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.
After introducing the functionality of merits and allowing members to use it for a number of years and then to remove it (because a better alternative was not found), seems to be not only a waste of resources but also a waste of opportunity to rectify something that already has a structure in place but would work better for the forum members with modifications.
For the latter, making all members merit source effectively means removing the merit-source tag and giving all members 'x' amount of merits each month to distribute. Theoretically, that was something that could have been implemented in the first place. Rather than the completely biased two-tier system that is in place now that theymos appoints/remove any member as he deems appropriate, it could have been a more metric based system on either
higher rank equates to more monthly merits to give or maybe
receiving 'x' number merits equates to distributing double merits.
These are mere limited examples and not an exhaustive list of every option or permutation.
Your "limited examples" don't get me too excited, but who am I.
It seems to me that even though several members are complaining in reasonable ways about aspects of the merit system, theymos is likely not completely unsatisfied with the merit system as it is playing out, so any suggested changes likely would need to be somewhat in line with what is already happening rather than revolutionary changes.
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..
That conduct is precisely the reason why I stated there was no discussion of corruption and manipulation because merit source were being blindly trusted by theymos without any credible checks and balances in place thus allowing merit sources to operate with complete impunity.
It could be that there is a certain level of scrutiny, but just not the kind of scrutiny that you believe to be warranted.
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.
In that case, we are once again talking about theymos unilaterally taking those steps. I think the forum has grown to a point where there are enough members that care about the forum enough to be able to contribute to a decision making process. It would not be practical to have an all-inclusive debate for every single issue to the forum but where it affects the forum to the degree that merits and merit sources do, maybe having the unilateral approach is no longer appropriate.
Probably by law theymos is the owner of the forum, so then his choice to employ democratic means is something that he could optionally choose to employ (and to take into account). Sure members could rebel or even vote with their feet.
So if the forum is losing influence and/or participation, then maybe theymos could be motivated by that. The forum's treasury is large enough that he probably does not need to expect the forum to generate revenue in any way in order to operate it through earlier donations being kept in BTC. Arguments can be made that fiduciary duties are owed to run the forum well and to spend its money wisely.. and sure maybe even participants of the forum can argue that we bring value to the forum and so therefore theymos owes us.
I think the punchline is that the extent of democracy is upon theymos's discretion and the extent to which he might share ownership, yet I thought that he was a sole owner in the last few years?
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.
It was deliberately left vague as I did not want the first suggestion that started the debate to be mine.
I will add this, I had never contemplated the implementation of a czar but after your suggestion it does seem to be a workable idea. I think implementation of a function that stops any merit source from distributing merits with impunity is an excellent idea. The fact a merit czar (as you stated) could remove/replace a merit source is an excellent idea but on its own does not solve the issue of a two-tier system not being conducive to community cohesion.
I keep mentioning merit czar because it seems that theymos does not want to do the extra work, so largely he would be appointing someone to take care of such duties and to be reportable to theymos in the event that theymos might either limit the powers of such czar or to override the merit's czar's powers (and/or decisions) from time to time.
The thing about two tiered. I doubt that can be resolved. It is a feature rather than a bug. Theymos want's two tiered since the merit system seems to be an attempt to disempower spammers and/or other ways that members might be abusive of the forum. The merit system allows a kind of way to make it more difficult for some members to get ahead.... Of course, maybe there is more than just a two tiered system since there are merit sources, and then there are members who contribute good substance and regularly receive merits and there are members who hardly receive any merits... Of course, there are variations within these categories, since some members receive merits who might not deserve it and other members do not receive as many merits as they likely deserve.. Yet I still doubt that theymos is wanting to get into the weeds of trying to sort the deserving from the undeserving.
Another suggestion could be rotating merit source automatically on a monthly basis similar to manner DT rotation takes place, is another idea that could be implemented. It would be better and more inclusive to the two-tier merit source system currently in place. A merit czar could be overlooking how these rotated merit source are giving merits and hold them to account. If merit abuse collusion is discovered, the merit czar can permanently ban that member from being rotated on to merit source again.
Yep. Theymos likely does not want to get involved in that level of detail, and sure a merit czar could be helpful in regards to rotating merit sources and even excluding some members from being merit sources or adjusting their quantity of merit source based on issues that might come up through oversight or reports from other members. There could be some creative ways that might help more than they hurt, and surely having a merit czar would not be without its own potential risks... yet I would imagine that theymos has staff members (or already existing mods) in place in which he might trust their judgement more than others.. .. and yeah, he would not necessarily even need to make the merit czar public.. and you never know, he might already have a merit czar and did not say anything... even though I would think that most solutions that make sense does involve increasing the number of merit sources rather than decreasing them, so theymos's recent action to reduce the merit sources by 20 or something like that tends to show that it is not too likely that he has actually identified and/or employed the services of a merit czar.
As far as suggestions are concerned, the debate is there for those that want to contribute with suggestions/ideas and I hope they do.
Sometimes the parameter of the debate might need to be outlined better, which was part of the reason that I had suggested a specific thread that outlines the parameters of the discussion better, and surely it does not seem to be a serious discussion if there are thoughts and proposals to disable a whole thread (such as WO) from being able to participate in smerit distribution. Sure anything could be on the table in theory, but if there are attempts to be realistic, then some kinds of proposals don't really seem realistic, even if they are theoretically possible to carry out.