There is already a place which offers merit bounties for quality posts.  It is called the “Bitcoin Forum”, and its URL is https://bitcointalk.org/.  Posts placed there will be considered for merit by merit sources, high-ranking users, and anybody else who has sMerit.  I invite users with quality posts to place their posts there.

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As a low-ranked user who has proved efficient at earning merit the normal way, I find such a suggestion extremely discouraging.

Suppose that I spend some hours writing post, as I have on some of my best posts both before and after the introduction of the merit system.  I do it because I want to make the post—because I have something worthwhile to say.  I place the post in the forum appropriate for its subject matter.  Then, I find that joeuser123 received merit I didn’t because he entered his post into a “merit bounty” contest, and I didn’t.

I do not like this idea.

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Consider the distorting effects of the system here proposed.  Far from improving merit distribution, it draws the limited supply of merit away from organic, natural distribution in the ordinary course of forum discussion, and pools it in a “contest” (OP’s word).

If you thought for even one moment that the proposed idea may be (ahem) meritorious, please reread that paragraph twice.

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Understand that the whole of the merit system is a “bounty” program.  It cannot perform its function of improving the forum, unless the forum as a whole is treated as one huge “merit bounty” section.

I am very uncomfortable with the merit giveaway threads.  I myself have neither entered any of them, or even checked to see if I was eligible.  I know that some of the people running them are well-intended; and I don’t think there will be any long-term damage, if such threads be only a temporary phenomenon during the exciting and tumultuous initial phase of the new system.  But widening such threads into a permanent, formally organized institution would undermine the merit system.

There is and must be one, and only one proper way to earn merit:  By making high-quality, on-topic posts in the forum appropriate for their subject matter.

For the merit system will not achieve its intended purpose unless it operates naturally, organically, rewarding good posts in the ordinary course of forum discussions.  You see, you read, you are impressed by a post—you hit the “+Merit” link.  You write, you post (where you would have anyway), you do a good enough job to impress someone else—someone else hits the “+Merit” link.  Merit sources may need to develop more elaborate distribution strategies, given the importance of the task entrusted to them.  But for the rest of us, the use of this system is supposed to be dead simple.

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...by precisely the people who deserve no merit, and will never earn any.  That’s a feature, not a bug.  Evidently, the system is working exactly as intended:


(Emphasis is theymos’.)