Topic: Reducing (removing) airdropped merits for those who didn't earn 1 single merit - page 2. (Read 1249 times)

Bitcoin Discussion invites the most spam, you're right. I think that's why it's hard to gauge for post quality when you're viewing a thread using Bitcoin discussion because quality replies by people who aren't brain dead are cluttered with lower level members with broken English spamming 1 liners.



Okay, fair enough, you got me here. Surprising to see such shit quality posters that are legendary but I don't browse altcoins at all so that's probably why I have a skewed view. Legendary members in Bitcoin discussion, meta, and P&S tend to have great discussion value added by legendary members so I'll leave it at that.


Huh? Well, didn't know that. I was under the impression that went you send merit, your overall merit score decreases unless you are a merit source. My misunderstanding.


Good, but like I said the problem still persists that members can be active in forums that are cluttered with spam, ie Bitcoin discussion, where valuable posts are not merited because they aren't seen enough. I don't think we should leave it to chance that good quality posts are seen by people who will eventually send merit in a system where merit becomes decayed.

I will concede, though, that the initial merit airdrop seemed fairly generous and that it doesn't allow newer members to catch up efficiently.

You have received only 4 merits. You shouldn't expect your received merits to have been distributed through all sections.
Be constructive. I am sure you will get merit. As o_e_l_e_o suggested, report unmerited posts that you think they deserve to be merited, I am sure you they will get merit if they deserve.
If you think you have already been constructive but haven't received merits you deserved:
1. Be patience.
2. Continue to be constructive and even more constructive.
3. Don't post for merit
 
I recommend you to visit the following thread created by DdmrDdmr and participate in the poll.
Merit - simple poll on operational fundamentals

That's not unique to you - Bitcoin Discussion is a mess, that's why. The last data I saw showed it has the lowest merit per post ratio of any of the non-altcoin boards. Most threads turn in to spamfests, and no one with any sense is reading past the 3rd page or so. Any replies on threads like that aren't even going to get seen, let alone merited.

Totally disagree with you here. There are plenty of legendary members which just spam one or two line nonsense. I went to Altcoin Discussion, clicked on the first megathread I saw (this one https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/altcoins-future-5165503), and Ctrl+F for "legendary". Here are some of the profiles I came across in the space of a few pages:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dimox-407887
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/allwelder-162975
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/seleme-22145
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/letyouearn-358450
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/voteformeg-148225
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/stripykitteh-101432

They are all spammers. It took me a total of under a minute to find these 6 profiles. There are plenty more.

I think you misunderstand. Merit and sMerit are totally separate. Your merit score will never decrease because of sending sMerit to other people.

Almost everyone (theymos included) has agreed that while airdropped merit could/should decay, ranks should not.

That's not the point though. I'm not spamming one liners but any posts I have made in Bitcoin discussion have received no merit. I've only gotten merit for posting in meta/politics and society which tend to be more hot button topics rather than constructive discussion about cryptos, for example. Merit is not a good measurement of contribution and there are plenty of members who post constructively as a norm that shouldn't be posted in this thread. There'd be way too many replies to post. Nearly every legendary member of the forum posts non-spam and should earn merit for every 10 posts they make by default because they're the last type of members to post spam.


I understand that, but merit is displayed as one overall number. Not split into merit and sMerit. So when merit decays, your overall number decreases and now you lose overall merit through sending merit, and decaying. This would certainly act as a disincentive to send merit if you are now losing merit two ways.


Seems people that are advocating for merit decay are members that post too much on drama ridden boards and receive merit for posting on hot button topics more than anything. The idea that you can lose your ranking as a legendary member for posting because you joined the forum earlier on seems rather outrageous. This would presumably apply to Hero's, Sr., Full, ect.

If the idea is to use merit to stop farming accounts in order to allow newbies - Jr. to stop spam, I think it's a great idea. However, decaying merit only effects more established members who don't spend their entire life on this forum racking in merit but also post constructively.

I get your point but if you look at the proposal at the top where users are required to at least earn 1 merit on a certain period just to avoid the decay of their merits you will understand that this will be a lucrative business for merit sellers, some normal member might even be merit sellers because of this idea. Yes this might encourage people to finally share their merits as well but like I said this will also encourage members to sell their extra merits for cash which will increase because of this proposal.

I’d say that 1 is correct, but 2 and 3 aren’t, since the max(0, 0 – activityCalculusResult) would be 0 (the max function, as is, would return 0 when compared to a negative value).

Note: In the same package, we should probably include perhaps the question on airdropped derivate sMerits, unused for nearly 2 years. These could suddenly gain a "utility" for some of those who haven’t found one yet for them (to "contribute" towards avoiding the de-ranking of other accounts).

Thank you, fillippone. I have to say that I thought a lot (writing, deleting and re-writing words / sentences) until I finally chose my words, both when I first PMed theymos (who suggested to create this topic) and also when I wrote the thread. Without his suggestion, however, I wouldn't have dared to start such a delicate discussion, as when you talk about a sensible subject, if you don't choose the right words and if you don't explain clearly, you might get misunderstood and the whole subject may go in a wrong direction. I'm glad it didn't happen though.

You wrote a very goot OP, and I think you posted your ideas in a sensible manner,
I tought about it in the past, but didn't wrote anything to avoid offend anyone or being engaged in fights. But you made a good job:I don't see anyone being offended by your ideas being explained.

I have the same feeling about the "old" merits, airdropped or not, and some other made already good points.


I would agree in principle on the following:

• Decaying merits for everyone on a long enough period (2 years?)
• Rank based on "highest merit in history" (sticky, never to be reduced).
• As ETF suggested, signature limitation based on current merit amount.

So, if you were very active in the past, you would be legendary anyway, even if not active now (what's the best definition of legenday btw?)
An user like Satoshi would have a legendary rank, even if with few merits.

All the current attributes of each profile would get a different meaning:

• Merits would mean something about your "currrent" engagement on the forum and quality of posts.
• Rank/trust would refer to your quality history on the forum (best example: satoshi)
• Activity would only refers to your seniority on the forum

Only downside i think is a little bit ov overcomplicating something made to be simple. is it worth it?

I think he was talking about the users which didn't earn even a single merit in almost 2 years, though, and not about all the users who received the airdrop... After all, this is the subject of the thread...

If I understand this correctly, I see several flaws:
1. A user can increase his Merit score by deleting old posts (which reduces his Activity)
2. Users without airdropped Merit would start losing their earned Merit because it's not limited to AIRDROPPED_MERIT
3. Users who run out of airdropped Merit will also start losing their earned Merit
Update: DdmrDdmr is right, I was wrong!

I've suggested before to link decaying airdropped Merit to post count, not activity. This prevents an old user with more posts than Activity from losing his rank when he returns to the forum and makes just 1 post (and his activity goes up by 14).

If you are seeing constructive replies which are going unmerited, please post them in this thread: [self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source.

Only airdropped merit would decay under theymos' proposal above, not earned merit.

I don't think that's true.

When theymos introduced the "1 merit for Junior Member" (and therefore a signature) requirement, there was a noticeable and measurable reduction in spam over the following weeks: The new rule (1 Merit for Jr. Member) is already reducing spam. This is despite all the merit selling and awarding to alt accounts that went on. There would be presumably be less merit selling and alt accounts now, since a lot of accounts involved in this will have used up much of their airdropped sMerits, without earning any more.

I'm not in support of this. Dormant accounts already got screwed over by the merit update, now having to put in much more work in order to rank up even if they had the potential activity. Also, the removal of already acquired merit wouldn't do much in that regard. We're not talking about enable merit, but rather total merit. You can't remove more than the already earner rank, and I think it'd be unfair to remove base metrit based on the future activity. The merit drop's criteria where applied when it took place, no need to go back at it with new criteria.

Yeah that's what I am telling that this could do more bad rather than good since either way the ones who will be abusing the merit system won't be affected by the changes at all the only ones who will be are either inactive accounts or accounts who won't be buying any merits. So if this would happen I think the best thing to do is to apply the changes first before theymos will be announcing anything about the changes which I think will be the best approach to prevent merit abuse from happening.

Well if you go like this then what about the handful of legends that earn 1000 points after the 1000 were dropped.

Does my Philipma1957 account  get marked legendary2x  




To suggest that air dropped accounts should be stripped merits almost 2 years after the system is in place  was not the way to do it.

To suggest starting from today to  dec 31 2020 if you don't earn  you drop 1 rank  will simply mean cheaters going to cheat.

  No one with  legendary rank  set in place  had any sense of needing to earn points.

Also a hero at 500 figured fuck I won't earn 500 points. For us humans it is simply less then perfect solution  no matter what you do.

I agree with you on this. If there is demerit aims at airdropped merits, it should be done with active users only. It is a joke if a Legendary (active one) who made hundred or thousand of posts last two years but have not yet earn a single merit. But there is at least one minus point if we only based on the number of earned merits to judge the quality of one member. Because the one who runs their business here might not earn a single merit but that one might not be a shitposter. As a consequence of a mix of that (inactive good members, active shit posters, active businessmen, etc.), there will be a massive complaints in the forum when airdropped merits will be taken away, I can imagine that.

But if such things implemented and complaints pop-up, I imagine most of them will come from shitposters, not businessmen.

Something like the ratio between total posts made since the merit system's birthday per total counted days. There will be some level of demerit based on that ratio (that can be used to assess users' activities as well as posting activities).
I agree with it, too.

In this case all active users will lose their airdropped merits at a same rate.
The rate of losing airdropped merits can be a function of earned merits in the last X days too.
For example, if someone had received 500 airdropped merits and has also earned 500 merits doesn't lose airdropped merits. Because this user deserved those airdropped merits.

You can be an active member of the forum posting constructive replies and be engaged in active discussion and still not be merited. This is what I don't get about the merit system. People tend to merit popular users that post threads and not users that post constructive replies because constructive replies seems to be the norm for many users. So essentially, you only get merited for going above and beyond which doesn't make any sense if you're going to introduce merit decay. Secondly, it would act as a disincentive to give merit away knowing that it's just going to decay way making your overall merit lower.

If I'm reading the formula correctly, active users would lose 1 airdropped merit per week (actually, they'd lose 2 airdropped merits with every activity increase, which is on a biweekly basis.)  If it's something that is important to you and the community, that seems like a fair way of implementing it. 

Those who are active and contributing to the forum shouldn't have trouble keeping their merit score up, and those who are here to shill and spam will be able to see themselves being slowly demoted.  An airdropped Legendary who earns no merit will be demoted to a newbie in a little over 19 years.  If you can't learn to earn merit in 19 years, I guess you should be demoted to a newbie. 

I like that the formula doesn't affect inactive users.  It does seem like a very fair compromise. 

Adding UI elements is very "expensive" in the sense that it's something to which every member constantly has to devote some brainspace. So I can't see adding any kind of split merit score or other UI element, since that'd be a permanent high cost as a result of a one-time thing in the past.

I also can't see decaying non-airdropped merit scores.

I could see decaying airdropped merit, though I'm not convinced of it currently. If it was done, it may be best to do something like this:
 - Your current activity score as of is recorded, which I'll call EPOCH_ACTIVITY.
 - Your merit score is defined as max(0, AIRDROPPED_MERIT-(CURRENT_ACTIVITY-EPOCH_ACTIVITY)/7) + EARNED_MERIT.
 
So you'd already have had a lot of time to earn merit, and you'd get an additional 7 "activity-days" per point of merit to get back even more. Inactive users wouldn't be demoted.

Just curious about the numbers you mentioned there - How many of those 800 legendaries and 3500 Heros are actually active on the forum? If you find that out, the numbers will drop down drastically.

I doubt signature campaign spam is that big of a problem these days. Very less bitcoin signature campaigns and strict moderation including merits have cut it down. Extreme amounts of spam come from the altcoin bounty campaigns including massive account farming. Some merit law should definitely be implemented in those sections.