Topic: Suggestion: Merit Phase 2 - Drain the Swamp (@theymos) - page 5. (Read 3032 times)

The Merit system has been with us for six weeks now and is clearly having some success in reducing the spam. It is now very hard, if not impossible, for account farmers to provide a constant supply of high ranked accounts. This, of course, is good news for any of us who have become tired of finding any interesting content quickly buried under a pile of shitposts.

What this hasn't addressed is the large number of accounts already in the hands of shitposters. Let's be honest about what rank is all about - signatures and the ability to gain income from them. The ability of someone who is already in possession of, for example, a Hero account (or 10) to continue to get paid for every shitpost they tack on the end of a spam megathread has not diminished or been restrained by the Merit system.

Some campaign managers have taken the initiative to make minimum Merit requirements compulsory to join their campaigns but those managers were already the ones with high standards. They were not the problem, it has always been the managers that just blindly accept the first x hundred people to apply and pay them regardless of the spam they produce.

I have noticed that these spammers are very easy to spot now, they are the ones stuck on 100, 250, 500 or whatever merit number they were initially given. They haven't managed to gain one single Merit point in the last 6 weeks.

So to my suggestion:

Amend the forum to hide signatures of any account that hasn't earned at least 1 Merit in the last 2 months.

This will bar them from getting paid to post and not have any negative impact on anyone making even the tiniest contribution to the forum. Nobody loses their rank and even if someone is away from the forum for a while they can quickly get their signature back.

I believe the quicker way is to not allow newbies and Jr. members to create new threads, except in beginners and help, then clean up the rest of the forum from spambait topics and spam mega threads.

OP, your idea isn't horrible, but I do think we're way too early in the game to depend on lack of merits being responsible for someone getting censored or anything like that. You know I'd be all in favor for a goal like you mentioned, but I think this proposal has too many potential pitfalls to work--yet.  Maybe in a year or so if we still have jr members with 600 activity and 23 merit...those folks might deserve to be stealth banned or some such thing. 

Remember, it is in fact pretty hard to get merit points for the vast majority here.  It's really going to take some time for them to rank up--especially if their English sucks and they don't avail themselves of the local boards.

I think I'm going to need to add a FAQ section to the OP.

This will play to the advantage of the spammers. All they have to do is pass merits around with each other, while the real accounts have no one to pass merits to them unless some other real account decides to.

I did think of that. Unfortunately, any system devised by man there will be another man trying to game it. The problem they will face is that they will quickly run out of sMerit to abuse, that was why I suggested an ongoing requirement. Like the Merit system itself, it will take time for it to show its full effect.

The Merit system has been with us for six weeks now and is clearly having some success in reducing the spam. It is now very hard, if not impossible, for account farmers to provide a constant supply of high ranked accounts. This, of course, is good news for any of us who have become tired of finding any interesting content quickly buried under a pile of shitposts.

What this hasn't addressed is the large number of accounts already in the hands of shitposters. Let's be honest about what rank is all about - signatures and the ability to gain income from them. The ability of someone who is already in possession of, for example, a Hero account (or 10) to continue to get paid for every shitpost they tack on the end of a spam megathread has not diminished or been restrained by the Merit system.

Some campaign managers have taken the initiative to make minimum Merit requirements compulsory to join their campaigns but those managers were already the ones with high standards. They were not the problem, it has always been the managers that just blindly accept the first x hundred people to apply and pay them regardless of the spam they produce.

I have noticed that these spammers are very easy to spot now, they are the ones stuck on 100, 250, 500 or whatever merit number they were initially given. They haven't managed to gain one single Merit point in the last 6 weeks.

So to my suggestion:

Amend the forum to hide signatures of any account that hasn't earned at least 1 Merit in the last 2 months.

This will bar them from getting paid to post and not have any negative impact on anyone making even the tiniest contribution to the forum. Nobody loses their rank and even if someone is away from the forum for a while they can quickly get their signature back.

it's not the farmers will get affected by this but the ones who got a single account. farmers got a lot of accounts, experience, and friends they can give/ask merits from another account. the one will be affected by this are the solo poster, single who had no friend on bitcointalk, the ones whos inactive and post very less will be affected also. to be honest I hate this idea.

it will take some time to understand that the freedom you mentioning is abused my majority. and the merit system is a try to fix the outcome of this freedom lol

That merit thing is becoming a communistic idea. For Newbies like me, merit will be mandatory for progressing, and I understand this. But harassing everyone to earn merit constantly is a bit too much, really. Now it aims to impose more and more restrictions. This forum should be a place of freedom, but it is getting restricted more and more, sadly.

Why asking, what the forum has to do?
We should better aks, what the offerer of the sig-campaigns should do.

Sometimes I'm browsing the bounty threads. And most sig-campaigns have the requirement to write at least 20 (sometimes 30) quality posts per week. That means  around 3 (to 4) quality posts per day. I avoid such campaigns, because to write 3 to 4 really good posts I need up to two hours. 14 hours a week for mostly some pennies. But many users don't care. They are taking part and: spam.

Instead of punishing users now, those responsibles for the sig-campaigns should be punished. Maybe their ANNs deleted or other hurtful things. They are responsible for the abuse of this platform, so they are in dept to deliver and not this platform.

?

Maybe they should be forced to reduce the reqirements. 5 post max per week. And if a member is blatant spamming, they should kick this member immediately. If not, the ANNs will be deleted.

I strongly disagree with this.Even though the merit system is doing well,I don't think every quality poster is awarded merits.My point being,a participant could be a great quality poster but due to whatever reasons his unmerited posts shouldn't stop him from participating in campaigns.

This also means anybody who has earned 1 merit in a week but is a spammer to the core will also be eligible to display the signature.I can show you 10 shit one liner posts which have been credited with 10+ merits.

Am new to this forum and read why merit system was introduced,basically its cuz of decrease spamming
And to force members to post quality posts in order to get higher rank.
But whole point was people still do shit post and account farming only reason was BOUNTY'S.
It can be stop if bounty manager's have a strict rule for signature campaign
Like minimum ___  word of post only get counted or something like if your post get a merit
Then you get ___ number of stake extra etc...

I strongly disagree with this.Even though the merit system is doing well,I don't think every quality poster is awarded merits.My point being,a participant could be a great quality poster but due to whatever reasons his unmerited posts shouldn't stop him from participating in campaigns.

This also means anybody who has earned 1 merit in a week but is a spammer to the core will also be eligible to display the signature.I can show you 10 shit one liner posts which have been credited with 10+ merits.

That merit thing is becoming a communistic idea. For Newbies like me, merit will be mandatory for progressing, and I understand this. But harassing everyone to earn merit constantly is a bit too much, really. Now it aims to impose more and more restrictions. This forum should be a place of freedom, but it is getting restricted more and more, sadly.

That merit thing is becoming a communistic idea. For Newbies like me, merit will be mandatory for progressing, and I understand this. But harassing everyone to earn merit constantly is a bit too much, really. Now it aims to impose more and more restrictions. This forum should be a place of freedom, but it is getting restricted more and more, sadly.