Topic: My take on Merit - page 2. (Read 852 times)

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I personally had an idea for signature campaigns, where the top poster of the week gets 10 merit (or some amount). This would incentivize better post quality within the campaign.

No one is required to post for Merit. If you just want to post randomly throughout the week, then that's fine too. Sure, the chances of you not getting more Merits will shrink a bit, but the main point is that people should be posting naturally, and not for the sake of Merits.

People are forcing and exaggerating in their posts to get Merits, that I have noticed too, but that's still better than spamming with 'yes I think the price will go up', or 'Bitcoin will make us rich, but we have to trust in Bitcoin'. Everything that may potentially enhance the discussion field in a thread is a welcome addition, because that's what's missing now.

Thanks. So which categories will you highly recommend me to join? In fact, I am not really familiar with other categories than Altcoin announcement.

Not really. I've been surprised by the points I've picked up so far. I just had a quick look at the last page of your post history and other than talking about the merit system (which we all are right now, it's a hot topic) I noticed most of your posts are in altcoin ANN threads. I don't really hang out over there so I don't if there are people giving out merit or not. In the Bitcoin technical sections, it seems not to be an issue at the moment.

So it's been a day or so now since merit was introduced and I've shared some of my thoughts and opinions on it across a number of threads, now I feel I'll compile them all in one place.

The math

By now you probably know that the only long term source of sMerit is from selected accounts. Theymos has said that in total there will be 8175 sMerit to be distributed each month. Before we actually look at how this sMerit may or may not be fairly distributed let's just break that down with some numbers.

Each account previously if fulfilling its potential growth would grow by 30 activity per 30 days. Given that, dividing 8175 by 30 we get 272.5. That means that 272.5 accounts with the new measure could grow at the rate they were previously able to grow. Now as of writing we have approximately 1.7m accounts in this forum, of course many will be inactive but even removing those it's a lot more than 272.5

An alternative way to look at this point is to consider the posts per day. If we take the average number of posts per month from January 2015 to December 2017 (therefore discounting for the fact the forum has got a lot busier in the last months than at the beginning of this time period which would only serve to worsen things) we get an average monthly number of posts of 451,274. Given that of those 451,274 posts there will be a total of 8175 merit given out we can calculate that per post we are looking at approximately 0.0018 merit being given per post, or alternatively 1 in 55 posts earning 1 merit. Compare that to previously where a user could assume that per 1 post they'd gain 1 activity up to the limit then it's a much slower rate of progression. These figures were calculated from the official forum stats if anyone wants to check my calculations.

They will be required to publish daily for some Merit.

I agree with you will be long posts or useful but generally not useful because they are mandatory shares.

Furthermore I think it is worth considering sMerits not being spendable/giftable to legendary accounts, they are effectively wasted as there is nowhere for them to progress from Legendary.

The big problem is the probability to get merits for good, high-qualitied posts is extremely low. Right?

This is the case, people earned that by making a contribution to the forum over a long period of time.


It will take a minimum of 8.5 months as the activity system is still in place and the merit system is an additional requirement. Have a look at the OP to this thread and you will see that it has already attracted 14 Merit. Is it impossible to make 1 good post like that every couple of weeks?


This makes no sense. Nobody has had any status taken away from them so it cannot possibly make them poorer. The only change is that it now takes some effort to get somewhere, it is no longer an automatic right. You might feel aggrieved that those who came before you had an easier ride, but that is often the reward for being an early adopter, not just in Bitcoin but in life generally. The early bird catches the worm.

I can imagine you all already earned your stripes

I probably will be a Sr Member in around 2-3 years

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

In most local topics, you can see merit buying/selling posts. So anyone hoping Merit will increase the post quality will be disappointed...

1. Is the initial amount of merit people received fair?

Many people have complained at the unfairness of receiving the same merit points when they were 1 week away from a rank compared to someone who just ranked up. Frankly they're right and it isn't fair. However it's hard to have done anything that would have been fair, the most logical would have been to give everyone merit = activity

3. Is the way that sMerit works well thought and will it be fair and effective?

The math

By now you probably know that the only long term source of sMerit is from selected accounts. Theymos has said that in total there will be 8175 sMerit to be distributed each month. Before we actually look at how this sMerit may or may not be fairly distributed let's just break that down with some numbers.

Each account previously if fulfilling its potential growth would grow by 30 activity per 30 days. Given that, dividing 8175 by 30 we get 272.5. That means that 272.5 accounts with the new measure could grow at the rate they were previously able to grow. Now as of writing we have approximately 1.7m accounts in this forum, of course many will be inactive but even removing those it's a lot more than 272.5

On top of this the merit score doesn't really discourage the old timers from posting shitposts either for campaign purposes.  The lower ranks still have to read those..

I think the merit system would be much more effective if it was only possible for a member to give one point to a post. I had a quick look at the posts that were getting 50 merits, and they were either a couple of years old, or posts about ponzi scams or air drops. It's hardly going to improve the forum by promoting ponzi pushers.

Theymos has said he'll be monitoring it closely and adding more merit sources as he sees fit, hopefully that will be the case and we won't end up in a scenario where ranks are much much harder to come by. I don't think anyone will have a major issue with a slower rate of progression, even if it was halved or so, but if it's 50 times or more then it's a bit ridiculous.

It is vital for the forums success that there is always a progression and a constant stream of new members. If these new members feel that the same opportunities are not afforded to them then they won't stick around.