Topic: IS THE MERIT SYSTEM being used correctly by a small clique of individuals here - page 2. (Read 1338 times)

Thanks very much this is kind of the format I was really hoping for.

I am not that great at math at all so please keep with me for this...I just want to understand how this merit all works.

Top   10 ->  9,57% received merit from Top 10.
Top   20 -> 17,80% received merit from Top 20.
Top   50 -> 26,38% received merit from Top 50.
Top 100 -> 32,69% received merit from Top 100.

So for example does this show...

The top 10 merit holders got 9.57%  of their merits (since merit started) from other top 10 merit holders?

So let's call it 10% for ease of putting some numbers in..


So let's say the top 10 received together as a group 10k  merit since merit started

1k total from other current top 10 merit holders.  9k from those outside of the top 10 current highest.



that would not look entirely terrible although still quite concentrated considering the user number ( i accept it has been nowhere near 2million)


So here comes the part I want to know...

From just knowing that how do I know how much total merit the top 10 merit users gave out in total?

Would it from this example be possible for them to give out only 2k and give 50% to the top 10 only ?

Obviously that is a crazy hypothetical number (i hope) that I am using just to see if I understand how it works or what I can tell from the numbers provided kindly by DdmrDdmr and loyceV


I know I keep asking for more and more but it is very helpful for the entire community to look at and learn if like me they don't already know.

Who can show me the top merit scoring posts of all time here??

Let's say the top 100 top merit scoring posts of all time. So I can skip past those that have provided a tool or service or guide, and find some real general posts that make the majority of forum use. Not that tools/services guides are not very useful because some of course are and have required a lot of work.

Writing a guide to increase chances of getting a high merit score for posts is good. However seeing the top 100 examples of highest merit scoring posts of all time would be very helpful/interesting.

I'm really sorry that I haven't been working on that. I've had a lot of minor issues to sort out, and  I've been making a few changes to my lifestyle.  I hope that I can become a bit more focused in the near future. I've added a few more avatars to the avatar index, but that is probably a fairly minor feature. I'm also planning to delete my ignore list, and to have a page which lists people that I add to a new list in the future, and I'll include the offending post. I'll categorise these lists, as not everybody agrees with my ideas.

It's also time to give the Fit to Talk project a boost. It has become a bit of a social club, and there is even a Spanish thread  that contains no English. I've still got loads of sMerits for "foreign" posters who can talk about the economies in their countries. By foreign I mean countries other than the UK and the US.

Merit is easily abused by those with multiple accounts. As such, there will be bad actors with artificially inflated scores. Anyone who watched the first couple of days of merit distributions witnessed that very obviously. That’s why you should take merit with a grain of salt. Some of the most disrespectful and useless members of this forum have been near the top of the merit list. However, it’s also a fun way to reward strangers for thoughtful posts, so it’s a worthy trade-off in my opinion.

This is the right information to drop the conspiracy theories... It only proves how the main merit senders don't send merits to their friends' circle. Thanks for the info DdmrDdmr  so, cryptohunter now you can be sure merits are used in the right way.

You can check this with the SQL Merit Explorer made by Piggy yourself if you want.

The queries I used (Bitcointalk/Cloudflare don't like SQL Scripts in posts): https://gist.github.com/mainconceptx/3d843db920308cf09669e3e8961d8cd7
Just copy/paste it.

Result:

I also understand OP worries.

However, I’m afraid the opposite can be happening up to a point. I haven’t been sending merits to Legendaries and I’ve seen many people commenting along the same lines, not only on that thread but on other threads on the forum.

I think what happens actually is that most forum members tend to lower their standards when they send merits to lower ranks. If among all the shitposters, they find a newbie who writes a good post, they tend to merit him. And I’m talking about a “just” good post, not a very good or exceptional one. They probably wouldn’t give merit for that same post if it was written by a Legendary. It is a way of stimulating lower ranks to be positively productive instead of shitposting.

For me, it is not surprising that the top posters send and receive merit from the other top posters. I wrote that post because I found that if I didn’t save merits for lower ranks, I was sending them to the high ranks and when I saw a newbie worth meriting I was out of merits.

P.S: I recently decided to send merits also to Legendaries because I get merit more easily now, so I have more merits to send, but I’m still biased towards lower ranks.

As of last Friday (last Merit Dashboard update):

LoyceV > DdmrDdmr = 45
LoyceV > The Pharmacist = 13
DdmrDdmr > LoyceV = 15
DdmrDdmr > The Pharmacist = 9
The Pharmacist > LoyceV = 4
The Pharmacist > DdmrDdmr = 5.

But that doesn't really show nothing much in general in my opinion on a one to one basis. What's more, all three coincide posting in some sections, and all bring decent stuff (dare I say) to the table, so reciprocal merit overtime is natural and is not a deep issue as I stated here: Is it true that we only send sMerit to our “buddies” ?.

This should be not so surprising as if you dug a bit more into Meta you will find that part of the merit sources cannot find posts to give their merit to.
Which makes the whole situation even more complicated. Theymos wrote some time ago that it's better for the sources to unload all the source merit instead of let it "burn" with the time.  It's not really burning but if you don't use it , it doesn't replenish.
So instead of wasting the generated smerit just pass it so it generates more, but sure it's not easy to find someone new to give meirt to.

I see where is cryptohunter going.

Let's make this dynamic, from the next 3 users how many merits send between them:


LoyceV > DdmrDdmr = ?
LoyceV > The Pharmacist = ?
DdmrDdmr > LoyceV = ?
DdmrDdmr > The Pharmacist = ?
The Pharmacist > LoyceV = ?
The Pharmacist > DdmrDdmr = ?

This should be it for the day ...:

Top   10 ->  9,57% received merit from Top 10.
Top   20 -> 17,80% received merit from Top 20.
Top   50 -> 26,38% received merit from Top 50.
Top 100 -> 32,69% received merit from Top 100.

There are currently 24.234 forum members that have received >= 1 sMerit, so the 100% will be reached on the top 24.234.

Also, we should forget the 2 million user mith. In practice, there are many less even posting and therefore postulating for merit on the whole (see The real activity of bitcointalk.org + full stats). Only 137K have made a post over the last three months for example, as seen on the referenced thread.

From the analysis "Top 30 Merit givers per board - Interactive Tool to spot possible Merit Sources", you can easily find out data of top 30 list of the most merited board, who gave most merit on which board. I think this one may assist you.

Indeed, and I think a lot of newcomers to crypto latch onto this "decentralized" word as some sort of holy grail to be achieved in every one of the world's problems/systems/structures, and it's just not feasible.  To give an example, the prison system in my state used to operate pharmacies at each prison and jail and did this for years...until they figured out that it is much more cost-effective to have all the medications get dispensed out of a centralized location.  That cut down on the staffing needed and improved communications.  Almost the same situation happened with long-term care pharmacy, i.e., nursing homes and other residential care facilities.  Sure, they all have Pyxis machines on premises, but all the scheduled meds come from pharmacies that resemble warehouses, with orders getting faxed in, technicians packacking meds up into blister packs, and pharmacists making IVs and checking the prescriptions before they go out the door.

Bitcoin is decentralized, and it's a unique concept for a currency.  Bitcointalk is not decentralized, and it's not a unique discussion forum. 

A lot of the top merit-givers happen to be older members, and many of them are also very good contributors and receive a lot of merits themselves.  That isn't surprising to me, but I get the feeling (well, actually he outright stated it) that OP thinks there's a "good 'ol boys" club of members passing merits between themselves for some undefined yet nefarious purpose.

OP, if you want to take a minute and look at the members I've given merit to, you'll definitely see a lot of recognized accounts, some of them merit sources, some of them on DT, but there are a lot of members below Hero rank that I've given merits to as well.  In my case, I actually try to avoid giving merits to Legendary accounts or Hero members who already have enough merits to rank up to Legendary and are just waiting to get enough activity.  Sometimes I can't help myself, sure, because there are a few Legendary members who make excellent posts that I feel compelled to merit, but overall I'm at least trying to target lower ranked members for merit.

Jet Cash is exceptionally generous and has that type A personality that makes him want to be a doer, and he's doing a great job being a merit source and trying to help the forum in general. 

There may be members who only trade merits back and forth between their buddies, but I don't think that's the norm for merit sources.  The sad fact is that it is extremely difficult to find posts made by lower-ranking members (especially Newbie & Jr. Member ranks) that would fit the criteria of being "just good".  There are so many members of those two ranks nowadays that certain sections are flooded with posts by them, and they all tend to be generic, uninteresting, usually poorly-written, and sometimes even plagiarized.  I'm sure a lot of merit sources have a hard time sustaining the motivation to keep searching for worthy, lower-ranked members to give merits to.

I have Jet Cash's "Snow Eagles" site bookmarked, but so far there are only a few members on there, and the site needs some serious improvement before it becomes useful.  I'm speaking for myself only here, but I'm more than happy to reward a Newbie, Jr. Member, or any rank below Hero with merits IF the post deserves it and IF I can find the post.  I have fairly high standards, but not impossibly high.

Why bother with such a complicated approach?
Check the first 100 posts on
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol
and you will see

I used random.org to generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 2 million:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/alexsnz-1887762
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/signtenboci-1557917
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/alefiel-1080411
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/rashyboi-1197833
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/silver-ff-429335
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/sk945-967934
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/morphfuse03-1103723
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/shravareddy-1378511
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/rc5ju-1260633
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/zeiskinanli-1739694
Now check their post history and see if anything is worth meriting. Repeat this until you're convinced 99% of the accounts doesn't deserve any Merit

Hold on a bit for the discussion of the stats.

I just want to confirm and fill in the X's for the top 10, 20, 50, 100.

Then we can all just take a closer look make more informed comments.

@ qwk  - thanks for reply... let me just see those x's filled in then I will certainly be down for a discussion of we think those are showing us.

It will be of great interest to hear everyone input and for a sensible and adult discussion to take place.

@ suchmoon these are certainly important points to further analyse and discuss.

Hm, let me consider this. No. Not at all.

Apparently, it looks like favoritism / nepotism of some kind at first glance.
But keep in mind: a large share of freely available merit comes from merit sources.
Merit sources are (if not by definition) people who usually also receive a decent amount of merit.
Why? Because that's how you become a merit source in the first place.
To become a merit source, you'll have to have a history of actually giving away merit.
To have such a history, you'll have to have merit in the first place.
How do you get that merit? By making meaningful, quality posts that are rewarded with merit.

In simpler terms:
1. write good posts
2. receive merit
3. give away merit
4. theymos sees "hey, he / she's giving away merit"
5. you'll become a merit source

That's why, in the end, many merit sources are also good posters (not all, though).

Why would I need more merits?

My time is better spent sending merits, not receiving them.


There is no surprise that good posters and otherwise valuable members also tend to care about forum issues and comment on them in Meta.


And that's the wrong conclusion. Shitty posters in Meta get laughed at and their posting histories get looked into and they often end up worse (neg trust, plagiarism reports, etc). You got the correlation/causation thing wrong. Posting in Meta doesn't mean you'll get merits. Making good posts in Meta or elsewhere may increase your chances of getting merit. Making shitty posts may decrease your chances of getting merit.

Got a bit bored at seeing some comments and thought I could use the time otherwise…
Thanks for the correction; can’t be working, and cooking and scraping and doing stats all at the same time…

Why? You're good at it!

My adjustment in red. Is this what you meant? And if so, can you do the same for the Top 50 Senders?