I've only read the first few pages of the thread and I'm interested on the "source" for merits. The way I understood it, we ourselves are the sources, with the merits going around like coins but certain users can generate it out of "nothing". Is there a limit on how much new sMerits are added to the system? I've read there are 57 sources with a total 11,975 sM added per month. Wouldn't that mean the value of merits would decrease over time? As of now, I only give 1-2 at a time.
And what happens to the "decayed" sMerits? Are they brought back into the system?
Q. Why this merit system is introduced?
A. To improve the quality of the posts so that community decide whose contribution is more valuable.
Now, I see there is a problem. Currently, all the spamming is due to multi-accounts a person has to increase his/her bounties. They spam to increase their rank to win more bounty. It is already known that developers of a coins have majority of multi-accounts. It cannot be proved and disproved altogether. And even if it is not the case, the developers can simply launch activity based bounty campaign rather than rank based. Spammers will still abuse the system.
IMHO, with or without this merit system we need an extensive moderator program to eliminate/suspend users from spamming.
Please tell me, if I am wrong or missed something.
I think the Merit systems is actually perfect for tracking these down. Naturally, they'd start sending merits to each account to try to rank up. We don't know, maybe theymos has already put an algorithm in place to detect these activities.
The sources get topped up with sMerits every 30 days. so currently 11,975 new sMerits will be generated each month to be handed out.
Theymos said that he would increase that number. I would imagine it being about 50K plus new sMerits in a month very soon bud