I don't think I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the system, however I may have misspoke when I said it is "harmful" to the merit system.
Accepted.
You are right, there is no obligation to do anything and this is why I believe I have misspoke. I was not implying that you have any obligation to grade their homework, but I was saying that it could be helpful to our overall goal of improving the quality of posts if you were to reconsider your stance. Again though, since you are not a merit source it is more than likely a waste of your time and merit to review these people posts out of the blue. I was simply saying that when you come across someone that you would've merited, until you realize they're on your list it is a missed opportunity for rehabilitation and positive reinforcement. I know this is not your obligation, but it would seem mutually beneficial for everyone involved.
What you also need to understand is the following: Being very conservative with your sMerit (until we know the details of the decay and whatnot), actually
boosts the fight against spam. It does also reinforce the negative side of the system, i.e. making it hard for constructive users to get merit. Therefore, it's a double edged sword (both being and not being conservative is).
Fair; It is your merit, use it as you wish. I have no problem disagreeing with a small detail on how you distribute your merit as an individual, as long as it doesn't become intentionally malicious. I don't believe filtering certain users from your merit is going to be the end of the world, I just would hate to see the merit system being used as a popularity contest rather than a meritocracy, which was the heart of my point. If too many users begin throwing the contingency that "I also must approve of your character/behavior entirely" before handing out merit we will quickly catch ourselves in a dystopian regulation of our thought-crimes.
I do not check whether a user is on the SMAS list or not before I send them merit as that would be too time consuming; I only remembered your case as I've recently taken a look at my PM box. I also believe that we shouldn't solely judge people based on their post quality when giving merit. Would you give merit to a known scammer? How about a known account farmer? Obviously, it is highly likely that they would abuse it and thus I would not give them anything.
A decent dosage (but not too much) of assessing the user before giving merit (especially in larger quantities) would be optimal.
I was only trying to make the point that with your queue being so long and it taking awhile to respond to SMAS removals it may be the case that someone has made tremendous strides towards improving themselves and now they are being filtered twice essentially. They are being ignored for merit, when they may deserve it, because you are too busy to review their SMAS status. I was getting at maybe allowing the SMAS to be for Signature Campaigns and let the Ignore list be for the users you don't care what they have to say, rather than mixing the two into a SMAS/SMAM (Against Spam/Against Merit). I'm being a little flippant. but I hope my point is not entirely lost.
It is very unlikely that I will: a) Encounter a poster that I know is on the SMAS list, and thus don't want to merit a *meritable* post (your case is an exception). b) Encounter a post by someone who is SMAS blacklisted, that I want to give merit to. The first part of the previous paragraph answers this.
Obviously there would need to be caveats and contingencies for this to be a proper thought-process. I know Quickseller is the boogie-man around here and you should not trust them with a trade or your money. However, there is an almost equal possibility (especially if they are logical, as you put it) that these people will produce technical information or guidance that is universally accepted still and merit-able. I'm saying nobody is a two-dimensional villain and they have equal capacity to produce high-quality information that is not misleading or malevolent.
Of course. I would not claim that someone shady or a *boogie-man* (as you've put it) would never be able to produce a quality post.
The merit system is not meant to tell you how trustworthy the writer is, it is meant to tell you who thinks this information is high-quality. The trust system already does a solid job at alerting users what these people have been up to. Maybe I am naive, but is it detrimental to believe someone like this if they are only providing information that has been vetted through the public? Meriting their quality posts would seem to help the public navigate through their posts to determine which are lies and which are actually helpful. I'm not saying we seek out these scammers to merit their good-deeds, but adding an extra layer of trust to the merit system would seem a mistake.
As of now, I disagree. It will be a
long road until we reach the state where the general consensus is the following: A high merit count does not make the poster credible; but individual posts with high merit count are credible/useful/constructive. The former is definitely going to be state that we will find ourselves in for a long time, especially given the practical experience we gained from the trust system (people naturally think a *green user* is definitely trustworthy/credible; this is not the case).
Once (or if) we reach the former, then I wouldn't mind meriting such people for deserving posts.
Oh, and I would also say that spammers and scammers are not in the same category and I would ask you the consider making a distinction. We're talking about meriting people on your SMAS, but then to mention QS seems to be disingenuous and making a false-equivalency. I understand you're just giving an example, and a good one, I'm sure you already see a distinction, but for the sake of your "Merit rule" I am discussing.
Correct, but they can be overlapping at times (someone who abuses a campaign with alts is both a spammer and scammer).
I think that merits should be given as merits to posts that have earned them, not given out as signature campaign rewards or other irrelevant "contests"/giveaways.
Optimally, we wouldn't need such bounties. However, given the state that the forum is in, it will take as a while to get there.
It seems like we agree more than we disagree and a lot of the disagreement seems to stem from miscommunication.
Indeed, which is why the long posts are being exchanged.