What qualifies as a good post, according to your standards?
I ask so because maybe merit sources should find a way to let the forum know what they stand for; that is their principles and what determines them to qualify a post as quality or not. Or is that better kept a secret?
In this way, maybe everyone both newbies and oldies would learn to employ this and create better post that would surely warrant the merits and upmovement of this forum in general.
For me:
A good post is one that smells brain juice.
A good post is one where at the end of the reading you don't say to yourself "Fuck, I have wasted X seconds/minutes of my life".
A good post is one that doesn't try to get merits, they will come naturally if you respect the first 2 points.
If there was an easy way for everyone to get merits, I would probably be one of the first MS not to give any.
A think I'm comfortable with your definition of good posts as those are the qualities that a good post should portray because some people literally thinks that after making some few posts that they must earn merit instantly but that is not the case because Theymos emphasized more on the need to only award merits to
high quality contents and not some gibberish.
I like your third point of a good post because it reminds me of when I started making posts in the forum and I didn't earn any merit and I was feeling so bad and I increased my level of research not until a day I logged in and saw I've got some Merits on my profile and was from a reputable staff of the forum, it made me engage more in making good posts and the merits kept coming till I ranked up to full member but now it's very unfortunate that most newbies now are after ranking up quick and start earning from signature campaigns but just like @hugeblack said that signature campaigns are just for fun because they come and go so the payments can't be reliable to earn a living from it considering the fact that the payments are low and real life jobs and business are more profitable and guaranteed than signature campaign payments so we need to be more devoted to quality rather than quantity because even the merits we earn is also part of fun because when the merit system was not introduced people were still ranking up and making quality posts so there is nothing too important about getting merits.