I think one solution could be that some percentage of merit required for ranking upto Jr. Member and Member should come from a Verified Merit Source. Verified Merit source should fulfill the following requirements:
1.) Belong to the set of people comprising DT1 member and people who have shown enough commitment towards the forum by earning, say, 250 merits.
1.) Be randomly selected from this group
2.) Anonymous in Merit History
3.) Change cyclically
A thread could be started where these members simply grant merit to new accounts. That source shouldn't show up in the merit history to ensure that people don't get bugged or start getting bribe offers.
Its fairly complicated but so is the problem. Maybe i should think of a more elegant solution..Hmm..Thinking Hat on..
1.) Belong to the set of people comprising DT1 member and people who have shown enough commitment towards the forum by earning, say, 250 merits.
1.) Be randomly selected from this group
2.) Anonymous in Merit History
3.) Change cyclically
A thread could be started where these members simply grant merit to new accounts. That source shouldn't show up in the merit history to ensure that people don't get bugged or start getting bribe offers.
Its fairly complicated but so is the problem. Maybe i should think of a more elegant solution..Hmm..Thinking Hat on..
As one of the people who would currently qualify to be a "verified merit source," I'm not sure that I want the added responsibility of only meriting newbies. However, I believe that my current allocation of source merit allocation is probably in the top 10, if not top 5, so it would be much more work for me than many other merit sources. I could end up giving a handful of newbie posts an insane amount of merit; however, people tend to notice when the amount of merits given is a two digit number, and I am sure the "merit abuse" allegations would crop up (although only the administrators would know who the merit source is, people could figure it out by noticng that such and so merit source isn't giving out any merits anymore.) When you say "anonymous" do you mean the merit score goes up with no other record or do you mean it will have a label like "anonymous" or "Verified Merit Source?"
You're right bones that it could be quite a load. That is why responsibility should be cycled between those people. 10-15 members every week would be enough to merit ongoing good posts. Considering there are 200+ people with 250 earned merits, the responsibility would cycle to you approximately every 28 weeks. That should be doable imo. As far as allegations are concerned, they will crop up no matter how fair everyone tries to be. This shouldn't be a reason for policy paralysis.
By anonymous, i meant it should appear in the merit history but the name shouldn't. Like you said, it could be something like "Verified Merit Source" or some cool acronym with an LOTR reference maybe. Maybe it could appear as "Wizard Council finds you worthy" or something..
If the ranks are not so important or shouldn't be cared about then why there is a ranking system in the forum, what is the use of activity?
Ranking systems are generally meant to be hierarchical so that there is an objective way to decide how much importance you give to people's opinions here. Merit was an evolution in this and it is now part of that ranking system and hierarchy. You can be sure that "activity" alone doesn't count for anything much now.Then wouldn't you want your "certificate" to be more valuable and rare and indicative of your contribution, not merely handed out to everyone who registered on the forum and made a few hundred posts?
I was expecting at least a reply of this kind.Not really, I'm not a special one nor anyone here. Every legitimate person should be weighted equally.
If it is the thing to "merely handed out" then something unique I would demand if I have an option to ask theymos.
This is sort of an ideological issue. You say that "I'm not special nor anyone here". In reality, there are subject-experts and then there are noobs. The subject-experts ARE special, whether we like it or not. All men are born equal only when it comes to Liberty and Justice. This cannot be the case when it is a particular subject matter. For example, I don't think my physics teacher was an equal of Stephen Hawking just because they were both physicists. If you strongly feel that merit is about equality/ equal opportunity, I request that you please do read this once:
Harrison Bergeron