Topic: What are Merits to you? (Read 597 times)

Initially, I saw merits as unnecessary (and oddly unattainable) since it wasn't a necessity for one to get to jr member rank and wear a signature. Then came the enhanced newbie requirements, which demoted my account.
At that point the 'one merit requirement' seemed an almost insurmountable task.
But I took on the challenge and realized that with a little effort, you would get noticed


My journey has actually taught me lots more about cryptocurrency than I would have made the effort to learn if the one merit requirement wasn't put in place. I didn't settle for one, I wanted two and then three and so on.
I am still a long way off in the list of merited users, but I'm also a a little way off from were I was before.

I would attempt to advice newbies even though in sort of one myself; do not make quality posts simply to get noticed, it's fulfilling to be helpful to someone else and you would also be developing yourself in the process. Merits is just like a 'pat in the back' for a job (already) well done.

While I created my account over a year ago, I have recently realized what a useful resource and wealth of knowledge this forum is and can continue to be.

To me, merits are still what I think they were originally intended to be: a means of showing gratitude and reward for your contribution to the crypto community in the form of post on this forum. That contribution could be in any form deemed worthy of showing gratitude. Insight, innovation, profound, and even funny. Sometimes you need a little comedic relief to move things along.

But now that I have come to know a little more about how this forum works and the benefits of using this forum, and also the abuses of the masses and the many ways the intended purpose is perverted, I want to grow in my knowledge and usefulness in crypto and I also want my merit/rank/trust to reflect that growth.

Having said that, given how freely some merit is given (note: I mean freely given, not earned), perhaps the merit requirements for various ranks ought to be raised to offset some of the frivolous abuses.

I do realize that in this merit system where anyone can give merit that has enough to give allows merit to be dispensed at their discretion, but there are now so many topics that making "merit-worthy" posts in many topics, may never actually earn you any merit. Perhaps, the system needs to be updated. Recalibrated. Fine tuned to adjust for inflation. Perhaps requiring more merit to reach higher ranks is in order. Another idea would be for merit to expire.

Just as bumps had become abused and therefore the system overhauled, the merit system could use a revision that would help bring it back to have more meaning for more people.

Perhaps, I have it all wrong.

Btw, anyone who reads this and would like to impart some more wisdom about the forum, please feel free to message me with informative threads or tips on how to wade through the garbage threads more efficiently.

I will now pass the mic to the next person hoping their post is merit-worthy! Good day!

Hope you all have a wonderful day and thank you for reading!

To me they are good indicator of people's knowledge about a certain topic. Or maybe they just make someone laugh which is also worth a merit

As someone who does not have merit, I still believe it is a good indicator of good posts. I like that it's people's decision if a post is a merit worthy, so people without knowledge cant progress in ranks and people in control of merit have power to change that if they think someone is ready to get a higher rank.

I think of merit system that way also. It is a means of improving oneself so that one can contribute well for the betterment of this forum. Honestly, I never saw merit as a hindrance to be better. I took it positively and accepted the challenge. I know it will now take time for all of us to rank up and we have to double the effort and wait but I believe that good things come to those who wait.

I forsee merit as a reward that someone noticed your post and you contributes  somehow. I couldn’t agree more  to users sayin its no big deal but no offense for me it kinda measures how much quality and impacting your post are.

 I know for sure most of us was thrilled on merits from the very first start and the fact that the more merits, the higher ranking or stats right?

Its just that users have to spend merits wisely and its not a bad thing to  add some shine on our profile tbh *laugh*

Good for you

I am trying my best to post, help and suggest. But so far no merit 
I guess that not only quality posts helps to get merit, but to be first on new themes and that some legendary member noticed you.

For me, the merits that I received are the reward that I received from what I can do like helping other people that I know that they didn't know. I may be not a brilliant person but I could also help those who are in need of help. As of now, I never help anyone yet and never get rewarded because of it. Until then, i'm still finding a way to learn more and help whoever I can without asking for reward. More likely it depends on the person I help if he/she will reward me. I'm more thinking of merit as a tool to prove that I can do some things than the other person can't do.

I can agree that not everyone uses the merits in perhaps the most correct way, but I don't think the system is designed to reward only quality posts, but
it is been left entirely to the users to decide how they will spend their merits, with some basic guidelines from admin.

A good deal of sent merits has nothing to do with the quality of posts, they are given just because of the sender like that user writing style, maybe even name or avatar. Although not a written rule, the number of earned merits means a lot on the forum, just look how many threads are open about merits statistic in Meta with top 100, 200, 300 merited users, an how many users emphasizes their earned merits.

Whether we like it or not, the merits have become a measure of the value of individual user, we are all already ranked by those values.

I won't say it is valueless for me. It motivates me to do better quality of posts. When people reward me merit I feel happy and thought my post is valuable and understandable for others. Also, it inspires me to put effort into my post. So, I think the merit system helped me a lot.

Many people in the forum are running for the merit because of its upgrade your rank. Some are buying too but I don't think that's really necessary. Because without a good quality of posts you cant join any signature campaign (most of the merits buyer wants to join IMO)

Merits are a way to show gratitude to the person who took his time and created a post or a thread you like. It feels good to receive them and it's good to hand them out as well. Being on the merit train means giving everyone the opportunity to get a share in the benefits of this forum.   

Such a good and refreshing topic on merits after a long time

What are merits to me?

[1] Merits in my opinion can be considered as a way/tool for querying and receiving response form bpip for some of my good posts from various sections.
[2] The merits which I have received in the technical section helps me in identifying my best posts by browsing through the bpip website.

Merits are also a way to determine or check myself how good my posts are and how well they are being written. Majority of my merits were received from Meta and Technical section, but it's quite funny to see how my technical knowledge evolved from December 2017 and how they are now. Though I got to know about BTC in the end of 2016, I obviously got interested at the end of 2017 as majority of us were. As all the newbies were during their initial run, I had no idea on the workings of forum and was a poor poster who came to this forum to talk shit about bitcoin. Then on January, merits were introduced which was a new way of identifying quality posts and helps the forum members in ranking up. Subsequently as days passed by and with the dumping happening all over the market, I started buying btc and to keep them safe I started educating myself on the technical side of the bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

To understand the core concepts and the working of code, I spent countless hours (maybe some days it takes around 1AM - 3 AM to understand a concept) on Technical Section by helping members in solving their questions and got rewarded with merits. So these merits have proved that my technical posts are merit worthy and helps others in clearing their questions. Truly speaking I had no idea on the bitcoin during the start of 2018, but after hours and months of educating myself I have started testing the code slowly. Today, once the PR has been issued I would merge them with the available code and would build the software and retest them for any defects. The goal is to educate myself completely on the technical stuff and to contribute to the core development so that at least at one point of time in future my name would be present in the Core Contributors list with at least 1 commit.

What are smerits to me?

smerits on the other hand is like a database of posts which I have considered the best over the past 1 year. Similar to the merits querying, whenever I think of reading some best posts which has enlighted and taught me something over the years I would visit bpip and get the data. It helps me in identifying the various posts which I have personally considered the best among the posts which I have read.Recently I have started spending these smerits on my local board so that the board might get a little traction and would hopefully restore the board back to its normal and free from spam.

As Tony Stark quotes : "What am I even rambling for? The merit system is gonna work the way it supposed to."

To those of you who believe that Merits aren't something valuable for me just because I hold a degree (rank) that you don't, you're completely wrong here. I actually wanted to create a chaos by making everyone aware of the fact that how badly merits are being misused to some extent. I never targeted specific users who came ahead in this thread and talked about themselves - whether it's about them being merited or they merit someone. I don't doubt / judge anybody's abilities here but only wanted to give a message with the chaotic subject here that it is made to determine what quality is, but I believe that the way it's being spread throughout various genres where it is undeserving, then it should not be, in any case, a measure of quality any further at least on the basis of my point of view. I never targeted those who are good at meriting best posts with humor but against them who are giving them to the wrong people. I bet you can't deny that there have been posts that don't deserve anything but got merited and there are some well deserving posts waiting to be merited yet. It's a shame that a thought that came at theymos' heart keeping in his mind the future, is also not being used in its proper way. Anyways, I never meant merits are nothing to me, else I'd never say that merits are rewards and a responsibility to circulate it forward at your desired convenience, but in current conditions, it's just that we cannot say that anyone having xxx amount of merits have a really good quality (there is an extremely high exception to this statement of mine for a lot of users).

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Get to understand and write English in somewhat better way and don't repeat your words nor mine and I bet you'll receive your first merit as soon as you expect.

To me, Rerit is really important .Unfortunately, many people are misusing it in their own way . But many people need it for make money from bounty.Whereas, Merit don’t say about judge anybody’s chareacter , quality of post ,….That just a remit for this forum. You know I’m bounty hunter , I have 378 activity and I’m just newbie cause I need to merit for up rank . If you talk “ Merit “ is kinda “ Like “feature for you so you true.

For me merit is given to you when people are able to acknowledge to your post. Merit is given to one who can alert people if sometime is wrong or introducing new thing or one who can look the same concept in a different perspective.

The community has people of different mindset the post that can cater to at least a few can get one merits.

This bit bothers me sometimes. I definitely don't give as much merit as I should but it's pretty hard to find posts by non established posters that move me. I'd much be handing it over to people to help them rank up but they don't half make it difficult.



Don't forget that when the merit system was introduced ranked up members got a large amount of merit automatically - 500 for heroes and 1000 for legendaries. It's rather telling that there are still hero and legendary accounts stuck at that level.

Hehe nice thread. I thought that we moved on from the merit subject months ago. /jk

Merit gave me what I wanted the most, my Avatar (I still get personal messages from time to time to take in away but that's another story).
When it was introduced I had no idea what impact will have on the forum. I was just sure that I probably won't get enough merit to reach Full Member in a year (I was Member when the merit system was implemented), but I didn't focus on that. When you see someone like Nullius you know that you cannot compare to his knowledge, humor, charisma so merit is not something for you. So I kept posting like I did before and kept exploring the more and more about the forum,bitcoin and blockchain. I always try to be helpful no matter if it is appreciated or not, it's just the way some people are. So thanks to this I got some merit and manage to rank up to Full member. Since then, the merit is just something I can distribute to the others. I like when I get some, (sure everyone is feeling the same) but after I got the needed for Legendary, I see no point in getting more, maybe only to distribute it to the others (it's good to be a merit source, tho).
What I prefer is to make this forum a better(safer) place for the newbies and help the mass adoption. This is something you should focus on.
I'm not a full-time programmer, I can't really be helpful on the technical battlefield, but what i can do and like is to fight those who try to go around the rules. That's what I hate and dedicated quite of my time to catch those.
So the merit is just a side effect of what you do for the forum.

I really dont give a thing about merits. If someone is getting merited heavily, it can be because they are popularizing popular opinions while a person of the opposite opinion gets lost in the crowd. This may not be the problem faced by this forum but other places too. Even then merit became a source of physically showing that one opinion is over another one. I tend to not like this, though I guess we all are biased because we are all humans.

Unequal distribution of merit is different sections of the forum make people forcibly post in less spammed section - it does ruin the quality of posts, even though it is supposed to improve it.

The main importance of merits went to stopping the account farming and ranking up spammer accounts which got controlled properly.

For me Merits are the "Token of appreciation" for the knowledge or information that we share. I agree that Merits should be given to the quality posts. Please share your merits to some useful posts. Don't just randomly give merits to some posts which are not good. Also, don't expect for a merit and post the threads or comments. You will receive the merits, if your post deserve a merit.

* My advice to the community members is do not hold your sMerits, please share it to the members who deserve it.

For me its nothing,but this could be considered as honored if someone holds it under their profile.

Now it (trust system) has been replaced by Bump system.
Bumping changes on some boards

If you spell "merits" backwards you get " Stir 'em", and the merits system appeared to turn into a system to stir up posters. However, recently it seems to have been replaced by the trust system.

It was fun to begin with but hard to come by without investing a lot of time and energy into Bitcoin and the community.

To me, merits have been a quiet reckoning about the limitations I have in terms of involvement with bitcoin and crypto. Some due to my procrastination on reading all those whitepapers and some because of where I live. It has also acted as a positive reinforcement when I get them. Yet, during periods of inactivity, months pass and you don't get any and it did get discouraging.

There was a phase when most active users could get enough merit to rank up to Hero or Sr. Member simply by being around and reading/ commenting on topics. Even now, the key i think is to be around the discussed topics, find something interesting and work your way to add something relevant. This just gets a bit difficult when all of the most merited discussions are about merits, reputation, trust etc etc. A snake eating its own tail.

There is nothing in the Discussion and Economics section which is stimulating enough to not sound like you are repeating yourself for the 100th time or watching someone else say the same thing that you were gonna say, the 100th time.!! That is why, i call this a quiet reckoning that when everybody else knows what I know, then maybe I don't know nothing..LOL..
It has become a worthy enough goal though, to do something that would be merit-worthy. It has also made me realize how upheavals in personal life can hinder your professional/ work-life. Hopefully, It has also taught me that it is important to learn how to avoid this spillover effect. Any tips on this are welcome..LOL..

One last thing is that too much foucs on merit has made the forum a bit impersonal. People sound more judgemental as everyone is judging your "quality". Its a shame that lot of newbies have to focus on "proving themselves" rather than just basking in the aura of the brilliant discussions that used to happen here, which of course is no longer the case.

The overall ecosystem too has become much more mechanical and has lost the feeling of wonder and awe that initially pulled people towards this. Though I guess it is mostly because of too much money being involved and hence the professionalism.

Like earlier, we had these crazy ideas of Sea-steads and unbridled worldwide innovation that bitcoin and crypto were supposed to make real. Now, that amazement seem to have vanished behind the cold veil of professionalism.

Well, Whiny rant over. Thanks for the opportunity.

Mertis - A tool to inspire others to create good contents for the community. It's a recognition for the contribution to the community. It does the same for me when I get it. Other than this inspiration/recognition, merits are nothing but some digits.

TFW the majority of the commenters have more than 500 Merits

Something I spend a great deal of time distributing.

Personally, I can't say that Merits is meaningless thing for me. I'm high ranked member already, so getting merits don't have any influence to my account. But I can't say that I don't care about. It's always fun to see that I got merits. It shows that someone liked my  post and it was interesting for him. But I kinda agree with you OP that merits isn't always indicator of quality posts. Often it's just about popularity of user.

Well, merits to me are something to give to a post with an information that helped me - sort of a limited Medium clap, Reddit upvote or Facebook like. Since it's limited, I don't usually give. Maybe during the first few weeks of implementation, it was easier to give on the expectation that merits would not be so hard to get.

Lately, I just ignore it completely.

I wasn't a fan of merits when the system started and I couldn't get any for a very long time.

The merit system was introduced a few days before my promotion to Hero, so my initial reluctance should be understandable considering that I needed an additional two years to finally rank up. Users who created an account at that time and had no problem getting merits are also currently Hero with the difference that I have been here for 7 years  .

After some time I realized that it was not the fault of the merit system, that nobody rewarded me, but my own and that I was a poor quality user (shitposter) who only wanted to take and give nothing in return. When I realized this, merits ceased to be a problem for me, as for many others who understood it much earlier.

Of course, the basic and immediately obvious advantage of the merit system is less spam but this is only a tiny part of the forum on which merit has a positive impact.

Currently, merits are for me a great indicator of activity and a quality measure of content published by individual users.

To me, merit is a reward for my quality contributions on the forum. Personally I used my merit earned to some extent to rate my performance on the forum. I said some because few of my quality contributions could have been missed while I might have recieved other few merits due to the generosity of the sender but on a much larger note the merit I have recieved represent my quality contributions.

Here's my story, well I'm not the F word type of poster or the insulting type that trolls just to favor a certain user to get compensated with merits, Nope I'm not and my post history can backed that. After the introduction of the merit system I didn't get merited like close to 3-4 months mostly because I wasn't that active and also when I was active, I didn't put much thought into my post before writing.

It took the intervention of LoyceV giving me the assurance if i was to improve on my post quality I would get merited, which i did and have recieved 757merits since that encounter. I doubt I have been merited on a post which isn't merit worthy deserving and that's why I see merit as a reward for quality contributions also that's why I try my best to do the same via the smerits recieved.

I don't agree that merits are nothing. Maybe for veterans like Stedsm, that already had a reputation before the introduction of the merit system.

Merits  are a good (although not perfect, far from it) way to evaluate how much effort a user put in his posts.

There are many users here which don't care much about what they write, and barely read. Those users have earned few or zero merits, and most of the times it is not even worth reading their posts.

By experience, I somehow learned to ignore users which have like 1001 or 253 merits. It is not worth reading what they are writing, most of the time.

Of course there are exceptions, and sometimes they are users which are not using the forum very much, or they suddenly decided to read before write, or they are talking about something they know. I always try to merit those posts.

Earning merits is not something easy, but it they are coming if you are patient and you are posting things that makes sense. It requires patience, time (to read and to write), and some effort.

Users which earned lots of merits write good posts most of the time, and those posts worth my time to read. If someone makes good posts, he will earn merits, soon or later.

I could have done that TL;DR thing just the way I snipped your complete post, but you know something? Your posts are darling to me, you're what you are and I love the way you describe things here. And yeah, I never ever meant that like kinda thing for you guys such as LoyceV and you, you guys are the example of what needs to be done and what exactly should be merited, how the standards are set, how the efforts are made and last but not the least, a challenge to yourself that you are only your best friend and your worst enemy too. I've seen many good posts being merited too but those misusing their merit power by giving it to people who just abused in that post or there was nothing but insult there and some more specific things that I didn't like, I believe those merited posts should be considered to come under the category of this like thing because it was their (merit sender's) like or choice to give it to such people for the ugly behavior.

Your achievements are priceless and the cost it takes to become the next DdmrDdmr is beyond hard work, extra efforts to know more and more as well as over efficiency to do what's in your mind (here: post).

I find that the concept of merits evolves over time on a personal level. Recapping from the top of my mind, in my specific case, it is/was:

- January 2018: Merits is something weird to do with ranks. God knows what sMerits are. Why is there such a complication on a forum? I’ll take a look into later on at some point (no need to be bothered with it for now, since I’ve just got here, and may not even stay for more than a brief experimental period).

- February 2018: Ok, managed to get one on my Local Board. Felt glad for a while. Still experimenting here (social network stuff not my piece of cake). 10 Merits needed for Member. Might be nice to achieve.

- March 2018: Received 76 merits. Gee!. It didn’t feel like a ‘like’, but rather more like a token of a certain appreciation in the content of the generated posts. Fair enough, I did put quite some time into it, and although what I posted on was not too crypto-related, it was probably useful for the forum to some degree.

- April 2018: Received 128 merits. Ok … Now comes the counterpart: I should start awarding the generated sMerits. Which criteria should I follow? Guidelines kind of point towards quality.. what is quality really here ?

I’ll have to read through a bunch more post now, and award based on what I consider to be, as per my criteria (one or multiple of): effort related, informative and well versed, helpful to others, got a good discussion going, witty at times, stated a point cleared than I would have put it, technical to a degree I can understand (or beyond, but instructive), very exceptional meme, and so on. Agreeing could be one of the criteria, but I do not think that it is one to be primal. Of course meriting someone you disagree with is humanly more difficult to do so.

- May 2018 .. August 2018:  yada yada yada ..

- September 2018: knighted (small to begin with; larger later on) Merit Source. Ok, more reading to do ...

- October 2018 ..  January 2019: yada yada yada.

- February 2019 .. to date: More concentrated on keeping my available sMerits to send low that receiving them. Still appreciate them, but less of a thrive now; after all, above a certain number there is no potential need for them technically to date (not entirely true, as for example, some campaigns may require a certain degree of earned merits over the last x months or so). I also let my (smallish) ego stop racing on certain rankings, which I entered laterally, and prefer to be pretty unconcerned with.

Now of course that is how I see it: not as a ‘like’, but as a multipurpose token of one or more of those criteria I explained above (April 2018 entry). I may have awarded some sMerits as a ‘like’, but normally I like a post because of a second layer motive. A like really has both conceptual levels to it: the liking feature, and the reason for it.

Criteria is diverse here, and not necessarily on the same page when it comes to merit (plenty of discussions here on what is meritable, in which boards, for doing what, what gets left out, merit circle-jerking, abuse, political issued – extended to DT issues, and so forth), but if the core majority of merited posts that you see seem decent enough in content, then one may not be too misaligned with what is was meant for.

IMHO, Merits to me are clearly nothing, yeah nothing. With that said, it is but something of an important value to me till I saw something and so, I stopped thinking a lot about the same. Again for me, Merits are nothing but a token, a reward that you get when your post is liked by someone on the basis of some part of humor and some part of your knowledge that you present in that post.

Merits are rewards for your brilliance.

To me, it is also a responsibility of a user to get the cycle go on by circulating them continuously while giving / sharing them with the most hilarious and humorous people around.

Merits bring responsibility with that reward to circulate and spread them amongst the best.

Now, why I don't like it and don't think of it too much, anymore!

The reason this Merits thing has become tragic for me is due to the fact that I've seen too many people getting merited for using slangs like (Fuck your mother, fuck you, fuck this, fuck that) kinda bullshit and many more shit that you can't even imagine that "Hey, did this post deserve a merit?" So, after seeing that the system made by theymos is good but people are misusing it in their own way, I stopped caring a lot about this thing. Obviously everyone have their own choices to give it to anyone for anything including all this shit, but then, I don't believe Merits to be a measurement to judge anybody's character, quality of posts or their behavior (like I said, it's kinda "LIKE" feature button for me).

Merits in today's time cannot be used to measure anyone's posting quality but just limited to being used as LIKES.