Topic: Analysis – The Merit Path – Where we start off and the path we follow (Read 441 times)

My count seem a bit higher, but the amount is still small for the last 30 days. I was going to add to the google spreadsheet I created today, the full deleted info I have (All the TXs, aggregates per person, etc.), when I saw some false positives that I’d not encountered before. They are cases where the scraper tell me the page is deleted but, if I check the link manually, there is a valid post behind (i.e. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--3174975).

There don’t seem to be too many cases, but it’s been entertaining me for some hours now to try to find the reason, which I have now found and was not aware of:

It turns out that the Economy > Trading Discussion > Scam Accusations -> Investigations childboard requires you to be logged-in in order to access its content. I’ve only encountered this on the Investigations childboard, but I’m not 100% positive that there isn’t another locked childboard (I’ve compared a logged-in session to a non-logged-in session and have not found any other cases though).

Since the scrapper does not log-in to Bitcointalk (and I’d prefer it doesn’t, unless I create an Alt account for the task if it is doable at all), the merits assigned to Investigations are marked as assigned to a deleted posts, and the posts themselves as deleted.

Anyhow, the proportion is very small, so the number of false positives does not alter the overall picture, but I’d rather it not happen on 1-to-1 lists (I may try to create an Alt and see in the scraper can bypass this issue somehow next week).

Thanks! Some results: Most noticeable: there was a sharp increase of deleted merited posts right after theymos' changes. The dates are my archive dates, so only an approximation of the Merit date, but the increase is very clear:
(the last few days lack Merit data)

I count 177 deleted posts with Merit in the past month, I would have expected it to be much more.
This is the list, sorted by board: http://loycevsbasement.privatedns.org/meritdeletedposts.html

Tableau has had recent updates, amongst which are better tweaks to make a Dashboard visible on multiple devices with better fitting. It you take a look now, the  Merit Dashboard should be rather usable from a generic phone device (specially in portrait mode). Not everything is perfect yet though, and since the Dashboard filters when you select a chart bar or a table row, it may get in the way with the actual page scrolling on the phone. I still favour a larger device though.

Ok, I’ve created a spreadsheet with all the deleted posts, regardless of their time of creation and if they make the user an exclusively merited user on deleted posts or not. Whatever you can cross I can recap back to the implied users through the merit TXs (unless you want to do that part). Let’s see if this goes anywhere interesting … : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Y36CFD6wfmrEeGpA9YNcbWvsiZhxq9tKapBmAMkRIQ/edit?usp=sharing

I have downloaded all posts since September 12. Scraping failed sometimes, but still, I think I have more than 99% of all posts.
If you get me the list of all deleted posts (just the post ID (example: 46748761) is enough), I can get you the board, thread title and if needed the post itself (excluding quotes, as it was created before any edits) of the past 4 weeks.

I'm curious to see the results, and it shouldn't be that much work (for me).

It would be great to do, but that requires manpower to go a one by one merit review on the section and classify each awarded merit somewhat. As you say, a lot of work …
Concerning the Newbie techies, I guessed that was the reason, so it’s nice that you corroborated my thoughts with hands-on knowledge of those specific sections. They are a subset of Newbies entirely different to those on other sections.

Ok, I broke down the lower ranks as you indicated, and we get:

Jr. Members -> New: 33%; Old 66%
Newbies-> New: 12,5%;  Old 87,5%

So, as expected, the proportion is large on the Jr. Members New subsegment, considering the small amount of time since the 17/09/2018 vs the Jr. Members Old subsegment, which have had 10 months to earn the same merit.
 
Here’s the breakdown of the Ann Altcoin TXs:
A fair share of 5,10 sMerit TXs, and 85 50 sMerit TXs.. (considering all historical data)

Actually, there are 311 forum members with more earned merits than posts. People such as @satoshi, @theyoungmillionaire, @GameKyuubi, and @1miau also have that ratio, although many others from the 311 look weird (delete posts, Alts, etc).

I guess you are talking about an interactive path such as a video of “merit receiving evolution”. I’ve though of it in the past, but could not find the right tool at the time. For now, I added this week to the Merit Dashboard a tab called “Personal Summary”, which is a good view of when you got your merits, from what ranks , on which section/subsections, and likewise on the awarding side.


I think that would have another objective really. The OP is based essentially on where the first merit is obtained. If you tell me in further detail what you mean, I could give it a go when I free up some time.

Great job, as always.

It would be interesting to see this distrubution with condition : exluding Jr Members who have only 1 merit.Cmon, this takes a lot of work and time and your asking for a tool ( another tool).

Isn't BPIP.org enough? Can't understand what you mean.

My merit analysis:

I believe Ddmrddmr is the only user with more merits than posts.

Lol great job, as always!

I wish you had created some kind of interactive tool where we could put our username and see our merit path. Interesting subject

Merits in those sections are logical because they are ledd abused threads, users without knowledge can't post here, also I want to mention that moderator achow101 is excellent, thanks him for the work he does in his two section.
Also posts in Marketplace and altcoins announcement sections are often merited without reason, ANN threads are meritted, that's not right use of merits.

I think bigger portion from this 43,53% comes after the introduction of 1 merit requirement for Jr. Members by theymos at 17^th of September 2018. So if you can devide this percentage in to two parts (after and before the new 1 merit requirement) would give rather accuracy one than this.

I wouldn't be surprised to see that most of the later deleted posts(after got Merited) are surely from Russian board (can you compare those two subsets?)

I also doubted most of the merited posts in ANN threads are sheer abuse scenarios. If you can analize, you would be able to find out how many times large number of Merits in an one merit transaction occurred in ANN sections only. I don't have the numbers but you have them surely and my guess is highest number of transactions with more than 5,10 or even 50 merits would be from ANN sections.

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I'm a member who against the awarding merits for ANN threads and the thread starters of signature campaigns.

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Great analysis OP and where/how you got time to do all the analysis?

BTW is there any way to use merit dashboard with mobile? because it's still not responsive. It would be great if we can use the merit dashboard on the go with our mobile too

I think I can explain this: From what I've seen, new users post in those boards with either a technical question, an interesting idea or even a scientific paper. I consider them to be real users, they should not be restricted by Merit, and I love to Merit them. Once their question is answered, they often disappear again. They're not spammers, so they deserve their first Merit, but you're probably right saying they don't care about Merit and Ranks.

Since these boards have the most spam, and good posts are hard to find, it would be interesting to see how many of those are deserved, and how many are just plain merit abuse. But that's a lot of work to analyze.

1. Introduction

Lately I’ve seen some comments on whether it is easier to earn the first merit on such or such forum section/subsection. This moved me to find the Merit Path for each person. The Merit Path is the set of distinct section/subsections where we get merited in, ordered by the date we get merited in them for the first time.

For example, my Merit Path is as follows: (Local) Spanish -> (Other) Beginners & Help -> (Other) Meta-> (Other) Serious discussion -> (Other) Off-topic

Therefore, in my case, the Spanish Local board was my starter. I got a few merits there before being merited in the Beginners & Help board. Got a few more merits around those two boards until I got my first merit on Meta, and so on.

This is similar (a very simplified version) to what supermarkets do when they analyse our purchasing habits, classify them by sections or product families, and give us vouchers to promote the next section they consider should be of interest to us (which often is not really), where we’ve never made a purchase before, based on the study of similar paths performed by other customers. My objective here is rather more modest though…


2. First stepping stone in the Merit Path

So far, 22.543 people have been sMerited at some point. We know that some of those sMerits have been awarded to what are now deleted posts, so I’ve taken those out of the merit path.
Out of these forum members, 1.249 have received all their sMerit on deleted posts, so I will not be taking these into account since there is no derivable merit path.
For the remaining 21.294 merited forum members, this is where they have obtained their first sMerit:



What we can see is the following:

a) Russian is the section where most people got their first sMerit (17%), followed by Ann Altcoins (16,53%), Altcoin Discussion (8,82%), Bitcoin Discussion (5,86%) and Economics (5,03%).

b) On the lower end, most local boards are very low contributing to the first merit, Serious Discussion is where 0,44% obtain their first merit, followed by Bitcoin Technical Support (0,45%), Bitcoin Project Development (0,51%) and Politics & Society (0,76%).

c) When we compare the complete history to the most recent history (first of august onwards), the ratios are rather much the same, but there is a larger spike in proportion on the Altcoin Discussion board (+5,15%) and the Russian board (4,02%).


3. First stepping stone in the Merit Path by Rank

The first stepping stone may vary by rank, being some more prone than others to receive their first sMerit in certain section/subsections. To see if this is true, I’ve crossed the above table with current rank (cannot go back to rank at the time of first awarded merit), and turned the numbers into percentages to see the distribution by rank.





Interesting finds:

a) The first table (in green) shows us how many forum members from each rank have earned at least one merit. The user base here is that of the 21.294 merited users who have received sMerit on some non-deleted post at some time. For simplicity, I’ve hidden ranks such as Administrator, Donator, Founder, Global Moderator, Staff, VIP and Brand New. In addition, copper ranks are translated to a regular rank.

Now what I had to recheck multiple times (since it startled me), is that the number of merited Newbies was so high (2.218 in this subset), along side Jr. Members (7.051 in this subset). Both amount together to 43,53% of merited users (in non-deleted posts). That is way more than I has in mind, although it is true that they tend to be merited with a very small amount of merits compared to the higher ranks.

But what is relevant is the volume of these two ranks alone in comparison: out of all the merited users on non deleted posts, 43,53% are actually newbies or Jr. Members. Astonishing!

b) Altcoin Discussion is a section where the lower ranks earned their first sMerit in a rather much higher proportion than the higher ranks, albeit the number of higher rank cases is not dismissible.

c) On the other hand, the Ann Altcoin section is way more different, being the place where 20,16% of merited Legendaries were awarded sMerit for the first time!

d) Surprisingly enough, Newbies merited for the first time in the Mining Altcoins is pretty high (5,59%), and are by comparison pretty high on Bitcoin Development and Technical Discussion (4,15%) and Bitcoin Technical Support (2,39%). Strangely though, many of the merited Newbies in these sections are barely active, so perhaps they are not very concerned with the Merit System and Ranking System at all.

e) Economics and Market Place are strong starters for the higher ranks when considering their first received sMerit, and much lower in proportion for the lower ranks.

f) The proportion of Legendries merited on Meta for the first time (6,29%) is not too large comparted to the Economy sections above mentioned, and not the best starter for Newbies and Jr. Members compared to other sections.



4. Complete Merit Path Combinations

This would normally be one of the most interesting sections to analyse. Nevertheless, since the majority of people have received whatever merit they have earned in one unique section, the merit path combinations with more than one step (like the one I used in the Introduction) are rather small in proportion, and do not bear too much statistical significance. Leaving aside those that gain their merit in a unique section/subsection (and that thus have a one step merit path that is shown above), the main combinations are:

In total, there are 1.976 distinct Merit Path combinations.

5. Conclusions
Bear in mind that this topic is about where one got merited, not how many sMerits they received.

a)  There is a fair share of merited people that have been merited exclusively on later deleted posts (1.249 out of 22.543).

b) Most merited people have been merited in one unique section/subsection.

c) The main section/subsections where people are merited for the first time are Russian, Ann Altcoins, Altcoin Discussion, Bitcoin Discussion and Economics.

d) 43,54% of merited users are currently holding one of the lower ranks (Newbie or Jr. Member).

e) Ranks have different section/subsections where they got their first sMerit. Being the higher ranks more prone to Ann Altcoins, Economics, Marketplace, Russian and Meta, and the lower ranks to Ann Altcoins, Altcoin Discussion, Bitcoin Discussion, and Altcoin Mining.

f) Ann Altcoins is the section that most people got their first merit on, regardless on the rank (Russian board aside).