Topic: Before you give merit to a newly-demoted newbie... (Read 1309 times)

It should be automatically disqualified those who demoted and should have atleast 1 to 3 weeks to improve their selves as an eligible quality poster before giving a single merit. Well, it was shocking that all of those who didn't receive any single merit goes back where they deserve. They just spammin' around and earning money from the bounty, not very surprising, that's how they work.

The demotion of those accounts will not have sense any more if they have friends who'll give them a single merit.


That's way too complex. There are tons of Jr. Members here and most of them are just doin' tasks at discussions. We can just check the merit summary at bpip and judge based on the facts and opinions of the highers.

Pretty much, and though I've already explained why, I guess I'll explain it again. Let's say a person writes a brilliant post here in meta about the injustice of the merit system, a post that is surely worthy of receiving a merit. However, upon reviewing their other posts it seems that up until they got demoted back to newbie they were only dashing off one/two-liners in spam megathreads - you know, the threads that go on for hundreds if not thousands of posts on such scintillating subjects like "when bitcoin stop going down?", "how to tell if baunty [sic] scam?",. etc. This strongly implies they were merely churning out posts to meet a sig campaign quota and therefore not really having a conversation/discussion which is the primary purpose of a forum. Their recent demotion back to newbie removed their signature which also removed the incentive to churn out useless/ignored posts in spam megathreads, and suddenly they are, indeed, capable of crafting a coherent sentence or two for a post in meta. If one were to then given them a merit for this brief flash of eloquence they could then go back to their shitposting for bounty ways, entirely defeating the purpose of theymos' retroactively applied requirement of 1 merit to rank up from newbie to jr. member.

So while it might seem cruel or unfair or what have you to deny a merit to a post that is worthy just because the other posts in their history are in spam megathreads (or are bounty reports), the fact of the matter is that merit can't be retracted once given out so if that merit is used to resume shitposting then it was very poorly spent.

If a person who mainly posted in spam megathreads and/or bounty reports does start engaging in meaningful conversations then after a while their earlier posts can be overlooked, but in the immediate aftermath of meritocalypse? No way, Josè.


@Karlblaise1 - I have no idea what you just wrote as your grammar cannot be parsed unambiguously, but I gather you think theymos should have individually dinged bad actors rather than demote all jr. members who hadn't yet earned a single merit back to newbie. Given that there are >2 million users on this forum please let me know how you think that could be accomplished without spending years reading post histories...

This should be up to each individual merit sender to decide. Ideally we should be meriting posts, not users, so that would imply not looking at the post history before sending merits to a particular post. This would also make it easier for improving users to get merited even if their past posts were shit. However due to rampant plagiarism and other issues I can totally understand if some senders choose to look at the post history, trust ratings, etc.

My question is quiet simple, what if the person creates a good post according to your requirement and later after checking the history posts of this person, you realized that they are not good posts, you will not award the current post with merit because of the previous posts???

This idea of demoting junior ranking members of this platform came as a surprise to me.
My inquiries made it clear that it was as a result of unintelligent posts coming from mostly junior members.
While i think a query should have made to fish out usernames associated to such posts, i believe this approach will make most of us go back to the drawing board to get better.

On another thought, I've seen many Bitcointalk members offering to sell and buy merits on several telegram channels for ICO projects. I dont think this portrays Bitcointalk in a good limelight.

SOLUTION
Their is meant to be an inquiry into the reasoning behind merit awards.
Am a hardcore disciplinarian and believes in the sanity of this forum; but wouldn't want unguided influence to demean the effort already made here!

More specifically, I started this thread because of the massive influx of newbies to meta complaining about or "praising" the rule change, realizing that if most/all of their posts (outside of bounty reports) are in spam megathreads (to reach their sig campaign post quotas), then giving them a merit for their eloquent (or, at least, not-crap) meta post would just enable them to continue spamming elsewhere.

It's not a matter of looking down on newbies or any other kind of elitism - I've merited 5 newbies back to jr. member myself in the last few days - rather, it's merely an attempt to not undo the change that many of us have been begging theymos to implement for months now.

What are you talking about?  It seems that the discussion here is about whether NOT to erroneously give merit(s) to someone who does not really deserve it.

I actually am torn about the level of due diligence that is necessary, once a good post is found, but sometimes a little due diligence is going to reveal a disingenuous poster that may have merely plagiarized in order to achieve what appears to be a good post (once or twice).   

I have no problem to give some benefit of the doubt to newbies or other members who are newer to the forum than me (and I would not fault any other member from sometimes sending merits out to members based on a kind of "benefit of the doubt), and surely sometimes erroneous merits are going to be dished out from time to time, but any suggestion that all posters in this forum are on the up and up and are genuine in their integrity and their desire to meaningfully contribute to the forum (or attempt to learn for themselves) is contrary to actual evidence. 

Actually, sometimes a few back and forth posts with any member could suss out whether a poster seems to be genuine or not, but it would be quite time-consuming to engage in that kind of higher level of interaction or that variation of due diligence prior to meriting a post.  OP here seems to be suggesting that at least a cursory glance into the members posting history would be an appropriate balance - which a lot of members seem to agree that approach to be reasonable, prior to sending smerit(s).

So your suggestion that some level of due diligence or skepticism about members creates division amongst members seems to put forth a false narrative that is contrary to experience of many members who have been participating in this forum for a decent amount of time.

I believe when a person benefits the community, he is praised. It does not depend on whether you are new or already a senior member. We need to maintain friendly communication on the forum. There is one good saying: "Be easier and people to reach for you"

That's a rather clever algorithm for quickly identifying a shitposter! I wouldn't worry about accidentally meriting a shitposter if you are actually checking their history beforehand, though - even if they changed their posting behavior after the meritocalypse their older posts will still give them away.

I was so curious on how that will work out, I even told Delphinus on the other thread he awarded a shitposter merit....
Seems like I was 99% correct:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/crocus-1997375


Such words, much contribution, wow!

I still have some merits left and I was thinking on helping a few newbies but only after the things calm down a little as I don't really want to get tricked by some wolfs changing their clothes for a few days and then reverting to their methods.

And I always checked their history, as it has prevented me from sending merits a hundred times. If the first thing I see is that the user has the last 20 posts of the same size (3 lines or 4 lines) I don't even bother reading them as no normal user engaged in discussing something on this forum will manage to keep that pattern.

Brilliant idea and theymos said he's gonna do it:

I can't agree with your opinion (maybe because I'm one of them;-).

Bitcointalk is the oldest and greatest site dealing in crypto, but not only it's technical aspects but the whole crypto scope. You can find here developers, ethusiasts, miners, traders etc. It's the greatest place you can read about new projects and also join to the bounty programs. So thanks to these this site became complete crypto platform.

I know that bounties generate lots of spam but in my opinion mostly in it's own area (ANN/Bounty section). Kicking away all Bounty and ANN would probably cut big part of spam but is this real the best solution?
Maybe rather than cutting large part of the society - I really think they are part of cyrpto society even if they don't know as much technical aspects they all are spreading news about crypto to the world what is "kind of work" for mass adoption of cryptocurrency.

Maybe better solution would be tighten the rules for them a bit. 1 merit revolution was the first step but i think it will be enough only for the short time. I think that main issue are not bounty accounts but MULTIPLE bounty accounts. Setting an account here is really simple the only thing we need is email. Let's say I'll make 10 accounts on the first one i spend some time to get a few merits after being given some i can give them back to my other accounts and then I'm the owner of multiple Jr member account ;-)
It's cheating but it's hard to prove and I'm more than sure that 20%-40% of accounts are fake/multiple....

What if.....

What if beside merit revolution upgrade a verification policy and add telephone number verification. Let's say Jr Member upgrade needs to verificate telephone number. Many sites already done it exchanges, steemit etc. It's much less comfortable for cheaters to buy 10 or 50 simcards than set up 50 emails... I think it could cut much more spam than 1 merit need

Just don't forget that it doesn't matter how you 'earned' your rank, old rules, new rules, people are reporting spam and shitposts, so higher ranks are also reported if they don't act according to the rules of the forum. If you are a decent poster, and you want to rank up, you still have the chance, but it will be a bit slower compared to the times of the 'old rules'...

I guess you don't have much practice engaging in actual discussions on here since you totally ignored the clause, "in spam megathreads (or bounty reports, of course)."

Looking at your post history, the last 4 show some sign of human intelligence as you deal with being demoted back to newbie, but prior to that is a 10 day gap then a post in a spam megathread - #1387 in "Investment in ICO" - and then about a 40 minute gap to post #371 in "Crypto Currency is the fastest way to get rich ?" then a 50 minute gap to post #1339 in "Is the world ready for cryptocurrency" etc. and so on. Just basically a shitshow of spam megathread shitposting, really.




And looking at your post history, the last 4 are whining about being a newbie again, while the 6 prior to that are bounty reports, and the other 15 are useless ramblings in spam megathreads...




Technically off topic, but I just mentioned elsewhere that I actually checked out Chip Mixer precisely because of the credibility and quality of people promoting it. The service is not something I am likely to need, but i will surely remember it in the future and with a positive connotation. That's 90% of marketing right there.


And an honorable mention to krishnapramod for nailing a plagiarizer while I was asleep!

It seems most people think that bounty tasks are spam and are not worth as a marketing campaing for the cryptoprojects. If this is the case, why keep accepting it on this forum? If this forum is just for techie people, there is no point in keep acceting bounty campaigns and expect that newbies can post "positive and valuable" posts. So eliminate all the bounty threads. And we non-techie persons and "toxic" bounty hunters will just move on to another platform.
And, afaik, almost 99,99999999% of members that have credits and a higher rank, earned it with the old rules, not with these new rules.

After going through your post history, the first 20+ posts (ignoring the rest 9 pages of bounty spam) didn't seem too bad and I decided to merit this average post:


But then:


You got the attention.

I can understand the concept of rewarding structure, However, In my opinion its quite difficult to get the attention from senior member or higher ranking members for newbies and chances are very low. I believe your story could make some influence on rewarding newbies for their contribution and support them, to overcome the recent newly- Demoted newbie situation.

Dont worry about i know but thanks for the note ! 

There are so many now coming out their Houses for that 1 !

Hope there are some useful .

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder buddy. Only other people can say that your post is meaningful or not and don't judge yourself by yourself.

We all will be as long as we persevere and be able to overcome this another hump in this forum. We just have to follow rules and regulations and avoid spamming because that is the main reason why we arrived to this situation. And importantly don't leave and quit the forum if you feel that you can do it.

It really sadden me to be pulled back after numerous potential post I have crated,I did create meaningful post since I was a user on this platform but I was not given any gratitude with merit for meaningful post I wrote,some of us are real but after every post we were just neglected and pulling meaningful users like us is  really bad,I hope one day I will still come back to Jr rank