Topic: Merit & new rank requirements - page 8. (Read 167717 times)

It would have been a nice thing to add demerit system in the forum and to regulate undesirable merits of users  but users will abuse it. Unless it will still control by MERIT SOURCES or you create or appoint another DEMERIT SOURCES to demerit any post that is not necessary or not worth of meriting. With that every user will be posting quality posts in the forum. Although what is quality post might be different from different demerit sources. Because they might see it from different perspective. I also suggest that if the 'demerit' should be adding, let there be DEMERIT SOURCES to that effect so that there should be check and balance in the meriting source and demeriting source and also there will be division of labor among the two organs in forum.

I really like and love your administrative work. You are neutral to everyone, both the brand Newbies and to the Legendaries, Moderators and to others. Recommendable.

if you look at the post history of members who get a lot of merit then you will realize that they really contributed greatly to the forum and other members. the merit system is really very good for increasing competitiveness between members and making other members have great intentions to make quality posts. getting merit is not easy but I still believe I can get it as long as I don't give up on making a good posts.

I understand how eager a newbie could be in wanting to get merit but you have to understand that people give attention to something what a quality standard, just as you wouldn't like to go to the market and use your money to buy unuseful items same is the forum here, no one will like to merit a post that is not of a quality standard.

Now this is how you can place yourself on a good edge to getting merit from the forum, find a unique and relevant topic or an aspect in bitcoin that you see a need for more emphasis to be laid and take responsibility on that, maybe you want to ask a question or talk about it, try engage members on discussion and follow up with the thread, if they see your ideas were full of "taughts" they may decide to merit your post.


The thing is the more you stay on the forum being active the more you see other opportunities that can help you get merit, but you need to see the major reason why you need to build yourself up in other to be able to deliver. Here's a guide that could help you through: newbie read this before posting there you find many answers to your questions as well.

Do whatever you can where it becomes the starting point for your contribution to the forum. High ranking is something that everyone wants to achieve but you only need to contribute with quality posts so that you will get merit as rewards.

I think there are many ways to get merit as long as you understand how the system works because the merit system in my opinion is very flexible (regardless of your current rank) but you just need to have a good effort to get it and it can only be earned by contribution. So do what you want as long as you care about post quality then you will get it.

Bitcointalk rules is not the same as Merit & new rank requirements, they are both different but the two are very important for newbies to read.

Receiving merit is not hard at all but it has sacrifices, I can not even call it sacrifices because it should be passion. For example, you are using bitcoin wallet like electrum, you use it to be receiving and sending bitcoin, you will be able to post on technical boards about bitcoin. Assuming you know about economy, you can be able to post on economic board. How about bitcoin discussion and others like beginners and help, all just require having basic knowledge about what bitcoin is and also how good posters are posting on the boards. As you are knowing about bitcoin, read what people that post good are posting, you can easily know people that are posting good and learn about them. If you are reading what they are posting carefully and understanding it and you are using bitcoin and bitcoin wallet, you will rank up.

Newbies should not be looking for merit, they should learn about bitcoin, read crypto news, read more about what good posters are posting and study this forum intelligently, merit will look for them when they have learned, but newbies are mostly after signature campaigns and bounties, not bad though, but should not lead them to spamming and plagiarizing thinking they will receive merit but got reported and banned.

All that newbies need is passion about what good posters are posting on this forum.

Merit & new rank requirements After reading this topic, I realized a lot.  I read it carefully till the 3rd page, it has become a 322 page topic so I couldn't read everything but here I have a question, many people are looking for merit especially newbies like us but I think we have to learn the rules of this form with dignity.  And what we can achieve by distributing what we can to others is enough. I think that's the way to get merit.

You seem to be twisting words by getting into so many details noorman0.

Theymos left the term "established member" vague/ambiguous; however, you interpreted such words to have attributes of "contribution" and "loyalty".. then you further defined what that means - which goes further in the weeds of your own interpretation rather than anything that theymos had actually said.... I will say that I do agree somewhat that making contributions would likely help to provide evidence (through actions) in terms of any member showing level of "established"... .. even though such term is likely purposefully left vague by theymos.

By the way, there are thousands of members who likely fit the definition of "somewhat established," so being "somewhat established" seems to serve as a mostly directional requirement to be considered as a potential merit source member..... that requirement does seem to more clearly eliminate newbies from eligibility.. and as you seem to imply by your insertion of the not bad "contribution" framing, it could even eliminate longer term members if they do not post or long on very often.. .


"working perfectly" is a pretty strong concept.  I doubt that any "serious" assessments would come to that conclusion.  With most things, including the merit system, there are going to be trade offs.... just leaving matters to the discretion of various individuals (such as 111) is going to have trade-offs, and even a system that rotates the 111 more would have trade offs, too... remember at one point, theymos had said that the merit system may well allow for the elimination of the trust system, but 4 years after the merit system went into effect, the forum's trust system seems to still be "live and kicking".... until it's not.. hahahahaha


Thanks for that analysis and some of the data, DdmrDdmr. 

In some sense, you seem to be providing justification for the point that perhaps some merit source members have been allocated way more smerits than they can handle....If the average per merit source member is more than 300 per month, but the merit source members are ONLY able to send around 200 per month, then it would seem justifiable that the quantity of their source is reduced to make it more practical for them to carry out their sending of smerits. 

And, the other point about merit source members being sloppy with their sending of smerits likely has some truth to it, too....so if any source member is having trouble spending even close to his/her smerits each month on a regular basis, then maybe a reduction in half or even 1/3 would put fewer pressures on such merit source members.., it does seem a strange way of framing the matter, especially when there had been forum threads in which merit source members were proclaiming not to have enough smerits in their allocation... though we have not seen as many of those complaints recently, right?

Don't get me wrong.  I understand how theymos may have some level of dilemma regarding choosing and/or adding to merit source members, so even if he has attempted to create some algorithmic assistant tools for himself, it is likely that he still finds a decent amount of manual labor that is involved in making tweaks to the merit system.  There might be a need for a merit source czar.. but that would likely create another headache for theymos.. presuming that he is capable of getting headaches.... hahahahaha.

There was one more point that I was going to make, but I have typed myself into a state of forgetfulness... oh well.

... oh.. I think I remember my other point...

It seems to me that the monthly spending of smerits should at least meet, if not exceed the number of smerits assigned each month.  Call me crazy or whatever, but surely smerits expire, and I would consider that a goal should be that any month, the overall average of source members spending their sources should exceed 90%, and surely I understand that on a sporadic basis, source members are not able to spend their smerits, but I have already made the point that if they are not regularly spending their monthly smerit allowance, then their source should likely be reduced in order that they are able to accomplish the spending of such smerits.  Again, am I being too unrealistic because if smerit source allocations are reduced then there is work that is involved to identify and to assign new merit source members who are ready, willing and able to send out whatever smerits have been allocated to them.   

By the way, I do understand that dynamic that a smerit source who has 100 per month, might show as having around 90% allocation if s/he were to always maintain 10 smerits in reserves - even if spending all of the assigned smerits before they expire.  However, part of my point regarding the monthly spending of smerits should at least reach the number of smerits assigned is that each spent smerit has halvening abilities to be sent, even though those non-source smerits do not have any time limit on them in being sent, I still would like to presume that a decent amount of the rippling of non-source smerits end up getting spent in order to bring 90% of the merit sources up to each month being able to reach the smerit allocation amounts rather than consistently being 18% to 30% below that as your 24k-28k per month spending amounts seem to show, DdmrDdmr... I already, anticipate that I am going to be labeled as "unrealistic" when I assert that smerit spending numbers should at least meet the monthly allocation numbers.... call me stubborn if you must.


Hahahahaha

I had to laugh out loud to this response, Loyce.   It seems some members seem to want to present ways that other members can improve upon their sending of smerits - and surely if we scrutinize how members send out smerits, some of "I am holier than thou" implications would not stand up to even basic scrutiny. 

I too have been thinking about this, there should be some specific members that should be awarded a rank that is not common at all that is superior to legendary. Example are people that have 10000 merits already. If I should say my mind, there is nothing bad if people like theymos himself, LoyceV, The Pharmacist, DdmrDdmr, pooya87, o_e_l_e_o and some other members are awarded a ranked that will not be easily attainable because they have worked hard on this forum. Even if some people among them do not qualify for the rank, there is still high chance that they would later qualify for it. Theymos, please think about this, just an awarded rank for people that have gotten to certain number of merits that many others have not and may not achieve.

I think theymos said that he is not planning to add another rank.
Why should there be another rank at all? This are just letters below nickname. They dont give any special perks (except newbie and posting time limits). The post from newbie can be same valuable as legendary users post. I think adding new tank will trigger some users to start cheating to achieve it, lets call it merit abuse. Do we need another abuse on the forum? My answer is no.

What the next move is Bitcointalk is going to introduce some new Rank fro the users having more then 6000 + merits just trying analyze what is the use of merit after the Legendary Rank?

That will be great if there will be a new rank the Hype of that Rank will make a new history lets if something exciting comes.

You don't need to see Merit sources, most users (shitposters excepted) can send Merit. You too can Merit good posts, and judging by the 3 sMerit you sent to this post, you can definitely improve on that.

It depends what you mean by decentralising it more? The thing is I think a lot of Bitcoin users tend to think because Bitcoin is decentralised, then everything would benefit from being decentralised, but I tend to disagree. Not everything needs to be decentralised to work effectively. When it involves trust, then that's usually a decent way of going about things, but at the moment while we do have merit sources, and DefaultTrust, basically everything else goes through theymos to an extent, which I think has worked fine, and doesn't need to be changed. How are you proposing we decentralise it more? I think the merit sources, and the number of them is somewhat decentralised enough.

Yeah, I don't think its as easy as saying "ah this user has been here a long time, posts good, and is on here all the time", since being a good poster, and being here for a long time doesn't necessarily mean they'll be a good merit source. I don't think the problem we have is with the number of merit sources, but rather that number of merit sources aren't depleting their merit source allocation.

I don't think so, being a merit source is actually quite time consuming, and a lot of users find it hard to deplete their merit allocation. I wouldn't say its stressful, but it definitely isn't for everyone.

I’ve always been a defender of "the more eyes on the table, the better". Currently, the Merits Sources have a 34.139 sMerit allocation per 30 days. Looking over the forum’s overall sent sMerits per month, we’ve been on a 24k-28k per month range sin July 2021’s Merit Source tweaks. That is a pretty stable range, and the charts on the Dashboard show the good the tweaks did in terms of sMerit awarding, since the prior months were in the 13k-16k range. There are more factors to consider, as this is not just a “sent” quantitate matter (number of receivers, content, etc.).

It’s clear that not all Merit Source’s sMerits are depleted each month, and even more so considering that the 24k-28k monthly factual range accounts both for Merit Source and regular user’s awarded sMerits. Hell, even with my awarding tricks I fall short, and although I could just double or triple my awarding habits beforehand, I find it hardish to do so. By that I mean that we shouldn’t expect Merit Sources to send all their sMerits monthly per se, as each one’s awarding criteria, amounts, time, will and interest will invariably be different both from one and other, and over time.

Could more Merit Sources be beneficial overall? Probably, from the point of view of diversity in criteria. Nevertheless, the greatest issue, I figure, is being able to precisely select people whom to trust (and have the time for it), and in addition, are indeed going to have a criteria that is diverse.

That is true, even I come to think of it, if theymos make a user a merit source, the user will want that. Almost everyone will want to be a merit source.


This forum is decentralized to an extent but not actually decentralized but working perfectly. To increase the merit source from 111 to 200 or 222 does not means it adds to decentralization, still theymos will be the one to allocate smerits to merit source.

If the merit system we are using now is working perfectly, I do not see any reason anyone should bring a proposal. What was merit meant for? To eliminate low quality posts and it is working perfectly, yet new members are ranking up.

It seems like a good idea to me, and I think it goes along the lines of decentralizing the system more, which might seem like a good idea to Theymos, but we can't be sure what he will think.

What I think is that it doesn't necessarily have to be like what you're proposing: double merit sources and cut the merits in half. That would be the simplest way to do it, of course. But you could add 20% more merit sources, for example, and lower the merit allocation but not exactly 20%. Maybe you could lower the allocation for those who don't use them up month after month, and keep the same allocation for those who do, according to what LoyceV says:


Anyway, if he thinks it's a good idea, I guess he will do it his way.

This is the requirements.

I assume the "established member" requirement is not about ranking, you need to show your contribution and loyalty as a member.

Contribution is how your activities (posts) are spent in certain forum sections and consistently so that you are well known (in a positive direction). Maybe this will take years. Loyalty is how you spend your sMerit to appreciate the contributions of others to the forum. Your objectivity may also be considered.

Sir i have readed the above posts and Posts from the First pages only i got its that the merit system was introduced to avoid spamers and create a Quality Community to intrect freely to improve the posts status.

By this point of view to avoid spamers i am totally agreed and yes sir i have explored 2 Merit Sources Working actively one them is mentioned by you may be There are too many threads in Bitcointalk so may be they were working somewhere else as we didn't noticed.

Is there is a limit of Members Using merit source rank. From limit i mean to say that New application limit for merit sources

Newbie jail no longer exists, so you can comment on any thread irrespective of your rank. No, Theymos didn't restrict any rank from being able to apply for a merit source position. But the thing is you ought to be a reputable member of Bitcointalk forum to stand any chance, see the requirements:
Going by this post, i guess you are referring to Ratimov as the only MS you have noticed, but that is not true like i told you in that thread, you are prolly only noticing him cause he has two threads designated to help users rank up, which is really appreciated by the community and that is why he is amongst the most generous users giving out merits, look at this thread to find out other generous merit givers: [Top-200] The most generous users giving merits. There could be a few reasons i can imagine why you're not noticing other merit sources:
1) You're posting in boards they don't read
2) They are prolly not interested in threads you post on
3) Maybe they skip your post because it does not meet their criteria, etc, etc...
4) LoyceV has a thread that can help: Report unmerited good posts to merit sources
It is still up to Theymos to decide if the "merit system/economy/process isn't flowing as it should, personally i think we need more merit sources, but i disagree that the present sources aren't doing a good voluntary "job".

From the look of ranks, I am not worthy to make comment here, but I picked up courage to voice out my view. I am sorry 🙏. From the OP and other's comments, all are well spoken. I want to also know something from the OP. Is there any specific Rank that is meant for merit source?

And also I registered in this in the month of December, 2021, by then till now, I am only seeing  one merit source out of the 111 mentioned. What happened to the rest merit sources? Is it that they are active but I don't noticed them or they are inactive?

Adding more merit source will help the forum very well but but what of about the 111. If the 111 are not utilized well in the forum and you bring another ones what do you think will happen to them?

Now it's probably much better than before as there aren't many complaints coming from ''newbie- high-ranking'' users about having trouble getting the merit. There have been plenty of newbies who have earned their merit faster than thousands of other spammers over the years, and it has been a simple display to introduce the merit system to them from the start.

The more knowledge a user has about bitcoin regardless of account rank, the greater the chances of getting merit. So this is the best guide for those who care about account rank especially if they are low ranking members.