Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 254. (Read 167726 times)

That is not entirely true, TMAN for example has given a lot of merit to users who openly disagreed with the change or criticized certain aspects. Others have been doing similar things, some more, some less.
I also have given a few merits to people being sceptic, as long as they had a well explained position or provided some alternative they believe to be more suited.
It's not about opinion not about agreeing with someone or disagreeing with them, it's about how you voice that opinion.
People who outright cry and shout "No, no, no" without giving reasons or alternatives don't get merit. Posts like that are neither constructive, nor "high quality".
If you make a well written post, explaining your position and opinion, bring something to the conversation, or just sum everything up really well, you will get merit, regardless of your opinion and stance.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Shitposting will be reduced - and this is GOOD. 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.

Well, I don't know. Wouldn't that be a bit complicated? What if I have spent the sMerit right before you tried to remove that Merit that you've just given to me? Would the Merit that I've spent also get revoked by the system?

I suspect this is by design, it gives merits a bit more impact than a simple "like" (to which they are often compared).
Also likely (at least part of) the reason why you have to visit a new page, and once again confirm a merit rating you send, so you cannot do this by accident.

Further, it could become quite the mess with sMerit being awarded to the person you rate, and how these are reversed.
Say you have 10 sMerit and reward 10 Merit to someone who previously had none (thus spend all yours), then that person gets 5 sMerit, which also is their total.
Now they go and reward those 5 to someone else (taking their sMerit to 0 too).
Now you want to reverse your merit rating, would this give you your initial 10 sMerit back? Would this also mean the 5 sMerit spent on another person get reversed as their initiator was reversed?
It could get very complicated very quickly with something like that.

I mean, if I give you a merit point and tomorrow I want to remove it (for a certain reason) I can't do it because the actual system doesn't allow you.

Yup, there is.

Agreed, that would be awesome and much fairer for lower ranks too!

Further, shouldn‘t it be rewarded with Merit from the Mods when we report something like that?:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.29023610

theymos

I don't know if someone already asked this, but is there any possibility to remove a certain merit point or not?

You were (maybe just indirectly) complaining about the new system, I've addressed those complaints. Obviously, I'm not going to pay you, or anyone, for suggesting posts to receive merit. Get real.

Flaw, not flow. And after two/three days, that is to be expected.

Or does it further increase interaction by people sharing good posts, recommending them, and thus adds more value, instead of taking anything away?

Then you dont merit them and someone else does. You can't merit everyone, you arent expected to.

I don't beg, I don't care much about it but it should be more fair to prevent spam.

You can not ask for sMerit, you have to earn it by making quality post. Don't repeat this or else you might get negative trust for begging.

can I get some extra Merits too? 770 activity - edit: few minutes after writing this I got updated to 784 activity lol

edit: What about getting some more proportional merit to the activity? People are going to spam to get the merit. By spam I mean un-organic posts.

I'm not interesed in that kind of activity, thank you, but if you're willing to pay you can easily find someone to do the work.

And you're missing the point of my original post that you quoted. The fact that there are quality posts not merited is already a flow to the system. The fact that they need to be constantly spotted and recommended, is a flaw. What if they won't get ever recommended? That person will try hard every day and maybe 90% of his efforts will go to waste. There are some very bad people like me, very evil people out there, who maybe prefers not to make rank up possibile competitors in future bounties or because they prefer to give precious merit points to his friends rather than to some excellent post of some unknow guy?

That's a wise decision. To make it even wiser something similar should be applied also for some or all of the lower ranks who are close to the next rank. Perhaps those who already have 75% of the necessary activity for the next rank or perhaps 90% or 99% or whatever. My view is that 75% would be optimal. The point is to implement more fairness in the process of switching to the new rules. Such a decision would cut down a lot of polemics and frustration across the forum. Especially Full Members who had to turn Senior or Seniors who had to turn Heros in days with the actual rules have been too much penalized, suddenly missing 150 or 250 merits for the next rank which they were about to achieve. To receive so many merits could now take them years, as they are so scarce.

I am. If you want to recommend quality posts that deserve merit, collect them, write me a PM and I will review them. Should I agree with your recommendations, I have enough sMerit to reward those posts.
(This is only valid for you, StelioKontos, I will ignore recommendation lists sent to me from any other account.)

Are you even serious? Why all good valid points against this system get funny replies like this?

Guys, any chance that current period will be counted as previously (without merits yet)?
2 activity till Senior member  

It's quite a visionary landmark to institute measures to check post quality,spamming and consequently churn the best out of all members in this forum. I hope that the pros of this new Merits system continually outweigh the cons. Let's hope creativity isn't stifled in attempt to forming "quality" posts.  I hope this doesn't intimidate genuine newbies in asking relevant questions. May this system last!

Let's give all merit for this post, the OP is gonna be huge 

 Infographic