Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 11. (Read 166645 times)

I don’t know if it is true that people are selling merit for $20/each, or if they are if they are able to actually get that much. If there is truth to that, I would say it is evidence of a market that is not vibrant and inefficient. I would see that as a good thing because it shows that it is difficult to trade merit.

I am not sure what has caused this. I think most likely, it is the result of self regulation and Theymos doing a good job of selecting merit sources who will not only refrain from selling merit, but also who will send merit to posts that are deserving of merit. Those who are capable of making good posts on bitcointalk, generally will have other skills that will allow them to make money by doing things other than selling merit.

Only if you never know how its history. There are many cases that you can find if you want to know more about merit system ^{[abuse & sales of merit].} If those two things are never done then I can assure you that there will never be any discussion about them.

The forum's mission is to be as free as possible. So I get that from theymos' perspective, a user is free to do use their sMerit any way they want. But that can't work for Merit sources, that would be like abusing forum resources.

That being said, there's also Global Mod hilariousandco who says:

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I really don't get that some people are willing spend up to $20 per Merit. It would be much cheaper to hire a writer and "earn" Merit that way.

As a merit source, I get my source sMerit from theymos. It is his sMerit that he has delegated to me for me to send as I see fit, but I also need to follow his rules. The only rule that theymos has for merit sources that I am aware of is they cannot sell their sMerit, although I also follow other common sense guidelines when deciding which posts to merit that might be frowned upon by the community if all facts were to be made public, along with speculation by some people.

The forum also believes in a free market economy, and part of a free market economy is the ability to sell things, even if people do not like those types of transactions. This is a concept that I strongly support, as does most of the community as a whole. This however does not mean that I will not think of someone differently who engages in transactions that I do not approve of (such as selling merit). As I do not approve of people selling their merit, even if they are not a merit source, if I become aware that someone is (trying to) selling their sMerit, and have substantial evidence of this, I will likely leave negative trust and support flags against those engaged in this type of activity.

To put the above another way, I support people's rights to make bad decisions, and their right to do things that I disapprove of. Making bad decisions, or doing things I disapprove of will be subject to negative consequences however.

It is my understanding that selling merit will not result in the person getting banned. Theymos said he is not going to be moderating the merit system. I understand the consequences of selling merit as a merit source means the person will be removed as a merit source, and the consequences of selling merit as a non-merit source are handled by the community.

With the above being said, in many ways, merit is valuable. Having merit will often indirectly lead to additional business opportunities, and opportunities for profit.

Merit can never be bought and sold. Merit can never be verified by buying merit in Bitcoin forum. If merit is eligible, then merit is available. Otherwise if you buy it after taking merit from someone you will not understand the right thing to do. Do random work because you are not eligible for merit. Then we will start monitoring the moderator? If you do random again, if you don't band the moderator ID, you will eat red toss. So qualify first I will get one at a time. Bitcoin will never understand anything.

Like RapTarX mentioned it would not be accurate to assert that such second paragraph was secretive, and there were several merit sources who shared that paragraph within days of the newly established merit system in January 2018 - and sure maybe it is not coming up or shared on any regular basis, but the contents of such second paragraph are not really secretive - even if they might NOT be easy to find where they had been posted at various earlier dates.. maybe even in this thread.. I have not browsed through the thread for such materials.

If a merit source sells merit and that's proven, theymos will surely remove the source merits and that's why that message is displayed for merit sources.
If a non-merit source sells merit, I don't think theymos takes any action. So, that message isn't needed to be displayed. (The merit abuser will only get negative feedback from other users).

I guess you have missed it either or you were not much active in meta lately. I have seen this message from merit sources a few times. I guess someone was looking for more source merits and posted this message when I first time saw this.

I don't know why the second paragraph was so secretive before that I can tell you that this is the first time the merit source has featured it for me. For the first paragraph I know that it is the message that is shown to all forum users in the merit link in their profile, no different from the one shown on my profile.

Perhaps because the merit source are those who are entrusted by theymos to run the merit system well, it is only natural that they will suffer more severe consequences than non-source users. This is just my opinion because I don't know what the term is.

I was merely attempting to be descriptive of what the actual rule is, and sure I understand that some people will flag or distrust some non-source member accounts for their behaviors.  I do believe that theymos specifically made that rule against selling merits for merit sources to make it abundantly clear and thus would give him a clear and unambiguous reason to remove members from being a merit source if they were to engage in such conduct...



Merit source members have a different kind of notice on their page that comes up every time that they go to spend any of their source merits that non merit source members do not have. 

It says this:
>>>>>
"You have received a total of XXXX merit. This is what determines your forum rank. You typically cannot lose this merit. You have XXX sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future.

You are a merit source. The next XX merit you spend will come from your source rather than your sMerit balance. Merit spent from your source will come back in 30 days. Unused source merit is wasted. It is not allowed for merit sources to sell their merit."
<<<<<<<

I believe that the first paragraph is the same for everyone, and merit sources have the additional second paragraph on their smerit spending page.

Imo, there should be no difference in penalties between source and non-source merit when they get caught selling merit. This may be the same as punishment for those caught doing plagiarism on purpose regardless of how long they have been here (new members or old members). JayJuanGee, I really never knew there was a specific rule about it because I just knew selling merit was something that was forbidden to everyone regardless of whether they sourced or non-sourced.

I agree with the overall point in which I also have doubts that merits are going to become monetized, but never say never if there might not be some other system that could be put into place that would allow for monetezation of forum activity in one manner or another --- if it were to make sense.

Regarding rules against selling of merits - that rule is specific to merit sources, so there may be a need to consider that non-merit source members don't have that same explicit rule in regards to their merits.  There is at least that distinction that has specifically been in place for merit sources since the start of the merit system in January 2018.

I don’t think merits will be monetised anytime soon, as selling merits currently mean immediate ban, as the sale of merits is one of the few explicitly forbidden activities here on the forum.

Having said that, merits are valuable, for the reason I tried to explain in my above thread.

I hope for that person's sake their merit ends up being valued monetarily. I didn't even know people on Reddit tokenized karma until months ago so don't believe you'll be finding me trying to rack up the points any time soon. That being sad I don't mind a motivated community member in a place its pretty much impossible to s*itpost for merit

Without focusing too much on this question, first of all.

Second: I wrote something that you might fin useful:

Ranking up is possible! 2900 Merits earned in less than 12 months!My 11 Hints!

Hope it helps!

My advice is to start researching other parts of the forum besides the local board where most of your posts are. Whether the point is that these posts are bad or your local board has no merit sources, the question remains for those who understand your language.

In a nutshell, be helpful to the forum and try to engage in discussions that genuinely interest you, there is no magic formula.

how can i earn more merit?

Just to be clear, smerits do not decay.  You can hoard them if you want, there is no rule requiring you to spend your smerits. 

In other words, you earn 1 smerit in your smerit bank for every 2 merits that you receive, and it's up to you regarding how or if you spend your smerits, and your not punished (at least not at this time) for choosing NOT to spend any of your smerits.. they will just continue to build up in your bank as long as you continue. 

Of course, each rank also has a minimum level of merits that you must have received as well as the activity level has to be at the right height, too, in order to rank up to the next level.  Here's additional substantive points for link provided above by aysg76.

>>>>>>>>
Ranks and activity:

Brand New: 0 posts
Newbie: 1-29 activity
Jr. Member: 30-59 activity
Member:   60-119 activity
Full Member: 120-239 activity
Sr. Member: 240-479 activity
Hero Member: 480 activity
Legendary: Somewhere between 775 and 1030 activity

Merit:

In addition to Activity you now need Merit to achieve each rank. The required merit is detailed below:

Brand new: 0
Newbie:   0
Jr Member: 1
Member: 10
Full Member: 100
Sr. Member: 250
Hero Member: 500
Legendary: 1000
<<<<<<<<<

You need atleast 30 activity to reach the junior member rank as you have qualified for the 1 merit required and only need to have 2 more activity left to rank up.As said it is distributed every two weeks

You have received 1 merit but you cannot send any merit to other members as you don't have any smerit which every member recieve on 2 merits gained.You cannot save your merits and smeirts as they decay after certain period of time so be sure about it.

For further help read this: FAQ: Everything you need to know about forum 'activity, account ranks and merit

Best wishes to you.

activities are given every two weeks. in the next activity distribution, you'll get another 14 activities as long as you made a post inside the two weeks period.

you can't send your merit but you can send sMerit. you can get 1 sMerit(sendable merit) every time you get two merits.

I suggest reading this thread Newbies - Read before posting all the basic things that you need to know about the forum, merit, ranks, activities, forum rules, etc... are in there.