Okay. Agreed.
You say with only 16 posts I start complaining. First of all, I am not asking for merit nor am I complaining. It was a thread where I read your viewpoint and thought of sharing mine. I guess that is the exact purpose why the forum was built. Exchanging ideas, right?
Let's see what you are said before >
The hard truth is that the top members of this forum one day decide that yes we need merit system (the decision might be right for the forum's future) as a way to keep the newer entrants out of the high paying signatures. They knew that if they allow the same rules that existed before (your activity allowing you to level up) then many of them would climb up the ladder and signature supply would outstrip the demand. This would lead to very reduced payments for those members. It is very easy to preach when we have already reached the top.
You are just complaining that you cannot climb the ladder to reach higher payments because of the merit system which was designed solely to stop you from the big money and "good" sig. campaigns.
Is that what you are saying here? Let me tell you something,
Theymos decided by himself to implement this system and as far as I know, the only signature campaign he was interested into was the
Honeymoon ICO /s. He doesn't care if the shitposters will earn more or less as long as they don't spam the forum. That was the main idea behind the merit, to discourage the low quality/no effort posters to leave. What happened then?
They were allow to wear signatures even with a rank of newbie and Jr. Member but the situation turned into a bigger mess, as those who earned a lot from shitposting before got banned, and started again but this time with account farms to make the same income as before. The shitposting got multiplied and there you go, the other solution was to de-rank them to newbies and remove the signatures from them so they have to either earn merit or buy copper membership (or merit) to rank up again. So your point here is completely of the the reality.
Secondly, you say with only 16 posts. Please make up your mind. Is it the number of posts or the quality of the post that determines one's position. I guess it is the quality. So please don't quote my low activity because it is totally irrelevant. And don't make it about who has higher merits. I can show that an established member (say with decent merit) has 10x the chances of getting merited than a newbie posting the same kind of content. I can do an analysis with the last 20 posts of some of the high-level members and good newbies and compare the merits with the number of quality posts.
It is partly true, that not the number of post but quality is important, but you start your journey here with a bounty report same as the next few posts, how do you expect the people will see you? Even if you post a "quality" content those bounty posts will ruin your reputation. Everyone will think that you quality posts are made just to earn you merit and logical higher payments, but not because you had something to share. Most of the time those "quality posts" are cases of plagiarism. We have reported hundreds of those.
You also quote my bounty reports. Tell me is it wrong to be in a Bounty?? Is it against the rules? I guess NO. I have contributed meaningfully whenever I had the knowledge and domain.
I've already answered above.
I am not saying that it is wrong. Look that is how the world functions. Everywhere, Economy, politics everywhere. People don't want the status quo to be challenged and that is fine by me. If I would have pioneered a new technology, I wouldn't want to share my powers. That is totally fine by me. What I disapprove of is the fact that don't showcase yourself as a saint and try to preach.
As you said, this is a free forum everyone can share their point of view. I'm sharing mine her so, I don't really care if you approve or disapprove it, but if you don't like it you have the freedom of choice and put me on ignore.
I know it is important to create a system that would have ensured the survival of this forum. theymos did a good job with merits system but like all things in the world, we cannot build a utopian system and there will always be drawbacks to any architecture.
If you are not a shitposter you gonna rank up one day (you already got your point for Jr.), but you need to build a reputation first, and this is not easy with the bounty reports as a start. The merit system is the best solution for the mess which was the forum before, it's not perfect but as long as the spam is reduced, it's good.