Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 33. (Read 167726 times)

<…>

-snip-

the new merit system is likely to be misused by irresponsible people to get some personal benefits. like giving merit to his multi account to increase account rank. and maybe sell merit services to someone who really needs merit who is willing to pay for it. how does the admin team detect this fraud so the forum avoided the monopoly of certain people. just a few of my opinions.

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Brand new	0	0
Newbie	1	0
Jr Member	30	1
Member	60	10
Full Member	120	100
Sr. Member	240	250
Hero Member	480	500
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1000

You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
paxmao's infographic
ibminer's infographic
8Habits's infographic
JetSet11's infographic
zentdex's infographic
alia_armelle's infographic

If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

I've literally never reached that point, it was a relief already to empty my source. It quickly piles up if I'm less active for a few days.

So at the moment I'm on 0 and I feel the relief.

I am both Merit source and average user too. My source is empty, my personal stash currently holds 460 sMerit. I feel less "pressure" to empty my earned sMerit than emptying my source.

<…>Speaking directly about those that have spendable sMerit. Merit sources have an obligation to spend their smerits allocated to them that's why theymos gave that suggestion but the average users doesn't have that obligation.<…>

I am both Merit source and average user too. My source is empty, my personal stash currently holds 460 sMerit. I feel less "pressure" to empty my earned sMerit than emptying my source.

That is exactly what theymos wants Merit sources to do:

the average users doesn't have that obligation.

That is exactly what theymos wants Merit sources to do:

I've been closely following your posts for some months now and I just have to say that they are definitely above par,and I admire the way you construct your posts always with links to make things clearer and easily understandable for readers.

Hardwork sure pays off and you're testament to that,congratulations mate!, keep it up

That is exactly what theymos wants Merit sources to do:

That's simple because, there isn't enough quality posts been created. You don't expect meriters to hand out merits to undeserving posts (in their opinion) just because we want more merits in circulation.

It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.

I'm not against the number of merit required to reach certain ranks, but that there fundamentally isn't enough merit "going around" as it were.

Update:

Time series plots:

[graphs above]

For more details, please get them there:
Time Series Analysis on Distributed Merits in the forum (daily, weekly, monthly)
Observation on interquartile range of intra-day merits with time series plot

If you wanted to implement Merit in a decentralized forum (ie. one in the vein of Freenet's Frost or FMS), you could do it in this way:
 - Everyone can, from their own perspective, give unlimited merit to posts, and these merit transactions are put into files which each user publishes via the decentralized system. (Like a merit.txt.xz which every user publishes.) Unlike on bitcointalk.org, you can also give people merit without an associated post.