Topic: Feeling more comfortable while integrating into the forum community - page 2. (Read 612 times)

The bottom line is, it's not all about the merits and you need to understand that the more stay in this forum, the more you learn about the crypto community in the right way. I managed to acquire solid information from this community and one of the best parts of being here is you can ask them every question related to crypto which you don't really find on other sites and you can be assured that they provide you with the right one because if not, huge numbers of users will correct them and that's the uniqueness of this community from others.

Thanks Buddy! It is absolutely awe-inspiring and refreshing to read through the lines of this topic and learn from it. I will also like to mention the fact that all your points resonates with some of my feelings, at a point in time, on this forum but the bulk of the whole thing is for you to improve your knowledge and understanding on how the Bitcoin technology and crypto world operates in general.

At a point, when I joined this forum, I was filled with the euphoria that comes with the spirit of a newbie and I wanted to always impress X,Y,Z even when I barely know them, thinking that my writing skills could fetch me some merits. Little did I know that was merely fallacy and I was practically being untruthful to myself.

This forum requires mammoth time, efforts and consistency to fit in and these are not hard-lines to drive anyone away but to further solidify the true nature of the forum, which is a thought-provoking informative platform where a mixture of students, deep thinkers genius and experts from different places and climes meet to discuss brainstorming ideas and problem-solving issues.

Like I mentioned earlier, few weeks after I came into the forum, I thought my writing prowess would help me gain accolades but if I did not take my time and efforts to acquire the knowledge, I can't get to solve problems or spring up thoughtful ideas. All thanks to the bosseson on here.

Although, my intention was not vested on the rewards or merits that will emanate from this forum, but more of writing posts and topics that will make sense to the general public. Hence, I didn't take the route of chasing specific threads in the name of getting merits.

My advise to other members here especially to the newbies and low-ranked members is to remain original in engaging this forum. Create posts and topics that will solve problems and drop personal opinions on issues discussed. I won't advise anyone to be pressurized by the ranking system thereby bring about the subjective thoughts of impressing one merit source or the other. The merit sources are well experienced and know when and how to reward efforts with merits.

Nobody knows all and if you think you know all that means you’re still confined in a place where you can’t seek for knowledge and assume that what you have is enough for you whereby the world keeps evolving and new things come out everyday. If you remain low key, you will always have a lot bunch full of information coming to you since you’re open to learning new things but the day you claim to be better than the rest and wants to raise shoulders amongst the higher ranked and more educative forum members, you will begin to lose important informations and your self entitlement of being the best won’t allow you to accept new things even when you know it is the truth and right path to take to find solution to what you’re seeking for. Just be humble and seek for knowledge in this interactive and educative forum.

Yes, that`s what I was talking about. But this is rather hard to do and even understand in the first place, because newbies and even higher ranks as well are often bump into advice when you should analyse what members with lots of merits do and just do the same, follow their lead. It is suggested that by doing so you will find out, how to write more noticeable and quality posts. Although I find it useful, I also think that only you can realise how to improve the content of your posts, how to make them more interesting and valuable. Nobody else would give you a proofed instruction, you should come up with it by yourself.


It was not made for it initially, but we cannot deny that those things are widespread right now. Ranks, merits, bounties - all of it creates the field for competition. And forum members don't want to find themselves overboard. It is hard, but it is also a motivation for many to become better and develop themselves.

You know, even if you know you have a lot to share in the forum, just don't act like you know everything. It's better to stay lowkey and continue to accept and learn from all the significant post from other members. Know that everyone has its unique ideas, so always appreciate everyone's post. And always be mindful of every post you make. It's good to be honest but by being straightforward sometimes, you will end up offending other members especially those who are in the higher rank.

Although there's no rank distinction here as everyone is fair when it comes to expressing your own ideas, but always maintain a healthy relationship with other members because the forum is not made to create competition but to encourage everyone to create an informational and interactive learning.

 Have your own originality in the forum. Regardless of your rank or position, you can establish your own identity through the content and authenticity of your post. You don't have to underestimate yourself because you are just a newbie, everyone started from a scratch. You can still be reliable in the forum if you know how to build your own name through your genuine answers and ideas that you share with the rest of the members.

Honesty and transparency is the key. Even if you can't give the best idea or suggestion from a single thread, that's okay. No one will criticize you for that as long as you give your honest and genuine answer that everyone can relate. Getting merits is not actually giving the best ideas in the forum, sometimes its more on relating with other people that they become satisfied with your desires to give them the most honest answers.

This may be a good reason in the eyes of some, but I do not see it as useful in reality. Why would I need to evaluate my post if my purpose is to participate in discussions according to my knowledge, especially since I am participating for the purpose of learning and not for any other purpose?
I reiterate that the purpose of establishing a merit system is not to evaluate posts, since any member can send merit points to any post he likes, even if it is worthless. The system was designed to make it difficult to upgrade membership, which was generating a lot of spam.
If everyone views the matter as important, this does not necessarily mean that it is true. Each person has his own vision and evaluation.

Topics guiding newbies how to earn merits for themselves are useful to the entire community and not just newbies but newbies are the ones finding ig difficult to earn merits because they don’t do so the way they should, they are always earger to earn merits thereby making all their efforts go unnoticed. To earn merits here you need to be well familiar with the forum ways and when you pass through the learning process it would be even more easier for them to earn merit but they always want to skip the learning process. Also things can be more easier here when you are well comfortable in the community.

I have always come to understand that everyone has their own style here and what works for you might not work for me so you should rather improve on your own style. Also our knowledge and interests vary so trying to imitate someone would only make things difficult for yourself and end up creating low quality posts which in the end you will be criticized for making such low efforts.

Everyone have areas they are interested in more and areas they are good at so instead of trying to delve in too many areas why not just improve yourself on the few areas of your interest and focus on making quality posts on them and that way your efforts will easily be noticed and appreciated. It’s good to have mentors or idols you look up to but you still need to pick an idol who has similar interests with you so you can learn easily from their work.

Doing this will only make them lazy to work and create quality contents of their own. Most of the threads created by merit sources regarding merit giveaway newbies are the ones who flood them with replies the most even though they are not qualified or meet the requirements. Doing this will only make them be placed on ignore list by merit sources. Ranking up or earning merit’s doesn’t require you to impress anyone, when you stick to making quality posts people will appreciate your work and gradually you will increase in rank.

Running ahead will simply cause you to break certain regulations for which you will undoubtedly be held accountable, therefore there is no reason to run. However, newbies do not want to be delayed because they are eager to get the legendary rank, which is why they are the most implicated and banned accounts on the forum. Newcomers must recognise that learning will be the most beneficial to them in the long term.

Mostly merits become a subject of interest because of the reason you mentioned. However, they also are treated as a criteria of a self esteem, I would say. Everyone pays attention on the merit number, and it creates the situation, when every single users begins to understand his value on this forum based on a merit number he has. That is why even if you are not that interested in participating in signature campaigns, you would care about merits. Just because everybody else do so.

Why Earning merit is important for newbies in Bitcointalk?

The people most interested in obtaining merit points are those who aspire to upgrade their membership in order to join one of the active signature campaigns. In addition to this, not obtaining merit points cannot prevent any newbie from benefiting from the forum, and no one is required to contribute to the forum. You can navigate the forum just to learn.
Merit points are a gift you will receive in exchange for your contribution to enriching the forum by joining discussions and sharing your experiences/knowledge/skills with the community.
The purpose of the merit system is to maintain healthy discussions among members with as little spam as possible, since before this system was established, it was easy to promote membership simply by publishing.

Of course not. There are many other criterions, but merit cannot be put aside, as most of the forum members and campaign managers keep an eye on it. I won't agree with your statement about whenever your posts are good, you can get higher payments than someone with +4000. I have seen a lot of situations, when users agreed to lower rank payments because the competition was very high and there were no enough place for the members with a high rank and a lot of merits. And I would rather say that the situation when someone with not enough merits gets higher payment is rare. Although those situations happen as well.


Cannot agree with that either. I personally don't consider merit as the objective reflection of someone`s value and influence on the forum. However, most users do. And they will look at your merit stats to draw their conclusions an judgements about you.


I believe this feeling of yours will eventually fade away when you realise that you are ranking up as well.


I am sure that grammar is of a high importance, because the purity and correctness of the language must be saved, even if you are not a native speaker. I get that most of the users here don't recognise English as their mother tongue (me as well). But, in my opinion, even good, quality thoughts don't have a right to be formulated in a bad grammar way. Because it will only provoke the meaning to be lost and misunderstood.


Actually I was talking about higher ranks being sarcastic and rude toward newbies, not the other way around. I don't see many newbies being sarcastic toward higher ranks, because usually they feel some kind of a dependence on them. Because higher ranks could give newbies merits and they would rather not do so, if they are traded the wrong way.

I agree, I reached Legendary just because of the contributions I made in my style. I was bearish with my charts when everyone was bullish and I am bullish when some of you are still thinking.
Maybe it's my chart reading skills which make me different than the others (in terms of my contribution to the forum), but I am glad to get the opportunity nevertheless.

So, stay loyal to your words, do not get influenced by anyone here no matter their rank, and the most important is to keep a healthy conversation.

I agree with what you said about some newbies being sarcastic but we can't also blame the user that did that due to the level of abuse that was done by some newbies.
I know those who are innocent shouldn't pay for the mistakes of others but the point is that we all have different understandings and patient reactions to things happening around us but I think this forum should be more welcoming for newbies to question despite how it makes them look stupid sometimes.

Regarding the first one, you don't have to worry too much about the grammar part too much, as long as you are doing you're getting your point across then you're doing just fine, maybe consider grammar if you're an active participant in a lot of discussion, it helps but it's not a voluntary thing for you to be grammatically perfect, being perfect might even get you scrutiny for using an AI because of your too good to be true posting structure although it's not a taboo to use a grammar tool like Grammarly. Number 3 and 4 is going to be difficult for newbies to do because let's admit it already, a lot of people that have recently joined this forum aren't just here to learn about bitcoin and anything related to that, they're here to try and make money because they've probably heard that someone has been in this forum making money through stuff or they have a friend that's been in this forum for a long time now and they want to get into too and try it but then find it difficult to do because of the merit system.

This two points remind me of the thread I stumbled earlier here made me to realize that it's not about the rank but the person behind the account. Seeing how both high ranks and lower ranks rubbish that thread and correct the op made me to believe in your number 5 point. Believe me, even at this moment, I find it hard to interact with most of the high rank accounts because I always assume they are far better and I need to be careful with them. And of course, some of these high profile are gurus but some are not in any way different from the rest of us but were lucky to receive the airdrop merits back then. This thread is necessary for those having the same feelings and finding it difficult to feel free in the forum.

Nice thread btw. Its really good that someone might open up about their opinion, and others should read it and see what they think about. Its not like you are totally on the opposite side but you are more broad when it comes to explaining things. It might be confusion to others but if we reread the thread we could something valuable in good terms. Keep it up, and I do hope newbies find your post as "meant to guide" and not to intimidate them.

It is true that you need +2000 merits to get higher payments, but it is not a guarantee. Whenever your posts are good, you can get higher payments than someone with +4000. The system may not be suitable for everyone, but I do not think that merit is the only criterion to say that this account publishes high-quality posts or spam.

Since you do not need a university degree to be able to earn an income, there must be other ways to say that this person is worthy. The merit system may be one of them, but it is not everything. Signature campaigns aim to get the highest amount of clicks and gain trust even if you do not use the service. The easiest way to do this is for an influential person to advertise for them. Be influential and you will not need merit.

I think you got my post wrong. I haven't said that newbies should behave in a certain way, it is exactly the opposite. I was just sharing my own observations and experience, and based on it, I can claim that there are some unwritten "rules" and "behaviour patterns" which could put a lot of pressure not only on newbies, but also higher ranks. Counter productivity of such discussion is a questionable issue and it is up to a particular person to decide if it is helpful or not.

All you said is very relatable. You've taken the time to point out information that has been shared before, but this time it's less aggressive and more explanatory, making it more understandable for your targeted audience. At least you've shown that you've experienced all these things during your start on the forum and have provided a way to navigate the ups and downs for new members, helping them feel more welcome. What you appreciate the most is how you encouraged them to be themselves. This is one thing that many new members tend to neglect. Once you become natural in your words and share your thoughts and feelings, the next person reading will understand and relate to what you've shared. But when you try to mimic someone else, you start going off-topic.

This point I love the most in this entire episode of wealth of knowledge that can help a newbie to propel them through the forum, Number 5 is very important because I have seen a newbie writing an interesting posts, highly exceptional and intellectually accurate,  and also have seen a legendary who writes a hit worthless posts.


So the difference between each member in the forum, is in the level of the quality of content that they write each day that makes up for the posts history, and not the rank of a member.