Topic: Possible solution to merit burning (Read 511 times)

JC can use the userscript to distinguish between sMerits from earned merits and sMerits from sourced-merits. With the script and a sheet to follow up in 30 days, JC can see how smerits of sources are refilled.

That's not how it works - see my explanation in the other thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5280804

The source sMerits don't disappear after 30 days. However you need to spend them if you want a refill. Not sure where you got the about about "shelf life" - that's incorrect. Perhaps the fact that merits a refilled after 30 days makes it look like there is a reduction but those merits do come back.

The OP is quite strange.

There is clear financial incentive to cycle merits, there is clear opportunity to cycle merits, there is strong compelling evidence in the form of merit fans and recipients data that people cycle merits.

Yet that is most unlikely?
Lol

Like the guy running out of the bank with swag bags spilling with money , with a gun, cashiers screaming and alarms ringing behind him, members of the public pointing at that guy with the swag bags and the gun and telling the police he just robbed the bank.

The cops say... nah most unlikely...probably a legit withdrawal

I mean for a start why would anyone want to steal money? Says the cops?
Also the gun doesn't provide any known opportunity to help steal money? Says the cops?
Also the alarm and screaming cashiers is certainly not to be conflated with sounds that indicate such activities like bank robbery? Says the cops.

Sensible conclusion is criminal activity in this case = most unlikely indeed.

Can you transparently present the thought process that makes you feel merit cycling is unlikely?
I am very interested.

Only then can I evaluate the solution your are proposing. I mean I would suggest burning every single merit on the forum. That may help.
Best to kill the spam or remove the negative of the spam, rather than kill the forum.

Yes, I am a merit source, and I was only discussing smerit refreshment for sources. Regular smerits have different rules, and fewer restricyions on their awarding.

My understanding is that your bucket doesn't have a time frame for refilling, but each replacement smerit has its own shelf life of 30 days. If is not spent during that period, then it decays, and cannot be spent or replaced. This means that less active merit sources may have a decreasing  pool of source smerits to spend. If that pool drops to zero, then the person is removed as a merit source. Periodically source smerits are reviewed according to a published formula. In this calculation source smerits and earned smerits that have been spent are aggregated, and a new limit is allocated. It is slightly higher than the rate of merit awarding for the relevant period. This means that the supply of smerits available for an active source will increase gradually. Thus a profligate spender supporting spammers will be able to provide more support. This will come from his increased allowance, and fromn any reciprocal "earned" smerits.

Spammers don't create a single quality posts. They are busy with spam and don't mind, don't spend a second to think for what they will write.

If a spammer changes from spamming to creating good quality posts, that member deserves to get merit for good posts, not for spam posts certainly. If a spammer suddenly makes a long post, you can use google search to find for plagiarism. There are not many spammers change and write long posts. They copy and paste.

You are not getting all his points. You should read it over and over again so that you can have a good understandings on his thoughts why merit sytem has been created.

In my opinion promoting newbies and low rank users are alright as long as they are qualified to to be promoted in accordance with their posting habit. Awarding them with merits is a job of the merit source which has been tasked by the admin of the forum. If there has been a problem in awarding with merits then the admin of the forum should get all the attention of the merit source and re-orient on how should it be done.

However, there is no point in stopping spammers to rank up especially if they too created quality posts. I think this kind of members that are complying with number of posts in signature campaign make sense on why they spam the forum with their posts. The question is that are those spammers could not make a contribution to make quality posts for the forum? If they can contribute some quality posts then high chance that they still get some merits and rank up slowly in the process.

You guys are just making it more complicated and that created confusions. Again,  this is the job of merit source to reward merits of members that contribute help for the forum and to other members so let them do their job and have trust in them.


Most likely for your information blood is thickier than water. it means that families, relatives and even friends that are here will tend to get bias when they had merits to send. However, I encourage forum members to invite family members to join in this forum. "As we all know that families stays together in this forum will learn together in cryptocurrency". The forum will be like some sort of venue for bonding discussing about cryptocurrency for the family. Not quite bad either if there are family doing like this.

The only solution that I can think of is that more quality post are posted by members that deserves to rank up. We also should make thread where everyone can apply for merit by posting their chosen post/topic that they think deserves merit, I saw one topic that did this and I think it is a good solution for a one stop shop merit rewarding for forum members.

Lmao. This is funny.

Is there an alternative way to rank up without merits good sir? Can i buy my way to legendary? Please tell us the magical secrets, good sir.

Egads, that idea is fraught with serious problems.

Merit sources aren't just a random group of members that Theymos keeps topped up with sMerits; most of them had to apply for the position by creating a thread in which the community could voice their opinions (and some threads turned into shit shows as people piled in to give reports of negative behavior on the part of the applicant and all sorts of other stuff). 

Some merit sources (like myself) were "tapped" by Theymos via PM at some point in September 2018 IIRC, and I'm pretty sure he selected members who he thought could be trusted not to abuse the position and/or ones he thought would do a good job distributing merits fairly.

If you gave "newer members" a chance to be merit sources, there are all sort of things that could go wrong.  I'm not sure most newbies, Jr. Members, and probably even some of the Member rank understand the importance of the merit system, and that it's not a mechanism whereby you merit your alt accounts, friends, and certainly not to sell merits.  I don't think members without track records of trustworthiness would be appropriate as merit source candidates--and I also think Theymos already realizes this fact, because I've seen a lot of the members he's chosen to be sources.

Just have to qoute this from your statement as I'm also having some issue with this and the worst part is the users guilty of this, still get awarded with all sorts of kudos and merits that make them feel great and end up giving us another worthless stats thread. I'm concerned because I get mentioned in almost all and when I see such notification on telegram, my enthusiasm to contribute to the discussion (as I was mentioned), get disappointed because it's another stats crab.

At first it was cool, but it's getting old and boring. We have third party platforms out there that we can get all those information from, so why keep flooding the forum with them. No doubt there are some interesting ones out there but majority aren't worth the hypes (merit-wise) they get.

In regards to the main topic in discussion, we have talked all we can about the merit system, the demerit, merit source bank conversation etc are all old and have been addressed. If the forum is lacking smerits, theymos knows what to do. Creating of more smerit is just a click of a mouse away (I believe so). So that shouldn't be our worries instead the quest to increase the quality of posts on the forum should be the focus.

This problem comes from:
- Inactive merit sources that were removed by theymos.
- Rest merit sources receive more merits per 30 days despite of the drops of total 30 days merit for all sources before weeks theymos removed many merit sources.

theymos will not create more sourced merits per 30 days so if more new merit sources will be accepted, admin will restructure merit replenishment on all sources, less for each.

I agree with this. Hardware, not just ASIC would definitely be a boon to most, if not all of us.

Instead of burning merits or loading a lot to the current merit sources, I think the best solution to this is to give chance to newer members as merit sources with the current ones. @theymos may also decide whom to be given how many smerits to share based on their activity and then reduce/increase a source's smerits based on how actively they did their job of sharing them.

Lets make it quite clear. Merits are not there to help members to rank up. They were created as a barrier to stop spammers and low quality posters being rewarded for polluting the forum. If good quality posters are leaving the forum, then tyhe solution is not to promote the spammers, but to improve the quality of the threads. There are several ways to do this.

- reduce the size of quotes to improve legibility.
- stop obsessing over statistics, and spend the time discussing the crypto economies.
- don't feed the trolls, and those who feel they have to attack other members with flame wars.
- encourage the knowledgeable and insightful to post more
- give us a few new boards to discuss serious topics - hardware, domains, and defi are obvious choices.
-

I completely agree with your opinion.
In my Croatian local section it has long been evident that we do not have enough merits to share for quality posts in Croatian and that quality posts in the Croatian local section on average receive less merit than posts in some other local sections.
In the Croatian part of the forum I have a constantly open topic where local members can report quality posts for merits but that is not enough because I do not have enough merits for everyone and I often have to give a minimum number of merits for really quality posts.

To be sincere, i haven't quite familiarize myself with how the merit system works, but am definitely not in support of Smerit being burnt.
Example is : I got merit to send out, am told to only give it to quality posts, i start out my journey on the look out for quality post to give my merit to, it happened that am unable to find any post that meets my definition or description of quality, I went back, and am told that if I don't send the merit out, it will be burnt and wasted.
This means that am indirectly forced to send out my Smerit cus holding them will only lead to their getting burnt, and when they get burnt, it profits me nothing and someone like me will end up feeling guilty for within me, I know I would have helped someone rank up with those Smerit that just got burnt, and what did I gain holding them till their death.. Nothing.

I think the merit system should be re-worked on, the rules as to how merit is awarded should be re-adjusted for the betterment of the forum in general.

Uh
This phenomenon (he/she is my guy)can be observed in all sections of this forum.

I gave merits to someone who thinks the earth is flat.
I gave merits to a famous troll.
I gave merits to someone who has a bad reputation.
Etc...
Does all of this actually make him/her "my guy" ?
So the only solution would be to stop sending merits ?

@Jet Cash is a (quite possibly) a Merit Source. Non-merit sources are pretty unlikely to have issues handing out their sMerits. Merits Sources may suffer the "how do I deplete my stash" syndrome, or the "the waiter keeps on filling my cup of wine to the rim" syndrome. This likely happens to all Merits Sources once in a while, and it´s down to them to find out how to deal with it (ignore the fact, lower standards, explore boards and topics, increase merit per TX, or whatever).

sMerits are not burned nor decayed. As I said, only Merit Sources have a similar thing going on to some extent:

Say I have a monthly allowance of 100 sMerits per month. If I only spend 70 within the month (30 days on a given window timeframe really), I’ve conceptually not poured into the Merit System 30 sMerits. It’s really more complicated than that, and the key is that a Merit Source can never have more sMerits than his maximum allowance in a given moment in time. Taken to the extreme, if my allowance is of 100 sMerits, and I don’t spend any, my sMerit counter will stabilize at 100 sMerits (not increasing any further until y spend some and it gets refilled again).
 
As to the complaints, that is inevitable. The systems is inherently subjective, and the criteria of individuals is bound to be subject to opposition and criticism (and some praise at times). You cannot implement an objective Merit System through subjective individuals. End of.

As in statistics though, one can hope for a varied and large set of Meriters, as opposed to a small and homogenous set. The former is the objective, and that’s why the "more eyes on the board" is an aspirational desire, albeit not that easy to achieve. I’d prefer double or triple Merit Sources with a more capped allowance, but I do get that there is one hell of a select and trust issue to do that (not to mention following the whole lot and their meriting capabilities).

One idea that sometimes floated around was that to allow Merit Sources to appoint a Delegate source to whom they could transfer a % or their sMerit batch. It would play along with the "more eyes on the board" idea, and delegate the selection and trust issues on to the Merit Sources themselves, ideally appointing someone who is not a clone to introduce diversity in the criteria.

Variations of this have been suggested many times and the answer is usually along these lines: merit is not scarce, theymos can produce any amount at any time if need be and has done so in the past. He seems to target ~20k merits sent per month (or perhaps some more complex formula but it hovers around 20k) and if the number drops significantly below that I would expect him to change merit allocations - increase amounts for more active sources, reduce for less active ones, appoint new sources etc.

1st-
Can you exactly point out what complain is there in the 1st quoted post? I see it's a mix salad of merir, trust system and another which I didn't get. Nevertheless, merit certainly contains the identity of a good poster. There might be exception due to some abuse but for some part, you can't say the system is useless or meaningless.

2nd-
Why no merits to local board? Aren't local boards part of the forum? In my local, I have never seen such a case where merit has been shared for being from same nation. In local, it is possible that the discussions aren't that active as like global but that doesn't mean there's no high quality post. If there are high quality post which deserve merits, why not merit them? If merit shouldn't be part of local board, then where's the need of their exist even?