Topic: Merit is the best thing that happened to new users (Read 1872 times)

Its quite worrisome to be reduced to newbie after months of staying in bitcoin. I do think this development will be of help to newbie at least to be able to read other people's post before posting theirs. The main problem is that everybody wants to post and those that have merits are finding it difficult to give out their merits

OP post with the needed information will be able to get the merits all the time in this section especially. Other than meta local boards like Russians, Philippines and other local boards are getting more merits.
But for getting merits you need to give the new updates and statistical information which is useful for this forum.
I understand the worries from the Newbies. They cannot able to rank up easily now since the merit system is between the activity.

I feel the need to say something about there "I agree with you" posts, because it's annoying me more than merit posts by themselves.






Look, we know what merit does and why's it implemented, just as well we know that the post is good because of merit given to him. There's no need for you to point the obvious to us.

Merit is not there to be chased after, because no matter how hard you try, if you can't post quality posts you won't get merit. Also, no one's forcing anyone to post quality posts. Can you post one liners and "I agree" posts? Yes. Therefore no one's forcing you but you won't get far with that.

One more thing. Think of merit as something of a marker. Don't pay attention to it, don't write just for merit and don't stress about it that much, because that number depends only on you and you can't force it to go up.

Such an author post really deserves a lot of merits, for he wrote all the pluses that appeared with the implementing of this system. In fact, I thought the same thing, and it's amazing that I'm not alone. Excellent thread, good luck!

The best thing that merit system has affected new users (newbies) in the forum is stopping them to start such non-sense topic.
Newbies should spend their time to read more topics, especially from Jet Cash, TMAN, Lauda, etc.
For newbies' starts, I suggest they should read those following helpful topics:
1) Newbies – Read before posting (Lauda)
2) TMAN's guide to getting merits
3) Tips – Guides for forum search This one is extremely important for newbies.
4) Unofficial rules of bitcointalk forum Please read it to avoid unexpected violations on forum rules.

Merit as not only the best thing that happened to me users, it spread its goodness down to even old members whose post quality has been really bad and full f scam. It has so far helped to correct this issue of low post quality and everyone now looks out to becoming better posters.

I’d say that life is possibly unfair in general. Depending on when and where were born, your focus and odds in life change radically and it is up to you to try to change that situation. Obviously, your personal environment is going to play its role here, as are your relations with other people. We were not all born clones of each other and thus life spans out in different ways for each of us.

The same thing happens here. We were not all created as users from an initial genesis at the same time. The higher ranks have been around for some time and that needs to count for something. Of course you’ll find counter examples of high ranked members that still carry on with their non-contributive posting habits like in the old days, but these I have encountered to be not that many really.

The forums has moved on from a trivial no-brainer ranking-up system, to a meritocracy. That is obviously going to be more difficult, but like as stated, so is life and so we need to adapt.

Yes that would be fine if it weren't for the fact that no matter how much I try to help and be useful in this space, nobodies handing out any Merit. I feel like it's allot of work trying to appease people and getting nothing for it.

As for me not much considered system of motivation to write good posts. After all, merit can be regarded as a resource. And any resource can be sold, buy, give, take, and so on . Don't get me wrong, but you'd better make merit more personal.

Merit is the best thing that happenned to new user ?
Yes maybe this is to train new users to be more intelligent,careful to make quality posts so as not to be easy to spam and not haphazardly post.

Its a great post from Kaar. BTCBTC

At first i thougt this merit system was very troublesome to me, but now i understand that by holding merit is to improve the quality of the forum. And newbie will be smarter again because will learn a lot to post quality, thank you....

Don't want to get merit for btc trading rather I would like to get them for next semester LOL

Let me quote all posts you made after posting this reply here :




Looks like some people are not going to improve at all. If you did a lot of research for making those posts, I advise you to save that time and utilize it for something more important for yourself.

Yea ofcourse I think that would compell them to research more and more to have good post that will enrich their knowledge

Yea its good that they are further been crushed by new rules. But anyway that would help them to set on firm base in the early stage only

I think you mean merited replies here. You are right about this. A lot of members here started giving merits in bulk to their friends or alt accounts just to rank up those accounts. I really do not see any point in the admin allowing members to be able to send 50 merit points for a single response. It  looks like that the admin might have left this loophole intentionally so as to trap the scammers. If he makes this thing clear in the next update and issues permanent bans for such accounts, I will be the happiest soul on the earth.

This is a problem that cannot be tackled by merit system completely. Different spammers have different purposes here. Some are here to be eligible for signature campaigns. Now that signature campaigns are also having some requirements related to merits, those will be controlled. But some spammers are here who use new accounts to bump their own promotional threads. They are not concerned about merits at all as they do not need it. Another type of spammers are those are making accounts and building potential activity to sell that account later.

I agree with that but best thing is that there will be activated accounts only. Neither spam nor inactive account s will be there.

I agree with you that the merit point is good for the forum. It is equally good for the users. It is not only for the new users but for everyone. There are older users who cannot rank up because of the introduction of the new merit system. Reason being that they have ranked up substantially before this introduction.

So overall, it is good for everybody.

Yes, this is true. Suppose a member made a reply in 50 words about some bitcoin exchange. Now it got 50 merits from another member. It is obvious that both accounts are operated by same person or they are friends. Many of such cases had been reported here. Some people are too dumb to make it evident I guess.


Of course, it is worst thing for shit posters. They needed this treatment for quite long. And OP mentioned that merit is the best thing for the "forum" but you obviously do not care about that and are worried about your own interests here only.

No never. its the worst thing. Now we have to work even harder to get promoted for bounty programs

I agree to disagree. First, you are right that they (most of shit-posters, spammers don't have ability to write good- (not high-) quality threads because they are lack of knowledge, skills, experience. Most of the time they spent in the forum till now is for spamming with shitty posts. They don't care about knowledge, skills, then that's why they are lack of them.

But you are wrong at the following point. Right atittude is the first thing to change so many things. It's Knowledge-Attitude-Practice relationship. Changing attitude first, then getting more knowledge, and finally changing their practices by composing high-quality, constructive threads.

Additionally, part of them have knowledge, skills, experience, by which I mean only small part of them are able to write high-quality posts, but they didnt' because they have no time to write such constructive posts (they are account-farmers so dont' have too much time for each account).

It doesn't depend so much on attitude as much as linguistic ability and how stupid and lazy these shitposters are.  Even if they're now extremely motivated to write very interesting, well-written posts, most of them just don't have the ability to do so. 

Instead they scream as loud as they can how they're writing posts made out of 24k gold and there's no one giving them merit!!  They just continually fail to realize how bad their writing is.  Most can't improve even if they wanted to. 

This is why I wish sig campaigns paid for local board posts, and that those boards had reliable merit sources.  I have no problem with these people ranking up, but in trying to do it in the main section, they're crapping all over everything.  They should soil their own house, not ours.

Still early days, but indications are indeed good. Only time will tell..

That depends upon their attitude. If they have positive attitude, they will change the way they write to better one, try to write better threads; and vice versa. Someone can change and adapt to new system will survive, evolve and move to next ranks.

merit system will make newbies to post good quality information to rank up in the chain

1) You are agreeing that newbie has less knowledge and thus it is justified if he does not get merits for initial posts. He can always learn and improve.

2) Upper ranked members do not much merits to give. Major portion will come from merit sources who are appointed by admin (and thus expected to be neutral or fair).

So, for me to understand this new merit system is that if your new, you need to really dig in and read what's happening in this community, once you, as a newbie, need to contribute to topics. I'm not quite sure if a "Newbie" will have the knowledge that, let say....A Hero Member has.
Newbies and those who do post quality posting, still are relying on the Peer's of this Forum (upper ranked) members who we giving Merits to give to those in this community. 
I dont see the logic? I've been with the community since September of last year and I've really started to involve myself into this community. I've been reading much on the Merits and how they are given and how a person can rank up. It does seem a bit unfair.

I'm sure that someone with Higher Merits will respond to this posting but the thing is. Even if this is a "Quality" post. I'll be pasted up. I gave my only Merit I could to the person who made this topic. I'm writing because I feel like it wont matter if I write a quality post or not. it's left up to the "Peers" of this community and I dont see them giving anyone much of anything.

So now I'll still continue to post and do other things like Bounty but I have and will still continue to post in here for my knowledge to the Newbies.

Based on the things I've said above....Newbies dont be discourage. If you truly believe in a topic then dont be afraid to post. Dont do it for a Merit but rather do it because you are contributing to the community. 
Thank you for this topic. I at least feel good that I posted a "Quality" Post but I'm not worries about this community. It's All Good.

It's the best update, now the new users will be able to learn more quickly and will post quality posts and that will help them get more merit points based upon their quality Post.

I think it's a good thing happen with all members in this forum , not only new members but theymos actually needs a tweak on reducing the requirement merit for Member and Full Member cause in my personality , it's quite high.

Indeed,As a newbie i admit that this makes a model for me,and do what i can to be a good member to the forum.

Perseverance,eagerness and attitude that the OP possess made him a great poster.This should be an example for all the people who keeps on complaining about the merit system.Besides, the system itself is not the problem but the people who can't accept it and makes this community worse.

Its a great post from Kaar. And I surely agree with him .It proves that really the merit system is working fine. One merit from me!

Yes and many beginners will learn the quickest way as possible with the use of merit system. Because there are many beginners that tend to post useless to rank up quickly.

Thats really cool. I dont have many merits but based on what you said I'll send you one. thats how we evolve.
 

Only for Hero Members with over 750 activty, my dear, and if you don't believe me look at my activity and compare it with my rank
Jokes apart, theymos has in fact mentioned once that also lower high ranking members who were about to grow in rank at the moment of the change of rules should eventually be given the missing merits after a rewiew of their posting history, or something like that, but I didn't see any traces on the forum of this having ever happened, at least no-one has mentioned cases in this meta area of the forum.

The admin made some adjustments for such unlucky members.

Great post I have been really not in favor in this merit system when I first saw it but when I read something about it I found out that this is a really good thing for all of us,
For all of the forum users this would really lessen those spammer,account farmers and other's who are abusing the forum.
These would make the forum much more informative I was here because one of my friends told me about this forum that I could learn somethings about crypto currencies by this forum,
And I learn how to trade what to do in crypto's and learn to be patient.

But what would you suggest? Moderators deleting the supposed useless posts and threads? I agree that it would probably be an easy decision in some cases, but this could be easily compared, or at least confused, with censorship. Mods already created the serious discussion board, and now they can try to promote a "subjective metric" (because it's still based on opinion, but there is no way to do it in any other way) on how good or valuable are the users contributions in terms of contents to this forum.

I don't believe that that is a good use of sMerit, all it does is highlight the fact that posts are getting swamped, and the ony way to fix that is through moderation.

I think we need to trust the mods for doing this control. Don't forget we don't have those many merit sources. Right now we only have 57 so it's easy to keep an eye on them (you can see that in the merit stats https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats). Of course that few merit sources could be a problem in my opinion, for the reasons I've mentioned.


This will not be a problem. Don't forget that you can only spend half the merit you received. So in your example, after you've sent 10 merits, that user can only send 5 back, and you now can only spend 2 more (since you received 2.5, and you can only send round numbers). So you can't cycle.

Honestly am not sure if i agree with this or not.. i think a lot of new users (almost all) would disagree with you, but i gave you merit for the good write up on the topic

I agree on this point, the only real pity is that the merit system has not been implemented already a year ago, before the demographic explosion of the the alts accounts - I guess for reasons of bounties. To procrastinate further the adoption of this necessary measure could have been fatal for the forum.
On the other side, if I may joke on that, merit the worse thing that happened to old high ranked users who were about to rank up

I do not agree with № 1. I know several people who have studied the world of crypto currency, started working on exchanges, traded and held, but at the same time created their accounts on the forum much later, and they write their posts much more interesting and useful than many old men (this results in your No. 2 - about useful posts). At the same time, nobody will give their s-merit, no matter how beautifully you write. This results in your №4, where you write that it's only better for bounty members. Many campaigns make stricter conditions where you need to have a rank on the forum, not lower than Full Member. A person who is not a newbie on theme of crypto currency and understands this well, puts his earned money into some currency, but already has no opportunity to participate in the bounty because hi have small rank on the forum.

I am not criticizing you in any way, you wrote a very interesting post in a positive way, which now can help not to panic to many people.

With point number 3, I fully agree. Sometimes it is very difficult to find from the whole topic, really useful information, as many begin to deviate from the topic. 

I wonder whether will abusement of merit sources in the near future. How to screen or control those merit sources to do the right thing, in terms of giving away sMerits (sendable Merits) to others?
In the future, I guess there will be huge demand of sMerits for ranking up from lower-ranked users. Those demands might lead to negative effects and merit sources should be controlled as strict as possible.

In addition, there is also a cycle of Merits-sMerits in the forum, from users to users. It might be a big problem, too. For example, I can send my 10 sMerits to my friend, then he will get 5 sMerits to send them back to my account. In my turn, I will send those 5 sMerits to other friends, who will send back 2 sMerits to my account again. For those two two-side rounds, my account will get 7 more Merits. I can even get more than 7 if repeating the process with more accounts. How to control the negative sending/ receiving behaviours?

Yes, maybe it will work. I read a post where theymos said that he wouldn't be surprised if there were 100-200 merit sources in a year from now.
With a lot of good sources maybe we will not face this problem, or maybe we will without even knowing it because there won't be any signs. It's very easy for these things to become popularity contests, and I never was fond of those (damn I don't even have a facebook account).

I like hearing different opinions, and I really like to lose arguments, because it means that I've actually learned something from it, and that's why I think diversity is important and I presented this concern.

We do have 49 merit sources now, and there are also some users trying to make good use of the sMerit they now have (link bellow).
Maybe this will work, let's give it time.

(The user I've mentioned)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/smerit-post-review-2819141

What an awesome post by a new member and it is nice to see the encouragement he got from other senior members. This is how things should go on here. Instead of complaining about the demerits of the new system, we should try to improve our skills. It would be nice to see who among the newbies and junior member is first to reach higher rank like Hero. May be there are more changes to this system as well. I am in for this and will try to be on topic and detailed with my posts hereafter.

You know, I see a direct correlation betwixt hashpower and Merit.

Posting replies is the equivalent to mining BTC with a CPU. It does something, but not much.
Creating original posts of quality is equivalent to mining with current generation gear.


I'm sure there's an analogy for the traders and speculators, too.

decided to change the rating system? yes, the time has come, only it was necessary to warn all forum participants about this, so that everyone was ready. and so everything was done on the eve of January 20 - the day of recounting the ranks...

I agree. At least now there will be a filtering system that will separate the serious posters from the rest. When I started recently, I just posted away. But reading through the posts made me realize that there are those that are really serious with what they do. Having this merit point system will greatly affect the quality of posts people will be sharing.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-new-rank-requirements-2818350

I just logged back on and now I see this. Where's the link so I can figure out what the deal is with these merit points?

well, actually i am not good poster so this merit system will put me in problem anyway. but in other case, i agree this system can kill spammer from their non quality post that can make this forum useless. so i think this good system for every member in this forum to learn how to make high quality post.

however, i also agree with vegita, the merit amount which was credit to the account should be not the same for new rank member who have just 60 activity and old member rank who have 119 activity. i think it will be better if the merit of old member rank higher than new member rank.

i am sorry for my bad english.
thanks

You seem to have gathered all the positive aspects of the merit system, and if it works, we will get exactly what you have described, and that is a good thing. I do have one concern about the system, that I have already posted in the "Merit & new rank requirements" thread.

Since you decided to use your thread to make a comment on some popular concerns, I will leave a link to my post and I hope I can hear your opinion about it, because my concern is not on your list.

Like I said in that post (link bellow), I do believe that this system will give us the ability to judge content, and that is a good thing, but since it's hard to get sMerit points to spend, we might lose the ability to give Merit over time. Even if we don't lose that ability, since we get half the Merit we receive as sMerit, we might end up "censuring" some content.

I will try to explain this part better, so I don't get misinterpreted:

If I give merit to you, that means that I like what you wrote, and this probably means that we are similar somehow. Now you have more sMerit to spend, and since we probably have a few things in common, chances are that you will give merit so something that I also like. Even without knowing it, we are probably promoting similar content. I don't think this is a stupid thought, and part of the "matchmaking systems", and "content suggestions" from google, facebook etc, are based on this principle (people like similar things, and they end up rating similar things the same way, and you can match them that way).

So this leads to the problem I've mentioned. If we have a small number of merit sources, and if a user doesn't have a chance to get sMerit by himself, in order to keep promoting the content he likes, we might end up "killing" diversity without even knowing it.

Don't know if I was clear with my thoughts, and if this makes any sense to you, but I would like to hear your opinion about it.

Here is the link to the post I've mentioned (with a few suggestions to minimize the problem I've mentioned):
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28980629

You're answering your own question up there. In the olden days, an enterprising account farmer could rank-up ALL of their accounts by posting useless crap with very little effort. Create 10 accounts and gain 10x more rank-power than a comparable single-account user.

Now they can only DOUBLE their merits (e.g. rank-up up to two accounts at the same pace) compared to an otherwise identical single-account user. And it would require some extra effort to launder those merits without getting caught.

It won't solve the problem completely but it's a significant hurdle for farmers.

The world for a bucket of sMerit.

Not that I was looking before, but I've seen more cogent, rational posting on this forum today than in the entire rest of my term of membership. If I had sMerit, I would have merited more than I did.

Very short view: some improvement.

I completely agree with the title of this thread and all the arguments expressed by kaar.
However, my guess is that the merit requirements for higher ranks will make it close to impossible to most of the people to go beyond the rank of Member, and for the people who currently have higher ranks, to grow further in rank. How many merits will on average A GOOD POSTER (not a shitposter) get for every post he does? For sure not one. If he'll be lucky he'll get perhaps one merit every ten posts, on average. So a good poster to become Legendary will perhaps need 10,000 posts with the new system. At least, i would add. And we are speaking about someone who is always making good posts.
If this was the intention, well done.
Otherwise I'd recommend some fine tuning on the new rules.

You might be right but it doesn't matter because like gopaljiverma said there is simply not enough manpower to handle this. Especially not for free.

Exactly my point. People forget there are still moderators that are doing their best to prevent those abusements. Merit will surely make their work easier. Like you pointed, nobody said this new system is final and there won't be any changes. If there are many abusers like some people fear, the admins will surely address that.

Judging by your last post you are definitely capable of producing high quality posts (you even got a merit for it). Not all of your posts need to get merit, this is not what the admins intended. However if you try hard enough some of them will eventually get merit and you will be able to advance in ranks.

My (rather sparse) observations suggest that happiness with this change rests in why one is on the forum.

My hope that is I can click on "Show unread posts since your last visit" and not have 200 pages of spam to filter.

And now, back to my lair ... new mining hardware arrived!

Not sure about other new members but it appears to be the best thing that happened to you or sure.(Judging by merits you got). I hope other new members feel motivated by this.
If you look at the user stats closely , you will find that about more than 5000 new members join here daily and there are more than 10000 posts being made daily. Do you think that all the good posts will get spotted and merited ? It is not physically possible for 50 people to read all those 10000 posts every day. At such, most of the new members will be stuck at their current levels only. We can see improvement in post quality for sure and that is good for the forum (not for new users who want to gain ranks as well).

Considering that I'm also new here, I'm not sure whether I should be happy about letting the feedback of others hold me back from being a member.. Although I agree that this prevents everyone of us from posting nonsense, I'm just not confident enough in my posts that they are merit-worthy...

Yeah!
It will make happy everyone who want to learn and improve his skils w\o spam

Any info about merit fairies and criteria for evaluating messages?

This is the first post that I've seen so far that view the merit system positively. Well, I honestly view it in a different way, however, what you have said made a point. I really think that because of the lax community rules and regulations with regards to posting, activities, and ranking up, members of this forum abused it. Just imagine accounts ranking up by just posting registration forms, airdrop comments and shitposts. This community would die and will be flooded if this merit system didn't take place.

It's true that this would let new comers to learn faster and work harder compared to those who have started early. At some point it is a disadvantage, and somehow it's an advantage.

Wow I gave the kid 5 to take him to 10 now he has 20... this is proof that the system works people...

It's a good point to discuss with. In some cases this merit sometimes can be abused of course. I am pretty sure that theymos and other admins have already discussed this type of issues. It will then eventually improves the merit feature by adding other functionalities. I guess it still goes back to the role of the moderator. Any proven circumstances of merit abuse shall be reported and investigated. I was just thinking tho if the main account of spammer can really abuse it since there are limitations in sending a merit and if you are not receiving one then you surely cant share it as well

I think this new system also have that kind of problems, I've already seen some abusing this system.
Later on, there will be a buying and selling of merits.


Having people to review, will give unnoticed accounts a way to rank up.(An alternative way to rank up)
Provided, they have enough activity.

Even if you get enough people to do those reviews, it will be more biased and easier to cheat. Imagine if someone gets into an argument with some people who later will have to review his account. This will create a whole lot of new problems.

There are more than 5000 new registrations happening here every day now. A lot of resources would be required to review the accounts.

My first 2 sMerits are for you man.

Don't you think it's better if there are several persons asssigned to review one's account when they reached the number of activity required?
It's up them whether a certain account would rank up.
I think that many people won't get much attention in their posts. If your post isn't visible enough, though the quality is there, you won't still get a merit.
For sure, many repititive post will be seen since everybody wants to get an attention.
But overall, the idea of the merit system is great.

Overall I am also happy with the new merit system. As more and more people start to learn about the new rules, they will think twice before making useless posts.

I never said it's goana stop account farming entirely, but I hope you do agree that it makes it way more harder and time consuming now. If before all you had to do is post once a day per user to get your activity up, now you have to post some good posts too. You say that a person with a large number of accounts has roughly the same number of average merits per post as the normal user. I have to disagree with you. Even if he is a great poster, he will run out of ideas for good posts if he has too many accounts. Even if he doesn't it will be much more time consuming than to just spam a 10 word post. Lets say someone is brilliant and manages to do this consistently. That means that his already good posts will get twice as many merits than the average. This is not such a big advantage considering the amount of time he will have to spend on this collusion.


I agree that this could have been implemented more smoothly. I myself was a few days away from becoming member. Anyway, this issue is more relevant to senior and hero members as the gap is huge between the next rank. This has been brought up already and we might see some tweaks in the future.

For the most part I happen to agree with your long term conclusions.  If I had any Smerit I would give it to you.  The implementation was a bit faulty cause many members got screwed during the switch.  Some were 2 activities away from a new rank that has been here 6 months and is now the equivalent of someone who just got the same rank yesterday.  My personal feeling is that for something this drastic just give everyone the next rank and I think most people would have been fine with the change.  Doing it this way feels like a kick to the teeth to the people who played by the previous rules.

 

Great post, great attitude... level up fella

The reason I don't understand how this stops account farmers, is consider this:

Assume an account farmer with an extremely large number of accounts has roughly the same number of mean Merits per post as a normal user.
If he gets 100 Merits, he also gets 50 sMerits. He then redistributes these 50 sMerits amongst his accounts. Assuming he has planned this well, he should be discreet about it, and in the end he'll get 25 more sMerits to distribute.

Once you calculate the entire thing, you realize that for every Merit the account farmer receives, he gets close to a total of two Merits across his entire group of accounts, once you account for sMerits.

Counterargument:

I think this might just be the Toupee Fallacy.
You only ever notice that bad colluders are performing collusion, so you assume that everyone who colludes will be readily noticeable.
When collusion goes well, and with the merit system, I think it might be easy to hide, you will not notice it... and hence assume that the only people who collude, are the ones who obviously collude.

So in the end, account farmers get twice the merit across their accounts for the same quality of posts.... which is an issue, but I guess it's not the worst.

I have seen countless of threads about how bad the new merit system is, especially for beginners. Although it does have it's problems, I think it will be a very good thing for newcomers. Since other threads are mostly criticism, I thought I would share my different point of view on the benefits of the system for newbies. Some of the following has been pointed out by others already, but usually it was by Hero and Legendary members who have been accused of not being objective. I am a Jr. member so I think I am pretty objective about this. So why do I think the system is actually a good thing for newcomers?

1. They will learn quicker.
Although I joined only recently, I am a long time reader here. I used to go to the Bitcoin board and just randomly pick a few threads that looked interesting. In most cases there was a good discussion which taught me new things. Lately however, it's almost impossible to find good threads anymore. Even if there is a good discussion it's usually ruined by tons of meaningless posts. Merit will encourage people to make helpful and meaningful posts which will help beginners set their first steps in this world.

2. They will become better posters.
Before the merit system, there was no incentive for new members to try and make good posts. Even if they tried, their posts usually got buried under all the spam. There are always exceptions but usually the skills required to write a good post come with experience. When people will actually try to improve the quality of their posts, they will eventually improve their overall expression skills which are quite important for many other things in life.

3. It will be easier for them to integrate into the community.
When there is less spam there are more discussions. Having a good discussion with someone makes you want to discuss with him more. This creates friendships and respect among the members of the forum. New members will be able to join good discussions and acquire friends. This will surely make the forum a warmer place for them.

4. They will be able to earn more from bounty campaigns.
At first it looks exactly the opposite. Low ranked members who participated in bounties will have harder time to do so now. While this is true at the beginning, in the long run they will actually benefit from this. Instead of sharing the rewards with spammers and account farmers, once they advance in ranks they will enjoy larger shares of the prize. Before the change, it still took time and effort to go up in ranks. Now, instead of creating armies of accounts to get better shares, people will be focused on posting good quality posts. Atleast in my opinion this takes much less effort.


I would also like to answer some of the popular arguments I have seen raised by criticizers:

Nobody said newbies will have to post quality posts from the very beginning. Of course they will make bad posts, and this is totally fine as they are newbies. It takes 2 months before merit stops you from advancing in ranks. This is enough time to be able to make atleast a few good posts. Only 10 merit points are needed to become a member.

I understand where the concern comes from but I think it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Higher ranked members post better posts in average. That's why it might seem like only high ranks are getting merits. I'm pretty sure most people give merit based on the quality of the post not the rank of the poster.

Is this concept really that revolutionary? Employees are promoted based on the opinions of their bosses. CEO's are appointed based on the opinions of the managing board. Presidents are elected based on the opinions of the people. That's how most things work in life.
While good posts might be missed and receive no merit, if you continue posting good posts you'll get merit eventually. If you don't, your posts are probably not as good as you think they are.

I really don't see why high ranked members won't give merit to lower ranks, but if that will be the case I'm sure the system will be modified.

No this won't eliminate spam entirely but it will definitely reduce it dramatically. Antibiotics does not always work, does that mean people should stop taking it.

Unless they have a source among them they will quickly run out of merits. Also it will be pretty easy to detect such collusion as everyone can see who you give your merit points to.

While such members definitely exist they are not the majority. Most Legendary members have posted quite many good posts in the past. It would not be fair for them if their contribution to the forum was simply ignored. Anyway by your argument no problem will ever be fixed as there will always be people who abused the system before the issue was fixed.

They may not be able to prevent it, but it's not going to be easy. Suspicious activity will be spotted pretty easily and people can be banned or lose trust.

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Overall, I think most criticizers pretty much ignore all the advantages of this system and choose to focus on the negative aspects of it. Of course it's not fair for everyone. It has disadvantages and people will be able to manipulate it. However, spamming will be less incentivized, and cheating the system will be much harder now. If you have any thoughts I would love to discuss them here.