Topic: There's enough merits, if hoarders aren't selfish. (Read 1319 times)

In this point and situation here in the forum, I don't think there is scarcity of merit's and according to recent data on merits distributions here in the forum, I think there is still enough merit's being calculated be it by merits source or those that got extra smerits from they received merits, although we can't deny the fact that there have been general decline in activities here in the forum recently and that can result in the down turn merits cyculation, although it may not have a long term influence on the merits system since the situation won't continue that way for a long time, so there is band to be increased in memeber activities in the coming weeks and the more active they become the more merits are being awarded to worthy posts at all time.

I couldn't agree more, but there is a clear change in the way plagiarism has been dealt with which coincides with the decreased activity. And therefore my speculation.

My guess is that maybe he's realized how much the forum's activity has drastically dropped and, that could be as a result of making a user behind an already made account, say a hero member to suffer the consequences of their ignorance? Mind you, this isn't about an unrepented plagiarist...
I can also back that up; Cyrus created a thread to revive accounts that weren't banned for very complex reasons and y'all know about it. What does that say to you?
That's true though but, how about those that have a single record and have been useful to the community? Isn't that like getting convicted for a felony cause you got involved in a street fight without any weapons at all?

I don't know
I can't believe having spammers or plagiarists on the forum is a goal in itself, so I see no reason not to ban them.

True, but there is an obvious change in how plagiarism has been dealt with on the forum. Previously, users were permanently banned for a single copied sentence, even if it happened years before being caught (which was imho the wrong approach). Now, spammers are not being banned even after multiple plagiarism cases and this coincides with decreased forum activity.

If you have to speculate, what would you say is the reason for this change?

It's not about people who spend their smerits on posts that are worthy of them but it's about people who don't spend their smerits at all and keep holding them mostly with intentions of maybe meriting their alt accounts with them so that they can grow in ranks as well in the future, some might do it because they have set very high standards for quality posts in their mind that they don't find posts that are quite good but aren't the best merit-worthy.

So if you are spending your smerits on random posts from different people and have no other intentions with them, you are not a merit-hoarder or selfish with your smerits, but you can't deny the fact that things like these do happen and it's nothing hidden anymore. It might not have other use cases but it can be used in different ways and for different purposes.

Selfish for what? As if smerits have any other use case besides spending them.

As for me, I don't keep track of my smerits, whenever I come across any content that I find helpful, I spend smerit right away, though I'm still frugal with them because I know my merit earning rate, so most of times I spend 1 at a time.

That's true, but someone who has a little respect for his profile won't be replying in one; at least that's how I see it. Not all megathreads are awful, such as tournament ones for Euro 2024, the Champions League, etc. However, there are many threads similar to the one I quoted earlier, and people keep posting again and again. It's intriguing. In my opinion, the worst of all is created by some selected campaigns that have massive post quotas; some of them were paused recently, though.

Casinos must just be loaded with money. They don't care, as long as their name is out there.

I don't think the forum necessarily needs any activity at all... But the bar for what passes as 'conversation' is so low on certain boards, singling out certain posts as "spam" almost seems like a futile effort.


Its truly a weird phenomenon that it is still somehow deemed a good idea to pay such posts... I don't completely understand the intricacies of it.

If theymos wanted spambots to keep the forum active, he could just as well make them by himself. I doubt he's into that.

Spam megathreads work great for reaching post quotas. That's 800+ posts about nothing, read by nobody, but all being paid.

I know those who doesn't post in the gambling board always sees those who are active posting there as spammers hence leashing out their merits could be a cold stone inside an ice block. I think they should start looking into gambling board to also enjoy the cool fun going on there, we hear lots of stories.

To be honest, I don't think the post quality has dropped as much as @The Sceptical Chymist is mentioning. There are certain boards that have huge megatopics that suffer from inferior quality, and it's basically all about quantity, which is the gambling board and the bounty sections. The first is a result of signature campaign requirements on the board. Even though I also have a 10 post requirement, I refrain from replying to megathreads that have no reason for existing. Some are so badly written that I'm annoyed as well, such as this one: "Double your money and quite". They can't even spell the word "quit."  Why even bother replying to this topic? Yet, it has over 40 pages of replies.

Maybe it's related to declining activity on the forum, so even those spammers are seen as a necessary evil to keep the forum active. Beggars can't be choosers.

I feel the same way except I don't think Bitcointalk will ever disappear, at least not before Bitcoin itself fades into obscurity, which is gonna be a long while from now, with any luck.

Satoshi's posts are too important to the internet for this forum to fail, and even though there's been controversy due to the URL change (among other things), this is the best place to view them... in their original context, just as they were 13-14 years ago.

I think I'm going to, if only because I'm a cranky old curmudgeon who'd discontent with the way a very old-school internet discussion forum is being corrupted by AI after already being massively corrupted by incentivized posting.  I like to bitch until steam comes out of my poor listeners' ears, but as I said I also have a fondness for bitcointalk and see its decline and possible end coming sooner rather than later.


One ought not be old to be horrified by such madness, only intelligent and alert.

How do you define regular users? And while we're it, how can this forum measure their activeness or participation rate on this forum?

I'd say: "do it!", but I already know that's not going to improve post quality. I find it harder and harder to empty my Merit source. I now have 200+ source sMerits remaining, and it increases by the hour.

I really don't get why the obvious spammers get such a soft treatment nowadays.

Even the tech boards get shittified by chatbot diarrhea. Call me old, but I don't like it.

It's gotten to the point where I'm very tempted to start up a thread in Meta about the decline of post quality forum-wide, because the only good posts I see lately have been coming from Legendary members who most likely aren't bots or members using AI to write the most bland, generic shit possible--and I've always tried to reserve my sMerits for members below Legendary status. 

On top of that, my discouragement has led me to do less reading than ever before, and that's not a good thing.  I love this forum, warts and all, but man....we're not even talking about warts anymore.  We're headed toward a condition that the best team of dermatologists in the world couldn't even identify much less cure.

It's called making a point

Don't you think theymos accounted for a certain percentage of sMerit to never be sent, when he decided how much sMerit each source can send per month? It was even adjusted a few times. I'd say the total number of sMerit sent is more or less okay now.

Hahaha...satoshi of all people? I won't even go there, but regular users.

This is not about blaming anyone but pointing to the good side of recycling the merits which I don't think is bad for the forum. But on the contrary, hoarding it for several months doesn't serve the forum any good and neither will it reflect the good intention of theymos on this.

You're not the only one merit source staying away from gambling boards. There are many merit sources who don't visit gambling board or its sub-boards as they don't find those boards interesting.

To be honest, those boards doesn't get enough merits and the ones who post at those boards may not get many merits even if they make very useful posts.

Right! we shouldn't adjust our post for merits, instead we can provide helps to people who needs them and in the process we might fall intto merit rewards.

Satoshi, who flee into space a decade ago, is competing with an average active user for merits received in the last 120 days. Sounds hilarious when you ponder deeply. I can't even keep up with his pace, and the last time he posted, I was still eating tacos. 

Bro is hoarding over 3k smerits that's -3 possible Legendary accounts. If theymos is going to penalise us for not sharing enough merits, he ought to start with the top guy Satoshi- I support


Bro is missing all the fun on gambling board, who's going to tell him.

But look at it this way I could not care less about gambling so if you post their I won't read it.
I don't read foreign languages as I really am only good with English
I read Meta
I Read  btc mining
I read alt mining
I read btc technical
I read bitcoin discussion
I read economics
I read development & technical
I read marketplace

 So maybe 35% of the forum is read by me
 I give a lot of points each month.

I am certain that I could give more as my hoard is under 500 points to give.

The job of a merit source is different from someone who has an Smerits. Merit source are to merit and quality post that they see on a  board or thread, even if the post is not %100 quality but is %70 upword, they might consider it as quality post and merit it but the number of merits that is supposed to be given to the post will reduce because it's not %100 quality.
But someone that has an Smerits will not merit any post that is not %90 to %100 quality because they believe that they worked hard to receive their Merits, so they will need to see a 100% quality post before they distribute sny number/s of merits according to their choice.

Let's start with this guy! Hoarding sMerits, how dares he!

If theymos thinks the average user doesn't earn enough Merit, he can easily double the entire supply. There's no point in blaming individual users for it.

There is no point in hoarding the merits

But it's up to them whether they want to send it to anyone or they want to let it decayed if that ever happened and I don't think penalizing them is not the right way either. Usually members send merits to worthy posts but it's very rare to find people who is not sending any merits at all and probable reasons are they are not interested in reading other replies or they set the standard too high that can never be met.

You nailed it, but no one cares if they hoard the merit until there is a rule/sanction that makes them care. They will continue even if they know there are no benefits in doing that, people's behaviour is random and could be so ugly at times. This is obvious on the forum where some users who have been blessed with enough merits will find it difficult to reciprocate it on others. This is worse to the extent that their 120 days sent merits page will be 0 despite receiving 100s of merits in months.

Such people are the real hoarders. Are they not reading any posts? If possible, such like them should be penalised one way or another to force them to at least share merits as it's also important to the forum to make the good and deserving users feel appreciated and known. Besides, I always appreciate those merit sources who dedicated their time to creating threads to view the unmerited posts that deserved it. But more is needed to make it effective even as some of those links above are no more effective.

I agree with you that even if you write a quality post the chance of getting merits on it is low. I have experienced it in the past and till today facing the same issue which is still okay for me with my rank. The problem happens when a newbie is trying to get some merits to rank up, he tries to come up with a good topic/reply but he has to struggle to get merits from the global boards. On the contrary, it is easier to get merits if on local boards as they have dedicated merit sources. I never felt that on my local board merit hoarding is an issue as everyone who has smerits is always distributing it to a quality post. The problem that we are facing is officially retired merits sources which is causing the activity of our local board to go down.

You making it look like is all about the merit that why members need to get themselves here to post, if that's the case then it will only make merit source to over look many post on the Forum because the posters are not doing it for the main purpose they're suppose to but having it in mind that they will get something in return (merit). You notice that the effort of dropping quality post won't be there and you see users always posting where merit sources are and even quoting them just to  get attention and merit, for me is best to post without expecting merit but post something interesting, if you always think of getting merit when you post then you'd be disappointed when it doesn't come and it will discourage you from posting even if you have the best idea of dropping a quality post.

I've seen this statement before, which is why I created Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source back in 2019. It turns out there aren't a lot of good posts that go unmerited after all.

Allow me to highlight the bolded part: if nobody sees your post, it's not a good post. A good posts also means it's interesting, and posted in a place where people can find it and want to read it. The second part: if nobody wants to give it Merit after reading it, it's not a good post.

If you think people should adjust their posts to earn Merit, you're going at it the wrong way. Merit shouldn't be the reason to post, and adjusting your posts for it doesn't work either.

Perhaps the merit system is subjective and not what you feel is a quality contribution can be a quality contribution to th merit source. you can be convinced that this post is merit worth while the person with the merit thinks the opposite.

Maybe your post are not always first, or in the first pages I believe naturally this are contributors to merit rewards, because you can't say something that will look too convincing for merit in the third page because it's assumed someone from the first page most have thought and spoken about it.

LoyceV what exactly do you consider quality post ? perhaps everyone has th definitions of quality post and categories so maybe if share yours and what you expect from people before you can hand them merit then it would be easier to make such post. let's hear from you.

I know that the bitcointalk merit system is designed to reward quality posts and improve overall forum content. However, one of the problems I see with this merit system is that even if you make a quality post, if no one sees it or no one wants to give merit, it might be like a normal post. I think that's what OP want trying to discuss. This can be discouraging for users (like me, lol) who put in some effort to contribute but are not getting enough merit.

Merit sources are the ones who distribute the number of merits to those quality and helpful contributions on every thread, and those who you think hoarders it's up to them if they want to give their sMerits we have different qualifications of giving merits sometimes can be subjective or base on their quality of the post. There are no benefits of holding too much sMerit at all.

That's why we have a thread related to this.

[v2][Self Moderated] In Merits, Count Down To Your Next Rank... by Fivestar4everMVP
[self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source by LoyceV
[Merit] Share your best posts/threads with Fillippone to be merit assessed by fillippone
[Merit] Share your best local board posts/topics by hugeblack

The meritorious must verify the merit of the meritorious.  There is no need to show selfishness or nepotism in this case.  Then new talent can move forward.

From what I think OP is saying about those hoarding smerit is like they are the ones stopping merit from flowing on the Forum and is like they're another kind of merit source that are stingy to distribute their smerit to good post here in the Forum. To me I see it that is a choice but to be frank with you OP that's non of our business if they hold it on to themselves like holding a pillow so tight to the body, if they hold it without distributing it, it still won't make their merit grow in anyway except they receive from either merit sources or other members who find their post interesting or merit worthy, like they say givers never lack and I believe you OP is also hoarding some smerit too so you're also guilty of what you are complaining about, givers never lack remember that and you have seen quality post and you choose to walk away too.

Absolutely!

There are enough Merit Sources on the forum, we don’t need any more. Plentiful Merit is sent by sources to deserving posters.

There is definitely not a lack of Merit, there is definitely a lack of top quality posters, especially new accounts. It is not hard to receive Merit, many sources are if anything over generous. Be a helpful member of the community, make good quality, constructive, clear and concise posts and you’ll be feasting on Merit in no time.

From what I have observed from members I admire their quality of post and from my experience of quality of post is that, it mostly comes from your experiences and how vast you are in making researches online, and thereby helping people solve those problem questions here by providing a tangible answers and solutions from what you've known or have learned, So there's no two ways about this, because you can only offer what you have in terms post quality, the more research you do, the more you become experienced and add more value too.

And when we talk about quality of post, yes I know it happens sometimes even when your post is of good quality the merits aren't coming, well, that won't stop you from doing what you are doing, whereas I have seen a situation where the merits keeps flowing, it happens both ways. Maybe sometimes It could be that a merit source person hasn't found them merit worthy base on their own personal reasons or kind of think new profiles are becoming increasingly created that some profiles aren't getting the attention.

Merit is meant to be given for those who deserved it, as it’s never meant to just keep and hoard it. That’s actually how merits should serve its purpose, not on the other way around.

Unfortunately, not all good posters are given the opportunity to be merited, some who are only be making lower quality of post are even get merited. In this case, it’s obvious that merits do not actually serve its real purpose, otherwise this issue in the forum won’t be made at all.

I really like the last line in your post - it's definitely true.

I agree with your assumption - but in certain local board, the number of merit distributed is so low every month that many users are starting to expand to global board in forum and try everything to earn merit. Some of them really seem like merit fishing - but that's the reality. So in my opinion - for certain cases, adding some new merit sources might be an effective solution to increase the flow of merit on certain board including local board.

If what I said is wrong - I don't think @hugeblack will receive many requests on his thread.

[Merit] Share your best local board posts/topics

Absolutely agree, there isn’t a need for more Merit sources. It seems to me that the people here advocating for more Merit sources are low ranked, low quality posters desperate for more Merit which would enable them to rank up and earn money from signature campaigns.

Maybe if they make a bit more effort to be a helpful member of the forum and make clear, concise, constructive posts they will get what they want (more Merits) to rank up and all of a sudden it’ll be clear that more Merit sources aren‘t required and better posting is what’s required.

Receiving lots of Merits should be hard to achieve, that’s the whole point, to encourage good posting and constructive posting habits. If theymos was to vastly increase the number of Merit sources it’s likely it’d be easier to receive Merit which cheapens it and means it’s easier to receive. The forum would be full of spam and low quality posts. Nothing good in life ever comes easily, try harder.

Everyone who gets merit here gets merit for a good posting. The exchange of merit is going on naturally, and very few people retain merit. And those who keep maids are not active in the forum; it seems that it has been a few days or a long time.

I believe that the concept of retaining merit should be viewed in a positive light, as it ensures a fair distribution of merit. If an individual consistently maintains the quality and quantity of their posts, they should rightfully earn merit.

The merits that Themos gives are for proper use, not to be misused, and if someone misuses them and puts them on the stone, they should be reported.

Even if the merit was to be given easily as if it were to be social media platforms, where everyone is a “like" source, it wouldn't go round. Merits circulates faster on this forum than “likes" do on social media were there are no merit sources. Anybody can like any post, but not everyone gets multiple likes. Why is it so? Don't forget that quality plays a vital role in today's world. Take the merit sources off your mind, it's not worth the worry. They owe no explanation to this.

No matter where you are. If your post is quality and engaging, people would send out merits. And the beauty of sMerit is that a single user can send multiple merits. A post can get 50 merits just from a single user. And sometimes a reader who genuinely got intrigued by a post may not appreciate it because they have no sMerit to give. They'll bookmark the post, some sort of, and merit once they've got some sMerit on them. What's my point?

Don't expect that a post that didn't get merited after 10 days of its creation wouldn't get merited again. A post can get its first merit after a month of its creation. Most times the post you don't expect to get merited tend to get the most merit. Like a staff said above, the post should be natural. Forum members are not bunches of bots, programmed to work in similar ways. Members have to relate to what you're saying before reacting through sending out merits, as an insignia for their interest on the post. Maybe it solved a problem they were just about seeking its answer on this forum.

This explains perfectly what a post deserving of merits should possess. Merit sources are vested with the duty of giving merits to those deserving of it. This days quality posters are just few in the forum, majority here (especially those in paid campaigns) are only  posting to meetup with targets for the week.  Do we want merit sources to distribute merits out of compassion to shit posters and spammers? Because that is one fast way of disposing off merits. I do not think anyone would want to hoard Smerits for no just reason as those Smerits will not be useful to them, except OP has more revelations he isn't telling us about.

Yes, there's a difference between hoarders and merit sources. The prior ones earn merits to gain sMerits while the later ones get a fixed or varying amount of merits per month. The merit sources could be hoarders if I'm not wrong because it's their decision to send merits to which worthy posts while the hoarders that you tried to mention can't be merit sources unless they properly make a merit source application thread and wait for Theymos's decision.

Now back to the main topic, the sMerits those hoarders earn aren't given to them easily because they try their best to make very high quality posts/threads, and sometimes despite making good quality posts/threads they won't get any merits. The sMerits they earn are 1/2 of the merits the earn from their posts/threads and that's why they contribute those sMerits to either someone whose posts/threads they like or they send it to whoever's posts/threads they prefer. It's their own decision to either hold those sMerits or send those to someone who deserves those sMerits, and no one can or should force them to send or not send the sMerits that they have.

What a smart move for differentiating merit sources and hoarders. But at the same time, a merit source could be a hoarder still even as non-merit sources can also be hoarders.

In my opinion, as you asked, you are making sense, that's how it is judging by the way things are currently. The merit will go more around the quality posters of the forum if hoarders desist from it and give it cheerfully to the deserving posts. However, no thanks to the attitude met on the ground by many who now replicate it all the same, it caused what we see today and may continue.

Regardless, many are receiving it massively, it may only not be even. Stopping sentimental sending will also go a long way though people like to deny that part.

A think I'm comfortable with your definition of good posts as those are the qualities that a good post should portray because some people literally thinks that after making some few posts that they must earn merit instantly but that is not the case because Theymos emphasized more on the need to only award merits to high quality contents and not some gibberish.

I like your third point of a good post because it reminds me of when I started making posts in the forum and I didn't earn any merit and I was feeling so bad and I increased my level of research not until a day I logged in and saw I've got some Merits on my profile and was from a reputable staff of the forum, it made me engage more in making good posts and the merits kept coming till I ranked up to full member but now it's very unfortunate that most newbies now are after ranking up quick and start earning from signature campaigns but just like @hugeblack said that signature campaigns are just for fun because they come and go so the payments can't be reliable to earn a living from it considering the fact that the payments are low and real life jobs and business are more profitable and guaranteed than signature campaign payments so we need to be more devoted to quality rather than quantity because even the merits we earn is also part of fun because when the merit system was not introduced people were still ranking up and making quality posts so there is nothing too important about getting merits.

For me:
A good post is one that smells brain juice.
A good post is one where at the end of the reading you don't say to yourself  "Fuck, I have wasted X seconds/minutes of my life".
A good post is one that doesn't try to get merits, they will come naturally if you respect the first 2 points.
If there was an easy way for everyone to get merits, I would probably be one of the first MS not to give any.

I think if we were to be paid for distributing merits, it would only negatively affect the distribution. It's best we don't go there. Imagine if the admin were to introduce some kind of satoshi per merit rate. It wouldn't take long before the posts that usually got 1-2 merits from user X started receiving 5 from the same individual. Or if we were paid based on how many unique members we merited. People would be searching for posts from users they haven't merited yet.

Anything that shows you made an effort to write it or you displayed knowledge. 

What qualifies as a good post, according to your standards?

I ask so because maybe merit sources should find a way to let the forum know what they stand for; that is their principles and what determines them to qualify a post as quality or not.  Or is that better kept a secret?
In this way, maybe everyone both newbies and oldies would learn to employ this and create better post that would surely warrant the merits and upmovement of this forum in general.

With such amount, i agree you're likely in 1st position . After all, there are very few member who receive more than 7980 merits.


In addition, admin doesn't pay them while AFAIK admin pay moderator.

Personally speaking, I have no desire to help members who join the Eloncoin sig campaign to rank up. In general, it proves the bar for campaign entry is far too low around here, and it makes me want to be stingy with my merits.

To be fair, I looked through your posts and they are better than the average account in your campaign. Although this one was kind of weird:


I'd say its more like some people take the time to make sure what they're writing makes sense, and others don't -- mainly because they are in a rush to crank out shitposts.

Obviously, if you haven't received any merits in the last 120 days, I can't expect you to send any. I don't expect the same from newbies either. I am not doing any lengthy checks on each user whose post I want to merit. Like I said, I would just look if you are receiving and sending. In your case, you are doing both. I don't care about the numbers. But let's say your stats look different than what they are now. You have received enough merits to have sMerits to send, but you aren't sending any. 9/10 times I wouldn't merit your post because of that. 

That would work well if you want to verify whether a person is sending merits but only on a high level.
Suppose my merit stats show that I haven't sent any merits (even that is only for the last 120 days) but that doesn't mean I am a merit hoarder.
What if I don't really have any merits to send and I have sent it all already?
I might have not received any merits in the last 120 days and so I couldn't send it to others as well. 

While its true that merit sources have different standards and some might indeed have higher than the others, generally I don't think that's an issue at all since I see many average members having no problem ranking up.

Have you really taken time to go through the active forums users Merit history to see if actually people are not giving out sMerits even though they are not obligated by any rules to give out Merits. If you know some hoarders why not just pm them and ask them why they are hoarding Merits as you have claimed instead of creating clout chasing thread like this. But if it appears that you are not getting enough Merits as you would have wanted, that might have made you think that people are hoarding Merits, why not improve your posting pattern. It could also be that your posts are mostly on threads where Merits source don't frequently visit example of such threads is the gambling section. And how sure are you that people you think have sMerit and they are not giving it out that made you think they are hoarding it?

Merit sources are human. They can't see and be all over the place ready to merit anything and everything that deserves it. Don't forget that it's a manual task, you can't automate it. That's why there will always be posts that remain unmerited somewhere, but I don't think high standards are the reasons for that. Plus, there is a thread in the Reputation board where anyone can report posts that deserve merits to merit sources. If you feel like you deserve more merits than you get at times or the same is true for someone else, feel free to use it. 

I agree with you. If the op isn't bothered about his post getting merited, he would not have created it. Or is he just being a crusader or something? There's no absence of merits, just good posts, like this one you made, Op.
You don't expect these merit sources to give merits to posts that aren't worthy and as such it would seem like they are hoarders and even though there are those who board merits, I think it's their choice to do whatever they want with it.
 Although it can be annoying when you make posts that deserves to be merited and you don't get but that shouldn't stop you from doing what you do because when you do your quality posts and it comes naturally to you, eventually the merits will come in because for me, it's as if these sources are checking how consistent one can be in making good posts, if it's not just a one time thing or occasional something.
 

3990
Make that 3356 Pizza contest to the rescue

I don't think OP do that, but user @Coin-1 do that on thread [TOP-200] Members who have a lot of earned sMerits. Some of them are either inactive or representative of certain service though.


Based on thread i mention on above sentence and your statement, that means you could have at least 1358 sMerits (excluding source).

Not really: every source sMerit I spent, returns after 30 days. I think it's after 30*24*3600 seconds exactly.
If I don't spend them, they don't disappear. It just piles up and won't get replenished anymore.

Take merits like pocket money, only the holder have the right to spend it, I can't say they're selfish for not sending out the smerits in the possession same way you don't force people to spend their pocket money, most times merit's cyculation may be affected by the activities of members, if the smerits holder is not active then, the smerits may become useless.

The only problem is not lack of quality and merit worthy posts. Amidst low quality posts, there are still posts which cross the average benchmark that ought to receive merits. The problem could be that most of our merit sources have high standards for giving out merits and it's rare for their standards to be met by an average forum user.

Don't be bitter that people don't give away merits that easily, there's a decay period for merits if I recall so if they don't use it, it will be for nothing. I guess that some people just don't find what you're posting to be that fun or compelling and that they don't really care much that they will give you their merits. If you really wanted to be recognized in your game here in the forum, maybe you need to start looking inward and see what are your problems in terms of how you post and the quality of those posts.

You remember the names eventually. Let's say I wanted to merit you but I never checked your profile. I would visit it and click on your merit stats. It takes me two seconds to see if you are sending merits. I would expect anyone who receives merits to spend them as well. I don't care how, in which quantities, or to which users. I just like to see them being circled.

Don't confuse source merits with sMerits. They are different. sMerits (the spendable merits) are the ones you can give to other people. Two received merits create one sMerit.

Source merits expire if not used. If you are a merit source, you first have to use your source merits before you can tap into your sMerit pool. That's why LoyceV says he is an sMerit hoarder. Because he is a merit source with a big stash of source merits, he rarely gets a chance to send his sMerits.

Let's say he now has 200 source merits next to his name. He needs to empty that to 0 before it's time to send his sMerits. Since it's difficult because of a lack of quality and meritworthy posts, his sMerit count keeps increasing and is not being emptied. 

My opinion is that you, being here in 2021, are making a statement that is obvious after two weeks. Likewise, there is no need for this topic. You can't force those who don't give away their merit; many will do this with pleasure.

What I have come to understand is that merit sources were given smerits to distribute in the forum but no definite instructions on how or where to distribute them, rather it is expected that whatever is a merit deserving post should be merited. The ambiguous part is that what A may consider a quality post might not qualify as such to B, this simplify mean that the merit sources, coming from different background with different interests, have to work out ways they deem suitable to distribute their smerits. I believe that each of them is doing their best in their capacity to deliver on the trust and confidence reposed on them by the forum administration because they were found worthy of the task. So, we have to respect and appreciate them just the way they are and try to get better in contributing to the discussion here as that is the way merits are given.

But I think as a merit sources, your Smerit have expiration if fail to exhaust it before the end of the month? I know very well that what make people to hoard Smerit for long time is because they have not meet to a post that have such attraction of quality they needed. Spamming is now taking over forum due to so many new accounts.

I'm probably the biggest sMerit hoarder on the forum, and if not, I'm certain I'm in the Top 5. I'm also the Top 1 most generous Merit sender. What does this tell you? Nothing

Merit isn't scarce. Good posts are.

I don't understand your point of being selfish because I know that forum memebers can't merit themselves but talking about being careless in holding obtained Sensible merits without giving them out before it decays, then it's absolutely a nonsense act.
Merits can actually speculate if holders grants them usefully but without the Merit source, I don't think if we can actually generate more to the forum because looking at the forum on basis, I see newbies on board and there's been a lot of quality post in the forum which can even drain the sendable merits of there's no source to regenerate more.

Are you tracking people whether they are hoarding their merits or not ?
Unless you are using bpip tool to monitor different users on the forum it will be really difficult to tell if the people are hoarding their merits or not.
Besides that, if people are hoarding their merits then there is no point of it because we don't have any kind of benefit for hoarding merits.
It's better to give it away which is it's sole purpose anyway but then again we have all the rights to choose whom to merit.
Even I become really choosy when it comes to meriting posts but because I have only a small amount of merits with me.

A straight, direct and clear point. The truth is, everyone have the right to do whatever with there smerit of which they decide who to merit or not in whatever situation (post).  It never selfishness, Merit sources are doing there best, and the truth remains that they cannot merit all the post, there duty is just to ensure circulation of merit. OP your post is dumb and empty.

Tell you what OP, if you had spent some more time to create a more detailed and interesting opening post, I would probably have merited it. But I chose not to. Not because I am selfish, but because you didn't put much effort into it.

Everyone has the right to decide how to spend their merits. That's true for regular users as well as merit sources. You can always adjust the rules a bit to your liking. For example, in 99% of cases, I don't merit posts written by accounts who have collected many merits but have never awarded others with any. Regardless of what anyone says, I see them as not playing the game the way it's supposed to be played, so I don't see the need to merit them (most of the time).

I don't hate them. I won't ignore them and not talk to them. But I don't need to merit them.   

He/she was talking about users who are not merit sources but have enough smerits and they decide to hold onto it instead of sending it out which is a normal thing every user of this forum who's not a merit source can do since they can independently decide what to do with their smerit since they are not merit source.
This is why I don't see any usefulness in the topic raised by the OP.

I understand your point and you are very correct but please edit the bolded area. Just read the line again

I'm sure everything will be done according to the portions. there is no selfishness or wickedness.
look at merit sources that even create threads for reviews or those who share their random forum member posts. Even if someone doesn't share their Merit, we know they have a reason. even if it is a Merit source or not. In fact, we still see many members who care about the operation of this very good system.
not all members have thoughts like you or OP. we do know that hoarding sMerit will not do any good. but everyone has their way of thinking regarding distributing the Merit they have.

It’s not a duty of a regular forum member to spend his smerits, however merit sources have an obligation to spend their monthly allocated smerits. Not everyone understands the merit system. The idea of “one good turn deserves another" is the reason why many members are merit backscratchers and their merit history has a visible ring. I don’t think merits should be given based on sympathy or relationship.

I am of the opinion that if some merit source hoards merits, this will show up to theymos when their merits get refilled every month, they are more likely to get marked by theymos due to this behaviour and eventually lose their merit source role.

For those who are not merit sources but done spend their merits, a merit decay thing should be used in my opinion, decayed merits being recycled to sources for distribution once again.

Maybe this is not the case, it is possible the OP is facing a dearth of merits, because as we have seen from the forum, cycling of merits occurs in specific groups and local communities and if you are not part of them you will be missed out and nobody will notice a thing.

I hope theymos takes the above problem up and attempts to solve it in future.

There's no requirement for non-merit source to use sMerit they have. So i think it's not selfish for not using sMerit they have.


I agree, but who actually bother check poster class/country origin before deciding to send merit to them?

I'd say there will always be enough merits even if some people are selfish and are keeping their smerits with them and aren't distributing them. As you said, there is a difference between merit sources and merit hoarders, and those who are hoarding merits can do that for as long as they want and that wouldn't have much of an effect on the circulation of merits since merit sources are given a quota each month that they need to distribute to worthy members.

It's not like merits have a limited supply like Bitcoin and those hoarding merits are eventually locking a percentage of the total supply. Let them hoard and use them whenever or wherever they want. Besides, theymos has already said something about hoarders:

It's quite right that have a difference, actually a merit sources have a expiration of Smerit allocated directly to him for monthly distribution, why ordinary users who earn merit on its own Smerit merit remains until when he decides to distribute its merit to anybody, this question is well understood but people did not understand that much on what you are navigating at.

he just want to understand or know if merits sources can hoard Smerit to themselves, even though you think that their is some merit sources you will report base on their hoarding Smerit, its obvious that the Smerit have duration in any of the merit sources, if they cannot distribute all that been allocated to them before the next coming of Smerit, theymos will know, and if he notice that, I think that he may neither reduce the allocation for the person and increase other people that can dispense their allocation before the month runs off.

Sorry but there is nothing like violation to the principles of the merit system if a user refuses to merit other profiles with their smerits so just like I said that it is a bad practice that is just what it is. Sometime ago I created a topic on merit decay where I asked to know why some users decides to hoard their smerits when they can easily decay in the future before I got to know that merit doesn't decay but it is not wise to keep it for too long without distributing them to quality posts in the forum.

Basically, just like Theymos explained here every profile with Merit apart from the ones that benefited from the airdropped merit when the merit system was introduced newly was given in order for them to remerit other profiles since a sendable merit is generated in every 2 merit sent to a profile

Theymos motive of creating the merit system was "mainly" to increase post quality just like he stated here and also to help users increase their ranks accordingly because no body will be happy to remain stagnated in one rank except those that have already achieved the legendary rank but even though they have achieved legendary ranks but there is still need for their posts to gain merits because before you achieve a legendary rank means that you have spent a lot of time in the forum and are capable of making high quality posts though not all legendary do make quality posts, some of them were just lucky to gain legendary ranks from airdropped merits and that is the gospel truth.

Furthermore just like Theymos said, meriting a post also differentiate it from other posts because of the quality of the contents in it.


Here Theymos is also encouraging users to award merit to quality posts and not to hoard it.

In conclusion, Theymos created the merit system to improve post quality and also to encourage users to know that they are making good contributions to the forum and become motivated when their merit increases with their activity and their ranks increase so it is the duty of everyone to make sure they spend their smerits on quality posts just like same way other users finds your post worthy of meriting and gave them so "one good turn deserves another" when people merit your quality posts also do well to merit others quality posts.

The difference is very big between the two, sMerit hoarders and Merit Source can never be combined even though they both have sMerit. Merit Source which is trusted by the Admin, has generosity in keeping the merit flow running. Merit Source has its own way of distributing Merit to posts that are considered quality. Some of the Merit Sources open Thread services to facilitate forum users to submit quality posts to make it easier for them to find quality posts that they have missed. While sMerit hoarders are a bit selfish because they have no intention of distributing the sMerits they get from the generosity of other members in appreciating their posts, even though no one can force them to send sMerits and have full control over these sMerits, this action is still not justified because there is no point in hoarding them.

if you think a post or a thread is high quality enough and deserves merit/s(may it be yours or other people's) you can try and share it on merit "giveaway" threads. merit sources cannot see every post on the forum so it is inevitable that they may miss posts that deserve merits. also, a post deserving a merit can be subjective, you may think that it deserves merit but others don't.

I don't really have reasons as to why I created this post, but  just stating a possible reason why many of us aren't getting the deserved merit for our contribution despite the fact that we present and it is of concern to the newbies too, although I can't ignore the fact many newbies are just alt accounts created to fill the void, but the truth remains that, we should try to encourage good contributions to this forum irrespective of the class or origin of country, so as to ensure growth and development and call for good initiatives that will help the Bitcoin family at large.

I don't think they're selfish

If you were talking about the sMerit source then they are likely looking for worthy posts to distribute the merit it doesn't mean they're selfish it is just a nature of this forum to avoid spam but if you think they are selfish because you don't get merit from the quality post you made just ignore them they have their own reason why they don't send merit to your post, sometimes some merit source have favoritism but not all.

If you were talking about individuals who have sMerit we have different reasons why we hoard sMerit I am not selfish but I am distributing it to those I know worthy and rarely give it newbies as we know multi-accounts are very common here on the forum that is why I let merit sources decide about them.

I don't know your reasons for creating this topic, but if you feel sMerit source is selfish because one of your quality posts didn't get any merit, why not inform them about your post? Sometimes they just miss those posts which is why they created a thread like this "Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source".

My point exactly, because even with the reduced number of merit sources, we have those who have enough Smerits in store and are either waiting for familiar accounts or waiting for an account that would quote exactly the source of their information before they are forced to release or allocate the merit deserving of the post or comment.
I see it as a bad practice because this is a community that should encourage growth and prosperity and the fact that the merit is limited for now should be a very good reason why being selfish with the Smerits we have is a violation of the ethics of this Bitcointalk forum.

Whenever the issue of merit is discussed the popular opinions are that it's in the discretion and choice of the user to decide to decide who and when to release his S'merit to. Do why and where is the word hoarding  now emanating from if it's in that way as popular opinions has it?

Merit should are the ones that can be charged with merit hoarding because that the very purpose they serve "merits distribution" to quality posts, and am sure they have been up and doing on that.

From my research in the forum there are 109 merit source and users receive merits on their posts if it's worth it so I honestly think that merit source are doing a great job from the distribution I've seen so far (the ones I know though) and even if any one or most of them decide to hoard his smerits, there still will be enough merits going round the forum. yes there's enough merits so even if hoarders wants to be selfish there are users receiving it and it's going round.  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.64155534

Well I understand your point and all that. But I guessed everyone with their own choices on how to use their smerit , but still the truth is that to hoard smerit ain't right actually. But must people literally choose to reduce the way they give merit so that they won't implicate themselves, because most people are fond of that , abusing the use of merit.

But still the merit sources are doing a great job when it comes to keeping  the merit flow of the forum balanced by distributing smerits to worthy posts, Just as Hatchy said. So I don't literally think we should  concerned ourselves with things like this  , let's just keep posting our quality post. And eventually I believe merit will surely come expecially from merit sources and other users that found your post merit worthy.

If I get you correctly you are talking about those that have SMerits in their profile but are not distributing it to posts they find of good quality. It is a bad practice to hoard SMerits when they can just easily come across good quality posts in the forum and gives them merit though every one is at liberty to choose between spending their smerits or not but for merit sources it is supposed to be done without hoarding it because the reason why we have merit sources is for distribution of merit in the forum so if a merit source refuses to spend their merit allocation then it is just an act of selfishness and wickedness because they don't even own those SMerits except they distribute them to other profiles.

Most people are sending the smerits they have to posts, only few people are hoarding smerits. Some of them are not very active on this forum than to see some questions and answer them.

Or do you mean that there are some merit sources that are hoarding smerits? You can report them to theymos if you notice that. Theymos will likely reduce their merit allocation or remove them. Theymos like merit source who makes use of the smerits he is sending them.

There was never any connections between the two terms and right bow, I'm still trying to understand the usefulness of this thread. Merits sources are given smerits by the admin and their job is to keep the merit flow of the forum balanced by distributing smerits to worthy posts. For those hoarding their smerits, no one can force them to distribute it as they have control of it and can choose to or not to send them out it's their business and not that of anyone. There will still be enough merit flowing in the forum even when they decide to hoard theirs so no loss.

Mind you, there's a difference between hoarders and merit sources, to begin with.

What's your opinion?