Not giving everybody the same opportunities will lead to people moving on to other forums
Correct. A Bitcointalk fork is being prepared already by a group of members who are fed up with the Lauda gang.
Yeah, the Lauda gang is fearsome. I thought I was tough enough to survive a “beat-in” for the secret initiation, so I tried to join. It turns out, Lauda does worse: A “scratch-in” by cats! I’m still bleeding from that; and worst of all, they decided that I was too wimpy. At least they didn’t feed me to the lion—I’m thankful for that, but could Lauda be going soft?
Not giving everybody the same opportunities will lead to people moving on to other forums
Correct. A Bitcointalk fork is being prepared already by a group of members who are fed up with the Lauda gang.
Of course, this has been tried many times in the past already. If you guys are going to openly invite scammers and spammers, it will be interesting to see how your forum handles them.
, I myself have a pet theory that the merit system is designed as a weapon against Roger Ver’s .com forum playpen. When all the spammers and trash posters leave, where will they go? Hahah.
You're making great posts and people like you will have no issue in 'ranking' up. It's just the lazies who got used to being able to fly through ranks just by posting the most generic of shitposts that are going to have great problems. If only they could be bothered putting the same amount of effort they do for the whining about the merit system into the regular posts they'd be no issue at all.
I have read the posts of Nullius and they are indeed extremely good. But he is an exception. The system should work for a decent majority, not only for the truly excellent ones. "people like you" you say, but there are a very few like Nullius, if at all. If only the truly excellent ones can "rank up", then you don't even need this system, you just can pick up that dozen people who is really excellent and give them a Legendary ad honorem rank and that's it. The system should allow a decent majority (or a decent minority) to rank up as if nothing had changed, and just put limits for the indecent minority (or indecent majority). There is still time to improve the system so that this is achieved.
I’m glad you appreciate my posts. But what you say brings to mind something pertinent which has been sitting in my drafts pile for a few days. The relevant part is that to “rank up”, it’s not necessary to earn merit at anywhere close to the rate I do. I can often earn +20–30 per day. Comparing merit and activity thresholds for rank, the system seems designed with an expectation that an ordinary, decent poster will earn on average about +1 per day. That sounds reasonable, does it not?
You're making great posts and people like you will have no issue in 'ranking' up. It's just the lazies who got used to being able to fly through ranks just by posting the most generic of shitposts that are going to have great problems. If only they could be bothered putting the same amount of effort they do for the whining about the merit system into the regular posts they'd be no issue at all.
Much obliged. And yes, I’ve oftentimes wondered about the cost/benefit analysis (not) done by certain people. The same applies much more strongly for those who sometimes expend
extreme efforts trying to gain money or advantage by gutter methods such as spamming, rather than putting
less effort into achieving reasonable success by decent means. But I suppose that here, some people are of a religious belief that divine law entitles them to make money by posting generic one-liners with a signature attached from farmloads of sockpuppet accounts. How else could the vehemence of their reactions be explained? Well, too bad for them that there is such intolerance of their religion.
By the way, congratz man, 187 merits wow, thats a good achievement.
Not good enough. So in the seven days since you wrote that, I’ve added another 113 merits—to get myself started.
Try getting 100 merits for reaching a Full Membership ranking.
You'll have to be some kind of Einstein or Mother Theresa to gain such amounts of merits. Or somehow get sucked up into the group of scam moderators. That probably works best around here.
100 merits is no problem. I earned an additional 113 merits just since I last posted in this thread a week ago. Here is a recent statistical breakdown of where I’m earning my merit. Dividing out one extraordinary event I don’t deem representative of how merit is earned, the largest proportion of my merit has come from technical posts in Development & Technical Discussion. But on the other hand, I’ve also oft been deemed meritorious for my vocal support of people who are making an heroic effort to clean up the forum. —Oops, I meant for “somehow [getting] sucked up into the group of scam moderators.” So, how would you characterize me?
But it's no use complaining about it. Because the merit system was not designed to merit posts in the first place but rather to keep members from reaching higher rankings. And for that it is doing it's job wonderfully.
Correction: It’s no use whining. Likewise, it is no use concocting absurd theories. Meritorious posts earn merit. For example, one of my highest-merited posts, “Bitcoin’s Public-Key Security Level”, is currently +18 (including +5 from the tech forum moderator). Make good posts, and you will earn merit—or don’t, and you won’t.
(I will not even ask what motive theymos is imagined to have for nefariously designing a system to “keep [thoughtfully contributing] members from reaching higher rankings”. Important words are here inserted. Logically, if theymos wanted to freeze everybody’s ranks, he could do that much more easily. Whereas the merit system separates the wheat from the tares; yes, it is designed to stop spammers and morons from rising in rank.)
[blah blah blah]
Let’s see: You created your very own whine thread, declaring a “right to consensus” and demanding that the merit system be put to a “general vote”. Having succeeded in bringing yourself attention, you got caught by TheQuin passing yourself merit from an alt and red-tagged by Lauda. Whereupon you promptly diverged into crazyland: “Maybe [actmyname] and Lauda it's one persone?” (Hahahah.)
Whining and blustering has worked so well for you in the past. Keep it up to keep getting the same results!
