Topic: The merit system and if demerit should be introduced (Read 152 times)

I must admit I created one of those threads myself called "Taylor Swift or Katy Perry" and it was a very popular dumping ground for one liners.  I won't do that again.

Just today I looked for that thread, but could not find it - maybe it was deleted, or probably I missed it.

Wanted to share that I decided on Taylor Swift (obviously)...

Back on topic - NO - demerit should not be introduced.

It probably wouldn't be worth adding to be honest as people will obviously just use it to target people they don't like, but maybe some sort of dislike button could be added. I also wouldn't mind a demerit button if staff had it and it was given to the countless trash threads that are created every day: Do you prefer coke or pepsi, do you love your parents more than your girlfriend created by Indonesians and Filipinos every day. Huge drain of staff time.

Much like we have merit farming now, we would have demerit gangs roaming the forums picking on anyone that didn't pay ransom.

demerit is a pathetic system it will purely causing a havoc throughout the day demerit would be publish/implement.

I can't imagine how many sob story I will read just like when merit was introduced to canaille.

If there was actually a demerit system, members making repetitive posts should be demerited first. What was the need to open a new thread about demerit when you could have posted this reply in

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/de-merit-2827699
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/not-merit-demerit-is-the-way-to-go-2963600
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2979083.0;prev_next=prev
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2975179.msg%msg_id%

In fact best option is post in the official thread about merit system: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-new-rank-requirements-2818350

Too many merit threads.

Demeriting can't exist because it'll give admins a headache. Merit system was introduced to reduce spam without giving admins more trouble.

Demeriting means people will be demeriting people for trivial reasons, and this would cause admins to have to review all the demerits that get reported... which would defeat the purpose of the merit system.
I think that merits should be permanent, but maybe sMerits should be controlled.

People are starting to hoard sMerits, which is creating an unhealthy flow of merits and people will give up when they can't get merits.

Yet another repost and useless topic about meritalk... When the mods will shut down these annoying topics pfff
Are they seeking some merit points when they start merit related topic!
Lock that repost OP

IMO. If this comes into effect, only moderators or a new team of moderators that are specifically enabled to demerit users would be useful if the demerit function ever gets used. I wound't like just anyone who gets a merit to be able to demerit posts as that's a reason for people to merit farm to try to get other users to have so much less merit that they can't rank up. This system was brought in to allow people to rank up based on post quality, not to keep everyone at a low rank forever.

I'd hope that only the moderators and maybe a team of 10-20 users who can demerit people that are selected by Theymos. It might be nice to have it so that people can't lose their  rank, they can only lose their merits (or maybe have it so they can only drop two ranks in 3 months so the drop is reduced a bit and people don't immediately end up back to being a newbie because someone didn't like their posts).

The once per post idea is a good one. Maybe that a post can only go to -1 and then the post gets hidden as you suggested. However, the user can report the post to a moderator/staff member to determine whether the post should be able to be visible or not.

I think currently, if someone was particularly bad at posting, theymos might reduce their merit to 0 or even negative.

Although, what if a newbie makes 140 posts in their first day and gets 140 demerits, wouldthey be on 0 or -140?

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This being said, there are definitely way to many posts on merits and demerits in the meta section and I was hoping it would have calmed down by now - but maybe not.

So looking at this quote theymos may consider implementing a demerit system in the future. I'm largely against the idea as I think there's too much room for abuse and this is backed up by the system that Reddit currently uses.

 I would like to add though that the merit system has really introduced a new dynamic to the forum and I think it's working as intended and will likely get better as more merit sources are added. But it would be interesting to see what the community as a whole feels about the possibility of adding this to the forum and hopefully if the current system does fail for what ever reason we can come with another solution instead of adding a demerit system.

Here's a few thoughts of mine:

1. Moderation by the community

If a post goes below 0 and into the negative it could automatically be hidden and have a collapsible menu to show the reply if anyone is curious what it says. This way spam posts or blatant lies etc could be hidden by default and make the forum more readable. This would also reduce the workload on the staff.

This also has it's drawbacks as this could very quickly be abused or misunderstood as I think it is on Reddit. Posts which someone doesn't agree with will likely be down voted even though they might be constructive and add to the discussion. Even if demerits were only given to certain members such as staff/merit sources these people would also likely be subjected to this sort of behavior.

2. Who can demerit and how they are generated

It's worth considering only giving merit sources the ability to demerit posts. They are hand picked personally by theymos and are probably trusted by him to distribute merit fairly. There's still issues where if someone has a personal grudge against someone they could use this feature maliciously I don't think anyone is perfect and might be tempted to use it for malicious purposes. If a demerit is implemented existing merit sources would likely have to be reviewed again to make sure that they understand that a demerit isn't something you give because you don't agree with the purpose but is there to identify poor quality posts.

It's also worth thinking about how they would be generated especially if it's not limited to merit sources. Merit sources would likely not need a limit to how many posts they could demerit but if anyone can use it on the forum then there needs to be a fair way to earn it. I think just giving certain people or merit sources the ability to demerit is probably the best choice.


3. Preventing members getting comfortable and continuing their old ways

Once a member has reached their desired rank they could then revert back to their old ways and start spamming nonsense again. There's currently no punish for someone who's not breaking the rules but posting garbage. A demerit system would likely prevent this and would give the potential to derank members.  Too prevent abuse and inconsistencies a demerit would only allowed to be sent once per post from the same person. To prevent someone thinking "This user doesn't deserve this rank" and gives them like 20 demerit points.