Topic: Request: Disable merits in the Wall Observer thread - page 8. (Read 2182 times)

Those threads are legit, you get merit if the OP of the threads thinks you should and that's okay. But there are threads which are just for farming, literally everyone merits everyone without worrying about the quality of the post or the actual thread/topic.

Maybe only thing that would help is more forum staff, but I don't know if that's possible.

How can that be enforced though, I don't know much about stuff regarding merit farms but there are a lot of MS that have threads that they open to share your posts that you think is worth the merit and it just so happens that there are some people that's active on posting on those threads so no one can really blame them if they get chosen to get those merits.

I think merit farming should be more moderated, so it's better to report individuals who do that and let moderators check and issue a warning/punishment rather than disabling merits in a whole thread. There are many good and informational posts there so I think they shouldn't be discredited because of others.

I've seen a lot of merit farms in local boards/threads that accumulate even more merits and I haven't seen any action taken. It is probably because it would be hard to moderate every single thread and user manually so the system can't really be accurate and ideal.

I'm pretty sure it is forbidden to farm merits? And it is mostly used for what you've said, sig campaigns and probably to seem trustworthy on the forum.

I have to disagree with your request because when you're disable merit in WO thread, it's will be unfair for high quality user since how good is his post, he will not get merit in that thread.

I think the better way is limiting only full member and above allowed to post in WO thread.

However you can use report to moderator since posting an image with source is considered as pointless/low value post or you can click ignore in his profile.

There's no rule about farming merit, it's unethical and unfair to the other, but as long as they're not joining a signature campaign or abuse trust list, there's no point about farming merit, isn't?

How people choose to distribute the merit which they earned is completely up to them. If they want to give it to people in the WO thread for some posts that made them laugh, or because they are friendly, then that's their choice. Eventually they will run out and the problem will dissipate itself.

I can see how it may seem unfair or that the thread needs to have merits disabled because of how much is distributed there, however I don't think that disabling merits there is the way to go.

Of course if people are intentionally abusing or farming merit with evidence to back, just isolate those users and report them. Farming merit for the sole purpose of feeding each other merit is against the rules at the end of the day, right?

It's been a while since I've been on the WO thread but I remember this being a problem for some time, I guess it's been exacerbated now. I remember naim027 and several of his alts getting merit there. And then other Bangladeshi accounts that were discussed a month or two ago on Reputation had also received merit there.

As soon as you visit the thread you know that saying bullish statements about the price, especially if we are in bull market, or saying you have bought a certain amount of Bitcoin is quite likely to get you merit there.

I think theymos thinks very hard before setting changes, but I hope he takes this into consideration, although I would like to know what the regulars there think, if they share the opinion or not. Maybe it's making the righteous pay for the sinners and they take away some of the fun they have there.


My guess is that they don't give it much thought. Many of them have accumulated a lot of Bitcoin for a long time, notice that few of them participate in signature campaigns and 90% or more of what they write is in the WO thread, so I don't think they give it more importance than clicking for a like on Instagram or Facebook.

What would also discourage that kind of behaviour is people not meriting those kind of posts as its not that hard at all to differentiate a legit one from merit fishing if you spend some time there (or at any other board/topic).

My question is, why regulars there are not more selective when meriting as its in their best interest in order to keep the thread clean from that thrash.

You can see some posters that are on WO that are established even since long time ago but not really active on other threads than to post about just the price of bitcoin. There are also good posts on WO that are given merit. Merit system is not something that is totally accurate on bitcointalk, but it helps against spamming.

Should merits be disabled in the WO thread? No

Merit farming in the WO thread has gotten way out of hand.

Its been a problem for years now but really ramped up this year. Although I can't prove it, I strongly suspect we're now seeing merit farmers creating alt accounts which they use to send merits back to their main accounts, with the end goal being to enroll as many alts in signature campaigns as they can.

The typical merit farmer post is a copy/pasted tweet from a large bitcoin-focused Twitter account, complete with picture and (often in smaller text) the word "source" with a link to the tweet. These accounts are literally just taking popular tweets and pasting them in WO for no other reason than to get merits. You'll see them on just about every single page of the thread this year.

This type of post is bad for a few reasons:

 - It is a distraction that dilutes honest conversation between good faith participants.
 - It is lazy, dishonest, and often wholly unnecessary.
 - It lends to promotion of a culture of cheating.

The meriting of these posts is creating a positive feedback system where merit farmers are encouraged to continue this behavior... as a result the only skill they're actually developing is how to extract merits from senior WO posters.

The simple solution to the problem is to disable the meriting of WO posts. Much like how signatures were disabled in that thread, it will discourage spammers from flooding the thread.