Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 22. (Read 167717 times)

Can I ask something? Who were the first members that automatically gained some merit points? And how many merit points were given? Different to each merit source?

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

I mostly agree and I do believe the merit metric is vastly better than the "activity" one. In my opinion, the average post quality would go way up if bitcointalk got rid of the activity metric. Finally, the fact I believe the average post quality is lower than other forums I participate in is indeed my very subjective judgement.

I quite a few doubts about your quality standards being too high.  Sure, they might be particular to yourself, and sure, you might paint yourself in a corner in terms of how you judge the conduct of others, including if you believe that everyone needs to believe what you believe in terms of what amounts to a valid contribution.

People send merits and/or find value in posts for a large variety of reasons.  Those might be subjective, objective and more likely a combination of both.  You are making a reasoning mistake if you believe that merits do or should fit some kind of objective standard, and in that regard, sometimes a short and seemingly non-substantive post makes a point (or even a set of points) in a way that arguably (subjectively, objectively or a combination of both) better than a longer post.

Many of us have heard the phrase, "different strokes for different folks," and so in that regard I am not really attempting to be profound, or to tell you anything that you should not already realize.  

Accordingly, there are some members who have received a lot of praise over the years, but that praise might not reflect whether or not they are praiseworthy in the real world.  The same is likely true for value and contributions in the real world of a large number of people, and such contributions and praiseworthiness is likely NOT reflected in the various ways that members of this forum are praised and accredited.

You are right in this specific case, but I'm talking about a systemic problem. Do you think that low quality posts get reported often enough to discourage low quality posts? If so, why am I seeing spammy/low quality posts all over the place?

Take your reply for example. It's a low content reply that doesn't add much to the debate. It's not really of interest to people reading the thread. You could have simply reported the posts without writing about it. Or you could have argued that the "report to moderators" feature was sufficient to  combat low quality posts. But you did neither of that.

Maybe my quality standards are just too high? Mind not changed yet.

You won't get Merit nor Rank with posts like this. I've reported 2 of your posts though, so getting attention worked for you

Change my mind: the merit & rank system encourages low quality / spammy posts (e.g. this post).

Obviously it's really needed to send merit to the newbie and most effective users.
I already requested to the forum admin for this update to be applied.
It will be more easy way to send merit to anyone.

Obviously it's really needed to send merit to the newbie and most effective users.
I already requested to the forum admin for this update to be applied.
It will be more easy way to send merit to anyone.

I already don't like the way clicking on +merit takes you away from the thread.  Can you please have it open in a new window?

At the moment i am having the same issue, it is hard to join in campaigns being a newbie and it is harder to get some points so that i can continue my journey with a higher rank.

At the moment i am having the same issue, it is hard to join in campaigns being a newbie and it is harder to get some points so that i can continue my journey with a higher rank.

This is very good for bitcoin if one fast food will accept it other will need to accept it too and it will provide attraction for people who do not know about it but want to know about it because of it.

I was always wondering how this merit thingy worked. Now I know why I'm still a newbie here... 

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oriOdNztTSfz6wqR2/200w_d.gif

this meriting of a thing will only make those selling it  rich

this is another shit coin in disguise

this meriting of a thing will only make those selling it  rich

Any bounty??

agree, just like posts in off topic board don't count in person's post history, same can be done for bounty board, wouldn't take much effort, I guess.

There is actually an argument to completely separate the bounty section from the rest of the forum -- posts wouldn't count towards post count, or activity and would be in a separate section of a person's post history. The bounty hunters don't generally appear interested in participating in the rest of the forum, and the rest of the forum generally isn't interested in what bounty hunters do.

There is actually an argument to completely separate the bounty section from the rest of the forum -- posts wouldn't count towards post count, or activity and would be in a separate section of a person's post history. The bounty hunters don't generally appear interested in participating in the rest of the forum, and the rest of the forum generally isn't interested in what bounty hunters do.