Topic: Share your thoughts : sMerit Review, Rank-Up Challenge, Signatureless Campaign (Read 834 times)

It's hard to strike a perfect balance when giving out merits. There will always be people complaining about it. It's true that the most established members post the most quality content, but low rank members should also be motivated every now and then by receiving merits for quality content. Quality posts keep this forum alive, but if only high-rank members are rewarded with merits, fewer and fewer members will be motivated to post quality content because they don't get anything in return (aside from the satisfaction of helping fellow members).

That's why my thread has been reformed and found a new home for itself within the Beginners and Help board. No more merit, just looking to help those that are interested and willing to ask for it. It gets a lot less attention, but I imagine the attention that it will receive will come with much better intentions and connotations.


When I heard that it made a lot of sense, but then I thought to myself that there is a lot of cleaning up to do within that section with that being the case.


Neither do I, which is exactly why I have made the changes I feel make my thread step away from the "soup kitchen" concept. I'm genuinely more interested in helping people improve their posting habits, behavior, formulating their thoughts more clearly and expressing themselves in a way that is conducive to whatever discussion they're operating within. That being said, it seems these people are much more interested in receiving merit than actually improving themselves. This is evident through the lack of attention my new thread in getting in comparison to the old thread, with the only significant changes being the section and the lack of merit being offered as a possibility. I never gave out merit to undeserving posts, so there was no chance of my thread becoming a "soup kitchen", although there certainly was a lot of users that thought it would happen.


I think the merit system is a slowly trickling solution that is killing our illness patiently. I have certainly noticed an improvement over the past few months in terms of the amount of spam threads, crap posts and irrelevant nonsense. The merit system was certainly a net-positive and it is getting better each day. We can improve upon it, but I think it's getting the job done.

No it doesn't belong in meta. Meta is for forum related issues. sMerit reviews are not forum related issues. They are for its users. Hence it belongs in off-topic/beginners and help.
 
And threads in services should only be related to services offered by members involving bitcoin payment.

sMerit for review was a great idea, which is why so many people copied it.

I don't understand why it would be considered a determent or a problem. Even if you may have received merit for your topic, if someone doesn't want to be involved in giving merit and agrees with your distribution and review methods, why is it a problem to forward you the merit to pass onto others? It's not like people can opt out of the system and not everyone wants to participate in board politics. Those who are holding are creating a bottleneck and you allowed them the opportunity to contribute without the required time commitment in reviewing posts. It's a shame to hear your service isn't considered valid.

I agree that a child board should be implemented to help members gain recognition in a wave of shit posters to support quality post growth. I understand there is a beginners forum already, but it seems to be mostly geared towards newbie questions. The review board should be a distinct category for people trying to increase their post quality.

On a more personal note, you were providing the board with a service that will be missed. Your thread jump started me into the 'member' rank on a post that might not have been noticed otherwise. I really appreciate your efforts, even though they seem to have been disregarded by mods. You were actively trying to make the forum a better place, and it's disappointing to see that the thread was moved to a board where you need to work much harder to accomplish the same result. I'd think it'd be in the forum's best interest to keep threads like these active since it helps promote awareness and quality but I can only speculate admin motivation.

I have a problem in replying to this question. I don't believe that the merit 'soup kitchen' threads are a good idea, but it seems that they are a requirement in the current forum. I think this indicates a deeper malaise which should be addressed. It should be possible to visit a board such as the Beginners, and to look through a number of threads in the hope of finding meritable posts. Unfortunately this isn't possible, and I think that this is the fault of the moderation policy on that board. I have a similar problem with my translation project, and I don't know where I should post suggestions about that. Perhaps we should have a board dedicated to merit and activity for a few months. Having to create threads to ask for members to submit posts for review is indicative of a serious problem in my opinion. The merit system ws designed to address this, but it seems to have created additional difficulties.

I've had to create a number of off-site resources to move forward on some of these projects, and these include a chat room for senior members, and a language training site. I think they should be part of Bitcoin Talk, but it is difficult to see how they can be included in the existing structure.

In my opinion, "sMerit Post-Review" could be placed in META since the topic is all about the forum itself. But it is more appropriate to be placed in SERVICES since it provide review for a quality post and award the poster. I have a thread in services which awards merit to those user that can decode a given puzzle and name it Bitcoin Forum Puzzle. I can't imagine a topic that started last January 25 were just recently moved in another board.

I'm aware that I don't need to close it down, but I allowed it to run within the Off-Topic board for only a few hours and it accumulated an impressive amount of spam, plagiarism, nonsense and rule-breaking. It just seems like it wouldn't be worth it for me to sift through a sea of BS. I'm not sure who I would be helping by fighting my way through the Off-Topic section. I might use it as a way to report bots, as you've suggested though. That's really the only use for that thread at this point, being where it is.


Not a single one of the review topics had a requirement on length, to my knowledge.

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New thread started here : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.37146114 , let me know what you think of the changes.

You don't have to close down your sMerit thread you know.. You can use it as a bait for bots and report them . And the topic you made is self moderated,so you can chose to delete the unwanted shitposts whenever you like.

There is the Serious discussion board, and within that the Ivory tower.
These are sections that allow for that type of discussion. Some are longer reads some are just a short starter topic with longer responses depending on the respondent and their knowledge of the subject.

I don't recall any of the Merit review topics requiring a long post just one of quality. Sometimes that is a few words others it is a paragraph or more depending on the topic.

  I think it would be great if this forum had a section for long reads. An area where we could put long thoughts and ideas that could allow more serious discussions to flourish. And in a section like this, topics that were meant to distribute sMerits would fit well. Since many of the topics of this type had a requirement that the post in question was long and of great quality.

Yes. I do. Good eye.


I'm trying to consolidate the opinions of everyone that has chipped in thus far. Primarily though, you've summed it up nicely. From what I've heard from staff, it would seem that sMerit review belongs in Off-Topic (where it cannot properly operate). Therefore, so I can keep the flame alive I will remake my thread in Beginner's and Help with some tweaks to it. There will not be merit being distributed, only posting behavior, quality and the contributions being brought forward are going to be subjectively judged on their value and if need be, redirected towards a more productive way of being.

I'll probably be locking this thread up tonight, unless someone has anything else to add that is going to be a game changer. Mostly got all of the information and input that I needed to move forward. Now it's been clarified adequately, and I have a solution to my own predicament. I appreciate the input and votes from everyone. Going to leave this open, so that I can post a link to my new thread and you guys can give me critique or whatever is necessary.

Do you mean a thread?

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Bill, which thread is making you confused, about it belonging to a specific section?
If it's your smerit review, it belongs in Off-topic.
If it's general post review without the involvement of merit, it belongs in Beginner's and Help.

So far there still is no solid agreement on whether or not it belongs in which board. It seems to be boiled down to mostly Beginner's & Help, Off-Topic, or some kind of new board. I have no clue how this would get brought to resolution. From the votes it seems that there is a strong majority of people that believe these threads are in some way beneficial for our community. I imagine that most of the people in disagreement with the concept would be brought on board with a few minor adjustments or tweaks.

As I said, probably tonight I will make an attempt at creating a new board in the Beginner's and Help section, with some changes in priorities, terms and rewards. It'll be a reformed version, mostly just for evaluation and not for merit distribution.

My thoughts on this is that threads like this are actually beneficial to the community because I have read about people exclaiming on how the merit system have been disadvantageous some classes of ranks but with threads like yours, it can bridge that gap by assigning merit to posts that would have gone unnoticed.
On the right category, I somehow agree with the moderator on the response he gave but the way people are tending towards beginners and help does not help either because it makes it as if it meant for newbies alone which is not the case. I think a sub forum should be created under the bitcoin discussion "merit evaluation or something" related to that.

Personally, i would say that kind of thread you have made is a great thing and gives a lot of benefit to other people, and if i remember it correctly, i joined your service back then. I  voted for "it gives benefit" in this thread., but for this conflict, i think it is better if you still running your kind of thread in a suitable board like moderator said like Beginners and Help.

Last, sane people doesnt react to insane people talks. So let that digaran talks.

Just voted - @bill , I think it’s a really good idea. Anything that encourages people to post constructively, clearly & concisely is a good idea. I know how difficult it looks for new members to rank up & have a chance of becoming somewhat respected here now so yeah, thumbs up from me.

Will leave you 1 Merit point now.

Edit - Surprised nobody else has.

It seems that the voting is starting to go heavily in one direction and that makes me a feel a little bit better about running the thread previously. I was thinking that it's entirely possible that I can continue the idea of my thread without it being a "Merit giveaway". I've come to the conclusion that I will probably open up a thread within the Beginner's & Help board with a more general idea of "Post Review". Since the original idea of the thread was to give a resource for lower ranking members to improve their posting behaviors, formulate their opinions more appropriately and get a better understanding for the rules/guidelines of the forum. I'll probably have the same idea, but give out no merit and simply give my opinion on the posting behavior and habits of whoever applies to hear my opinion.

I'll have people submit their posts, with a maximum of 3-5, and I'll give my opinion the same way that I always have without any promise of merit. If I find an extremely interesting post, or one that I would organically merit, then I won't avoid doing so, but at least it doesn't step on any toes this way. Thoughts?

I think if the MODs says your posts don't belong in a particular section, just move it to its necessary sub forum I'm sure people who the posts is meant for will still find it and get the communicated information from it.

It is really time consuming looking around for good posts and you have done a great job running your service for so long, I appreciate it since I also participated once.
Running an almost similar service myself, I found a solution to all the false applications or the lazy once applying without reading the rules, by listing them as a merit beggars and deleting their posts to avoid fake activity.
It helped me, and now almost no spammers applying Hope you find a solution. I'll give a hand if you need any help.





I guess the most appropriate board should be the beginners and help, since this is mostly what we are doing, helping the beginners. I did't thought about that but if this is the case I should also move mine there.

I've always looked at these threads as being a FREE service provided by users (myself included), so since it's free, I don't see any issues with it being in the marketplace but it's still the moderator's decision in the end.

I want to think that my thread helped with the cleaning of the forums since I made people read the rules, made them avoid posting in useless mega threads and suggested ways in which they could improve their post quality (if only I could reach more people). I have seen a few users that improved the quality of their posts by following the advice I have provided for free.

Just my 2 cents