Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 291. (Read 167717 times)

And why are getting users still red tags for post quality?

No, you don't lose your merits and you can't "derank". You're sending merits from a separate pool of sMerit points. You're earning them the same way like your rank merit points, just at a lower rate (0.5 sMerit per merit received).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit


AFAIK - no. I would like to see that implemented.

Not only mine but can we see other users' merit stats? I tried adding different uids but I can't see anything change. It still mentions my merits sent and received.

infazan is possibly a bought/hacked account. Password recently changed and woke up from a long period of inactivity.

Totally agree with most of the ideas. The current merit system will tie up the opportunities to be Members, Full Members and Senior Members. Those old accounts dont worry about that, but the new ones have to face harshly with those new rules, with merit ranking.
Personally, I think admin and moderators of the forum should focus on how to release new, more strictly screening system for investigating spamming accounts, which post non-sense, shit posts most of the time. After that, banning those accounts permanently. That's rule might be better than the current merit system.

Please consider about the idea. Tie up spamming discovering system, and more strict banning rules (permanently bans)

all these people will run out of merits pretty soon! Ive chucked 10 about for a laugh.. the rest I will be serious with

there will always be a bedding in period.. this will take months, then the positive results will be seen.

The new system is surely better than the previous one, even though it is over-rewarding "old members". I guess nobody who has joined Bitcointalk in the past six months will EVER manage to become Legendary Member, at least not in less than one or two decades. Fine, this could be a price to pay to avoid the forum getting even more trashy, I fully agree. But I think that the implementation of this new system could be done in a more fair way. The fact that initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for one's rank is not a big deal for Newbies or Juniors, but for higher ranked members, like Senior or Hero Members, it can create big inequalities. For example a freshly ranked Senior Member is now getting the same merit score as someone who has already been a Senior Member for almost half a year and is about to become a Hero. Even more dramatic would be the case of a Hero who has already the activity to be a Legendary but the random system did not grant him the rank yet. A more fair way to distribute the inital merit would be to calculate it proportionally to the actual activity. This would avoid that people like me (I don't want to make it personal but I'm the first example which comes to my mind) who is missing only 4 points of activity (and 5 days) to the rank of Hero Member, instead of getting, let's say 470-480 merits (instead of the 500 of people who already are Heroes), is getting only 250 merits like someone who has just ranked Senior Member 10 days ago, and instead of 5 days it may now suddenly take me years before I can become a Hero - how many very good posts has one to do before he gets 250 merits? If you receive one merit every 4 post you do (on average you are likely to get less IMO) it will take you 1000 more posts to rank up from Senior to Hero, and if you like me were only 4 points of activity from that target, and now suddenly you need another 1000 posts, to say that this is becoming extremely frustrating is a big understatement. On the other side, with a more proportional and balanced initial distribution of merits I think nobody would feel that the system is penalizing them more than it penalizes others - which means people would be more inclined to recognize its substantial fairness, or at least that every effort has been done to achieve the maximum possible fairness.

Thank you!

With the current allocation rules the merit points are so scarce that selling or buying them makes little sense. And they cannot be very expensive, because nobody is going to pay that much for upranking.


For me it is 150 points. I think it does not even worth trying.


It probably is. It is essentially freezing the rankings.


I'm not sure if it is going to be good for the forum in the long term. Maybe it will change.

I checked a lot of topics again, and didn't noticed any received merits for a good posts, although I have noticed a lot of merits received for the high rank member posts like "You want some merit bro? Here you go hehehe" and responses to such posts like "Oh, thank you, I have sent some merits for you as well hehehe". What can I say about it, I don't think, that this system will stop spam and shit posting, and I'm pretty sure, that high quality posts will be rewarded with a merit, although I have already found a telegram groups, where merits are sold for 1$. Why do you need to send your merits for free if you can sell it, right? So this system is not solving the problem, but it already added some corruption and it gave many advantages for a senior members, and gave a lot of disadvantages to the newbies. This forum is not facebook, why it is necessary to have "likes"? And I'm just curious, what was the motivation to put such ranking system - to get a full member rank, you need to gain 10x more merit, than for a member. I don't think it will stop creation of multiple accounts, as some strange activities were noticed already:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/copper-member-2439743 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

If you can find the post. It's easier with this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit

The system is already being abused. Great. 


You can see it in top of your post.

essentially forcing people to post, what is even considered high quality anyway? As i think i have said before, the basis of a forum is to have questions answered, i.e. i have x problem, please help, then the community kicks into gear and helps, this has always been the way when i have had tech problems, either the asker or the answerer i have been and this works.  Wouldnt the best way be as forums have always been, we have moderators who simply kick the idiots out, nice and easy!

And how we can fight with such things?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28896442

50 merits for useless post. Multiaccounts 

How i can know who sent me sMerit?

Let say if I've 1000 smerit and I'm refuse to spend them until the end of season/month.
Will I got another 1000 smerit for new season/month ?


Well it's seems that merit abuse business already start.


Not all poster as good as Lutpin's , that's why it's difficult for them especially when english is not their mother language

Without amendments, the forum will eventually clog up from the shadow trade. Corruption will grow.

It’s not that I think it’s wrong (check my signature). I pointed out in my first post in this thread that it would be interesting to see how long it would take for someone to game the system. It took less than a day. LOL

I was following the thread for while and it was mentioned that there will be a rewards system for reporting spam. I can say that I do understand the whole concept of the Merit system and I totally agree with it. I guess the reward system for reporting spam was just a user proposal.
Just wanted to thank you for doing this, answering all these questions. It's appreciated

Just because a battle seems lost doesn't mean you should stop fighting. By your logic, let's just stop banning spammers then? because there will be spammers with or without merit system.

And yes, you are right, a lot of people forget to report even the most obvious spammers, but what makes you think people aren't going to forget to give merit points as well?

And as all merit systems, they will be gamed/exploited. Namely, now we'll go from some broken-english shitposter trying to reach Legendary to some broken-english shitposter trying to reach Jr Member (which is achievable with 0 points of merit) in order to put a bunch of Jr Member accounts in signature campaigns, so it may even increase spammers as they will assume it is simply impossible to get higher ranked accounts anymore and instead of focusing in one account, they will focus on bulks of Jr Member accounts. I don't think it solves the basis of the gross volume of spammers which are the lowest value ones. I can tolerate the less obvious spammers, but ultimately the hardcore shitposters will still remain active.

No matter what, you are going to need mods to get care of that, it's a constant work that needs to be done. You can't ruin the forum for everyone else by adding anti-privacy friendly requirements on the registration for instance.

Other potential exploits include "merit sources" giving merit to other accounts which they control (impossible to prove), or someone negging you because you give merit to someone that you like but they hate, or someone thinking you are giving merit to an account you control when you aren't and so on.