Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 58. (Read 167726 times)

Let me know how exactly. It`s very easy to talk about the shortcomings of the system and criticize the existing rules, but I don’t see that you offer at least some alternative (not to mention inventing anything better). Before looking for flaws, try to comply with the requirements of the bitcointalk forum and get at least 1 merit. Perhaps, the problem is not in the merit-system, but in your inability to become the full-fledged participant?

People can pick holes in the merit system all day long, and mostly if it goes against you.
But no one has proffered a better option.
Merits since it was created has greatly increased the quality of the forum, of course some users were airdropped merits for being early on the forum, but it reflects the level of contribution of the user.

I think he meant the topic in the language translation in Russian locale. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-2818398

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=10.0

I don't know too much about the forum. I'm still trying to know the current situation since I am newly registered. Whatever I have learned till now from all the spambusters thread is-
"Anyone here with only intention of hunting bounty is spammers."
If someone joined here only for participating in bounty, s/he will definitely be a spammer. Anyway, my experience is limited. I still have lots of things to know.

Your idea that bounty hunters would not be able to rank up is wrong, checking the stats you'd see that a lot of members have gotten at least one merit since the updated rules were implemented, and that's what it was made to do, spur users into contributing while earning, there's no problem at all with trying to earn, through what you ironically refer to as passive income.
It's also put in place to discourage account farming which was the real problem.
Admittedly, all spammers were hunters looking for ways to earn, but not all hunters are spammers.

What method? The merit system? You might not last long here but if requiring merit is going to scare people away who can't get it then good. The merit system stops nobody from posting here and you can do so with or without merit. It's just if you want to rise through the ranks you're going to have to start contributing something of worth.


I have no idea why he was throwing it around like candy on Halloween. He was just giving it to anyone who asked and often in batches of 30. Utterly defeats the purpose of the system. All the following posts were given 30 points by QuestionAuthority:

The sentence is not completed. Here is the full version.
"with this method this forum will not last long for bounty hunters."
It will be foolish to compare between cryptocurrency and a forum. Why do people join this forum? For having a discussion about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? OR, for having a passive income. With the merit system, bounty hunters will not be able to rank up anymore because they don't know how to contribute in a forum. On the other hand, people with real interest in this forum will definitely gain knowledge as well as share too.

with this method this forum will not last long. It is not the principle for which cryptocurrencies were created. demonstrating this is enough to see the statistics on google

3225 in around 8*4=32 is equal at around 100 sMerits weekly.
This is not a very big number on the paragon with the past weekly sMerit and the 1 "month ago week merit".


Was way lower than 1k/month as the previous quote he spent an average of 400/month 100/week.

The dropped out merit source is QuestionAuthority and he is the number 2 in the list of meriter user rankings with 3225 awarded merits. So that could be the small dent that you highlighted

It also denotes that most of the newly added Merit Sources may have a modest allowance, meaning that they serve their purpose to reach areas which were likely rather small in terms of sMerit TXs, but on the whole they do not add to a noticeable amount to boost the weekly flow out of the 4-4,5K area. They may gain some traction over time, but that is yet to be seen.

In addition, a large Merit Sources seems to have dropped out (and he/she looked like a 1K monthly Merit Source), so that could create a small dent.

That was to be expected. If you randomly check some of the Jr. Members that were ranked down to Newbie by the new rule, and received Merit again in the first week, you'll find that many posts aren't worth it. I've seen a few high-ranking accounts (usually with red trust already) who sent 1 Merit to 50 or more Newbies to give their army of spammers a signature again.

In the long run, these numbers shouldn't matter much. Merit turned an unlimited problem into a manageable problem.

New graphs available.

After the new monthly merit source's refill, we had an 11% spike while 1 month ago we had a 170% spike, this means a lot of those 9600+ (maybe 3k+) merits were awarded from abusers/sellers !?!

I think that the main difference between the hero and the legendary is in the time they spent on the bitcointalk (as well as merit, activity is also required). In this case, the activity indicator demonstrates really important data, namely, how long a person has been working on the forum. Despite the fact that I consider merit to be a more important indicator, activity still hasn`t lost its significance, especially in the case of higher ranks. Because no matter what good posts you write, you still need a lot of time to deal with all the requirements and rules of the forum, to “get acquainted” with the most active users and to establish yourself well. Another advantage for many participants is the different rates in signature campaigns. Most members want to raise the rank just for more money, so there is a gap between the hero and the legendary. But otherwise - with respect from other users and other privileges - I don`t see much difference.

You can look up the concept of grandfather clause on wikipedia.

The general grandfather clause idea is that if there is a change in a rule, the new rule will go into effect, but old members will not be adversely affected by the new rule (which means that they are grandfathered into keeping the benefits that they already received); however, in this case, this new merit system would be a kind of hybrid-grandfather clause because under this new merit system all new members are abiding by the same merit rules even though the older members are able to retain the rank that they already received and further all older members had received a one time airdrop of merits that was based on their rank at the time that the new system was put into place.  

Even though it is possible that there could be airdrops of merits in the future, this merit system is not designed in a way to anticipate such additional airdrops of merits but instead seems to intend that all members (no matter what their rank) receives additional merits by receiving them from other members rather than by any additional airdrops nor from admin.

Of course admin has discretion to do whatever it wants in terms of giving additional airdrops of merits for any reason or no reason, but as far as I know there is no evidence that any additional merits have been given to any members beyond the initial airdrops of merits on January 24, 2018 (and then a one time correction a few weeks later that went to some hero members to receive an additional 500 merits as long as those particular hero members had reached a certain level of activity as of January 24, 2018 (activity level of 775 or higher, I believe?).

Duh. I see I was wrong here . I thought only Legendary members were able to use colour background in their signatures. But now I just checked the rank thread and it seems that Hero Members are also able to do this ...

 I think I got confused because of the slightly different Senior Member ChipMixer signatures (without coloured backgrounds) which I thought also were the Hero Members' signatures.

In this case, I have no problem with the current rank system. The only "privilege" for Legendaries, in this case, were the 1000 auto-generated merits every Legendary got when the merit system started (in contrast to the 500 Hero merit points), and this one only was an one-time benefit.

Your further explanation above causes me to wonder exactly what are the "forum privileges" that allegedly currently exist for Legendary members that do not currently exist for Hero members? 

I was not aware that there were any privileges for Legendary members (as compared to Hero members) beyond symbolic - meaning the rank title itself.

My proposal is to eliminate the privileges for "Legendaries" - i.e. to give "Heroes" already the maximal possible forum functionality including all signature options, with the exception, obviously, of typical staff functions (ban users, delete posts etc.). (Edit: There seem to be no such privileges, see next posts.)

I think it's simply not necessary to require 1000 merit points to be able to use all forum functions. 500 - the "Hero" threshold - is enough in my humble opinion, it should be achievable in 2 years approximately, or much less if you're a really good poster.

The reason is that I think that current newbies do have a point when they complain that 1000 merits is a very difficult figure to achieve, and it was much easier before when it was purely activity-based.

"Legendary", or even a superior rank with 2000 merit points, as you suggested, could be kept as a "honour badge" but not as a rank required to use any functionality of the forum. I think if you made it to the "Hero" rank via the Merit requirement, you already demonstrated that you're really contributing valious contents to the forum, so it's not necessary to add an incentive to reach 1000 or 2000.

(I was waiting for KingZee to respond to my [positive] evaluation of his proposed alternative merit system, but he seems not to be interested in discussing it here anymore. A pity.)