Quote from: guybrushthreepwood on October 19, 2018, 09:10:43 AM

I think the admins should consider making everyone start on an equal playing field with zero merits and then everybody has to earn them from scratch. It's true that many people probably haven't earned their rank and got lucky just by signing up at the right time but then should Newbies be on the same starting point as someone who has been here for years and made a big contribution? Should theymos -- for example -- have to earn his merits the same way a Newbie will and we discount all his past contributions that he's made previously? I think the "free" merit that was given out was some sort of compromise to take past posts into account even if that means some spammers got through the system. I think it's likely a catch 22 situation and a case of you're damned if you do and damned if you don't because if everyone started on zero merits then all the old timers would complain, but if you give certain ranks merits for free then all the Newbies would complaining that it's not fair. Life isn't fair, but we have to play with the hands -- and merit -- we are dealt.

This concept that you describe is a common practice of a grandfather clausing - which like you mentioned is a sort of compromise. Sometimes, a grandfather clause will continue to allow older members to stay under the old system; however, in this case, the grandfather clausing merely was a way of distributing merit in order to approximate rank that was already earned - even though hence forth everyone will earn merits (and/or rank up) based on the new system. Surely, no compromise is going to be completely perfect, and there remains some discretion about how it is implemented and thereafter tweaked - which tweaking seems to have already taken place a few times since the initial implementation.

Quote from: guybrushthreepwood on October 19, 2018, 09:10:43 AM

Quote from: KingZee on October 18, 2018, 03:37:19 AM

Quote from: cryptovigi on October 17, 2018, 09:46:38 PM

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Are we really going to argue on outliers? I'm not backing any hard truth or absolute claim when I say that 40% of legendary outgoing is towards hero/legendary, etc..

But are you seriously going to deny that the distribution isn't biased? The picture clearly shows that almost for every rank, they're more likely to merit their same rank, rather than a much higher or a much lower rank. That goes for EVERYONE, NOT JUST HEROES AND LEGENDARIES.

But you can look at this two ways. On a whole higher ranks are more likely to make better posts, so therefor are more likely to get merited. The quality of posts that come from new users are -- generally speaking -- very low and there's plenty of them so it's obvious higher ranks are going to get more merit, but that doesn't mean new users don't get any. There have been some new users who signed up and got a lot of merit very quickly because they made excellent posts that stood out. The problem is that most new users don't and that's why they're not going to get any -- or much -- merit. I can see why users are annoyed or feel hard done by the merit system but there's probably not much anyone can do other than play with the hand they have been dealt.

I know that there is a bit of harping on this point regarding built in biasness towards higher ranked individuals, and even though some of these matters can be curious regarding whether there is some kind of egregiousness going on - but in the end, some of the fussing about boils down to pettiness and in that regard, there seems to be an attempt by some merit whiners to assert that the distribution of merits needs to be based on objective criteria - which you are nearly never going to get when you add human subjective components and human discretion. Part of the movement away from the old ranking up system to this new system was intentionally meant to add more human element (and therefore subjectivism) regarding the ranking up of members - or even some levels of credibility that might be given to individual users (even those that have already ranked up) based on the number of merits that they earn over time.

Of course, there can be some learning that comes from criticisms about an existing system, yet sometimes also, the whining just devolves into a high level of complaining about nothing in order to attempt to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Overall there remains a lot of benefits in the new merit system, and there remain decent and legitimate ways to earn merits within this new system in the event that any member has desires to rank up - yet even not ranking up does not prejudice them in the ability to participate in the forum in a variety of ways, at least in the information sharing ways - even if less rank might remove some abilities to earn money from forum participation (which I guess could be one of the motivations that a member might later adopt, even if that was not an initial motivation to get involved in this forum).