Topic: A simpler version of demerits: "dmerits" for every X merits earned - page 2. (Read 900 times)

I am aware of that thread but wasn't aware the Op of the thread was bursted for account farming. I just checked the thread and discovered that there's an unanswered by question by Jollygood waiting him.

Meanwhile, the merit system is ok. If we seek for improvement it should be to create more sources and not demerit feature which will be misused just as some people are doing DT power now.

A user started a topic about this issue on this thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63714900 and later on bust with farm account. The intention is for personal vendetta to the user that bust him.

The OP of this thread agree on this idea so he continue the topic in this new thread with a poll. Actually, Merit system is already working well because farm account is already less rampant these days since they can’t rank up easily. This feature will not be open for discussion again if the previous OP doesn’t mention this topic because the current merit system is working fine based on its purpose.

I'm surprised like you and I simply do not know where this ugly idea is coming from despite other creative ideas that can move this forum forward. This will certainly move the forum backward which doesn't make any sense. Because theymos and the brains behind the creation of the idea of the merit system just the way it is must have thought so well about the OP's wicked idea and must have wisely condemned it before taking a stance as we see today.

Can you imagine what the OP is clamouring for, it will cause anarchy in the forum if care is not taken. Some people who had given you several merits could determine to remove it one after the other if there is a disagreement between you guys or merely a change of decision. You know what that means? Some who had been promoted to a higher rank could get their status demoted due to this ill-conceived idea.

The way the merit system has been made permanent when you send merits is just the best.

People shouldn't live in fear on this forum, but unfortunately you are correct. Poking the wrong bear could lead to a person losing their way of earning and some just cannot afford that. I don't really think most of the members I respect would engage in that sort of shit.

@OP adding a demerit system would be great if it could be used properly and not be biased. I think that's impossible here.

Voting is not an excellent mechanism for making such decisions. If a vote were held, there would certainly not be a merit system or signature campaigns would not be prohibited.


Will choose Yes, the current merit system needs to be modified and added to DeMerit, but the problem remains in how to implement it. If it is a new DeMerit list, the forum would be very centralized.
Frankly, I do not like the current trust system because of the points mentioned by @Plaguedeath as many are afraid to leave negative feedbacks to avoid be attacked, getting negative trust and less opportunity to join sig campaigns.

In general, in ALTT there is a system similar to a court, where 4-6 members are elected and take action. If it is necessary to make adjustments to the merit system, I suggest creating a similar idea, but frankly, I do not have an ideal idea.

This is a big place and even if theymos wants to moderate, a lot of things will be unnoticed. Theymos can assign some modes to perform the job but it's also some manual job.

Changes are always welcome but for this one my vote is "No".

No, I'll sum it up for you, it's very simple. OddJobsForBitcoin opened the following thread:

What Sort of Signature is "FUCK Royse777"?

In that he basically made up that someone had tried to hire him to put on that signature. As it usually happens in the Reputation section, whoever opens a thread gets in the eyes of the DTs, who start investigating his story, and in this case decodx discovered with blockchain analysis that he has a lot of alt accounts with which he has joined the same bounties and that he has been involved in accounts selling.

When asked why he had broken the rules joining bounties with his alts, he replied:


So, when caught red handed, OddJobsForBitcoin opened this shitty thread talking about demerit and how bad some higher ranked members, like decodx, are doing:

Hey Theymos, There Should Be a Demotion Button

BenCodie thought it was a good idea, regardless of the context of where the proposal came from, and from what we see in the voting results, he seems to be the only one.

Yep, you make a solid point and no doubt that's one of the reasons why adding a de-merit system would fall flat on its face.  If I sat down for about 10 minutes, I could probably come up with a dozen or so additional reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea at all.  Right off the top of my head, I can picture all sorts of abuse by members who might be leaving the forum and decide to give a big 'fuck you' to a bunch of people (assuming they were able to under the hypothetical system).  And I think it would put members on eggshells, sort of like the fear you mentioned.

In any case, this was discussed at least one time that I know of, back when the merit system first came into existence.  The consensus was that the power to de-merit a post would do more harm than good.  And hell, it doesn't really matter what the community thought about the idea.  Theymos obviously snubbed it then, and I don't think he's likely to change his mind no matter how well laid out one's argument is. 

I voted NO!
But why this sudden interest in demerits?;
What has happened?;
Are we not the problems of ourselves?;
Sugesting demerit function means there's merit saturation;
This kind of posts make theymos to keep deaf ears at merit sources applications;
We all agreed that the forum needs more merit sources;
We also on ourselves are suggesting function to demerit someone.

Exactly this. Recently, there was a case of abuse on Altt, so the admin deleted all karma points.
Something is different here and I wouldn't expect theymos or moderators to monitor possible abuses or organized demerit user profiles.

The other forum Altcointalks has this plus and minus karma the same features OP wants to be added, OP's suggestion here is very premature why not monitor the other forum first if it's going to succeed or fail so you have your model of merit and demerits so you have a build-up of your argument.

Why this sudden collective interest for a demerit function?

I don't see why, is it because of the airdroped merits? even those who have a majority of airdropped merits don't bother anyone either. We can all already see who has earned merits and in what proportion on Bpip or with the web extension, this is not misleading for anyone (I mean campaign managers etc..) ; for example with OP:


As for the others, apart from airdropped merits, I'm not such a hater myself lol. So, no real need for demerit imo.

In any case, for the moment the result of the poll look pretty clear:

I voted no.

I basically have 2 or 3 ideas a month about things that might make sense for Bitcointalk, but I keep most of them to myself, because after the initial excitement wears off, I ponder them more deeply and almost always come to realize that they are flawed in some subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) way and/or that they would throw off the balance that theymos has (presumably) worked so hard to achieve. It's really hard to find things that would be strict improvements (that is, ideas that would have nothing or almost nothing but upside if they were implemented). It's easier (though still hard) to find things that might/will create new problems but that you're almost certain will solve an even bigger problem (or set of problems) in exchange. So, if I were you, I'd start by asking: "What is the problem (or set of problems) that I'm aiming to solve?". If you can't come up with a really clear problem-statement, then, in my experience, it's usually not worth unpacking/debating the details of the solution (at least, not yet). Another way to think about it (just abstractly, I mean; there are no general-purpose units that I know of that would let you reason this out concretely), is that if you can't estimate the magnitude of the problem(s) being solved, then you have nothing to weigh against the magnitude of the problem(s) being caused.

(I mean, I know that sometimes the answer to something can present itself before you actually know the question, but, in general, that's a really inefficient way to work. A semi-related example that comes to mind is that I think the constant factor of 0.5 in the sMerit calculation could be swapped out for a rank-dependent value: that is, instead of the per-transaction sMerit calculation being something like sMeritBalance += meritsReceived * 0.5, it could be something like sMeritBalance += meritsReceived * LUT[receiversRank], or even something like sMeritBalance += meritsReceived * LUT[receiversRank][sendersRank]. In either the 8-entry 1D LUT case, or the 64-entry 2D LUT case, the values could all be set to 0.5, which would keep things working like they currently do, but, I have a hunch that experimenting with those values could have multiple benefits: it's easy to come up with LUTs that would make it much harder for unestablished accounts to rank each other up, or LUTs that would make the merit system less source-dependent by generating sMerit a little more generously for the higher ranks, etc. but because I came up with this idea before I had a specific problem in mind, I've just been sitting on it, struggling to arrive at a really convincing argument for why it should be implemented. But, I also can't just push if off my plate, so to speak, because I think it's likely the solution to something, I just don't know what.)

I saw this thread earlier but I decidedly to wait for comments  
The demerit of a thing will mess things up so bad in my opinion but if we decide to bring it in then there should  be a negative effect on the issuer as he or she must sacrifice merit to do that and it has been proposed by @LoyceV. This should really show how badly a user need to sacrifice his/her merit  to demerit another user

Exactly this why i am against it to be honest, we will be causing more drama than we already have on hand. The merit is already a one way function and the whole reputation board is filled with drama adding another end will just create more problems. The people supporting it are only looking at how perfect they want the system but we can’t get that spontaneity or transparency no matter the rules we set or twerk here, even bitcoin that brought us here is not total spontaneous, going for a perfect system only creates more problems.

My only option if ever big T consider it is it should be restricted to the person that sent that merit, they should be the only one to take it away and it shouldn’t been added back to their smerits too.
My reason for this is maybe you sent an excess mistake due to mistake like we read on the forum and you feel the post doesn’t deserve that much merit you can take it back. Or you merit a post that ended up to be a plagiarized post, you can take it back too. But still if you look at this there will still be problems, so the best is leave it like this

So far this is the result of the poll
Yes   - 1 (6.3%)
No   - 15 (93.8%)
Total Voters: 16

Those who voted Yes understand that there's going to be abuse, we are not speculating we just foresee the scenario based on all our experience here in Bitcointalk


Total mess indeed.

I have voted "No" on the poll because I think dMerit system will ruin the current level of this forum as it could create a dMerit war between members of this forum. The forum is a good forum but there are always those members who disagree with someone, and they don't let such people to grow on the forum no matter how well the other member is contributing. The dMerit system will make job of such people easier and one its implemented such members could easily dMerit and reduce the ranks of those members who don't agree with them or who share their own honest opinion about things.

I know that the merit system is also not at its best, because if you notice the flow of merits then most merits are given to those members who are either part of a Local board or to those who are already established members with thousands of merits. This lets a huge group of members to receive way less merits than what they deserve but who cares about that? So my simple suggestion is to allow the current system of merits and make no changes to it at the moment. If change is really necessary then it should be improving the current merit system instead of add a dMerit solution.

I could only think that if this is implemented this will be worse than the how the DT works before, too much hate will be around.

Reddit have this kind of way to + and - karma but the good thing there is, sender isn't visible to all users and you can do it to anyone without time restrictions unlike on altcoinstalks, so hate is implausible but will only push of quality and friendly posts, it's also the same thing for merit-only karma system.

Even if you add 1 demerit for every 50 or 100 merits, the system will not work, as taking away 1 or 10 merits from someone will not change absolutely anything, because to remove 1 merit or downgrade an account hundreds or thousands of merits are needed...

The suggestion is valid, but it doesn't make sense to implement it on the forum. The current merit and trust system already fulfills its purpose very well.

I love the intent and I honestly stand behind creating features that would allow us to protect and improve the post integrity in the forum, but I don't think demerits is the way to go here.

Bitcointalk's got its fair share of merit hoarders, trolls, and merit-hoarding trolls. Few years ago we had problems with the trust-rating being abused (during the Yobit Scam breakout) where people just threw in negative trust points to anyone regardless of if they are being very honest or what not. We don't want the same thing to happen yet again with another feature that could be abused just as much if not more here. We get heated arguments in the forum every now and again, people could easily throw in demerits against those they don't agree with to further fuck with them, regardless of how sound their arguments are during the discussion. Ergo, someone's bound to get punished for being very sensible, a direct contradiction to what we're clearly pushing for.

Pretty sure the forum's moderators and Theymos have been keeping a close eye on those who are creating posts that do not contribute shit to the discussion, I say let the mods do their jobs and delay citizen justice for now until we actually find a helpful solution that would not harm people for being themselves. Demerits are a good step forward but it's not the final recipe we're looking for.