Topic: Do we need merit sources for low ranks? (Read 969 times)

I don't know if it has been suggested before, but I was thinking, perhaps there could be two types of merit used. The system as it is, and in addition a "lower trust" type of merit that has no impact on the forums trust systems, but allows users to rank up and unlock various forum privileges. This could help solve some of the issues with newbs not getting enough attention from merit sources, and allow for a more liberal application of secondary low trust merit sources without severely compromising the integrity of the system as a whole. This would also have the added benefit of familiarizing newbs with merit use while also removing most of the risk of abuse, as even if it was abused the impact would be negligible. It would also serve as a way to expose and root out gaming the system at a very early stage by building demonstrable ties between account farming and abuse networks.

Indeed, LoyceV have that topic as well, but it's different than Coin-1's. One is for highlighting undermerited posts to merit sources, while the other one is for congratulating the rank ups.

Pharmacist's general generousity towards lower ranks is admirable and there should be more like him.

About changing the systen, that's a difficult work and I don't think there will be any drastic change in the future. But maybe this topic will raise merit sources' awarness about looking closer newbies' posts...? Let's hope for the best

Lower rank users are the future of the forum so OP made a good topic to discuss.

Maybe you forgot the topic of LoyceV: The future of Bitcointalk: Low Ranking Top Merit earners in the past 30 days, that was last updated on February 22, 2020, 11:14:27 AM

First of all thank you for the useful topic you made.
In my own idea, merit is a unique and value here jest because it's to easy to earn by new members.
It's just like a market: "The more demand, more value".
In the other hand, I believe creating a new merit system will just take way too much time, hassle and work.

First of all, I would like to say that in my opinion it is very impressive how much time some of the long-time forum members spend here to give new users a fair chance to rank up in the forum. I have only been active here for a very short time, but I already realized how difficult it is to find merit-worthy posts, especially from members with lower ranks (Newbies, Jr. Members etc.). The amount of spam produced by many bot and bounty fake accounts is just enormous.

Accordingly, I can only fully agree with The Pharmacists previous post. The merit system was created to reward good, informative and helpful posts (from low and high ranked users!). The fact that some merit sources should now only focus on posts from low ranked members does not seem feasible to me. The amount of garbage posts and spam is simply way too high. Nobody is willing to scroll through hundreds of bad posts every day to find one or two good posts, which are merit-worthy.

Instead, merit sources should focus on fairly evaluating meaningful posts from all users and rewarding them accordingly. While doing so merit sources should keep a few points in mind with regard to new users:

New members here in the forum often find it very difficult to write informative and helpful posts. In most cases they are new to the crypto space and often overwhelmed by all the information. Many posts written by newbies that may seem informative and helpful for them are often trivial for the long-time forum users or have been posted many times before by others. If you look at the “Beginners & Help” section, for example, you will notice that almost every question has already been asked and almost every topic has been dealt with. This makes it even harder for newbies to write meaningful posts. Perhaps merit sources should take this into consideration and rate a post written by a newbie differently than a post by a long-time user (I am sure many, if not all merit sources do that already!).

In summary it can be said, what just have been posted above: All of us have to make an effort to find and reward the few good posts from newcomers.

Creating a distinction isn’t much of a good idea. And that’s exactly what this would do. The main is to ensure all good posts are merited, that could be done by increasing number of merit sources, and more specifically by ensuring all merit sources understand that they have a ‘JOB’ to do and it’s not just a medal.

Merit sources specifically for lower-ranked members:  mediocre idea.
Merit sources stepping up meriting lower-ranked members:  great idea.

I definitely try to favor the lower ranks when spreading merits around, but if I had the task of only giving merits to Jr. Members for example, I'd have a really, really tough time doing it--and I probably wouldn't be alone unless there was some relaxing of standards.  That would go against the spirit and intent of the merit system and personally I wouldn't do it.

I think what we need is a better sense of who's going undermerited and which members need merits to rank up.  I think LoyceV has a thread going, and I've taken a couple of members under my wing (so to speak), but I wish there was a better way for me to be directed to good posts that need merits.  There probably isn't a better way, unfortunately.

Edit:  Ah, Coin-1 has a thread that's helpful that I forgot about.  It just got bumped and thus helped me remember it.

I believe that tk808 is a merit source and from his merit history, he seems to be dedicated to Altcoin Discussion section. He might be an example of a merit source for low ranked members. However, there are various ways to earn merit: helping other people, making jokes or funny comments, exposing scams, sharing deep, dark knowledge, etc... If you're good at any of them, you will eventually get merits and rank up. Generally, I don't think merit sources for low ranks are necessary. And if it is, who would volunteer to do that?

This is one of the best idea to solve the merit crisis problem lol. While I have seen many outstanding posts by low merit users or newbies get the same attention as any legendary member would get for the same post, still there remain a kind of little bias and I have felt that bias in myself only, when I read a post by a newbie, psychologically I don't take it with as much weight as I would if a legendary member posted it and I fight to remove such discrimination out of my mind, so merit sources to merit good posts for low merit members would be awesome.

This is a very hot topic since @theymos use merit system for new rank requirements. Many of new user feel unfair about airdrop merit for old users especially if the old users only do spam or low quality post but not get reported. If @theymos not use merit system till now, we will see many spammers or low quality post to get quickly rank up. Or mods will work very hard to delete the shitpost in this forum.

My opinion for old members who get airdrop merits by @theymos it's fair and they deserve it. Why I say airdrop merits is fair? Because in past no one believe in bitcoin ; this forum is still quite and not popular. It's like a new ICO get announced in altcoin, they will give airdrop or giveaway to make new people interesting, right? This is what I mean. This airdrop is only the way @theymos appreciating for old members who still stay and contribute along the forum from first created till early 2018. I personally like the merit system, because this can make me more work hard and forcing me to post with high quality.

From my side,  we don't need to add more sMerit for Merit source. I saw many high rank member who get from airdrop merits do not want to sent their sMerit . Maybe they are too lazy or don't want other member to rank up, so they don't want to distribute their sMerit.

Moreover the user who don't give any sMerit not get any penalty or negative trust. Instead giving merit can get negative trust if they are abusing the merit system. That is why they think not give sMerit is more safe than giving it. I believe if all of high rank have contributing their sMerit for posts who deserve to get Merit, every user will rank up much faster.

Many of newbie don't even read the rules before he want to post. If they want to spend a bit time to read the rules first, I believe they can make the useful thread or post and earn merit at least 1. New comers only think this forum to earn free money. Since signature campaign have minimum rank, then they refuse to earn merit and choose joining bounties for instant way to get money. If bounties have minimum rank also, maybe they will force to get merit and learn to post with high quality or useful for everyone.

This point is really important. Since the introduction of merit sources, some users see it as just their job and theirs alone to give out smerits, so they hoard their smerits for no reason, and even if they are to come in sight with posts that even they themselves know is "up there" and needs to be merited, they do nothing, waiting for the merit sources to "come do their job". It's wrong, and I'm also thinking that if every user spent their smerits, no hoarding whatsoever, complaints would not arise and the duty of sources wouldn't even have to come under close scrutiny.

Theymos says he reserves the right to decay unused smerits in the future, that will be a really interesting implementation, it may encourage users to do more with their smerits, it would even deter those who sell merits from hoarding it for a long time to sell them eventually, so they do not lose it. Decaying hoarded smerits is what I suggest in addition to whatever has been said to improve the system.

A lot of MS often complain that there is not enough merit to reward everyone who deserves it, and on the other hand you say you have 300 sMerits and for some reason you can't find users who deserve them. Maybe problem is in fact that you only look to Beginners & Help board, and most newbies come to this forum to participate in bounty campaigns?

It would be interesting to see statistics on how many merits each rank gets, because everyone except Legendary need merits for ranking up. Is there any difference in giving merit to Hero or Newbie if their post deserves it?

I think that merit system works relatively well.
Theymos adds new merit sources every a few months (users well respected in the btc community), those who give merits receive more merits to give, while inactive merit sources lose their merits etc.
We often have merit giveaway threads where newbie and young members can report their good qualiy post and receive merits and generally I think that members with good posts don't have problem to get merits and advance in the forum.
I know that almost all if not all local boards have local merit sources so I think everyone here really have equal chance to get merits but for good and quality post of course.
A certain standard must exist to be fair to everyone.
In the Croatian local board we also have thread where any local member can report good and quality post and receive merit.

I might support or not the ideas that you think about the merit source. But the thing that crossed my mind is that in this bitcointalk forum we have millions of active users spread all over the forum and still have sMerit to share with everyone, including those who are beginners or lower ranking and only for decent posts.

But I still dont understand the behavior of users who ignore this system in order to function properly. When they find a post that is useful, they usually lose the opportunity to send sMerit. Really, I dont think that a merit source can reach all good and useful posts to give merit. But with the contribution of users on various boards in all corners of the forum I think beginners and lower users wont complain when they dont get merit and attention from merit sources.

I also have a habit of inviting those with higher ranks or who have sMerit stock to actively contribute to sending merit to anyone who makes useful and useful posts on my local board. There we also have several threads that can be used by everyone, especially from the local board to get some merit. So far I have also seen several merit sources also do it on a number of different boards so that they also allow users to send useful post links via PM to send merit.

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So the point is we still dont need a special merit source for beginners or lower ranking. If everyone want to contribute and use this system correctly and appropriately, then according to everything it will be fine.

This only is the reason why I disagree with the OP suggestion, have you tried surfing around the altcoin board, trying to find meritable post to award merits to, now I'm not speaking of exceptional post but post which are above average that once you encounter them, without wasting anytime you'll observe the OP put in some time/thought into his post. That's the stress most merit sources especially those focus on this board go through. I won't want that for others.

Merit source should be seen like regular forum users although the only privilege they have is more smerits to spend and that's why they just have to go on with their regular activities on the forum and when they come across worthy post they merit such post.

Ps: I noticed when I try searching for meritable post, it becomes harder to find but when my focus isn't to find such posts, I come across them more frequently.

It's been suggested many times that it would be useful for the merit stats underneath everyone's user name to split airdropped and earned merit, so something like xxx (yyy), where xxx is total and yyy is earned. It seems theymos hasn't taken to the idea though, since it has never been implemented. I'm glad to see that it's on suchmoon/ibminer's list of ideas for their BPIP extension though.

Precisely. The people who are posting for the primary reason of receiving merits are the ones who are least likely to earn any. I always cringe whenever I see a "How to earn merits" guide or similar. If you need to follow a guide to earn merit, you are doing it wrong. The best way to earn merit is to forget merit even exists and simply use the forum to read, learn, and discuss, as it was intended.

DdrmDdmr gave some really great stats about this in this thread: Analysis – Merit per post per Section/Subsection. They are over a year out-of-date, but I'd be surprised if they had changed significantly.

And it's OK if the sMerit folks don't give merit to posts good like that. I personally like the ranking system based on merit because for people who joined after it was made their rank reflects the integrity of the posts that they're writing. Take me for example I'm already a Member but it wouldn't be appropriate to make merit sources that boost me to Full Member at this time, I'm just six weeks old for times worth  .

On the other hand I can barely tell the difference between a wise Sr Member and an auto ranked Sr Member who's trollish or just sig ad spams. At least I can trust people with more than 2000 Merit because you had to earn at least 1000 of it, like you for example.

The people who try to rank up fast are the ones who want to join a sig campaign, and you tend to notice that most campaign members don't get much merit after joining a campaign for reasons like not writing informative content like bullrun2020bro's posts, and their posts tend to just be one or two sentences.


Which causes less merit to be sent in boards that house more spammy threads for example. Altcoins subsection sees less merit sent than Bitcoin General Discussion which in turn sees less merit, on average per day, than the Technical Discussion board where questions there are more intellectual by nature. At least if we only compare posts that are questions. Answers on the other hand get even less merit on average because most answers aren't as merit-worthy as the questions.


Yeah, to get merits these days they need to come to the forum with a lot of technical or scientific knowledge. They might be able to get 1 or 2 merit points from people giving away merit but that's about it.

As a native English speaker I don't think people need squeaky perfect English to write good informative posts. People may very well learn it as a second or third language and as long as their english is intelligible that doesn't stop me from understanding what points they are trying to make.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and explaining so deep your ideas. Apparently, from all I understand, it wouldn't be needed to have merit sources for low ranks. At least this is the general opinion.


This is not generally true. For example, Tman gave 50 merits in a single transaction to The-Devil, but afterwards things turned out that The-Devil was a cheater and a plagiarist. However, this incident didn't affect Tman's good reputation here (nor it would).

The well seasoned you become here on the forum and bitcoin, the better merits you receive in the progress. Merits are designated to be awarded for quality and helpful posts and these posts often emerge from the well seasoned senior members in the practice. I spread my merits on almost all the global boards and some local boards and the only place where I see utmost quality post from a newbie is majorly from the Tech Discussion and Mining board.

This is because the merit receiving user is a new account here on the forum but has been a well seasoned user of bitcoin in the past. Rather real non-alt account newbies in Meta and other boards like Beginners & Help are new users to both bitcoin and this forum in general. This is one of the reasons, they don't really post good or doesn't come under the criteria of producing merit worthy posts.

If someone has spend time in learning about this forum and bitcoin in general, they wouldn't really have any hurdle in receiving merits as they produce the posts which are equivalent to higher rank members. I limit meriting certain users once they attain the Legendary rank unless their post is of really good quality or has taught me something new rather than the one which I already know.

As iasenko said, users need to spend time here to distinguish a quality post (non-plagiarism) vs spam post and I would say that newbie can't really distinguish them and awards posters with merits. I have been a little inactive for a week or two in posting, but I was constantly reading and meriting posts. Spending smerits must be followed by normal users as well and shouldn't be limited to merit sources which isn't happening for majority of the time.

I think there are being more Merit sources being aloud, especially there are being more real active members granted Merit source ...

Also I think after X-time the merit sources get an increase of stashes, so there will be more merit to send over time.

Most merit sources also reward lower ranked members for sure, probably taking a bit more care with complete fresh members "total newbies" but I don't think when sources comes across good post they wouldn't merit...

Last days I have had some issues outside the forum, but still I emptied my merits, only just on some members I know they can use to rank up or they are good to re send the merit they gained....

But like a source only and only for low ranks isn't a thing imo, many legendaries exhausted from merit but still writing good posts are still wanna be rewarded as well .... and they do like to send out merit as well etc....