⭐ Merited by Foxpup (3)
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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?
Yeah, Lets reset the whole bitcoin network itself too, I missed out in 2010, I could have mined shit loads of BTCs for myself. These whales don't deserve all those BTCs they mined for merely contributing their 'CPUs and GPUs' to the network, just because they were at the 'right place at the right time' isn't fair. I want a reset...
I get what you're saying and there's two sides to the argument with pros and cons each way, but this is a little different. I don't think you could ever make everyone happy, though. I'm with you that newcomers should probably just learn to deal with it, but that certainly is easier to say when we're already "legendary" -- uggh, does anyone else cringe typing that out or is it just me? I do think older users do have more of a right with where they are now compared to newbies who come here and just want to get paid so they should probably just learn to just accept with it, but that obviously isn't going to stop people from complaining about it.
Of course, there are some members (such as Satoshi) who are no longer active, but received a lot of merits for historical posts, and even though the vast majority of merits seem to get sent for current active posting, there are some merits that have been distributed to historical contributions and it is likely that such distribution of merit for historical posts will continue to take place (at least on a smaller scale), which also does seem to be helpful to identify respect for some historical contributions or contributors (even if the member might no longer be active - or even dead).
Satoshi will certainly be the anomaly here, though. I'm sure other more active users and even some of the most prolific would have difficulty having their older posts merited to such an extent. Most will be long buried and forgotten, whereas satoshi's will always have a spotlight on them. Even theymos doesn't post that much compared to the rest of the community but he is the most merited user here according to the merit stats and that's probably because he gets a lot for stickies and announcements of rules changes and so forth -- or people just like to suck up to him lol.
In my observation, quality post doesn't entirely guarantee a merit at the end of the day especially for the new users. Why I say this is, I have seen good posts/topics that has no merit yet I and so many new users learnt alot from it. It becomes a problem when a new user struggles to contribute in a way and it passes by without any form of recognition (merit) but what hurts the most is when one reads comments that indirectly makes it look like you are try to give quality only because of the merits(of course, the merit is part of the reason) however, there was a good struggle and lots of reading and research in other to produce that quality post that is being tag as 'desperately looking for merits'. That hurts so much.
Nobody is guaranteed any merits. You could write a thesis on bitcoin and it might not be merited for all sorts of reasons. The key is to keep making quality posts to increase your chances of receiving hallowed merit, but don't concern yourself with it too much and it will come to you over time I would think.