Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 324. (Read 167808 times)

How do you get merit points for then distribute them? By writing comments or by getting merits from others?

That seems circular reasoning. How is decaying sMerit an incentive if there is no reward to sending or holding sMerit in the first place? In fact, sending Merit is consuming a non-zero amount of time and labor. Consequently sending Merit is punished instead of rewarded.

Yes. Yes. Or why do you post in beginners and help right now? Before the merit system?

But if you need more incentives than just helping others: you arent the only one reading beginners & help that isnt a newbie.
Good posts can be rewarded, even if they aren't directly related to you or helping you.
I can give merit as legendary to another person helping a newbie. The system stays the same, it's just different people rewarding your help.

You may not see your negs but we still do: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=370611

It'll be interesting to see subforum activity as merits cannot be given out by anyone lower than Full Member- I suspect it'll probably decrease in spammier places like Bitcoin Discussion where the same thing is said over the course of hundreds of pages.

So it is right to assume that if a member gets banned or his account nuked the merit he has sent stays?

To be nice? To help people? Not everything has to have some sort of measurable reward.

Now that all of my negatives have been removed, the positive smerit I have sent to counter-balance those ratings remain and my total sMerit is currently sitting at -6.

Is this something I am to overcome myself, or is it possible to get my other "test" merits removed?

I was pretty excited to get used to the system, but now it seems I'm at a pretty sad disadvantage for using the system properly, because I foolishly was testing the bug before posting about it uninformed.

I can probably work my way back up to positive numbers, just wondering if anything can be done?

Ok, I've understood all about this new system, however I have a consideration:

I usually go to the Beginners & Help forum, so that I can help newbies, I like it. But why I'll do this now? The newbies don't have sMerit to send me if they like my post, right?

Maybe you guys should think in something else in order to solve this and help the community to grow even more.

This, contradicts this :


So, I give you 7 merit points.  

@Theymos, you have implemented the "like" button of facebook here, trust me, it'll end up getting used like one.

This might be something tiny and I dont know if everyone would agree, but can you move the merit button to the left side of the quote(/edit/delete) buttons?
I know it's just a small change, but I've seen myself misclicking a few times already when selecting post links via the #number.

As a long time SEO professional I see this system very much similar to PageRank, and it will have a number of benefits and pitfalls of the PageRank system.

The benefits are obvious and great, it will reduce spamming by requiring additional tasks.

Now going to the potential pitfalls -
1) Merit farming on paid sites. Some members have suggested banning/penalizing members purchasing this. The problem here however is the same as negative SEO - how do you prove someone bought it? And if people receive merit from a "paid source" and get banned for it, you could then buy paid merit for people you don't like to get them banned or penalized.

2) Reciprocal merit telegram groups. To make it less obvious there could be "merit chains" of 3 people or more.

3) Alt-chain merit giving. Once 10 alt accounts or so have enough merit, they could now use their monthly allowance to instantly pass the merit requirements on their new alt accounts. This would make identifying alts easier of course and is easily solvable by a rule that would disallow this. But since alt accounts are allowed according to the forum rules, it waits to be seen what the admins point of view will be regarding this.

Point 1) and 3) are easily solved by retroactively removing merit given from an identified corrupt merit-giving account, and also removing all sMerit capability from the corrupt account (+other penalty maybe?).

Point 2) will be very, very difficult to combat.

The overall problem here is that professional spammers will utilize their network of spammers and finances to circumvent the merit system, whereas non-professional spammers will be stopped in their tracks. This is kind of like a central power monopolizing corruption to only the most professional corrupt bodies (kind of like the extensive licensing needed for a bank or casino where only the best malicious actors can thrive: ie highly organized crime syndicates, or corruptly-networked individuals that can crash the financial system with crappy equity-baskets with AAA ratings).

At the end of the day it's very unlikely any automated system can overcome the spam. However as an overall I think the merit system is nevertheless good since at least it adds an additional barrier to overcome for spammers. I like and prefer however where trusted community members can simply give red trust to obvious spammers, thus preventing them from meeting the requirements for signature campaigns. It will be good to see both of these systems acting as deterrence against spam together.

PS: Awarding default merit to all existing members is a problem I think. There's already tonnes of farmed hero/legendary accounts that will have huge amounts of monthly sMerit.. permanently. My idea: Make this "free" initial merit expire after 1 year. That gives all members 1 year to make enough quality posts to retain their ranking.

Oo 5 days before "Full Member", i'm shocked. But in any case this is a fair rank system and i support it. Hope i will receive my "Full" soon )

It's really a smart move from theymos to clean this forum from spam, so we can see now more constructive posts. Members should posts good quality post to gain Merit points and then, they can be upgraded to the next rank.

It's worst than that, bud. I've already introduced the concept on BCC's thread where one can lend their sM and earn interest compounded daily, calling it ... wait for it ... BCCsM.  


That may or may not have been my drift. 

I love this place!  

Greetings from 2100, the new forum software is nice.

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And this place loves you <3

Given that it took 3+ years to implement, I'd say your assessment is probably right.  

Lol, this is exactly what I was thinking! Merit business is officially on its way 

If this will implement, Lauda and other DT that active on spam/troll busting will be demerit AF due to Negative user still have merit too that can be given away.  

Exactly that's what I am fearing!! I am sure Gleb will not sell it for sure, but it shows it will open up a market for merit points and the worthy people will not get any merit.

Edit 3- my account again degraded to Hero from Legendary.