Quote from: LoyceV on October 15, 2018, 10:28:27 AM

That's quite a statement after being inactive for more than a year. Is it really that hard to believe this forum has a terrible spam problem, which has to be limited before all signature campaigns are banned entirely?

I count 22925 users who received at least 1 Merit. I think this invalidates your statement.

Oh please, I don't have 429 alts.

Trust has nothing to do with Merit. I've merited red trusted accounts. That doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the post, it means I think the post is worth reading, and better than 99% of the spammers.

Welcome back to the forum

Keep posting like this, and you'll do just fine

I suck at splitting quotes so I'm concatenating. And thanks for the merit point.

I don't see how the Merit system will help reduce spammy posts. Newbie probably account for a good percentage of total posts in the Marketplace, or in the Discussion forums to boost their post count. The ONE thing that is extremely effective against spam already exists, Activity. You can only get 14 activity every 2 weeks. What's the point of spamming if you want to reach a goal of being eligible for sig campaigns, any dweeb can write one well-thought post a day. So Merit is just purely redundant in that regard.

Numbers! I love numbers! You count 22925 users who received at least 1 merit, nice. I count :

- 4% who received more or equal to 50 merit.
- 25% who received more or equal to 10 merit.
- 33% who received more or equal to 5 merit.
- 48% who received more or equal to 3 merit.
(all percentages are inclusive of ranks above them).

So basically, half the accounts that ever got merit, never got merited again. And the top 5% of people who got merited, are AT LEAST 50 times more likely than your average user to get merited.

Quick Edit : Also not to forget that these are 22k users who got merited at all. I wonder if we could get stats of Posts by Seniors Merited / Total Posts by Seniors, Full, Hero, Legendary. That oughtta be a fun sight.

I don't doubt you might not have alts, or that a bunch of people don't. But those btctalk accounts getting sold in the marketplace don't come out of thin air. There ARE people who abuse the merit system, just like they abuse other systems. The only problem I have with the merit system, is that it's BUILT to be abused by people who can. No one can FORCE their way into making a newbie account Senior overnight, but they sure as hell can spam the shit ouf ot it with merit.

This just goes to say that there is a lot wrong with this system from a neutral point of view, there is too much selectiveness for it to be unbiased. Which goes against the whole point of making it friendly for non-well known users.

Quote from: cryptovigi on October 15, 2018, 10:30:20 AM

Can't agree - I'm the best example that you are wrong. During last 3 weeks I didn't invent cure for cancer and didn't solve any unconfirmed bitcoin txs either what I sincerely regret. Unfortunately I'm not a part of the top well-known 10% that browses Bitcointalk - probably I'm a part of the top unknown 10%...

However, even without such contribution and connections I managed to get some merits. And I'm certainly not an exception what you can check in one of my last posts MYTHBUSTERS: Only high ranked users are rewarded with merits

To sum it up again, I'm not saying you'll never get merit, sure, merit is "infinite" for some users, so I don't doubt they'll feel generous every once in a while. But my point is that for 50 constructive posts you make, and from 50 average posts Mr. Big Shot makes, there's going to be a ridiculous bias against you. The problem is that Sig Campaign managers (most of them definitely falling in the top 10% category purely because they give out money "for free", and people love to merit them to slurp and kiss ass.) will have a skewed idea about merit, and that it's easily obtainable by anyone. It's not.