Topic: ★ Benefit of Merit Competition on Signature Campaign ★ (Read 782 times)

We used to have that even before without merit system ( Funny part tho is just that you have to dig it from the garbage field. Atleast now the garbage field
is slowly getting organized)



Because we have to. If we don't strive for a change who will do it then? Admins already have been making too much efforts yet it is still not enough and that's the main reason why we should also move (we are called as a community aren't we?)

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In general, I don't really think that such merit competition in ChipMixer has actually boosted the quality of participants' posts.
Why I said like this?
Because those participants are intrinsic constructive users, they write constructive posts as their basic instinct.
Merits come or not, it depends on luck, the odds of catching attention of readers, and available free sMerits of readers at each specific time point.

As a member of bitcointalk I feel so great when so many community members share their thoughts on a thread. I beleive just getting merits on a thread isn't the only achievements for a thread poster. We always able get so many useful opinion from a inclusive discussion. I think same things happened on this thread.

Intention of my thread was to get valuable suggestion from everyone who specially thinks for our forum improvement. I beleive after reading this thread discussion current campaign managers will take necessary steps to choose best campaign participants. Already we have got many tips for successful campaign management. Every single campaign bear importance for users and forum too. What we need to do it to find best way which will stop spammers and forum will be benifited by quality posters activity IMO.

Lots of thanks to them who feel it necessary to share their valuable thoughts and advice on this regarding issue.   

That's a really useful thread, merit sources and other members with spendable merits are visiting that topic to check those posts.
I saw that if someone needs only a few merits to rank up, merit sources are happy to check the post history to see if the member creates quality posts, and if yes, they have managed to rank up several members since the opening to that thread.
It's a bit similar to the old review topics of the merit sources but concentrated into one place

FYI: if you find something like that, you can post the link to [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source

I certainly don't think that this method of selecting constructive posts is correct because in my opinion there are people whose posting quality is damn good but don't get enough merits on their posts.
There are people who post one liner posts and yet receive a decent amount of merits. I don't blame anybody for this since people tend to merit whomever they like but for whatever reason they have.
It depends on the campaign manager on whatever basis they can select the constructive posts but earning more merits for a posts doesn't necessarily mean that it would be constructive.
This is just my opinion according to my experience on this forum.

It means that there are around 29 percent (or lower) of probability to get accepted to join that campaign for self made Senior Members who earned 150 to 250 merits.
I think that it is a significant probability of chance, so for someone who are self made Senior Members (started from zero merit), you can hope with your application.
However, if don't get acceptance, you should not feel dissapointed, because that campaign is the highest competitive one over last two years (due to its highest pay rates and its long period since its opening)

Wonderful statistics you wrote there, it gives a sign of hope any of the newly promoted snr member rank users might get a chance of getting accepted. No doubt the campaign is a strong one and been given the opportunity to promote along side other reputed members will be a honor given to who ever is acceptable.

After checking current members of the campaign,  being one of the candidates, I decided to take look at the competition ...
Until the moment of writing this post, 40 candidates were registered so let's see what their achievements in the bpip: most merited ranking look like:

0   (0,00%)   participants earn over 1000 merits
11 (27,50%) participants earn 501-1000 merits (places from 19 to 62 in the ranking)
11 (27,50%) participants earn 251-500 merits (places from 72 to 162 in the ranking)
4   (10,00%) participants earn 151-250 merits (places from 181 to 330 in the ranking)
3   (7,50%) participants earn 101-150 merits (places from 364 to 488 in the ranking)
3   (7,50%) participants earn 55-100 merits (places from 569 to 709 in the ranking)
8   (20,00%) participant did not qualify for the first thousand of the most merited users

The above list shows that competition among candidates is as strong as among current members. Especially at the very top of the scale - although among the candidates there are no users who have earned over 1,000 merites, however the percentage of those who have earned more than 500 (including more than 1.000) is even higher among candidates (27,50%) than among the current campaign participants (26.23%). Comparing all candidates who made at least 250 merits (self made sr. member) we got 55,00% what compared to current participant (52,46%) is also a bit higher.


On the other hand, more users who, due to the insufficient number of merit did not qualify in the bpip most merited ranking, tries their luck more ofeten amog candidates (20,00%) compared to current campaign participants (1.64%).

One thing is indisputable: THE COMPETITION IS FU@#$N STRONG !!!

I can make much lighter time-series plots, rather than your bar charts.
I will do it for you if you want.
I made a time-series of my earned merits there

Yesterday I submitted my application for the ChipMixer campaign, I have known for a long time that this is the best signature campaign around the forum, but after reading the @LoyceV post I was scared that there is no place for ordinary people but cyborgs. Two weeks - the 50th @The Pharmacist (138 merit) and 52nd @LoyceV (142 merit) were enough for these guys to get more merits than I ever did!

So I decided to check if all participants have the same high performance. I am not able to compare subjectively the quality of posts of individual participants, so despite the fact that according to the words @DarkStar_ merits, it is not the most important to see how the participants perform in the ranking of the most merited in bpip.

5   (8,20%)   participants earn over 1000 merits (places in the first 10 ranking)
11 (18,03%) participants earn 501-1000 merits (places from 24 to 63 in the ranking)
16 (26,23%) participants earn 251-500 merits (places from 68 to 164 in the ranking)
14 (22,95%) participants earn 151-250 merits (places from 201-338 in the ranking)
11 (18,03%) participants earn 101-150 merits (places from 405-545 in the ranking)
3   (4,92%) participants earn 55-100 merits (places from 621-749 in the ranking)
One (1,64%) participant did not qualify for the first thousand of the most merited users

As you see - It turned out that not all 60 participants of the campaign are users from the first 60 or even the 100 most merited users. Almost half are people with 2, 3, 4 or even 6 and 7 hundred. It looks like the Campaign Manager realy does not just look at the numbers but the content of your posts, which means you have at least a theoretical chance to get there even if you're not at the top of the rankings.

I also believe merit contests would probably lead to abuse.
And yes, it happened in the Stake campaign with people using their alts and some others all of a sudden becoming "great posters" (receiving 15-20 merits in a week though they never got any in their life). That's why it lasted only one week.
Another thing that could happen is potential winners might not want to send merits to other potential winners. Not cool especially if it's in a campaign with "renowned" members.
And like Dark_Star said, people will go to the sections where the most merits are given. And many users here never read these sections.

One thing that could be done is rewarding the best posters for the week. Of course, that would be decided by the BM, which means subjectivity (I don't see it as a problem in good campaigns, it might be one in others).

(I had to reload the page several times for all images to load. F5 didn't work, going to the URL-bar and pressing Enter works)

I'm curious to see if some users really have a consistent flow of Merit coming in. I'll get some data (based on the current list of participants, even though they haven't all been in this campaign since the introduction of Merit. I've included TheQueen and HabBear too). These are the Merit distributions, each column is 5 days since the introduction of Merit:





























































I must say many people have a much more consistent Merit earning than I expected!

I want to test that too
Instead of using exact calendar weeks, and to make it easy for myself, I've used 7 day 24 hour periods from the moment the first Merit was sent. This may have slightly altered the result, but the overall picture should be more or less the same.
Week 1: LeGaulois earned 91 Merit.
Week 2: LoyceV earned 60 Merit.
Week 3: bill gator earned 48 Merit.
Week 4: LoyceV earned 62 Merit.
Week 5: SyGambler earned 53 Merit.
Week 6: LoyceV earned 31 Merit.
Week 7: TheQuin earned 55 Merit.
Week 8: TheQuin earned 33 Merit.
Week 9: iasenko earned 24 Merit.
Week 10: DdmrDdmr earned 50 Merit.
Week 11: LeGaulois earned 54 Merit.
Week 12: DdmrDdmr earned 34 Merit.
Week 13: The Pharmacist earned 56 Merit.
Week 14: DdmrDdmr earned 33 Merit.
Week 15: DdmrDdmr earned 37 Merit.
Week 16: DdmrDdmr earned 34 Merit.
Week 17: DdmrDdmr earned 71 Merit.
Week 18: DdmrDdmr earned 21 Merit.
Week 19: pugman earned 65 Merit.
Week 20: 1miau earned 54 Merit.
Week 21: 1miau earned 31 Merit.
Week 22: Welsh earned 130 Merit.
Week 23: DdmrDdmr earned 38 Merit.
Week 24: iasenko earned 27 Merit.
Week 25: hilariousetc earned 53 Merit.
Week 26: o_e_l_e_o earned 36 Merit.
Week 27: BitCryptex earned 49 Merit.
Week 28: hilariousetc earned 47 Merit.
Week 29: hilariousetc earned 106 Merit.
Week 30: LoyceV earned 81 Merit.
Week 31: hilariousetc earned 44 Merit.
Week 32: DdmrDdmr earned 56 Merit.
Week 33: hilariousetc earned 69 Merit.
Week 34: DdmrDdmr earned 101 Merit.
Week 35: DdmrDdmr earned 78 Merit.
Week 36: LoyceV earned 43 Merit.
Week 37: ETFbitcoin earned 38 Merit.
Week 37: hilariousetc earned 38 Merit.
Week 38: DdmrDdmr earned 63 Merit.
Week 39: bob123 earned 49 Merit.
Week 40: LoyceV earned 31 Merit.
Week 41: o_e_l_e_o earned 34 Merit.
Week 42: DdmrDdmr earned 53 Merit.
Week 43: o_e_l_e_o earned 61 Merit.
Week 44: o_e_l_e_o earned 36 Merit.
Week 45: HCP earned 32 Merit.
Week 46: DdmrDdmr earned 75 Merit.
Week 47: LoyceV earned 49 Merit.
Week 48: The Pharmacist earned 70 Merit.
Week 49: The Pharmacist earned 22 Merit.
Week 50: The Pharmacist earned 138 Merit.
Week 51: DdmrDdmr earned 118 Merit.
Week 52: LoyceV earned 142 Merit.
Week 53: LoyceV earned 79 Merit.
Week 54: d5000 earned 51 Merit.
Week 55: LoyceV earned 62 Merit.
Week 56: DdmrDdmr earned 78 Merit.
Week 57: o_e_l_e_o earned 96 Merit.
Week 58: BitCryptex earned 103 Merit.

There's more variation than just DdmrDdmr and me
Counting how often each user would win the weekly Merit run:
     16 DdmrDdmr
     10 LoyceV
      6 hilariousetc
      5 o_e_l_e_o
      4 The Pharmacist
      2 LeGaulois
      2 1miau
      2 TheQuin
      2 iasenko
      2 BitCryptex
      1 HCP
      1 d5000
      1 Welsh
      1 bob123
      1 SyGambler
      1 bill gator
      1 ETFbitcoin
      1 pugman

This is not a good idea, look what happend on Stake signature here

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-abuse-by-wilburwilbur-5114255

Op accused one guy to cheat the merit system to get money for the merit contest, and in the end we discovered also the OP cheated the contest so, a merit reward system will lead a more abusing.

I don’t think that any campaign is really considering the merit per week achievement to determine campaign participants. Perhaps the overall earned merits, and in some cases the earned merits within the campaign could contribute towards a bonus of some sort, but a weekly earned merit ratio would be rather over the top with the current numbers:
The above shows how many forum members have earned at least 1 merit in the weeks pertaining to 2019. We are currently on week number 10 of the year (partial, since data is from last Friday), and so far 96 people have managed to earn one or more merits each week of 2019, whilst the core of merited people, 2.335 have earned merits only on one of the weeks during 2019.

Even a simple criterion such as "has earned at least one merit during 2019" renders only 3771 forum members. Merit criteria for campaign selection is therefore only feasible for a select limited amount of campaigns, simply because there are not enough candidates to go around on any tight merit criteria.

Do not be discouraged. Manager have right to including your as participant campaign or not. Since manager had control and know who's participant in criteria and who is goes deserved first.
If you feel like your most get tons of merits that's doesn't mean you will be picked.

Merits it's only about "Lucky". Why? Beucase if you do contribution for community and feel like deserved get a merits, that's not guarantee, but you deserved thankyou not merits. Merits come from "Source Merit" and "Member who care to share merits".

In simply case  :
J : Hello I've stuck in code, my program's not working, here's for script xxxx..
K : You just missing your " ; " in line 442. (Then the case is solved but no one given a merits, just thank)
           ^ That's only telling about short information, but constructive.
Compare with :
X : New Campaign BBB Weekly paid 0.001 / Post. But the OP derserved Merits from those random people

So that's why i telling you, Merits only talking about "Lucky".

The campaign manager then benefits due to feedbacks and forum recognition but have you considered the profit of the project been advertise, don't forget the fund aren't coming from the campaign manager so if you're advocating for merit competition just to benefit them you're doing it all wrong besides if such competitors are to be adopted officially some rules needs to be put in place to provide fair chance for all participants. Merit earned within a week doesn't automatically showcase quality produce for that week. Example for the pass few days I have been getting merited for post I wrote since February and if I was to be in such campaign offering merit competition I would had won.

I don't believe that merit should be a factor. The important things for campaign managers should be -

- Number of impressions
- The reputation of the poster.
- The click through rate
- The conversion rate.

Without an affiliate link, it is difficult to measure these, so the manager has to rely on earned merits, and his evaluation of a poster's history..

Personally I don't think it as a pressure for managers mate. If you just think about signature project owners side then you can observe that they are spending money for getting investors on their project. As a investor I don't show my interest when I see a shitposter wearing signature on his/her profile.

A quality post can easily attract investors concentration which is really needed for these projects IMO. I also believe that if a project get well response from bitcointalk signature campaign then managers reputation grow dramatically. We can't deny that quality post have got so many useful things. 

There's another problem with it: total merit doesn't say anything about the quality per post. If I double my post count, I'd probably earn twice as much merit. However, DdmrDdmr has earned more than twice as much per post. Gmaxwell earned like 6 merit per post.

But merit per post is easily manipulated, so you can't use that either.

Wondering most of managers (alt coin campaign) never check even quantity of post how they will find quality post if there is merit abuse?

However OP suggestion isn't bad. It would be encourage make good post at least. On the other hand it might encourage merit abuse as well. But we should take good one rather then choose bad. Even not weekly but managers can distribute few bonus stake between top merit earner monthly especially for altcoin signature. I don't think bitcoin signature manager's pick bad poster.

I saw non Bitcoin paying bounties doing it as well, extra stakes for people having certain amount of merit (for example, Eosbet). It's certainly distinguishes airdropped ranks vs self-made ones.

Merit Per week is really bit that much lol but if that is their rules then It is still up to them (that is not that hard tho to those who really have been contributing much from this forum).


You also still have to consider that because if you were posting on a spam thread then it is really pretty useless. If you have to keep up to the competition then choosing the right place would be crucial.

It is simple to understand, because LoyceV and DdmrDdmr have been ranked in the top three in terms of top earned-merits.
They have been ranked only behind theymos.
They are both outstanding guys.
LoyceV have received more than 2100 merits, and DdmrDdmr has come so close to 2000 received merits.
https://bpip.org/report.aspx?r=mostmerited

Merit per week is too luck based imo and hurts those that consistently gain merits. A user might gain ~10 merits every week consistently, but may never win a bonus because every week there are inconsistent people who might gain 15 in a week and 0 in the next week. It also encourages people to post in Meta because that's the easiest section to gain merits.

If I did something like this in the ChipMixer campaign, LoyceV or DdmrDdmr would *probably* win every week because people love meriting merit/trust analysis. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's very unlikely someone who makes very good posts in other sections would win and it would be a bit discouraging for everyone else. I do track merits as part of an interesting project, but I see no point in rewarding the top merit earners per week. This graph represents the earned merit distribution in my campaign. There are 5 clear outliers who would almost certainly win every week, despite there being plenty of other users who are deserving of a bonus.

Well, every campaign manager have their own methods to select participants. Personally, I think that total merit earned is one of main things which should be considered when manager choose participants. But Merit earned per week - I think it's a bit too much. I don't think it's going to improve something. If user is a good poster, I don't think that he is going to make even better posts to get few bucks bonus or something. If user have right attitude, he aren't posting just for money or merit. And in general, now we can't complain about quality of posts of Bitcoin signature campaign participants. Main problem is altcoin bounties...
It wouldn't be big additional work, because most of bounties participants haven't earned any merit at all, some lucky spammers maybe managed to get 1-2 merit in total somehow

Actually this isn't new and other campaigns are doing the same. But when you come to think of the extra fund involved you won't have to blame the campaigns not engaged in such practice of rewarding extra ordinary poster as most of them aren't paying that much talk more of adding extra expense.


Aren't you forgetting the third possible scenario, it can also lead to merit abuse and spamming for merit just to get bonus.

In conclusion we shouldn't pressure any campaign or campaign manager into promising a bonus they can't fullfil since extra fund is involved and current market situation isn't favoring most projects.

I think the managers can check posts quality and check the merits before accepting the members. I think the managers have the final word and this is how it should be since they are hired exactly for doing this, filtering shitposters and welcoming good posters. Good posters will in most of the cases have more merits than shitposters.

Yes, Merit competitions can be a good measure to improve the posting quality and I think introducing them would also be beneficial for the advertised project. Participants are required to make posts that are not only high quality but also visible. A good post is not necessarily beneficial for the product you are advertising in your signature if it isn't noticed because it's posted in a spam-megathread. I agree to gentlemand that there are sections where it's easier to get a Merit and in the Wall Observer signatures aren't displayed, so the earned Merit there isn't affecting the visibility of the signature.
A good solution could be if there are little rewards based on Merit on a bi-weekly base in my opinion.

Most of the BTC paying signatures have already a very high posting quality because the managers do a good job in selecting quality posters. The far bigger problem is in Altcoin signatures. Some managers don't care much for post quality there and pay everyone spamming the required number of posts per week although if the quality and visibility of the posts is not acceptable. It's not only bad for the forum it's also useless for the projects because they are paying spammers for posting useless bullshit.  
I'm not sure if lazy managers would be willing to have more work by checking the number of earned Merit if it's already not possible for them to reject shitposters effectively.  

I'm sure the good mangers will weed out abusers when participants buy Merit or use their alts to merit their main account, in addition someone doing this would be very stupid to risk his account being tagged. The Merit system had a useful impact to discourage people doing questionable things with their accounts if the result could be a red tag.

I think meta would do

Whereas the method is a good way to encourage quality posts, it can also sometimes encourage merit abuse by certain greedy posters. So before a manager gives out bonus payments to the most merited users on that given week, looking at the quality of the merited posts could be an appropriate thing to do.

This is a subject for the meta section more than anything.

I think a base merit requirement is important. Merit per week is a bit much. A requirement to have earned a certain amount of merit within the last month or two is a better balance.

Certain sections don't attract the handing out of merit no matter how good posts are. Others are ridiculously merit happy like the wall observer thread. It would be a shame if poster behaviour was warped by the requirement to fish for merit above creating content that doesn't make you want to hang yourself.

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my thread. Today I am going to share a matter which looks very effective on my eyes for our community. It relates with signature campaign. I had applied on bustadice signature campaign though I had not accepted but I discover something interesting from the activities of campaign manager yahoo62278 . As a applicants I read their main thread and find that campaign manager have put additional stake for few participants  who will make most constructive post.

After visiting the spread sheet I discover the process of choosing most constructive users. Campaign manager select them based on their earn merit per week. As a new user of bitcointalk I see this kinda merit competition on a signature campaign for the first time. I am not sure that any other manager have previously done this kind of competition or not.

Honestly this matter impressed me a lot. I believe merit competition increase the quality of users post which can minimize spam on our forum. I think if other managers follow this strategy by putting bonus stake for constructive users then it will encourage community users to make quality posts. I am not only suggesting this for BTC signature but also for other signature campaign. As far as I know stake distribution fully depend on managers hand and it will not be difficult for them to put few bonus stake for those users. In one side its creating competition among participants to make quality post for achieving bonus. On the other hand forum will get quality posts, unique ideas and obviously going to the next level.

Special Note: I am not sure that my thread is appropriate for this section or not. If not please feel free to suggest.