Sure these are kind of discretionary tweaks, and certainly Theymos and/or any other person(s) that he relies upon for recommendations can decide whether they believe that they are tweaks in a direction that would be beneficial to them in terms of the forum.

Since a lot of the decision had already been made to implement this new merit system, I would surmise that the system changing suggestions that are more "tweaking" in nature rather than revolutionary would seem more likely to receive the greater level of receptiveness from Theymos.



Your personal example seems extreme and therefore somewhat anecdotal.  It surely shows what is possible, but you seem more like a bot or a team of 10 rather than a real representative humanoid.  That is supposed to be a joke.. hahahahaha, except the truth of the matter is that we should be attempting to draw from the more common experiences, even if there can be some outliers and even some models to aspire to, but most humans are somewhat flawed, and there are problems with expecting perfection when dealing with a large number of peeps.



Could be... sounds like a discretionary matter too.   Without really seeing how this plays out, I personally do think that the merit thresholds do seem to increase quite a lot quickly, and they seem a bit high in my thinking, even though we know that it is quite possible to earn a decent amount of merits in a short time, the more regular and normal usage might not presume averaging more than 10-20 merits per month, depending on whether members are not going to hoard smerits and whether sources are going to be able to reach out enough in order to circulate enough merits that end up with decent levels of additional smerits to keep quality contributions from being overlooked.



It seems to me that the merit system was added to supplement the ranking up, but not to anyhow change the activity level requirements - however there may have been some concerns regarding phasing out some aspect of the trust system, perhaps?

Regarding your personal situation.  I doubt that you would really need to receive an expedited actual ranking up in order to be appreciated for the number of merits that you receive - however it could be possible that either algorithmically or discretionarily that Theymos might look at some high merit statuses in order permit them to rank up more expeditiously based on their high level of merits.. whether that is a 2x consideration or a 3x or some other formula that might be deemed fair and reasonable.



Again, we get to the idea of whether the perfection is the enemy of the good.  Sure on a personal aspiration and from making a good first (and perhaps lasting) impression, then it is good for posters to aspire to quality posts because their history could likely follow them forever, and whether going back and deleting post would help may be a messy kind of process rather than just letting post history stand, "right out of the starting gate."


Thanks for taking me out of order... hahahahahhaha     By the way, I share with others in my enjoyment in reading a lot of your posts, and surely each of us need not agree with all the points made in any post in order to recognize substantive contributions (and even art sometimes) that goes into creating decent and good posts (whether they are perfect or not.. in their time)