Topic: Merit System - Looking for Goals - page 2. (Read 476 times)

I'm not that familiar with the "smart" goal system but I'll try and give it a go if it makes you understand it easier. There has been no percentage of posts that have been posted that was expected to be curbed. Specific goals can only be measured after a few months and not really foreseen before. It would be nice to have these statistics released at the time of reviewing the system though.

Normally the amount of new registrations would be accessible here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=statsbut  I think this is currently disabled until further notice so it might be best to keep on checking that.

Some interesting data since the introduction of the merit system can be found here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.39521119

That has some pretty indepth statistics on a few things that you might find interesting

Specific:
The merit system was introduced to specifically target those that are ranking up without contributing much to the forum in terms of posts. Therefore encouraging members to make more constructive posts. It specifically rewards those that make quality posts by allowing them to gain merit points and rank up. If a member does not make quality posts then they will not rank up. The idea behind this is to reduce the amount of users posting useless content and start actiely looking to make quality posts in order to rank up to access certain benefits of the forum like the bounties and signature campaigns which require you to be a certain rank but also the benefits that come with higher ranks such as avatars.

Measurable?
It's measurable by the amount of merits that a user receives and the amount of signal to noise ratio. A great way that this is measurable is by looking at a specific members merit received. If they have not received any merit at all or very little this normally shows that this user is not making quality posts. Moderators would be able to measure this too by looking at the amount of reports that they have received since the introduction of the merit system and comparing from before.

Achievable?
Well the goal has already been achieved. Its reduced the amount of people that are ranking up. However it hasn't reduced the amount of spam enough. It may have an impact of the amount of spam thats being posted but it certainly was not a complete solution to it. Especially since most bounties dont restrict who can join them.

Relevant?
Of course its relevant to the forum. The community including myself are getting sick and tired of the spam that Bitcointalk is covered in right now. So it was in everyone's interest to introduce a system like the merit system which is relevant to the spam issues right now.

Time bound?
The merit system is permanent and will not be removed so it is not time bound. However when reviewing the merit system it is probably wise to allow sufficient time for new merit sources to be added and a cooling down period after the initial panic of the merit system being introduced.

I would say a review 6 months in and a year later would be the best time to review the system and whether its doing what it was suppose to do and make any changes to it if necessary.

Hi,

I'm interested in researching and learning more about the Merit/sMerit system that was rolled out here in BitcoinTalk earlier this year. I have read the OP (original post). But there are over 250 pages of replies to the original post announcing this change and I have not been able to find a particular piece of information, and I'm hoping someone can help.

I'm searching for any information on the stated goals/objectives of the Merit system. In particular, I'm looking for anything close to what would be considered "S.M.A.R.T. goals" for the Merit/sMerit system from authoritative sources.

If you are not familiar with S.M.A.R.T. goals here is a post form MIT about them (http://hrweb.mit.edu/performance-development/goal-setting-developmental-planning/smart-goals).

S.M.A.R.T. goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

Here is my question and I would greatly appreciate your assistance, if you would like to offer it:

Does anyone have any references to any stated S.M.A.R.T. goals or some metric based goals of the Merit/sMerit system that they can kindly post links to? I've asked some people about these who seemed knowledgeable and they could not produce them. I can't find these goals myself. If they exist, I would very much enjoy reading them.  I'm simply asking if anyone knows of written, metric based goals the Merit/sMerit system was intended to achieve that they can help me find and read myself.

Some examples might look like this...

-The Merit system will reduce spam by 10% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will increase the length of posts by 20% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will decrease the quantity of new user accounts by 30% within the first 6 months.

I have seen the vague descriptions that the Merit system's goals was to reduce spam and increase quality. Did anyone produce/set/post more specific goals (again, as described above)?

If anyone has seen any of these from an authoritative source, I would love to read more about them and read that post more thoroughly.

Thanks very much for reading this my fellow crypto community! Have a great day!