interested in knowing what kind of deal is done here.

Maybe this is a test for April 1 and theymos script started to work a little bit earlier ?

But on the other hand it looks like account is hacked. I feel really bad for the owner, if he sees on Monday that all of his merits are gone and thinks that this is just a Aprils Fool's Day joke, but later realises he was hacked.

I think the motive of this person was to bribe you with Merit so that when a spot for the ongoing campaign you are running opens up, and he applied, you would add him to it. But thank God, you are one of those people who are incorruptible.
It was an outright abuse of Merit by the sender.

I really like the idea o_e_l_e_o. Separation of the rank level from the possibility of display signature and combine it with the number of earned merits would be a great solution (much better than deranking all high ranked users who didn't earned any merits).

Thanks to this, we would avoid "punishing" users who deservedly gained their rank before introducing the merit system. Today we can not treat everyone the same because many of Legendary users undoubtedly contributed a lot to this forum in the past when there was no merit system and they surely deserved their high rank (even if they didn't earned any merits last 15 months), but there were also many of them whose contribution was zero and they got ranks thanks only to activity. Unfortunately, today checking who really deserved his rank and who did not is not possible at all.

Such a separation would have the additional advantage - it would significantly reduce the phenomenon of account trading, because it would no longer be profitable to buy high accounts, without the "earned" merits.

If it will be made, demotions on all ranks will happen, but I like your ideas.
Then all will have a fresh start, really fair start.
If you or someone have been here 4 or 7 years ago, you can have enough understandings on crypto to help others, then receive merits, and rank up again.
If you or someone are unable to do this, it is clearly you are luckily ranked up to high ranks without ability to contribute anything to the forum. It worths almost the same as brand-new or newbie.

I heard about huge merit giveaway in the situation of different kinds of deals between members. It happens that in such situation a shit post or stupid one get like 50 merits.But your situation is something unique to me, I hear of such case at the first time indeed. I do not even know how to explain it.

theymos raised his opinion in early days after activation of merit system that he don't worry too much about merit abusers because they soon will out of sMerits to abuse.
He even don't suggest to tag abusers who abuse insignificantky with negative trust due to the same reason above.
However, over time, due to some huge merit abusements, he actually take off all those abused merits, and removed bad merit sources.

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I don't check the account, but I doubt that hacked account owner will do this for non-sense purpose.
Why the owner did that to disclose that the account is a hacked one?
The account owner actually sent out 125 sMerits within 4 minutes
Woke up on 27 March and sent out sMerits one day later.
https://bpip.org/profile.aspx?p=notthematrix
Last posts made in March last year, 2 months after the beginning or merit system, so it was long enough to know what is merit and its function. If the same owner did not send any merit 2 minus after merit activated, it is unbelievable that one year later, the same person sent out 125 sMerits in 4 mins.
All proofs show that it is likely hacked account.

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Lots of sMerits destroyed on nuked, perma banned (plagiarised or hacked) accounts.

CoolCryptvator is a scammer, deal with caution, his account have been compromised by an hacker !!!

If we update the figures I’ve drawn-up in the pastconcerning sMerit circulation, we get:

 600.000      sMerits Initial Airdrop
-350.129     sent sMerits (Merit Sources and regular forum members)
+175.065    Min estimate generated (first halving taken to its maximum theoretical degree, and not accounting for all the other halvings which I cannot estimate)
--------------------------------------------
424.936   Total unsent sMerits (aprox. *)

(*) Not all is really sendable really, due to inactive users, banned users, and so forth.


Now Merit Source pool is currently of 20.855 sMerits per 30 days. Being conservative, and taking into account that the pool size has varies over time, lets say a bare minimum average of 12k has been sent each month since the beginning of the Merit System. That would mean that at least 180.000 of the sent sMerits were originated by Merit Sources .The remaining 170.129 (350.129 – 180.000) would come from the Initial Airdrop and halvings.

So even in the “best” case scenario (no halvings), there are around 600.000 – 170.129 = 429.871 airdropped sMerits in user accounts (*).

After 15 months of the Merit System, I don’t know how likely they are to come into the scene, but they also constitute a risk for merit trading. I would think that, after 15 months on non-usage, they should be withdrawn from the accounts on the basis of avoiding risks and not being into the Merit game anyway.

Maybe, but I don't see this as a huge issue.  If you haven't given out your airdropped merit already, you probably never will and I highly doubt there's that much still available to abuse even if it were all used for that purpose (which it won't be).

OP's situation is just a consequence of people being free to do what they wish with their sMerits, and I have no reason to doubt his story.  Not everyone realizes the value of merits and a lot of people just don't care about the system.  It's really only the shitposters who could earn more money if they were able to rank up who obsess over merits.

Yes it would.  But there would be a lot of pissed off Legendary members being demoted in signature campaigns, and they're usually not the ones making the garbage posts and all of the problems around here.

I am seeing second time someone is complaining about received merit. First case I have seen on reputation. However you clear from your side that you are not involved with abuse. I believe it because really no need 50 merit now.

However I don't think we should take seriously about merit sender. At least he is spending his airdrop merit. OP should spread your merit around the forum. Holding merit doesn't benefit for you. So why not help other people's?

I don't think sender should be tagged or any other action against him. Just say congratulations if someone spreading his Airdrop merit.