Topic: Please limit merit awards to one per post per person. - page 2. (Read 756 times)

@DooMAD
If they're really not adding anything, then they shouldn't get merit. But it doesn't need to be mind-blowing, either. Someone suggested a feature where all umerited posts would be hidden (which I may do at some point) -- I think that it'd be good to look at it as asking what posts you would want in such a summary. So not just incredible posts which might've taken an hour or more to write (those should probably get 10+ merit), but also the questions, arguments, jokes, etc. which couldn't be removed from a thread without starting to lobotomize it.

It's all very new, of course, so maybe this strategy will not actually be the best, but it is what I had in mind when designing the system.

@TMAN, I have been adding sources, and I will continue.

If that is the case then you need to up the number of merit sources to include the people who have been dishing them out. Decay the initial sMerits over 4 months and chuck in another 20-30 merit sources.

More merits will be handed out up down and sideways. The shitposters will learn and then all the members who need 90-500 merits to level up will be able to in time

Maybe I've got it wrong, then.  I thought the idea was to disparage not just the obviously terrible posts, but also the average and mediocre "That's just about enough effort to qualify for a not-shitpost" type post.  And it's sometimes tricky to differentiate between those and the people who are trying to be constructive, which is why I was only giving merit to the higher-end of the quality spectrum.  There are plenty of posts that aren't really contributing anything to the discussion, so I assumed the idea of merit was to highlight just the highly exceptional posts.  If we're supposed to give the reasonably decent posts a 1 and the truly insightful ones a 10, the average run-of-the-mill posts are still going to get lots of merit, keeping in mind more than one person can merit the same post.  That doesn't really have the same effect in terms of raising the bar, because it still allows people to climb the ranks by making just enough effort to disguise the fact they're posting for the activity and not because they had something worthwhile to contribute.

My only other issue I've encountered is that I came close to giving merit to a post earlier, but then luckily I read the next post where someone called them out for copy/pasta and not citing the source.  I'm hoping that's not going to be too much of a headache, considering we can't undo the act of giving them merit if it later emerges it was just plagiarism.

Someone like that doesn't deserve any merits as they are retarded.. failed logic in that argument bud

On the contrary, it seems that people are not giving out as much merit per merited post as I'd hoped. Any post that deserves to be read should get merit, and really good ones should get 10+. If people with plenty of sMerit to spare persist in giving out only a couple of merit per post, then changes will have to be made to either disincentivize sMerit hoarding or adapt to the lower amounts.

Merit sales are not an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

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On the flow of merit: imagine how the (US) road network works. You have the huge interstate highways, and the gaps in-between them are filled by state highways, and the gaps in-between them are filled by county highways, etc. Merit is like that, with sources taking you 95% of the way, and the decaying sMerit filling in the gaps.

He was trying to say that there should be a cap on how much merit
you can award to a single post.

E.g. let´s assume a Sr. Member has 20 sMerit to spend. He gives them all
to an old post by Satoshi. Afterwards he has no sMerit left until he slowly earns
a few new merits by composing high-quality posts.

If there would be a cap on how much merit you can award to a single post he would have to
distribute it more wisely. E.g. 5 merits as a tribute to Satoshi, 2 merits for
a helpful post by a newbie, 2 merits for a post that contains a nice infographic,
1 merit for a meme that made him laugh and so on.

I actually think that is a decent suggestion, because it would increase the distribution
of merits.

50 per person per month is plenty of a cap.. I don't understand the issue here

I think that is an improvement which must be made. Something like capping merits to a maximum of 5-10 per post.

No. Every time sMerits are passed on they are halved in value, but every month new ones are generated..

SMerits need to be given and earnt. Otherwise no one will level up

As far as I know, sMerits are being renewed every 2 weeks like the activities are done. If you want more sMerits, then I think you really need to have some good posts to be meritted and increase your rank.

What I meant to say here was that with time all the default Smerits that members got will get exhausted. This means that the number of available Smerits will reduce considerably. After few months, it will stabilize again.

No you need to earn more by posting quality content or asking amazing questions. I.E. helping make this place better

What about our default sMERITS is this renewable too?i only got one sMERITS and i want to give to a deserving people.

That is correct. People should just send merits, post well and get more. It's a simple enough system I really don't understand the backlash against it

Those merits released monthly for merit sources, right?

Depending on the previous days, most merits were awarded to ANN thread, merits posts and account Farmers.
i totally agree with signature campaign manager was not a Merit Faucet. But making limit merit awards to one per post per person Is a completely unfair decision and can solve this problem with a "DE-MERIT/cancel merit" property for Mods.

They are not scarce.. 10k new sMerits will come out every month. Once given then 5000 sMerits will be passed down, then 2500 and so on... don't you see?

Very informative post which has precious ideas about how to discover farming accounts and ilegal behaviours related to buying/ selling/ exchanging merits in the forum. Additionally, maximum merit donated per user per post is not bad idea, it should be considered carefully and implement in the future if possible.

With time people will realize how scarce these merits are going to be. All most of the members forget one thing that a good post is bound to get merits from multiple users here. Thus even those 1 merit per person can add up to 10 or 20 for a good quality post.

I am not surprised if such a rule is enforced in future especially for the general members (except merit sources). For quality threads also one should not give more than 5 merits. However, this is  my personal opinion and a lot of members will say that they are free to do whatever they want with their merits.

I'm keeping it one per post [//EDIT: two per post now, so that each person I merit will get 1 sMerit], with the notable exception of posts of significant historical interest, which I give a 5 just to make sure they stand out from the crowd.  I suppose everyone is going to have their idiosyncrasies and do things a little differently.  But it is a little surprising there isn't a cap on the amount you can throw at one single post.  It does leave things open to abuse.  But then, anyone abusing merit should be easy enough to identify, because it's all so transparent, so it's possible this was intentional and should make things easier to recognise account farmers and ban them.

I'm inclined to disagree about campaign managers not being merit sources, though.  It's precisely these people who need to be responsible for ensuring high quality and it's better if they have carrots as well as sticks in their arsenal to achieve that goal.