Topic: WHAT TO DO WITH 1 MERIT ? Why we need this update ? (Read 733 times)

This post was made some months back,after the new merit system was put in place,and up till now, the OP still hasn't earned any merits for him/herself

After this experience before I merit any user, I must do a thorough background check to prevent this mistake from happening twice.

The New profile Rank Update system is very Good for the Future of this forum. it will clean the spam post. When I heard this news I was despondent of this. In any case, in the event that you all think and see the focuses from flying creatures see. Its very encouraging. By and by I am expressing gratitude toward to theymos for this upgrade. I trust this isn't beta form , I desire to make it stable.

Newbie Members don't free expectation, This is a good choice all things considered. Why -

Due to excessive garbage-posting, you now need 1 merit to be a Jr Member. All existing Jr Members who didn't meet the requirement were demoted. Also, newbies can no longer set any signature or personal text.

Note that this does not affect:
 - PM rate-limiting, which is based purely on activity & whitelisted status.
 - "You must wait ___ seconds...", which is based purely on activity & whitelisted status.
Many of these limitations can be eliminated with a copper membership. In particular, you can set a signature at Member level if you wear a copper membership.

One reason that I was hesitant to do this before is that there are an awful lot of newbie restrictions, and I don't want the forum to be unwelcoming to good newbies. I'll think about tying some of those to activity instead of rank in the future.
 
With help from DdmrDdmr, I just added 36 new merit sources, which should help newbies achieve the requirement. But if you're incapable of posting anything worthwhile, then you will never rank up, and you shouldn't: this isn't the forum for you.

In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks. The required scores are:
You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.

Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay attention.

There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.

Do not beg for merit excessively.

Useful infographics

Forum users have helpfully created some infographics to explain the merit system:
If you want to be a merit source:

 1. Be a somewhat established member.
 2. Collect TEN posts written in the last couple of months by other people that have not received nearly enough merit for how good they are, and post quotes for them all in a new Meta thread. The point of this is to demonstrate your ability to give out merit usefully.
 3. We will take a look at your history and maybe make you a source.

I am especially eager to have merit sources in sub-communities such as the local sections.

Trivia:

For current members, your initial merit score is equal to the minimum required to your rank. Of that, a certain amount (less than the usual half) is spendable. The spendable amount was calculated based on your current rank and the number of activity points you earned in the last year. A Legendary member who hasn't posted in the last year would still be Legendary, but would not have any spendable merit.

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

There are stats here, and you can find someone's merit summary by clicking the "merit" link on their profile.

merit

to deceive

sell to the lower members

help me

thank you

I want to buy merit.
The purpose is not to deceive, but rather to sell to the lower members. and where to buy
please help me
thank you

I want to buy merit.
The purpose is not to deceive, but rather to sell to the lower members. and where to buy
please help me
thank you

Just think about it a bit different:
if someone can solve his/her problem with $10, it's OK, not a big deal
but an account farmer, who farms 100s or even more accounts, it costs 100 times more, at least $1,000 to buy copper membership for the farmed accounts, to be able to continue to spam and earn with that army of spambots... (but I'm sure who has 100 farmed accounts, it's not a big deal for him to pay even a few 1000 dollars for copper membership...)

We are just cheap assholes and don't want to pay 10$ for copper member status  Just kidding I don't need it but its funny that most of the people who cry because of new rule are really cheap bastards!

Yes agreed , This decision is good for us . But i think many sufferers will go against the system. What will happen now ?

For whatever reason I don't recall this section being this on fire even when the merit system started, and I don't remember this many attempts by newbies to get merits.  OTOH in this case there are a lot of junior members who got the smackdown to newbie status, which they thought they had sailed through.

And do I think people like OP actually believe what they're saying about this new change being a positive thing?  Hell no.  What I'm thinking is that they're writing what they think all the merit sources want to hear.  In fact it's quite obvious that's what's happening, which is why there are so many posts from obviously awful members saying they support this.  I'm not buying it at all.