Re: Merit System Numbers too high to achieve - A Suggestion
That won't work for me. I'm a selfish bugger, and I've only got a few points to give away. They will go to people who help me regardless of their status. For example, if I want to set up a node on a Raspberry Pi, then a newbie could have a lot of Pi experience and make valuable contributions, and he should be rewarded for it. Alternaively if a poster states "My dog prefers Strawberry Pie", then he should get nothing, under the old system he would have got an activity point.
You and I may not have much sMerit to give. But from the way I've seen some folks throwing it around, that's not true for everyone. My guess is, the distribution method isn't going to end well:
The supply implications (e.g. decay and how actively people use the merit system) also aren't obvious. So, even if people do use them as intended (as a reward for quality posts), we don't know how well-distributed they will be. For example, it's theoretically possible that once the initial sMerit awarded yesterday is mostly spent, that sMerit mostly circulates within limited social networks that revolve around merit sources.
If the post is really worthy to be merited, I don't mind. And the system allows you to gain sMerits if someone merited your posts so even if a large portion of merits are sent to merit sources they can just give the sMerits they gained to other people.
But the distribution is really an important question. I think we should have a designated boards for every N number of merit sources just like we have a specific moderator/s for every board. They should still have the power to give merits in whatever board but only after they've finished doing their rounds on their designated boards.
At any rate, We'll see how efficient the distribution is after a month or two so let's give it some time first
