Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 148. (Read 167726 times)

I wonder if anybody was able to upgrade his rank from Member and higher ranks since the merit system was launched? Is there some kind of statistics about that? I suppose that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The merit system itself is great, but the merit limits for achieving a higher rank are too high. Is there some kind of review planned that could lower the limits down?  

Just to respond publicly...

Yeah, I'm not really a professional Bitcoin Talk poster and so I had not read all those rule before. That's a lot of rules, I hope my reply here is not seen as breaking them. However, the data list you provided is not what I mean by "stats." In general, statistics are used to summarize numerical data. But I appreciate that tracking list. I couldn't find it on my own. What I would really like to are summary data such as:

The percentage of accounts with sMerit that have sent sMerit.
The percentage of accounts that have received sMerit that had less than 100 Merit (in other words, the more likely situation where quality, not friendship or duplicate accounts was the reason sMerit moved).
The quantity of new account creation rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).
The quantity of new account posts rolling 12 month average (as of December 2017 compared to today's rolling 12).

Those are the types of numbers I would personally find more helpful in forming my own opinion regrading the effectiveness of this intervention.

Again, I personally agree change was needed - but this feels more like a dome was put over the city to protect us from the sun, but now there are two worlds - those living in the dome, and those living outside of the dome.

I worked on a location once where a huge fence went up around it. They created a deer problem because of the deer they trapped inside the fence. The merit change not only prevents spammer from flooding the forum (good job on that), but also trapped the deer inside the fence (not a great problem to have). The spammers now how a lot of sMerit and new users are discouraged from posting.

(Did anybody understand my apparent gibberish?  Pbzr ba, sbyxf, guvf vf n pelcgb sbehz!)

This is now totally gettin' outta hand! Take a look at this dude's Merit summary - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=349097. What a fuckin' joke!

Hello. You post good!

Understand your point that some old 'grandfathered' merit will soon run out, but I'm not sure the abusers are getting picked up. I mean, even in fairly obvious cases - If you check out this guy (chachacoin17) it is clear something isn't right. Its even been reported and still no negative trust here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.31751372

One way to encourage people to report questionable merit would be to receive merit for correctly identifying someone who is abusing the system. You could even take the merit off the abusers. Just an idea.

Must be an inside joke to refer to yourself in the third person because whatever could be any supposed other joke is not obvious.

This is now totally gettin' outta hand! Take a look at this dude's Merit summary - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=349097. What a fuckin' joke!

Hello.

I'm getting used to the new merit system, even though I timed my starting point badly and had to pay (not much admittedly) for the privilege of posting for the first time. Could've been a few steps up, but can't complain as for the first few months I was only using the forum now and then for reading, and wasn't posting anything. It has it's flaws for sure, but definitely makes you put the time and effort in to improve. [...]

The one thing I don't like is the obvious playing around by some where I've seen 5/10/20/50 merit points earned for one or two line 'stock' posts, but I guess that will gradually decrease as the system plays out. Onwards and upwards.

Wow first time I come upon a language Google translate can't decipher!
I wonder if he's just spamming gibberish

Hadn't heard about that, will look it up.

Hadn't heard about that, will look it up.

Although if everyone knows that they are actually a longstanding member of the community but on a different account, receiving merits from people who know them etc it kind of fails the point. I'm guessing no one knew when they first started so will have a look. Point still stands on other multi account issues.

You mean like @nullius? Search for him. Or @Blue Tyrant. They are doing a great job earning merits organically by posting great content.

Yeah there have been a few examples of high ranked 'older' users, who now have lots of merit, giving their alternative accounts merit in 50 merit chunks. From what I can tell, not all of them are reprimanded or get any penalties.

Also feel for the people who were on the cusp of becoming the next rank when the merit system kicked in - would have set them back quite a bit. Now while rank doesn't really matter for most things, it does make a difference on bounty signature campaigns so I can understand why people would want a realistic path to ranking up.

Most of the people who are pro the current merit system are people who have hero accounts from being on this forum before the bitcoin rush, and keep saying to 'just make quality posts'. I'd be interested in a well established member starting a brand new account without telling anyone (with approval from moderator or whoever to do this) to see how they go in getting merits. Would be a good experiment I think - you could do a thread about the outcomes.

Nice idea but then there's the following problem,
If obtaining sMerit become a matter of time, then spammers/bots/etc with high rank will also become a matter of time.
All they'd need to do would be to shitpost with multiple accounts and then use their accounts to merit themselves.

Makes sense to you?