Topic: Posting in forums with moderators who give no smerit? Solutions? - page 4. (Read 2150 times)

Because we're not supposed to send merits to rank users up, or for any other purpose. We're supposed to send merits for good posts. Which may help users to rank up if they consistently create good posts, making the rank-up an effect/consequence/result of good posts. It's really not a complicated concept. You're just deliberately making a mockery of it with your "fun and friends" sham.


Please reduce your cocaine intake or fuck off to twitter if this is too slow for you.

What if I tell you trust is even worse than merit? The opinion of less than 0.01% of all users counts! If you calculate trust without a selected 200 users, there is nobody with any green trust left! By your (flawed) logic this is very unfair to all the users would need green trust.

You've been searching for a non-exciting problem since I first saw you in Meta, trying to use statistical data in a strongly biased way to get the results you want.

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Please use proper quote tags, it's much easier to read.

Of course it's incorrect, even worse - you're using fallacious arguments that make you either dishonest or stupid. There are 25k recipients and the list is growing. In the long run good posters will rise to the top. You're making it sound as if there are no other merits outside of the 0.13% but even those 200 users are spending most of their merits outside of that "group". The data you're quoting doesn't support or even contradicts your claims, despite your valiant attempts to mangle it to fit your narrative or to ignore it when it doesn't. At this point even anecdotal evidence would server you better than your straw people, e.g. if you could show some of those zero-merit high-quality unicorns users.


So there is no criteria but you can clearly notice posts not meeting that non-existent criteria? At any rate, that doesn't justify mangling the purpose of the merit system as being for "fun" and "friends". I'd suggest that we should stick to what our benevolent dictator prescribed, which is to use merits not for "fun" or "friends" but for good posts.


Yes, that's a bonus feature. The main purpose is still to highlight good posts.


Surely these hypothetical good posters are smart enough to figure out how to post outside of spam megathreads and bounties.

I am not saying what the intended purpose was.

Still I stick with my conclusion it is working far better than with no merit system so no need to change it.

You said it is not meant to be related to rank but rank does depend on it right?

I mean surely you can not argue only 0.13% deserve such a concentration if some AI could measure all posts against objective criteria. There are many factors that are easy to understand and even empathise with why the concentration is happening and where.

I started in this thread by saying it was the fault of the mass of spammers and bots why good posts elsewhere do not attain merit so easily as perhaps they should. I stick to that. I am not actually blaming the top merit holders am I?  there is only so much time they can spend trawling crap looking for the odd gems. That does not mean they are not there. It also certainly means there is no claim to high merit high quality poster low merit low quality poster. Does not work like that.

You're making claims not supported by the data you're quoting. The data (even if you take arbitrary parts out of it) doesn't say that there are unmerited high-quality posts/users as you're claiming here:

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The purpose of the merit is system is not


but

Imagine that all the top 200 merit holders tell me they are not sending as the stats claim? perhaps the stats are wrong?
Over 50% of all merit given by the top 0.13% is to others in that group. More if you take out satoshi and theymos.  I am not making claims I am describing data. If you take out meta board merit then that makes it look worse.


I have no need for merit since it at legend rank you do not require it. In theory do you need rank because only the ivory tower is off limits to juniors. I don't think diverting or even questioning my motive can alter the observable stats that are there in black and white so is irrelevant to this discussion. Let's stick to sensible analysis of the stats.
Can you describe the narrative I am weaving that would diminish the purpose of this merit system?
Anyway for sure merit system works fine as I have said no need to change. I see no need to discuss further since it seem repetitive now people can read the stats and think for themselves.

You're the one making these claims so it's really up to you to support them. There is tons of data available. I know how I send the merits and it's not even close to what you're describing. It sounds like you have a problem with some of the top recipients or perhaps with the fact that you're not among them so you're trying to weave a narrative that would diminish the purpose of the merit system. However the main purpose of the merit system remains to highlight good posts. Not for ranking up, not for fun, not for "friends" or "likes".

Yup, looks like threw coal on the fire. my bad.

The little smerit I have given out does seem to be the higher members. Just seems like the engagement and quality is higher.

@suchmoon

After this thread, I'm keenly aware:

• The threshold of merit is such that I'm lucky for the merit I do have.
• Roles of moderators are independent of smerit (which I will not make a similar post, again.) It does make sense though. Fighting spam and quality control are two distinct roles.
• Qualifying threshold higher than I originally thought.
• Don't worry about it.

@LoyceV

I'll keep my eye out. I thought for sure that those would meet minimum expectations. Thank you.

There is no point agreeing with a straw man and something that flies in the face of the stats provided.

1. saying merit is not correlated strongly to post quality is not the same as saying it is only given to freinds for crap posts.

there are many factors (not all bad and many understandable) that are leading to merit cycling in the top 0.13% a huge amount if you take out theymos and satoshi. I mean if you only believe the 0.13 % opinion counts then that is fine. However, even if you are fair as you can be (considering you have alt boards on ignore which is fair enough considering how they are) but even if you make an effort as far as you can reasonably then your individual experience is not a drip in the ocean compared to the what the stats are indicating.

Face it removing the top 0.13% merits given out and removing merit given on only the meta board reduces most high merit accounts by on average 80% or even greater. This is like saying the 0.13% are only high merit accounts in the minds of 0.13% of the active posters here?  This is fair enough but to then say high merit = higher quality poster than a lower merit account is way way off.

The strange thing that we can freely observe here and I don't mean to be seen to picking on anyone is the persons here in this thread defending this are the persons that would be the VERY MOST effected by this being highlighted in terms of having their merit reduced in a HUGE way. I mean again I notice your account gets a huge huge hair cut without even taking meta out of the equation. Does not mean you are not a good poster so don't worry about this. I would say though that those that are least effected by this filtering would have a more balanced appreciation of their posts.

All of the above just means.....

Just accept that merit is fun, it is effective in reducing negative behaviour but don't be tempted to draw any other conclusions based on merit.  Some huge merit score holders could be good posters and many zero merit posters are quite capable of making just as good if not better posts.

Agreed.

I spent about 20 minutes trawling the Economics section, looking for low-ranked members to give merits to.  I ended up reporting more posts as being spam or shitposts than I gave merits to.  I would absolutely love to help Jr. Members, Members, Newbies, etc., rank up but I just can't find any of them making posts that make sense or that add anything to the discussion at hand.  It's very frustrating.

Also, as a merit source and one of the most generous merit-givers on the forum, I'd love to know who my "friends" are and who I'm circle-jerking around with.  If such people exist, I'm unaware of them.  I have high standards for handing out merits, and it just so happens that some (maybe even most)of the most interesting posts, the ones I've merited, have been made by senior members.  It's not because I'm in some leather-chair, cigar-smoking, mustache-twirling, brandy-swilling good 'ol boys' club where we've made an agreement to circulate merits only amongst ourselves.  Christ, look at who I've given merits to.  There's a lot of lower-ranked members and there's a wide variety of members overall.

Stop being a scunt.

No it's not a problem only fuckers that care about merit are the shitposters spamming the forum or perhaps the people that see merits as some type of video game competition.

What is your merit score once we remove the "opinion" of only the 0.13% of posters and all merit/meta sub board awards?
I would expect you too are in for another 80% hair cut?


What if only the top 0.13% whilst on meta are able to recognise what a great poster you are?

This is not aimed at you specifically but since you can't resist stalking me I am as always happy to engage you. You I have admitted are useful and probably can make some good points now and then but you are quite an aggressive person and can be annoying.

I say the onus is on you to provide me with evidence because if you are part of a group that claims their high merit score means they are great posters then you are gaining from this assumption you claim is correct. So you prove it. The stats combined with simple probability suggest you are wrong. Unless you really believe that the 0.13% are the only ones able to discern what a good post is lol.

I am not even saying some top merit earners are not capable of making good posts ... just there is no strict correlation at all.

Please stop finding any way you can to chat me up and just accept merit is fun, merit is useful... the higher the merit score of the individual does not correlate with post quality. There are many great posts that are not getting any merit here and if they all got the optimal merit they deserve on some strict criteria of usefulness or depth the top merit scorers would not be who they are now except of course for those who are not moving at all on either sides of the stats chart provided.


@dmrdmr

Well you were talking about the percentage of merit receivers when you mentioned the 0,02% figure, so the base in that context is of 25.008 forum members (all merit receivers) and not 150K. In addition, 500 people is closer to the 50% ratio, not 200.

looking at my link i can see most have 50% reduction or far more, this stat is being skewed by theymos and satoshi who are obviously beyond the intended scope of this debate and rightly so... take them out and it looks far far worse for the top 200... this is without meta board merit removed.

I think you are actually a very smart and useful poster due to your knowledge of stats and effort put in to provide them. However I notice your merit score is obliterated once run through my filter and if you took meta merits away you would likely be near zero merit.

Does that make you a bad poster or a beneficiary of scheming merit circles - NO that is not my point at all. It is simply that you can not say high merit = good poster low merit = poor poster. It simply does not work like that.  I have no idea why people are trying to fight against that obvious conclusion.

We'll be clear on that once you present facts. Merely saying that 0.02% or 2% or 0.13% or 0.013% of users (or whatever it is) send merits to each other not because their posts are good but because they're "friends" doesn't make it so.

The very notion you have even 0.8 of a real "friend" is ludicrous... being part of a group in meta all awarding each other for making some kind of post is fair enough to me if we are honest about it though. I mean the stats don't lie

What is your merit score now and what would it be if we removed what I had suggested .... remove any from the other top 300 and remove all merit from meta? you score does not seem to be as badly effected as I had expected. I will look into this futher. How many other accounts do you own?

The rest of your post has no real effect on the stats presented.

I agree the merit system works okay but we need to be clear that merit score is not a measure of post quality. People need not wonder why their " good posts" are not getting merit if they are outside of the clique predominantly lurking on meta. That is fine by me.

Well you were talking about the percentage of merit receivers when you mentioned the 0,02% figure, so the base in that context is of 25.008 forum members (all merit receivers) and not 150K. In addition, 500 people is closer to the 50% ratio, not 200.

Regardless, coming across decent posts is not trivial, and one tends to favour certain sections and posters, often because the content they provide is way better, and easier to read in a linear manner.
In an interval of around a month, 53.858 posters have created 796.538 posts. 309K of those posts were created by nearly 37K Newbies. Now the content produced by those Newbies is nowhere comparable to that produced by the top 200/500 posters. I’ve just gone through the posts of the list of top 25 posters of the month, that are Newbies or Jr. Members, and all their posts are social reports and spam one-liners. If I were to do the same with the top 200/500 merited users, the difference in content is going to be crystal clear.

Anyhow, if there is an issue overall in my opinion, it’s that ranking speed in general is extremely slow now for the immense majority, even if they are merited. Heroes for example must exasperate at getting a few merits every now and then needing 500 additional merits to reach their next rank. Heroes received an average of 1,96 merits per poster last month. From Hero to Legendary takes 255 months at that rate (21 years).
The issue is not that the best posters get lots of merits, but rather that it is difficult to rank (for those that wish to rank) at a decent enough pace, preferably in the span of their lifetime.

I don't have 800 "friends". And if you think that's what merits are for then you're the problem, not the merit system.

Go ahead, find those brilliant unmerited posts and let us know. I'm sure merits will rain on them. Until then it's safe to assume that the system works as intended and 100+ merit sources and 100s of other merit senders provide a decent coverage for the forum.

All Merit data is publicly available, you're free to do this (I'm going to watch a movie Tongue ).
But more importantly: why would it matter how much came from other users with good posts? It would be much more surprising if most of my Merit came from spammers!

Don't be shy I am not saying the FACT you will notice over 80% of your merit will vanish is a bad thing. I am just trying to show you this is not opinion this is simply fact. You're a stats guy this will not be hard for you to provide.
It matters because 1/ their high merit does NOT mean they are good posters (first incorrect assumptioin) 2 why would only the top 0.013% of merit holders in meta find that you need so much merit?

You mean the "inner circle" of people who aren't spammers and make decent posts? Using the term "inner circle" makes it sound as if that's a bad thing.

2 incorrect assumptions  people outside of the insider merit club are spammers and that the inner circle make decent posts (compared to what)

And yet, you keep bringing it up. I'm still not sure what you're trying to prove though.

I am proving nothing the stats are there they speak for themselves.


I'll await your merit score once the merit insiders club and their fav sub board are removed.  The reluctance to provide your stats is because you think that losing 80 percent plus is a bad thing or maybe your server is down who knows. It is not a bad thing it simply demonstrates what I have been saying. Merit is fun it is useful it does not mean you make great objective and insightful posts and those with less merit or zero merit are probably actually capable of making far more objectively insightful and deeper posts but finding them is the issue.

The point is clear since I have actually stated it several times but just once more.... merit is worth keeping here it stops a lot of negative behaviour and is fun to give out to your friends and to those you align your views with. Fair enough but stop conflating high merit = good poster low merit = shit poster. It is simply not that case.

All Merit data is publicly available, you're free to do this (I'm going to watch a movie ).
But more importantly: why would it matter how much came from other users with good posts? It would be much more surprising if most of my Merit came from spammers!

I could probably provide it, just not now And since "my" webhosting is currently unavailable, I can't provide you the latest version of full raw Merit data (theymos only provides the last 120 days).

You mean the "inner circle" of people who aren't spammers and make decent posts? Using the term "inner circle" makes it sound as if that's a bad thing.

And yet, you keep bringing it up. I'm still not sure what you're trying to prove though.

I can't help what people believe. I consider Merit as: "this post is worth reading", or in some cases even: "at least it's not spam". Very good posts receive more Merit, and in the end it's the total from all users that counts.

Lol, I've almost exclusively seen shitposters wonder why they don't get Merit, not good posters.