Topic: Why is Meta growing fast but serious discussion and ivory tower dead? (Read 639 times)

Those boards, serious discussion and ivory tower has posting restrictions. You need to be at least a jr member to post in the former and full member in the latter.
I doubt a cryptocurrency novice would rise to that rank (except by airdropped merits). And notwithstanding there are enough legitimate high ranking members to keep discussions alive on those boards.

The problem is the discussions are mot primarily about cryptocurrency it could be as diverse as possible and everyone can not be knowledgeable on every subject.

I believe is like what Jet Cashhas said its all because of signatures & merits but I would like to add also that one of the reasons also maybe is lack of knowledge and confidence because some newbie [not in rank but in knowledge] or other user has lack of knowledge about cryptoworld and thats one of the reason why they are so very afraid of making some discussion or replies in that thread that may result in misinformation that could also result in report or being a spambies [posting or replying nonsense post] ! ^_^  

I would surely do as you suggest, if I'd be seeking "merits" or "rank", but since I've never cared about titles and prizes in real life - guess what? I won't surely start caring about stuff like that in this forum. I've just stated a mere fact.


Mine was just a sort of little philosophical consideration, in no way a concrete proposal, which wouldn't make any sense. And back in the old days (I've first joined this forum almost 5 years ago) this forum was still only a place to discuss and not the huge and noisy bounty signature factory which unfortunatelly is today. As for rewarding people for not being an inconvenience - well, I didn't think it in these terms but I could actually see a point there.

Stick to the meta section and do not go near the alt discussion board if it is merit you seek.

Also align yourself with the views of those of high merit meta hermits and do not question their actions in any way.

Or just not worry about merit or rank if you are not a trader or ico sig user and just enjoy posting.

You still seem to be earning merit, so the posts you do make are will get you there eventually; just not at the same time as the old system.

I disagree with the above statement though, any such mechanism would really just be rewarding people for not being an inconvenience. When someone comes here to learn and attain knowledge they are drawing from the pool which is great that's what the forum purpose is. In doing so though you are not making a contribution at that moment; later on when you use that knowledge or add some of your own is when the contribution is made and merit would be appropriate.

If you continue to do so, rank will not be a issue. Forum allows every member to read and listen with a newbie rank only without the investigation board (member rank is enough for that board too.)

And you said it's impossible to be a Legendary anymore. Well, Ddmrddmr has started with 0 merits and s/he has earned 1200+ merits. LoyceV has earned almost 1300 merits so far.
Maybe in your case, it may take some more time but at the end of the day, 1000 merit is not so much, you don't even need the whole 1000.

This has been my approach from mid 2014 to 2017, just reading and listening to what people have to say without feeling any need of commenting. This is the reason I am not (and with the new rules never will be) a Legendary member.
It's a pity that the forum's ranking mechanics didn't ever find a way to recognize and measure the value of listening vs the one of intervening with comments in most cases unnecessary.

@pugman

I agree with you for sure. I would not usually have even noticed those sub boards or thought it was really the place for a person like myself. However. I really would just like to see the alt discussion board go back to how it was even just a couple of years ago. If that can never happen now It would have been great if all the good old alt posters could just have moved to serious discussion and leave ivory tower for the real smart and serious of course a lot of the old good posters would be quite at home in ivory tower too.

 I don't see why just not having sigs there would prevent most of those going there because most didn't wear sigs or only sigs of projects they liked to support the person other legends running them or projects they had been with for years.  I think maybe most didn't realised it was there or it just didn't get enough persons posting there to build a strong community going.

I think things are getting better anyway so perhaps the alt board will attract most of them back again in the future. Hopefully they didn't all make so much money they just cashed out and lost interest. I don't think that is the reason most of them seemed genuinely so interested and supportive of decentralised, trustless, projects and some had such aspirations to improve and design things themselves.

The old alt discussion board was the most addictive and interesting board I've ever visited with a bunch of very interesting and sometimes extreme characters. Even if you didn't like everything they said or did you couldn't help but be interested in what they would come up with next. Sometimes even just watching 2 very smart people debate/argue is like watching 2 excellent generals in combat and in those arguments there was a lot of information and well described thought streams laid out for people of all levels to gain things from.

That’s true. You don’t get the sig spammers trying to bump all of your topics there to no end either just to flog a dead horse which someone then comes along with more knowledge to resurrect.

I posted above what I think should happen to off topic in order to revolutionaries that board and stop newbie spammers from going to it whenever they need to up their post count.

IT is dead because it requirement of to be "Full member" to post there . Board got restricted to  handful of active poster.
Actually it is restricted discussion board.

"SD" look ambiguous to me,Some of the topic posted there looks like "off topic" to me. But it serve the purpose because nobody is bumping your topic with spammy replies. Your topic can stay in first page for couple of months (nice visibility ).

Yass queen. Description of those board: Such nerdiness, much lame.

Meta is more like the chill out board, and you get to thrash talk to newbs, what else could you possibly want? I mean,don't you not love it when noobs come here and be like "why you BULLY me?"(Definitely not the Rick Astley song).

Honestly, IT and SD boards are BORING!! And humour be dead there, most of the times, and its more serious, and that's what its intended for. I definitely can't do that. Imma let procrastination be my bitch and talk shit to people.

Yes true. As an extension; build some info graphic and 10 merits are almost guaranteed.

Even if the infographic is useless or not good at showing thingsm you’ll still get something for making a chart.

Or maybe because as you can easily get merits by discussing about merits.  Try being a statistician that concerns anything about merits and I assure you that you will get at least 1 merit for you to rank up.

The IT and SD boards still have some traffic because people can get merit there. If no merit was allowed, they would be really dead.

I find meta and the Development boards more serious than those ones, and I don't think it is a problem that people get paid to post there.

Meta is about this site we all love. Serious Discussion and Ivory Tower are rarely even about Bitcoin so nobody cares. Once bad apples in the community started attacking community projects and demonizing innovators, there was little value left here outside of advertising scams for a quick buck. Now we are all desperately trying to find a way to restore an environment that fosters innovation and supports community projects, while others chase Merit as some sort of status symbol because supporting selfless projects and creating things of value here aren’t what they are after. Meta is where we all come together.

Well, topics in meta are fairly easy compared to topics in the serious board (not only about the mentioned board though). Users only need to know about common sense, forum rules, and some descriptive statistics (usually merit related) to engage in conversation here. Furthermore, like JetCash said, signatures can be displayed here.

I've noticed that discussion there is sparce and far between and it can give any a day without any interaction

But also any content there is quality as there is no extra motivation to post except you have in depth knowledge on the topic being discussed.

It maybe paints a picture of what the forum would be without spammers.
Less activity, more quality.

I wouldn't really say the reason is down to merits and signature,as the OP, is actually talking about older members,most old members on the forum have already ranked up and most do not participate in signature campaigns..

I think the reason is down to the fact that meta is like the official court room of the forum,as so many matters,even those that happened on other sections are brought to meta for deliberations and solutions..
Also meta handles issues on how to move the forum forward,hence more threads in meta and more posts

Its simple people would rather moan and complain about issues rather than coming up with solutions and participating in real discussion.

@TP

"Older posters?  I think they've been the ones who've been posting the most in Meta for a long time now.  It's the newbies who've started posting here recently, and they're the ones who are doing so, probably to earn merit."


Posters that have been posting around 3-4yrs or longer who were frequent posters on the alt board before.

This is actually very true. Although since I have spent a few hours now looking over the merit and where and by who it was given/received I can totally understand any new poster from the alt board would realise that he will not earn merit there. Meta seems to be the easiest place to gain merit so they are catching on. Also you have to wonder if after a while the members who want to speak to genuine other members who are looking to discuss and debate cc related topics and they are finding the alt discussion board can no longer sustain this.

The problem with moving all good posters off of the main discussion boards on to boards that are not unusable due to new spammers (whom seem motivated to put lots of effort into creating accounts and spamming for a tiny amount of reward) is that it's seems a strange approach. The the good posters should not need to move. Would have been better to bring back junior boards (noob jails to contain those types) which would have worked instantly and a lot of members would not have left. Then rather than doing lots of negative reporting and snitching on serious and non serious offenders we could just do positive work like meriting new posters until they have enough to post on the main boards.

If we are being serious most people will come here not to discuss how the board should be run but to discuss items specifically related to bitcoin or altcoins. The other sub boards can be of interest to people but I have never seen a forum where the fastest growing and most highly merited (other boards have similar mechanisms) is a forum which discusses these mechanisms.

Merit is being more and more concentrated by the top 200 merit holders and I expect those that have the highest merit scores (except a handful) are receiving it from other top 200 merit holders in the meta section. Whilst that continues and practically nothing is going to the altcoin discussion board you can expect meta to keep expanding and the altcoin board just left with bots and fake discussions from ico spam teams. These are not essentially criticisms of the top merit holders because it is quite clear if the majority of genuine posters have moved here and also a lot of very helpful people are in here too then lots of merit will be concentrated here.

I mean if merit was just started as a nice way to say thanks or appreciate a post then fair enough. To me though it could be such an interesting tool to bring the board back to version of it that is long gone. You will end up with tiny % of the board with 1000's of merit all from the tiny % and the voices of potentially great posters never being heard because they will be drown out by a lot of financially motivated noise.

So yes some it is completely understandable why things are as they are regards merit concentration but great posters will come here and leave because nobody can ever locate them to invite them to meta and are unable to post on serious/ivory. Also you may get a poster that has a lot of interesting knowledge and advice or even very interesting questions that could if answered by a tech boffin give a lot of people a lot of insight come make a post and it just vanishes in the wave of who is best with no justification other than I am part of the spam team or bought some crew.  I have no care about merit if you are a legend you don't have a use for it do you? but it would be great to use it as a tool for good as well as a way of just tipping your hat to other good posters that are already of a level up where merit is of no use.

I am not sure why the junior board idea has not gained more traction. I have seen no logical reason for it not to be implemented. If most want to stay in here sending merit around and around how will anything change on the main discussion boards. The bitcoin board is not so bad since it is kind of self moderated by the fact you meant to keep discussion of other projects to the alt board which is obviously what icos need to do or immediately can have their spam threads moved.

You would expect support of certain projects to be on the alt discussion board. But there is for the most part no discussion it is just I think this one is best with no debate/reasoning or discussion at all and 99% of posters look like they may take the only semi reasonable post and have text spun it. Also multiple threads on the same ico on the front page at the same time all saying the same thing.

In years previous you would get a lot of deeper discussion into the projects with a mixture of knowledgeable (tech wise) posters and others both posting and asking questions. It was actually useful and interesting.

Just be great to have alt discussion back as it was a few years back before ico massacre.