Quote from: iasenko on September 09, 2018, 08:34:02 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on September 09, 2018, 08:27:07 PM

I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.

If we get rid of the spam / or reduce it significantly/ then maybe the good posts will rise up and get what they deserve. Now is more like looking for a needle ^[1] in a haystack so people give up or give the merit to the "usual suspects".

[1] ...

Yes. It seems that we cannot just simplify the explanation for smerit distribution, but I do recall a kind of 2-3 month surge in the distribution of smerits that seems to have dried up a lot because it seems likely that regular (non-sources) folks do not have a lot of merits to give out (or perhaps they are budgeting their use of them).

I will concede that it can be quite a bit of work to read posts every day and to give out smerits, and maybe some of the sources feel somewhat burdened in that regard, and are NOT really giving out their smerits. Surely it is an administrative decision for theymos to consider whether he wants to increase the number of merit sources or to reassign merit source status to some members who will be a bit more willing to give out smerits.

I agree with you that it still seems quite possible to receive merits for decent posts.

When I scout out some threads, one of the problems that I see with posts is that frequently members do not even seem to be reading various posts in the thread. The read the OP or they read the title of the thread, and then the spout out some superficial points that have either already been made or that don't really contribute much value to the thread. I actually believe that it is NOT problematic to repeat some points, but anyone who is really contributing is going to attempt to say the same points in a way that is personalized, and perhaps even provide some evidence or logic or even some personal experiential points that allow the post to be meritorious. I have no problem giving merits to members who have mediocre points as long as there is some meat in their posts - which frequently is lacking with one liners.... yet I may merit one-liners too, if either the person has provided substantive points in the past or there is some kind of humor in there that captures a decent amount of meaningful sentiment.

Contrary to me, it seems that some members seem to require too much quality from posts before they find them to be meritorious. - but I do understand that non-source members are going to want to budget their smerits, so my criticism about some of the aspects of stinginess of smerit distribution seems to go to some of the sources who don't seem to be spending their smerit because if there is really 19,500 worth of smerits that are generated every month, then it seems fairly convincing that a smerit distribution that is approaching 3k per week (which would be about 12k per month) indicates that merit sources are not spending their source merits... so a lot of source merits are seeming to be left on the table.. perhaps evidence of 1/3 or more.. and maybe administratively it would be better to attempt to get that number below 10% and to assign source status to members who are largely spending their smerits.... and surely those kinds of tools are in hands of theymos to be able to determine whether there is a pattern of non-spending of smerits from designated merit sources (also based on the level to which they receive smerits, each month).