Topic: Attention Theymos: This is a sMerit holdup! Hands in the air! (Read 21868 times)

A'ight, it's been two weeks since I bumped this thread with an earnest appeal for more sMerits in order to help out the community and I've been met with SWEET FUCK ALL of a response from Theymos, except for the resounding silence which in itself is actually a very loud statement.

I'm not sure what the implications of the statement are, but I'm hoping he still gives a shit about the merit system, which is the only fucking tool the community has to suppress shitposters, account farmers, and to improve the quality of bitcointalk--and it's a blunt tool at that.

Theymos:  You made me a merit source; I did not apply to be one.  I'm trying to help members rank up and in general I'm trying to do a good thing for the forum, that's it.  I don't want to be the most generous merit-giver or any of that shit.  If you really can't be bothered to even acknowledge my initial bump and all the posts between that and this one, what the fuck do you want out of all this?  How many merits do you want circulated?  Do I have way too many already?  What are your thoughts on maintaining the system?  All of these things and more would be nice to know, especially when you've got an unpaid army working to run the merit system.

You couldn't even give me maybe another 100 sMerits out of sheer gratitude for the 3 years I've been a merit source??

Jesus, dude.

Good lord, you don't know me or my history on this forum very well, do you?  I'm neither liberal nor progressive (these days I'm not even sure what those terms mean, but I think I have an idea), though I try my damned-est to live and let live.  I'm not sure what any of my political views have to do with handing out merits anyway.  

Do you know why I want more merits to give away?  It's so the merit system keeps functioning, which keeps members from wandering into areas of the forum where they have nothing to say, hoping they'll earn some.  So you could almost say I do it in a segregationist spirit (though with none of the mean-spiritedness of what that term usually brings to mind).  If you don't believe me, just take a look at Reputation and Meta in 2017 right up until Jan. 2018 when the merit system was started.  There were a lot of pissed off people complaining about what I just described, me among them.  

So please, do not call me the liberal merit source.  It smacks of ass-kissing anyway.

Yeah, I know the post you're referring to and what my response was to it.

So here we are, a week or so later and I guess Theymos isn't listening to my pleas for more sMerits.  They sure would come in handy, because I've got more requests than I was able to handle with everything I had.  If I had maybe 100-150 more sMerits I might be able to catch up within a day or so--but that is NOT a request for anyone to merit my post(s).  I don't want merits from anyone except Theymos, if he hears my cries and has mercy on my blackened and damned soul.

Damn, don't waste good coffee spitting it up because of my purple prose.  And that's why I used the word; it was appropriate, perhaps a bit amusing, and maybe even a vocab-builder for a few folks.

Thanks, I appreciate it.  I wrote the above before reading your post--not that I could have prevented you from meriting any of my posts in any case.  I just gave a few members some merits, so your contribution did help.

Wow, that nearly made me spit my coffee out

You have a way with words! If anyone else has never run into "niggardly" before, it's an easy-to-misunderstand adjective that means "grudgingly mean about spending or granting" according to Merriam-Webster.

I really appreciate The Pharmacist's generosity and hope that his sMerit allocation is increased (or at least temporarily boosted, given the situation).

I sent 30 merit your way (to the bump post), I hope it helps!

wow!!! what a liberal mindset in the forum. Your are a merit source, you finished your allocation of merits of the month within two to three weeks or below for the masses (lower ranks) and you still want to help more. If you become a politician, your ward, constituency, state and country will really be happy because we don't have such politician in the world. I have said it in one of my comment on your post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5410264 that you are a liberal and progressivist scholar. It is only those who are from the social science field would understand what I mean. This your request is very good and I also want to make a suggestion which other users has also made before. If Theymos has not responded to your request. Other merit sources can help you out by meriting the threads and the post you want to merit. I also believe a merit source told you to send the post you want to merit to him so he can also merit them. I was trying find out the comment but I could not again.

As it is, i know you are not happy for seen a good post and you don't have merit to give. I understand your feeling. I am also begging other merit sources to help our humble liberal merit source. Please permit me to address you THE LIBERAL MERIT SOURCE in my generation.

Correct.

This is probably something I should know, but deleted posts don't invalidate any merits given to them, do they?  And I guess that's a way of enforcing the local rule, it's really not a viable option unless the report is eventually deemed inaccurate and Timelord2067 wants it scrubbed entirely.

Point taken, suchmoon.  That's not to say I'm going to give up taking that particular shortcut, but I respect your views.

Sounds good to me!

He has an option to prevent posts from being Merited: his thread is self-moderated. If reports are inaccurate, he can simply delete them and nobody can Merit them anymore.

my main account posts more than this one and I occasionally give a lump out with it.

Like I just gave 27 to the pharmacist.

But if you look at my philipma1957 account I would think I mostly do 1 or 2 merits to  posts.

That's not what the merit system is for, and you have no options for enforcing this anyway.

If users want to confirm (or deny) what's been posted they can make a post.


Because (IMO) that's what the merit system is for - to merit good posts, not just to give bags of merits to users.

For example if I want to read best recent posts and go here...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topreplies

... large merit dumps skew this picture. That's not to say I haven't done that, and you're right that it is really the merit sender's discretion how they choose to do it, but I need to point out that "going through all the trouble" does have value.

Hi and thank you for your responses. I appreciate your feedback and your understanding that meriting a post that might turn out to be inaccurate isn't a good idea.

I don't have an issue with your merits which is why I came to you for clarity on why just one users' work was chosen for merits (and to remind you of our commitment to excellence and accuracy).

Let's move on.

Thank you kindly, philipma1957!!  To be clear, I'm not asking for merits from the community, though obviously I can't stop anyone from giving me any and I appreciate the support.  

I don't have a list of posts; I have a waiting list of post histories that I need to review, per my long-standing offer to the community and the recent thread I created about it.  But I definitely appreciate your offer of help and I'd link to specific posts if I had any.

Oh crap--I admit I did not read the fine print in your thread, but on the other hand nobody has to comply with your rules for meriting posts, even if it's your own thread.  As far as I know, you can set rules for posting if it's a thread you created, but since you can't report a merit given against your rules (like you can with a post), it's kind of an absurd rule to begin with.

And to your point, I've given out merits in that thread based on effort and not necessarily accuracy.  Regardless of my feelings about your rule, I'll abide by it in the future.  It probably isn't the smartest thing to do, giving merits to a report if said report might be complete BS.  Got it.

And yes, I'm a merit source.

Well yeah, it is lazy.  That's why I took the time to explain my reasons for doing it (not lazy).  If I scan the last month of a member's post history and it's obvious I'm going to be giving out the entire 50 merit limit, why bother going through all the trouble meriting posts individually?  If you offer a service to the community like this, feel free to conduct it how you see fit.  Otherwise, if you have a problem with the way I do things, bring it up with Theymos.

Investigators who merit other Investigators research are giving Campaign Managers (and anyone else that requires verification of the information) an assurance that the research is sound not just that two or more UID's are Alts, but if the evidence is uncovered, we also report that they have scamed or are in breach of the terms of campaigns that participants have signed up for.

Ordinarily I would also merit their work, however I read once that the OP of a thread shouldn't necessarily merit posts as it might be seen as in some way "buying" comments.

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Merit dumping sounds lazy.

... So does trying to justify it ...

The Pharmacist doesn't Merit "investigators", he merits users' posts. That's a difference. If you look at his sent Merit history, you'll see he Merited several users several times in a row. That means he checks their post history (see Rules for my post history review offer to the community) and doesn't necessarily read or check the rest of the topic.

Agreed.

Of course The Pharmacist is a merit source, otherwise why ask theymos for more sMerits.

You had time to derail the thread with unrelated garbage but didn't have time to read it (or at least the OP). How interesting (not really).


BTW setting conditions in your thread for how other users should send merits is absurd.

I just thought I'd mention here that it is a condition of meriting in the Known Alts of any-one - A User Generated List ^{Mk IV} thread that you are attesting that you have verified that the evidence presented in the post is correct.

(It's in the fine print - (as agreed through consensus in the Mk III thread) - in a post that was last edited on the first of July, 2022)


I only mention this because I've just noticed that you've merited one investigator five times with six merits a piece (i.e. 30 merits) while seemingly shunning other investigators whose posts are of equal quality.

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You're not a merit source?

How interesting.

here are a few 27 to be exact.

Instead of waiting, make a list with those who deserve smerit and let us know,  I'm sure there are people willing to help. I managed to collect some smerit as well and I can give a hand,  just send me the links

Wow, I thought I'd locked this thread a long time ago, but I guess I hadn't.

Anyway, I'm bumping it because once again I'm going to publicly plead with Theymos for more sMerits.  I never thought I'd run out of earned ones, as I had over 500 of them and my source sMerits kept refilling nicely and I was able to make it through each month without even coming close to using them all up.

However, since I created that thread in Meta with my rules for post history reviews (not going to link to it, lol), I've used up all of my sMerits, and the PMs keep coming in.  I hate to offer something only to put people on a waiting list for it within two days, but that's exactly what happened.

So Theymos, I humbly ask you to either give me a one-time injection of sMerits or to increase my monthly allowance.  And note that I blew through about 700 sMerits within 3 days or so.  I don't think I'm going to continue at that pace, but I definitely could use some help right now. 

I hope you see this, and I thank you whatever your decision is.

Skeptical Chymist, I will not argue about Lauda's stinginess, since I did not go into the details of his earlier smerit activity, but I can say one thing for sure ... on his last day on the forum, he was quite generous, meriting the posts of all who decided to say goodbye to him. And even though his last publication received a lot of merit, he had something to send, since it is unlikely that when assigning m'sources, Theymos could ignore such a famous name.

Yeah, they were both very colorful members to put it mildly--and honestly I'm a bit disappointed that they both disappeared, because they tended to make the forum a much more interesting place.  Lauda was a straight-up drama hound (in a way that I always found entertaining), and TMAN was just funny as hell with some of the stuff he wrote.

By the way, I might be off base in making this statement, as I haven't checked Lauda's merit history but he was pretty stingy as far as handing them out, and I'm pretty sure he was particularly ungenerous toward lower-ranked members, whom he viewed as the root cause of a lot of the forum's issues with low-value posts.  TMAN, on the other hand, would drop 50 merits at a time and I think he was a merit source.  Not sure if Lauda was one, though I'm sure someone here knows.