<…>Example: You write a valuable article. If 10 people like it, you will get 1 Merit. If 20 people like it, you will get 2 merit ... Then it will encourage writers to post really valuable articles.
What do you think of this idea of mine. Is it useful? And will anyone change that way on this forum
The thing is, there is quite a fair share of wrongdoing here. Your idea, which has been proposed on a similar basis multiple times, has the drawback that it is very easy to rig.
Say I created 20 fake accounts, and liked a post of mine with them all. I would get 2 merits for that. Now imagine everyone doing that. We’d have a ton of farm accounts just giving likes as is there was no tomorrow, rendering the whole point of the merit system pointless, since anyone could basically self-generate merit through Alt accounts.
New accounts tend to think of merit on more social terms, since they tend to not come across it easily. We need to understand that merit has a couple of concurring objectives:
- Reduce account farming.
- Reduce spam, by incentivising better content.
- Adjust the ranking-up system, delimiting the scope and speed with regards to your posting abilities.
Now the system is far for fair, and less widespread than I would personally like, but it’s better than how it used to be before on account of it’s contribution to the above objectives.
Note: When my account was a Newbie, I too vouched for a change to socialize merit awarding, empowering a lateral democratization based on votes (see
An idea to democratize merit assignment to all levels (complementary)).
