That, alongside the possibility that the recently added merit sources are likely modest in terms of allowance, and may have emptied their pockets during the first week or two after been added.
Yeah, I thought my sMerit supply was going to get topped up faster than it has--I forget how many merits I got when Theymos made me one of the new sources, but I used them all up pretty soon after he did it and I've yet to get any more. I figured on the beginning of the month, but I was wrong apparently.
Yes. This can be a bit of an experiment when you are not sure the method in which your smerits are replenished.
Merit source members have to spend their source smerits every 30 days in order to regenerate more source smerits. If they do not spend their source smerits within 30days, then the source merits will not regenerate until 30 days after they spend their smerits.
So does that mean I should get replenished 30 days from the time I was added as a source or from when I spent my last merit-source sMerit or something like that?
I believe that when the merit system was first introduced, there were some unexplained questions about how merit source smerits were going to be replenished, and the below-linked thread shows some discussion of the issue in which initially, the smerit algorithm was not functioning as intended, yet from what I could tell, theymos had largely been able to correct it, within about two weeks after the first 30 days had passed and merits were not being replenished.
Here is a link to the thread (seemingly the same thread that was subsequently referred to above by Steamtyme, too?):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3041961.0Furthermore, in early July there was a bit of a backlog of smerits that were rewarded to smerit sources based on previous errors in the algorithm.
In essence, source smerits are currently supposed to replenish exactly 30 days from when you spend them, so any merit source should be able to systematically track his/her smerit replenishment (or errors) if s/he were to chose to do that.
So, for example in your case, it appears that you spent smerits accordingly (assumingely source smerits):
September 16 = 3 smerits
September 17 = 13 smerits
September 18 = 5 smerits
September 19 = 3 smerits
Those smerits should replenish to your source bank of smerits 30 days from the time you spent them with the below amounts on the below dates:
October 16 = 3 smerits
October 17 = 13 smerits
October 18 = 5 smerits
October 19 = 3 smerits
I'm curious but not concerned, and I'll figure it out eventually. Anyway, I took a look around the Economics section today and didn't see any real newbies worth meriting. The last few posts I've merited were from relatively senior members, but they were certainly deserving of it.
I'm sure that a lot of members recognize a similar phenomena in which higher ranking members are providing a lot of decent content, and surely I have no problem spending smerits on those kinds of posts/members, and giving a bit of leniency to doesn't seem to be a bad thing, either - and likely many of us have made mistakes of giving merits to shitposers who we later realize did not really deserve the merit (or that someone later points out that the post had been plagiarized... ). There are only so many hours in the day to attempt to figure it out, too..