Topic: Bias on giving merit, forum negativity and positivity to the newbies. (Read 787 times)

 Oh no! I can't say a thing with the replies of you all guys. Just as thought and expected.

Anyway, sorry for my english because I am not good at it.

I can't argue with all of you.

Thanks to all replies. I will going to lock this thread.

Exactly. There is a confusion about this. Many newbies who receive merits in Meta write in a way that makes it clear they already know the forum. These people can not be considered newbies.

If you are a newbie looking for merits, do not waste time on the Meta section.

If you are really a newbie, it will be difficult to receive merits. That's why you need only 1. It would even be interesting to have a statistic about this. But I imagine that a bounty hunter who knows little about Bitcoin and only wants to participate in airdrops or send messages as a spamer, will need about 30 messages of reasonable quality to receive 1 merits.

The interesting fact is that to write these 30 messages you will need to study, read and search. So the next step that will be the required amount of merits to become a Member will work in a more fluid and natural way.


Now, the OP's initial question is correct. There is a bias. If the newbie or low ranking is struggling to earn a merit just to participate in more bounties, people will avoid sending that merit. And most of the examples of newbies receiving tons of merits in this topic demonstrate this. They are people who post on technical subjects. Texts of great quality, relevance and that are useful to all. They are not in search of merits. They are searching for great debates about a subject that they love which is cryptocurrencies.

That was NSFW... my hysterical laughter earned me some weird looks.

Although to be fair, DOGEWHATSHERNAME also plagiarised it:

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/21901/what-happens-if-your-transaction-is-never-confirmed

I find the imgur links to be annoying, since that site always loads slowly on my PC--and in this case it's doubly annoying because the context of the merited post is missing.

There probably is a bit of bias toward high-ranked members with good reputations around here, but that's not something that can be proven.  And there are merit sources who have plenty of sMerits to give and are actively looking to help newbies out.  The problem, which has been stated many times in many threads, is that most new accounts these days tend to be people who have nothing useful to say but who are compelled by signature campaigns to come up with things to say anyway.  They're also usually not writing in their native language, and the result is that even if you can make heads or tails of what they're trying to say, the post is devoid of anything useful.

Thus, while that bias toward more well-known, well-respected members might exist, the bigger issue is the paucity of quality posts made by lower-ranked members.  If more newbies made better posts (and if you didn't have to wade through a morass of shitposts to find them), they'd be earning the merits they so desperately crave.

Meta is probably the worst section for newbies to earn merits, but they keep trying because they see a lot of older members earning merits here--but older members can see right through most noobs' intentions when they post in Meta, especially when they create threads about merits.

This is a great example of generic crap that keeps getting written by noobs.  Bad English, hard to read, and what's being said in the post has been written by more noobs than I can count. 

Seriously?
You're an example?



http://archive.fo/vYeKE#selection-1875.0-1875.409

I wouldn't say that Meta is a good place for a newbie to get merits, particularly now that the pity wave of merits after the 1 merit requirement introduction has subsided. Check out DdmrDdmr's thread on where users tend to get their first merits.

The best place for a newbie to be noticed is where they can genuinely contribute. A real newbie (not someone's alt) is unlikely to bring up anything useful in Meta.

Then why do it? This is just yet another pointless thread whining about nothing and we've been over these arguments dozens of times.


So we shouldn't give merits if there's misspelled words or grammar errors? I think I've met very few people online who have perfect grammar (including myself) and don't make typos every once in a while, but that doesn't change the content of the post. It's the effort and point of the content we should be taking into consideration. As long as a post isn't pure spam or crap then it's up for being merited. Merit is just a system to stop the worse of the worst from rising though the ranks and it works in that respect. Sure, it's not easy to get merit but I don't think it should be given to people just for bashing away at a keyboard.


Some context would be nice. What are we meant to do with three contentless posts? They could be the best or worst posts in the world for all we know and you may or may not have an argument here but context is key.

Edit:  at the ones you have used as examples. Those are all threads that do deserve lots of merit. I think if a newbie account would have posted them they would have got a similar amount. Believe it or not there are actually newbies that come here and make good to great posts. They're just dwarfed by the gazillions that come here and have no clue what they're meant to be doing here. I've literally seen dozens of newbies come and there first post is what do I do here, or how do I earn, because they've literally just been told they can earn good money here but have no idea what bitcoin is or how they can get it for free, and that's why we need the merit system to curb that behaviour from those sorts of users. If they came here and made a worthwhile thread then I'm sure they'd get appropriate merit, but they usually don't. Stick around and contribute and you'll likely get some pretty fast.


Negative feedback as in comments? Well, yeah. People are tired of the same old merits make the rich get richer and people only give them to the friends bullshit just because they haven't received any merits. 9 times out of 10 they don't deserve them.


I wish this would fit in my personal text.


I know, right? Didn't even include the content of the actual posts. It seems at least one of them is for reporting plagiarism. If someone makes a post that exposes accounts copy and pasting then the time and effort is usually considered meritable. Sometimes people post dozens of accounts in one post, but because you conveniently left out the content we can't possibly comment further on that.

  Firstly every rank other than newbie has a needed merit to achieve it and to get to junior member you only need on merit and 30 activity that means the forum has giving the newbies like us the lightest task. That only cancels out your allegation of the forum being bias.
If you complain of 1merit what will those that need 100merit or 250merit.
You have to drop this self pity attitude no one is obligated to give you merit you cant get merit by being vindictive on higher ranking member.

I understand making a post that is of quality is not as hard as you think just do a research that will be helpful to someone out there. Don't get too obsessed about the whole system just work harder

Look at it another way round: If a Newbie or a Jr. Member created decent posts in places other than spam-megathreads, then he is likely to stand-out of the crowd very soon, since, to be frank, there just are not that many lower ranked members that make half-decent posts.

That is really an opportunity that one can grab, and all it requires is investing some time and, of course, having a bit of savoir-faire in him (logically, if the latter is absent, then there is not much hope). Obviously, one can’t expect to be merited on the first decent post he makes, but being consistent at it over a few days or weeks at most should do the job.

Now the common denominator of lower ranks (with decent exceptions for sure) is that they post like there is no tomorrow, with repetitive one-liners day after day. If they posted like the higher ranks that do get merited, then they would have no issue getting merits. There are also many high ranked members that do not get a single merit and wont. Have you noticed those?  Perception in the OP is likely biased too, having focused on observation of decent top ranked posters and likely ignoring the large amounts of them that go unmerited.

First, let's get clear which (opening) posts you use as examples (suchmoon already did this but I'll embed the images anyway):
1. [LEARN] BBCode Lessons & Tutorials [+tutorial videos!]: 15842 views.


I'll make you a deal: Find 3 high-quality posts made by Newbies without any Merit, and show them in this thread. If I agree, I'll merit all three of them, and your post too.
You're not a spammer, so by that figure, you shouldn't be restricted by Merit. However, your posts look like you only made them to earn merit. Take this example: you're not adding any new information, you're just rephrasing text and numbers from other users.
Instead of pointing at high ranking users and complaining about Merit, try to add something helpful to the forum.

Me not sending you Merit doesn't mean I'm unfriendly. Merit was created to stop spam, and nobody is going to miss spammers.

I love meriting new users that show they aren't spammers! That's what this forum needs, and if they stick around, they'll be self-made high ranking users a few years from now.

Sorry Actually I'm not complaning ask you can see my history I'm committing I'm belong to complain because I'm newbie we are both newbie and I'm the the OP here.

Yep being Newbie or low ranked user is harder to get merit - its true but it's not imposible. Being the "fresh one" puts you on the spotlight and you have to work a bit harder than "oldboys" but it's just like in real life. When you are newcomer you have to show at first yourself from the good side.  So probably you won't get merit for the first good post or second one but when you write something really good noone would look at your rank and you will get plenty of merits.

Look at these posts below - they were wrote by newbies or low ranked users and some of ranked users found them very good and gave 20 or 50 merits to reward them:



And I also could show you a thousands good posts of ranked member which hasn't been rewarded but you can find them everywhere....
@xtraelv shoed you some of them:

OP why you put the blame on the system and not to the abusers? Merit sources have to deal with alts, trolls, and account farmers. Many said that the percentage of "real newbies" were very low compared to the "fake newbies". Because of all these craps, I also find it difficult to spend my sMerit on newbies. You may call it biased but whatever.

However, once I know (for sure) that a newbie is a "real newbie" then I won't hesitate to give my sMerit to his quality post. I started as a newbie and got more than 200 merits. Kindly use this https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-analysis-self-made-high-ranked-users-based-on-earned-merit-5039605 to remove any newbies doubt.

That's the problem. Most newbies start threads in order to get merits. Most high rank users start threads in order to initiate an interesting and useful discussion. That`s why newbies get a negative feedback, and higher ranks get merit.

Surprised! Even you don't know the history of merit but you are complaining and concerning about system ? Read this post how are they got merit https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28856522

At least use search button before you posting about merit system. You need to acquire enough knowledge before posting.

OP, stop whining about getting merits. The unfairness you talk about is not towards only you but to every other member of the forum as well. Initially people were giving out merits to people for testing the system and thus some threads here got merited like anything. Now the distribution of merits changed a bit and people are getting reluctant to merit newbies who dont read rules or contribute to discussions.

A good example of debunking your myth is my own account. I am Hero member here but how many merits I need to reach Legendary? more than 300!
And do you see me getting merits everyday for merit sources? NO!

Do you think life is fair for me or you who need 1/3rd of it to reach a good rank like Full Member? ("good" considering paid signature for which you are here)

---

Possible solutions:
1. STFU & GTFO.
2. Leave the forum
3. Create your own forum.

 At the time of merit system was introduced people got airdropped merits according to their ranks.

• Member        = 10 merits
• Full member  = 100 merits
• Sr member    = 250 merits
• Hero Member = 500 merits
• Legendary     = 1000 merits

So if the person was legendary when the time of merit introduction then they got 1000 merits by default.

Maybe your right as you said how they become legendary if don't have any single merit? can you please explain to me sorry for my question I just want my mind clear.

Should get. If OP want to change his posting behaviour then he should learn from here. It's really abused meta by merit and ban post. Especially from newbie. I don't think it's very hard to earn 1 merit to become Jr. Member for a quality poster. I believe admin always try to encourage send merit to newbie. Especially he gave instruction to merit source (imo).



Wrong , Legendary doesn't mean he wouldn't spam. Legendary equal not a quality poster. But every quality poster is a Legend. There is lot's of legendary, they haven't got even single merit. But there is so many new account who have earned more than his rank. I will say they are real Legend.

In regards to the OP,  you are right to an extent. Members on the forum are naturally drawn to posts from other members they recognize as quality users on the forum, similar to a teacher who raises his/her expectation when it's time to grade the script of an A-list student.

That doesn't translate to a bias on other members, and there's no need to categorize it as a neglect of lower members, there are a lot of higher ranked members (earned or airdropped) who  gets neglected by members with smerits.

There is no bias against ranks, and no one owes you any merits.
And the merit system has been discussed so many times it's now a broken record. And if it doesn't favour you, it's biased and prejudiced and once you get them you realize you were only short changing yourself with your negativity.
Improve your post quality, and improve it further, and if you don't get it then, read more, interact more and improve it even further.
And through this, merit or not, you have become more knowledgeable which is the actual reason for the merit system.
And that is worth more in my opinion.