I write these words for large group of Newbies who were Jr. Members few days ago…

Like many (hunderts or maybe thousands) of you few days ago I’ve been degraded from my „serious” Jr. Member rank…
Probably I wouldn’t even realized it so fast, but I’ve joined a few bounty campaigns where I do translation and moderation of ANN threads in my native language and i saw that images I've posted changed into naked links.

MERIT – it’s a keyword. I’ve read about it few months ago but I found fighting for it to hard for me… But what now – the rules were changed and being the translator makes me really in need to have one – only single one….

So let’s do this… I'll get one!
First though: „there are for sure places/sites when i can get one free. Come on – It’s only one – I don’t need more”. So I did some google search, than BTT search… didn’t find anything.
 
So can’t get it totally for free, than came second though: „no worry… I’ll buy one!” ;-) Once again google search, BTT search, Telegram search… This time was better I’ve found several announcements users offer merit for sale, but each one came from users with negative Trust… Should i risk??? What really mean Negative Trust and this statement below „Warning: Trade with extreme caution!” hmmmm… can I trust this guy? I don’t think I can…

Third though: „Maybe try to beg for one?” Checking few begging threads showed that users don’t give merits to beggars – they rather lough at them and seriously criticise this idea...

Another round "Let’s check once again what do I need to get merit legally way?". There are really tons of threads in meta section about it and all says „write something really readworthy”, „write something what will help another users”, „make sure that your post looks nice and pretty and is written in proper language”…
Ok on the one hand it doesn’t look hard but what can i write about? I’m not a specialist in blockchain area (honestly I’m still Newbie – hey just like my current rank ;-), there are thousands of users who are better than me and for sure they can write more than me.

Ok so let’s leave it and look into some threads to check if getting merit is really so simple… After checking dozens of threads one tithing came to my head: „Merits sucks!!! People really not often give merits especially to Newbies. Probably they (senior users) start this system to give merits one to another and keep newbies far for possibility to use this forum for earning money from Bounties. They are greedy. Beside there are thousands of threads and merits are given only in few of them. It’s rather impossible for me to be given one!”.

Then I’ve passed by some more discussion threads and found quite new one related to cryptocurrency regulation. Reading few posts I’ve realized that few days ago I found a link to very interesting article about dark side of cryptocurrencies and possibility of changing them to be less useful for criminals more for regular people. „This one should fit here and it also additionally it puts look from other side.” - I though. BTT is discussion forum so if I already get here (to that thread) i can give a few word from myself – and I did it.

You can’t even imagine how surprised i was few hours later when i opened BTT and saw that i was given MERIT only for this one single post. It wasn’t really big deal – it was only one short voice in the discussion nothing more, but one user found my opinion or probably rather not even opinion but article i linked interesting and gave me not one not two but FOUR MERITS only for this!!! By the way great thanks to DarkStar_ for his generosity.

The funniest thing is that i spent many useles hours looking the way to get merit and then when I was writing that post I wasn’t think about merits at all I’ve just though that article I’ve read fit into discussion and it’s also interesting (for me at last) so maybe someone will find it interesting as well.

After this I’ve changed my mind about this merit system and high ranked users - today I’ve realized a few things:

1. The source of discussion forum is… discussion.
2. Users who can give merits reads many threads and they really do give merit if they found something interesting readworthy or useful.
3. You don’t really need do nothing extraordinary to get merit (of course i still think, that i was very lucky… probably I wouldn’t give myself merit for this post)

I’m sure that there are many users who think like me until yesterday and wonder how what to do to get merit (cheat, buy, beg, get free etc.). I'm writing this post to give them some hope showing how easy geting merit in the proper way could be. Don't lose faith guys!!!

Below I give a link to my post I'm writing about
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032385.msg45892114#msg45892114