In December 2018 I created a thread in the B&H board titled:
Giving 26 Newbie/Jr. Members a Chance to Rank Up.
In the beginning I had a limited amount of merits allocated to Newbies and Jr. Members but seeing that I got awarded a lot of merits in the thread I decided to reserve the corresponding number of sMerits to Newbies/Jr. Members who show me quality posts.
I am now in a dilemma. Several members who sent me merits for that thread posted that they expect me to distribute these merits to Newbies. But I have not seen any good applicants for a long time, nobody is applying. Quality Newbies and Jr. Members acquire merits in the standard way so they don't need my thread for that.
I currently find myself in a situation where I have 28 sMerits to give out but I have reserved 26 of those for my mentioned thread. Some say that my rules are too strict, that might be the case but I believe that because of these rules my thread 'survived' for so long and wasn't moved to Off topic or locked. Several months ago I even PMed theymos regarding the thread and he said that "
the thread is good as it is". I have a screenshot of that PM posted somewhere in the merit thread.
Just for reference here are the rules for the mentioned thread:
RULES:
1. In order to apply you need to have an activity level of 30 if you are a Newbie or 60 if you are a Jr. Member.
2. Send me direct links to your posts that you believe deserve to be merited. 3 posts per user MAX.
3. Your posts had to be written before 01/04/2019. Any posts after this date will not be considered.
4. No merit begging, merit requesting, proposing to buy/trade merits in any way. NO PMs, if you send me a PM proposing any of this I will not consider your application, your post/pm will be made public and reported to Mods.
5. I will only consider Newbie/Jr. Members who are making any kind of quality contributions to the forum. I have nothing against bounty campaigns BUT if 99% of your posts are in the Altcoin > Bounty Section / Thread Bumps / Off topic posts / Low quality / Spam / Nice project, good luck type of posts / you will not be considered.
6. Only NEWBIE/JR. MEMBER Accounts will be considered, no other ranks.
7. Only posts written in decent English will be considered, NO posts from Local Boards.
And this is the reason why I am creating this poll. I think I need to honor the wishes of those who gave me merits in my thread but on the other hand I often find myself in a situation where I can't merit a good post because of those reserved merits.
Looking for suggestions from the community.
EDIT: I forgot to include a link to the thread in question >
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/giving-x-newbiejr-members-a-chance-to-rank-up-5085605