Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

I am not advocating an increase in merit source members because that compounds the two-tier issue. At the merit system currently stands, it is a two-tier system consisting of a group that are merit source and another group that are not. With all of the perceived benefits some might member conclude that merit source have brought to the forum, it excludes factors that are hardly mentioned: corruption and manipulation.

I was considering that to resolve the two-tiered system in the way that you were suggesting would either be 1) to completely get rid of the merit system (which seems to bring us back to a system that had already been in place, yet with the baggage of 7.5 years of prior existing merit system) or 2) to expand the merit sources to such a level that everyone or almost everyone were a merit source.

I suggested some kind of compromise of the second with the use of a merit czar since there would likely be a certain amount of work to oversee that abuses might not be getting out of hand if the merit sources were to be expanded to levels that are quite higher than thaey are now.. and yeah, theymos may have already experienced problems with having more merit source members which is part of the reason that merit source members are currently down to 88-ish.

Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

The word worthy is subjective without doubt nevertheless, the deliberate avoiding of giving merits to a worthy post purely based on the fact the author is disliked, is an inappropriate use of the system.

There isn't a current standard of even requiring posts to be worthy in any objective sense, and the only restriction is really on merit sources to not be engaged in quid pro quo kinds of arrangements, and yeah, maybe there might be some unwritten rules regarding merit source behavior that might cause theymos to remove such members as merit sources - not spending their source smerits seems to be one of the unwritten rules that might cause a merit source member to lose his source..

Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

As is the over meriting of a post on the basis of having somewhat of a rapport with the author. The latter is commonly glossed over by merit source citing a quote from theymos that stated it was better to use the allocated per month merits rather than not within the stipulated month. That has given a free hand to some merit source to justify their merit giving.

Yep. I saw that post by theymos, and I think that he stands by his statement which communicates quite a bit of liberty to merit source members and harder to criticize members who might ongoingly max out their smerit sending to certain other forum members every 30 days, and theymos does not seem to have problems with those kinds of smerit spending/distribution ideas (50 smerits to any particular member every 30 days).

It seems that many times other forum members, including author of this here OP tend to be inclined to want to impose smerit sending standards on source members and those standards do not exist and theymos does not seem to be in agreement with such standards.

Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

All of this is happening in an environment where merit sources can act with complete impunity and without having to justify their actions if (some or most) of their merit history is examined and questions raised. That is part of the reason why a two-tier system is not conducive to community cohesion.

Are these questions being raised in public ways and about specific conduct of specific source members? Or is the conduct being reported and itemized within private reports to forum admins.

Sure I know from time to time some members will be put under scrutiny for their conduct, but it is not generally only about smerit sending, even though in some bad cases smerit sending might be part of the package of wrong doing of specific member that might be targeted, but it still seems to be fairly rare, at least I have not seen too many of those kinds of threads that might attempt to review various source merit members.

Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

What I am advocating is an overhaul of the merit system. How exactly that overhaul would manifest itself after a transformation is something I would invite members to suggest if they believe it is the way forward.

That is still pretty vague. You seem to be suggesting democracy (like commentary and perhaps voting) and/or a committee, and members have already commented on these ideas for years.. yet sure, maybe there could be a thread that is specifically on the smerit system reform topic. Perhaps? If theymos were to give guidelines on such a topic or maybe if someone could reasonably infer what his guidelines might be, then maybe some useful suggestions could come through such a thread. The idea of disabling smerits on the WO thread does not seem productive at all, even though surely there is some relevance in looking at threads such as the WO in terms of the large quantity of merits that are given out (or distributed and/or redistributed) through that thread.

Quote from: JollyGood on Today at 09:50:54 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 05:14:02 AM

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Quote from: mindrust on Today at 03:53:41 PM

Quote from: joker_josue on Today at 06:57:41 AM

[edited out]

Well, it is not rocket science.

This usually not a good way to start out a post in regards to a topic that includes controversy and a variety of potential solutions.

Quote from: mindrust on Today at 03:53:41 PM

.... here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.

I am not sure if you have enough information to proclaim that the merit system is completely unmoderated, and sure maybe you consider more and/or better moderation of the merit system. The devil is in the details regarding how additional moderation might be applied and what might be the guidelines for such better moderation. or maybe if it is not moderated, but merit source members might rotate, but that would be a lot of work. Theymos would have to do it or delegate some or all of the duties in regards to how rotation might take place.