Nevertheless, why are good posters trusted by default?
They aren't.
theymos has essentially created a democracy for choosing users to be DT1. The 250 merit cut off is to earn a vote,
not to be trusted. No one (except theymos himself) is "trusted by default".
There needs to be a way to limit votes to real members, otherwise anyone (including scammers) could flood the forum with alts and vote themselves on to DT. Merit is a simple way of doing that. I struggle to go think of any other simple way to differentiate users other than a newbie jail, which brings with it a significant number of other problems. If you have any suggestions, I'm sure theymos would be interested to hear them, as OgNasty has said.
As an aside, thank you for starting a mature discussion and not just mudslinging.
Fair enough. In other words, one has to be a good poster first to earn a vote for DT1, while possible trustworthy members with less meritable posts are sidelined. Correct me if I'm wrong, is the foremost criterion for selecting DT1 posting skills?
If this is the case then merit is no longer a simple reward for good posts and determining account ranks, but it is also a potent political tool. So, I was a bit surprised when theymos removed a member as merit source for political reasons. After-all he created the system.
Is stingers still a merit source?
Not anymore. That's clear abuse, awarding merit for political reasons rather than any idea of quality. Only because he was a source, I effectively undid those merit sends. If he had not been a merit source, I still would've blacklisted anyone who got into DT1 through that type of shenanigans.
I hadn't read into the thread deeply enough to see that stuff. Those are better arguments against the trustworthiness of H8bussesNbicycles & co., but note that the current negative-trust-ratings were sent long before that. Before February, the thread looks like politics to me.
The member's only mistake was announcing he was awarding merits for political reasons beforehand. However, we know other members are doing the same, while pretending to be awarding them to good posts. If merit is essential to getting on DT, then it is clearly a political tool, and can be abused for political gain.
Nevertheless, why are good posters trusted by default? In my humble opinion, the logic of having 250 merits or even 1 merit to be voted into DT is seriously flawed.
This could very well be true, but the question remains... What's a better way of doing it? theymos is trying his best. If you propose a better way, it would likely be considered.
I have no idea yet. Nonetheless, it is quite obvious that the new model is deeply flawed and I'd advocate for returning to the previous model until something better than this suffices. This new model can be gamed easily, and I expect it to be proven shortly.
