Topic: Flaws In The Merit System. (Read 1374 times)

Guys, here is my opinion about this. The system itself raise the rating to obtain the rank - unreasoned (not thought out to the end). If earlier everything depended on the number of posts, now the main thing is the number of merit. To earn it, you have to write the posts. That's why the participants of bounty programs and write a huge number of posts without thinking about their quality. Wrote, and thinks, and suddenly me would give merit. I think to reduce the amount of spam, you need to recycle the system. For example, to give merity for any other services that person has done for the forum or the help of administrators, managers forum.

This analysis provided by r1s2g3  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SAi_b3umCcFJO2dMoLYjWCjNz1JhOLWrsRHhYQK-nb8/edit?usp=sharing

Does add weight to your suspicions. If you could remove even the top 300 or 400 and merits from the meta board then you would start to see a more reasonable merit score table. Most would not have more than 100 merit.

You can see already many persons merit score is cut in half or in extreme cases reduced by 75% and that is without taking meta out of it or those aspiring to join the fraction of 1% that reward each other the most merit.

There are some on the top 200 who deserve to be there for sure but I would not pay much heed to merit scores.

You can there fore see great posters from the alt board will have extremely low chance of merit.

Where do most new posters post??

Merit is good for showing you like your friends posts or agree with peoples posts... I would far rather read through a persons post history in depth to get an idea of what they are like and how much you can rely on what they say.

Trust is a more important score to look at but again I would read through it deeply not just take the scores at face value.

I'm not for sure, but the merit system seems like a decent temporary fix to appease the festering problem of spam from the influx of new members and all that it entails. The rank system worked in the past because it was created on the tenets of trust, honesty and other virtues that were once abundant among fellow members of the forum, during the earlier days of course, before every Tom, Dick, and Harry got wind of Bitcoin. There wasn't any need to screen so heavy as they do now.
   I agree that the Merit system has some major issues, one being that the giving and receiving of merit will always be a subjective experience due to the inherent nature and mindset of the giver. The new merit system brutally puts you on trial by a jury of peers (there are some tough critics in our community). Opinions of any kind are subject to bias, and opinions themselves are subjective. Another flaw I believe lies within the acquirement of merit. To acquire more, you have to go through a gatekeeper, which is actually an excellent idea, but again, maybe the execution of its implementation is off?

Overall, I think the merit system works, it acts as a screening agent and deters a lot of would-be hagglers.

Just my two cents!

I highly agree with you on the fact that the merit system has big flaws. The idea behind its introduction was a great one but this system is kinda bias looking at how people reward posts with merits. Looking at the current state of the merit system, its operating like the system where the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. 
and nothing can be done about it. Lets learn to adapt to this system 

This seem true even newbie rank could offer service just by buying the copper membership to enable newbie to post images and pictures. This will not limit one user to offer service to earn. I do not believe that rank and merit has to do with earning in the forum except for signature campaign. You need merit to rank up to join signature campaign and this is a problem of the common users complaining in the forum about not getting merit.

I read OP post and even saw that he had a concrete evidence on some users that has merited with just a word which is shown in the images. Maybe we should ask those users then why they had done meriting such one word post. If I were to guess it since both the merited users were possible merit source then probably they were just transferring more smerits to another user so that user could distribute it to other users that are having a quality post. theymos has consider this giving huge amount of smerit of a merit source to another trustworthy users to look for posts that are worthy to be merited.  

However, many were still complaining about the inequality of not giving merit and envied the high rank users because of the merits they receive from co-high rank users. Still we need to consider that many of this users had posted quality post and worthy to be merited. Probably they had given a protocol to reward merit to someone is not copying and pasting of posts by the other users or copying and posting without the acknowledging the owner of the articles or blog being copied, checking their posts history for some were spammers and other considerations like constructing a post with bad English skills.

So, before they complain of not getting merit/s they should make sure to check their profiles and posting habit if they were worthy to be merited.

I don't think it is appropriate to regulate how merits are given, especially if people are volunteering their time to give out merits. It wouldn't be fair that someone has to learn (and be accountable to) a bunch of rules just to give out something that doesn't have any benefit to them. You cannot 'unsend' merit, so someone who breaks a hypothetical rule would have a hard time remediating their mistake.

That is very much similar to what the merit system is. Although not all merit is given because the sender agrees (or "likes") the post, as a decent amount of merit sent is sent for posts of which a decent amount of effort was put into it.

Maybe for the next April fools day joke, theymos can implement a system in which people can award a "LOL" to posts they find funny, and an "angry merit" for posts that upset someone. People would need both merit and "LOL" in order to rank up, and if the "angry merit" to "LOL" ratio gets too high, their avatar will automatically change to a warning that the person is mean.

Hey Jet Cash. Next year I'd say you are 100% correct.  At this moment, the merit system is still too new. There are still a lot of members like myself, who have a high post count to merit ratio due to the recent start of the merit system. Here is what my story is. I was an active forum member up until a few months ago. I logged in last month and noticed that my post count was good, but I was a newbie. I had about 80 posts and no merit. So, I think there are a lot who are in the same boat.

Overall, the merit system is better. My post quality is higher now. The only downside, is that in the back of my mind I am wondering if I am going to get validated or not. I guess that is the cost for quality right?

Aren't merits an overrated like button? Overrated because only a select few can dish them out as they please, and the rest of us mortals have to make do with limited amounts? Saying the system is flawed isn't fair. What people find merit worthy is subjective, unless you have a mind control drug that can be applied to everyone on the forum so that we all think and act the same way.

Constructive comes in different forms for different people: Informative, educative, helpful, funny, etc. Then you have the sycophants, and those that have the same opinions but cannot be arsed to post, so meriting is a of showing agreement, nothing wrong with that, and some use it as a way of saying thank you. It isn't perfect and can be gamed. Make no mistake, any system can be gamed, after all this is just a forum. But it has so far done what it was implemented to do, to reduce spam, Which it has to an extent, eventhough it means some of us will take forever to rank up.

As far as now we don't have any guidelines to how the merits needs to spend other than Don't merit the post you just agree,merit the high quality post so it is about our own opinion is about how to spend our merits here.When we stop hunting for merits then the whole system will work properly so stop posting for getting merits,just post yourself and the merits will follow up.

Which is absolutely untrue and then you wonder why nobody gives your merit when you "stand up" with false statements. If you are offering any proper service here, i.e. you have the actual skill-set required to do a proper job (unlike >90% of the people offering services around here), then neither trust nor merit nor rank is relevant.

I was thinking of creating a post on the same lines. The irony in the entire situation is that new members of the forum are EXPECTED to make Quality posts to get merit. That is fine by me. But the double standards lie when I see numerous posts of "biggies" in the forum who merit anything and everything. There are basically syndicates where everyone has friends and they merit posts that do no good to the forum. I have seen people who are fighting for some scam (Referring to a big fight between two groups) and then they are meriting posts on that thread. The list is endless of many useless posts without any logic/contribution getting merited.
Why the double standards in terms of new members and those biggies. New members are expected to contribute/make quality posts whereas these syndicates have gamed the system. I am slowing coming to terms with the fact that the forum is not at all decentralized. Like every system, this forum has been hijacked by these members who have reached the top and are now dictating the terms on the forum. The sad part is if someone tries to stand-up he/she is literally mobbed by the entire gang.

P.S. Though there are some very good members as well but they are greatly out-numbered.

That is one of the issues u have also noticed with users taking sides to try and get favour from higher ranked members

And some members use it as a reward for agreeing with them. (Some merit sources as well)

Meriting something you agree with is quite a task, but merits should be given you deserving posts regardless of your position, and point of view.

We might need a full guideline on how to merit posts and not just a few lines in the official rules.

You are using the wrong standard. I believe it is best to award merit to posts that a lot of effort was likely put into making. It is possible a one liner is deserving to have merit, and it is possible a 10 paragraph post should not receive merit if it is incoherent. The basis for giving merit is if a lot of effort was put into creating a post.

The ultimate goal of merit is to eradicate people who post as many posts they can quickly in order to "earn" as much money they can via signature advertising, which market forces have caused to pay by the post. If people who put a lot of effort into their posts are rewarded by being allowed to rank up, those who create a lot of low effort posts will leave when they can't rank up.

In general, if a post is funny or witty, chances are, not a lot of effort was put into making said post. Most of the time when I say something funny, it is because I reacted to something I read or heard, and thought of something funny off the top of my head. I wont necessarily spend a lot of time trying to find a way to make something funny.

My concern is that many of the posts cited in the OP were low effort posts, and as such, I don't think deserved merit. I think it is pretty clear those posts (and many more throughout the forum) received merit because the merit sender agreed with the content of the post.  The problem with this kind of behavior is that it will encourage the forum to become an echo chamber, and will encourage others to agree with those who clearly have merit to spend.

The underlying root problem with the merit system is that merit is valuable based on the fact that merit ultimately allows someone to earn more money via signature campaigns by way of having more signature features, however merit cannot be easily purchased with money. There are however implicit barter transactions for merit when people back someone with sMerit in a dispute. It would be more appropriate to allow people to buy merit so they can have more signature features, and so they would have incentives to not go around posting a bunch of nonsense and garbage because if they did they would lose what they paid when they get banned. 

Yes, merit spamming has become very common and some of the smerit holders are also supporting it by meriting this type of posts now.

I think missing the quality post and meriting the posts which don't deserve it is also a big issue and it should be solved. But yes you also highlight a possible problem in the merit system.

It's not about blaming them as a merit abuser but it's about telling them the real purpose of merit system and how to use them in a proper way!

I respect your thoughts too.

You have a good solution but there are also posts in meta which surely deserve merits of there explanation and work behind it. So just eliminating it will not be so adequate. In some cases, there are useless posts merited as you can see in my main post and I would surely add up more examples so that everyone could understand the reality and improve it.

Yes, some of the posting rules should surely be modified in the bitcoin discussion board and removing spammy thread you mentioned is a good solution to it

You have explained too much in one sentence for sure. LIKE ≠ MERIT ( small but great meaning to tell everyone for what merits should not be used)

Merits are really scared and they should not be used as a LIKE and that the reason I think behind the scarcity of merits in other discussions boards as I mentioned earlier.
Most of the posts you merit are truly deserving it but anyone can make mistakes of meriting the posts which don't deserve merits but just match our thoughts and this is not the right way to use it as per the use stated by theymos.

If you think that way than there would be floods of "FUCK OFF" posts every were in demand of merits. I think there should be no partiality while giving any merit as that just makes the merit system useless logically.
( This post is also an example of how merits are used not for the quality but for just supporting views)

I think you should do some research just in meta section and you will surely come back here with many examples of undeserved posts merited and this is increasing every day and this is a big flaw I guess.

This is a totally wrong statement by you. I don't think this is right as the real purpose is just lost behind the merit system.

Posts which make you laugh are surely merit deserving as the poster has done some efforts to put some humor in it but posting a GIF or One line views does not have any efforts involved in it rather than spending the merits for telling people that you support them you can just spend them of a person who is putting some efforts in posting.

I think there should be no difference in merit source and a normal user for sending merits as there are no different rules for a merits source all are same.

Yes, you have surely motivated many users to make quality posts and merited numerous merit deserving posts too but even if you do not spend one merit on a post by legendary who make you laugh and use it to merit a newbie who is just trying to build himself on the forum he will be better motivated to make numerous such posts and help in betterment for long term.  Of course, This is also a big issue which could make the merit system useless and you should not ignore it.

Yes, this would at least save some merits getting wasted for bots.

I'm almost certain a new rank will be added eventually and I don't see the issue in adding one sooner rather than later as it's something for all us Legendaries to strive to achieve. As I said previously, Legendary rank is becoming far too common now and will only become more so as time passes. I would suggest fixing Legendary at 960 activity and the new rank is double that at 1920. You could also make the merit requirement very high for this new rank so it's only for the crème de la crème of users. Some nice perks could be introduced for it (maybe things like a custom title, access to a special sub board or the ability to have an image banner in your signature).

Don't forget the badges theymos said he might do also. There may eventually be badges for high merited users or maybe one for the top merited user or users, which would be cool to achieve.


This could work, but it will also hinder many other genuine users who just aren't getting merited enough for their posts (and a lot of decent posts do go un or undermerited). I think a better solution would be to make the merit requirement higher so it takes ten to become a Junior and that would make it much harder for people to abuse the few merits they will get.

Maybe to reduce the flaw of merits being passed back and forth, merit can only be received if there is 2 merits for that post so that way merit giving is confirmed by another member

Oh, and BTW let´s not forget that Legendary also like to give merit and to give one, they need 2.

I understand why you are agitating for more of the merits circulating in the above sections. Indeed, the forum is called bitcointalk, and it would be logical to discuss bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, and reward participants for quality posts relating specifically to this topic. But! You focus your attention on what should be, and not on what it is in fact. In reality, the situation is such that in bitcoin and altcoin discussions there is such a huge amount of spam that it`s almost impossible to find worthy posts among it. It`s in these threads that the bounty-supporters (mostly shitposters) mainly write, as the rules of the campaigns require.

META branch has become an airhole for those who are tired of garbage on the forum. It`s here that you can express your informed opinion, and expect that it`ll be heard by other forum participants. META is read by the forum users, this branch became the focus of the bitcointalk elite. And this elite thinks about how to improve the forum, develops strategies for returning to the original goals of bitcointalk. The META branch is still practically free from spam, therefore, worthy, interesting and promising discussions are held here. I believe that those, who are now directing all efforts to find ways to improve the forum, will be able to rejoice bitcoin and altcoin discussion. Only after such qualitative changes (eliminating spam, limiting the possibilities of shitposters and irresponsible bounty campaigns), it will be possible to say about increasing merit circulation in the above boards.

Is that because you think they will flow your way, if not handed out to Legendary members?

The point is that someone feels it is a quality post, and regardless of the rank quality posts should earn merit.

You are assuming a rank above Legendary will never be created.  I believe one will be, eventually. 

Also, Theymos may introduce new features that rely on merit.