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.

Oops it's my birthday today and I new something good was come.  Never knew the avenue was going to be form a spamming guy making silly messed up post.

If you have your statistics correct you would know that the merit distribution is not a respecter of rank the are over 100 smerit source and you can't tell me all of them has the same vision hey come on they are humans not bot

Take a look at a post that got merit the OP is not even a full member
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.30592114

Coming here making this will only discourage yourself
Ask yourself want your purpose of making this post it won't get you any where rather you will expose yourself to everyone as a spam poster

For my Observation here a lot of newbie complaining about merit I think you and I belong to that things but I'm new register here I don't know why they keep complaining. Since I see your thread How could you say merit is a bias since I did not see any spam comment or spam post from high-rank member yesterday I read one legendary member are keep spamming but many people are saying the legendary account was compromised by the hacker or he/she sell the legendary account to a newbie. I suggest stop complaining keep creating a good post constructive and helpful to member and also think positive merit will flow to your account slowly don't rush you will obtain your merit someday just think positive be your self-good luck.

Firstly rename this post as spam post from a spam guy seeking merit.
  Making post like this can not get you reward because it's annoying and unwise.

Yes I am new here but I have seen people get awarded. Well I think Mr OP has just created a shit post that has made me got merited lol

Have a positive attitude and contribute meaningfully to the forum then you can achieve anything. You don't have to come out here spreading fake and unnecessary post just like this one

Here's your problem:

Well I think the OP is really going of point. Just take me for example I am still a newbie and I got 3merit already.

The forum has been very transparent and straight forward as to regards smerit rewarding.

The fact that you made this post goes to show how unfocused you are. You can't be a shitty poster and expect to get merited for it.

Well you can go ahead and keep making shitty post and let us keep getting the merit

Firstly, a newbie shouldn't start a tread trying hard to get merits,  you should start a thread that would be helpful to others and qualitative trnough to improve your readers even slightly and you'd surely get a merited at some time if you keep at it and don't sti0 offering assurance if you don't get merited.

There are also merit sources who were charged with the duty of finding memorable posts and meriting it, and if you've paid close attention you would have felt their impact on the various boards.

Then there are stories of members here who would debunk your claim, Ddmrddmr who started from scratch with no airdropped merits and now has potential merit count and is only limited by activity. Including many others, some who have achieved different high ranks with no airdrop.

I also used to feel the merit system was abusive and biased till I changed my posting objective and I have since noticed changes.
So the negativity might probably be coming from you, and not other higher ranked members

There are lot of newbies and other ranked members have reached out enough merits for their next rank up but they don't have activity count for that to reach their next rank which means newbies can get merit but not all of'em for that you need to get yousrelf noticed among the forum user,not just like a sheep among herd.

Well I think the post is very much unhealthy and born out share misunderstanding. The forum is well organised in various aspect and that's includes the merit awarding system

There are various merit source that diligently award smerit  to good post.
I think the op has not worked hard enough and don't deserve to be rewarded.

Let it be known that once you get your act right and become constructive then and only then can you get rewarded

I won't say bias. Just that people are a bit lazy. No one wants to dig around to find quality newbie posters. Whereas, hero/legendary members with a ton of green trust, shine among commoners. Also, many newbies post in altcoin/bounty/non-crypto sections where the chances of getting merits are even lower. I don't wanna say it, but a newbie has more chances of getting merits in meta section vs. other sections. Plus merit donors expect exceptionally high quality posts from newbies as they don't want to help rank up spammers or sometimes clever copy-paste posters. I personally prefer to give merits to lower ranked quality posters.

There are about 119 merit sources with about 22000 Smerits generated per 30days
If they definitely do not hand out merits to you, then nobody will(Then it's then down to your own ineptitude)

It's so easy for someone who's failing to blame others for his/her failures

Your assessment is basically wrong,not just cos I'm trying to leap to the support of anyone,but because I'll be using my own situation as a case study and I guess it'll take you back to the drawing board..

My account is barely 4 days old, and I've received 4 merits within that very short space of time("from high ranked members),that's just like approximately 1merit per day, my posts/comments definitely isn't the best,nor is it top notch, it just happens to strike one or two chords when it's seen

Noobs fail to understand that no one is under any obligation to rain merits on you, if a member wouldn't hand out merits to you, then we have the merit sources(and if they do not hand out merits to you, it's high time you go and check your ineptitude)...

You do not demand for merits,you earn it, and you definitely won't be earning any for this shitty post you've scribbled down here
The real and honest question should be how many percentage of noobs can actually take out their time to come up with something worth meriting,a large percent are simply lazy and cannot wait to get that elusive one merit and go right back into spamming

sent merits to everyone posting other than OP... maybe he will get the message now?

4 ranks up 100 merit required

"Senior members"

3 ranks up 900 merit required

Stop whinging about it being unfair.
You only have to earn one merit to rank up to a Jr Member

Sometimes it takes weeks or months for a good post to be noticed.

Your focus shouldn't be on earning merits. I sometimes write posts that take hours to write and get no merits while others are one liners and get merits - it is up to others to decide whether they find them interesting or not. If you make enough good posts then you get merit for some.
I'm generally suspect of newbie accounts that moan about merits. They often turn out to be account farmers.

Before you complain about the system advantaging senior members:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/walletswap-5001019
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/utilizing-waste-mining-resources-and-immersion-cooling-5024125
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-does-a-double-spend-51-attack-work-explanation-and-examples-5035336
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wallet-wallet-address-private-key-public-key-explained-in-detail-5035375
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4972467

It is neither hard to get merit - nor does it favor certain ranks. If your posts are consistently unique, informative and interesting then you will have no trouble gaining merit.

It is unrealistic to expect every good post to get merit. It is not a "participation prize"..

If your posts are cliche, regurgitated repeat topics,  complaining about merit, obvious merit farming or uninteresting then you will find it hard to get merit.

Not agree with that, I was newbie and I have earned enough merit. Even my earned merit Sr. potential but I am still full member. You are wrong, why are you wrong? Just visit my merit history you will get answer. If you made quality post then you will get merit, no matter what is your rank.

Actually they are not newbie, they are spambie. To be honest I have visited you profile, your intention is only earn merit. You haven't contribute anything new. Just repeating old history.  

Edit
However, I want to confirm you even high rank member's  not encourage send merit to your good post then there is merit source. They will send merit you, you no need to ask or wait for old member's. But your post should be quality. Also admin encourage for meriting on good post ( not only better post). Let's see admin intention.

Kinda ironic that you complain about bias but use a very biased selection of threads to complain about without direct links (possibly in attempt to obscure the content in them?)

You can check this thread, Bitcoin Technical Support. There's a lot of newbies getting merited by higher rank member, why? its because they don't care about merits and they really deserves to be merited anyways. So there's no bias whatsoever. If higher ranks really see newbies showing quality post worth of at least 1 merit then they will give it hands down.

User Loycev has commendable post and there is no arguing with that. The only thing i empasized the post is that if you are a high ranks bias meriting would be possible and if you were lower rank you will be less likely to receive one.

I would be far more friendly to you if you found an actual example of an undeserving user but LoyceV... come on, that's just plain stupid. roslinpl's post also deserves every merit it got. ¹

Even if you had found a proper example that would still be short of actual proof. There is lots of merit data available. You could start by analyzing that and telling us where you see a bad pattern, as opposed to one or two user accounts. Hint: many capable data nerds (including LoyceV LOL) have done that and haven't reached the conclusion you're angling for.

And while we're using anecdotal evidence to make far-reaching conclusions:


I've been giving away free merits for a month now. You can follow the link in my signature to find out that there have been very few attempts to claim them. So I'm gonna file your claim under "utterly debunked".

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¹ - posts in OP's screenshots:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/learn-bbcode-lessons-tutorials-tutorial-videos-1727100
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/report-plagiarism-copypaste-here-mods-please-give-temp-or-permban-as-needed-1926895
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/loycevs-merit-data-analysis-full-data-since-jan-24-2018-not-just-120-days-3078328

I know that it is not good to accuse higher ranks for a bias giving of merits. It is not good to generalize high rank users for the bias of giving merits.

No hurt feelings because this is only base on my observation after gone reading a lot in this section. Most of the merited post are from the high ranks (good posters). Absolutely a good post from a high rank user will then receive merits without hesitation. I bet some factors that will contribute to the bias decision of giving merit was because the poster is senior user, the merit giver is a sychopant user, the user display a good character in the forum which relatively the awarding of merit standards will be bend for a bit even if there were mispelled words and grammatical error.

The users of this photo had a good post and recieved lot of merits and I do not know if there were any lower ranks could be able to receive lots of merits like this.


https://i.imgur.com/dqMIxuZ.jpg



https://i.imgur.com/KzMv9KT.jpg


Thus, bias giving of merit will only apply to high ranks users. And if you are a newbie trying hard to start a thread for merits then you will end up getting a lot of negative reply. I have seen some post started with newbies or lower ranks in their merit related post and definitely get a negative feed back.

NEWBIE + GOOD POST = IGNORE
HIGH RANK + GOOD POST = MERITS


What will be the impact for this to the newbie?
Simply it will inflict negativity to the newbie and will do the same with other newbies. It is just like a domino effect.

What will happen to the forum?
Bitcointalk will be full of newbies with negativity. This will not likely to make everybody enjoy the stay in the forum.

Anyway, not all high rank users will give negative feed back for the post because some of the high rank users were professional in dealing with newbies. I do appreciate them. I know one high rank user who were get tired of the negativity in the forum.



I qouted this post from one of the good users here in the forum.


What could be the impact of the positivity  to the forum and cryptocurrency?
It will add and reflect good cryptocurrency discussions and active markets for cryptocurrency. A forum with good service will definitely help the crypto market to be active because some of the users here are also crypto contributors and investors.
 
Being rude to others must be put to a proper way of dealing it. Instead of posting rude comments to their threads, we have other option by using private message. If not then just ignore and never mind that poster.

Now, can we be more friendly? I  am started to worry now the possible replies.