Topic: Random merit giveaway threads. What do you think about them? (Read 565 times)

I think it would be a very bad idea. It would encourage and increase merit abuse and account farming. My idea was to just totally discourage especially if someone has very few sMerit to handout.

I mean if one had lets say 20 sMerit, what would be so hard with looking for 10 merit worthy posts and then hand each post 2 merits?

It would be interesting to see some stats about merit threads. I often peruse them and it's mainly worthless shitposters who somehow think that highlighting their shitpost will magically get some merit.

A child board would be a sea of shit and would be an automatic ignore for me.

I think it's best left in the wild and handed over without any solicitation or expectation. I reckon those who want to focus their merit giving should be free to do so but a formal endorsement with its own forum sends out the wrong message.

I thought of creating a separate thread but decided to bump or revive this one instead.

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With these random merit giveaway threads popping out every now and then, don't you think it's good to have a dedicated board for them (maybe a childboard on BH). I have seen three recently created threads already and I'm sure there are older but still active threads.

Back then spam was huge compared to now, I can see that spam has been reduced but still  Altcoin announcement thread is receiving the most spam.
Taking a look at merit giveaways- They should be given to the deserving users ethically. But there is no official rule towards merit giveaways so i doubt there's any problem about them.

Congrats Buddy.   You believe  in system then sometime system take care of you.
(Actually, I do not think this is first time that LoyceV helped somebody like this, otherwise LoyceV is very stingy in giving large number of Merits)

Another assumption is they started their merit-give-away topic as an initiative to legalize their merit sellings. I am not sure about this, but there is a big question about that. They might start a topic with easy requirements, and then give their merits away legally without any suspect.
Personally, I don't think that merit give-away operators whom aim at Newbies or Junior Members should require too much because I experienced such hard period myself. I had to struggle to earn my very first merits. Even when I am a Member, I still struggled with my first 40 or 50 merits. I am not sure that everyone will experience the same difficulties as well as the same journey as mine, but the first one to move up to Junior Member, then the first 50 merits to get enough experience and familiarize with the forum are the most challenging period of forum members whom started from Newbies.

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Fortunately, I ranked up to Full Member a few days ago. That rank is my desired destination for more than one year, and eventually I hit it.
By the way, I say thanks to LoyceV, whom sent me 8 merits in a row into my two different topics. I thought I deserved that, but again thank you LoyceV (if you actually read the post later) for your help to boost me to Full Member faster a little bit.

Most annoying for few of the thread starter that  they hoarded their sMerits specifically for the purpose that someday they will start their Merit thread.
Few of them were started with good intention but few just copied the concept.

I'm Already keeping an updated merit giveaway thread, if you can't find any current giveaway on the thread that means I don't find that giveaway to have any quality or benefits the participants.  other reasons could be because I suspect the OP to have other intention (like you have mentioned). The thread was previously on beginner and help board but i have move it to off topic as numerous giveways were beginning to pop-up on B&H board and now becoming a spammy trend.  I saw no need for an update to be on the same board as the threads themselves.

PS: if you find any giveways thread that you feel doesn't meet the forum standard (rewarding only deserving members), just use the report button and they'll either be deleted or moved off beginner and help board.

I have such a thread that I opened back in December 2018, I think about a week before LoyceV created his thread. I don't like calling my thread a merit-giveaway thread. Although it is meant to give away merits to Newbies and Jr. Members, calling it a giveaway implies anyone there gets merits the easy way just be applying. It is not like that and I have turned down more members than I have merited due to users sending totally incomprehensible posts.
I also have many rules in place and check the entire posting history of the members that apply. Several users have even been reported and banned due to plagiarism during my checks. If users post mainly bounty and social media related posts - I don't merit them.

It is true that I have been awarded many merits in that thread and I am thankful for those, especially recently by suchmoon that allowed me to surpass the 1K merit limit. Thank you again for that!
I also take that very seriously and have adjusted the total allocation several times taking into account the received merits. Some users have merited me and posted that those merits should be used and distributed to low ranked members and that is what I intend to do. And I keep that number in my mind so whenever I merit other users outside of my thread (on a daily basis) I make sure to never go below the amount of merits meant for Newbies.

There was some talk a few months ago that these types of threads should be moved to the Off-topic board. I was against that idea because I think that new members frequent the H&B a bit more and I don't really like the Off-topic nor spend any time there anymore.

I even PMed theymos asking if my thread is OK where it is or if I should move it elsewhere. Screenshot of my PM is posted in the thread where he says, if I remember correctly, 'the thread is OK as it is because it is substantially different than other similar threads'. He was probably referring to the Rules I have there.

Your point might be true OP but still we should still think that those threads started by Ognasty and Quickseller are legit. They reward merits that are deserving which are posted in their merit.giveaway threads. One cannot say that the merit giveaway posts is a way to cheat and merit alt accounts.

Meaning that wether it was a cheat merit give away thread or not it will depend on the merit source how he/she will support that thread. If merits source think that it is legit so we could expect to get a support from.them.

You don't really expect shitty members receiving merits on opening up their own merit giveaway thread it's just that other members know that these members have opened up their own merit giveaway thread to receive merits in return. Trust me is that obvious as you will see the difference in quality of their giveaway threads compared to the ones created by known members.

There is already a solid merit distribution thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/self-moderated-report-unmerited-good-posts-to-merit-source-5093271

No need for anything new unless you have some very particular plan but even then you might want to use it instead of creating your own. There are multiple merit sources subscribing to that thread so that's a huge advantage over any individual one.

if you think it's okay for someone to do it, then it should be okay for everyone else to do it too. This is not some sort of escrow service or anything like that, and I see no reason why it should be an exclusive "privilege" for certain people.

I had two merit giveaway threads , one has ended and one is still open in my local board, there are many reasons why some of us need to start  such topics, the one which i think of as the most important is the lack of time/interest in surfing the forum sometimes, so once i have all the potential posts in one place according to my "rules" it becomes easier to evaluate posts and spend those merit.

I like this idea.  The only problem is, who starts it?  I was going to make a new thread with the idea that thread starters be given the ability to disable merit on their thread, so that the user who starts the thread for public Merit giveaway entrants isn't accused of doing so for the Merit.  I didn't though, because I don't want to be accused of proposing the idea just for the Merit. 

I don't want to link to it and single out any individual member, but a new merit giveaway thread has recently popped up, and looking at the OP's merit history, they have 5 sMerits to give.

I can understand the point if you have 50+ or even 100s of sMerit to give like some users (and like me, you prefer to give 1 or 2 merit to lots of different users rather than just give your entire allocation to a couple of users), but I don't understand the point at all if you have single figure sMerits. If you have 5 sMerits to give, and you aren't coming across any meritable posts, then you are spending too much time posting and not enough time reading, IMO. Given the number of merit giveaway threads that now exist, you can always just go in to a pre-existing one and hand out some more merits there, rather than starting yet another one. Or just go through your own recent merit sending history and double up on any particularly good posts.

As mentioned, I suspect most of the junior users who open such threads have an ulterior motive.

Do not feed them, whoever open inappropriate giveaway thread. I had detected few giveaway who had not spent single merit but he had opened merit giveaway thread. I just simply asked question why he had not spent any smerit? and suggest them to locked thread. However, all merit giveaway thread intention isn't gain merit or gain reputation. Some peoples want to helps newbie and I appreciate them. But whoever open suspicious merit giveaway thread, I really not feed them. 

Take a look at my thread and see how much merit I received just for opening the thread— a lot, and the same is true for you and LoyceV.

IMO, at least one reason for these types of threads is to get merit, possibly to rank up.

I don’t think the forum should regulate who can open which types of threads. Although I think the merit system has caused some people to create a lot of “guide” threads with the hope of earning merit — in some cases the information is useful and informative to newer users, and this beats the alternative of people posting a bunch of garbage.

Perhaps one solution would be for someone to create a single merit giveaway thread in serious discussion (no signatures so no sig spam will be there), that anyone with sMerit can use to award what they believe to be good posts that are (self) reported in the thread. All/most other merit giveaway threads could be disallowed, with few exceptions.

^^I don’t think the above should be implemented until the issue referenced in the OP gets worse than it is now.

I find it fascinating that users with almost no sMerit are opening threads asking for help identifying merit-worthy posts.  As you stated, I can understand why Merit Sources would ask for a little help from time to time identifying good posts, but someone with a couple sMerit asking for this sort of help seems less than genuine.

At Rambotnic's case you will see that he only gave his merits as a way to show that he has a useless account now because it has received a lot of negative trust from trusted members, it's not about not really about him gaining anything its his only mean on getting back against the forum. In my opinion just as long as the merit giveaway isn't similar to Rambotnic's case I think that we shouldn't even take a look at this seriously as we can easily look at their merit history and the posts they are giving merits to if their is something fishy about it. Other than that I think that them receiving merits back from their merit giveaway threads is a given, most of the merit senders of these kinds of threads if not merit sources are DT members which means that they also show support towards these kinds of threads.

Sending merits to someone totally depends on senders hand where I think there's nothing worse to help others by giving stored merits to quality posters. In my opinion its a good step to encourage upcoming community users to keep continuing their quality works. On the other hand if you think its pretty much easier to attract forum users attention by opening a merits giveaway thread thread then I am not going to be 100% agree with you.

I have seen some merit giveaway threads where its hard to find big number of participants. It means that community users are not so much busy to grab merit giveaways from every merit giveaway opener. Yeah its true that merit giveaway threads can be a cheaper option to giving merits to Alts account but we can't say this for every merit giveaways.

I am agree with some of your suggestion like there can be rules for minimum number of Smerit to open a merit giveaways where forum Admin can make it 30 to 50 IMO.