Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 219. (Read 167717 times)

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Full Member=50 Merit, Senior Member=100 Merit, Hero=200 Merit, and Legendary=300 Merit.

I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them.

Hey, just a question!
I just click the "merit" link on my post (it seemed strange that it existed...) , and I saw I can send merit to myself! (I didn't click, so may be it doesn't work).
This sounds to to me as a bug. Can you check?

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that actmyname's ratings are outside of what I would consider appropriate, which is why I didn't take action to immediately remove him. But from what I've seen, it does seem likely that he is too trigger-happy.

So what are you proposing that be done against shady behavior regarding the merit system? Nothing? Or are you simply saying that *we could/should* tag them, but that some of the tag's by actmyname were unwarranted?

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.

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Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.

I think that tagging may be appropriate in particularly obvious cases, or particularly egregious cases involving hundreds of merit points and several posts. But generally you should start out by assuming good faith, and only change that opinion as the evidence really piles up. Tagging someone immediately after an instance of apparently-inexplicable meriting is too trigger-happy IMO. Even if it is a case of illegitimate merit, even hundreds of illegitimate merit points are not much of a problem IMO, so you have to ask whether it's worthwhile to possibly make a mistake by tagging someone who is merely suspicious.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that actmyname's ratings are outside of what I would consider appropriate, which is why I didn't take action to immediately remove him. But from what I've seen, it does seem likely that he is too trigger-happy.

600k  merits were not announced in the official thread and it can  be a rumor. That figure seems to be quite high for me.

Don't know how that system will work but I'm sure if you(Assuming you a source of demerit) start de-meriting them you get out of stock every month.

I think that tagging may be appropriate in particularly obvious cases, or particularly egregious cases involving hundreds of merit points and several posts. But generally you should start out by assuming good faith, and only change that opinion as the evidence really piles up. Tagging someone immediately after an instance of apparently-inexplicable meriting is too trigger-happy IMO. Even if it is a case of illegitimate merit, even hundreds of illegitimate merit points are not much of a problem IMO, so you have to ask whether it's worthwhile to possibly make a mistake by tagging someone who is merely suspicious.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that actmyname's ratings are outside of what I would consider appropriate, which is why I didn't take action to immediately remove him. But from what I've seen, it does seem likely that he is too trigger-happy.

Yeah, but you can demerit stupidity  

So what are you proposing that be done against shady behavior regarding the merit system? Nothing? Or are you simply saying that *we could/should* tag them, but that some of the tag's by actmyname were unwarranted?

Great example of a garbage shitpost that I would've tagged only a couple of weeks ago.  And now I don't have to do it because the merit system is in place, which almost ensures that idiots who can't speak a lick of English won't advance here on bitcointalk.  It's deliciously satisfying, and I must say it is still bringing a smile to my face. 

Are you fucked?  Yes.  And I would also suggest that if that's how you view things, you're here for all the wrong reasons.  If you came to bitcointalk because you enjoyed posting--and reading posts--the difficulty of getting merit points wouldn't bother you in the least.  The only people it bothers are the gibbering ape-beings who are here to crank out shitposts as fast as they can, with absolutely zero thought involved in their creation (see above post by Godwans). 

There are going to be people who buy merit, and those who trade it between alt accounts, but overall I think it's going to slow down the process of account farming and dis-incentivize shitposting to a large degree.  I can already see the fruits of the system being picked.

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.