Topic: Thoughts about the Merit System, from an "angry" Sr. Member - Giving mine away (Read 737 times)

Well I guess that could be done, specially if anyone wanted to gather an exact number for statistic purposes or something like that, but I guess we all know that the spam would disappear, and probably a lot of users (mostly farmed accounts) would disappear as well. We can't deny signature campaigns are a huge business in this forum. Projects that run sig campaigns here, pay a lot to the users that are wearing their sigs. The payouts have decreased overall, but considering the number of users in each campaign, and the number of campaigns running, I would say it's a very big number.

If I go to the overview campaign thread, and look for the average legendary member payout, which I would say it's 0.01 per week, we are talking about an average of $360 a month for a few posts (considering BTC at $9k). This is not an over extended figure, so I would say it's really quite easy for a legendary member to get at least $360 for a few posts.

That's a really nice extra income, and in some countries that's actually quite a lot. If someone uses alts, they can probably win more here than they would on a normal job (again depending on the country they live). Given this, I would say it's easy to assume, that if this option would disappear, people would stop spamming.I still don't think this is the best way to solve the problem though, because advertising plays an important role in the crypto ecosystem.

Forum sections where it's not allowed to use sig are a good way to create good sections free of spam, and the merit system is a good way to promote good content and to prevent account farming. This is why I think we are going in the right direction here.

Don't know if more measures will be taken or not, but I would say these two alone, will help a lot.

Banner ads exist on the forum and people regularly bid for banner spots in the Auctions section. It's possible to block banner ads but they're still a form of advertising that dissuades people from spamming, and besides the serious discussion thread there's other threads where signatures are blocked like the well-known Wall Observer thread in Speculation.

We could also just disable signatures forum-wide temporarily and see which direction spam goes in as an experiment.

I understand where you are going, but although banning campaigns could solve the problem regarding spam, because the only reason people spam and farm/sell accounts, is due to the profit that comes from campaigns. But there is nothing wrong in using part of the forum for advertising, and I think completely removing that feature would actually harm the forum and even the crypto ecosystem.

There are some good projects being advertised here, and I actually invested in some of them after I got to know them through this forum. That is a good thing, and there is no need for drastic measures.

I think that if there is a way to allow "adds" on this forum, and at the same time allow users to have good discussions without having to navigate through tons of spam, we should try it. I think mods are doing a good job here. We already have the serious discussion thread, where adds are "banned", so no reason to make it as a default "set up" for the hole forum.

As I said in this thread, I came to the forum to participate in a betting competition. How "off topic" can that be? The only relation to bitcoin was that the prizes were paid in bitcoin. I then started using sigs to try to make some bucks, that are quite important for me, but I've also learned a lot about bitcoin and crypto. So it could be said that I came for the "wrong reasons", but it ended up opening a lot of doors to me, in terms of acquiring crypto knowledge. I think that everything can be achieved in this forum, and things are getting better, and the merit system is a step in the right direction.

The merit requirements are proportional to the activity requirements.


The merit requirement for Sr. and above is slightly more than activity, but the requirement for Full Member is slightly below. The biggest adjustment to this is that the requirement for Member has been reduced from around 50 to 10. I think this was done so as not to be a disincentive to noobs.

Ohh I see what you're talking about, I think I'm starting to understand what you're talking about now.. Also, I want to ask what are your opinions about the number of required merits to have past Member to rank? Isn't it too much of a gap to achieve? I think that the scalability should be the same with activity.

That's really mature of you.
When I first saw the merit system I didn't think to much of it, especially because I barely post in the Meta section. I had the same reaction as you at first, oh shit it's going to take me ages to reach Hero status. Because the whole reason I used to post was for bounties. But since the merit system I have been trying much harder to earn merit and to contribute valuable content to this wonderful and weird place. So in a way the merit system has changed my posts in a good way I think. I don't care much about reaching hero/legendary anymore, because as how I see it i'm already lucky that i'm senior and can earn BTC through campaigns. With the merit system I have to be more involved in topics and I have to say it has increased my knowledge of crypto by a lot.

Only thing I regret is blowing my load of merit to quickly

I appreciate the reply but im still unclear on it. Some of the people on these forums with the oldest accounts and the most posts often give out extremely dumb advice. It took me about an hour on this forum to realize that all those side stats were meaningless.

Personally for the second part, I think all of the sales of accounts and the campaign garbage should be banned. I see it about the same as a bum picking change up off the sidewalk. They are actively harming the user experience to make a few pennies. Instead of solving the problem, they make these complicated workarounds when you can just ban the people doing it in the first place.

The main purpose is to stop account farmers. Now you won't be able to rank up if you spam short sentences in off-topic. Like these guys, and many others:

There are numerous reasons.
1. Some people need high level accounts to scam. They think starting a promotional thread, campaign, ICO, auction, whatever, requires an aged account. In fact some newbies might see aged accounts as trustable, believe that those people know what they're talking about.
2. Campaigns. Some people are here for the money. They see the forum like a type of faucet where they'll get paid for solving captchas, bumping threads, and so on. In fact, that's what some ICO bounties are asking them to do. I've seen campaigns that were forcing people to post in the ANN thread and results looked like this: love the project, great dev, good luck.


That's the golden rule of the Internet.

Can someone explain to me the actual purpose of this system and why everyone cares so much about arbitrary forum titles?

1. This smerit thing, people are already offering to trade/sell/whatever which makes its original purpose moot.

2. Trust, titles, and merit are all completely pointless when the forum allows people to sell forum accounts.

3. There is so much scammy, weird activity on this forum already instead of basing trust off of these things, people should by default not trust anyone. This just gives another avenue for someone to fake their contributions in an attempt to rip others off.

I just had a quick look at your post history. The last post that isn't about merit and is in English is this:


It's on page 34 of a thread called "Can we totally eliminate all the banks in this world?".

Did you read all 34 pages and decide that nobody had already said exactly what you did?
Do you think anybody else is ever going to read all 34 pages to get to your post?

Most of your posts follow the same pattern, just spamming your first thoughts on the subject title which hundreds of other spammers have already done before you.

Try reading a thread before posting. Engage in discussion rather than just posting your opinion. Forget about chasing merits and just enjoy talking about Bitcoin to people, then the merits will come to you.

I'm currently in this phase and I think I'm having a hard time to cope up with this merit system. I am really not sure if my posts were helpful/informative/constructive enough for people to give me merit. I still don't have any merits till now which led me to think if what I'm posting is not significant for people to notice. I'm trying to prove something that I too can gain merit through improving what I know and what can I contribute with my personal opinion/perspective of the topic.

It is greatly appreciated if you guys can guide me to how I can really make a quality post worth giving merits to

I agree, and I wasn't saying that they are the same. I was saying that trust and rank already provide a certain status in this forum which is perfectly normal, so there would be no reason to create a new system just to provide additional status, or to try to "lock it" like WaffleMaster apparently thinks.

We had "trade status" related to trust, we had "experience status" related to rank, and we now have "content status" related to merit. I can be exploited of course, but I think those cases will probably be minimal.




Thanks guys, I'm glad you also think that way. Like I said before I already created the thread in the service board of this forum (link in the OP), but users still haven't posted any Topics for discussion. Feel free to stop by, and make your contribution. The boards are still a little messy right now, which is normal, because the system just started, so that could be a good short cut, to start gathering some good threads we can use.

Same here, I was angry too. After 4 months of being a Full Member I was proud to be a Senior in a few days. That will not happen in the next few months now I think.

OK, I got used to it and meanwhile I do not care, the OP of Bolt Brownie hits the nail on the head, definitely worth of one Merit  

Nice topic. I have really enjoyed reading your post. I think this coming threads in the forum will become more interesting because we are seeing the positive effect of the merit system. Topics become more informative and questions from newbies are being reduce that really makes every boards looks like a mess.

I was also angry at first because I should be a Sr. Member 6 days after the merit system was released. But looking at the benefit and the effect on each member gives a clear definition why we are here in the forum. And that is to improve yourself and share thoughts in the world of crypto we are in today.

Trust and merit are two different things. I don't trade through this forum, so my trust should stay at zero. Merit is awarded for contributions to the improvement and support you give to the Bitcoin Talk forum and its members. At least that is the way I think it should work.

What you are describing could already be achieved with the "trust" system, so why create a hole new system just to "lock status"?
I think that ranks, the trust system, and now the merit system are valuable and can in fact help build status for an account, and there's nothing wrong with that if that status is legit. I think most accounts probably have legit status, and there are of course those that only farmed it. Every system can be exploited and used for personal gains, but that doesn't mean that they were created just for that.

It's of course naive to trust anyone just based on a number or a rank, but that is true for everything in life, specially in the "online world".

I can't get behind the idea of merit. I guess I got a standard of 500 just for being a 'Hero Member', which probably means I could give 250 out, but the whole system seems too easily gamed and exploited to lock 'account status' behind it. This may make higher rank accounts more valuable and further facilitate people farming merit for increased profit.

Now people might see merit and think that the person is trustworthy the higher the number is. People already do this with higher ranked accounts like hero and legendary, which is obviously naive. Seems like it is just more things for scammers to lull victims with now.

I've created the thread I've mentioned, link is in the OP, but I will also leave it here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.29237739

Well done, you've taken the step of embracing the new system rather than sulking about missing out on ranking up like many others are doing.

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This just shows how difficult it is to find interesting discussions going on when it is buried under a deep pile of shitposts. That's exactly what this system is trying to fix. I found the unexpected benefit of checking what certain people have left merit for and discovered good threads I would otherwise have missed.


From personal experience, I've only had a paid add in my signature for a short while and before that, I used to leave a referral link in there. It was very effective in getting hits. Even when I took a break and didn't use the forum for a couple of years I was getting about 5 hits a day.
It really depends on what is being written. Is it the sort of thing people will be searching for and reading? I'm sure the advertisers paying people to post in spam mega threads are wasting their money but this is still a very effective place to advertise if people are posting interesting content.

You'll get there if you keep making posts with as much effort in them as this one.
Your other posts seem fine too, but I would definitely recommend re-visiting the topics after you've commented. Only reply to substantial replies too.

Don't forget that you can also create threads yourself, I'll be a nice change when more people start writing topics with something a bit more substance in them.