Topic: Merit giveaway: is it a good idear? - page 3. (Read 1072 times)

Where? It would be ironic if i wanted to discuss stricter giveaway rules whilst at the same time giving my own merit to spammers... But...
I don't think i'm giving away my merits to people that don't deserve them. If anything, i should probably merit MORE newbies, but i think i might be a bit to strict when giving merits.


A quick search resulted in loads of merit giveaways... A small section (just the first page of search results):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5177856.20
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/anti-spam-merit-giveaway-for-junior-members-only-updated-2828412
https://https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5200267.0
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-giveaway-for-forum-contributions-5124596
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-giveaway-5177856
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-giveaway-good-quality-post-5239568
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reaching-2000-merits-merit-giveaway-5271955
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-giveawayprovide-a-link-of-your-post-that-you-think-it-deserves-a-merit-5195943
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-giveaway-for-quality-post-5137880
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215727.40

Now, don't get me wrong... I didn't look into these links, so i have no idear how high they set their bar... But with so many giveaways, do you think none of them are ranking up shitposters, scammers or account farmers? So, is it so bad to discuss this? If you think everything is fine and nothing should be discussed, i'm afraid this thread is not for you.. You're welcome to stay and discuss tough...


Everybody is free to do with their merits what they want to do...
However... I remember a time when account sales were pretty common. Sure, they were frowned upon a little bit, but no negative trust was given for them. There were some DT1 members that were specialised in account sales.
If nobody started discussing account trades, it would still be common practice...

But back to the subject matter... Yes, i want to prevent SOME newbies from ranking up... On the other hand, i'd like to see more newbies that actually want to be a member of our community ranking up. That's an other side to this discussion... On the one hand, i think there should be community guidelines (as there are for altcoin giveaways, account sales, doxxing) that outline expected behaviour in case of a merit giveaway. On the other hand, there should be more initiatives to filter out people that actually belong in this community and merit them.

But i get the feeling nobody else thinks this is worth discussing... So i might aswell close this topic in a couple of hours...
 

Why such irony? Even if such rules were to be made nor to be clarified for a pending new rule about such giveaways, like stompix have said, what would it do to the community? Maybe better try thinking of rules that regards with making merit giveaways, then have you think that it answers a problem? Or rather better ask first, is such problem do really exist? Other than ImThour's merit giveaway, what are other giveaways that you can say having a low bar to the standards of merit system?

TBH, I don't found any problems with the current giveaways by other users. And I also see that the users that giveaways merits with their programs or any other activities they require would not violate nor contradict the main reason why the forum implied merit system.

Furthermore, I still understand why you wanted this discussion to be tackled, and I guess it is because to prevent further newbies to rank up still being not worthy at all. But still, consider thinking about my previous questions.

Not so sure about the different opinions 

OP probably has thought of doing something good, making newbies read the forum rules, but he indeed set the bar way to low.
The responses which got merited were just 2 extra seconds fo work from #proof of authentification, copy paste a text and get merited, he could have at least asked them to comment why they thing one rule is a net positive or why they disagree with another rule, force them to think at least for a few seconds and write something on their own.

But, I doubt it will cause anything significant, even if he wouldn't have stopped or a few others try to copy him, a few 10-20 users getting one merit is nothing, one rogue legendary could have made more damage with a single dormant account and his airdropped merit.



And what would the community be able to do with the set rules?
Tagging users for abusing merit would never work, theymos was against it, adding them to the distrust list means nothing, so...as long as you can't enforce them there is no point having them at all.

Well... I'm not looking for new rules per se... I'm just polling if there's community consensus on how to respond to such threads.

The thing is: we're batteling scammers and spammers and account farmers, but if we only focus on the accounts themselfs, we're doing nothing about their influx. But if we stop these people from ranking up, they'll never be able to wear a signature, sell their accounts, have less time between posts, have a rank that makes them more trustworthy in the eyes of their victims.

I'm not looking for a ban on merit giveaways, i'm defenatly not looking at attacking giveaway thread starters in any way... I'm looking at some community vetted ground rules, some guidelines on how to proceed if you want to give away your merits.

I wrote about this in my interview. I know some people might not like my opinion but it is mine and it will be a lie if I say different than what I thought.

In 2018, I struggled to earn my first merit and it is truly a big challenge to rank up to Full member rank. Things change (as it always changes in life), nowadays it is easier to earn merits especially if we're mentioning about newbies.

Merit sources are easier to dump their sMerits on posters. I'd not say what they are doing is wrong. Being a merit source is a non-salary work but "Do all receivers of such huge sMerit dumps deserve from their contributions?" Some do deserve whilst some don't for such over-give merit (theymos' words). I know what theymos said about his opinion on it but there are open gates for shady abuse and I expect to see some receivers will demote to low quality posters again. It destroys what merit system is created for.

There are some factors for this trend:

• Less total merit sources
• Higher monthly smerit allocation for each
• Less time to scan around the forum to find good posts that easily to be covered by shitposts
• Less observers on merit distributions (abuses)

---

theymos

I don't think his way of giving Merits away was the best of ideas, but in the end, he deserved his sMerits in a fair way I suppose, so he can do whatever he feels like with them. Better than selling them or sending them to alt accounts.

We're already having a hard time enforcing the existing rules, so it would probably be a bad idea to add new ones...

Again, I'm not saying his idea was a splendid one, but let's get rid of spammers, scammers and shitposters first, and successfully enforce the existing rules first, before we start inventing even more rules.

While I think that merit giveaways based on newbies highlighting good are a positive thing; handing out merits for little to no effort just so brand new accounts can move up the ranks is rather detrimental and kinda runs against what merits are for.

As long as it's not turning into a trend I don't really see it as a problem though, since any outlier doing this will run out of smerits soon enough.

@Casdinyard: well, actually i'm trying to have a broader discussion... I merely listed the thread as an example, but i'd rather see if there is a community consensus on where to draw the line next time there's a giveaway.

Sure, this specific case has been sorted. IMHO there wasn't even a need for the OP of said thread to apologise... But what are we, as a community, going to do the next time a thread similar to this one pops up? Are we going to tell the thread starter his actions are frowned upon, are we going to ignore him, are we going to encourage him???

The link and the thread are already locked and even the subjected OP already had apologized for his actions.

But then you're right, Merit Giveaways are fine if and only if the people to be merited are really that worth it and not just because they've copy and pasted the rules then saying that it was their favorite one. Better if the OP of that giveaway made a challenge where as all newbies must read all of the forum's rules and explain it with either 500 words or point certain ideas and explain it thoroughly - that would be a giveaway with a much sense. Also, there are a lot of users out there that giveaways merit but if the users replies with their recent good topics or replies that they think are worth to be merited. Which is also a good and fine idea.

Afterall, merit must only been given to newbies that one would think are worthy.


You've had a great point. But I think the issue is closed after the accused merit giveaway maker locked his thread. If the ideas and opinions have already met your queries, better lock this as well.

Hey,

I am the thread creator and I literally didn't realized at first that this is going more in a negative way rather than positive for the community.
When I understood point made by mocacinno, I locked the thread and I am sure there is no way I can take back the 6 sMerit I gave to the users.

This is my mistake and I am sure everyone of you might have done something like this in past, so I would request to forgive this time and I will make sure to not create any stupid Merit giveaway thread.
Thank you so much for explaining and helping me understand this whole system and I completely agree that this would have lowered the bar and the whole purpose of Merit.

Also, thanks to @Timelord2067 for helping me find posts and threads where people actually deserves Merit. I will be looking in them and helping the community in a positive way.

Regards,
ImThour

I hadn't seen that post (yet), and it does show how Theymos looks at the "issue".
That being said, I do think there's a big difference between reviewer threads and thread that give away merits for completing menial tasks.

Personally, i think even reviewer threads are a grey area... I feel like they increase the odds of ranking up for shitposters that made only a handfull of usefull posts in a sea of "garbage".


I actually PM'd the OP of said thread... And i'm 100% sure he had the best intentions and just didn't think his giveaway trough completely (something we all do from time to time). I was listing his thread as an example tough

I agree. The thread starter may have had good intentions with the giveaway, but the rules used allows it to be exploited easily. An extra point like; going through the post history of applicants to find merit worthy posts would help give a idea of the users being ranked up.

Merits should be reserved for quality content imo. Knowledge of the rules and application of it is great, but shouldn't be a criteria to rank up. A member should not need an incentive to read the rules of a forum they have been in for a couple of months or years.

Except a user has large lumps of smerits to dump or wants to generate interest for an activity, I would rather they give out merits naturally as they come across deserving threads/replies.

In general, I think users who aren't Merit sources shouldn't have a hard time finding good enough posts on their own. Merit giveaway threads often receive Merit, so that might be a reason to start one.

See theymos' post on the subject

I'm writing this topic after responding in this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-helping-new-users-must-read-forum-rules-to-earn-5276103

The OP of this thread is giving away merit to newbies that promise to abide by the forum rules and copy/paste their favorite rule in said thread. I can only imagine it takes a newbie less than 30 seconds to rank up this way, 0 effort needed. I quickly noticed two of the recipients were on my ignorelist. These 2 ignored members have now ranked up, and can add a signature and have more lenient posting restrictions in general.

This means they now have an opportunity to partake in sigspamming, or they can now make money by selling the ranked-up account. Neither of these options is very appealing to me.

People that know me a little bit probably know i'm not a big fan of ignoring people. I always try to stay friendly and helpfull. I don't ignore people all that often. I value opinions and try to stay away from drama as much as possible (sure, we're on bitcointalk... 100% drama avoidance is very, very, very hard... If not, impossible). As a matter of fact, i basically have to notice a certain username multiple times when they're actively posting crap before i'm tempted to read their post history. And only if their posthistory shows they continuously post utter garbage they'll end up on my ignorelist. Just to say that today, 2 crapposters got ranked up...

This topic is NOT pointed towards the OP in the linked thread, but merely to discuss the general stance of other members towards merit giveaways. AFAIK, the OP in above thread is trying to do some good for newbies, and others have done merit giveaways long before he started his thread.

I think there's a fine line between merit giveaways that are beneficial, and merit giveaways that are toxic.

I've seen OgNasty give away merit to people that have mastered the technical details of signing a message. I've seen people that allow newbies to highlight merit-worthy posts... I think these forms of merit-giveaway are fine, since they at least require a minimum amount of effort of the participant.
But on the other hand, any giveaway that can be claimed with less than 15 minutes of work might do more harm than good (IMHO).

I'm sure we'll see a lot of different opinions on this subject tough