Topic: Where are the merit sources? (Read 1079 times)

Looks like number of merit sources were increased but,number of sMerits generated per cycle decreased from 23045 to 20735.

Anyway feels like nothing to discuss here anymore,since it was already one year old thread.

Locking.

That’s a surprise to see a quote from September resurge now… Anyway, TMan’s The Pharmacist's post seems to have really rapidly moved some things around (I guess by cause/effect and not coincidently). There are a few more merit sources and in play, but, perhaps more importantly, quotas have been reassigned (at least in some cases), with the likely intent to adjust them to awarding habits, and taking into account if a certain source finished-off all his sMerits in the 30 day window or left plenty of unspent sMerits.

If the exercise has been done in this manner, it should show some results over the following weeks, making the global aggregate sMerit pool more efficient in terms of distribution.

dMerits (delegate merits – suggested by @Jet Cash) and/or having one or two "intern Merit Sources" appointed by merit sources themselves (I suggested something of the sort at some point) are not likely to be implemented. Nevertheless, reassigning quotas regularly based on awarding habits should proof a better solution in terms of efficiency of the Merit Source sMerits distribution and overall monitoring.

It will not stop for they are some jackass that has been ruined by Merits. And they are ridiculously addicted on limbo that's why they are fond on bringing up or even digging the very old topics here on BCT. Not even a hundred years will make them pass on what they like to do, they will certainly make their grandchilds looks like them and will continously whine all over the place.

How long will it be before we have a new topic, so that we can stop the constant boring and repetitive posts about merit.

Merit is here, and it's going to stay. Constantly drawing attention to the fact that you can't earn any won't result in your being awarded merit. In fact the reverse could well be true.

If you can help your claim and run a good statistics as to how many merit sources are actually dishing out merit you might get to see that they are really work hard

You don't expect because they are merit sources they should just dish out merit lack luster

In this case they could delegate their unspent smerits to someone else like another trustable merit source for example.
They just have to send them their remain smerits. Some merit sources are complaining they don't get enough smerits to spent (like The Pharmacist for example), so it can be a win-win deal.
Only 15850 merits have been spent this month by all users. While 22055 merits had been generated for merit sources. The gap is huge.  

Probably for multiple personal reasons: many probably work aside from being on the forum, and do not find time enough to award all their allowance. Others might be awarding smaller quantities per TX and therefore take longer to finish off their pool if they don’t spot enough meritable posts, and so on.

Awarding should be a simple job in theory, but in practice, I find it more time consuming than one would wish for, especially when you merit a person you’ve never merited before. This is a personal procedure obviously, but I tend to look at the post, check for plagiarism, and review the history to a certain degree. That is quite some time, apart from the one invested in trying to find the post to start with, separating the wheat from the chaff.

Opps sorry I thought it was for a month but still if we calculate them in average it will be about 16K per month but the merit sources can create 23K merits every month and alo we still have airdropped merits in circulation so why the merit sources are not spending their merits.Or this forum not have that much posts worthy to be merited.

Where did you get the 4K from? That sounds like the reading for a week, not a month. August aggregate is of 16.631 and July 18.286 sMerits. What we do not know is the exact share to these figures from Merit Sources and regular forum members.

OP Updated,lets get some discussion going!

Now the merit sources and the number of smerits generated gets doubled now since when this thread was created but is that all they were doing their job right?

Then why the number of merits awarded in this months is just under 4000?

The only other post of yours (other than your recent ones in Meta) I could view was this:


The above is complete garbage.  Since all the other sections you've posted in I have on ignore, my guess is that you're probably making all of your posts in spam sections, and I'll bet they're not much better than the one I quoted.  You have no basis to think you deserve merit, unless someone can point me to a post of yours that actually was good.

This isn't a charity here.  Merit should be earned.

Newly added merit sources will effectively measure the outcome, adding 36 members by statistics that will adjust the ability to score merits even for those who can not speak English.
Overall, we're talking about getting one merit or ten but more than that deserves more effort.

Thanks for the latest warning.

You do realize that you are quoting data that is outdated by far right?  The updated Merit Source data can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sources
I’ll use a similar argument that I’ve used before. In a corporation that makes shoes, only a reduced set of the workers have the technical capabilities to design them, the rest all know how to wear the shoes, but perform other tasks that, brought together, keep the company on its feet (no pun intended). Publicist, salesmen, finance and administration, logistics, etc. all put their part into making the shoe brand become what it is.  The analogy goes to say that, although Bitcoin is the core conceptual driver of this forum, we can create meritable posts in many areas.

Merit in the Bitcoin section is indeed not as widespread as one would think, but the general Bitcoin Discussion thread is way too spammed currently, and finding good posts there is not easy.  On the other hand, the more technical subsections are not comprehensible by many, and therefore bare less attention by meriters probably than they deserve. Fortunately, there are now more Merit Sources around to try to reach out, but paradoxically (and logically), the more technical the topic the less people that are going to understand it or even be really interested in it. Going back to the shoe corporation example, the designers are essential there, but not many people really understand their language…

There are currently 2.381.734 accounts (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats), although in terms of active accounts (logged in within the last three months) there are something like 368.297 according to @vod’s BPIP (see https://bpip.org). That means that chances are better than one would have thought initially.

Dude as far as I know, btt have more than 2 million members and now you are expecting immediate result? c'mon! let's just wait mate  . About to your concern that bitcoin discussion has a lot of problem especially the lack of distributor of merit and of course you can also add the lack of moderator there. I believe that they are now doing movement that can help the discussion to be better. Let stay calm and wait for their action to be done.

I know Rules & Merrit is a hot topic.
However, it does not help to build knowledge of bitcoin&cryptoccurrency at all. It seems odd that more Merits are awarded to Rules & Merit than knowledge of cryptocurrency.
I am not talking about changing the rules. It is strange that the postings about Repetitive Rules&Merit receive a lot of Merit.
I think many people seem to be just concentrating more on Rules & Merit than on constructive discussions.

Of course, I also wanted to write constructive posts, so I searched for the Merit posts in this forum. The result is above.

I find this relatively accurate, I also often post identify about Bitcoin market. But in other topics and topics that are often get very little merit.
Although I saw the posts deserves have merit.


This is what I also want.

You now have s strike of three posts in a row that are not bounty reports, all from today. That is a start, forced no doubt by the change of rules. I took nearly two months to get my first merit, so things are not necessarily swift. On top of that, a posting history composed nearly solely based on social network reports does not help.

Rules and merit are a hot topic, and therefore on the radar for discussion where good posts may or may not be merited. Nevertheless, the spectre of options is ample here, so it’s a question of finding yours, and being applied to creating content that is of interest to others, well versed and thought through. Time and though are basic factors to throw in.

Sure, informative is on my list, but often I fell more inclined if the post also throws-in some opinion. For example, I often encounter posts (normally thread initiators) where the author places a link and a brief (often very brief) extract of the information within the link. With a bit more effort, those kind of posts could turn into something good and meritable: making the information summary (not copy/paste) enough so that we don’t really need to follow the link to be informed, and adding and opinion in the process, can boost the post’s worth (albeit at the cost of additional time on behalf of the poster). Perhaps one key factor to consider is time: invest time to upper your chances (as opposed to throw in a 1 minute line and off to the next …).

These subtle criteria differences of focuses among meriters are good for the forum, as diversity opens more chances to be both spotted and merited.

I personally tend not to reward mere opinions, but rather focus on the "information content" of a post.
I.e., if someone posts 100 lines of "I like this or that, it's so great", it's highly unlikely to result in merit.
If, OTOH, he only posts 2 lines about why he likes it, there's a good chance for him to receive merit from me.

First of all, there is normally no point to reviving old threads on the forum. This thread had been dormant for seven months and just woke up through your post from hibernation, only to find that the context has changed quite a bit and, as a result, may end up being counterproductive.

The list you mention may include some, but certainly not all not. Neither are all users on that list a Merit Source. What’s more, the 36 newly added Merit Sources have just started-off, so any try to detect them will result rather futile for the time being.

The quality of a post is complete subjective, so the more Merit Sources and forum members in general that award merit, the more diverse criteria there will be in that definition (which is an advantage to all). There is not standard de-facto.
I personally favour more those posts that debate and express a well-versed opinion to some degree of extent, but many other sorts may qualify such as informative, witty, controversial, that expresses my opinion better than I would do, that makes me think that I may be wrong, and so on.  But that’s just me.
I also tend to look at the posting history, needed to get a rough general idea of how a poster posts, and to detect posts that may attract my attention but do not blend in with history – these are usually plagiarized and a waste of time for all since the more we need to investigate a post, the less time to be reading and meriting others.

Ever since I started in this forum I have the same question running in my mind. What is a quality post? How is it judge? Is a lengthy post considered a quality post? Is a short but direct to the point qualified to be a quality post? I have seen a lot of post that are helpful and informative from low ranking members but they didn't get any merit at all. On the other hand I see a lot of high ranking members posting one liners and they get away with it. Can someone enlighten me.

These are the existing but without the new ones !

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=topsendat

Here you have merit source list I guess

I get the feeling that this is sometimes done so that the recipient can give out the sMerit that goes with the award,

I absolutely agreed with you, every member who post high quality posts, whether newbie or legendary, he can receive merit points, but the problem, you can see that some newbie, a member and Full member write good quality posts and they deserve a high amount of merit points, not just 1-2. On the other hand, you can see also some users (mostly high ranked) give a high amount of merit to (high ranked member) not to low ranks accounts, which I think probably it's unfair to low ranks members.

But I hope the work of merit source is to reward the good quality posts so they have to find it where it is.I don't say about mega threads which contains more than 20 pages,but it is not hard for them to read the replies with less than 5 pages.
If still they can't find the quality posts then what is the solution for it increasing the number of merit soureces for each and every section may helpful.
But I think we have merit sources for all the section so why they are not giving merits too that section,that's why I am asking where are the merit sources.Yeah I really like the merit give away but wanna tell you something,here it is what I have
I checked your merit history too,most of them came from META section only,that;s why I am asking where are the merit sources.Even if they are working all the timezones still they can't find quality posts in other sections.

1) Merit sources might be from different countries. And thus they will be active in all time zones. I have got merits on my posts made at different time intervals.

2) Theymos is adding more merit sources as per the need.

Yeah right now merit is only circulating in the meta section, because there are so many "talks" happened in the meta section, while bitcoin discussion is a home for "replying OP only" thread, maybe it is not all but the majority is. Once the topic is increased in quality, and there is a "real talks" there, maybe higher rank members will play at bitcoin discussion. That is what i propose in my post before, while looking to why meta is meritted heavily, i guess we should look at what is the problem with bitcoin discussion too.
If you really love that board that much, i guess you could make a merit giveaway thread for that board specifically or gives merit to a worthy post, that way you will make people there engaged on a merit activity (receiving and giving) so in the future there will be more merit circulating in there, and people who doesnt get merit there will learn that themself is not worthy of merit, they will leave or learn, their choice, both will make bitcoin discussion better.

I think we still needs more time to settle down to the new system because we still not yet complete one month of the new merit system and as per the theymls statement he will look at the new system in a month or two and will make chamges if needed.
But sadly quality posts in other sections are not getting merited and single line posts in meta and local theread getting 50 merit points.So I agree that it is only circulating on particular sections or in between the more reputed forum members.

Just wait because the main reason for the merit system is to crush the spammers maybe it needs more time and changes in the rules of signature campaign will help a lot to clean spam posts.

This may happen because those high ranking members have made/make high quality posts so users will merit them. I personally have a policy of not giving out merit to anyone that is Legendary or eligible for Legendary (although that has been violated a few times by accident and during the first few days of the merit system).

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The main issue is likely an issue with bubbles. For example, I only really frequent the Dev & Tech and Technical Support boards because those are ones that I moderate and find interesting. Thus the people I will merit are going to be people who post in those boards. This means that there are going to be lots of people who I don't give merit to because I don't every see their posts. So some merit sources may simply not be giving merits to high quality posts because they don't even see them.

Furthermore, there are some threads which may contain high quality posts but the thread itself is garbage and just shitposting threads. I tend to ignore these threads, and even if I were to see a high quality post in such a thread, I won't merit it because it is in what is effectively a shitposting thread (this has happened a few times as there are some shitposting threads in Dev & Tech). Merit sources may behave in a similar way.

I like your thread,and I am not angry at you or the other people on the meta section,I didn't say it is a sin to merit in meta but you don't get my point the merits are only circulating in the meta section.

Why I have to ask to people for merits? and begging for merit is a sin in my opinion.
I thought we have merit sources for every section and their work is to find the quality posts.

I am saying to all the legendary members engage into the bitcoin discussions too other than meta section which is only about the discussing about forum not about bitcoin.

Yeah we need to change the rules of the signature campaign or it is better to completely stop signature campaigns from our forum then all the shit posters will fade away.

Yeah just like QA said in my thread (and i like how he thinks), there is no board boundary to gives merit, so if people giving their merit on meta or local board, i guess it is not a sin, local board has some people talking about bitcoin too. That is why i asked you, why dont you try to ask people of bitcoin discussion to give merits?  Why dont you engage people there instead of accusing the merit given in the meta is not well deserved.
See you dont get what i have said. You said that merit failed to fight spam, i said it cant be succesful if there are no adjustment in other aspect like campaign rules, and im just saying an example of rules which can make all the shitposter gone, since most of them all here for the money, they will leave the forum once they feel they cant apply to a bounty/campaign because getting merit is hard, or they will grow up and become a good poster, then the shitposting and spamming will be reduced.

I didn't say all of your merits came from merit sources,I said all of your merits came from meta section.You can check that most of the merits are shared only in META section.And I just saw that QuestionAuthority is doing a good thing by sharing more merits to the bitcoin discussion.As of now he sent total of 1012 Smerits to others and half of them for the bitcoin related post(I think).But there were 71346 sMerits shared until now and most of them are in meta section and in local boards.But the main discussion of our forum is bitcoin so it doesn't get what it deserved.
I am not talking about joining about signature campaign bro,if you are earning merits for that purpose I can't say anything about it.
Exactly...

Honestly, I think that high members ranks are more eligible for the merit source than lower ranks, they have more merit points to award. The right question is:" Why merit sources are mostly given merit points to high ranks members, instead, to give more merit points to low ranks members who deserve that?"

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I know "merit system" is very good to improve the forum, but I don't know why I always see great posts which didn't have any single point of merit. I think high member ranks (most of them) don't care too much about low ranks who they try to improve their posts quality.

You do miss one thing again that all of my merits is not come only from the source, and why do you so angry to all meta people who got merits? I guess not all of them get it from sources, maybe from user to other user, so if you dont get it from bitcoin discussion, why dont you try to ask people of bitcoin discussion why they dont give merits? And if you want statistic about which board getting merit, feel free to look at my statistic about QA and you will be amazed on what board is getting merit from QA which will render all of your argument near to meaningless. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.30272338
With the number of merit circulated by now, all of the good posts can not be meritted because the amount is small now, i dont agree with this kind of things too. But adding more sources without background checking the candidate thoroughly will only make merit system as an useless commodity later, eg alt-account as a merit source, black market seller of merit, low standart judgement of which post is good, etc.
Merit is intended to fight spam, but merit cant do it alone, it needs activity point, and the member of this forum too. There must be a change in the rules of several aspect, like campaign will need merit to receive higher payment ( a manager applied this to a campaign which i joined), campaigner needs a lot of merit to apply ( which i joined now), bounty rank restriction (i see this already happen now as bounty only for member now). Im not being a cocky person here,but this is where this forum heading right now, if we dont change ourselves, we will left behind. And i am just as scared as you, scared to be left behind.

Ohhh god,can you understand what I am trying to say here,the merits are only shared in the particular section which is META,and I just saw all your secieved merits all of them are from meta section.
So,that's why no merits have been shared in other sections that is my point to say here.
so do you agree that all the good posts can't be merited?
So I think we need more merit sources for each and every section then only we can reward the quality posts.

There is one thing that is missing from your aspect of thinking. Merit sources is only a human, they have their own life, they have other works, etc, they can not be here 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. They are not bot who can gives all their time and energy to this forum 24/7. So they can not go all over the posts to search for quality post, that is why some of them make a thread like QuestionAuthority did. And i guess it is not begging if we help them pointing out our best post, its just make their work easier.
That is why theymos himself stated that he needs an established member which he can trust to be a source from a specific board, because he knows that people have their favorite board/section.

Finally you understand that what I am trying to say,the people need to merit good quality posts in other sections too.Yeah the system needs time to sttle so let's see what will heppen.
I already mentioned that many people are spamming in the bitcoin discussion section still so it means that the new metir system also failed to fight against spam.
No matter how many pages the work of merit source is find the quality posts.So they have to do if they are the merit sources,because this forum mainly created for discussing about bitcoin so it is important to merit quality post in bitcoin discussion.

The bitcoin disscussion section is basicly a play ground for shitposters, all the topics are spammed by poeple who are trying to post just for signature campaigns, so there are hardly any good posts that actually add something that has been not mentioned yet, and even if there are some good posts the merit sources, or people with merits to give don't actually have the time or the patience to go through 5 or 6 pages of bad posts to find the one that actually is good quality and deserves to be merited.

He started the thread first and then was made a merit source because of it. He does also look around for things to merit other than people coming to him.

I think I agree with some of the other comments here, a lot of merit is given in Meta because that's where most of the conversation has been happening since the system was introduced. There quite a lot in the Bitcoin Development & Technical Discussion and Bitcoin Technical Support as well. I think Bitcoin Discussion is still mostly signature spammers that already have high-level accounts but you can find a bit more discussion going on there now. As TMAN just said give it a few months and I think you'll see a bigger improvement.

First of all I'm not too desperate for merits bro,I am just asking about why the good quality posts are not rewarded.I agree that it needs time to settle to the new system and I don't think so the shit posters will leave until no more signature campaigns in our forum because still Jr.member can participate in many bounties.
I really like his idea that only merits for quality posts about the bitcoin since many people are sharing merits in the meta section.But I think he is a merit source since he is the most merit sender of our forum until so his job is to find the good quality posts,not to ask post a quality post in his thread.

Read his thread and you'll know why he gives out 20 to one person sometimes.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-system-upgrade-2827596

no people need to wait a few months for the system to bed in, the shitposters to leave, the clutter to reduce.. then in time merits will be flowing more freely.. why are you so desperate for merits now anyway?

The main aim of the merit system is to stop the spam level posts which are only created for the purpose of completing the minimum quota for their signature campaign.So your view about merit system is wrong bro.
Yeah,eaxctly that is my point they need to spread their sMerits to all around the quality posts.And for your information I checked the most merit sender  of our forum,that is QuestionAuthority who totally send 992 sMerits until now so it shows that he is one of the merit sources.But When I checked his  send merit history,he mostly sent 20 sMerits for most of posts so it looks like the merits are only given to limited amount of people.
That's why other quality posts are not merited yet.

Or maybe merit sources should spread the awards a bit more. I don't think that posts should be given more than one or two merits at a time.

In my view the purpose of Merit system is not to improve the quality of post. Because there is already rules for sit post, rapid post etc, These can be deleted by the mentor and account may be block as per existing rules of Bitcointalk forum. I received 5sMerit and spent them now if i read a excellent post than what i can do. There may be system of supply sMerit on spent or after some time interval.

I am not talking about you bro unless you are an merit source,so there is no merit source for those section.
Ohhhh no,sad to hear that so we need more merit sources?Or they just only foucusing on the particular section.
So we are in need more merit sources,I am wonders can i be one of 'em.
But as per theymos if you want to be a merit source be a somewhat established member of the forum.Can someone explain me on that so I am also willing to apply as a merit source.

That is on my current merit page. So come on guys, stop complaining about merits, and get out there and make some good and articulate posts that will help Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community. This doesn't include all those bounties and alts tht are feeding off the Bitcoin concept.

Note - I don't give merit to people asking for it, so please don't spam me with begging messages.

This is exactly what i was highlighting in my thread (for reference only: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/constructive-criticism-on-the-merit-system-2961141).

As long as merit sources only are a small group of persons, the whole system will stay centralized and will be susceptible to individual "mistakes". How many merits you will get is highly depending on which merit source is going to review your posts and will therefore always be an individual decision.

Ever though that the merit sources are out of merit and waiting for another week or so to be topped off?

I don't visit the services boards, or the marketplaces. I did have a go at selling and discussing crypto domain names, but I got very few views, and no replies. I think your post shows that there has been a major shift in the membership here, and I'm not really interested in the threads about earnings from bounties and ICOs. I do try to help by visiting the beginners and discussion boards, but the pickings are fairly lean there these days.

No, I am saying that most threads under that category contain subjects that are too common and generic. Relatively, even if people where to comment in that thread and provide useful information contributing the forum then why not give them a merit? But the number of individuals who provide useful information compared to people who just spam under those categories are low, which is quite saddening.

Why I need to ask to someone,then what is the work of the merit sourece?

*I don't like to beg anyone
I am also waiting for that result,but already people sharing merits between the friend zone.
We have lot of section other than meta section so none of them are producing high quality posts?
For eg.service discussion sections are really helpful but posts in that sections are also not rewarded with merits.
So you means that none of the posts in those highlighted sections doesn't deserves merits.

Unfortunately, most categories like the bitcoin discussion forum, economics, gambling and other relevant titles contain threads that are too generic and common, perfect for individuals whose purpose are to complete their required quota under the rules of their signature campaign. Unlike here in the Meta section, most discussions (like this one) revolves around the discussion of actual things that happen here in the forum and not some poorly-made threads.

Generalising that the 'merit system' failed to do its purpose is too fallacious. No system is perfect. If there exists a perfect system in the world, I doubt that corruption and chaos would occur. While the merit system cannot fully answer the problem of shit posting and spammers, it at least mitigated the damage and added a new type of reward wherein people rank-up depending on the usefulness of their replies. Hope that clears any ambiguities you have in mind.

I've been cruising a lot of the boards, and I can't find many "high quality" posts. I give a point to the few that I do find, but it is a real struggle. I'm not a merit source, but I do receive some "merit sauce" ie sMerits, and I feel that I should return them to the community, so come on guys, start talking about Bitcoin. That doesn't just mean price movements, or questions about Bitcoin replacing paypal, banks, you tube or sex.

Do point them(High quality posts) out.

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Why people only in meta get merits? Because here's where people actually have a discussion, everywhere else it's mostly only shitposting.  But if you think you have good high quality posts, ask for a review,

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Don't judge too quickly, you ain't in a court. Let time tell whether or not merit system is a failure.

I can see that there are 57 merit sources are currently available who can create 11975 sMerits in the time span of 30 days.But where are them I can see lots of HQ posts on the different sections but none of them rewared with merits.Why this happens still merits sources are not enough or they concentrate only on particular sections?

By the way this forum is created for discuss about bitcoin but most of the merits are only given to the META section which is only dicsuss about the forum,so bitcoin discussion doesn't desevrves merits?
Legendary members please concentrate on other sections also other than meta section.

I agree that lots of shit posters are spamming around bitcoin discussion so new merit system failed to improve the quality?

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Edit:

But still not all these merits were spend,again the same question Where are the merit sources