Quote from: _BlackStar on July 18, 2022, 02:54:54 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on July 17, 2022, 10:18:37 PM

Actually it is true that some members will get better in their post quality with the passage of time, and surely some members might well be trying to earn merits, and I can see why you may well consider the term "fishing for merit" to be derogatory, and maybe even presuming way more bad intentions upon the newbie (or the lower ranking member) than such member deserves. So yeah, sometimes merit sources may well expect members to have to jump through way too many hoops before sending any smerits.

It's fine if they want to see people have to go through some hoops to get merit, but it's a bit scary if most people follow this trend. It's hard to come up with a good idea for a topic because actually most of the ideas have been discussed previously by many other users. So this is the real reason why newbie or low ranking users try to get other ideas but unfortunately some of those initiatives can be judged as merit fishing.

There may be a bit of "I know it when I see it" coming from merit source members in regards to judging if too much merit fishing might be happening, and you can't necessarily blame them...

In your example, you can see how some of this can end up going badly. Some members start threads over any dumb little thing, and surely even though I am not much of a thread starter myself, there can be some value in starting threads.. but Jesus fuck.. when the OP of the thread barely has any bones, there can be a lot of questioning regarding why a new thread needed to be started rather than finding some thread that already exists that is already in the ballpark.

Sure, interacting with other members (presumptively more senior) can surely be helpful but also be seen as lacking in substance (in the merit fishing kind of way), and sometimes some merit source members might be too quick to judge.. admittedly so.

Quote from: _BlackStar on July 18, 2022, 02:54:54 PM

It might be good to be a little stingy with high ranking members who could logically do better on this forum based on their contributions and the quality of their posts.

And also there might be a need to hold some members to higher (or even lower) standards depending on posting history too.. I surely don't know the line exactly because sometimes even my own thinking on the topic can vary depending on what else I have going on .. sometimes I will formulate mental pictures of other members in my head, and they are likely not even always very accurate, because sometimes if I run across a post, or even some other member points something out and then I review some posting history.. my mental picture could radically change in one direction or another.. and sometimes that translates into merits or regrets about having had sent merits.. but we know that is not reversible.

Quote from: _BlackStar on July 18, 2022, 02:54:54 PM

The merit system has to be sharp in two directions, it doesn't have to be sharper for high rank while we have to be a bit blunt to low rank^{[that's really unfair, IMO].}

Getting back to the idea of members having a posting history.. sometimes merit sources might judge someone more harshly when there is little to no posting history, and then after a while, they see several posts from the member and then end up lightening up on their harshness... Some times bad impressions are created too.. and I have had some more longer term members tell me that I was being too mean to some new members, and surely sometimes, there is context and disagreement, and maybe sometimes they are right.. I may or may not decide to change my behavior.. and I might take one stance but not really disclose what the stance that I am taking.. and sometimes I just end up forgetting about it or even being inadvertent about it.. mistakes can be made sometimes, too.

There are some members who I have liked them a lot if they post about certain kinds of content (topics).. but if they post about other kinds of content (topics).. it can sometimes bother me in regards to their opinion or their approach to the topic... so those kinds of posts can influence, and then those kinds of mental images can sometimes get stuck about a member. rightly or wrongly..

Quote from: _BlackStar on July 18, 2022, 02:54:54 PM

But at the end of the day, the merit system is not moderated and each source has their own way of going about how they spend their monthly sMerit supply. I'm not against it, but I want to share my opinion.

Yep.. fair enough.. Theymos does seem to leave quite a bit of latitude..at least so far... and perhaps part of the rationale is that it is a voluntary position (I am pretty sure the very first set of assignments of merit sources, were just members who theymos picked for his own reasons.. so several of them did not ask (including yours truly) but at the same time, some of the earliest members who he chose to be sources were either stingy or just did not have time for sending smerits), and it could be that theymos can get enough of an idea about if he might conclude that some aspects is not working.. whether it is the report button.. or maybe looking at some of the ways that merit source members are spending their source merits....

Quote from: Ratimov on July 18, 2022, 02:57:36 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on July 17, 2022, 10:18:37 PM

I must be living in fantasyland.
I thought that most of the smerits were distributed on the WO thread. One thread hogging all (most) of the smerit distribution....

It was about all locales, not about the entire forum. In the Russian locale (among all locales) the most merit has always been distributed. As for the WO thread... this thread has long existed according to its own customs, and there the merit distribution has long since moved away from how theymos imagined it. There, a post in which there is not a word about cryptocurrency, but just a few pictures from life, can collect several hundred merits.

Ok.. I will take your word for the smerit distribution comparisons for the various locale sections of the forum...

If you use the word crypto or cryptocurrency in the WO thread without explaining ur lil selfie.. then you would not likely to get any smerit from me.. .You might even get me to hold a grudge for a while and to lecture you on the topic... My point is that the WO thread is about bitcoin and bitcoin related topics and gosh maybe almost anything else except for shitcoins (unless they are clearly referred to as shitcoins and put in a proper context.. maybe even deference to king daddy Cheesy

)...

If you send a funny cat video in the WO thread, on the other hand, that seems to capture some kind of moment or something that seems relevant to anything other than shitcoins, you may well get me to send an smerit or even more than one. Personally, I do not tend to send a lot of smerits on any specific posts.. .. usually it would need to be bitcoin-related and maybe have some explanations and fleshing out of matters related to bitcoin or some other topic that I believe had been well-explained (or some other reason to strike me as merit worthy) before I start to increase the quantity of smerits sent to any specific post.. but I recall sending some higher quantity of smerits on a few occasions for just somewhat spur of the moment considerations.. so sure.. maybe some of those kinds of emotional outbursts (from an admitted bot) is not very healthy to the whole merit system.. .

and I am not even sure if the WO thread is going outside of theymos's vision too much.. because that thread has kind of built a place in the forum.. so yeah, probably you are correct that theymos did not originally consider it to be any kind of theymos or forum cultural phenomena.. but when he shut it down in early 2017-ish? he seemed to rethink the place of the WO thread.. so whether such thread is too far gone or not, I doubt that the evidence really supports that it is too far gone otherwise something about it would end up getting modified. .and it even seems to have had gotten better after Infofront took it over as the new owner.. It's working, so don't fix it.. right? Maybe some folks disagree?

I won't even hold grudges against shitcoiners if they end up come around or at least largely refrain from their shitcoining in bitcoin threads.. .. but the most likely way to get me to hold a grudge is to either engage in shitcoining or to wantingly engage in loose language that attempts to describe bitcoin as if it were equivalent to various shitcoins.. hence the stupid-ass term crypto (cryptocurrency) that annoys me so much, and maybe even more if some members try to defend their usage of such vague and frequently misleading term... although if the thread is in the ann section or within some thread that is already vaguely-framed - I will usually (not always) just stay out of those threads completely and let the shitcoiners talk however they like in their abilities to sort matters out amongst themselves.. in regards of confusion about the topic they discuss.. and maybe sometimes smart things still might be said, even when it starts out with a weird framework that fails/refuses to distinguish bitcoin from shitcoins.