Topic: Has the Merit faucet dried up? Solutions? - page 2. (Read 819 times)

Can posts that identify others as scammers not be high quality posts? There's several threads within the reputation thread which have gone into depth, and investigated their claims quite thoroughly. These investigations take time, and effort. Just because there is a lot of bitching that goes on within that section doesn't take away from the fact that there's some genuinely good posts in there.

There's also a few bitching that goes on within the Development & Technical support sections. Although, I'll admit to a much lesser degree. But, I've seen a few posts which attack each other for no real reason other than they disagree with each other. In fact a few members like to push their agenda against achow101 over there for whatever reason.

I also enjoy some of the discussions that come out of Meta, and although there's been a massive up rise in shit posts here recently its not all bad. For example, recently there's been some pretty good suggestions regarding moderation, and how to identify, and deal with the current problems of the forum.

I agree that this problem exists. One suggestion I would to add here is that staff should use some accounts from newbie status and post in different sections to realize the depth of the problem themselves. I know this will consume some time but will benefit the forum with accurate evaluation of current situation.

I hate when people don't get sarcasm. Let me tell it out loud, THERE WAS SARCASM IN THAT POST!

Obviously, I know theymos checks other factors, he wouldn't be an admin if he won't do his own research. Come on, man..

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Oh.. Thanks for the encouragement. Really helps. Really..

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Loyce V, you should thank digaran if that's the case. I am waiting for him to accuse you, that, you paid theymos to make you a merit source and also that you wanted to use your merits to give it to your chipmixer alts.

I have a feeling that 80 is the limit for now. When the number dropped to 79 LoyceV got approved quite quickly.

Not really 4 months is not even half of the year and I would think that looking in depth in someones merit history to determine whether they are meriting to the standard of the other merit sources is a pretty time consuming thing to do. theymos probably checks for several other factors too.

Exactly, the frequent posters of meta like having this high standard thing whereas most of them who post in the spam boards don't. The rest already have enough merits or they don't care.

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No they don't. I had come across somewhere that not all merit sources spend their entire source merits. So that goes away.

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So did I. Well, look at my merit history and you'll see that lowering standards won't work if you don't find good enough posts. Also when I do, the post is plagiarized.

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So it will take me a year atleast to become a merit source. Nice.

That is the merit sources job though they are the ones which should be actively looking for posts to reward. Anyone else who earns sMerit or has their initial sMerit might not have the time to merit so that 600k will not be fully used.

Merit sources are selected because they are active and know how what is a good post and what is not. The majority of us who have the initial sMerit either do not have the time or only look at certain boards where there is not that many good posts.

I think we all kind of see that there seems to be a lack of merit sources (*) and perhaps a need to find placements for them in specific board sections/subsections. Apart from the voluntary personal postulation to become a merit source, we’ve also suggested ways to help locate these potentials (i.e. through the sMerit network size, as discussed some weeks ago) and thus allow for the Forum to proactively ponder the selection process in a proactive manner.

Regardless I believe that there is also a need to consider the ranking-up numbers which, are a derivative of the matter. A key (business) question is what is a healthy rate of ranking-up forum wide (per rank level) in a given period of time for the system to be considered as going well? That constitutes a business goal and governs the flow of merit that should circulate in the system in order to fulfill these goals.

Looking at the ranked-up members with the merit system so far on the Dashboard, we seem to have so far:

  8 Sr. Members to hero
  37 Full Member to Sr. Members
  56 Members to Full Members
 24 Jr. Members or less to Full Members
1819 Jr. Members or less to Members

Whether those numbers are ok or low depends on the objectives, and these have to be placed in such a way that the model works without dying from starvation.

(*) merit sources pump newly created merit into the system, but are also making up for the mass of airdropped initial merit which has not even started to see the light (600k initial sMerit airdrop and only 171k merited in txs - and from that we should substract the part that came from merit sources and halved merit, so at least 450k roughly is static).
Perhaps the initial projections have not been met, since most of the airdropped sMerit has not been placed into it’s initial run, and thus merit sources are relied upon to make up for it with an overhead in work.

I've found the mining section to be moderated very well and full of helpful and knowledgeable individuals that support each other's efforts. 

OK, you got me there.  I made a statement that was overbroad--it's the main sections (B.D., A.D., Economics, Trading Discussion, Speculation) that have been overrun with spam.  I still find things useful in Exchanges, and I'm sure the mining section isn't bad. 

I think the reason I like Meta as much as I do is because it naturally draws people who actually care enough about the forum to talk about it--or to engage in its politics, as you stated.  From my experience some of the most capable writers tend to post there, whereas the illiterate shitposters flock to areas like Bitcoin Discussion.  You're right, it should not be this way but it is.  I think shitposters want to post in spam megathreads because they know their posts are diluted with 1000 other shitposts and therefore they won't get reported--and they're right! 

That is bad. Meta and Reputation are the boards where most of the forum politics, bitching takes place. I'm surprised you called them good sections because it dissolves the entire point of running a bitcoin forum. Most happening topics in those boards revolve around leaving feeback back to each other and how untrustworthy someone is.

Excluding Development & Technical Discussion/ Technical support sections.

If this forum ever does turn into Facebook/Reddit, then likes/upvotes should without a doubt not contribute towards ranking up. Personally, I can see the appeal of the like system, but honestly I don't think it's needed.

hello I think the forum needs to introduce the likes.
likes can put Jr. Member and Member. Because they can not share the merit, But they can put a like worthy post.
10 likes in 1 merit

There's no point in making this post; merit sources claimed themselves that they couldn't find any good posts to merit.

The best solution is to buy a legendary account and do this https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.23660639 (https://archive.is/dDnCk). Don't get me wrong but literally, till now so many people have abused this merit system, there were even merit sources involved but you can see around people readily exchange merits between their alts and when users like me report it mods don't care,DT members just become blind and theymos is literally in his world

You should be happy you got 50 merits for literally doing nothing (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/vlad230s-post-review-service-jr-member-and-up-open-3212390). Yes, you did merit me because you felt my post deserved it but do you think you deserved those 50 merits.
Most members(including) are here to make money if you go back to the old days and see the posts they just used to be one-liners this all so-called "quality post" is just a joke.

I'm sure after posting this I will get backfired, but at the end, even you would agree with me.

Edit:
Honestly, I can't deny the fact that why you don't get merit, imagine you were a merit source and saw a post like this

Replying to the above quote this is the worst idea ever if this get's implemented it will increase the number of merit abuses, you can already see around there are so many spam bots created daily and when this get's implemented these spam bots will start spamming likes as well and with the current moderation system where merit abusers don't get punished I don't think we are ready for such a feature

To be fair your merit received is a little inflated due to Searings merit on your post review thread so it would be a little unrealistic to expect 0.5-1 merit everyday. However, your post quality is damn decent, and I'm not disputing that you don't deserve more merit than you've rgot so far. New merit sources are the answer, but I feel the roadblock we are hitting is that potential good merit sources aren't gaining enough sMerit in order to demonstrate that they would be a good merit source. I do understand that theymos asked for applicants to list 10 posts, however that's not really a enough if you haven't merited a few other posts yourself.

Also, just because someone doesn't earn sMerit themselves doesn't mean they aren't going to be a good source. You could be really good at spotting others good post quality, but maybe they don't tend to post much themselves, and thus don't demonstrate their ability to pick out good posts.

Several sections are being neglected, but it's only natural that the main Bitcoin section is going to get the most exposure. Places like Bitcoin Discussion are going to be lost within the spam, and places like Mining only appeal to a certain few. However, having said that we should make it a priority for finding merit sources that are actively reading these sections, and can maybe demostrate that by including 5 posts per section in their application instead of 10 general posts. The altcoin section does have some decent content, but I can't really blame those who don't want to wade through the shit that's there.

It seems from the opinions within this thread, and others that I've observed merit distribution isn't exclusively the problem. There's certain sections which are overrun by the spammers which would likely be because of the moderation team is currently covering several sections of the forum, and as a result are spread thin. If the community as a whole started to report a little more then maybe we could reclaim Bitcoin Discussion, and other sections as well has having a few dedicated mods here, and there. Economics section doesn't seem to get that much merit apart from the Wall observer thread which I've seen some wasted merits on just memes, and pictures of unrelated stuff to the thread.

I think this is just because of the amount of spam that's in other sections. Plus, people seem to like giving out merit based on people who find scammers, abusers, and those who break rules. I can't say I'm against that, but a lot of users that post high quality content unrelated to these things are missing out. Especially when concerning users breaking the rules. They could just be reported. We've seen several members opening up topics reporting like 1-5 users, and they receive merit for it. I think this has subsided now due to the amount of people who started doing this.

I'm not entirely against this, but I do feel that moderation is separate to merit. At least currently due to the limited amount of sMerit which is available right now.

Yeah, but that was only natural as people didn't truly see the value of merits in the beginning. Plus, it was likely abused by a few individuals.

I did not have excellent and especially nullius in mind by the way 

Sorry, I don't read mining. I do merit in Altcoin, but it's hard to find any decent posts there. I barely read economics, and even "my own" local forum for that matter.

Agreed. I try to "lower my standards", especially for Newbies. Of course quality posts should be merited a lot, but just regular good posts are already far above the spam for which the Merit was introduced.

I disagree: you can't have a forum with only the very best people posting. That would mean the forum becomes very elite, and very quiet. One of the goals used to be promoting Bitcoin knowledge, and for that to happen, people should join.
I'm happy if posts range from acceptable to good, better, excellent (and nullius). If I see a new user with good posts, I don't want him to be limited in any way by a system that was introduced to stop the worst of the worst spammers.

From now on, I'll try to merit a bit more posts. Note that me meriting a post necessarily doesn't mean I agree with them, it means I consider them worth reading.

It took me more than 3.5 months, almost daily bumping, and many "vouches" in the thread to get processed. I haven't seen any sources added since.

I can't speak for other sources, but in the last few weeks I have just been so busy I have barely any time to respond to scammers on here, much less time to reward good posters.  Whatever little time I have left is going into the BPIP redesign.

Speaking personally, I don't think the problem is lack of Merit Sources.  I think the problem is that everyone is creating guides or making threads aimed at helping new users to try and earn a ton of Merits because that's how some Merit swindlers have chosen to reward themselves through their alts.  Then when the Merits don't come flooding in like in the threads they see from others, they get discouraged.  If you actually want to earn Merits, you will engage users that are encountering issues and help them resolve their problems.

I even seen a list created by someone, I can't find it now though. In that list I have seen several applicants, may be 15 to 20 (?)

I am not sure but I feel like this Legendary voting will create a mess.