Topic: Future possible again change Forum Ranking Rules ? (Read 561 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

I was really surprised by this information  It seems the new rating system with merit has worked very well so far, even it will be a good measure for the future. With an effective ranking system like this, I think there won't be a need for another system to replace it, or until another ranking issue takes place.

Yep, because OP's English is lousy but what I understood is this: OP is not ranking up nearly as fast as he thinks he/she should be, and it's all because of the merit system.  OP has only earned 4 merits since registering in May of last year, so it's probably looking like it's going to be impossible to reach even Full Member. 

My question (which I'm sure I know the answer to) is why is it so important for OP to rank up?  If you're here to read and write, rank doesn't prohibit you from doing either of those things. 

I'd also volunteer my opinion that Theymos probably isn't contemplating any changes in the ranking or merit systems.  Yes, it's very hard for members to climb the ranks but the merit system was designed to make it that way.  OP might not understand how bad the forum had gotten by January 2018 in terms of nonsense posts, spam, and account farming but let me tell you, it was bad. 

If you could still rank up just with activity, it would probably be even worse right now and might even have driven all the good members away out of frustration--so the merit system and the resultant difficulty in ranking up was an absolute necessity.  There's probably a local board OP can post in, and hopefully if that's the case it has a merit source roaming around.

I believe that any changes that does happen would be on the ranking system, with tweaks just like the enhanced newbie restrictions. I doubt there would be a change to another ranking system or an extra criteria in addition to merits and activity.
Aside the fact that it would make the profile description beside posts bulky, I do not see any possible need for it.

It took about 9 years to change the rank policy from 2009 to 2018. So do not expect the things to change that quickly because every change is made with a thoughtful process and it is not like changing rules everyday.

There's definitely a possibility that things might change in the future. Although, I doubt theymos has any plans currently. The system largely has had a positive effect on the forum, and has reduced the amount of spam that was occurring prior to the merit feature introduction. However, I believe everyone should be prepared to adapt, and we don't know exactly what the future will bring. The great thing about the merit system is its scalable with adding, and removing merit sources, and any fundamental changes likely don't need to be made in order to adapt.

I think this forum remains friendly to newbies which contribute, and has largely reduced the amount of spamming in order to rank up, and join a signature campaign. If you're banking on the forum ranking becoming easier then I would say this is unlikely looking at the current feedback from the community. There has been complaints about the system, but the majority of these complaints are from those directly effected by it, and usually don't have quality posts.


Exactly. I think this is the best we've been prepared to deal with a new influx of users. The news Bitcoin halving will be well documented within news outlets, and it has the possibility of increasing the price. If that does happen we will likely see a massive increase in newly registered accounts if history is to repeat itself. We've got two systems preventing users ranking up unlike before. Activity, and merit will mean that most users, and spammers will stay at the newbie rank, and because of this there will be more exposure to moderators due to there being a few patrollers, as well as global moderators seeing their reports. Before, users might have gone unnoticed, and got the desired post count, and activity. Then, they were able to run rampant, and only global moderators could deal with these users if there wasn't a moderator active in the section. For example, Hilariousandco has is a dedicated moderator of Bitcoin Discussion. Although, they're also a global moderator there's only a few global moderators which can handle reports of anyone that is higher than newbies in that section.

LoyceV, it would be interesting to see how many of those 59,000 posts comes from the participant of yobit signature campaign. The last data from November is say that there are almost 600 participants, and if all of them write max 5 posts per day it is 3000x7 = 21000 per week.


I bet this thread is not posted because OP wants to make his ranking on the forum more difficult, the main question is whether the situation can return to pre-merit status when only activity was important for ranking. In short, the chances of this are practically zero.

It is possible, because change means to level things up, it means to grow, and as long as there is changes going on in this forum, everything will evolve and we are all going to be benefited, if we're going to look at it positively, always.

Though there are some people who doesn't like to controlled by laws here, especially the new system (merit system)

The number of posts per day has been steadily dropping from 353,000 per week 16 months ago to 59,000 per week now.
If Bitcoin goes "to the moon" after the next halving, I expect this forum to be flooded with new accounts again. I'd say the Merit system is ready for them: decent users will rank up, and the spammers (like the guy who just sent me a PM asking if I know how to get Merit) will be Newbies forever.
The system can probably be improved a bit in the future, but I wouldn't expect ranking up to become easier.

Don't expect the rules easier than now else you will again be opening the doors for the spammers whom have been very much controlled by these new ranking up requirements.

Maybe he wants it to be easier than it is right now.

Why do you want the forum ranking rules to be changed again ? There is no issue and flaw in the current ranking system and therefore you will not find a big change, if there is any. I think perhaps the minimum requirement of ranking up may increase or decrease but the overall structure of ranking up will remain the same.

Maybe it will change. Maybe it wont. There is always the possibility of changes or additions to the forum at any point but nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can predict changes/improvements that need to be made to meet demand, but why do you ask? Are you hoping it will be removed or maybe changed to benefit you in some way? I wouldn't concern yourself with any potential changes that may happen or not as that's out of your hands and any changes shouldn't effect your posting abilities here.

If I understood your question correctly, then yes, probably merit system is not the last stage of the forum's renovation with the target to clean it up from weak users. As the previous examples showed the new change will come unexpectedly and each of us should be careful to not to loose our place on the forum by doing out of rules things.
You said you've asked theymos about coming changes, did he reply and if yes, what did he say to you?

It seems you only want theymos who answers your question, right? So, why don't you PM him if this question is intended for theymos only?
Well, let me try to help you. In my view, any changes are always possible because it must depend on the situation and condition of our forum in the future. If you saw the rank policy system could change in 2018, it is also the same as in the future. The system will follow what is needed/urgent in the future.

>The change indicates that our forum is growing and trying to find the best system to apply for the current condition.

Is little bit difficult to understand your question but yes, we had changes in the forum rules before and surely we will see more changes in the future.
Simply, the forum as a gathering place for people is undergoing different changes and accordingly the admins must also change the rules in order to protect the forum from spam and abuse.  
It's impossible for all members of the forum to be satisfied with every change, but I think that the merits nevertheless raised the quality of the forum post and thus fulfilled its purpose.

When start forum 2009, rank policy system only activities then 2018 change forum rules rank up policy merit + Activities , I ask @theymos again any Possibility change forum rules upcoming future.