Again, I am likely the forum member sending most of the smerits in those three mentioned threads.
Do you want to judge the substance of smerits being sent?
Do you want to second guess the sending of smerits?
Do you think that there are bad motives for the smerits being sent, since that seems to be the burden to show that there is some kind of bad motive for sending smerits based on current policies related to the discretionary aspects related to the sending of smerits?
Hi, first of all, upon reading my post again, I understand that it might have come off as offensive, and I can assure you that it's not the tone I was looking for; therefore, I apologize in advance if it was considered that way. With that being said, I was mostly surprised, due to the size of the buy/sell topic that's over 180 pages long. I've never visited the thread because it's far too large for my preferences, and I always thought it was a topic where those who want to get their quota reply. I'm now seeing that it also includes replies from reputable members, such as yourself, and a few others I've already interacted with in the past.
One of the main reasons I'm not posting in such topics is that I cannot catch up with the replies; I'm losing the flow of conversation if I cannot reply immediately or within a short time frame; by the time I can reply, another 5 will have been posted. I also appreciate what you do, since you're sending a large amount of merits to newer users, helping them rank up, including myself. You've sent me almost 40 merits (39 to be exact), which have been a great help in ranking up to Legendary. With that being said, I am not second-guessing the merits you send, nor do I think there are bad motives; on the contrary. On top of that, the merits you've sent seem to be on newer members, which is extremely encouraging to them, and I'm sure that you're not giving them away to someone you do not think is worth it, or their post isn't well-constructed and fluent to read.
Yes, it might come as a little unfair to those who do not participate in such challenges or topics, and it does sound a little cringe claiming a Bitcoin challenge changed your life, but not every aspect of the merit system is 100% fair, and nor is there a system that's equally fair to everyone. If someone seems to be missing out, which is why I mentioned it, they can try their luck in one of these mentioned threads. I hope this clears up the misunderstanding.
Thanks for the explanation, and I hate to be even having to get on the defensive when it comes to smerit sending, and so yeah, I can find it a bit problematic when it seems that my own merit sending is being attacked, and I am not even claiming to being able to figure out if some of the posters might not be real (such as AI) or if they might be otherwise unworthy of smerits for their posts. I mentioned that it already takes quite a bit of time to read through various posts in the threads that I mentioned, since there are a lot of crappy ones. Maybe I have to get my own AI assistant to help me to identify good and/or bad posts.. .which I am currently reading most if not all of the posts that I merit...and yeah, I have already been back and forth with nutildah quite a few times on the topics in regards to my own expressed concerns about his seeming desires to impose additional smerit sending standards (perhaps even his own pie in the sky standards) that do not currently exist.
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For example, JJG recently commented that my posts sound like nonsense (at least when it comes to WO), and do I need to make a drama about it? You simply get out of the way of the person and the matter is resolved - the forum is large enough that you can be an active member and avoid bothering anyone - at least that's my philosophy.
I cannot recall the exact details, yet I recall that we were having differences of opinion, and members have differing ways of dealing with the differences of opinion. Sometimes if we go back and forth and disagree then at least, there can be ways of figuring out the extent to which you or any other member stands behind what is being said or might be able to back it up when there might be questions about facts, logic or how those might come together to formulate opinions and/or conclusions.
Another risk of being specific in your posts is that you are more likely to get interaction with some other member when you are being specific in your posts... That seems to be a good thing, especially if there may be different ways of seeing similar things, and if getting into substantive specifics. Even AI are getting better at engaging with specifics, so it might not always be easy to figure out whether the posts are coming from a real person or not. I am not even going to say that I know how to figure it out.