Quote from: Cryptomultiplier on Today at 12:59:28 PM

Quote from: Etranger on August 07, 2023, 02:36:30 PM

Quote from: _act_ on August 07, 2023, 01:22:03 PM

It is just that merit is used to make this forum to have quality posts.

Merits cannot be fully considered as the certain way to ensure quality posts. If this were the case, then there would be unified objective criteria for evaluating qualified posts. And each time these criteria are met, the post receives a predetermined number of merits. But in reality everything is absolutely different. Merits are often given not for a quality post, but for agreeing with the author. Therefore, merit turns into something similar to like. In addition, users give a completely different amount of merits depending on their capabilities (number of sMerits), as well as depending on how generous they are in general. And there are far fewer generous people than stingy ones. Also, merits are more often given to those users who already have a large number of merits. The less you have, the more suspicious and distrustful they treat you, and as a result, they give you less merits.

I will not deny that the merit system has had a beneficial effect on the forum situation. There are significantly fewer freeloaders who want to get easy money for spam. But the system is far from perfect, and it cannot be stated that there is a direct indestructible correlation between high-quality posts and merits.

I couldn't agree more with some of your points, because I have come to understand on my own, that more merit is often in a direct correlation with ones quality input or amount of merits gained overtime.
Just as you said when one has more merits, it's easier to simply add just a few more, compared to very low merit score(likes) trying to get more to become recognized.

A forum or community as this with more minds interconnected on a subject of interest is more spiritual than meets the eyes, that is why spammer are easily spotted without even seeing their faces or knowing them in person.
Writing is one that expresses intentions at the most, and any one of the more successful pleb here, knows that they got to where they are because they bared their intentions and kept a clean mind. It is just like I would say, they remained faithful, consistent, disciplined in their posts and organization and above all learned the terms, language, rules before even applying it fully.

It is the wisdom to express all that has been learnt in good understandable words, that makes one rank up.

Like you suggested, there can be a variety of factors that attract the receipt of merits including persistence and quality contributions, but at the same time, quality contributions could come from drawing from experiences, showing actual interest in topics in which you post, helping members or maybe providing some kind of substance that causes them to think or even to laugh. Some posts might not even be good quality in and of themselves, including that they might be difficult to understand or even in not so great English, but they still might receive merits based on some kind of an ability to relate or even that members have historically recognized the posting member as a good contributor, so they send smerits based on "giving the benefit of the doubt" to the post and/or to the member.

Another phenomena could be that a member (most likely a source merit member) has some extra merits that they are purposefully wanting to send, and there could be some coincidence (or luck) that they saw your post.. and they were not offended by it, so sent an smerit or two based on a kind of random serendipity.

Quote from: _act_ on Today at 01:11:53 PM

Quote from: Cryptomultiplier on Today at 12:59:28 PM

Quote from: Etranger on August 07, 2023, 02:36:30 PM

Quote from: _act_ on August 07, 2023, 01:22:03 PM

It is just that merit is used to make this forum to have quality posts.

Merits cannot be fully considered as the certain way to ensure quality posts.

I couldn't agree more with some of your points, because I have come to understand on my own, that more merit is often in a direct correlation with ones quality input or amount of merits gained overtime.
Just as you said when one has more merits, it's easier to simply add just a few more, compared to very low merit score(likes) trying to get more to become recognized.

Just like I have said before, merit system has been the reason we have quality posts on this forum. If merit system was not introduced, this forum would be a place of trash posts.

You can noticed someone not posting as good as another person, but having more merit, but still he is having merits and ranking higher. People that are giving merit can be partial, especially those on local boards, but merit still ensures that posting quality on this forum is achieved.

Maybe the forum would not be "a place of trash posts" without the merit system, but it does seem that the merit system has mostly improved the quality of posts - even if there surely might still be some problems in terms of some of the subjective nature (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself), and maybe there could be some improvements that would come from the employment of some rotation of source members.. but it can take a lot of work to select new source members and also some amount of follow through that might be needed.