Topic: Merit is a proof of brain concept (Read 883 times)

maybe, you are right, but, sometimes, i see posts with merit, and i don't think sometimes, that it because great posts, maybe only great sarcasm

If you've come here for the right reason(s), then you don't really care about high ranks[1]. This is the only truth in this context. Everything else is either bullshit or an excuse ("early members unfair advantage", "elitists", "you wouldn't rank up with a new account either" et. al.).
To everyone new joining here: You deserve nothing[1], and you are entitled to nothing[3].

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[1] Users do care about passing some initial ranks due to use limitations.
[2] Making XYZ shitposts that you think are "quality contributions" doesn't mean that you deserve anything.
[3] If you think that you are, then you are an delusional idiot and not welcome here.

you should read all what i said 

It was also a joke that people can sign up here with literally hundreds of accounts and post nonsense everyday just to rank up and hence why the forum is such a shitshow. Now that's not possible without putting substantial effort into your posts. Lot's of people will rise to Hero member and a new user has nearly one and half years to get the required merit. If you can't get it in that time then you're probably contributing very little and don't deserve the rank.  

Registration date for this account is - Date Registered:   March 27, 2018, 07:55:50 AM

And it will rank up to member at the next activity update. I'll probably reduce the amount of posting with this account, as I hope that merit is a dying topic, and I'm more interested in the English language help topics. I think those would help genuine members to move up through the ranks, but it saddens me that so few members want to make any effort to improve their posting skills. Several members have already been promoted to heroes under the new system.

If you start from a new account, then you will understand what you see is just a joke, I do believe no one can rise to Hero member under the merit system

Why is this necessary? You could just as easily argue that it's then not fair to all the old timers who have been making quality contributions here for years. I'm not sure why you really care about others either as it doesn't effect you at all. You should accept it and be more concerned about making quality posts to receive merit yourself because regardless of whether it was retroactive or not you would still be in the same position.


Or these more popular posters tend to make the best posts? It's not a coincidence. If you're 'popular' here it's probably for good reason and they're only popular because they've made posts over time that stand out. I would rather not give my merits to those that don't really 'need' them but if I see a post that I think is deserving or helpful I wan't to show appreciation of it. I think it's helpful to others as well to show what sorts of posts are deserving of merit.

I did that, and I started to receive merits. It was only then that I thought I has better post the association.

The real problem is not getting merits for posting, but finding posts that are worth meriting.

You could find this out easily: make a new account without telling you're JC. Check how long it takes before you earn your first Merits.

It wasn't suggested that the merit concept is revolutionary. Post count is a proof of work, activity is a work limiter, and merit is intended to be an indication that you can actually think about the work you are doing - hence proof of brain.

Correct indeed, It may ne hard for new members as the older members that reach higher rank when merit system still not implemented but merit's goal is to organizes our post so that it would be easier to gain information you still did not know yet. But as you have know of it doesn't do that much yet until now but it surely does it's goal step by step. Yeah there are lots of new members whining about merit system and creating merit based topics but merit system is for bitcointalk to be a good forum and organized forum for everyone who want's to learn CRYPTOCURRENCY.

Well said. I have seen too that maximum Jr.  Members are expecting merit. It's ok they can expect if they make good post. But when I see they just want upgrade their rank only for signature camping, then I feel really bad myself. Even though I am still Jr. Member, I have not joined yet any bounty. Because I had joined bitcointalk for learn about cryptocurrency and I am still learning.
On the other hand English is most important for this forum to get merit. Because this is the most popular forum about cryptocurrency.

You touched on a good point about Merit question: Merit sources on local boards.
I'm aware about the theymos intent to designate local members as sources of Merits, but until now we got no success in applications of  brazilian/portuguese users.
Many users are already without or with few merits and in near future our local community may be stagnant.

well  there is always the activity  .. if the member own activity with no merit   it may make sense

also  you understood me wrong  am pointing to those alt high rank accounts  that  only do bounties  ( i think i replied to a specific post  that talk about rank farming  before the merit system   )

Edit :  

fair enough    like in the bounty campaign that people who complain about merit join  [ first come first serve ]  you don't like that ?  then work for it and post better contents .

And if someone decides to take a break from the forum?  

Should we also go back and start re-meriting every post ever made so that old members get their "fair share" of merits? That idea was also brought up at some point. It's all quite meaningless though. The merit system has been designed to curb shitposting going forward. It's not going to give you some sort of retroactive social justice. Focus on your own merits. Start with punctuation.

The most popular posters are popular because they make good posts. It's hardly surprising that they are awarded merits.

Your points are good. But I have something I want to bring to your notice if you never realised it before now. First the merit system is not fair to everyone. Most constructive posters, don't see their posts being merited as people hardly give out their merit points. Another thing I have noticed about merit is that people only merit most popular posters even when it's clear those being merited don't need the merit for anything. To me, I have no issues with the merit system all I can say is that I'm happy I discovered crypto when I did.

Quoting this for the new page.. Newbies need to realise that life is not fair.

hey  then why not make it fair to all of the members of BTT forum and implement a complementary system that  reduce  high rank members merits ( and if accumulated  it will reduce rank ofc )  if they dont get new merit in a certain time     . i mean they are heroes and  full members   it should be easy to get 1 merit  since they have more experience in the forum  

that will for sure expose those fake rank members  that simply take from the forum with no giving back or contribution to make it better  


 

Quite ironic isn't it? All shitposters/spammers blabbering their mouth about the merit system and yet they don't exert even a little effort of improving their posts despite all the tips and tricks that other users who earned a decent amount of merit are sharing.

TMAN's guide is one of the most helpful topics out there and newbie probably ignore this because they are mostly in the Bitcoin Discussion board.

Lets equate merits with Bitcoin. I was a bit late in supporting Bitcoin, and I missed the chance to mine coins. I would like to build a Raspberry pi system, and start mining, I think the block reward for me should be 50 Bitcoins, and the difficulty is too high for my poor little raspberry Pi. They should change the whole of the Bitcoin algorithm to enable me to get lots of Bitcoins for a very minimal effort on my part.

All these complaints about the merit system are equivalent to my comment about Bitcoin mining.

I would of already been a Hero . there are plenty including JC who are close enough to the goal as well.

I agree with what JC has posted here, anyone taking it the wrong way need to read a few of JC's posts and threads. If local boards do not have enough merit sources then take it up with Theymos directly, don't make out that JC is an elitist as if so most of us that are active in this sub are as well..

I took one look at the post by tumis and put him straight on ignore. I didn't even manage to get to his posted message.
I think that illustrates the point that merit is a proof of brain, or at least thinking before you post. Given my opinion on posting large irrelevant images in threads, a large graphic of the world distribution of something may not be the most sensible thing to include. Especially as this thread has no racial bias, despite the attempts by some members to imply that it has. If someone posts using 漢字 (Chinese han characters), then am I racist if I don't award him with merit? A lot of the pseudo-english posts are almost as incomprehensible to me. The han characters are the oldest most continuously used system of writing in the world, and it has the greatest number of users worldwide. On that basis, we should convert the whole forum to posting using han characters, and then where would you whingers be?

This is a forum where the majority of the boards are English, and communication is by text message. If you aren't bright enough to read text, but need to look at pictures, then YouTube and Steemit have loads of such posts. Good luck on trying to get a picture into a linux or node command line, or an HTML tag.

Here is a post that I've just seen on the beginners board. It's crap like this that we need to block, so that we can have sensible discussions. It isn't racist to try to get rid of this stuff, it's just common sense.

Exactly. bitcointalk has been circling the drain for years and sig spam has been a problem as long as I've been here but the spam today doesn't anywhere near compare to how it was back then and the longer we left it the worse it got until it obviously reached fever pitch. It's a simple fact that the majority of people signing up to this forum are doing so just to earn and they see it purely as money making site. Most of the people here these days probably have little to no actual interest or knowledge of bitcoin and are only here because their friend/schoolmate/auntie/ dog told them they can make easy money here and we can see this in the sort of threads they post in or create. This is why the Off Topic and Politics boards are such a mess because they're often the only boards they can post something about. And then there's the dozens of threads that are created almost every couple of days asking how you heard of bitcoin or bitcointalk and they're filled with the same answers: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.35226256

When you're young, can't speak English very well and know little to nothing about bitcoin what are they expected to do? Factor in that they probably have multiple accounts and it's just a recipe for disaster. Something needed to change.



The only people who are complaining about this are those who's profit is effected. The merit system doesn't curb anyone's ability to post here but just earn and this is all it's ever been about. As for us going back to Newbie I'm sure most of the higher ranked users in this thread would have no issue in getting the required merit if that happened as we have no issue in making quality contributions. Many of us already have a lot of merit that we don't need but we got it for making great posts. If anyone else made them then they would get the points too, but most people aren't interested in writing anything more than a line or two these days unless they're complaining about something.

Welcome

You are very right about what you write.

But take into consideration the fact that the size of local communities varies.
And the mentality of each nationality also varies.

This picture illustrates it very well. In Poland, with the sharing of merit, it is weak. Compare what is going on in the community in Russia, for example, and you'll understand what I'm talking about. Merit - and the merit is not equal. That is it.








Merit is good," I admit. But why not make it better??



Quoting my post in my native language sub-forum. :

"
Inspiration for admins in the forum ?
Or maybe additionally (by the way) a new ico with a really big brand and a massacre community, which is bitcointalk ? = EASY WIN ?
Don't you think so?

Idea:

I think you could do something on a blockchain :-) For example:

All actions - actions - reactions of users on the forum - are stored in the blockchain. Each user can Rate and this rating is not displayed to anyone.
Later, e.g. once a week the computer system counts and uses an appropriate algorithm based on proportions and relationships such as:
How many reactions did the fasting arouse?
How many answers per hour/day?
What is the engagement in the thread?
How much has been given in the subject matter of the author how many others, what is the ratio between the dependencies of these people (whether they know each other or not, what are their ranks - e.g. preferably when NEVER before have they become CONFIRMED (to avoid "cronyism") and between such users who have the appropriate STAGE and lack of multi-accounts (including proxy, vpn and many other patents - KYC ;- hah))?

etc, etc

Alternatively, only at the very end of the human factor (trusted people who could sometimes react to something / correct / change) .

I think it was good to do such a system, but it would be good to think about it ;-
And by the way, the great project and the new ICO.
Well, gentlemen with such a potential and opportunity - lets do it "

We have different perspective to accept the fact why merit was implemented even thou there is a reason behind it. In reality the more attractive you are the more merit you will gain, and the clearer the statement you explain and contribute then you'll receive merit.  But the "merit thing" seems to be a racial discrimination because we have this "language barrier". Sorry for my words.

Yes that's right, this is similar to schooling, at school if you improve your study you will have a high grades, here when you make improvements and everything you say is appropriate and help others you will get some or high merit, at school grade here the forum merit will be given to you, so we should be smart here.

All people have to learn till the day their breaths gone away. Lots of things to learn, English, Blockchain technology - both its technical aspects and its services, the forum rules -which will change over time, merit system in particular.
Fortunately, in the forum, there are lots of available, free sources to learn. Forum members can not blame on anyone else for their lack of knowledge, skills, experience. They have their own time and should spend part of it to learn, gradually.
To sum up, I don't see reason to complain about merit system, which is - of course - unfair system (never found truly, completely fair ones in our lives). Let's think of its postive impacts on the forum and help to maintain such amazing effects over time.

Since these people really create admirable post that needed to be merited then why not limited the number of merits to be given to high rankers or restrict them to recieve Merit.

I think these time we could enumerate these people because we already have data's.

Ability of a member could develop in time but if members could follow great posters as a basis of posting, ideas will be just at ease.

For other members, try bookmarking the latest post of these guys and you will see great topics to develop your skills and other hot topics in the forum. Communicating with them could gain knowledge more faster rather than reading a whole bunch of shit topics and reading all the comments from top to bottom.

If you're posting here for "profit" and you're having a hard time - that's great, this means the merit system is already working.

Them guys keep missing our point because they do not know the struggle at all. Wish you guys would go back to being a newbie or jr member and let us watch you rank up. Show us that doing our thing and creating helpful posts will give us profit.

Imagine now for a second that all Hero accounts on the forum will be declassified with a starting merit of 10. How many of them can even reach the 100 merit for Full member Rank without abusing the system?
Imagine the whine.

Were you provoked by my post JC? is this you, showing your brain now? lol. I do agree with you even though this is in your blood as an English man to feel superior. I even sent my "letter of resignation" to theymos without pasting a link and accidentally clicked on send.

Sorry for my bad english, my tongue was busy elsewhere. it's not like you don't already know that English is not my first language. I just have to keep mentioning it.

Merit ideas and encourage the good efforts of members with somewhat bad command of English.

Yes, there is a certain level of mental ability required to earn merits. That does not equate "command of the English language to mental ability", which is the claim you were making. As Jet Cash already stated - posting incomprehensible English on an English board is stupid, posting incomprehensible French on a French board is stupid, etc, and that's how I interpreted those statements when I read them. I'm not gonna post gibberish on a French board and whine about not getting merits so I'm really struggling to see how the opposite makes sense.


You're bringing up some good points but that's a whole different issue. Local board users can apply to become merit sources. Theymos has mentioned that he's open to having more local sources. I don't have numbers to support or oppose your claim that "only a small fraction of merit sources are actually active in each foreign language board". If you have the numbers - please share. Keeping in mind the number of posters/posts in each board.

Oh, I have no sympathy for people who join the forums only to make money. I think it is great people passionate about crypto have the opportunity to earn some revenue on the side, but that shouldn't be your only motive for posting. The thing is, those people wouldn't be making quality posts in their native language either.

I think there are valid criticisms of the system as it stands in relation to contributing members of local boards. It is prohibitively difficult for quality members and spammers alike to rank up if they don't speak English, despite the fact that it is possible to differentiate between the two. For a forum dedicated to discussing a currency that is supposedly stateless, it is saddening that such a large percentage of the community is de-facto rejected.

I agree with that, but one of the disadvantages in having English as a first language is that there is no obvious additional language to learn. Russian or Chinese would be extremely useful in the current turbulent world, but it's a bit late for me to learn either of those languages.

btw, I can understand the need to post in Meta, but why post rubbish in Beginners or discussion? Also, why not try to improve your English skills if you want to make a career of posting here?

There are translation bounties for other languages and they are actually quite well paid.

edit: you think the translation bounties are discriminating towards English-speaking people, because there won't be any bounty for them?

I think most of these "elitists" are intelligent enough to recognize the quality in the content of a post, even if it is written in poor or imperfect English. To how many posts in poor English have you given Merit, MadZ?

Besides, the main language of this forum is English. Everyone is free to start his own forum in his own language - even in poor English (last time I checked, bitcointalkpoorenglish.com was still available).

No-one will do this because obviously... there won't be any airdrops or bounties over there.

And I agree those people deserve to be called idiots. What you (and a lot of other prominent members) fail to realize is that there are plenty of members who make quality posts in their native language on local boards, yet receive no merit because each board only has one or two merit sources. They have a right to come to Meta and complain about the system when it actually does discriminate against them. In light of that, it's laughable to dismiss every complaint by saying the user is simply too dumb to make posts with comprehensible English, which is what you're doing. The issue isn't that simple.

@Madz

I don't see why you highlight my points. To be brutally frank, If you post in incomprehensible English on an English board, and complain because the majority of readers don't think it is brilliant, then either you have a limited brain, or you aren't using it.

Mainly from the following quotes:


I don't see how those sentences can be construed otherwise?



Like I said in my first post, I completely agree that merit is a great addition to the forum. Spammers and Google-translators are a huge problem, and merit does a good job at combating them. That being said, I disagree with the connotation that low merit = lower intelligence, which the OP is pretty explicit about (see examples above).

Merit is essentially predicated on one's command of the English language, since only a small fraction of merit sources are actually active in each foreign language board. Should users not be allowed to rank up just because their native language isn't English? Members like Jet Cash act like the only people who complain about merit are the spammers you mention above, when in reality this isn't the case.

Take for instance this thread, a prime example of your average "the merit system sucks" thread. Notice how the OP actually makes the vast majority of his posts in the French sub-forum, not English boards. Reading through them, they look to be of pretty decent quality, however, he has only received 20 merits for the 400 posts he has made since the system was added (all from the French sub-forum).

I feel like a lot of the more prominent members are ingrained in the mindset that low merit = third world shitposter. As the example above shows, this isn't necessarily the case. All I'm trying to point out is that there are numerous reasons why a positively contributing member of this community might have low merit, and it is understandable that such a person would feel frustrated by the system.

When the merit system was introduced it really brings so many generic post however one or two quality post could be read sometimes.

You can't blame them if they have an upcoming (monthly) liability henceforth what you wrote really implied that most of the newcomers were just here to earn airdrop money in which case always had been the looped.

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It is most likely that a fraction of registered new members is genuinely interested in bitcoin as a general (peer-to-peer) payments not a place where oneself could have an insatiable temptation to create a new account for the sole purpose of ripping this forum off.

So I consider myself as a higher ranked user, as I'm at the Hero rank right now. (I haven't told anyone to shut up (yet), if they moan about the merits system). The point is, I do experience the merit system, because I was just 1 or 2 activity periods away from the activity minimum of the Legendary rank when the merit system popped up. Now I need to gather 500 merits to become a Legendary, but that's life. I've already managed to gather 10% of the merits needed, and I can tell you that it's not easy (it's difficult) for a higher ranked user as well.
I think the difficulty to gain a merit for a post is totally the same for a newbie and for a higher ranked member, because they need to deliver quality content in the post and it doesn't matter if the user is a newbie or a Legendary, the only thing that counts is the quality of the actual post.
There are also merit threads where sMerit holders do post reviews and they give away some merits for those who deserves that, and those few merits are usually enough for a newbie to rank up in time to jr. or even to member rank. If you really think that you don't get merits because noone is interested in giving out the sMerits, you should try those sMerit giveaway threads, they will be happy to analyze your post quality and will give you a merit if your post quality is fine for them.

Step back and think about your post, and what I said. Nowhere have I said that command of English is related to intelligence. What I did say is that if you are posting on an English board, then you should make an effort to communicate with your readers. If you do try to communicate with minimal English, and you complain that you aren't lauded for your efforts, then that is an indication either of low intelligence, or a distorted view of self-importance. I wouldn't attempt to post on the French board without first learning French, so please learn English if you hope to communicate on the English boards.

Where do you see that equation? It's not wrong to expect forum posts to be coherent in the target language. The only mental ability needed here is to understand one's limitations and not post Google-translated garbage.

Everyone must surpass the phase of giving opinions about merit through some threads . Plus, I think the majority of users have accepted the merit system   ( except some newbies and Jr members ). And  it is certain that this update  helped a lot to improve and develop many things in this forum and even the behaviours of users.

In my opinion, this is the way to get merit:
Hopefully that I do not see other topics,  talk  about merit.

Well I don't have any problem with merit system as I'm not part any bounties, yes I did try in the start but found it waste of time. I'm happy or pretty ok with it what I have received in terms of merits. Yes of course not to all my posts have received merits but i would say 40% of them.

Here I strongly disagree with you on "useful posts" some thing constructive and useful to me may not be as useful to you. You have your own measurement standards and others have their own. Your measurement standard is not the only yardstick to value the posts.

Also we should keep in mind may be someone genius one field but zero in other. That's why we have various boards on Bitcointalk. You can't judge someone but his single post.

and to follow those rules.

That should be end of all merit discussions. I will quote this comment again


Edit: @Jet Cash I have doubts if I'm on your humongous ignore list 

This thread is a proof of arrogance. Equating command of the English language to mental ability is an extremely elitist viewpoint, not to mention completely incorrect. Merit is an excellent addition to the forum, but it shouldn't be used to justify your narrow-minded world view.

OP explain it a lot though i agree because english is not my literature or should i say not my mother tongue so now it's giving me a hard time to say what i wanna say but then again this merit really serve me as a motivation to strive more , i'm not taking it as a hindrance to leveling up.

Now i'm improving myself to be a better poster though , and it's not how intellect you are , you just need to be a good listener and also don't be lazy to read.

And now i'm reading some books and also some thread too that can help me , to be honest my vocabulary is limited now i'm trying to expand my vocabulary.

I agree with this, but you're asking way too much of the average Jr. Member who only wants to crank out the maximum number of posts for his weekly altcoin bounty.  There are even buiilt-in spellcheckers on a lot of devices that could be used, but the fact is that most members who are only here to earn money could care less about spelling.  It's a major achievement if they even get the grammar correct in one of their typical sentences.  I really don't think they're interested in improving the content of what they write, much less the little things like spelling, punctuation, and the rest of the variables that make the written word beautiful.
And I'm so happy those days are over.  Let the noob shitposters bitch and moan about the system, but they'll either adapt to it by upping their game or give up.  Either outcome is a win for the forum as a whole.
No, it wasn't just last year that it turned to shit.  One of the first things I noticed even before I registered here in 2015 was that a lot of writing sounded like it came out of the Bizarro-Superman planet, and also that no one replied to any post other than the OP in a thread.  It was obvious very early on that there was less discussion going on than people churning out posts without reading anything in turn.  There are a lot of threads that ask a basic question, and if you read the replies you'll see the same answer duplicated dozens of times--and it's not necessary.  That's been going on for years.

You are over complicating things way too much.

Bitcointalk really turned to shit last year.
Of course, something like this would be implemented because so many spambots were using it to get money.
So just make it so that spambots can't rank up and they will change or go away.
It's totally fine.

But, on the other hand, all of these whining posts do come from somewhere.
Merit is incredibly difficult to get.
Supposedly, you get merit just by, "Doing what you are supposed to do and making quality posts"
The reality is that there just is not enough smerit to go around and their are boards where there are hardly any smerit being passed around at all *cough cough altcoin discusion

The merit system is not some revolutionary proof of brain concept.
It is just a system to try and regulate a forum but has turned out to be arbitrary at best.
That's all.

No, man. What JC is speaking about is just that: he, as many of us, spend time reading and searching for useful posts, for something that contributes us in something, either because this is an interesting insight or an informative post, etc. There are many sMerits to give up but few to deserve it. Also, if you take a look at the most merited ones, some of them are relatively new users, as DdmrDdmr, for instance. He had obtained more than a hundred merits in less than 2 months.

Maybe you are right in one point: the luck, but this is also related to the matter of being "wise". If you post in spam sections, or in mega threads, you are unlikely going to earn any Merit. Just learn from others and be patient. JC here is making some good points. Read to him carefully.

Besides, taking a look at your posting activity, this is the third time you copy-paste the very same words in three different threads. Copy-pasting is against the forum policy, so it is going to be difficult for you to earn any merit.

OK - I'll be brutally frank. The responsibility of the senior members is to help to rebuild the forum, and pull it out of the cesspit that it was becoming. I understand that there are over 4.000 new registrations every day, our responsibility is to help prevent most of them from polluting the boards, and covering the good posts by potentially valuable members with weeds and rubbish.

We don't have any responsibility to any new members, but we may choose to help those who are interested in the forum and in crypto. As a new member, your responsibility is to respect the forum, and to respect the members who have spent many years in helping to build it. Put aside your greed, and your desire to freeload on our efforts, and stop and think what you can offer to the community.

   Higher ranking users kept saying we should shut up and stop ranting about the merit system but they did not experience it in the first place. Sure, having a merit system may reflect on the capability of a user to create useful posts, but how about the responsibility of those who own sMerit? Who has the eagerness to read replies in a thread and give merit? It's actually too hard and a matter of luck. No matter how you construct posts, if no one who has sMerit will recognize it, you can't get one.

First off - apologies for starting yet another merit thread, and I'll explain my reason for starting it.

I think we are entering a period of great financial and economic change, and I would like to be able to discuss this as the events start to unfold. Bitcoin Talk is probably the best place to do this, because of its associations with Bitcoin and crypto-currencies. Without a substantial improvement to the boards, BT is unlikely to attract many of the significant players in the emerging markets. I would like to try to help achieve this improvement, but I'm not sure of the best way to do this. I try to award merits to encourage members to prepare for this future, but I seem to find more members to ignore, than to award with merit. I've attempted to help posters to improve their communication skills in English, but I have had very limited success with this.

I have come to the conclusion that many posters have no interest in the stability of the forum, or in trying to improve their earning potential, and at some stage the forum will have to lose them. This can be done by banning them, removing their earnings through the board, or by educating them. I started this thread in the hope that some of the people complaining about the merit system will realise that their complaints just highlights their own weaknesses and inabilities, I had hoped that we could help a few of the new members to build their skills and knowledge, but you can't help people who won't help themselves.

Proof of effort.


Well it's probably almost impossible to achieve a high rank if you can't speak English or articulate yourself very well. People got used to just being able to rise through the ranks by merely posting whatever generic posts they could be bothered making over time but that was the problem. You could literally have as many Hero accounts as you wanted just by logging in once a day to claim a giveaway and 1.4 years later you'd have an arsenal of Hero accounts farmed to do what you want with. Now this isn't the case. Not only will you have to put effort into your posts they also have to stand out enough to be merited which isn't as easy as it sounds.

I see a lot of posts in meta section moaning for removing merit or merit is not fear etc etc. Seems like they are trying to say, receiving merit is Impossible. Sure it's not easy but it not impossible, it's just difficult IMO. Guess what(!), it was suppose to be difficult or spammers would be receiving it very easily with their one line/ few words "thank you", "very good project" etc. type of posts. It would not have any difference with activity count.

Yes, your realisations make sense:
1. Activities to control number of posts
2. Trust is representing morality/ethics
3. Merit is a reflection of intellectual presentation

PS: I am having a feeling... I guess I exchanged slimier opinion in another topic long ago, not sure.
 

I've read so many threads and posts about merit, and I've come to realise that the real problem with the merit system is that it rewards meritorious posters. Post count is just a simple count of the number of posts made, regardless of content or benefit to forum members. Activity is a limiter to control the rewards for over-active posters. Trust is a comment on trading morality, and the honesty of a member. Merit is a reflection of the mental ability of the poster, and his willingness to follow community guidelines on posting. If you don't have the ability or intelligence to construct useful posts, then of course you will see merit as discriminating against you. The sensible member will endeavour to develop his abilities to take advantage of the verdant pastures that surround the cesspit.

It isn't too difficult to improve your posting skills. The first task is to read the rules, and to read the thread before you post in it. The second task is to ensure that your post can be understood by your readers. This means you should check for typing errors and misspellings before you hit post. If English isn't your first language, then try to ensure that your sentence structure follows the rules of English, and isn't just a word translation of your local language.