Topic: Merit Drying Up? (Read 990 times)

Most people seem to think a merit is a merit. and they aren't aware that there are different types of awardable meits. I wrote an article about it on my "walking the plank" blog. You can read the article here-
https://talkmerit.com/the-source/index.php/articles/the-bitcoin-talk-merit-system

I started to write an article about making good posts, but I got a bit discouraged, as there didn't seem to be much interest in it. It was intended to cover the whole process of forum participation right from the choosing of your member name. You can view the start here -
https://talkmerit.com/the-source/index.php/articles/how-to-create-good-posts
I might finish it if there is any interest.

I have received over 500 merits since the system started. If you want to look at my posts that received merits, then you can view them on a list created bu LoyceV. They are listedon this page, together with a list of the threads that I have awarded with merits -
http://talkmerit.com/projects/merit-history.html

I'm reluctant to create a guide for merit hunters, as I think that should be discouraged. Active forum participation should bring its own rewards.

Merit should be in abundance so that all members can participate in this effectively. More strict action on merit abuse should follow this to prevent abuse cases. 

Currently , I am seeing merited posts on local boards more than the posts on the global threads. I don't know if that is healthy but eventually the merit is still moving forward. I agree that we need more merit sources tho only some users in the forum are interested that meets the requirements of the administration. Hopefully more active members can gain the knowledge and power to provide merits to high quality posts. Not to the point that only the best posts are always being merited.

Plus I see no point in meriting too much to those posts that has already alot of merits.

how do you earn sMerits? i have been on this board and never earned any sMerits after they came up with new merit system.I just dont understand how it works.

I would rather look for merit and give smerit by following my signature program  and looking for quality posts when I open one of the topics and read it carefully

I am not sure about the new merit in invent as it is now, this will be an additional lesson for all of us, essentially do not be lazy to read and find out about the information contained in this forum.

I've just looked in my merit wallet, and I've got 160 sMerits to award ( please note that I didn't say "give away"). That's 32 people from the local boards who could pick up 5 merits each, if they submitted one post to my translation project. It must be over a month since somebody submitted a post. In most cases other members award merits to the posts as well, so 5 is really just the start.

I've been spending so much time looking for meritable posts, that my other activities have started to suffer, and I've had to back off a bit. I've also tried to improve my search efficiency, If I am looking at the beginners board, then I start with page 5, almost everything before that is bumped up crap. If you guys want to earn some merits for decent posts, then stop the beggars and thieves that are driving away the people who want to help you.

Yep, and I've been known to merit funny meme posts.  One-word or one-picture posts worthy of merit are more the exception than the rule here, however.  With most posts being total garbage, really witty, clever, or funny posts are a pleasant rarity.

The forum definitely needs more merit sources, and ones that cover under-merited sections especially.  On the other hand, people with sMerits to give out don't want to lower their standards too much, and I'd say that really good posts DO get merits eventually.  Sometimes it takes a bit before people notice posts.  And if a member consistently writes quality stuff, he'll eventually get merits.

Holding merits and not giving it out is a thing I don't really understand why it's like that but I recently noticed that it's not the fault of the high rank members not giving merits even when you post constructive and meaningful post. Because there are some who are just here to red those high rank account sorry to say that, so I believe that's the reason why most of them are extremely careful when it comes to merit issues because no one what's is btt account to be affected with red!

@jet native speakers can really feel the effect of the merit system. Tho even if theymos created it to fix the spam problem. We still also cannot deny the fact that it still also has a lot of negative effects since there are really quality posts that are not being recognized. Tho, I think that is just healthy since anytime or sooner that can still be recognized. Unlike the abusing of merit which really sucks.

Yeah, I fully understand, but I already mentioned that 1 or 2 people read so many pages from a thread, my bad, you might be the third one

Peace and good luck.

I'm a bit sad today, yesterday I deleted the Italian board in the Fit to Talk English project. A quality translated post was guaranteed to earn at least 5 merits, if it was of sufficient quality to be posted in Ivory Tower. The board didn't have a single post or expression of interest, and this is despite the fact that Italian language speakers have been complaining about the shortage of merits for them.

As I've posted many times, there is no shortage of merits, and don't forget that every two merits awarded creates another merit for the community to award. The fact that they are not being awarded recklessly shows that the community is taking a responsible attitude towards the merit system.

I started following that thread when it had 400 pages. Since then, I've read about 95% of the posts. Let's say I've read 450 out of 976 pages by now.
That's the difference between just dumping a post in a Spam Megathread, and actually caring for the content of a thread.

I've seen good threads with lots of pages too, let's face it... nobody reads more than a bunch of pages... maybe 1 or 2 persons that really read whole pages of a thread.

P.S. Please don't tell me that you will read till page 976 of a thread or whatever big number page, just, please ... ok? * I know 976 was just an example, but ... please

I do agree on what have others have said about more and more members are now focused on writing quality content and expecting to receive a merit that they tend to forget to send sMerits themselves or they are just purposely keeping their sMerits as their is no kind of consequence whatsoever on just keeping it away. Also we cannot force them on handing out their sMerits just for the purpose of increasing the merits being given in the forum, it would give a horrible effect on the merit system overall. There is no clear solution for this one as the way I see it we cannot satisfy both cleaning the forum from spammers and shitposters and at the same time make worthy members rank up fast by receiving a considerable amount of merits regularly.

A lot of great ideas are spawned in chill-out threads. It's the sycophantic spamming that is annoying, and it is never original.

well in the end it still boils down to the same problem as before. That is the reason why i don't like the idea of having such merit sources. Well as reality do always comes up to why people or users stays in this forum to gain something more than knowledge and that is why people should always hope to be rewarded by their efforts on every posts even if there are still no real discussions happening

One of the downsides of the merit system is that many members see it as a payment for posting. As a result of this, they tend to write posts in the expectation of being rewarded for their efforts. You should enjoy the interaction and information exchange in the Bitcoin Talk forum, and not look on membership as a career choice.

I’m not sure about that, there’s many other reasons why people have slowed up handing out Merit. Have a read through the thread.

It depends on the thread. If it's a Spam Megathread where thousands of people repeat the same thing over and over again, it should be trashed, not rewarded. You're already saying nobody is going to read the thread, which means you shouldn't reply there.
On the other hand, if it's an informative thread and on page 976 the OP posts the biggest news in a long time, I give it 5 Merit, because I think everybody who sees the thread should read that post.

A good post can be just one word.

As a fellow citizen, I will speak for the sake of our fellow High ranked Members. How can you assure that they're not giving merits? Just because you can't see anyone from our local high rank members distributing merits in posts in our local board? Yeah it's a little bit unfair but I'm sure that they still distribute their merits, maybe not to us from our local but in other members of this forum from different country. I think it will be too much unfair if they only give merits to members from our local board whilst there are people in other places who deserves merits as well. Distributing merits doesn't depend on what country or local board you belong, it depends on the quality of posts of members who will be distributed.
Also, you should consider what Mr. Joel_Jantsen said.

But I do agree to this one. Yeah, there are really some good posts/threads in our local board that takes (I guess) days to complete but only receives less than 5 Merits (which is somehow enough I guess, but posters have different expectations of number of merits they're expecting to receive). They are very informative, unique and full of effort as well. But don't worry, as long as I have sMerits to send, I won't hesitate to merit it.

I'm afraid that I may not fulfill my full responsibility if happens that I became a merit source. I don't really like failures from my own hands, that's why I'll pass from it.

Does your local board have a merit source? If you can tell a good quality post that deserves merits, you may apply as a merit source. That will certainly make things better, wouldn't it?

That doesn't make any sense. Should you come across any proof of someone doing it, you should report them. Just posting theories here isn't going to help anyone.

This is also a problem in our local, there are many good posters there and sharing facts and ideas but few people gives merits.
They didn't know that it is hard to create contents and they didn't support each other.

Some of the high rank members don't want to give some merits because they're happy farming bounties. They forget where they started (local) so they're living happily with their money.

I don't think replying gets you any merit points though, there are good threads with tons of replies, not many scroll through all the posts and read them. Everyone usually reads between 3-10 pages and that's all, what if someone on page 100 had a good opinion on-topic, who will merit that one?
I understand that the merit system was created to stop spammers and shit-posters, but what about real posters that just say their 2 cents about a topic and that's it? I mean why does a post need to be 1000 lines with 10 million arguments(I probably exaggerated here:) to be considered a good quality post?
Anyways, I stopped long ago trying to get merit, people still make shit-posts in places they shouldn't, because some just don't care if it's a shit post or not as long as the thread stays up and it's visible(referring here more to paid posters that bump threads).
P.S. I stopped trying to get useful information about bitcoin or other interesting stuff related to cryptocurrencies... I began to use the search button more often to find what I really wanna read...something interesting for me.

I think reducing the amount necessary to go up a level could be a good solution (20-30%). What is the difference in earning 90 points or 60 to move up from member to full member?
Shitposter will never rank up, you will increase the chances for people who have problems with English.(And before you say yes, but there are local sections, some of them are without "active" merit sources).

For me it's still the same as getting merits only even if he/she is trying to get the respect of a certain person. If one's mindset is for forum purposes then i'm sure lots of merits will come along the way.

That's why @oweljayr trying to earn merit and the person's trust so that the next time he post it will be easily gain merit from the person trusted @oweljayr. The purpose of theymos with the merit system is for the forum not for the members (users/people) in the forum.

Allow me to be very pretentious by quoting myself, whilst giving you some valuable advice:


And just in case this still wasn't clear enough, let me say it in another way:

If you would jump high celebrating for a Merit, you don't need to get Merit.

You need to get a life, man. Or sir.

Fair point (re: bolded). I didn’t consider that.

That would be catastrophic, I'm afraid.  If you think merit sales are bad now, can you imagine what would happen if the spammers and scammers suddenly got a sMerit award?  They'd be selling them left and right, not to mention giving them to their alt accounts.  I would not support that.  What we need are more responsible merit sources, and hopefully that will happen in time.

Yeah, same here and I'm comfortable doing so, because there are some members who consistently make good posts and they deserve those merits.  And remember, Hero members also need merits to rank up to Legendary, so I don't have a problem giving those members my sMerits when I have them to give.  I have found some lower-ranked members making one or two good posts recently, but they seem to be rare.

You mean 'squeeze through a needle hole'?  I think the problem might be your language skill.  I haven't looked at where you post, but you might do better on the local boards than in the main section.  You basically have to be pretty good at English to stand out in the main sections.  There are so many non-English-speaking spammers posting for their signature campaigns that if I catch a mistake within the first sentence of a post (assuming there's even any punctuation that would delineate a sentence), I just skip right over it.

We've tried to help people to improve their posting skills on Fit to Talk . There is even a thread there about the eye of a needle quote that is attributed to Jesus.
https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/index.php?topic=48.0

Sir, madam, friend - would you point me one topic from your post history which you think worth merit. Unfortunately, I can not find a good one to merit. I have one sMerit to spend.

Looking forward.

PS: Listen mate. You need to improve your post quality if you really want to start receiving merits.

---

Update:
Stop looking for kind heart. It sounds, you are begging.  

Absolutely sir, I have been trying hard to capture the heart and the mind of so many veteran members of bitcointalk to get at least 1 merit ( I could jump high celebrating from where I am standing right now seeing a merit in my account) for all the replies, quotes and post I am doing.  But life's too hard for it.  I thought I should pass over a needle hole before I could get at least 1 merit.  Too bad but I am still hoping and never giving up finding 1 kind heart veteran.  

I don't think that will ever happen again, as it will be enable spammers to rank up again.

The system allows users to apply to be a merit source, I'm not sure of the Turkish section has one already:

I have always said that crypto is international, and so is bitcoin Talk. It is useful for us to know what is going on in various countries. For example, it would be good if there was a discussion about the proposed TurkCoin, and it was available for English speakers to read. One of the reasons I started Fit to Talk English was to try to bring these discussions to the English boards on Bitcoin Talk. Because it offers no benefits to Twitbook spammers, it seems to be under-utilised.

There is some good posts and threads in turkish language board but none of those getting any merits as far as i can see.Should i blame the system or users who have merits and not sharing them?

I don't agree with that. There is no shortage of merits to award, but there is a shortage of meritable posts. There is also a problem finding them.

Merits are constantly being generated. Every award of a merit creates a half-child. The marriage of two half-children allows for the award of an sMerit, which gives birth to another half-child. This means that every source merit created effectively provides two sMerits for the community. Upon consideration of this, you will realise that half of the sMerits are available for the better members of the community to award, and not just for merit sources. If we can keep merits away from the Twitbook bounty spammers, then there will be more sMerit available for decent posts made by genuine members of the forum.

Agree with the bolded, I think I had something like 200-300 base meeit’s to begin with. I now only have around 5 left plus my source merit which I’m currently only able to hand out a handful per day.



Would be good if everybody received an airdrop of sMerit, yes.

I'm just curious is there any new merits being generated by the mods or it's all available and in the hands of users?

This seems to be a good basis of distributing sMerits. I got some sMerits which will be enough to make a Jr. Member rank up to Member but I've been having some trouble looking for Quality posts from other members that's why I end up giving them to some of top Merited users around here. But seeing this, I think it's just fine to give users with a "Not bad" post ratings. The problem is, I'm also having trouble to find even post with a "Not bad" rating.

Yeah, but almost over 80% of reported users who has been abusing Merits are proven guilty. The good news is, abusers are getting lesser lately.
Because a couple of months ago, Merit abusers used to send almost 50 sMerits to their alt account, friends etc to a post that doesn't deserve it but as we can see now, they are sending less sMerits, maybe it's because it's in order to keep their sMerits trading smooth and undetected.

Sometimes it's really unfair, those shitposters almost rank up receiving merits while their post are shitposts while there are some members who post good contents but can't even receive a piece of Merit.

Some people will really question you for sure, it's because they're too judgemental. Meriting a "not bad" post is not too bad at all. It doesn't matter if they judge you or question you etc. What important is you gave a precious Merit to a poster you think that deserves it.

Over thousands of spam posts, there are still some good post hidden behind these garbages

Too bad for this guy. Even a "not bad" ratings won't fit any of your posts. But somehow you got about 40% over 100 to reach "not bad" rating. You need a lot of improvement and one thing, you should stop spamming in Megathreads, I have no reasons to wonder if your account get banned soon. Just saying. I and mdayonliner already warned you. Make some improvements buddy.

Nothing I do ever seems to be normal or standard. I wasn't one of the merit sources in the initial appointments. I received an airdrop of 80 sMerits, and I was lucky enough to 'earn' quite a few more. I allocated these in ones and twos to post that I thought were interesting, and I haven't flown a spammers sig. I think these facts resulted in me being made a merit source in the secondary allocation. At that time there was a known flaw in the awarding software, and when I awarded merits, they were taken from both my source merits and sMerits. However, I think this may have been retrospective, and I had a constant source balance of 0. I wrote to Theymos, and he doubled my allocation, and this seems to be being replaced normally, but I suspect that I may still be on half rations. This isn't a problem, as I still have merits to award.

I opened a private invitation only chat room for merit sources and DTs, as I wasn't sure if my fairly severe policy towards awarding meits was beneficial to the forum. The discussions there were very helpful for me. If any merit sources feel that a private discussion about possible changes in the policy of awarding merits, they are welcome to join the room and open discussions. For obvious reasons, this offer has to be restricted to merit sources, DTs, staff and admins.

I find the reason being that most of the profiles which were initially provided base merits are out of smerits by giving it to other people, later on since they themselves have not received any new merits, they are unable to give smerits to other profiles as well. Forum is mostly dependable on Merit Sources to receive merits now.

Looking at your posting history - it not gonna work until you change your posting habit. I do not see any good post that is to contribute for the forum. My friendly suggestion - change your posting behavior, be a part of the forum. 

After all i still consider myself as of the moment as a free merit distributor. I usually give my smerit just whenever I like the post or just feelin like I should give it to that certain posts.

I've also tried distributing my smerit by posting a certain thread to give out my smerit which is I think not a good idea even if the purpose is to help newbies posts who has not been seen by me.

That is why i have concluded that some other users who has still smerit to give are doing the same thing as me. They are just handing it out freely when they across to those certain posts. Instead of looking for some good posts having the purpose of distributing merit and that might be the reason why it seems that merit distribution is drying up

Messi and Ronaldo are gone. There is a very little chance for them to play in the next world cup. I am very sad for them.

Meanwhile for your first post. I guess being active is not what merit sources should force on. Instead, the members who want merits should be active on this forum, engaging, making a good writing, analyzing, etc. It will make sources job easier if members going active and worthy, rather than otherwise, and it is not a hard thing to do to be an active member and a worthy one.

You are true. But it is really very hard to find HQ post around spam post.


Exactly I am looking for it. If I found some post that helpful for forum and forum members, I consider it as a quality post.

I for sure agree! I am having trouble ranking up and I want to look trustworthy for my ANN! I feel no one is giving it out much anymore. Maybe the merit sources, but no one else. I personally have not even see merit sources give any out but then again I haven't been looking for it so I am sure they do.

Yes, to me this last week has been sad to see that even in the Spanish board, they are appearing more and more newcomers with no intention of being a part of the forum, but to earn some money. This is particularly sad to me, because the Spanish board was a kind of mental refuge to me, for the conversations in there were used to be fresh, well-argumented, intelligent and one could learn many things in there.
But, regarding greed, this is maybe easy: do not give merit to people with a lot of bounties reports, do not let them rank-up.
Nevertheless, I get the point, this is fu***ing sad to see all these people "greeding" around.

The main problem is the greed. 99% of the people coming to the forum (after the BTC hit the news)are coming for the cash and don't care about the technology nor the possibilities at all. They don't respect the forum nor the founders because there's enough freedom here and they can abuse it and they become even more greedy.

Somebody aked me some time ago on FB how many compaigns  im into at the moment, I said none. He said that he have aroud 80 at the same time and he was wondering how his friend was capable of "working" on 200 with his 20ish alts..
It's just discussing.
 

jajaja... you are absolutely right. Last week I had the misfortune of running into one of these "shitnewbies", whose only goal was to earn merits by copying another's ideas, or making whatever to earn some. To me was kind of sad seeing how this person actually got merits, enough to become a member, but, even so, it is not for me to decide who deserve merits, we all have many different points of views.


About the higher quality spam, I think that depends, again on the personal vision. Despite the fact of merit beggers with the costume of a "nice poster", so easy to see, maybe we need to open our minds and think about that in absolute terms. I mean: who deserves to become member? and then, full member? and then...?
To me the most important of all is the attitude the user has towards the forum, so, if I smell merits beggers, no matter the custom they use, I put them immediately on my ignored list, but there are others in between the line, wanting to rank-up but also trying their best. So, as usual, this is a personal matter, I'm afraid. The point, from my perspective, is to show that ranking-up is not so difficult if you care about the forum...

The problem is not so much in the merit drying out, it's more like many people now are focused on getting merit and that is what is wrong. Everyone writing with the only purpose of ranking up, same threads with different names, newbie guides,tips all over the forum.

I'm trying to give away all my merits to the newbies, but lately nothing fresh is coming up, so im meriting from time to time the "usual suspects".

And the results now is that we have a higher quality spam, thats all.

We all get a different amount of source Merit. As a more respected member you probably get 10 x the amount I get per month.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/marcinhusk9-1122541
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/nazrulio-1361182
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/ghazbaz2018-1588200
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/gilliard82-1852908
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dunglien2908-1953656
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/naim559-1543533
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/nazrulio-1361182
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/cloward-1654396


You are talking about them (above) kind of Jr. Members? Most of their posts are "Amazing project!", "nice project", "Good project" and then - done!
Or, you are talking about yourself? You seems not doing "Good project" type things but not much better than them too. You will need to improve a lot my friend.

The whole idea behind introducing merit system was to stop these shit posters to get ranked up. And it's working. I personally do not mind if these Jr. Members stay Jr. Member for the next infinity years (until the forum shuts down).

- You might need some encouragements from here: List of members achieved 0 to 100 and plus merits <=== All these members were once Jr. Member.

What's with your signature, can you explain to me what fit to talk is all about. I followed the link but don't really understand the forum. Thank you

If you want to go to the supermarket, you need to use a pedal cycle. Using an excercise bike involves a lot of activity, but it doesn't get the shopping into the cupboard.

All the frezied activity for merit is counter-productive. Not only does it give the poster with an over active mouseoid a bad reputation, but it clogs up the boards, and hides the meritable posts. Stop being selfish, and give the good posts a chance to see the light and germinate.

We have built this by establishing a "Merit Inquisition" the lasts months. We need to get rid of it, as I said, we know each other enough to see that most of us are not merit farmers or abusers, carajo  

Precisely what I was trying to say: this is not a "like" system, we don't need to "agree" with others statements, just to respect that.



Yep, I too stop meriting those who have merit recently me, but the reality is that when somebody merits me I use to take a look at his/her profile, and sometimes I discover great posts/quotes on it, yet I stop meriting the person, just in case.
We need to stop the witch hunts between us, let use this energy for those who truly are shameless farming accounts.
Besides, if a post has been merited, and one believes the post to deserve a merit, then merit the post. The only result of doing so is that the poster will rank-up due to his/her good activity. Where's the harm?

Thanks a lot for the observation.Junior members are particularly  at a disadvantage. I see people with a lot of activities, well over 200, at least 6months old without  a single merit. It will be nice to encourage them with some merits so they can upgrade to the level of a member

Every day you should get back the source merits you spent 30 days ago.

Yeah I do often give Merit for ‘good’ & not great/high quality posts, mainly because there are lots of good posts but not that many great/high quality one’s.


Missed a sitter just before Aguero made it 4-3. That would have been 4-4 if Messi had scored a relatively easy chance.

I never give a lot: if a post is worth a lot of Merit, I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one meriting that post.
Top Merit-sender suchmoon switched to sending 5 Merit at once (most of the time) 6 weeks ago. Up to yesterday, he sent 2394 Merit sent to 534 unique users in 1052 transactions. I prefer to merit as many different posts as possible, but I still can't get through my Merit supply.
I'm now considering just meriting posts in my Merit history again, that would be an easy solution to distribute more Merit (to lower ranks).

That doesn't matter, personal opinions average out as enough different people spend Merit. I don't think I've sent anybody enough sMerit to rank up from just my supply. That means users need the opinion (and Merit) from multiple other users.

I think many people don't realize yet that Merit doesn't mean "I agree", posts can be worth reading, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have to agree with them.

I think merit abuse is a fair exception to this list, and many people have been sending Merit to shitposts with the sole purpose of ranking up.

Agreed.

Absolutely.

That includes our right to try to keep sMerits away from the Twitbook bounty hunters.

Yes. Some people have been acting like Merit Police recently. I am quite sure this is not what Satoshi's spirit would have supported.

If people gain Merit, they all have the liberty to decide what to do with it.

Every single member has the right to decide for himself which posts deserve his hard-earned sMerits. Sarcastic remarks, statistics, images or not, Merit or decentralization analysis or whatever... In the end, a quite surprising mix of high-Merited members might come out of that...

I had to do something, my merits are still wet.

Yeah, of course, so we must just change our mindset and don't judge others if they give someone 5 merits for some post we don't agree or think that deserves that, or give merits to the same person if this person is doing a pretty decent job (I say that because sometimes I stop myself of giving merits to one user I've recently merited, just in case, you Know). I think most of us more or less "know" each other, meaning that it's clear that none of us are farmers or merit-sellers, and each of us has our own policy, our own favorite board, etc. So lets us be.
We need to show newbies and other ranks that it is possible to rank-up if you have a decent behavior. If they have hope and see results, probably few will change their mind and be more careful about their own posting history.


Wild JC!!!!

Seems like you pulled it out of my mind  
I had roughly something like this in mind. The problem is, you can not set a standard when it comes to give merits. Different people have different points/variables for analyzing a post to determine in which category the posts falls in. For a post which you will think it worth 5 merits I may think nah (!) it worth 1 merit (although I am out of your guys's league, I barely have sMerits), Jet Cash may think the post does not even worth a single merit!

But having a category in individuals mind is a good idea. It does not have to be publicly exposed and common for everyone.

---

Argentina are OUT! 4 - 2. Can you believe it?
PS: France was a better team especially Kylian MBAPPE. He stole the match from Argentina. Congrats France.  

I've become radical. I've awarded a few posts with 2 merits recently.

On the rewarding of 'normal' posts - If I have time, and I see that a guy has made a sensible post ( what I would call a useful one), I have a look at his activity. If 50% or so of his first page on the recent post list are 'useful', then I will award merits for the block.

No Merit for Messi today.

That might be one reason. I definitely think the system has worked, the amount of shitposting & spammers have dropped dramatically. It's not only me I have seen some other members are also thinking the same.

A couple of days ago we have an interest insight regarding merits in this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/analysis-smerits-per-transaction-and-smerit-transactions-per-post-are-they-low-4559515

But, in addition, even when numerically the number of merits seems stable, the truth is that the number of users isn't. Probably, that's why we all feel that the merit system is decaying.
Now, maybe that's normal. It would be interesting to see how many new accounts are immediately enrolling bounties, and, in this case, why all those members are probably don't receiving merits. On the other hand, I'd like to point out again that maybe this is our fault: I mean, maybe this is time to change our mindset and reward more than just one merit to the deserving people, because, being real, this is really difficult to rank-up beyond member if we don't give a "punch" too good new users, good members or whatever the rank. Just don't be shy, and if you find a really good post, why don't give 5 or more? Because of farm accusations? I think we are beyond that already, to accuse one to another when the merit system is about to be 6 months old, is kind of annoying. If oneof us reward with, I don't know, 8 merits to someone and the post is decent enough, let it be.
Besides, I might point out that is is also truly important to reward also to high rankers, because, as you of course know, if we want to spread merits we need also to win some (I don't beg, I'm just doing well with my amount, what I mean is we must not stop giving merit to a high ranked based on his/her position).
While some can be interested in, for instant, tech, others can be in society. As well as we spare our merits, more people will be rewarded, for we have all different points of view and different approach about what a good post need.

That's a really important statement with which I totally concur. Instead of dividing the awards in between "Bad and good", we mentally can change and divide it into:
- NOt bad= 1 merit
- Good= 2
- Very good= 3
-Awesome= 5 or more.
As an example, of course.

I've only been keeping track of the number of transactions per week for 5 weeks, but it seems to be stabilizing:

I don't think you should only Merit high quality posts: I think "normal" good posts deserve Merit too. Merit was introduced to stop spammers from ranking up, but people with "normal" good posts shouldn't be should also be able to rank up.
Of course, high quality posts should receive more Merit, but that happens already and doesn't need adjusting. Ideally, I think good posts should receive at least 1 Merit, and high quality posts a lot more.

It would be interesting to see if this is true. If theymos can make a data dump of the initial sMerit distribution, it's easy to see who has sMerit left.
It would also be interesting to know how many users received the sMerit airdrop. Until yesterday, only 15159 users gave one or more away. I think many users haven't even touched ther sMerit supply.
As of yesterday, 180742 Merit was rewarded since introduction. Theymos said that around 600k sMerit was distributed.

Is it okay to promote my latest addition to my Merit history overview here? This is OP's Sent Merit (5 days per column):

And this is OP's Received Merit:

I can only conclude it looks quite stable!

I hate that, and I put a lot of posters who insert non-essential images on ignore. It's hard enough wading through all the threads to look for gems, without having to scroll down a long thread with quoted images. I usually don't bother to read the comment associated with the image either. The other advantage of putting the poster on ignore if he is the opening poster, is that the thread title gets greyed out in the index, so I don't have to keep looking at the picture.  It also saves my bandwidth if I am on the mobile.

Merit rewarding is drying up yes. I am also seeing people going back to the pre-merit era, where they don't care about their post quality, since people have figured out that, good posts don't get merit, whilst, the high quality posts only do. By good posts, I mean, if  a person has a good point via discussions, or if they help answer a query. The posts that do get merited are, if they are long, but yet constructive,or if a post is written with some humor. The normal discussions don't meet the merit standards and hence spam is spreading more and not less.

I am trying to find good posts that have been recently made but it is not easy to find a good posts. When the merit system was implemented, people started putting so much effort in posts and now they have stopped. There are some tweaks that need to be made in the merit rewarding and merit sources should begin with that.

Based on my observation, most merited post are those who have inserted images or clear detailed information where most of us find it helpful. I believe that most merit provider are getting more strict to judge that post since we are all aware that we are seeing repeated or similar topics here in the forum. Good posters are running out of idea how to contribute their knowledge since most of it was already raised thrice or more. Just my opinion.

I've got 74 sMerit which doesn't get touched until I've awarded all my current source merits. I'm not sure how you can factor that into your calculation. Also, I don't know what my source merit allotment is, it just seems to get topped up by a few merits every day.

Objectively, checking the amount of sMerit that is being awarded on a weekly basis on the Merit Dashboard (Global Summary tab or Sent Merit Tab), the amount is rather stable overall, being in the 3,9k-4,5k per week since the beginning of May 2018.

Of course if we scale this up to a monthly  follow-up, the amount of awarded sMerit has in effect decreased over the months noticeably:
July 2018:         17.768
May 2018:         19.807
April 2018:        23.482
March 2018:      32.141
February 2018:  48.374
January 2018:   39.170

Recently we discussed this issue in a couple of threads on Meta ( Incentive to the Merit Sources to Achieve their Quota? and Analysis- sMerits per transaction and sMerit transactions per post-Are they low? ).
The basic additional output is that awarding is very often on very low amounts (namely one or two sMerits), and posts tend to be awarded by one person or two at most. These patterns may vary a bit depending on the forum board we focus on.

What does seem weird is that the amount of sMerit awarded per month these past few months is roughly the amount that Merit Sources have at their disposal per 30 days (last I saw, there are 81 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 18.700 sMerit per 30 days).
We do not know how much of the aggregate sMerit Pool the Merit Sources manage to award, but in the extreme cases of awarding it all (which does not happen really), it would mean that basically only Merit Sources have sMerit available or are commited to awarding on the whole. As I said, that is logically not the case, but I would have expected a weekly overall sMerit of at least twice what the Merit Sources have.

Statistics may seem a bit of a bore to some, but the give us some solid insights which normally surpass our intuition and, on occasions, ament it (as I often find myself). 

I'm still finding it hard to award merits. I'm back at about a hundred again, and I've started several threads to try to award them, but it is still difficult. Maybe I've got too many people on ignore for begging, merit abuse, and over-quoting. or maybe I set my standards too high. Also, I quit some boards if they are full of Twitface and bounty threads. Maybe I put too much emphasis on looking for newbies and juniors as well.

It's really up to the members who want merits. Post some construcvtive and useful posts, and think about them before you hit the post button.

If some of you senior members want to try for some merits, I've opened up my discussion threads on the beginners board to all members ( even Satoshi ). I could do with some cleanup posts, as there is a fair bit of misinformation in the threads. I'm trying to avoid doing it myself as the threads are supposed to be merit generators.

Don't know how you are doing this. But I am indeed actively rewarding people with my modest pile of sMerits.

Not just another Merit statistics post or hidden begging, but posts helping other people, or with an interesting "fresh" vision on some debate or subject about crypto. I keep a reserve of 5-10 sMerits for posts I read along the way, and if I go over 10, I try to actively search and reward immediately.

I suppose it's different when you're Legendary, but as a lower level members, like me, it would be very dishonest to wish and hope to go up in rank, if you don't reward others either.

PS: Argentina vs France livestream here:
https://neosportek.blogspot.com/p/world-cup.html

Oh me too, I reckon France 1-2 Argentina. Messi is about to explode into this World Cup after a slow start I think.

It's not only me I have seen some other members are also thinking the same.

There could be other variables too like: people are bored now, they don't care enough spending time on searching for good posts, merit review topics are ending up in off-topics section (I have seen some members are upset about this because the topics are not receiving much traffic) etc. I am not literally saying that all these could be the valid variables, I could be completely wrong in my thinking.

PS: I edited the earlier post a bit (just to inform). I am off now to watch France v Argentina   

I definitely think the system has worked, the amount of shitposting & spammers have dropped dramatically. It’d just be nice to see more posts being Merited. I think your last paragraph probably just about sums it up.

This matter has been debated on meta previously. It seems that some merit sources are not active, some others find it difficult to find (quality) merits to post but what I hadn’t seen commented on here is this:


That might be one reason. Everybody with certain ranks was given merits to send initially. Another one is that we need more (active) merit sources. On that, most people agree.

When I have merits to send I send them pretty quickly because I have a broad conception of what a quality post is. I don't send merits to shitposters, though. Others don’t send them so easily because their concept of what a quality post is is narrower.

Depends on individuals interest however my answer is yes. It's a big responsibility to the community for a merit source.

I think despite of redundant, repeated topics, there are good topics as well and members ARE creating more good topics every now and then. Thanks to merit system.

Since I am not a merit source yet (some day I may apply, I have this inner desire) and not good at data analysis like LoyceV, DdmrDdmr etc, I actually do not know the reality here however this is what I think...

Earlier everyone had their airdropped sMerits. Members did not realize how to effectively spend their sMerits so we have seen lots of unnecessary merit transactions like even 50 merit for one post (ignoring the abuse part of-course). But now people do not just throw away their sMerits, they make sure it's not wasted. So factually the numbers are getting lesser.  

Is it just me or has handing out Merit become a lot less common place now? I rarely see anybody handing it out now, certainly a lot less than a couple of months ago.

As a Merit Source (I don’t care if people know) I like to look around for good posts & tend to hand out at least 2 a day.

Do we, as a community, need to do more to reward high quality posts, should we be more actively looking to hand out Merit?

I guess when the system was first implemented those who weren’t Merit Sources had more sMerit & naturally would be more likely to hand it out. It’s been a while now though & lots of posters may simply have run out.

There has definitely been a big drop in the amount of posts I see Merited though.
If you still have sMerit do your bit, actively look to reward good posters.