Hello,
I thought a lot before writing this topic and how to choose my words in order to not offend anyone.
As you already know, almost 2 years ago,
the new merit system was implemented.
Prior to that point, the rank-up was realized through the activities, and prior the activity system the rank-up was performed through regular posts. Due to the systems used in the past, many were just "farming" accounts, posting hundreds of useless replies / topics etc, but they managed to rank up. Even to Legendary.
The activity system reduced the farming until some point, but it wasn't as performant as the merit system.
However, after January 25th, 2018, the new merit system was applied and the rank-up is now done through quality instead of quantity / spamming / redundant posts etc.
Once the system was applied, each rank received an airdrop of merits, according to how many merit points they should have in the respective rank (Hero received 500, Senior received 250 etc.). Since then, the reputable members kept increasing their merits through their quality posts, fact which represent they deserved indeed the respective airdrop.
However, those who used to rank-up through farming the accounts earned just a few merits, or
didn't earn even a single merit in almost 2 years.
I was curious to see how many users are there who received a merit airdrop but who earned 0 merits since January 25th, 2018 and I started
a topic. Unfortunately, I didn't find everything I wanted. However, thank to DdmrDdmr, who performed (I think) a huge effort, I found out that
about 800 Legendaries and 3500 2500 [edited after Ddmr notified me about the typo] Heroes didn't earn even 1 merit after the airdrop. He said this information is a bit inexact, but we don't need the exact numbers here. Just the amounts. And the amounts are huge. I didn't dare to ask him to check also how many Seniors, Full Members or Members are out there without 1 merit earned, but I imagine there are thousands or hundreds of thousands. Indeed, some members were and still are inactive, thus they couldn't earn merits through their posts. However, they could have received some merits for their past posts, if they had quality ones. But even without taking this aspect into consideration, even without counting the inactive members, there are still thousands who are still active and who didn't earn any merit.
Having this information, I thought about asking theymos about his opinion for this situation. To be more precise, if he has something in his mind regarding all the users who received airdropped merits but didn't earn even 1 merit since then. I also expressed him my ideas about the situation, as it follows:
- it doesn't seem right for so many ranks to just "wear" the airdropped merits, without earning any single merit by their efforts, while others work so hard for earning them
- furthermore, the number of merits is one of the first things seen by a new member, who doesn't know about the airdrop, nor about what to look at when he creates his first impression about someone (trust, references, flags etc). Seeing a big number of merits gives the idea of a reputable person. However, those who received the airdrop and didn't earn any single merit since then might trick newbies with different schemes, as the newbies would tend to trust a person with so many merits.
- as a proof of the difficulty in ranking-up, since January 25th, 2018, the maximum rank that could be obtained by a member with 0 merits is Hero (due to the possible activity points that existed since then and until today). So far (also with Ddmr's help),
only 31 members reached the Hero rank. And
only 44 became Seniors.
- it looks weird for a Member or for a Full Member to not earn even a single merit, but it looks very bad to see a Senior, a Hero or a Legendary without earning 1 merit. If at lower ranks is not expected to have so many quality posts, at higher ranks the expectations are higher. Nobody is forced, per se, to write quality content, nor to earn merits, but it raises heavy questions to see a Legendary who didn't earn 1 merit by his skills.
In the light of the above mentioned aspects, I asked theymos if he has something in mind about this situation and I also suggested him my ideas:
- change the badges color of the members who didn't earn 1 merit by their efforts
- highlight at the profile the airdropped merits and the merits earned through effort
- remove a percentage of the airdropped merits if the respective member doesn't earn 1 merit in a certain period of time; increase the percentage in the next period
- decay entirely the airdropped merits for those who didn't earn even 1 merit (with some exceptions though; for example, satoshi, donators, VIPs could be such exceptions).
Theymos replied telling me that he is aware of the situation and he is thinking at some possible solutions, but he doesn't consider this as a priority for the moment, due to his own perception and also due to some uncertainties he expressed in the PM. However, he also said he is prioritizing things also by taking into consideration if many people express their complaints, thus he encouraged me to post this topic. In case many people would share the ideas written here, maybe we can assist to a change in the future.
- Issue of note: I understand perfectly the fact that there are members who wrote quality topics prior the merit system, who became inactive and who didn't receive any merit for their past posts (this is pure bad luck, as past posts tend to get merits though - for example, look at Satoshi's posts). None of the above refer to such reputable members. The problem is just about those who take advantage of what they received and who don't offer anything back to the forum (and all they could offer back is just quality writing).
That being said, what do you all think?
