Topic: Automated distribution of Merit. (Read 301 times)

Well okay, if the current community is fine with distribution of merit here on forum then let it so be. Will come up with an altered additional way of distributing merit sometime soon.

Till then this thread solves no purpose, so closing it for now.

I think that every user of the forum is responsible for his sMerits. The merit sources are trusted by the administrator, and they are responsible whom their sMerits will be given, what amount and what quality of post. Then these users are responsible for their sending own sMerits. Such a way the tree of merits grows on the forum. I guess that no any automated merit distribution is needed. Each merit should be earned for useful posts.

I love giving merit to Newbies! But only if their posts are worth it. It doesn't have to be the top 99.999% best-of-the-best posts, but it has to show someone put some effort in, and basically the post should be worth reading. This post for example was the first post for which I gave more than 1 Merit. By doing so, I hope to encourage Newbies.

This "something" is them writing decent posts.

Both of these basic premises are incorrect. Bitcoin Talk has always cared about quality new members, and when I joined several senior members spent time explaining why my eccentric ideas about Bitcoin were impractical. The problem is that newbies don't care about the forum, most of them seem to see it as a cash cow that can be bled until it dies. The merit system, together with changes in moderation, are designed to cope with this. Giving new members an increased supply of knives will just ensure that the forum does die.

The forum is awash with sMerits to award, so much so that it almost seems that merit is leaking out between the boards. Lauda has stated that he has 281 sMerits to award, and I commented that I had a bag of them to lug around. Other merit awarders have had to increase the number of merits per award because it is so difficult to find decent posts. I have started to award in twos instead of ones because of this. I'm also trying to create projects to reduce the time it takes to find a decent post.

With regards to Steemit. I have joined Steemit, and I did this because it seemed to provide payments for my photographs that I submitted. The secend reply that I got to my first submission asked for $195. For this I could rent an upranking bot, and it suggested that I would probably get $800 or so if I made this payment. I very nearly closed my account as a result of this. It just made the whole thing look like a sophisticated ponzi, and I'm still reserving judgement on this. Is this really the way that anyone wants Bitcoin Talk to go?

Getting tired of this...


Merit, like everything else on this world, needs to be deserved. No "participation trophies" on this forum would do any good.
 

My thoughts: Either you are living in a forum-like cave, or you are farming accounts as well. Because the following is completely backwards:

There is a lot more merit to give than there is content that is worth giving it to.

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Any kind of automated distribution of merit will defeat the purpose of this already very fragile system (hint: tens of thousands of farmed jr. members).

Absolutely not. The forum is not closed for new members, they can is still join and post and even buy the copper membership to bypass some limitations. The ranks are only needed for signature campaigns and there should be no incentives for that. Besides the "very Jr accounts" need very few merits to rank up anyway. 10 merits to get to Member rank and they have at least 60 days to do it.


Steem is not a good example of anything, let alone a model for the merit system.

On the contrary, who cares about the opinions of the older members of the forum?
"Care" in this context is for those who make informative posts. If newbies come to the Meta section to either ass-lick the merit system or call it bad then they would be ignored. I think this is already well known.

Steem is a shitcoin being pumped by some shitcoin shillstar youtubers. Please move on and learn to do some research and to put your money into other coins.

You get a merit for sending merit ? What does that even mean ? The rest of the story sounds equally absurd to me.

theymos is the right person to answer that question.Given the complexity and centralised structure of stemmit,I doubt he will ever agree to something like that.

We don't want merit to have any value but should only help right accounts to rank up.

What I was thinking was we could also include something like as in steemit. You get merit for sending merit and the merit is very minute and is based on how much merit you hold. Or it could be very well a modified version of steemit because it won't help new members in any way.
Is there any way that the steemit model could be implemented for merit system?

If merit was actually made a commodity like steempower, it would really have some fine value.

None of the points above are valid IMO.
It is absolutely not true that the people don't care about newbies. I was a newbie myself when the system (Merit system) was introduced, and just like others, everyone must have seen me like a newbie, but I managed to grow higher and pass that phase without any problems. So if someone says that newbies are not noticed or are neglected, then that is not true unless a newbie doesn't deserve being noticed.

And, there are more than enough sMerits in circulation to serve the purpose and that is not a reason for someone to complain about not getting Merits at all. Hundreds of people are getting a share of thousands of Merits every month, and if someone is out of that league, he is the only one to be blamed for that.

So you really want us to go back to square one ? Where all the automation of activity and the ranking system started.The above idea would not encourage anything but shitposting which will be credited with merits.I don't thinking crediting shit-posters with merits is a good idea.

How will it actually benefit the farmers and spammers to create a bunch of accounts just to collect those "very minute" merit?

It won't actually destroy the forum by promoting signature spam (because signatures don't accept / pay almost nothing to low ranking accounts).

1. I will assume you mean basing merit on posts counts. Does it necessarily have to be based on anything else asides the current standard for assigning merit to members?
2. This talk about distributing "something very minute to help uplift them" is unnecessary. How do you control members creating multiple accounts for the sake of receiving this "something very minute"?

Newbies and Jr members are not the ones spreading the fud here. The more sr. Members include ranks of members to sr . members are responsible for most of the fud that is generated for the purpose of getting payout from signature campaigns.

If not based on posts, then what else can merit up can be based upon?

You are giving the power back to the post count and activities. if so then how would you control the post quality stuffs especially for lower rank members? Merit came here as a QC (quality control) for the forum so that these signature spammers do less spamming especially the newbies and Jr. members with no clues with that they are doing. Also, most of these Newbies and Jr. Members keeps posting to rank up as well.

IMO merit is doing fine. May be we need to see more merit source and some well arranged set of rules about spending sMerits to stop the abusing.

I see a lot of newbies nowadays struggling with getting merit because -

1. They are newbies, and hardly anyone cares about them.
2. Enough smerit is not available in the market to fulfil the needs of all the new "genuine and real" newbies that join the forum.


This puts a check on the growth of new members hat might be helpful and really beneficial for the forum in the long term.


So I was just thinking of a way to distribute "very minute" amount of merit to people on basis of "something" that might help them to lift up their accounts to a better position. This distribution may only be limited to newbies and Jr and not be there for higher ranks.

This "something" can be based on their number of posts and time (as in case with the activity) or it can be something else(please suggest).

And as this is only limited to very Jr accounts , this wont ultimately dissolve the purpose of merit on the forum and yet keep the forum open for new members to join.

What do you think about it?