...... So, sometimes those new users don't get rewarded nearly as much, since the community has come to expect a certain standard when posting.
Which in the most part is brilliant, but it does mean it's a lot more difficult to rank up. I personally like rewarding users that ask some decent questions, and give the impression they're actually trying to learn rather than just fishing for merit.
Probably any of us can be moody sometimes too, and we might not even conform with our own standards, if we happen to believe that we have some kinds of consistent practices (standards) in the way that we send out smerits over time.
Sometimes I look at a post, and I think to myself.. This post is so damned stupid and incoherent, but the person seems to be genuinely posting from his/her own experiences and seems to be a real person.. So at that point, I might start to consider that I am using a "this is a real person" standard who is trying.. .. and whether s/he is trying to learn from others, learn from oneself or just trying to communicate an idea (but not very well), gives me some sense that there is hope that his person might be capable of getting better at posting.. and that might be enough to get me to send an smerit - again depending on my mood.. because if I read a bunch of similar posts, then I might lose my patience, and therefore the posts that I read earlier in my session got lucky to receive some smerits and the ones who I read later, I had no more patience, so there is a kind of luck that might sometimes be involved.
So what is my presumption? that the person is a person who seems to be trying.. and there is some kind of substance to what they are communicating, even if I don't completely understand it in its present state of arrangement (did they use google translate, or did they actually type out those quasi-incoherent words that have a few gems of some ideas contained therein?).. and for me it is not necessarily about "trying to learn" from other members in the forum, but the fact that when people post from their personal experiences, they sometimes will end up learning more about themselves and even learn how to present themselves better, and even if their motives for posting had happened to have been totally selfish in their attempt to ONLY help themselves, they may also may sometimes end up providing benefits to other members who might be able to relate to their having had gone through the process of fleshing out their ideas.. as incoherent as parts of them might have been.
I go back and read some of my posts, too.. and sometimes, I will say to myself, what is that person trying to say? And, it's my own post. Some people will tell me (suggest to me).. "maybe you should go back and edit your presentation a bit, so that members can understand what you are saying?" And sometimes, my response will be "who cares if they understand or not? I feel better for having had written the post, whether anyone else understands it or not."
Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to promote mediocrity, shit posting or ongoing patterns of laziness in terms of posting drivel, but sometimes "ain't nobody got time for editing their own posts," and sometimes the post still might be deserving of a merit and sometimes some of the later posts from the same member will become better because, s/he had gone through an earlier process to sort out some of his/her ideas in an earlier "draft" post.
Also, there are some members who hold themselves to really high standards, and we cannot really blame them for their ongoing consistently clear and grammatically correct posts.... .. so for sure, sometimes posts will receive merits merely because the ideas are presented very well, even when the ideas might not be very good.
