Topic: One year anniversary of merit system (Read 1245 times)

You seem to have a wrong impression of the events: The Merit System was introduced on the 24th/25th of January 2018 (depending on your GMT difference), and it did not de-rank any accounts at all. An adjustment introduced on the 17th of September 2018 did de-rank somewhere around 67k (*) Jr. Accounts back to Newbies. Specifically, those that to date had not earned a single merit.

The shock really came to spammers and account farmers, and for the most, it constitutes (laterally) a firewall to ranking-up at a pace similar to the one before de Merit System was introduced, albeit not impossible (just slower).

(*) See Analysis - Ranked up Newbies in the new Era, where I derived the 67K figure.  

There is no wound at all, because eventually I am a Hero Member now, and still on the way to Legendary rank. In my opinion, the forum has become more interesting with merit system. After merit system started, if someone begin from scratch and become Senior / Hero / Legendary member, it is definitely that they deserve it, from their decent efforts, and lots of time spent as well as contributions. With them, there is no wounds, I think.

The merit system introduction was a big shock to btt members. Millions of account was put to newbie without notice. There was a big catastrophic in the system that affected the highly rank account. Remembering it, its like remembering past wound of many. All the same we gat to celebrate it yearly cos we now have quality post that worth reading

I would like to disregard the graph cause I really hate it personally even if this are very informative. To all the newbies who struggles because usually the tech guys are creating more informative info's than you. Don't get discourage just focus on improving, it doesn't matter if you are getting crashed up on a certain debate just make sure you give a good fight lol.


Lastly, to all the retarded sh*t posters. "How's one year of suffering?"

To keep the thread lively, I gave you some figures on merit system and merit circulation in the forum, with LoyceV's last data dump and my meret time series analysis.

This one is in plan of theymos.

It was too long since the last post published here, and today I updated it with changes in total merit sources.

yes right, because I only spread portfolios for translators and comments to support signature campaigns.
I am not looking for additional merit, I do not want to make spam by starting a thread that is not useful.
maybe I will make a useful tutorial thread later, after reading your thread.

I don't think that you can earn merits by your post like this.
You should compose it better, in sentence structure, at least.
I don't discuss about your ideas here.

Furthermore, your post history shown the reasons why you almost has not earned merits via your posts, by now.

merit system is very influential to reduce new accounts which are indeed created for farming accounts which are then sold
and used for Multi accounts when participating in a bounty or airdrop program.
To go up Rank is quite difficult, I myself still can't go up Rank because there are still many merits
that must be collected to go to the Rank Hero Member.

Box plots:


Notes:
- merit_full: Full dataset, from 24/1/2018 to 24/1/2019.
- merit2daysdrop: the first two days dropped (24-25/1/2018, id = 1, 2)
- merit: the first 26 days dropped due to outliers (24/1/2018 to 18/2/2018, id = 1-26)
- mean: mean
- sd: standard deviation
- p50: median
- p25: Q1
- p75: Q3

Raw statistics:
Due to effects of outliers, the means fall from 843 (full dataset) to 794 (first two days dropped), then to 685 (first 26 days dropped).
Moreover, the medians present almost the same pattern, when medians for full dataset, first two days dropped, and first 26 days dropped are 640, 639, and 622, respectively.

Statistics should be used are from truncated dataset by dropping the first 26 days.
- Mean +/- sd: 685 +/- 262
- Median (interquartile range): 622 (515 - 774)
The median of the truncated dataset present nearly the true median of one year intraday-merits.
It means that:
- 50% of observed days have intraday merits above 622, whislt 50% of rest observed days have intraday merits below 622.
- 50% of observed days have intraday merits in the range from 515 to 774 (the interquartile range).

Today, I got dataset from 24/1/2018 to 24/1/2019 (in fact, the real dataset last to 30/1/2019).
I only used the dataset for one year period to see how many merits circulated in the forum from that period.
What I got is:
308504.

Let's see some statistics:
- Mean +/- sd: 843 +/- 889
- Median (interquartile range): 640 (521 - 843)
- Min: 312
- Max: 13018 (the merit airdropped day).
What does it mean?
- 50 % of those days have total intraday merits below 640 (median), whilst 50% of them have total intraday merits above 640.
- 50% of those days have total intraday merits range from 521 to 843 (the interquartile range).

Updated the OP with my newest topic:

Two kinds of feeling:
- Happy to rank up after surpassing merit challenges.
- Satisfied to see shitposters stop ranking up easily and make the forum as their land-fill.

Data analytics is only one of ways to contribute to the forum. Let's do what you think are constructive for the forum and forum users.

In third world nations, even $10 means a lot of things for locals.

You need to understand my point. Your post and my own post are not essentially contradictory. However anecdotal accounts/experiences do not change how the systems of control function.  Imagine if there were set criteria for merit and a way to ensure all posts were measured against it equally and rewarded equally... and rather than 100 merits you should have 200. Who can say.

If you actually reviewed my entire post history you would see very much I am always helping the under-dogs and preventing the abuse of the new members.

Thanks for the feedback o_e_l_e_o

I appreciate it

You are still well above average. You've earnt merits faster than you have earnt activity over the last year, and so even if you were not legendary you would not have been hindered from ranking up at all.


I am always on the look out for good newbies who aren't getting the merit they deserve. Unfortunately such posts are hard to come by, and when I do come by them, I find there is usually about a 50/50 chance that they are plagiarized. Still, if you or anyone else does come across any such good-but-unmerited posts, post a link to them over here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/self-moderated-report-unmerited-good-posts-to-merit-source-5093271.

You only appreciate yourself when you know what you want through before you received those merit. It's a great feeling ranking up in the new system. As an average poster with no skill in data analysis, merit analysis etc it was a thing of joy knowing my little contribution to the forum was appreciated and i have ranked up earning over 100+merit so please don't call us fools. For you merit means nothing but for some of us it does mean something. Never insult that man celebrating his $100 salary because you own $10,000

Merit = subjective gamed nonsense. I know legends with less than 80 earned merit that could destroy all but a tiny few of the "high cycled merit" crowd in any debate or discussion. Their value here is magnitudes greater than most of self congratulating fools here in meta. FACT

Although of course they would have no need of the sig campaigns you see most of these high merit cyclers spamming everywhere with. FACT

Merit is being used in such a way that it is net negative now.

By now, the most intesting things I witnessed around one year after the start of merit system are:
- Campaigns tend to requires minimum earned merits to join.
- Campaigns' managers tend to choose candidates with more earned merits in last 120-day period.
- Even shitty higher ranked users (Full Members, Senior Members, and higher) that have not earned single merits after more than one year will hardly have odds to get acceptance from campaigns' managers. It's amazing impacts of merit system.  

Sometimes, I saw shitty higher ranked users with no single merit earned, they will be rejected from campaigns for sure.

Still tough to gain Merit unless you’re a techie, creating data dumps etc. I do feel sorry for the new members who are trying but struggling to rank up.

There are a lot of shit posters & spammers & the Merit system has euthanised them but it’s the average to good (but not excellent) posters who struggle to rank up.

A big shout out to them.

I have 1404 Merit but obviously only 404 of those are earnt. Even for me as a Legendary Member I’m not ashamed to say it is disheartening seeing a growing number of people on 2000+ Merit whilst I struggle along on 404.

Overall the Merit system is an excellent addition to the forum but it does kind of favour the elite posters not the average to good which there are more of.

Oh Great, Anyway I know that you can play a lot better, you've posted a lot and got a lot of merit from there but you did not have to give anyone, how it happened, you should give them the same way as getting Merit.

Today, I made the update on my another topic with newest data dump from LoyceV. For full details, please read in original posts.
Hope it help!

LOL. I guess you snapshotted the screen simply because you felt like "OMG, merits ruin my life!".
Just kidding, you has gone through the merit challenge well.

BTW, you should use the width option to resize the image, that is oversized by now.
Find a appropriate x figure yourself, but it looks better now, in my opinion.

I dare you all to do the 1 year merit challenge. Post your old and latest profile summary. Let's see who enjoy earning merit on its first Anniversary.

Yeah, I still remember how merit-less I am until mid-2018. At that time, I only hope that somehow I could get 10 merits. Long story short, I'm still here even with the constant harassment from you guys! lol

I'm going to bump my newb's guide once I reach 500 merits.

Dang, I just looked at your date of registration and you must have taken a serious break from posting at some point.  You could have hit Legendary a long time ago--well before the merit system was created, in fact. 

Agreed that overall it's been a positive thing, because just before the merit system rolled out last year it seemed like it was complete chaos with the shitposters overrunning a bunch of different sections, and it got to the point where actmyname and I were negging the spammers.  Not a good use of the trust system, as I've said before, but we were just so frustrated and didn't think we had any other mechanism by which we could combat these fools. 

I was absolutely ecstatic when I woke up that day in Jan. 2018 and discovered that Theymos had created the merit system.  If I hadn't had the flu at the time I would have been break dancing in my living room all day.  It was immediately clear that it would seriously cut down on account farming, since newly-created accounts would have to earn those merits in order to rank up--and I assumed (correctly) that it was going to be hard for the average shitposter/account farmer to do this.

The merit system doesn't seem to have caused much improvement in certain sections like Bitcoin Discussion, but I've seen people trying a lot harder to post constructive things as a result of it, and that's a great thing.  Overall, I much prefer having the merit system on bitcointalk even if it's far from a perfect fix for the bounty spammer problem, and that's because I remember what things used to be like before merits.  It has done its job, too.  The good posters have ranked up, while the shitposters have learned to live with being a Jr. Member for the rest of their lives here.  That's a victory.

Say what?

Good to see merit activity picking up again in the past few weeks.

I'll admit, I was a bit skeptical of how effective the system would be at first (and a bit salty I had potential Legendary activity at the time). Definitely has been a positive addition to the forum as a whole.

 

The origin of merit system should be mentioned in the OP.
ideas for improving post quality?
5 weeks before the day on which merit system launched, theymos asked for ideas.

It was a very elegant decision. Now, during the decline of activity, the system of merit takes the necessary forms. Is there any information who is the author of this concept or is it a teamwork?

It is a remarkable milestone. A lot of people felt stuck when "Merit" was born. LOL.

You're correct beside yours looks more informative. About the merit guides, I did a thread on a simple advice I got back then and it's still guiding me today already helped me rank up to full member. the thread was titled Stop searching for merits and you will received them.- see Smerit as liabilities I believe it still has some information to pass to the new comers.

Sure. it is easily to see a spike in September in the time series plot.

Wrong!
They are potential merit abusers.
There is a topic, published by LoyceV about this issue:
List of demoted Jr. Members who were ranked up again

There was also a boost in merit circulation during that period, members with smerits were hunting for good posters to award merits and rank up, likewise demoted jr members improved their posting, which was the sole purpose of the restrictions.
The spike was not simply due to merit abuse.

Thank you. I added your topic into the OP.

Why not leave it here some days? I don't think that Meta board is the place for first come first served one.
If topics are helpful, and meaningful, they should be there. Maybe I am wrong, not sure about this.

The list of thread givingaway merit is outdated here is a more current thread titled Updated [20/01/2019]: List of Active Merit Giveaways threads. it even has jet cash's video challenge titled "My 25 sMerit offer for a single post" also you should consider moving this thread to another board (off-topic)  since we already have an anniversary thread on meta.  

This is about the same thing: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/happy-birthday-the-merit-system-5101652
but your thread is really pretty and informative

One year ago today, the forum witnessed one of the most innovative change that entirely and successfully changed the way of spamming control. Merit system launched on January 24, 2018, 11:00:11 PM (forum time), or Wednesday 24 January 2018 22:12:21 (GMT time).
The system launched by theymos, forum admin, with the topic, namely Merits & new rank requirements.
Firstly, we should take a look at the time-series plot of merit circulations in the forum within the past one year.

Time series plot of full dataset (from 24/1/2018 to 16/1/2019)

Time series plot of truncated dataset (from 26/1/2018 to 16/1/2019) [first two days dropped]

From now on, we will take an overview on merit system (its history, upgrades, basic statistics, and helpful guides & topics on merit system and related stuffs)

---

- All time high of intraday merits is 13018, on the one day period from 24th Jan. 2018 to 25th Jan. 2018, whilst the all time low of intraday merits is 312 on one day period from 24th Dec. 2018 to 25th Dec. 2018.

---

Chronological history of merit system
Before jumping into chronological history of merit system, we should review where it originated.
Around more than one month before 24th Jan. 2018 [on December 18, 2017, 12:54:08 AM], theymos ask for ideas to improve post quality and/ or at somewhat extent to control spamming endemic in the forum better.
ideas for improving post quality?

1) Launch day: 24/1/2018.
Then, the first forum users discussed about merits there: What is the function of the "Merit" score?. As a result of that, AdolfinWolf is the first one got sMerits from theymos.
How many merits allocated to existing forum users in total?
Theymos stated that there are around 600k sendable merits (sMerits) allocated to forum users.
I am not sure about the figure 600k, when the figure collected, at the first dump or after additional Merits and sMerits allocated to Hero members who satisfied activity threshold on January 27, 2018, 02:57:53 AM (forum time).
Interestingly, an estimated figure of more than 11k sMerits destroyed permanently because they belong to permanent banned users.
Then, bugs found and fixed later.

2) First adjustment: Additional re-allocation merits to Hero members who satistified the threshold of activity over the last one year before the launch of merit system.
On January 27, 2018, 02:57:53 AM (forum time), less than three days after the launch of merit system.
3) Second adjustment: Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements
The change of ranking rules caused a massive merit abusements in September, total sMerits circulation rocketed in September. You can easily see spikes in September from my time series plot. Consequently, there are lots of higher-ranked users got red-tag with their abusements.

Recent days (since 9th January of 2019), the Trust system upgrade with new rules/ operational mechanisms, that led to a new tide of merit circulation. Once again, you can easily see the spikes since 9th Jan. 2019. In my opinion, the new tide has nearly the same fractal pattern of the September’s tide. Addtionally, it’s interesting to see how long the Trust system-related topics will maintain its hot-level. Anyway, the Trust system changes actually resulted in dramatical rises of total intraday merits during last two weeks.

---

History of merit sources:
1. 24/01/2018: 35 merit sourcess
2. 26/01/2018: 49 merit sources

3. 01/03/2018: 57 merit sources in total

4. Rose to 123 merit sources in total (not sure when ??)

5. 15/3/2019: Increased to 130 merit sources
This wave happened simultaneously with Vod's remove as a merit source

---

How to check temporary total merit sources? Please get it there: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources
Merit stats page
How many pages reached after only one day of merit system?
More than 51pages, impressive, right?

Patrol page to check temporary spamming situation of the forum

---

List of merit analysis topics:
1) Analysis – Merit per post per Section/Subsection (by DdmrDdmr)
2) Analysis – The Merit Path – Where we start off and the path we follow (by DdmrDdmr)
3) Analysis – Personal merit per day, merit per post and ranking-up projections (by DdmrDdmr)
4) Top 200 Merit Receivers without Merit from the Top 200 Merit Receivers (by LoyceV)
5) LoyceV's Merit data analysis (full data since Jan. 24, 2018; not just 120 days)
6) Time Series Analysis on Distributed Merits in the forum (daily, weekly, monthly) (by tranthidung)
7) Forum chronicle - UP Rank List (BPIP statistics, trust) (by Nikisa)
[MERIT] [NFSN} We’re destroying more merits than we’re sending. Like, way more. (by suchmoon)
9) Tracking the difference of merit circulations with Default Trust Changes (by tranthidung)

---

Guides on how to get merits and merit giving-away challenge topics
I will add more topics later
Guides:
1) List of Threads Giving Away Merits - Updated 12 march 2018 (by Outlay)
2) TMAN’s guide to getting merit
3) cabalism13's Activity Tips on Ranking (by cabalism13)
4) Stop searching for merits and you will received them.- see Smerit as liabilities (by CryptopreneurBrainboss)

Challenges:
1) Updated [20/01/2019]: List of Active Merit Giveaways threads. (by CryptopreneurBrainboss). This one is the most updated, and fully topic on merit-give-away challenges. Should read at first.
2)   Giving 18 Newbie Members a Chance to Rank Up To J. Member (by Pmalek)
3)    Merits for all Rank Members - Conditions Apply - 5 merits available. (by Juggy777)
4)    I have 10 merit to give for Jr.Members and newbies  (by mikeywith)

---

Inspirational stories of self-made promoted users (by tranthidung)
I believe that the topic can inspire some users to change the way they use the forum, and stop complaining, instead start thinking more positively.

---

Notes:
The topic has been under construction.
- It is normal if I made mistaske, so I welcome all comments to correct my mistakes if you find them.
- Thanks all in advance for any supplementary information.

Someone who have not been busy with signature campaign, can use the avatar.
Merit avatar for use.

---

One year anniversary of enhanced merit system
Merit source observations