Yes.. If you think that the matter is simple, then you are engaged in oversimplification.

If you have been "saying since almost day 1," then likely you are neither attempting to look at the matter objectively or to attempt to see how matters play out.



I will grant to you that the passage of 6 months does allow a greater ability to assess the situation, but concluding that the implementation failed seems to be both wishful thinking and failure/refusal to account for actual facts.


It is a fair enough assertion that there might not be enough distributed merits; however, the whole implementation of the merit system began with a front loading of merits - and what I mean is that active accounts received an initial distribution of merits that was based on activity level and then rank.

Since the behavior of members after the implementation of the merit system was not completely known, there has been a dialectic process that would allow for the assessment of member behavior after the initial distribution and the behavior of merit sources, too.

I don't doubt that theymos is continuing to assess the extent to which the actual behavior is playing out as a failure or a success, and likely the assessment is going to come out somewhere in the middle rather than your seeming presumption that the system has been a failure and that some goals have not been reached.


First of all if ranking up seems too difficult based on the playing out of this new merit system (and that is a BIG "if"), then perhaps tweaking the ranking up requirements could be a path forward, yet I highly doubt that something like 2 merits is even  within the realm of realistic (unless we are considering the matter in terms of comedy).


You could be correct that either merit sources need to be increased and/or their receipt of smerits.  There could be some advantages to random distribution, but I am thinking that theymos would not want to go anywhere near "random" distribution because "random" distribution would likely bring back some account farming and shilling problems that were intended to be addressed and reduced by the merit system that was adopted and implemented.


I think that activity level was always part of the consideration for which members would receive merit source status, but a central aspect of the whole new system is to move away from pure activity level for ranking up, so it is difficult to figure out what you are getting at exactly, Forward_Thinking, with regard to your suggestion here.




Good for you.  But merely because you have experience in the field does not mean that you are the smartest person in the room, nor does it mean that you have presented ideas that are compelling for someone like theymos... even though in the end, it is possible that theymos might recognize some value in some of your suggestions  - but seems that you got some of the presumptions wrong too, which seems to undermine a degree of any value that may have been present in some of your suggestions.


The place is dying on the vine?  Do you have some actual statistics for this rather than your supposed anecdotal life experiences?


O.k.  Fair enough that you have additional experiences beyond your Forward_Thinking account, but again seems to be an unnecessary appeal to status, when your presented ideas remain lacking.  No?


Again, you are making an anecdotal assessment regarding what bitcoin talk is becoming, so if you have some more convincing statistic or links then that might be helpful to support your point.  I will agree with you that your voice does not count for too much if you are not generating many merits and you retain low rank; however, if you make really good points backed by evidence, then that could help you to become more convincing and perhaps even cause some members to send some merits in your direction.


I don't even feel any kind of need to look at any of your other posts, because you have presented enough not backed up points within this one post.


You could be correct that there is a bit of a move towards weeding out some of the nonsense of the public while retaining value of already good members and allowing new members from the public to rank up.  Such a move towards screening members or causing more requirements does not completely remove the public aspect of the forum because regular peeps and even low ranking members are completely free to read posts and to post in a large majority of the forum.  Of course, the more access that you want to higher ranking members and the greater credibility that you want, then you need to figure out ways to contribute sufficient value that causes inspiration from other members to send you merit(s).  

You are not a lost cause, yet, Forward_Thinking.  If you figure out ways to improve your post quality, and maybe not to harp so much on negative forum administrative things and go out into the forum and perhaps talk about bitcoin or some other topic that is of interest to you and contribute some value, then maybe after the passage of some time, other members will begin to recognize your various contributions to the forum and to send merits into your direction. Good luck.

Regarding this merit system matter, I am sure that theymos is going to continue to assess how it is playing out and to figure out the extent to which he believes it needs to be tweaked here and there.  It is likely that tweaks need to be made, as you suggest, but they are likely not either obvious nor simple as your post seems to argue.