So if we do a little bit of maths for @The pharmacist
total sum received from 10 users = 636 merit = 61% from just 10 persons all (except 2 are part of the top 200).
If we look at the top 100 (remove foxpup, dbshck, Winner)
He has received 283 merit from the Top100 it is 28% of his merits from just 6 persons.
If you take the top 150, then it is 569 merit received (56% of all his merit) from just 8 persons, all in the elite.
Like cryptohunter, you're looking at it the wrong way. It makes perfect sense that the most merited users have the most Merit to give, and since they give it to good posts, it often ends up with the same people.
To stay with your example, let's get some more data on The Pharmacist:
9. 1023 Merit received by The Pharmacist (#487418) from 171 unique users in 590 transactions
31. 736 Merit sent by The Pharmacist (#487418) to 294 unique users in 579 transactions
As you can see, he's had Merit transactions with hundreds of people. It's no surprise that most of them don't have many sMerits to send, which leads to the obivous result that most of his Merit came from a small group of users.
And some more data:
User The Pharmacist (
full history)
- Received a total of 1023 Merit up to last Friday.
- Received 27 Merit (2.63%) for 5 (0.07%) of 7020 posts created before the introduction of Merit (0.0038 Merit per old post).
- Received 978 Merit (95.60%) for 406 (15.71%) of 2583 posts created after the introduction of Merit (0.3786 Merit per new post).
- Received 18 Merit (1.75%) for posts that are now deleted.
Merits do stay in the top 100 / 200 / 300 call how you want.
Again: you're looking at this the wrong way. Instead of looking where the Merit came from, you should look at the post it was sent to. Obviously there's some abuse, but I'm pretty sure most of the Top Receivers received it for legit good posts. Why would it matter who gave it, if the post deserves it?
I've merited your post, not because I agree, but because it's worth reading and you're not a spammer.
Look at the first 2 posters in this thread. Over 1k merits each wasted if you are of the mindset that merits are for ranking up.
I'll just respond to this part: that's the wrong mindset
Theymos made it very clear we should try to merit great posts, and later backed it down a bit to "good posts".
Merit is only wasted when it is given to bad posts, or spammers.
This is what theymos told me:
My views are also not completely in line with those mostly in control and I like to bust balls when people get too authoritarian and/or big egos.
True, I've seen you around, and merited you a few times. I try to make it a point to also merit good posts without agreeing, but it's always on my mind that my Merit can be seen as an endorsement for that post.
we must obey theymos, right?
I think theymos would disagree
Cryptohunter's problem seems to be mainly the attempt to bend facts to fit a narrative. I think there would be merits raining on her if the original assertion about good posters hiding on altcoin boards turned out to be true.
I don't even mind bending facts a bit, that can easily be disproven. Just not if it keeps coming back.
I'd like to take cryptohunter off ignore again if he (she?) stops repeating the same thing. Now I feel like I'm repeating myself too
However merit sources can create a topic in Meta and offer to forum users, who believe that their post deserves a merit but was deprived of attention, to provide links to their texts with a small explanation comments.
I've made this suggestion a few times to users, without much success.
You sources are conservative with your merits, giving just enough that it is working while making high rank much harder to achieve and more elite. You are just doing what you think is right.
You aren't giving 10 merits to posts you pick instead of 1 because you must thing that is too many.. You think 1 is enough and they should be more scarce than giving out 10s all the time. You are keeping high rank elite. Whatever..
You 2 (first 2) deserve a higher rank than the old legendary, and some deserve higher than you, so maybe it should be more elite.
I think my source sMerit is 200 now, per month. I make it a point to keep it as low as possibe, but I also try to Merit as many different posts and users as possible.
If you're not a Merit source yet, I think you should apply!
I think I'd do a better job as a merit source if I got more source merits
Ask theymos, see if he agrees.