Topic: This shitty Merit System has ruined Bitcointalk and made it like Facebook - page 4. (Read 1287 times)

Support an open discussion from the best minds in crypto, security, assets, technology, not some kids
hooked on Facebook-likes-Merits to make their Signature-Campaign posts.

(I know many signature-posters still make great posts, but many do not).

What do you want then? In one sentence.

I would definitely pay to improve my rank and to support the forum. But the copper membership
seems to be for Newbies so they can post images. Am I missing something?

Paying for a higher membership (and to support the forum) is actually a much better system
than the Merit system because it improves quality, and I doubt people who pay to support
the forum would harm their accounts by spam posting.

edit: I suppose you meant this:

https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

I think paying 50 BTC for a custom Title and VIP is a little rich for me right now. Glad its
worked out for the Forums tho and that so many BTC were HELD!

We're already on page 2 and you still haven't explained why you need merits and/or given us a huge list of excellent posters who haven't been merited because of some corruption or whatever you're preaching. Merits or lack thereof aren't preventing you (or anyone) from contributing to the forum. You can  even post absolute garbage and still get by - if you don't get pity merits you can buy Copper membership.

So perhaps the problem is that you just enjoy being part of it (the problem) instead of being part of a solution. Make good posts, earn merits, spread them around in a way that you think is lacking, report shitposters... too hard? Easier to whine in Meta? Thought so.

I give merit away as fast as I can find a reason to do so.  Never once does competition for a signature campaign enter my mind.  I doubt that's much of a factor for any of the merit sources.  If it looks like they're meriting each other or their alt accounts excessively it likely has much more to do with their ego and feeling some sort of validation by having a higher score than anything related to a signature campaign.

If you have proof of members meriting their own alt accounts, by all means, make your case public in the Scam Accusation or Reputation board. Otherwise it's just noise. 

I would like you to take a look at the following thread:
[TOP-200] Members who support newbies

Check the members and the ranks of the users who award the most merits. You were trying to say that high-ranked members don't award others with merits because they don't want to create more competition. Well, members of the highest ranks are the ones that are on top when it comes to merit distribution and awarding low ranks. If you want to believe all those accounts are awarding their own alts with merits, make an investigation and post your results in the appropriate section.

The question is also why have facebook-like-merits to "reward" posts when the post should speak for itself?

Like with people buying bad, cheap meat and never admitting it when asked, its pretty clear (and for example Facebook
also fully knows this, as leaked internal data has shown) people become absolute SLAVES in hunting for likes/merit for
their brains reward system.

I can see the moderators do their best to improve the forums and its always easy to complain (as I do right now)
but not very easy to offer solutions.

But without even making it a loaded question, just as a neutral question to bring the discussion forward,
do you think the merit system has actually improved the forums?

I know you have given me merit before like in the HITBTC scam thread, and I thank you for that. But I think you
were actually the only one.

So the only good thing I can see from the Merit system is you barely get any so maybe that makes people
chase it less than on Facebook. But why Facebooks system should be a good thing I dont understand?
I grew up with ircII text based, lynx text based, then BBS and forums all text based. It was good times,
why now forums (not just here) need to be facebook-itized?!

Isnt there maybe a better solution? I mean one easy fix would be to stop showing the merit on posts,
that at least would make people who post here a lot not get CONSTANTLY reminded of it by seeing it
many many times a day, right. Which automatically influences their brain (even if they dont want it)
towards merit.



I thought so too and I signed up here for good discussions and maybe shill some projects I believe in,
and benefit bitcoin future and all that. But would you seriously give up on $1000 a month just for
posting anyways?

Can still make quality posts.

However now, you need to make merit-Posts first because only then you can get into the club,
or you buy a Bitcointalk account (which I dont want to suppot, really, but when the alternative is
posting for 8 years to gain the needed merit,......)

Tit for tat strategy. Encourage honest meriting and look for reciprocation.RETURN
RETURN
Also see: mutually assured destruction, social contract, status quoRETURN

---

Also, what's the problem with merit in general? All it does is add a further restriction to leveling up - good for preventing spam.

Let's pretend that it's just you and me on this conversation ok mate? I'm going to tell you a secret of mine : I don't pretend/intend to run campaigns on my avatar/signature related to services (i.e casino, mixers) advertised on here.Not because I have anything against them, I would just prefer not to. So now that we've got that out of the way, why should I be worried about making "merit-hunting posts"? Do you think that all of us are "sheeps" because we defend a system that has been proved to work ever since it was implemented? The same number of voices that support this system would be the same number of voices that would be against it if it was implemented in a poorly way.


Again, could you provide some examples where that happened mate? I would gladly read your answers / thread to understand how you got this view of the forum/system in place.

You act as if whoever runs these campaigns just trows their money to the first user that goes to them. In reality there are a couple of campaigns (if not all) that have a huge list of requirements other than "be a Member or Hero Member".
Anyone that just tries to "give himself merit" from their alt accounts will face the same problem that it faces in the other accounts : without providing good, positive and helpful posts they won't get their money for advertising.


I don't think anyone would go to the extent of creating hundreds of accounts to give back sMerit to his main account and then repeat this process without being caught. Besides the tremendous amount of work that implies, with the time that you wasted doing that you could had created some really helpful posts :p
But I'm open to debate on that issue. Do you have any proof that supports your claims?

EDIT: Ah! I've just told you a secret of mine on my 100th post! Congrats to us!

See, thats the perfect example of a merit-hunting post. You pretend someone is wrong,
claim the morale high ground and theres an issue so you can gain some merit

Thats also how the media has been doing it for a while keeping
everyone hooked. They just make up issues and that gets them attention and clicks.
Which has led us pretty much to mass insanity and people completely addicted to
quick dopamine rewards.

Whether theres an actual issue or not does not even matter because for them its just about their
personal benefit.

You could barely make a thoughtful post on bitcoin future because it will soon get either pushed
back or flooded from all the signature posters.

I have tried asking people to give good, cheap altcoin suggestions and 99% I get replies by
people pushing ETH with always the same type of posts that I have no doubt are auto generated
with text spinners or other text tools, maybe even AI.

I mean I get it, its a pretty significant amount you can make here, when people use several
accounts they can probably replace their job. In some countries maybe even already with just
one account.

Then they can use that to push Merit to their other accounts, or to their friends, so they always
receive Merit back. None of that actually improves post quality ever.

With the continous Bitcoin rise you could be looking at making a small fortune all based on
spam posting. Sure not all make spam posts, but I mentioned the issues and none of you even
has disagreed.

Also you just need to look in the Signature Campaign threads. It shows the people who want to
sign up and they post their merit received in the last 120 days. Its usually like 5 or 10 Merit.
So currently you are looking at 5 years to improve one forum rank.

Like why would YOU merit anyone for a quality post when you can just merit your friends or
your alt accounts? Not a rhetorical question. You think theres no actual issue with that, why?

That's the issue with the way that you're thinking OP. One shouldn't be hunting for merit. That is not why the system was put into place. The system was implemented to discourage spam posts and increase the quality of the content generated by the community. You can look to your activity in this forum as a discussion of yours in any group of friends : you intervene and share your ideas only when you think they add value / create discussion about them right? You're not expecting anything else in return (expect contributing to the flow of the discussion). It's the same way of thinking that you should apply here.

What is this tremendous hate for people that are running campaigns for other services? Is this jealously? Do you want to achieve that same "spot" but weren't unable to so far and you feel frustrated? My advice for you OP, since you seem to be focused on just climbing up and get some random campaign, is to first, change your personality. Don't just set a bar for " I want to be a Member or Hero Member to get into Y campaign" because that alone isn't enough for you to reach it. You first have to become the person that is able to achieve those ranks and then you can try to achieve them.

Make your habit (positive/helpful posting) be something consistent. I've had good results applying this way of thinking in other areas of my life. I really recommend that you read this book : Atomic Habits by James Clear


I don't understand this way of thinking mate. There is so free speech in this forum, how can you possibly say that "having your own opinion and formulationg is PUNISHED"?. Could you provide some examples where you saw that happen?

I take breaks. Like sometimes I havent posted for months. Which also was the case from the great depression after last Altcoin crash. Why should only people be rewarded who post here only or mainly for merit and forum rank? I imagine there is whole bot networks just to make money here from sig campaigns. Giving merit to each other or selling it.. I mean really it makes more sense to buy hacked accounts than waste your time hunting for merit and help ruin the forum with spam posts and a merit focused discussion instead of quality posts in a bitcoin focused discussion.

My arguments were completely ignored. I get it you (you as in everyone with a sig) want to protect the system you are benefitting from. But why would someone with a lot of Merit and in Sig Campaigns ever give out Merit? All he would be doing is cause more people to get to high forum ranks and steal slots in the best Sig campaigns from him. You may be an exception but most humans would say what you say then act completely different. Just like for example with cheap meat from insanely large, cruel animal farms. Nobody admits they are buying it yet almost everyone (90%) does it.

The reasoning I gave was mostly ignored. The merit system helps fry everyones brain and go for cheap & quick rewards in life only just like with the Facebook/Smartphone generation. But its just like with the meat, nobody ever will admit it to themselves.

All this does is create mindless sheeps who are easily distracted, and having your own opinion and formulating is PUNISHED because swimming with the mass gets you the likes/merit. Its a very bad situation and it will help destroy Bitcoin once the people who can still do analytical thinking will just destroy the mass.

And you must have missed my post, then. 

I will reiterate my point that you've been a member since August 2017 and have made only 631 posts.  What are you expecting?  It isn't supposed to be easy to earn merits; that's the whole point of the merit system, to suppress shitposters and reward members who put in a decent amount of thought and effort into what they're writing.  I'd say you have a pretty good merit/post ratio.  I've certainly seen members with ones that are a lot less.

not suprised everyone in a sig campaign disagreeing

So do I, but I'm a merit source and it's kind of my voluntary job.

I do agree with OP that the average member with very few sMerits to give isn't going to be motivated to get rid of them unless they're feeling generous, but that's why Theymos has merit sources patrolling for good posts.  The whole system would probably not work without sources for the reasons you've given.

Why is this now a problem for you, OP?  You've been here for a few years and likely could have ranked up faster had you just posted more and perhaps put in a little more effort into your posts (though I haven't checked your post history).  Very few posts get merited, period.  Therefore you kind of have to be a prolific poster in order to earn a lot of merits (or an outstanding one, which is rare).  Good luck.

You got all that right.  Anyone check OP's post history?  I think I'll do that after writing this, see if there's anything worth meriting.  I've often encouraged people to PM me with requests to look at their posts, but only one or two members have ever done so.

Edit:  I gave OP a few merits for some of his previous posts, which were pretty good/informative.  I'd encourage him and anyone else to contact me as described above, and I'll review your posts--just don't beg for merits.

What I think you mean to say is signature campaigns have ruined the forum, which is obviously why you're complaining in the first place. It's not merit that has ruined it for everyone but shitposters who came here in the masses. The merit system was meant to be a way to stop people coming here only to earn via posting and before the merit system anyone could farm as many accounts as they wanted to abuse campaigns hence why something needed to change. I agree it can be quite hard to get sufficient merit to achieve a high rank but it's not impossible and you seem to have a got a decent bit of it recently. With that being said, I'm still in favour of letting users bypass the merit system by giving them the option to buy new donator ranks that come with the benefits of some of the higher ranks ie Silver Member gets you Senior status in all but name and so on. I think that would help those who are struggling to get merit or are impatient.

I try to review the local German section.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=16.0
Not like you said everything is fine and running smoothly, every topic has a merit.

I think it's not a Merit system like Facebook, your broken way of thinking is like Facebook.
You don't have to wait for the system to change to write something interesting, you can just do a scam in the Bounty section, if that's better for you.

$50 in Bitcoin per week, it is given to forward-thinking members, such as the creators of Bitcoin, members who complain and think badly, are simply not suitable to receive $50 in Bitcoin per week.

If you continue to think the Merit system can spoil your mind, you can choose to stop posting on this forum and do anything unrelated to the Merit system out there, it's better to make your nerves normal.

No one forces you to do something here, if you are happy, do it and if you are not happy to do you can find another forum, very easy way of thinking is not it.

It seems you have received a few merits recently, but wondering why you are complaining about it. If no one cares then how you have received merits? Peoples care, but only on a quality post or a good post at least, its depend on the sender. Good contributors always try to spread his/her merits on good posts, no only busy with earning from here. If someone from good contributors doesn't receive merits, then it doesn't mean the merit system is worst, possibly other users did not notice the post.

OP get out of the altcoin section(s) and post some GOOD posts elsewhere and you should be able to get some more merit.
This is bitcointalk, you are going to get more traction talking about BTC then alts.
Yes, you can get merits in the alts, I have gotten some there and sent some there. But, I tend to, as do others, give more merit on the boards in the bitcoin section.

I also see you post a lot in the German section, no idea how many merits flow there, that might also be an issue, can't be sure since I don't speak German.

-Dave

It's been a while since we've had a good anti-merit rant. Unfortunately this one isn't even that good, just the same old fake complaints. Merits are not scarce, good posts are. Throwing a tantrum and threatening to stop posting here won't impress anyone.