Topic: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MERITS? (Read 403 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.

Oh, people are still complaining about Merit system?
I can agree that now it's more difficult to rank up, but who said that it should be easy? Some people are buying Merits, but they are risking to get red trust rating, also I suspect that it would be every expensive to buy enough Merits to reach high rank. And these who are selling their sMerit sooner or later will run out of it.
I noticed that amounts of Merit that people are sending are getting smaller. It's most likely that they spent all their sMerit that their had. Maybe others are just become lazy to spend their sMerit.
And another thing - I saw stats somewhere that huge number of forum users still haven't sent any of their sMerit, I don't know, maybe they are still not aware about Merit system. If people would use their sMerit more actively we would see less people complaining that's too difficult to get Merit.
Merit system isn't perfect, but it's one of the best thing happened to Bitcointalk in recent years. It can be improved somehow, but I don't have ideas how. 

You need to have a reason for being here that goes beyond wanting to make money on bounties. If your only reason to be here is to get in on bounties, then I have bad news for you.

Hi Matthewio,

As you can see I have many posts, and I have helped many people answering their questions (in far detail). Yes, perhaps it is easier to grow merit. However, like odolvlobo just mentioned many people spam and topics are getting flooded with new messages. Therefore, I may assume most replies et burried in the many messages and therefore receive no merit.

Next to that, perhaps a person wasn't satisfied enough with your reply for merit after all. I would say keep doing what you are doing and grow your account, BitcoinTalk is not all about merit, it is about information/knowledge sharing and I'm having fun doing so regardless of the merit.

If you have joined this forum in order to make money then you have joined the wrong forum. I think the merit system is working well. It has removed much of the motivation for people to post drivel.

There are still plenty of people that spam, but I predict that they will stop when they find out that it is doing them no good, and hopefully they will begin to participate in a meaningful way..

My friend told me that to get merits should be patien and wait There are good people who give it because now There are new rules to get merits

The merit system is one of the best updates here on bitcointalk as of now. People used to be able to spam their way up the ladder easily; they could even reach Hero Member status without even knowing much. This significantly lower the amount of spammers that could join campaigns, which is very very good in my opinion.

i am a beginner and on my way to become jr member, so i could join some bounties, but my friend told me a bad news that makes me down...he said to join bounty, we have to have merit, and more difficult to earn some btc recently....what should i do to get merit ?

I completely recognize that the merit system has made it more difficult to rank up in this forum. My account was grandfathered in as I've been around for a while and got my rank back when posts and activity were the only criteria. So, when it comes to what shows up on your profile in this particular forum, you newbies have it more difficult.

With that said, keep in mind that this forum is primarily a place where you can learn about cryptocurrencies in general, and also specific projects. For example, if you read some news article about a particular alt coin and you're interested in learning more, you can find its main thread on this forum. It's helpfully linked to on its page on CoinMarketcap.com This forum is also a place to network. You connect with people based on common interests and if you have skills you might put them to work in service of a project you want to support, either as a volunteer or paid contractor.

Once you get involved in a subcommunity here, once you start to get to know people and work with people, honestly no one cares about your rank, so don't worry about it. The only time it really comes into play is with signature campaigns as higher ranking members have more options. But as far as contributing meaningfully to a project or coin's development, your rank here will not limit you at all, so don't worry about it.

The reason most of us old timers who actually have spendable merit don't use it more often is because for the most part we don't care, so we don't think of it. I don't judge you by your forum rank.

I imagine you came here with the goal of getting more involved in the cryptocurrency industry. Then you saw the ranking system and perhaps you got a little sidetracked? Remember your original goal and stick to it.

merit system was introduced in january 2018 bcoz of increasing spam posts and account farming .
but rank system will be a concern for person who was not at higher rank before before changes .
old members may not need merit for rank but still getting more merits will show them reliable and helpful person . so they too need to do hard work for earning more merits whether he is hero or legendary .

it may take time for you to be at higher rank , but it will help you to improve post quality .

however apart from above benefits of merit system , me too find that people are not spending smerits properly and sources are less .

You joined too late. If you had joined a couple of years ago you could have risen up the ranks by making posts. Since they introduced the merit system it is pretty much impossible for any new person to rise above member rank in a normal human lifetime. Unless of course your a cheater or a sycophant.

its just you have to have a good and healthy conversations or topic, good thread is about good merit when someone like how you conversate with others

I agree with you, with the enforcement of merit system, making post quality more attractive and reducing spam, everyone is working hard and thinking to make quality posts, but I think the post we discussed is the same topic, we just repeat the same thing, I think the system of achievement should be reviewed.

I think with this merit system for users who have just joined in this forum will be very difficult to get a higher rank. This policy may be issued because more and more users are in this forum and then made a merit system so that users post quality that is not spam

The merit system still exist, and more of us were accept the reality on merit system. Although it has provide good resistance to the level of quality post, but I don't think how merit really important, maybe merit only used for the purpose of some people using multiple accounts users. In total ratings, merit still good to be used as a rule in order to have good balancing system in the forum.

I think merits are on strike, and to develop the site and block spammers, There has been certain restrictions
Your comments have to be so inspiring and touching to deserve a merit

Or your post has to be very knowledgeable as well
Keep working
merits will come

In my opinion regardless in earlier days or not it's still hard for genuine users to get merits in this platform. Also I think people don't really share merits with others, perhaps there are few higher ranks who would give away merits if they see quality posts but I think it's like 1 out of 100 people in this platform.

Merits in my opinion is indeed improving / force other users to post quality posts but I think there are lots of people who post quality posts but don't get the merits they deserved. I think merits system should be revised though. Or at least lowering it in order to be able to rank up because somehow it seems a bit impossible to get it without buying merits.

Also, I think you are posting this in a wrong sub-forum eh? or it's just me??

I have wondered if I joined this forum too late.I kind of imagine it was easier for someone to get merit point in the earlier days. It is kind of very difficult to grow in level on the platform with the way things are structure.Then there is the problem of those selling merits,making it difficult for accounts that have made genuine contributions-without spaming.It doesnt look too nice to see so much activities on an account yet no corresponding merits.

DO you think merits can be improved upon?