Topic: [Discussion] The Merit System builds our personality (Read 569 times)

It's been a fascinating experiment so far.

I'd say shitposting is down but that went hand in hand with being more strict on Sig campaigns too.

It has also spawned other forms of shitposting, the aforementioned merit fishing which I find a bit nauseating and there are also the posters who are blind to their emptiness and will carry on with the shit convinced it's only a matter of time their genius will be picked up on.

The merit obsessives are the most interesting. It seems it dominates certain lives.

I prefer to dribbles on as normal and see what happens.

The things that I have learned with this merit system is to be patient, be creative, put some efforts.

Just be patient, don't lose hope when you haven't received merits for almost 1 week, maybe your three threads are not just too good enough to be appreciated, make some moves, forget those things and create quality posts.

Be creative and put some efforts, as you can see most of the top merited posts here are very useful and creative, they put some explanations and they make things clear to us. If we are going to put efforts on our threads we will gain merits, just like this one, it is not that easy to create a program for this forum. He puts effort from doing that so he deserves merits as well.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54234252

If you find any member doing this, you can report them. When your accusation is true that members can get at least negative trust from DT member. I remember about a member getting a lot of merit in a few weeks after he joined this forum.  Even he not getting perma ban from Theymos, he gets a lot of negative trust from DT member. (read the full case here: Disadvantage of Quick merit earn method.). So, if you find something wrong, report it.

I don't agree with you.
Yes,  some members trying to abuse merit system but honest members,  someone who contribute to the forum with constructive and quality posts will be rewarded eventually.
Even if someone feels that his posts deserve merits,  there are several merit giveaway  topics where new  members can report their good  posts and ask merit.
Any way,, I feel that merits are good because new and old  members are trying more to increase quality of their posts.
Of course still we have to fight with scam.

This may be the case for a minority of users, but in general, this isn't true. People who make very good and merit worthy posts generally consistently make high quality and merit worthy posts and therefore earn more merit, which is why it seems there is some sort bias for their posts, when in reality it's just that their posts are consistently high quality. I generally pay very little attention as to who has made a post when deciding whether or not to give out merit. In fact, if I do pay attention to the user, it's usually to skew my decision making in the opposite direction to that which you are suggesting - when I am down to fewer than 10 remaining sMerit to hand out, I'll sometimes skip high quality posts by high ranked members or members who I know I frequently merit, and instead opt to "save" my sMerit for newbies and other lower ranked members.

Please post links to them in this thread: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source

There is no doubt that the merit system builds our personality but at the same time merit abusing from members builds the worst personality.Because by abusing merit system the users who deserve merit are getting ignored.Depriving from others don't build our personal ever.

this could mainly be because those users are active in the same boards not because they have created any kind of group to circle merit amongst themselves. for example according to bpip site i have sent the most merit to user @o_e_l_e_o and thinking back it is because i keep seeing his good quality posts in the same boards that i regularly visit like the technical boards. now looking at your post history you seem to be posting a lot in gambling, Pilipinas and altcoin boards and these boards are among those that i either never visit or rarely visit. so i would never see any of your top quality posts to give merit to.

This is something that may irritate some people, but the merit system is not moderated (except in rare cases of abuse), so theoretically someone can assign all their merits only to one person or a narrow group of members. As in real life, some rules apply here - you will help a friend rather than a stranger, even if it means you may not have rewarded better post which is again a matter of subjective assessment.

This is definitely a higher level at which merits circulate, but it is only part of the process of selecting the best among us - not just in quality of their posts but also on some other characteristics that make them special, and perhaps we could use the term merit magnets

Time likely brings on more affinity to some people, although that may brush of after some time, so it’s not necessarily a constant function. As usual, we’ll find examples and counter examples of basically anything merit related, but meriting for the sake of a built-up relation should not be a core driver, but perhaps more an affinity for the type of content some people create. That’s why the more eyes on the game board, the better (and the more prone to objectivity).

Another thing I observed is that this merit system had led the forum members to create a group where they themselves exchange merit.  I don't say I disagree with it, actually, it is a good thing somehow since forum members have more interactions outside the forum and somehow build this camaraderie and trust atmosphere among themselves.  The negative side is that some of these people tend to be biassed towards other members that do not belong to their group.  I have seen lots of merit worthy topics and posts but garners less merit because this member is not known to them and they preserve  their smerit to their so-called "friends".

that's all true and the merit system has indeed affected the forum as a whole and a lot of individuals but not everyone. for many, the merit system was just an additional feature added to the forum they were using. of course most people are improving naturally over time.
for instance i can say that my behavior or personality or post quality has not changed with merit system. the only thing that changed was my ability to "upvote" posts that are valuable like i was doing on reddit or stackoverflow sites. and the annoyance of having to choose only a handful of posts to merit since i'm not a source and despite receiving a lot of merits i still find more posts to reward than i have smerit to spend.

+1
If we will take it logically, that is the goal of merit system. In order for the users to create quality post and contribute to the forum, avoid spam and shitposting. However, users must not take an advantage of the system. Posting to help others can be done without the aid of merit system.

The best thing to do in this forum is ignore the merit system and always look for learning, helping and contributing to the forum. If you made quality post that you may know and people doesn't satisfied with it, it's okay. As long as you helped and share the utmost ideas that you have, even without merits. For me, you are a good user of the forum. Ignore merits because merits will come for you if you really deserved it.

Do I say that it identifies our personality? No sir, what I am trying to point out here is that we are building our personality unknowingly because of merit system. Virtual and reality are two different space, you can be good here but not in real world. Besides, you have already personality even before you talk here. But the thing is that, the forum influences us because of merit system.

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BTW, thank you guys for your comments. I really appreciate your opinions about how merit system improves us.

Despite of some of my disagreement with you. I agree that if one user has a good intention to contribute to the community, and spend enough time and efforts to learn and help the others, they will be recognized sooner or later by the community. Recognition will be partially reflected on their received merits.

The main point I disagreed with you is the merit system does not identify our personality here. It motivates us to make more contributions, that's it.

I didn't see that effect in people, but it is true that I could not be paying enough attention and I was (wrongly) extrapolating my own attitude to others.
If you have seen people improving because of the merit system, I'm glad the system has that effect on people (or at least some of them).


I was also worried about this, but if that doesn't happens often, then it is OK.
I would love to know how things would be if this system wouldn't exist. I am always fascinated about social behaviour


Completely agree.

Every system, no matter how well conceived, has its weak points, which some manage to take advantage of. What you describe often happens, but it's not easy to judge if someone is asking a legitimate question/started a topic or it is just about "merit fishing". I agree that anyone trying to help others should know what they are actually writing about, because bad information is far more dangerous than no information at all.

When I just see how many alt accounts there are on this forum (which of course is not against the rules), which exchange merits among themselves, I wonder what is going on in their heads and what personality they develop. Yet they know very well that the only merits they can count on come from their alt accounts, and when airdropped merits dries up, only option is black market.

Unfortunately merit system also incentivizes a type of useless posting called "merit fishing", when people deliberately create posts with a sole goal of earning merit and not actually helping. It often takes form of deeply flawed guides or educational posts that do more harm than good by creating and spreading misconceptions. Luckily this doesn't happen often and I hope it won't be in the future.

It's true that the merit system have impact on our personality and many people improve or become knowledgeable because of it. I have seen several forum members which have low rank before and achieve higher rank when you look at it. Also, congratulations om your ranking up to Full Member which is one of the example that many newbies should see as the role model.

I've been browsing bitcointalk for around 3 years regularly, mainly as a source of information.

My experience and knowledge was usually overshadowed by more experienced people always willing to help others. I had helped others from time to time, of course, but I don't feel like my contribution to bitcointalk has
been meaningful so far.

I find the merit system very good for distinguish between helpers and non helpers. People you can usually trust. Beyond that, I have my doubts.
I am not entirely sure that people puts more time and effort in their posts just to get merit points. I believe that that has more to do with smoeone's personality. I think that people puts more time and effort into something if they get something back (like satisfaction for helping others). Merit points by themselves doesn't gives you anything. If you want merit points to have a social status, I believe that you could be more efficient at that with a good post than with 1000 merit points.

Just my thoughts..

I don't know what you mean by this but what I know is that personally, I do not merit users post based on rank here or try to help rank up and I think that's what others do too. When you post or create a good topic like this one, you get merited. Even low rank users merit legendary rank users which is the last rank here.

You've really made great points with your write up here and not just some merit post that forum starters creates to educate old members.

The only thing that has changed is that it is much harder than before to progress in the ranks, and that one part of the users thinks that it used to be much easier to get to a certain rank before that is the case now, and that is actually true. What many do not take into account is the fact that those who have been members of this forum since before the merit system did not have chance to get merits, but instead of that they are rewarded with airdropped merits for their current rank. Today we can see if someone is get those merits deservedly or not - so if someone is get 500 airdropped merits 2 years ago, and after that is managed to earn same amount after 2 years, such a member is worth something on this forum (at least in my opinion).

I have no doubt that the introduction of the merit system has also helped reduce shitposting, but much more is helped the stricter management of signature campaigns which are without a doubt the biggest motivator for which users post. I did not check how long are you member of this forum, but back in 2015/2016 some campaigns are only managed by bots, and this was a shitposting paradise.


On the other hand, it is a bit strange that one number in the profile actually represents how valuable or worthless someone is on this forum, especially if we take into account that there are a lot of members who write quality posts and are not rewarded for some reason.