Topic: Future possible again change Forum Ranking Rules ? (Read 560 times)

Do you only refer to Theymos or all of us in this forum?  
In my opinion, the change of rank system in this forum may be needed someday. It will depend on how effective the current rules at this time and for the future.

So far, I think that the merit system is very effective to make this forum much better. Although many members complained about this, in fact, many others can encourage themselves to face the merit system and can achieve higher rank through merit system.

And what is about the future? Once more, if the condition of this forum is changing again, if there needs to make a different condition again and to improve the forum, this may change. And every change will always refer to better changes.

So, let's do what is now present and be ready for any kind of change in this forum in the future.

At first before saying something, you need to have basic information and know a little story around it.
Let me tell you that at first there wasn't any activity requirement to rank up, only post counts (Since there are no limits on post per day, it was useful against spammers).

Then there was added activity requirement, 1 activity in 1 day, automatically but in order to activate this activity, you have to post so 1 post activates 1 activity point. It created a barrier of not ranking up immediately, for reaching SR member you need 240 activity that means that 240 days of wait and for hero - 480. Still it wasn't a problem because people were registering accounts and starting posting later (you can register and wait 40 days, post 40 post in one day and get 40 activity). So alone this automatic system wasn't enough, then the merit came.

As for now alone post count and activity point don't have enough power to rank you up because in 2018 merit system was implemented, now only the combination of these 3 can boost your rank. System can't give you merit automatically, only users can. So this makes ranking process more manual based and combination of these 3 makes it more difficult for spammers to rank up. The only other thing that comes to my mind for far strict rules is to make ranking process 100% manual, i.e. when person has 240 merit/post/activity, then this account moves under Staff's review and he/she will decide whether this user really deserves rank up or not. But I hugely doubt that will happen.

You want to read and post on this forum? It gives you possibility of that without limitations. Want to post images? Then buy Copper Membership. Want more signature space? Then consider this: Quality over quantity.
Good luck.

I have these ones:

• Assumed monthly statistics on registered accounts of bitcointalk.org (2009-2019)
• Time Series on monthly statistics of forum (new users, new topics, new posts)

There are strong correlations between numbers of new registered users and new topics created.
You can see the spike of monthly registered accounts in December 2017 (see details here. The spike has correlation with bitcoin price too.

Now, it's the turn of the most amazing discovery!

Despite of the spike in 2018, if we look at the median (look at p50) of monthly registered accounts, the year of 2018 has the median at 38296, that is not too high.
The top 3 years in medians are: 2019 (17939), 2015 (17516), and 2016 (12506). It means what happened in late of 2018 is unsustainable growth (from many factors, bitcoin price to consequently forum serious changes (merit system, enhanced merit system, and so on).

Whatever is the reason, if the bitcoin reaches all time high price, it will again become a hot news in the media, the hype will be at its extreme and whats more there will no resistance above the ATH price, so all this factors will bring many new people to crypto and this will also mean that a lot more new users will register on this biggest forum of bitcoin.

Yup, hats off to them. Especially one which TMAN gave 50 Merits for the contributions.

Are you asking or are you requesting for a much easier merit system? If you are asking for just the possibility of it then the answer is yes, but if you are requesting for a much easier way to rank up then the answer is no. If I recalled it correctly the last tweak theymos did was adding a 1 merit requirement for Jr. Members to rank up to member status due to the rampant spam happening in the forum. So if you are expecting for a change don't expect it to be easier but become harder especially for shitposters.

To be honest, @OP did pretty well until now, 36 posts for 4 merit is good ratio. It's not like he/she is writing 50 posts per week for months and is stuck at the low rank despite enormous effort. With the increased activity merits will come.

There were quite a few merit giveaway threads lately, and some of them were even closed due low interest from newbie/Jr Member ranks, so i would say that system is working as intended and is not stopping any decent poster to get the merit. On the contrary , i often see high ranking members giving newer members merit, as  a sort of encouragement to keep going on.

There are many signature campaigns in bounties board that you can join them without any need to earned merit. The only thing someone needs to join them is an account with some airdropped merits. Even junior members are allowed to join many of these campaigns. After BTC bull run, I don't know whether ICOs/IEOs will be of interest to community or not. But if they will be, many old accounts that haven't earned any merit will probably wake up and join these campaigns. In these bounty campaigns, quality of posts usually is not checked by managers and everyone is allowed to join them.

I am imagining a worse problem when BTC $50k. With new ranking system, shitposter doesn't have a chance to come up with campaigns. But instead, the merit trade will take place more than at any time  Not sure if we find out who merit dealers are, but it will disrupt surely this forum again. After all, the new ranking system is still the best solution for this forum right now

I think the rules now is probably much better and new members and some members who just got back a long time a go will have to do more efforts than before
before you just need to post a certain amount , wait for it and your a junior member, now you need to post get merit, and a requirement post, the good thing is that
today merit is hard specially if you are just spamming , you need to post constructive one and helpful post, to others and if they like it you get the merit you deserve

After the recent username changes to those who have earned a lot of merits i'd say it's possible that we get an update in the future. Then again I also agree with what the others have said here the system we have now seems to be fine it's likely that the ranking requirements will remain until another problem comes up or a new set of ranks get introduced due to the amount of merits getting distributed over time.

I’ll be too high, drunk or AWOL to care

Nah, the cream always rises to the top, we waded through enough shit during the last epic price rise & we’ll do it again.

I don't believe that the halving will be the major influence on new membership. I think the failure of the fiat system, and the imposition of banking sanctions will be far more important. We could anticipate this by encouraging posting on the relevant boards.

Only theymos can know,  this why you ask him only . I see some adaptions suggest by members for improvements of merit. Further time required for for testing. Theymos like Bitcoin developers. Slow and gradual test not quick to change like alt coin developers, big timeframe for evaluate before further change. Some member want fast tweak they suggest, they think it will improve. Merit stop lot spams and bot used to grow high rank for sale . I think rank is over concern by members. Only Ivy tower you are prevented. Small rank can post everything and read same as legendary rank, so rank not important but can pay more for signature if you want to have when you are hero or legend but will take some years . Merit make some problems with dispute and argument. This will maybe fix next update. To conclude, no big change nothing I notice being talked about , tweak and improve to merit is possible reduce 50 to less amount .

And when that new wave of users arises, I dont expect it will improve your work.

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Basically, development is needed if the forum needs it. Like implementing a merit system, main goal is to reduce the amount of spam, junk and low quality posts and I think this system is very effective.

Besides effectively preventing spam, junk posts and low quality posts, the merit system will also limit them to move up to the next rank if the user is still active as a spammer and rightfully so.

Whoever succeeds in improving the quality of their posts, he is entitled to rank-up and merit will not prevent a good poster maker from advancing to the next rank.

Yes.
The diagram below shows number of new registered accounts per month from January 2015 to December 2019.
What happened in 2017, will likely happen again and we will have many new accounts.

Imagine how bad it will be? BTC @$50k all the professional bounty hunters spinning up YouTube vids again, we will have a forum full of spam, shitposters, shitposters and one liners.. yay

Is this also the reason why Twitter campaigns are no longer active?
If I remember correctly, there have been many campaigns through social media like Twitter. It has a high payout for people with a large following, but as far as I know, most of those followers are fake or acquired via cross-tracking, it does not help increase the quality of advertising  And spammers easily use those accounts to make money 

Even Twitter started banning the spammers, so let's hope they never return. But still, out of these these 9998 posts, 846 posts contain the word "twitter" (in total 7163 times) and 946 posts contain the word "facebook" (in total 10162 times).

Don’t forget bounties are pretty dead now, some of those guys were earning 10x the national wage by shitposting here and social media, the next IEO run will bring the shitposters back and that’s when the merit system will be tested. I imagine 2021 we will see 5mm registered accounts here