Topic: @Admins: Merit not working as configured, trolls just don't care (no surprise) (Read 1271 times)

I do not understand why people should want to pay for posting?
And also for bounty hunters, this doesn´t solve any problem, they will pay fee and then they will post like before.

That's $9 for 1000 spamposts as a Newbie, and dust for any higher ranking account. A Legendary would pay less than $0.01 per million posts. At those rates, it can just as well be for free, using my computer costs more.

Opening a LN channel will cost several orders of magnitude more than a fraction of 1 cent.

Trolls are a totally different problem than spam. In my previous post, I more or less assumed the main goal of pay-per-post would be to reduce spam. And while it may help reduce low-quality posts, I don't think it will do anything against trolls. Trolls are trying to damage Bitcoin and benefit whatever they're shilling for. While spam is easily recognized, many users could still believe trolls, especially the ones who are spamming the serious technical boards with thousands of posts.
The spam attack on Bitcoin transactions must have cost many millions of dollars in fees, I have no doubt trolls can find funding to trashtalk Bitcoin here.

Those where the names that came to mind indeed. And the fact that I recognize their names, means they've accomplished at least something.
Trolling is against the rules, I don't get why they aren't permbanned. I remember freightjoe spamming and bumping hundreds of old threads, and I think Anti-Cen has had his third (and hopefully last) temporary ban already.

Carlton Banks why not create a poll and see the result. I said it before and again saying it now, it's not a membership service site it's a forum for open discussion. I not joining a membership site to learn about Bitcoin and stuffs where I can have information available using search engine (FREE).

If BitcoinTalk would offer a paid membership then Bitcoin would not become what these days it now. BitcoinTalk playing vital role to market Bitcoin (did and will do IMO)

Copper member? You said what? Pay some small money to have a big signature.

I agree pretty much with everything you wrote, except the part about a simple solution. I think it would be very difficult to have an efficient control over all bounty' campaigns, but I hope we can do it in the future.

Stop here and just think for a second. All these problems with account farming and spam are because of bounty campaigns. Bitcointalk should have special rules and implement a system to control bounties. I mean rules for everything from moderators to posts quality check. Only moderators approved by BTT, only quality posts checked manually on weekly basis, only higher ranks, etc.

I think if BTT has the power to control this campaigns, spam and account farming problems could be finally resolved. This will be in favor for Bitcointalk and their members but also for ICO's because the quality of their bounty campaigns will be much higher and there will be no abuse which means no money lost on scammers. That is why an interested project should be willing to cooperate.

This maybe looks simple but simple solutions are usually the best.

The merit system was created to curb people signing up here with multiple to unlimited amounts of accounts just to make low quality contributions to earn from sig campaigns. Now no matter how many posts you make over the months/years you will not rank up unless your posts are deemed worthy to be meritable. Sure, merit could be removed but I don't think it should. The alternative if it doesn't work will likely just to remove signatures.

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The merit system has proved to eliminate multiple accounts and encouraged members to create quality posts. I agree it should not be removed but still need to be reviewed periodically for improvement. And paid system is not part of improvement though it is very cheap.
I suggest we involve members if they find unqualified post which is merited and report to moderator. If moderator think the same, they could cancel merit given. And yes, I mean merit can be reduced. This would make  distribution of merit are more transparent and I believe it would encourage member to make quality posts. But that’s just my personal opinion.

This would not work. If users are asked to pay before making posts, some persons who have been impacting positively on the forum might feel otherwise and stop contributing to the forums growth. If memory serves me well, not everyone here does signature bounty campaign as signature campaign presently is bringing  all this chaos to the forum. Maybe there should be another means to stabilise and filter the forum not this fee approach.

I'm not short on merit and I hate spam, but I'm not in favour of paying per post.
As discussed here, I wouldn't have joined this forum 3 years ago, if that would have meant paying for it. I agree paying per post would stop many spammers, but it would probably stop at least a few knowledgeable people from joining the forum too.
However, it pay-per-post would be introduced now, I'd pay, as long as it can be covered by the earnings from my signature. As much as I like this forum, I'm not willing to shill out my own money to post here.

I agree this should eventually happen though. I get that theymos can't just turn everybody into a Newbie instantly, but long-term, the "free" merit should be taken away again. Something like half the amount needed to level up naturally (=1 merit per day) will do.
I value someone's posts much more if he earned 100 merit by himself, than if he's Legendary but barely received anything.
Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly more difficult to see if someone earned his merit, or got it for free. Decaying free merit would solve that in the long term, and puts high ranking people with bad post quality back where they would have been if they didn't rank up before the merit system was introduced.

I've read a few claims that some people are paying $20 per merit. If they're willing to pay that much for a small fraction of their next rank, they'll pay a lot to keep posting too. 0.0001 satoshis per post isn't going to stop spammers, and a million times more won't stop it either.
The forum has 8513 posts per day. It would be interesting to know how much is earned from those posts to know how much people are willing to pay for it. About half the posts on the forum are in bounty threads now, I have no idea what that's worth per post. High ranking signature campaigns pay up to several dollars per post.

I've collected pros and cons of tipping micropayments last year, but there isn't much interest. I prefer the merit system now.

That's not why I'm against it. I'm pretty sure nobody would post here if a post would cost anything close to what my signature pays.
I'm glad to say the one in my sig also advertises on the forum, so it's not only taking advertising that doesn't earn the forum anything.

Or even worse: a Newbie has a problem with his wallet, and is happy to pay some dust to get help. But the people helping him, have to pay for that?

Sounds like a ponzi

Quality comes at a price: the ones now accepting bad quality posts don't have the budget to be more picky. I've only shortly managed a signature campaign, and it's a lot of work. Without merit, I had to check many spammers' posts, and some of the good participants were quickly snatched up by a better paying campaign.
Giving a small group of managers a monopoly to run signature campaigns would probably end most of the spam, but I don't think theymos would want to limit freedom by creating a monopoly.

This actually makes it easier on the manager, as he has much less accounts to check. But only high paying campaigns can be this picky.
FYI: Just 14,000 out of 2 million accounts have earned at least 1 merit.


I'm not done reading yet, but my day is up

I am an exception only that I don't spam ANN, Bounty and megathreads with the same old vacuous nonsense, like the vast majority of lower-level accounts. My individual posts are by no means exceptional - I simply add to the discussion by posting original thoughts in coherent English.

I didn´t claim, that i deserve more merit than i have today. Neither i see merit as my right. I just don´t like the attitude of some, who behave like god, because they have an old account with many smerits.

I just wanted to point out, that in my experience in this forum since the merit introduction, i saw many posts of people (i DONT talk about mine), who didn´t got a merit for a realy hq post. I´m happy for you, that u made it somehow to a higher rank, but maybe you are one of some exceptions.

The spamming and faking accounts still working on this forum, but we cannot blame Merits system for this.
While there are bounty campaigns accepting these accounts, they will multiply.
Instead trying to punish regulars and respectful users, we need some kind of control system over managers and campaigns.

I registered my account the same month that you did. I'm not a hero or legendary member, I don't personally know anyone on the forum, and I had the same starting disadvantage that you did. I continue to privately report scammers and spammers, and have never asked for or earned any merit by doing this, or by using giveaway threads. I have earned 150 merit, you have earned 2.

What's my point here? Two things. Firstly, your argument that merit penalises lower members is nonsense, as I was a "lower member" like you when it was introduced. Merit penalises shitposters. Which leads us on to my second point - the difference between you and me. The vast majority of your posts are shitposts in [ANN] Or [Bounty] threads. The reason you aren't being merited is because you don't deserve to be merited. You see merit as your right, and this forum as nothing more than a tool to earn money.

The merit system is really only of financial benefit to somebody above member rank if they are part of a bounty programme. Apart from that, it is a way for the community to encourage good posting, and to indicate their approval of various posting practices.

I don´t see a way, a forum will survive a "fee per post" payment. The easiest solution in my opinion, is just to forbid every signature campaign in this forum, maybe even delete signatures at all. No one would care this much anymore about activity, post count or merit. Spammers would leave, because there is nothing to earn anymore.

But please consider, you will get rid of all the unpleasant visitors here, but i´m very certain that some valueable member will leave as well because of that. If we are honest, a big % signed up to this forum to earn something and not to contribute to this forum.

Maybe the Merit thing was intended to solve this issues, but the way it was implemented, is realy disappointing. Yes i know, im just a member and only registered since late last year and i only have to produce high quality content to earn some merits... (you don´t believe that yourself) I´m seeing so many "good" posts by lower rank members, which are getting no merit at all. Then i see some stupid one-liner by some hero members, who get 10 merits for that. The newer members, who came this or last year, dont have any more motivation to write "good" posts, because it won´t be rewarded with this new merit concept and therefore signature campaigns.

One of the more "popular" ways to earn merit nowadays is to earn it by reporting alts, spammers, ICO´s or to beg in some "giveaway" campaigns from higher members, that they give you some merit for your post. Do you want that as the direction for the forum?

Another issue i saw often is some arrogance by higher members, which is realy concerning... (maybe i would have the same position, if i were them). Some of them promote merit as the holy grail, because it just strengthens their position in this forum (who know, maybe they just spammed 3 years earlier and are now hero members for that). And then i see even worse people, which are for a "fee per post", of course with a lower fee for higher ranks... (PROTIP: LEGENDARY OP).

IF you really only want to get more quality content for this forum, just remove signatures at all.  But I guess, many of the higher members wouldnt be okay with that, because they want to keep their priviliges and want to earn with them.  But please stop promoting even more benefits  for higher members after introduction of a Merit-System, which is so much in favor of them.

And of course, you are ...a full member lol.
Ok then but let's all start from zero then buddy.
We'll see how many centuries it takes you to get to that rank. 

I've started several projects to try to help people to improve their English, and I have had minimal to no success with them. It seems that all you and your peers are interested in is to scratch a few dollars by polluting this forum. and you are not prepared to put any effort into improving yourself. The merit system was introduced in the hope that it will stem the influx of beggars, and that most of the existing ones will leave. It does seem to be working, and that is a relief to those of us who are interested in Bitcoin.

The merit system was created to curb people signing up here with multiple to unlimited amounts of accounts just to make low quality contributions to earn from sig campaigns. Now no matter how many posts you make over the months/years you will not rank up unless your posts are deemed worthy to be meritable. Sure, merit could be removed but I don't think it should. The alternative if it doesn't work will likely just to remove signatures.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJVH6OdqWo

Why do you need to rank up?  Surely as a newbie (and eventually a Jr. Member) you can still enjoy reading or learning about Bitcoin, you can post and interact with other members of the community.

Perhaps you could detail for us why not getting merit and not ranking up will make you have a bad user experience here.  How the lack of rank will inhibit your ability to learn and be apart of the crypto community?

Merit system i dont know what is the reason why it have been created. To suffer the users?to find a merit? Or to make it in the same rank forever? It is hard to ger some merit if you are hard to speak in English and hard on the grammar. It is possible to remove this merit system?