Quote from: bakasabo on March 19, 2018, 11:57:29 AM

Quote from: TheQuin on March 14, 2018, 09:35:08 AM

The Merit system has been with us for six weeks now and is clearly having some success in reducing the spam. It is now very hard, if not impossible, for account farmers to provide a constant supply of high ranked accounts. This, of course, is good news for any of us who have become tired of finding any interesting content quickly buried under a pile of shitposts.

What this hasn't addressed is the large number of accounts already in the hands of shitposters. Let's be honest about what rank is all about - signatures and the ability to gain income from them. The ability of someone who is already in possession of, for example, a Hero account (or 10) to continue to get paid for every shitpost they tack on the end of a spam megathread has not diminished or been restrained by the Merit system.

Some campaign managers have taken the initiative to make minimum Merit requirements compulsory to join their campaigns but those managers were already the ones with high standards. They were not the problem, it has always been the managers that just blindly accept the first x hundred people to apply and pay them regardless of the spam they produce.

I have noticed that these spammers are very easy to spot now, they are the ones stuck on 100, 250, 500 or whatever merit number they were initially given. They haven't managed to gain one single Merit point in the last 6 weeks.

So to my suggestion:

Amend the forum to hide signatures of any account that hasn't earned at least 1 Merit in the last 2 months.

This will bar them from getting paid to post and not have any negative impact on anyone making even the tiniest contribution to the forum. Nobody loses their rank and even if someone is away from the forum for a while they can quickly get their signature back.

Hello TheQuin,

By doing it you want to hide signatures from Jr.Members also? It's harder for them to get at least 1 merit point, then why would be so cruel for them? Using your suggestion Jr.Members will never get any higher rank, since I have noticed, that people rarely grant merit for Junior, and rather give merit to Hero or higher rank (even just for a huge post, but with few useful words).

I would suggest to make "Anti-Merit" button.

For example if you see some high ranking member is posting some crap, then few (for example 5 members) can start a vote to remove 1 Merit from him.

If they win this vote - crap poster got merit reduction.
If they lose, they (for example) lose their 1 merit point.

This will protect merit owners from being zerged members, willing to cut their merit points.

Of course I understand that my suggested Anti-Merit button should be discuses so that there will be no system abusers in future.

No no, just stop guys, you are trying to make it too complicated. This is a forum after all, we can't keep implementing new systems all the time to stop shitposters, every forum has them, sure there is an incentive to post crap in this one but still. The merit system as is, it's perfect, eventually people that cheat will run out of merits and usually get busted and the high rank spammers usually get busted as well, they either get banned or red tagged by someone like vod or other people that usually tags shit posters. It just needs time, in a year from now, I can assure you there will be significantly less spammers.