Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 78. (Read 167726 times)

Yes.  It seems that we cannot just simplify the explanation for smerit distribution, but I do recall a kind of 2-3 month surge in the distribution of smerits that seems to have dried up a lot because it seems likely that regular (non-sources) folks do not have a lot of merits to give out (or perhaps they are budgeting their use of them). 

I will concede that it can be quite a bit of work to read posts every day and to give out smerits, and maybe some of the sources feel somewhat burdened in that regard, and are NOT really giving out their smerits.  Surely it is an administrative decision for theymos to consider whether he wants to increase the number of merit sources or to reassign merit source status to some members who will be a bit more willing to give out smerits.

I agree with you that it still seems quite possible to receive merits for decent posts.

When I scout out some threads, one of the problems that I see with posts is that frequently members do not even seem to be reading various posts in the thread.  The read the OP or they read the title of the thread, and then the spout out some superficial points that have either already been made or that don't really contribute much value to the thread.  I actually believe that it is NOT problematic to repeat some points, but anyone who is really contributing is going to attempt to say the same points in a way that is personalized, and perhaps even provide some evidence or logic or even some personal experiential points that allow the post to be meritorious.  I have no problem giving merits to members who have mediocre points as long as there is some meat in their posts - which frequently is lacking with one liners.... yet I may merit one-liners too, if either the person has provided substantive points in the past or there is some kind of humor in there that captures a decent amount of meaningful sentiment. 

Contrary to me, it seems that some members seem to require too much quality from posts before they find them to be meritorious. - but I do understand that non-source members are going to want to budget their smerits, so my criticism about some of the aspects of stinginess of smerit distribution seems to go to some of the sources who don't seem to be spending their smerit because if there is really 19,500 worth of smerits that are generated every month, then it seems fairly convincing that a smerit distribution that is approaching 3k per week (which would be about 12k per month) indicates that merit sources are not spending their source merits... so a lot of source merits are seeming to be left on the table.. perhaps evidence of 1/3 or more.. and maybe administratively it would be better to attempt to get that number below 10% and to assign source status to members who are largely spending their smerits.... and surely those kinds of tools are in hands of theymos to be able to determine whether there is a pattern of non-spending of smerits from designated merit sources (also based on the level to which they receive smerits, each month).

If we get rid of the spam / or reduce it significantly/ then maybe the good posts will rise up and get what they deserve. Now is more like  looking for a needle ^[1] in a haystack so people give up or give the merit to the "usual suspects".

[1] ...

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.   

Merit offering is relative to the total market cap of the cryptocoins!
I guess it makes sense since a lot of people came here to make easy money last year and while the prices are falling and their money have gone to smart people, they're starting to leave the forums.

Most of them were spammers and didn't affect the merit system anyway, but still a lot of free sMerits were given to these people when the system first went into effect. Some other newbies had to be good fellas too, worthy of merit! (statistically speaking)

Update, this is the lower number of merit earned on a single week so far.

Well i hope we can get more merit sources in the future so the distribution of merits are faster and wider. I guess there must be an initiation to encourage people to apply to be merit sources. It would be great to if it can be started on local board first i guess.

The number of sources is increase from start, was around 80 and now they are 84 but since they have a life outside of the forum some of them are no longer active so also for this reason the weekly merit is decreasing week after week.

There are no stats yet about the forum history for this year https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats but is safe to assume that those number in there are following BTC price indeed

The number of merit sources has remained pretty stable in the past 6 months or so.  Currently the number of merit sources is at 84 - and I had assumed that the number of merit sources would have been higher by now....

Regarding whether the changed merit system is taking any dent out of spam, perhaps we are going to see what happens during the next bitcoin price spike, since your theory seems to be partly based on asserting such a spam to BTC price correlation... another reason to look forward to our next BTC price explosion.. Hopefully, soon!!!!^tm

Yes, if the number of merits continues to fall even if we have more and more merit sources and at this rate it will be very difficult for many people to get a +1 on their rank, however the drop in spam is relative for me and follows google trends, as soon as, and if ever Bitcoin will return on 15k + spam will increase new for the growing hype and the new number of new subscribers





I bet it is the same on this forum activity.

So it looks like it definitely takes a lot to gain merit to gain rank now. Haha Bitcointalk definitely up'ed the game for sure. Hopefully this will make post quality increase substantially.

By now, you should start working on it.

Looking at your post history, I can tell that you are not that much aware of how to earn merits. You have two redundant post on the top!

I hope you do not mind to remove one of it. May be this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.45138304

I seached the google and even the deep web on how to get instant merit here in BTT but then something strange hAPPEened...something unusual...something horrible....something chilling...something inexplainable...something unfathomable...something no one will ever expect. What was it? Its NOTHING!

You see... Even deep web cant give me instant merit. It is something that i should work out...WE SHOULD WORK OUT.
But then, if we really want it...if we really will it..then there will always be a way.

#iloveBTTrule
#meritIslyf

As @d5000 mentioned above, Local Boards on aggregate constitute the most merited area, but we should consider that we’re aggregating 21 Local Boards here... That’s a large mass we’re aggregating (half of the subsections on all Bitcointalk). There are some local boards which from the overall perspective may seem really merited (Russian, Turkish and Indonesian are amongst the most), but this should be seen as relative to the number of posts on these boards, since the number of total merits on these boards does not reflect this and may be misleading.

Take a look at a post I created not too long ago: Bitcointalk – Posts per Day - evolution during past six months. Specifically checkout a section called "4. Merits per post Ratio". There you will see a column called "Merit/post" which tell us just that. The ratio of each individual local boards is not that great, and certainly does not standout.

I can speak for the Spanish Local board. I have not seen any merit exchange or abuse there. What there is there a smallish pool of good posters, way above the average in terms of quality. These standout of the crowd and substantially contribute to the local forum richness. They are therefore amongst the most merited there due to being good at posting, and nothing else that I’m aware of. Nevertheless, merit there is distributed at a very slow pace, being 79,89% of TXs of a single sMerit, and 88,28% of the posts merited by a single person.

In fact, I published yesterday a list of the members that have needed merit to rank-up there: Only 22 people have ranked-up so far needing merit in the process. Out of those, 5 people have received all their merit on the Spanish local board, whilst the remaining 17 have had to emigrate in a sense to get a large part of their merits on the regular English boards … not really that great.

Let's avoid giving new people ideas like that please!

Allow me to help you with that search if you feel generous then!
link
link
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link

There was a whole thread about that topic. Local subforums are, indeed, the sub-sections where most merit points are awarded. However, I think you'll only get some there if you speak the language well (or if you engage in illegal actions like merit trading).

Altcoin subforums are the second section regarding merit points, but the merit distribution there is very concentrated on what you already found out - original postings in ICO ANNs (which may be "unofficial" parts of bounty campaigns and thus, in reality, "illegal").

The reason that other altcoin posts are not likely to be awarded is simple: There is much spam there. I tried for some weeks to merit posters in the Altcoin Discussion forum that brought up some good contents, but it was so difficult to find good posts that I got bored and gave up. I think merit sources are also not likely to search the few pearls in the amount of trash there.

Back to regulats updates, this one is till last week to 26/08/2018, sMerit is very low I guess for the summers vacations, hoping it will be back to atleast 4.5k soon.

You are right indeed.
All language local forums are open afaik

I think all language threads are open to post. If you go to the other language there are threads for posting in all countries languages.And English is the International language So English is used in altcoins threads. So that everyone can understand.

Interesting thread. Just found out about it!

Just out of curiosity: are there sub forums that usually there’s more merit exchange? I’m more often on te announcements for altcoins and usually only OPs get merit there.

Maybe I should explore more the other places of bitcointalk. Including local language communities. I barely gonto the portuguese and spanish sections.