Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 2. (Read 167808 times)

In order to draw a line between a quality poster and a spammer, it is not enough to look only at the number of merits. Unfortunately, there is still trade in merits and accounts on the forum. And an unqualified spammer can write from a promoted account. Or a large number of merits may be due to the initial distribution, when the system was first introduced. And after that, the user practically did not earn merits. So, in order to evaluate the user, you need to conduct a more detailed and qualitative analysis, and not let the number of merits mislead you.


There is no doubt that merit system made a great contribution to the development of the forum and decrease in the number of spammers and trash posters. However, we cannot make a wrong conclusion that it happened solely because of the merit system. It is necessary to take into account the fading interest in the forums in general. Therefore, those who remain here must be quite devoted to this format of communication. Moreover, a huge number of spammers were associated with more opportunities to earn money on signature campaigns and bounties. Now there are fewer such opportunities, and this is killing the interest of those who registered only for the sake of monetary rewards.

The merit system was introduced as a means of separating the shaft fro grains, if you're a spammer or troller, the merit system will bounce on you and halt you down from growing, this will now advance to helping people know that it is required of them to be a quality posters, if not then they will remain on the same spot without ranking up, not giving a quality post may not result into ban since it's not on the forum rules and regulations to ban users not engaging quality posts, but ca results to being tagged and your posted being deleted or moved to off topic, the merit system instroduced helped alot to know those who are serious from those who were not on this forum.

You explained it very well and at the same time you gave your knowledge about the different aspects of the posters. I strongly agree with you that someone's writing style really matters a lot for them to get merits because the ones who are sending merits often look for quality and information in a post. If someone tries his/her best to create good and helpful posts which can promote valid information in the best way possible then the members with such posts often receive merits every once in a while. I believe that our ultimate goal should be to serve the forum as members who could provide helpful and valuable advice to others, and not as those members who often make posts to grab merits. Well, I have seen that sometimes even if you put a lot of effort in creating a post then still you may not receive good amount of merits for such posts, but that doesn't means that you should stop producing such informative posts. At the end such posts will always be appreciated and may also gain you some merits here and there.

I agree with you that the members who are genuine and they try their best to post as much information as they have are  really valuable assets to the forum. We all know that each person has different level of knowledge that he/she can share with others, but your point regarding the way of presentation is also correct. There are some members who have a lot of knowledge about the things, but sometimes they are not able to express it or present it in a way that most people can understand, and for that particular reason those members need to improve their presentation style as well as their writing style so that others can get their point without much difficulty. Those members should work on their writing style in a way that their writing readability score gets higher over time, and I also believe that using of online tools to fix grammar issues is worthless for the ones who want to improve themselves.

I'm also not a native English speaker, but I have spent a lot of hours listening to the audios of the native speakers and read many of the posts and books created by native English speakers, and that's one of the reasons which helped me to improve my English writing skills. Although, I don't really care much about my English these days but mainly focus on the way I present the knowledge that I have. I won't consider myself more knowledgeable than others, but I believe that as  humans we all have different opinions and point of views regarding things, and everyone's opinion hold some kind of value in it. Finally, I would say that I agree with all the points that you have mentioned and if someone follows them with pure heart for the purpose of learning things and then sharing those things to help others then they surely will be awarded with merits for their helpful nature.

I believe that I largely understand what you are trying to say, which is that each person has differing levels of personal knowledge, and sometimes they may or may not communicate their knowledge very well.

Their experiences may well still be valid, and they also might know things that other forum members do not know, but they still may need to work on improving how they communicate their ideas, whether they receive merits for improving their post quality or not.

I will also add that there are likely a decent number of forum members who probably should spend more time in terms of constructing their posts better to try to make sure that they are either communicating decently good ideas or making some kind of a point that adds value to the conversation, and surely I doubt that there is any kind of necessity that every member understands what they are saying, and in fact if they are communicating sufficiently well, then maybe only a few members will understand what they are saying, and whether they have reached a sufficient enough of a threshold of members understanding them, is not even any kind of a forum requirement, but surely, the more that they can get their posts to resonate with other forum members, then the more likely that someone will end up sending them some smerits.

Surely native speakers of English do have advantages to communicate more clearly and probably do not necessarily need to spend as much time on typing and rereading their posts, and not all new members want to earn merits, but if they do want to earn merits, then it will probably serve them better to either make sure that they are making some kind of a decently new point (and sure it could just be adding something in regards to their experiences on the topic), or that they try to write their post well and perhaps read through it a few times, try to lessen the number of errors and try to make sure that the ideas flow or are grouped in a way that makes sense.

Members do not need to be perfect, as long as they are attempting to be genuine and really attempting to add value (even if they might throw some jokes in there or some provocative statements), but if it seems like they are not really trying or they are being disingenuine, then they are likely to neither receive smerits and also some forum members might start to dislike them or even tag their account with neutral or red trust.

And, sure sometimes style can be helpful too.. so for example, if you are using the same phrases and references, then other members might start to get annoyed by your way of writing or they might lose track of what you are saying... and by the way, you do not necessarily need to be a non-native speaker or a newbie member in order for some members to detect some repetitive patterns in your style of writing and even to make fun of your way of writing.  I have had members imitate my posting style, and surely, I can notice that it looks like something that I would write, and I can recognize why some of them might get annoyed with my writing style.    .. but sometimes if any of us are able to practice some variety in the ways that we say things, then that can be helpful to better communicate some of our ideas a bit more clearly (and in less of an annoying way)... ..

.. even with all of this, I am not even suggesting that any member needs to give into the haters, because haters are going to hate, and you should not let the haters bother you or to direct you, unless you believe that maybe it might be the right thing to do in terms of taking some of the advice of the haters, even if you might sometimes end up taking some of their advice (based on your own choice) and perhaps without even letting the haters know that you are taking some of their mostly hater-motivated advice... and sometimes it is just funny.. sometimes haters are funny too, even if they hate you and then they tell you how much they hate you.. and not to make fun of them, but we cannot necessarily take all of these matters too seriously, even if they might have both good points and bad points all at the same time.

In my point of view, the most notable thing the merit system does is that it draws a line between quality posters and spammer. The higher number of merits below your forum names represents his dedication, contribution, and ability of that person to make quality comments. When i saw some posts that got merited i tried to read them all in case i might learn something new.

As you can see, with the understanding of what you wanted to say, many didn't succeed. I am not the exception.

As for the fact that it is not always clear in advance how useful your post will be to others, this is true. But if you always post only to get merit, you will often be disappointed. Each post cannot receive merits. In my opinion, here it is worth changing your own attitude to posting: write what you think is important and interesting, without expecting that someone will definitely appreciate it.

Yes, of course, it can be very sad when you joke somehow or share an idea that seems important, but there's no reaction at all. I'm not talking about merits, but when it turns out that no one understood your humor, on one even answered it with emoji, it's sad. But don't give it too much importance, just keep sharing your thoughts and jokes, and sooner or later they will be noticed!

No, not really, i don't understand what you are trying to say.
Users make high quality posts because they have the knowledge about most of the discussions that takes place in the forum, if you don't have knowledge about a particular topic, it is better not to post and to read, there's really nothing in between; you cannot think that you can't make quality posts when you are a quality poster.

In the case of I know what I know and people don't know what I know is very wrong, everyone has different knowledge and different skills, what others might know you that thinks you know all doesn't know it, hope you guys understand what am trying to saying? Sometimes people who thinks that they can't create a quality post doesn't know that their post might be of good help to another person.
I believe that the merit system is designed to grow anyone who has a quality post that deserves it, i haven't been here for long but this is what I understand about these merit system.

Merit system is not a direct cause of quality posts on the forum. Qualified content existed even before the implementation of this system. Moreover, many users who have been here on the forum almost since its inception claim that there were more high-quality discussions than now. Merits did not affect the improvement of the quality of the posts. They just contributed to reducing the number of users who spam.

Because such people do not have enough motivation and they stop visiting the forum. And those who write useless nonsense but still visit the forum, just do not get any attention, often precisely because they do not have merits at all or there is not enough of it. But still such users are present here and they continue to write garbage. The Merit system did not make their posts quality and interesting.

 And those who write well did it with and without merits. There is no system here, because the system presupposes the possibility of foreseeing which post  will receive merits. That is, guarantees are assumed. And they just don't exist. Because you can write high-quality posts, but you won’t get merits, because either the merit sources didn’t notice or ignored you, or those who would like to give merits didn’t have such an opportunity at the that time. And no one waits for sMerit to show up to retroactively reward a post, such a post is simply lost and left unappreciated. And such situations are repeated very often.

Like you suggested, there can be a variety of factors that attract the receipt of merits including persistence and quality contributions, but at the same time, quality contributions could come from drawing from experiences, showing actual interest in topics in which you post, helping members or maybe providing some kind of substance that causes them to think or even to laugh.  Some posts might not even be good quality in and of themselves, including that they might be difficult to understand or even in not so great English, but they still might receive merits based on some kind of an ability to relate or even that members have historically recognized the posting member as a good contributor, so they send smerits based on "giving the benefit of the doubt" to the post and/or to the member.

Another phenomena could be that a member (most likely a source merit member) has some extra merits that they are purposefully wanting to send, and there could be some coincidence (or luck) that they saw your post.. and they were not offended by it, so sent an smerit or two based on a kind of random serendipity.


Maybe the forum would not be "a place of trash posts" without the merit system, but it does seem that the merit system has mostly improved the quality of posts - even if there surely might still be some problems in terms of some of the subjective nature (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself), and maybe there could be some improvements that would come from the employment of some rotation of source members.. but it can take a lot of work to select new source members and also some amount of follow through that might be needed.

Just like I have said before, merit system has been the reason we have quality posts on this forum. If merit system was not introduced, this forum would be a place of trash posts.

You can noticed someone not posting as good as another person, but having more merit, but still he is having merits and ranking higher. People that are giving merit can be partial, especially those on local boards, but merit still ensures that posting quality on this forum is achieved.

I couldn't agree more with some of your points, because I have come to understand on my own, that more merit is often in a direct correlation with ones quality input or amount of merits gained overtime.
Just as you said when one has more merits, it's easier to simply add just a few more, compared to very low merit score(likes) trying to get more to become recognized.

A forum or community as this with more minds interconnected on a subject of interest is more spiritual than meets the eyes, that is why spammer are easily spotted without even seeing their faces or knowing them in person.
Writing is one that expresses intentions at the most, and any one of the more successful pleb here, knows that they got to where they are because they bared their intentions and kept a clean mind. It is just like I would say, they remained faithful, consistent, disciplined in their posts and organization and above all learned the terms, language, rules before even applying it fully.

It is the wisdom to express all that has been learnt in good understandable words, that makes one rank up.

That's why they say "you never know what the next person is thinking" and what you like might be what the next person dislike, just like the saying "another man's meat is another man's poison" that's how it is.
I feel whenever you have this recognition it makes it easier to get merit but it doesn't work that way to some members, depending on how frequent you are in the Forum and what you bring to the table.

Yes, the key word here is eventually. You never know when it is going to happen. Just because quality posts can be identified by anyone doesn't mean they will be rated. Very often, qualified posts get lost in the flow of discussion and got forgotten. And if ordinary users may not have sMerits, then the merit sources have them. But how to understand that the merit sources are looking at topics in which a particular user writes? I don't know exactly how they choose who they reward, but the likelihood that they will notice your post decreases with each passing day. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about the system in meriting, in my opinion. I will agree here with Who is John Galt?

You're right, there's nothing wrong with signature campaigns, it's an extra incentive to be here and discuss Bitcoin with strangers. If there were no signature campaigns a lot of users will not be as active as they are on the forum, it will just be a recreational forum to chat on when bored or when we have a question or are looking to learn something new.

It's only a problem when users spam because of it. Churning out redundant posts on all the accounts in their farm to meet the campaign requirements.

There are personal whims but majority of the time quality posts is universal and can be identified by anyone. The fact that a post isn't merited does not mean other users did not find it to be a quality one, but it could be they did not have smerits at the time of reading it.
Just do you and put some effort into your discussions and you will get merits eventually.

I agree, there is a lot of interesting information on the forum. I have already found interesting clarifications of some questions for myself. In this regard, the most interesting thing here is that among the members of the forum there are people who are very deeply versed in the topic, who can briefly and easily explain rather complex things.

Funny moments also occur, but I do not always have enough preparation to understand it all. To talk freely, you have to learn more.

I also see nothing wrong with signature campaigns, why not take advantage of the additional opportunity to get more satoshi. But this also requires a separate time, so I'll deal with it a little later.


Of course, I have little experience in this regard, but it looks like that there's no system in meriting. You never know for sure what others will like. It seems to me that you just need to take it easier: it's nice when you are noticed, but if no one notices... well, that's okay too!

Merits cannot be fully considered as the certain way to ensure quality posts. If this were the case, then there would be unified objective criteria for evaluating qualified posts. And each time these criteria are met, the post receives a predetermined number of merits. But in reality everything is absolutely different. Merits are often given not for a quality post, but for agreeing with the author. Therefore, merit turns into something similar to like. In addition, users give a completely different amount of merits depending on their capabilities (number of sMerits), as well as depending on how generous they are in general. And there are far fewer generous people than stingy ones. Also, merits are more often given to those users who already have a large number of merits. The less you have, the more suspicious and distrustful they treat you, and as a result, they give you less merits.

I will not deny that the merit system has had a beneficial effect on the forum situation. There are significantly fewer freeloaders who want to get easy money for spam. But the system is far from perfect, and it cannot be stated that there is a direct indestructible correlation between high-quality posts and merits.

I ant have this attestation and  so I can never know what it was like but, its not unlikely that there have been a shift.

Despite the shift, it's of note that certain systems like the trust system and even  these campaigns works in ways to correct the shift and one who seeks value in things would know what the forum has to offer to be more than bounties and signature campaigns.

Though some might have joined up due to campaigns, when you get to realise the value in bitcoin to he more than the forum and the information in which gorym offers, your must likely not going to stay away from the forum without the advent of these campaigns.

People drop by here to ask questions, verify informations and call out a scam. These works and add values to the forum still.

You make a very valid point. People are attracted to what they can benefit from; it could be some social app like Facebook or Tiktok where they can scroll around and watch videos if they are board, or it could be Quora where they can ask questions about pretty much any topic and so on.

This is the same with Bitcointalk; ideally users who register an account here has some slight interest in learning about Bitcoin or crypto. It's also fine if along with that they learnt about signature campaigns and build an interest in it. But some users have no interest in Bitcoin or the forum at all, they just want to make a quick buck.
They may have learnt from a friend that there is a forum where you can join bounties and get rich like that. The ask for the URL, register and account, run straight to the bounty sections and start spamming with no consideration to how the forum works. Until they need to earn one merit to rank up, then they start with the merit leaning posts in the hope a user will consider it.

The forum definitely has useful information and some funny chatter, but you have to be looking for it to find it or for it to be beneficial to you.