Topic: I've still got 80 sMerit to give away. - page 8. (Read 2369 times)

Would you mind explaining more about those words "~ merit points should only be awarded singly ~", please.

As the name of the topic shown, Merit and new rank requirements, for sure the system was created as a ranking tool, stricter than the older ranking system.

Another problem which related to designing is as you can see in the Theymos topic, there are bunch of merits' senders behind the topic's tittle. It looks extremely messy. I think Theymos should make it better, such as a drop-down list.

I don't think merit is intended to be a ranking tool. I believe it is a tool to improve the quality of the forum. It is really up to the members to use it to help direct the flow of posts. So far it seems to be used to "reward" ghosts of the past, and to help members of sig campaigns to "rank up" to increase the size of their banners. Because of this abuse, I think that merit points should only be awarded singly, that woud reduce the abuses slightly.

Not trying to say that the merit system is not good but to me I feel it's not a good determinant of ranks, reasons being that:
1. There are people out there whose posts are educating and yet no one is touched to merit their work.
2. Friends could just keep sharing their merits among themselves irrespective of the quality of a post.
3. Sooner or later it will be sold and bought all in the quest to rank up.
This will make people try to rank up by all means and for those quality post makers, they end up being where they're. Just imagine newbies and Jr member's account were not given any merit and this leaves me wondering if the mods have no room for them in this forum or better still, no regards for them at all.

Well I've managed to give away 6 sMerit since I started this thread ( big deal ).

and I found some interesting posts as well.

I think most Newbies and Jr. Members are bounty hunters. They are only want to rank up for signature bounties then hard to choose correct one to give merit. They have to make good posts for earn merit. I think bitcointalk rank up rules will be change more than in future.

Key point here

Just go everywhere and give them to Newbies/Jr.Members that deserve them.
It's pretty hard to rank up now for them.

I've been awarding points in ones and twos because I believe that that is the best way to encourage members to make good posts. This logic probably comes from the likes system on another professional forum that I frequent. I've been a member for just over 2 years, and I've received over 5,200 "likes" in that forum. Members can only award one like per post, but there is no limit to the number of likes an individual post can receive. I think this system has helped me to hone my posting, and it encourages me to make posts that members will find useful or amusing.

I've still got 80 sMerits because I don't go out hunting for posts to merit, but I just award them when I find a post that appeals to me. However, it is quite difficult to find these posts. The most promising boards ( the serious discussion ones ) tend to be neglected by most members. I don't visit the Frog Pond very much, as most of the threads seem to be worthless ( in my opinion ) long tail spam fests. I think I have given away too many on the Meta board - there are too many posts about Merit points, and I've just created another one. The beginners board ought to be the place for me to read threads, but that seems to be more about issues other than Bitcoin. Tech support has some interesting threads, but I'm not a power user of Bitcoin, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to make judgements there.

So what's the point of this thread. It's really a plea to turn the Frog Pond into a useful board for Bitcoiners. It wouldn't be too difficult to do. If the mods could lock the long tail spam fest threads so that they slipped away, and the non Bitcoin and newbie threads were moved to the appropiate boards, that would create some breathing space on the first page. There is also something that members could do, please start to make quality posts on the serious discussion boards.

ps. I don't sell sMerit, or give it to people who ask for it, sorry.