Topic: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MERITS? (Read 401 times)

I agree with this. Those of us who have merit to award tend to not think of it because this is a new thing and you know, we're all dinosaurs. With that said, I am trying to be conscious of awarding merit when I see a good post. Here are some things I look for:

1. correct spelling and grammar
2. some truly useful information. Even if I don't act on it, I can recognize that it's useful.
3. a good question asked in an intelligent way

I will not award merit to posts if I see the following:
1. asking for merit
2. poor spelling and grammar
3. nothing worthwhile in the content
4. questions that could be easily answered with a little bit of research

Keep in mind that not all posts are going to be "merit-worthy," as some are just parts of discussion and those are important too. But at some point as you learn and grow in this industry, you should have some valuable insights to offer, some good questions to ask that others will appreciate. When you get there, you probably will be much less concerned about your merit or rank on this forum as you will have transitioned into finding your place in the industry as a whole, networking, joining teams, contributing work, and all that good stuff.

And it goes without saying, please don't ever PM anyone asking them to send you merit. If that happens to me, I'll simply click the ignore button on the sender and be done with it.

It's not any harder to earn merit today than it was in the earliest days of the merit system.

On the first day that merit was available a lot of people probably spent their merit at a higher pace, but that literally only happened on day one or two and after that the activity settled down.


What is your end game? You've only just arrived here, why do you want to grow in the ranks so quickly?

I think this merit system working very well. Those working hard to make the better post, they only get merits. I believe I we joined this forum too early. Because this is the start of the crypto world. This forum will be the most advanced next level forum in few years with cryptocurrency come to the mainstream.

I kinda agree with you. They need to level up their merit system because like you said there are many members that have a bunch of activities and yet having no merit in their account. But for now, let’s just create a quality posts and thread that is new to the forum in order to gain their attention. Let’s work hard, Read a lot of those posts that gained merits and there we can learn how to create a quality posts.

To be extremely honest, merit system is comparatively new and I believe that it will take much time to inculcate the habit of giving merits to others for their good contribution. Sometimes I forget to give merit points even if I like the post because that's not something that we are used to it so I am not expecting much use of merit feature at least 3 to 6 months from now. However, even if you are not getting any merits do not stop sharing good content and focus on the contribution of your knowledge because even if you are not getting merit points today but in the coming future other members might find it useful and you will get merit points for your old posts.

If you buy/sell merit and are caught then your account will get negative trust which will make your account useless. As it regards to making quality posts, there are guidelines for that all over the forum. It will probably be a bit easier to get merits in the future as I'm quite confident that there will be more merit sources added to the forum soon.

merit system is good. What I do not understand is quality Post? already everyone has written something on a topic. I am thinking what I can do. In the future, it will be selling merit or it will be a case of transferring another account to yourself.

Thanks for all these links. I will definitely take a look. I awarded you some merit for the post too, because it's truly informative, helpful, etc.

For all you people who joined this forum *only* to make money as soon as possible, yes, sorry to disappoint you, but this is precisely the category of users the forum moderators are trying to weed out. Bye bye!

If you joined this forum because you want to learn about cryptocurrencies and what's going on in our industry, and possibly earn legitimate money by growing your skill set and contributing your own skills to projects, then welcome here! Learn all you can, make some friends, network, contribute meaningfully to projects that you believe in and which pass due diligence, and you will do well regardless of your forum rank. It's really that simple.

In a way its good for forum but not so good for new users and for sure even worse for spammers.
So in the end, i would summarize merit system is good one. More advantages.

If merit system can be improved? For sure, just by advertising how it works and that you can give merit to others when u like their posts.

I posted quite a few topics with statistics on sMerit, but on Meta. I find them quite meaningful overall so I’ll share the links here to the main ones I've created for those interested:

[update 29/03/2018] Stats on Which Ranks send sMerit to which Ranks:  Which Ranks send sMerit to which Ranks.
[update 19/04/2018] Stats on the Rank pipeline:  Stats on the Rank pipeline - How many are we on the way to ranking up? extension.
[update 04/05/2018] Stats on which forum sections/subsections receive sMerit and their weekly evolution:  Forum Metrics - Section/subsection sMerit breakdown.

There are interesting too, but from more specific angles:
[update 08/05/2018] Stats on first users after Merit kick-off - What the've been up to:  Analysis of users after Merit kick-off - What the've been up to.
[update 08/05/2018] Stats on Deleted posts with sMerit:  Analysis of Deleted Posts with sMerit .
[update 20/04/2018] Stats on Forum evolution:  For forum nostalgics - how data show forum evolution.
[update 03/04/2018] Stats on Rank composition by Forum Structure:  Rank composition by Forum Structure - Where a Rank gets sMerit from.


The first one approaches the questions you ask, being the second one inherently interesting since it shows where we are placed on the rank-pipeline. The third is very interesting since it covers the sMerit awarded section/subsections with specific weekly breakdown.

The statistics are statical, and thus relative to a specific date of data compilation. Some would be interesting to update perhaps further ahead.

Merits can really help each of us to improve more here in forum, but yeah, it is really hard to gain merits now unlike before, maybe we should also have some level of giving a merits to each and every one of us, I suggest that if the account already a Full Member then that is the time that the merits will start to give, then the previous should be given by the moderator of the forum but it is just my suggestion for some accounts that are just starting because it is really hard to get some merits even if you already do everything and search for some topic or details that you think you can help on. Maybe we should need to do more to get some merits

That's interesting that you are tracking s-merit. Who (generally speaking) is receiving it? Does it go primarily to already established members who would likely be very knowledgeable? Or is it going to new members who are showing a capacity to make intelligent posts?

I suppose there will always be those trying to game the system. I guess the best you can do is make it as hard (or better yet, harder) to game the system as it would be to just treat it honestly.

I think one issue is that s-merit is a new addition and I'm not sure the established members have really caught on to how important it is for new members on this forum. It's not like with Steemit where curating content was a part of it from the beginning.

Generally, when one needs points that can only be awarded by other members, then what one needs to do is market and promote oneself in the hopes of being noticed, and possibly flat out beg for merit points. You may write amazing posts, but that's not enough. Those posts would have to be noticed by the right people (those with s-merit to award) as well.

Of course the problem with just anyone having s-merit to award is that they might try to sell it in some way and just award it to those willing to pay for it. I assume that in the merit source application process you would have to agree at some point that you won't do that. And then what would happen if the merit sources become known and become the recipient of tons of PMs begging them to read posts?

I honestly don't know enough about how it's really working to be able to tell if it's helping. I do know that if you join the forum and do honest to goodness networking, forum rank isn't going to matter much. Really, the people I see asking about it or complaining about it seem to be here for only one reason: to make money through signature campaigns. It's helpful to weed them out, so it may be that the system is working perfectly, just not quite in the way initially intended.

so i am wasting my time, i guess...yeah i got motivated from.my friend who joined in this forum,and make a lot of money from bounties, i am not going to lie, that's da reason why i joined in....but if u said that's no chance for making money, i have to leave and living my real life, thanks for ur advice,tho....i appreciate it so much

I've got merits to award, but I've stopped looking for posts to credit. I was spending more time reporting posts or putting people on ignore, than I was awarding merits. It's time that you low level spammers who keep making useless repetitive posts realised that you are actually stopping people from receiving merits. If I visit a thread, and I see some of those dreadful quote pyramids, or several of the standard bot replies, or some stupid picture or formatting, then I quit the thread, and that means that anyone posting after the rubbish won't be noticed.

It is very time consuming hunting through threads looking for good posts, and we aren't paid to do it, so please guys, stop posting stupid standard replies in the hope that someone will give you merit - they won't, and you are making it harder for you and everybody else to get the rewards they deserve.

I'm just going to tell you straight off: if you don't know anything about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, and are only here for bounties, then you're not going to earn significant amounts. The only people who are earning good money here are the ones who actually did a lot of reading and are very passionate about this industry.

What wiser meant was, if you're intentions in joining bitcointalk is solely to make money, then you should look for another way of making money instead. Like, you know, a job?

"but i will so much appreciate if you tell me what exactly i should looking for in this forum". This forum is mainly for discussions about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. Not as a platform for people who know nothing about blockchain to make money off. I checked your post history; and it's pretty obvious you're only here for the money sooo...

What kind of bad news you,sir ?
I am not going to lie, i am here for get in some bounties, but i will so much appreciate if you tell me what exactly i should looking for in this forum, so i could take another clue that helps me be more useful

The amount of smerit that is being awarded decreases each week, although these past few weeks it is kind of stabilising in the 4500-5500 range. I normally track it each week, but I’ve given it a skip this week. The question really is if that quantity is enough to sustain the faith in the system.

Besides, I’m not sure that the spamming is really decreasing too much. If people start to lose faith in the merit system the may either quit posting altogether, or post with total disrespect for merit knowing that their rank will never be a high one.

Account farmers will try various tricks to prosper, but we may see a herd of farms being created with low level ranks to make up for the loss of chance to reach higher level ranks. By this I mean that spam posting may not be reduced that much or even at all, while users that try to contribute may be discouraged by the lack of smerit overall.

I think the way to make it better is to carefully screen some people to be merit sources. There is an application process but from what I understand it's not being vigilantly attended to. The thing is some people, including many longtime members who have s-merit, are really here to network, etc., and they don't even think of awarding merit because they don't see it as important, or maybe don't even know about it. But there are people who would love to award it but they only have a limited amount. So... the solution is to give trusted members a renewing source of merit. That way those who want to curate can, and those who aren't going to get involved in curating no matter how much s-merit they have, aren't going to be hurting anyone.

Unfortunately, patience enough wouldn't earn you merits. It's going to take good amounts of knowledge to be rewarded merits. No one is going to give you merits just because a user here is a "good person". People and I here have said this multiple times already  and I'm going to say it again. If you're here for the money, don't waste your time and go get a job instead.