Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 264. (Read 167717 times)

True, but sooner or later the moderators will figure out that some random farmers are abusing the merit system by exchanging merits between their own account. The true purpose of the merit system is to promote quality posting and lessen spamming and shitposting, right? But by abusing the system will just provide solid proof to those having alts that eventually abused bounties as well.

I think i agree with you. In the sense that the system is a fair one based on the premise that we all started from scratch (all start from zero).

I actually like this idea.  I mean at this point a merit is basically like a reddit gold.  People should be able to just buy it to reward good posts.  As far as leveling up goes my feeling is the majority won't be leveling up because the content is just average to poor.  If anything I would love to have another setting to never ever see anything except 'merited' posts.  I can't wait for the campaigns to switch to merit rather than activity but it would have been better if everyone just started with 0 merits and have to earn back their ranks rather than be forced to read the higher up's shitpost by default.  

Except it’s not against the rules to have alts and it’s not against the rules to sell accounts. If they would ban people for doing those two things you would probably have a solution to the problem they are trying to solve with the merit system.

To be honest, I would of course have slightly changed the conditions for awarding merit.

Legendary            3-10 sMerit max for post / and max 30 sMerit for person per month (min at least 3 posts will be marked,at a time not 1 as now)
Hero Memeber    2-5 sMerit max for post   / and max 20 sMerit for person per month (min at least 4 posts will be marked,at a time not 1 as now)
Sr.Member         1-3 sMerit max for post   / and max 9 sMerit for person per month (min at least 3 posts will be marked,at a time not 1 as now)  
Full.Member       1-2 sMerit max for post  / and max 4 sMerit for person per month (min at least 2 posts will be marked,at a time not 1 as now)
Member           only 1 sMerit max for post / and max 3 sMerit for person per month (min at least 1 posts will be marked,at a time not 1 as now)

So we solve many problems.
1) Worthy people with good posts will be awarded titles faster.
2) The older the title of a person, the more sMerit he can reward.
3) So we solve the problem of abuse with sMerit
4) So people will spend their sMerit wisely

This merit system could also be used to track and hunt down alts.   
Obviously these farmers will abuse the merit system in order for their alts to rank up. Making it easier to track alts and could provide solid proofs.

I must say I'm a bit divided here. The idea looks great, but by having just a few merit sources doesn't it make the system a little centralized?

The "campaign spamming", and bad post quality is a problem, and this system should give everyone a chance to objectively quantify their opinion, in order to express if what they read in this forum is good or bad. The problem here, from my point of view, is that an opinion is of course always subjective, and if we restrict the merit sources to much, then we will have a system that may, or may not be, aligned with what the majority of users think or like.

Right now, I think that the ability to give Merit will somehow act as our voice in this forum, that should be used to judge content, and this is a good thing, but the problem is that we might "run out of voice" as we use it, unless we are a merit source.

I know there are two key factors to minimize this "centralization" problem.
-  We all start with sMerit that we can spend, and half of those sMerit points can be used by someone else.
-  We can apply for a "position" as a Merit Source, by gathering 10 posts for evaluation.

The problems here in my opinion are:
- The initial sMeirt should end soon enough if we don't manage to become a merit source (and we can no longer judge content).
- If we apply for a "position" as a merit source and we don't get one, our problem of eventually not being able to judge content in the forum will persist.

Right now I see three possible "solutions" for these problems.
- Everyone could decide who gets to be a merit source. "Applicants" would still gather at least 10 posts for evaluation, and the users could vote for them. Those with more votes would become a merit source. This is far from being ideal, but it is still less "centralized".
- Users would be given a small amount of sMerit, based on their activity (still not ideal, because Merit would be less valuable this way)
- There could be a new type of sMerit that users could purchase, and then use to evaluate content.

I think the third option is better and I will explain why. We all buy books, newspapers, movies, music, etc.
We buy these things because we like it's content, and by buying them, we are expressing just that. So I see no problem in buying sMerit, and then using it to express my support for some of the posts I read, because I liked them. Money is used to express value, so this is exactly what would be happening with this option.


To end this post, I will repeat that I like what this system provides (the ability to judge content), but I think the ability to give Merit should be as open as possible (without trivialization of course). Maybe I will never run out of sMerit, and what I think it could be a problem will never become one, but right now these are the concerns I have about this system.

Demerit possilbilities will of course be again installed with the arrived happy few. And of course the possibility will then be abused again, as is the case with the trust system. The problem of this forum is, I keep repeating it, that there are hardly any objective rules and that punishment and reward are mainly located at the subjective whims of a couple of devious individuals.

You don't need to search a separate group on facebook, there's a lot merits sellers in local section now, go check your local section and you bound to found at least one seller that sells his merits.
Either way, it depends on how stupid the sellers are, if they send the merits in bulk to a single post let's say 20 merits, people would get suspicious and DT will swoop that post with red tags, Both the poster and the one who sends the merits
Also it won't work as their Smerit will get depleted in a few exchanges


It will be added as a new criteria to rank-up
Before the update, we just need activity point to rank up, but now we need both activity and merits in order to rank up to the next rank
Hopefully, with this new system it will encourage users to post high quality instead of spamming with 2 liners posts.


TFW when you're about to be Legendary and now you need to collect 500 pokemons merits

Activity is still factored in and needed for rankups but Merit has also become one of the criteria for rankups on the forum. I don’t see any indications merit will completely replace activity or something of the sort anytime soon.

Dont seems to understand this merit stuff...

Is it going to replace activity in terms of criteria for ranking?

Ok, didn't know that. I just read that you can't give one post more than 50 Merit a time. So you would need 10 Alt-Accounts to do it ;-)

Wouldn't that be a great way to fight altaccounts? If a shitposter transfers all his sMerits from all his altaccounts to his mainaccount, those altaccounts won't be abled to rank up anymore. Only his main will be eligible to get a higher rank, unless he actually posts quality posts with the altaccounts. The only way he could get Merit on his altaccounts without making quality posts would be using the exploit in the quote below.

You can only send 50 sMerit to a user in a 30 days period.
It's going to take 10 months for that (or multiple accounts).

But since Merit is public it s also easy to trace.

It is visible to see who is sending sMerit to whom, if somebody will overuse this extensively I think moderators will intervene
Also if "spam account" with lots of Merit will spam something irrelevant - this will also be suspicious, others will report this account.

I agree demerits can easily be abused but I think It is needed for the better sake of this forum , Most of us here just want more better quality post and to remove the account farmers. But let just wait for theymos decision. He'll just make his thing to improve this forum.

You want to multiply your Merit and you don't care how much sMerit you have? Easily done, if you have been able to spam a lot in the last years:

Account A: 1000 Merit / 500 sMerit
Account B: 0 Merit / 0 sMerit
-->
A sends B 500 sMerit
-->
Account A: 1000 Merit / 0 sMerit
Account B: 500 Merit / 250 sMerit
-->
B sends A 250 sMerit
-->
Account A: 1250 Merit / 125 sMerit
Account B: 500 Merit / 0 sMerit
-->
A sends B 125 sMerit
-->
Account A: 1250 Merit / 0 sMerit
Account B: 625 Merit / 62 sMerit
-->
B sends A 62 sMerit
-->
Account A: 1312 Merit / 31 sMerit
Account B: 625 Merit / 0 sMerit

From 500 sMerit I would be able to generate 312 Merit on my main account and 625 on my spam account (even a bit more would be possible if we continue sending the sMerit further around). Not sure if such a system really makes sense...

I have a question to all, how about us who get red trust could it be deleted after they get merit or not?
Because most of the users in crypto currency are getting negative trust without knowing so, what could merit effects to eliminate red trust??

There are many things going on with this new system. as you can see. The constructive replies are hard to get people to pay attention and merit points, when you set up the topic to bring good service and prestige, it has a trust system.
And I think people are buying / selling this merit a lot. It will be difficult to justify what we are aiming at. Finally, with a large forum system. Every second there is a lot of activity going on in the boxes. So I think you can start requesting merit points in some important rank: like from sr.member -> legendary members. That would be better for newcomers. It is also required for longtime participants of the forum.

Really good innovation.
Just sent my 6 merit which I had to the helpful person.
I think Merit rank will help to make forum better.
And yes, I'm for Demerit, may be it will help to make forum better as well.