I don't really have anyone I dislike here on the forum, and I tend not to
care on who made the post, but rather how much the post contributes to the discussion, and if it had anything of any real substance. I've merited users with opposing views, as well as those that have posted things I've agreed with. I've even merited posts which were factually incorrect, but at least tried to make sense of things. For example, if someone has claimed that Bitcoin will never be able to do x, and they gave some decent reason as to why they might think that, but were ultimately factually incorrect then I have, and will continue to merit those that make effort. If its a blatant attack, without any real substance then it wouldn't be merited by me.
There's so many factors to consider, and I have no doubt that the username of the person's post does influence others, as well potentially even myself at a subconscious level. Although, I do tend to actively try to mitigate that. For example, sometimes seeing a legendary user, you might be like "They've already achieved the highest rank", but really that's not entirely what merit is for. Helping those, and rewarding those that make quality posts is one of the motivations that merit was implemented, but also merit has a alternative benefit of highlighting good posts, for those that want to only read posts which have been identified as quality posts, for example if you were strapped for time.
I was under the impression that merit is meant to reward good content to make sure there are better posters and lesser spammers eventually on the forum. If Nutildah is looking up at the username and their history with the user, then I am sure a lot of other users must be following the same path.
Regarding this, other than the fact Nutildah has already responded. Users will likely be influenced by usernames that's just a factor that comes with being human. You can try, and actively mitigate it, but your unlikely to prevent it completely. We are human, and humans are inherently bias. I'm not saying that is the case with Nutildah, but its not something that we can be over critical of, as everyone has a sort of bias whether that's subconscious or not.
Also, merit doesn't really remove spammers on the forum, not now at least in the earlier days that it was introduced I suspect it disencouraged quite a few account farms, but these days it simply prevents spammers from being able to progress to another rank, at least that's the intended purpose.
Yeah, I assume merits are basically given out like a "like" on Reddit, and there's no rule that says you can't withhold merits from members if you don't like them--and frankly, I think members should be free to do with their sMerits what they please, and if they don't want to merit a good post made by someone they have a grudge against, they shouldn't have to.
I don't think that is the intended usage for up votes on Reddit, though. I've always seen up votes as giving a post more exposure, because you think it contributes to the sub reddit, or contributes to the discussion. Very similar to how many users here use merit. Generally, if a user is contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way, they'll receive merits.
By design, I believe reddit is intended very similar to that of the merit system here. However, its the users using these platforms which are the weak link in the system. You'll always have users down voting posts that they don't agree on, and you'll have others who up vote things that they do agree with, but doesn't necessarily bring anything to the discussion or subreddit.
The same for Bitcointalk, because merit isn't distributed by one user, but instead by multiple merit sources, this creates diversity which in return results in different standards being set. I've noticed that even with merit sources, the quality standard for rewarding merit is often misaligned with one another, and for sure you'll probably find that every single merit source out there, including me has merited something that you disagree that it should have been merited. You might have different numerical values to others, and might disagree how much another user gives a post.
