Merit is a new system where older users can withhold merit from younger users so they can't rank up and earn all the bounties!
I don't think so, just look at this thread, a lot of higher rank members are already giving merits to lower rank members. This new method is not about hoarding bounties, this is about preserving the quality of the forum. There are a lot of forums in the internet that are already using the merit system in terms of likes and upvotes and so far it's been helping improve the quality of their forums.
Not sure you can say that at this stage though.. just because a trickle of new users in this thread (maybe 10% or so) are getting merit doesn't mean it's working. A lot are getting merit just because they are complaining that they don't have any merit and that it's unfair lol.
Out there in the wild: it may turn out that new users seldom get any merit at all.
Check this young account out..
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-is-the-best-thing-that-happened-to-new-users-2828014right attitude, quality post.. lots of merit from lots of people.. it is working fella
Again, that is just one sample, one data point. It could even just be an anomaly.
For every one user that makes a hot post/thread and gets tons of merit. You could have 99 users who get next to nothing or anything substantial.
Well, I am not sure that this is a very appropriate case study. Or are you willing to tell me that the only way to get merits is to make threads and posts where you unconditionally praise the new rules with a deferential attitude? BTW, I happen to agree with every line written in that OP as I have also stated in one post of mine in that same thread. But in that same post I've also outlined what in my opinion will not work with this new system.
I have a personality and a way of writing that does not appeal to very many people; however, if I had a lower rank or I was just coming to the forum,
I may consider either
modifying my way of posting to rank up or just keeping with my regular style and to find out whether I receive very many merits.
Even if you do not rank up, you are not really hurt either way in terms of being able to communicate ideas and to brainstorm ideas, and no one is stopping you from posting your ideas. I have found that my style and my ideas resonate with some folks (that seems to be a kind of minority), and they do not resonate with others, yet over the years, I have pretty much stuck to my guns, and it seems to work out o.k. with me in terms of various forums and also in terms of my real world interactions.
I have marked bold the crucial part of your post. That's actually the problem. To rank up (right or wrong most people want to rank up, be it because they want to run signature campaigns, be it for simple reasons of prestige) people WILL change the way they are posting, but the move may not be in the desired direction. I will make an example to make this case clear.
Sure, there are going to be some folks who change their behavior more than others in order to adapt to the new system and what they are attempting to achieve.
I don't know if you are familiar with the DeepOnion project and how it unfolded. As soon as their "airdrop" (in fact a signature campaign) had become economically valuable, many people wanted to join it. But in the community there were also a lot of critical voices, who were raising doubts and critics. They all got banned from the airdrop and their critical posts were deleted from the thread. Which has been the consequence? The consequence has been that this "system of reward and punishment" has selected a community made only by people fanatically in favor of the status quo. I am not judging the quality of that project here, I'm just exposing a pattern of human behavior.
You even seem to concede that this DeepOnion project might not be a good example because it is such an extreme, and I find it difficult to give much weight to such a comparison when you are providing attributes that do not really exist with this forum, the management of this forum or Theymos.
Yeah, fuck, Theymos has been accused of having various controlling and censoring tendencies and he has even been accused of running off with donations, but a vast majority of those accusations are pure bullshit. Sure, there is going to be some factual evidence to support these kinds of accusations, but if you spend enough time around here, you will tend to find that there is a considerable amount of decentralization and even tolerance of a variety of views, and various kinds of proposals to change the systems are attempts to improve the space or to adapt to changes in the community too.
Of course you cannot compare the new rules of BCT with that totalitarian management of DeepOnion's thread, but both has something in common: they end up rewarding those who praise the system and the status quo and punish those who raise a critical voice.
Yeah.. you admit an extreme comparison, yet you still want to assert that there is similarities. O.k.
And you can already see the first signs of such a tendence here in these threads about the new merit system. Juniors who are posting here to praise the system get plenty of merits, critical voices don't.
Sure there is some truth to your assertion, but folks who frame matters in terms of positive terms are likely to get more praise than negative nancies. That is the way of the world. Do you want to hang around folks who are constantly complaining? I tend to filter those kinds of toxic folks out of my life to the extent feasible.
Certainly there are ways to have constructive feedback without coming off as a whiner and certainly there are ways to be critical without going on some stupid-ass tirade. Accordingly, I think that if folks are able to be constructively critical, then they can still earn merits.
By the way, I feel similar about bitcoin bashers.. there are a lot of fucking whiners, and if you are going to whine about it, then you need to bring a whole hell of a lot more evidence (and logic) to the table to overcome my already informed views about the fundamental strengths of bitcoin.
Which do you think will be the consequences long term?
DeepOnion's thread has rapidly become unreadable, consisting in a mere chorus of enthusiastic hyping statements.
What will happen to Bitcointalk?
Again, you are making an inadequate comparison. I think that theymos is making these implementations in good faith, and surely I hope that he has folks helping him out because sometimes, it can be quite overwhelming to figure out all the good, bad and the ugly going on with any kind of new system, and how it might disparately impact some folks. I personally think that the initial merit distribution should have been based on a kind of prorata based on activity level rather than giving the minimum merit for each rank, and I have repeated this a few times (as have a few other posters), but sometimes it may not be easy to go back and retroactively fix - even though we see that out of "fairness" Theymos had retroactively gone back and gave 1000 merits rather than 500 merits to those members with 775 or higher activity levels at the time of the distribution.
Shitposting will be reduced - and this is GOOD.
It should be.
But variety of opinions will as well shrink, because of natural selection. You'll have less shitposting but much more buttlickingposting. And worse of all, more and more a single line of thought.
Maybe, there might be more butt kissing posts, perhaps? Overall, I think that people will still post what they want, and probably, the more likely outcome, they may put a bit more effort into some of their posts considering that they might earn some merits if they back up their position a bit better, rather than just typing one liners (conclusions only).
