Topic: Obliterate all Aridropped Merit Please @theymos (Read 623 times)

I agreed with you, Pmalek. Even grandfather high rank users have not contributed anything or contributed limited things for the forum, and luckily hit high ranks before January of 2018; they - at least - have not spammed the forum. At least, they did  not spam the forum after January of 2018, because they knew their account values very well, and became more careful with each of their posts. However, non-spam posts don't equal to constructive posts for sure.
Things might become much complex on how to classify grandfather users whom won't be demoted because they deserve such ranks due to their past contributions; and grandfather users whom will be demoted due to their lack of contributions (both in the past and after birthday of merit system in 2018).

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Therefore, the best thing to do is don't do anything. 

OP, what you're asking for is analogous to telling a company to take away the sole distributorship right it gave to its early patronisers just because some new dudes are coming in with bigger cash and wanting the distributorship deal. I am a member of a forum on crypytocurrency, cryptotalksworld, and I know how tedious it has been for us as early member to get traffic to the site. Will you now think it right to flush out all old members who slaved for that forum if traffic increased a few years from now by denying them certain rights and incentives? Life doesn't work that way and I believe that's the principle Theymos is considering most.

OP, many people that you propose to deprive a Merit at the time really worked hard to improve the forum. They wrote guides, promoted cryptocurrencies to masses of people. And to deprive them of their merits only for the fact that they are now retired and do not show much activity unfairly.
It's like depriving your grandmother of food because she retired and doesn't work.

I'd prefer a merit to posts ratio only be displayed if it counted posts made since the introduction of the merit system. I was mostly active on bitcointalk between 2011 and 2014, and 90% of my posts were made before the merit had come to existence, so I'll admit I'm biased

I think eventually another merit airdrop will be necessary, rather than destroying "airdropped" merit, especially if there are continued waves of permabans for plagiarism, spamming, multiaccounts, etc, that includes enough higher ranking members. The continued culling of higher ranking members with the lack of members ranking up (in compairson) will require further merit airdrop in my opinion to maintain the same number of ranking users. Maybe not now, but in the future.

I realise many high ranking members will not like this, but if new users came here and earned a minimum of one merit while contributing activity to the forum, then I think they are deserving of further merit. After all many newbies disappear when they find it too difficult to rank up, even ranked members, so it makes sense to reward those who stuck around rather than gave up because "they couldn't rank up". I think we're still a year or two away from needing another merit airdrop though.

Maybe alternatively there could be merit decay, for users who are no longer active, but I don't see why removing all merit completely makes any sense, personally.

I like this. Next to merits we could have an additional - earned merits: X field.

There are users in higher ranks who don't contribute anything, you are right about that but those are a handful compared with low rank spammers.

If a decision is made to do something regarding the airdropped merits I am sure those from high ranks who have not contributed to the forum ever, meaning both before and after the introduction of the merit system, can be singled out manually and demoted if needed. But doing it to everyone in the same way would be wrong.
Someone mentioned Hal - good example, or Zepher or anyone else... May they rest in Peace!

Even spammers have to be actively every day, or even more actively than higher rank users, so you actually raised wrong points here. Another fact is there are lots of shitty higher rank members whom ranked up with old system, without merits, and only requires activity points. Being more or less actively in the forum does not mean user is more (or less) constructive in the forum.
However, it is the fact and the unchangeable thing because theymos (by now) has not shown his intention to deal with grandfather higher rank users. Fortunately, if you actually noticed, there are more and more self-made users, from Member to Hero or even Legendary ranks recent months (more than 14 months after the start of merit system in the forum), they somehow better compete with grandfather users in good campaigns. It means grandfather users have less and less opportunities to be accepted in good campaigns. Impressively, this is the key points merit system works, and with such effects, I don't think demoted or decay of airdropped merits & sMerits are essential things.

They are not dummy accounts, activity required to reach hero ranks is more than a year, they stayed active every single day to get that rank.

Imagine yourself as a high ranked member, would you like to be get your merit taken away?

I thought this merit problem threads are over but there are some newbies who needs further clarification regarding merits.

To the OP, what is your main purpose of creating this thread? Aren't you just happy that you are one of the members here who are getting information regarding crypto? Or you are just one of the stupid members there who doesn't accept that his rank is low because of merit therefore you don't earn that much compare to those higher ranked members and you are creating a thread like this.

In my opinion, there is no need for the airdropped merits to be removed. Even though those user who got airdrop merits will distribute or not doesn't matter to me .

If you don't want what theymos is adding in this forum, the door is open to leave

I did a quick search and found someone asking the question in 2017: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-first-signature-campaign-in-bitcointalk-forum-1828070

HabBear linked to a list of signature campaigns from 2013:

OP, members got grandfathered in when the merit system was implemented.  It's just something you're going to have to deal with, and it's really not that big a deal other than your resentment due to it being so hard to rank up from scratch. 

You know the reason why Theymos started the merit system in the first place?  It was because of lower-ranked members spamming and rampant account farming, which also involved many accounts with low ranks.  The problem never was with higher-ranked accounts, and although there are certainly examples of Hero/Legendary members shitposting, they are the exception and not the rule.

If Theymos removed all the airdropped merits, what problem would that solve?  It might make you feel better, like you got revenge on members that have something you don't (a high rank), but it would not improve the forum or do anything else useful.

so you are saying those high rank old accounts, with no earned merit, didn't contribute to the growth of forum?
weren't they here before you, when the forum was not as popular as currently now?
weren't they keep posting before merit and signature campaign was around? (cmiiw) ^[1]

what benefits? I'm pretty sure you're referring to bounty and signature campaign, eh?

if they come back, most likely to discuss the recent news or updates on anything bitcoin related
and not just to earn bitcoin from signature campaign by spamming the forum
many new accounts are more consciously merit-driven rank-driven for the purpose of joining signature campaign
and merit was put in place to stop spam from that kind of newly created accounts

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[1] can anyone tell me what and when was the first signature campaign started?

Point of correction, everything here is subject to change; get that please.


Suggestions are needed before the implementation if @theymos will deem it fit to do so.


More reason why we needed a change for another year ahead.

I'm against removing all airdropped merit but some sort of activity-based decay (like Loyce mentioned above) would be good I think.

I'd like the number of merits shown on user profile and next to each post to be changed to show earned merits instead of total (or show both, or show merit/posts ratio). Just a display change, without actually removing merits or demoting anyone.

I do not think there is a struggle, of course there are personal objectives everyone has while joining the forum, and earning from bounties (preferably Bitcoin paying) is high on the agenda. Anyone diligently contributing to the growth of the forum would be far more recognized than members who do not contribute and probably hide off in some spam section.
There are other factors as the input of those accounts when the forum was not rewarding and their contribution to the growth of the forum.

Yeap, like Hal, we all can not deny what he did for crypto in general, and for bitcoin as well as for the forum in particular. Even Hal passed away years ago, the bitcointalk.org community will never forget his contributions in early years. Even next 5 or 10 years, Hal's account receive only 1 merit, 10 merits, or 100 merits, his huge contributions years ago will still be there, forever. His story should be read again and again because it contains lots of motivational things. Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney)

Late-in doesn't mean late-out, but all i wish for is just fairness on the part of the lower rank members that struggle it out on this forum. Personally, am doing well base on my experience and strongly believe that in due time i will make it. Not saying anyone should get punish, but let it be a free play ground for all, and let see who survive it here to the TOP.

Proudly, i acknowledge some excellent posters and knowledgeable lower and high rank account on this forum, which i read after on daily basis to equip my humble self, those accounts are accounts that distinguished themselves, which; with or without airdropped merit they will still be in their present rank.

Just my opinion and not depriving anyone from whatsoever.

This has been discussed before. It's mainly unfair to the old users who haven't been active, and you also can't expect most users to earn Merit at twice the rate of Activity.

If any airdropped Merit is going to be taken away, I'd say remove 1 Merit for every 100 posts made since the introduction of Merit. This will only hurt the worst spammers.

There's a reason why it's called a privilege, you don't denial people of their privilege especially when they have done nothing wrong. I was against the demotion of jnr members who haven't earned any merit but that decision turned out great and considering earning just 1 merit isn't that hard even though you're just an average poster and not a spammer that was a great decision by theymos but demoting higher ranked users just because they're not impressing meriters isn't right.

A better solution will be demoting members with only airdropped merits who are caught spamming the forum with shitposts don't generalize the punishment just because of few members especially as earning the merit for those ranks (hero, legendary) isn't that easy.

To OP, just because you came in late doesn't mean the early users should get punished. Is just like the miners of today requesting for the same block rewards that miners during 2009-2012 got  

Yes, they could have become inactive for whatever reason. Marriage, children, sickness... Just life taking its toll on them.
They are not hurting anyone being were they are and I don't really think someone's good past should be forgotten just because they are not part of the new merit system.   

There are two main things should consider:
- Difference in level of contributions between before and after the launch of merit system: Some people was more actively before the launch of merit system, then become less active or inactive. Therefore, they likely not get a single merit or less merits than others (more actively users). We should play fair with users' past and present contributions. For example: You can not call theymos as God because he has managed the forum within recent years, and you can not call satoshi as a trash because he /she/ they left the forum years ago.
- They contribute things to the forum, but not joined hottest things, trends of the forum, so they received less merits than others contrustive users.
Shitposters won't be able to get true merits (true merits means they not get them by abusements); but good posters don't need merits to prove that they are good posters.

Just because someone has not earned a lot of merits doesn't necessarily mean that he hasn't been a valuable asset to the forum in the times before the merit system was introduced. Therefore I don't think theymos will just forget about that and do what you are suggesting.

This forum is privately owned, @theymos, the person.
You are happy or not the door of the forum is wide open, want to go or be quiet forever, like a cat meets its food, fish food.

Little justice cares, that's justice, every case, Op, the Bitcointalk Forum is not owned by the government, which must have laws for action, for the welfare of its people.

Merit, one thing that often complains about every member, for the purpose to be ranked next, but everything has been decided in the forum rules, and now the system is running well.
No one has heard about the proposed removal of Merit,
This system has been running for more or less a year, and now it works well.

I wouldn't mind, but many others would. That view point is too narrow, there are many excellent people that haven't earned much merit for a plenthora of reasons. Maybe he could do it only for the users that don't pass a certain condition, e.g. earned less than 10% of total airdropped merit.

Couldn't hold my peace than to succumb to your suggestion because, many are enjoying the privilege of the airdropped merit till-date without contributing to the growth of this forum. Most of the higher rank account couldn't earned one merit while some earned 2-5 merit after the advent of the merit system implementation, so, what are the benefit gained by this forum to embrace those dummy accounts without contributing to this community?.

Am on the same opinion that, let theymos erase all airdropped merit, and let the struggle be fair for both we the lower rank members and those claiming to be higher rank members with or without merit earned from inception.

Most of the issues on this forum could be resolve amicably by breaking the stronghold of those who are not contributing to the growth of this forum. With the erasure of the airdropped merit from the ancient, many account holders will sit-up again to build a better community before benefiting from the community.

There's a gathering momentum for the surge of Bitcoin price before the end of 2019, and many abandoned high accounts will definitely wake up for the race which is not fair to the entire community. Therefore, let theymos be fair enough to the entire community at this point in time.

Just my opinion please!.