Quote from: Timelord2067 on Today at 02:12:05 AM

I've said in posts elsewhere that I think the merit system is a great thing as it has become harder for people to sell lower end accounts.

I like your suggestion of rotating merit sources in much the same way the DT 1 are "chosen" - each month. Perhaps a strict rule no more than two months in then an automatic one month out then the fourth month you are in the pool of randomly selected.

In theory, your rendition of a rotation of merit sources sounds like it could work; however, factually and theoretically based on such facts, there seems to be a lot of difficulties already.

I can theorize at least three difficulties:

1) We had already seen that theymos seems to be having difficulties establishing any kind of decently large sized pool of merit sources that he is willing to assign. He started out with something like 35 merit sources, and he intermittently increased the merit sources to about 130, one year later (or maybe less than a year later). In the past year, the number of merit sources has only been 100, so the pool seems a bit small, anyhow.

2) Let's say hypothetically theymos could get up to a higher number of merit sources, 200 or 300, then you would be suggesting to rotate those merit sources in and out.. seems a bit logistically problematic but also could create a lot of confusion and even de-spirit merit sources from wanting to engage in the process.

3) A lot of extra work for theymos to administer, and since the merit system runs on a kind of algorithm, it seems that duty periods should be longer than 4 months, just to let the algorithm run out for a while and the merit source to get some bearings about what is happening - but then even theymos might still haver difficulties in monitoring such a system that would be changing so frequently.

I don't want to be a party poop, but just seems like a bit of an administrative nightmare and also one that would create a lot of frustration to merit sources, assuming that they are even able to get used to the various periodic changes.

Quote from: Timelord2067 on Today at 02:12:05 AM

If a merit source can't find enough posts to merit, then don't just dump what you have just because you have them.

Of course, theymos can remove merit source status for any members who seem to be engaging in abuses, but if they are periodically dumping more merits than they "should be dumping" then how would theymos even know the difference between too much dumping? He would just know it when he sees it?

I have always had a policy to just spend 1 merit per post, with the exception of 2 or three merits from time to time, but even I have found that giving one merit per post can take a lot of time, sometimes, and sometimes I just feel that I do not have that much time to be reading posts.

I recall a few months after the merit system was implemented, theymos said that merit sources should give lump sum merits whenever they could. I never really employed such a strategy of giving merits, even though theymos proclaimed that giving lump sum merits would be a good way to send merits.

Quote from: Timelord2067 on Today at 02:12:05 AM

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...any suggestions...?

It might sound draconian but cancell all merits gifted between merit sources.

I agree with your presumption that merit sources are likely to receive some merit sources because they are merit sources, but you really believe that it would be practical to have a rule against merit sources sending merits to other merit sources? As you likely realize, there is not even any kind of official forum acknowledgement regarding who are the merit sources, even though Coin-1 maintains an unofficial thread in which he attempts to identify merit sources, whether they had admitted to being merit sources or his algorithm had detected that they are merit sources. Again, that is not even an official forum acknowledgement, and surely some of the merit sources could change from time to time, too... even though Coin-1 attempts to announce any detections or even announcements on a monthly basis.

I am having troubles with really considering theymos to be motivated to implement your suggested changes, and of course, like anyone else I have troubles reading theymos's mind, unless he actually directly addresses the matter.

There had been speculation that theymos might make changes to merit sources 6 months after the last changes (last changes or major changes were in November 2019), yet the last changes were nearly 10 months ago. I think that some of the reluctancies to make changes to the merit system is that it can become a bit complicated to make changes including trade offs, and still it some sense to figure out ways to increase the number of merit sources, rather than creating systems (or subsystems) that just create more administrative complications without any kind of clear and probable benefit to perhaps resolve some of the problems that you, timelord, are perceiving.. to the extent that theymos might perceive those as meaningful and material problems, too (which might be a BIG presumption).

It is likely that any changes that theymos does make would attempt to remove or add merit sources to attempt to achieve or improve some kinds of semblance of fairness in the way that merits are being spent by merit sources to the extent that fairness might not already sufficiently exist... and of course, again, if there is a sense that merit sources are abusive in their spending of merit sources, then theymos has the ability to unilaterally remove those members as a merit source or reduce the quantity of their source (to the extent that he knows about the alleged problem and agrees that such a problem exists with one or more merit source member(s)).