Quote from: suchmoon on October 02, 2018, 07:22:15 PM

NSFN stands for "not safe for newbies". If you're a newbie looking to earn your first merit this topic may elevate your blood pressure.

According to merit stats we have sent ~22 thousand merits in the last 30 days.

According to ban and nuke stats ~24.5 thousand merits have been "destroyed" due to permanent bans in the last ~2 weeks^*:

Ironically half of the bans probably came from being exposed due to them meriting their own alts. We should rename merits as 'alt' or "friend" tokens.

I love how this guy excitedly boasted in Meta about getting merits, then as soon as I brought up the likelihood of him meriting his alts he quickly moved it to Off Topic and locked it Grin

. I think that tells you all you need to know.

Quote from: Welsh on October 02, 2018, 08:03:15 PM

Quote from: iasenko on October 02, 2018, 07:56:05 PM

Waste, but that's why it's created, to point out the quality poster and those abusing the system.
If you check for plagiarism before you give merit, probably big part of those wasted by mistake will be saved.

Yeah, I would advise anyone to do this if you have the time. I tend to dedicate a certain amount of time now to giving merits when I know I have time to check for plagiarism or not strictly plagiarism, but something that has been repeated to death or has been discussed recently. A common trend among newbies is to back a few pages, and just regurgitate a good reply hoping for some merit.

I think this is why we should up the requirement to ten before they can have a signature because then giving out one bad merit here and there won't be such an issue. It's such a hassle having to google people's posts just to see if they're plagiarised, and if they're text-spun then you likely won't get a hit either. When one merit is all you need it's like Christmas come early for a spammer and you can get one all too easily and in numerous nefarious ways. Let's see them try to get ten on their dozens of alt accounts. It would make abuse much less likely to happen and also make it much easier to spot. One solitary merit will fly under the radar a lot of the time.