Topic: Are users loosing interest?? Merit is Good or Bad?? (Read 340 times)

This is a nice thread and I hope the admins have checked the stats themselves. Those Alexa figures showing decrease in traffic here might be because crypto is not that much popular as it was when bitcoins peaked at $20000. However, mods have additional tools to check the activity like time spent by users and all, total posts being made.

In case, the forum is suffering because of the rule, it should be modified. Admin should be flexible enough to do so if he wants this forum to continue for long.

Alexa works statistically in the sense that it bases its ranking on people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. So, you will be ranked higher if more people on this forum would have it installed. More info here: https://yaro.blog/549/how-does-alexarank-work/

A few good years back I was on a domain name/web development forum and a lot of people had that toolbar installed since they used it for their work. So, if you would have compared the two forums, BCT would definitely rank lower since a lot of people don't use anything like that here although BCT has a lot more traffic than the other.

Going back to your question, merit is definitely a good improvement to the forums trying to stop shit posters rank up. You can't imagine how many people post shit everyday.

Your comments like rich people, for us it is very important to earn income from bounty especially signature campaign. if you hate merit system most likely your SPAM, bitcointalk forums use merit system not for your own sake. but on request of some parties for future of this forum, as

• Bitcointalk Member Polls,
• Investors,
• All Project developers
• Improved forum quality

I think it's a nessesary evil. It's another layer of accountability on top of the mods

Hello, my opinion is that the merit is the worst that happened on this forum !!!
Are you afraid of spam? Yes, all the forums on the Internet consist of 70-80% of spam, and if you remove spam then such popularity as now this forum will never be!
Yes, people want to earn a signature and there is nothing wrong with that. Better make a restriction on projects with a signature - so that they do not set requirements for a large number of posts.
P.S. It is better to completely remove the signature on the project, and cancel the merit!

I doubt any stats that comes from Alexa.
Especially since the stats for ref by country looks like this:


If somebody has a premium account, out of pure curiosity where is Philippine in this chart?

Besides, numbers are just numbers, if the rank is high just because people posting in altcoins and the bounty sections, then this forum no longer represents bitcoin.
Take a look at the forum stats:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats


Already close to 10% is made of posts with links to Facebook and Twitter or... junk!!!

Damn this chart just looks exactly like bitcoin chart. So the merit already serve the purpose of creating it i think 

I certainly hope that users are losing interest. The very fact that they are now being called "users" indicates the low level of many new members. We don't want people joining just to use the forum. This is a self-help community, and as such it is open to exploitation. It is very friendly towards new members, and this has led to an influx of beggars and thieves who just want to exploit the good nature of the established members, and the facilities here.

Lets make it hard for 'users' by tagging with red trust and a merit famine, and lets help the genuine new Bitcoin enthusiasts

Its a solution to the spam that the forum has been getting for so many years. It restricts the spammers and not the real forum users. So its a win win solution


Yeah. But there are certain "good ol boys" that give merits to each other.



People who wants to join the forum for money are the only ones who are losing interest and we know the reasons why.

Merit system is good idea in the purpose of filtering the furom from spammers. It increases informative and helpful post to contribute to bitcoin community but it can be abused by greed.  If only they assymble a team that fucos on checking meritable post with a critiria it will give lowranks more chances to rank up.

It well become more fair and competitive members in this community.

We shouldn't be pressured with this merit system. I know its quite biased if high rank members do have multiple accounts in here but please don't forget the mere fact why this merit system was being implemented in the first place, this is to eliminate spammers and shitposters that just want to rank their way up for them to join signature campaigns and recieve huge bounties from ICOs. I myself is a newbie and also wanted to rank up but if I should rank up I need to at least earn and work for it by making sure I'm doing better quality posts. I know there are lots of good quality posts that were not merited but sooner or later if someone finds that post of good quality then that's the time that the OP can receive one. It's not easy to acquire merits but we need to change our mindset when it comes to that matter. The more we hungrily ask or seek for merits why not try to change or exert for more effort on the strategy or the quality of our posts to help out the community. I may sound hypocrite for not wanting merits but I strongly believe that it would be a great achievement on my part getting merits and ranking up because I truly deserved it.

I've found that personally I have posted less since the introduction of the merit system. While i dont feel that I am a 'shitposter' (though i have posted my fair share in alt threads) I've almost treated the merit system as having a negative reinforcement effect. Unless I really think i'm adding something, or putting forward a view that hasnt been raised etc then i just leave it. Now that may sound exactly like what the merit system was brought in to do but it means that i've visited the site less and less and essentially have missed posts/threads which i could have made valid contributions to.

Actually getting merit has been a bit of a struggle and although i dont think i have begged for it, an unfortunate percentage of my merit has come from threads where people assess posts and assign merit (which kind of feels like asking for it/begging)

Overall i think it is a good system and has had generally the desired effect, though for me it has been a slight let down (do i hear tiny violins?). Maybe i'm just a bit sour since i was around 10 activity away from being a full member and then i needed 100 merits. Anyway I think that maybe people have come to the forum less after struggling with merit, which is essentially not getting constant approval which is what everyone is really after. People love that. 

Rather than build up pressure to convince everyone to see merit system in the negative light, why not use the same energy to research on how to maximize the system?

The higher rank advantage is only on signature. But signature is not the highest paying job in bitcointalk.

There are great opportunities in this forum that are open to everyone irrespective of rank.

If you realize this alexa graph, traffic is growing even when market was going down. Rank of the forum is going down since the merit.comes into existence.


I never said that website is not popular, I am saying that traffic is going down. Alexa is not very advanced and it's graph is almost accurate.

Any blogger or website holder can understand it that how changes made into the site may eat your traffic.

I am also want this forum to be safe for new comers and democratic in nature. Since every member is a part of this forum.

Biggest scam on this forum is posts on airdrop where these airdrop forms are collecting sensitive user information to unlock wallet or exchange with brute Force attack. I think every one know that what is airdrop, nothing is free.

There may be other alternative to make it safe and secure. I raised this issue because many ppl don't like this merit system. But no one raising a discussion on it.

The merit system did not solve anything on this forum and could not solve something. It is only in theory that one can reason that merit will stimulate the writing of qualitative messages. Though the idea in general was good. However, for that. so that this idea worked further, it was necessary at least once every few months to renew the forum participants the opportunity to have additional s-merit. Without this, when in the forum participants the opportunity to reward someone else for high-quality messages ended, everything just froze. It stopped working because there was no longer an option to use s-merit.

I think that the system introduced in January at this forum of merit not only does not justify itself, it also does great harm to the image and popularity of this forum. If someone tried to limit the number of new forum participants, then he achieved this, because it became unrealistic to grow now on it in ranks. The introduced system of merits actually eliminated future competitors for high ranks. Now they can safely earn on ICO projects and not worry that there will be new members of the forum with high ranks. At the same time, the merit system did not give any positive effect. Now s-merit is over. And what's next? After that, everything in rank rises in place?

I think the implementation of this merit system is so good utilization, implementation is also fair if we follow the rules forum. There are only a few people rated this system as lacking and considered unfair because they themselves haven't tried maximally. Just makes 1 post continuously no one gives the merit directly make a statement that "Get merit is difficult". Don't misunderstand because all also need a process.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org
Alexa is not the main reference for measuring how popular Bitcointalk, and crowded visitors in Bitcointalk. indeed, from different sources almost the same but that does not mean it's all because of the merit system.

Yeah.... Restricting new member will surely help in reducing earning of a spammer.

I think is a way of letting the heavy growth of participants stand still for the main time may be it will be relief in the future for a better growth of the platform.

It has already spammed and full with crap since the booming of bitcoin and people try to make money here instead of discussing bitcoin growth.

Most of people in this forum are spammer because there are bounty and ICOs popping everyday, if these spammer got hard time promoting their account then all they can do is creating new account. But what if creating a new account will be restricted in the future? I think that is also a reason to counter spammer. First by making they lose confidence in getting ranked, reduce bounty and forum spammer and at the end only people who trust in long term progression will last as the poverb said "Rome wasn't build in a day".

Lots of people share different point of view, something looks good in you might be different with others and if you look into many sections there are user who do their work and earn merit faster than you create a topic.

Most of merit source already here since before bitcoin was well known and they also promoting this forum when there are nobody trust bitcoin. Why would people share you a piece of pie if you don't even work for it? Its not about sympathy rather than what you did to deserve that slice of pie.

So by this suggestion some forum member have to do this task, it's like wastage of resources. If you see forums like Reddit. They have a very simple algorithm. They calculate Karma for each post. User will be aloted negative kerma for spamming.
But it is  applied to all members equally. That mean you can also vote if a very higher rank member did something wrong.

But here ppl with lower rank is completely understand sympathy of higher rank member..

I think its purpose is not succesful since spammers and shitposters are still everywhere. It only gives hard time to newcomers since though having a good posts are not even getting single merit. I think it would be better if the process of giving merits will change like a team that can review posts and not the ranked users since some are manipulating it.

Just think, merit has no effect on scammer. Process of locating scammer and punishing scammer is exactly same as before merit.  Merit can only only control your promotion. Getting promotion or hopping for promotion is not even bad. Everyone is doing their JOB for getting promotion in real life as well.

I think introducing a merit system is good to eradicate the spammers and shitposters which will give a good environment in this forum. But I noticed that some members of this forum violating the rules which as a results is becoming unfair to newcomers. First, those having a multiple accounts to which giving merits from their ranked account or swapping the merits. Second, those having friends or families are have the possibilities of swapping merits. What I have observed is some account having an informative posts but don't have merits compare to some new account with already have merits even without informative posts. I believe in the purpose of merit system but the way of giving merits I don't trust it. Maybe if only the moderator will distribute the merits or a system that can review individual posts will be better.

Another Point of View on Merit:  

Merit is actually created for making forum spam proof or restricting more user to get increased bounty share??

Merit is not even a method to remove spammers or to locate spammers. It is a way to restrict users so that bounty share for higher rank holder will not get shared (its a point of view)

If more users will get promotion they will share bounty rewards.

I have seen many quality post on which no merit is awarded.

Infact few of higher rank members are creating thread for throwing bounty like "I want to give 10 merits come and beg to me"  .. Few threads are there where ppl are asking to share thread reply for which you think merit should be awarded but unfortunately not awarded.

Is Bitcointalk discussion is now shifting to merit center???

Merit is a drama.
In the local sections nobody has merit anymore and we don't know when we can get some again.
Many profiles have merit and don't distribuate it...

Don't know if it was a good idea because the forum is always spamed and full with crap @80%

I think Merit is not right to capture a good post, and Merit is more synonymous with restrictions, because we understand Merit itself is not given by a moderator but by other members and it is very burdensome for users or owners of new Bitcointalk accounts.

Hi,

I have seen many post where user are sharing thread like blogpost. They create thread and put answer in that and keep refreshing profile to chk for merit collection.

Few time I saw ppl are demanding merits.

Merit is a solution for the forum or a restriction, whats your opinion?

Is Merit actually flowing between users?

I believe that ppl are loosing their interest on Bitcointalk.org you can see the traffic fall on the website: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org

Let's share views to make this forum healthy and democratic.