Very interesting to see the reactions to the newly introduced concept of merit as an additional indicator of account maturity and quality beyond just pure number of posts / activity. While this was introduced to increase post quality it has of course created a counter movement and a market place for "trading" merit - for money.
So this is just a reminder for everyone that the introduction of merit is a GOOD thing because it will help improve the quality of this forum for everybody.
"Trading" merit will undermine this and render it eventually useless.
Keep contributing!
I agree that merit is a good thing, due to reduction of low quality posts. And trading isn't an issue, because everything is checked and controlled by forum moderators (hopefully) and they'll cut off such actions. But there are some other problems: people give merits quite seldom, if we compare to "likes" on fb, and it would be great if people truly gave merits for what they like. But the thing is - lost of people barely even read others posts, or even if they do they don't feel like meriting someone due to rivalry. But I like the conception and I hope that it will go off well.So this is just a reminder for everyone that the introduction of merit is a GOOD thing because it will help improve the quality of this forum for everybody.
"Trading" merit will undermine this and render it eventually useless.
Keep contributing!
It is kind of an interesting phenomenon that merit is given out so seldom (at least from what I can tell, but maybe my posts just suck
)I think the reason for this is twofold: (1) many of the people with lots of merit are merit rich and don't necessarily think about rewarding higher quality posts by noobies (this probably stems from the newness of the system and will decrease in time); and, (2) as stated before, lots of people simply don't read other people's posts and so lots of gold gets missed on pages 2-155 (assuming a 156 page thread).
I kind of agree but maybe its just that if you are interested and dedicated to getting the ranks then you will do the research required to "game the system" enough in your favor to achieve your goals, is indeed the desired intent.. it requires people with a lot of patience that won't be easily distracted by the rules not giving you a fair break.. it requires a lot of reading and analyzing the forums to figure out where and when you are most likely to rank up, who to help and where the most activity is coming from and from which type of user.. and requires you to engage to the best of your abilities, quote who you are talking to and trains you for long term forum quality posting and success.. its almost like beating the system IS the goal.. which even if someone disagrees with... can't ignore the facts that this type of system mandates you learn.