Hi All,
I have been watching this merit system closely ever since it launched.
It was launched just a few weeks before I could have been Sn Member, but still I supported it in overall effort to curb spammers and scammers.
Here I have supported it.
Here I tried to educate people for use power of smerit.
It might have achieved in abuse of membership and might have reduced spammers.
But it also created strong hindrance to growth of good actors in the forum.
First, very less members are educated about what this merit system is and how to effectively use it.
I have seen many thought giving merit will reduce their merit. However that's not the case.
Lack of proper education became counter productive because of that more then 50% of merits dropped is never used till date.
You can see even large number of high ranking users never used their smerits effectively.
On the other side, large accounts which got good amount of smerit, used merits to give to their own parked accounts. I have proofs but i recommend an internal analysis to take collective action.
Also, some smart people evolved methods to earn merits, by using below means:
1. Write more about merits and create merit thread to attract people who are interested in this topic, as they are more keen on giving and getting merits.
2. Create stats around merit and only talk about those to harness same aspect of human psychology highlighted in 1st point.
3. Stick to more active and bigger threads, and only post in that thread to make friends along and keep passing merits to each other.
I would like to call for action against merit abusers.
I would also like to have rethink this whole merit concept and evolve it so that it can become balanced.
Also, smerit airdrop should again happen, eligibility and conditions can be discussed, like burning previous smerit left since months, or dropping more proportion to people who used smerits.
Also, i recommend to identify user who only specifically write about merit topic to get more merits and if found wrong, take actions against them as well.
Always remember, spammers evolve and change their ways to breach whatever rule you make. So evolving system against them is require thing.
By this time many of you have seen and observed how smartly they are playing, i would invite your thoughts and findings in this.
I am ready to post materially to back what i have seen, as and when needed.
Lets have a constructive discussion about making system balance and robust. Locking this thread, as I feel message is conveyed and already we have many threads which have similar discussions