I have not read the entire thread and I look forward to doing so.

Yes it will.

I am a researcher and I focus on workplace culture among other things. My current estimation is the current wave of Ai will have radical impacts on the workforce. It will and has eliminated repetitive jobs. As some have mentioned, that is good because it also create certain jobs.

The problem is the workforce is not flexible enough to bend to the changes and the damage will be big. Time will tell how big.

What are the best places to find ICO ratings you can trust? So you can avoid the scams...

Better than just creating tokens with working products, they should create tokens that have people who have agreed to use them for their intended purposes. Buying a token because it has a working product is still just speculation if you don't plan to use that token to get that product.

You also have defined what a "working product" is. It is a beta version? It is phone App? It is a non-blockchain tool? Does it have to be on the blockchain?

In my opinion the biggest flaw in ICO buying is that people don't pay attention to the team. They buy the shine. The idea. Good ideas still fail through poor execution. Happens all the time. And THAT explains what is wrong with many ICOs. Buy the team, not the shine.

Did you read the study before posting? That report says 80% of ICOs never even intended to do what they said they would do. That just means 80% of the ICOs you see advertised are pure junk. That does not mean 80% of altcoins are pure junk.

No I don't, but call centers are pretty well managed and tightly controlled because they can be. Call centers allow the organization track so much of the work being done that it's easy to use metric based management techniques. Sales is another easy one, but call centers are better.


I think you are talking about price predictions? If so, then yes...if you don't say when the price will hit a number, you are not really being helpful.


SMART goals are just one tiny example of what I think should have been used to help reduce spam. My original question is not 'did they use SMART goals' it was 'does anyone know of any publicly communicated goals that even come close to fitting the description of the SMART goal system' and so far, the answer is no. No one seems to know of any publicly stated goals for the Merit system that even come close of the SMART goal system.

Do I have data/evidence that suggests that a formal goal setting method is more likely to improve an organization than an informal one...yes. Stated another way, normally a clearly thought through strategy is better than just guessing.

Do you need my help finding evidence as to how SMART goals are better than informal goals? If you do, please first read the reference I posted in the OP.

I think we have different native languages and so I don't want to be too critical of you here, but SMART goals are not exactly jargon but I can see your point. Please allow me to explain, there is a very specific reason why I used the SMART goal system to ask my question. I was debating a highly aggressive person in another post on this same topic and he kept accusing me of assumptions, and saying I was claiming expertise but not proving my expertise, blah, blah, blah. All of those were him just deflecting my questions because I found a flaw in his arguments. He seems to be in love with the Merit system where I am concerned about its unintended outcomes.

This post was my attempt to find a professional and courteous way to obtain an answer to my question. I'm just attempting to understand how much planning went into the Merit system.

From what I have seen offline in professional settings, when someone begins a major intervention like the Merit system that person will set goals. But all goals are not equally useful and the SMART goal system is probably the most famous and is a great one, so that is why I used it here. Maybe people do not set SMART goals and the problem with skipping that step is that you get lost months later trying to figure out "did we do it?" "should we fix X?" "are the complaints right? "are the praises right?" Without an agreed upon standard you end up with what is called "scope creep" now that IS jargon. But it means that your project all of sudden is now asked to fix a lot of things you were never supposed to be working on.

In part, if you don't use SMART goals or some other similar system, it becomes very difficult to defend your intervention when you hit difficulties if you have set no goals, or vague goals. And all interventions hit difficulties. That's just called life 

To me, the Merit system is a screening system. It is a method to screen who should and should not rank up. I don't know the goals. It's clear that those goals, if set, were not publicized. Knowing what I know about how people normally implement interventions like this one, seeing the results, seeing the stats, reading the posts, I am pretty sure the Merit system did not achieve what they wanted it to. Since February, I have been warning that the Merit system would likely not achieve it's goals. But I have no way to be sure because I can't find any public goals.

Here is where I first warned of the problems I was seeing: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30489106#msg30489106 (2/17/2018)

Here is an example of how I don't think the Merit system is NOT working as planned: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg41158125#msg41158125 This post shows the numbers of people who have been able to rank up during the new system starting with the Full Member level. The number of people who have ranked up is tiny!

The Merit system is a screening system and they set the standards way too high. If you are familiar at all with medical school screening process, they too set the standards way too high. And in the US we have a nursing shortage as a result. No one wins when that happens.

Yes it was and from what I've seen, people who support the merit system by praising it, get merit.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856897#msg28856897
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28857034#msg28857034
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28879939#msg28879939
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28857876#msg28857876
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28858487#msg28858487

You get the idea.

Had his English been better, and maybe if in his language was a little less cult-like, someone probably would have given him merit for it.

I'm curious about this  statement "or you have brought up opinions which have already been discussed a million times this week." Is your expectation that posters research previous posts to make sure they are not duplicating thoughts? If that's the case, this forum would need a better system of cataloging records because some of this topics get hundreds of pages of posts.

It's not an incentive system. There are four ways to change behavior. Positive Reinforcement and Negative Reinforcement [these both encourage the behavior], Positive Punishment and Negative Punishment [these both discourage the behavior].

The merit system falls under negative punishment. The result of negative reinforcement is the decreasing of some behavior. Negative punishment is when you take away something good that the person wants in order to stop the behavior you don't want. But it really doesn't matter what you intend, if you take away something good people will stop doing what they think led to the loss of what they liked.

Walk up to your child and tell the child 'no more TV for a week' and the child will ask why, complain, and try to figure out what the child did to deserve this and what the child can do next time to maintain access to the TV.

That's called negative punishment. It's been a documented concept since Pavlov/Skinner and is sometimes called Classical Conditioning.

You are calling it an incentive system because you think 'we give merit for good behavior' but the big picture is, BitcoinTalk took away ranking based on activity alone and has now made it harder to rank up with ambiguous rules and a liquidity problem and really really high merit requirements for ranking up. That's almost the same as freezing ranking up. It's not exactly freezing, but it close.

The merit system will be seen as punishment for anyone who wants to rank up and has been involved in this community for over 10 months. I don't know their reasons for wanting it, but anyone who wants to rank up, and has been around for a few month prior to this change, after this merit system came out has been punished. Again, using the formal term of punishment in the sense of behavioral conditioning. I know how people on here like to debate about the meaning of words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment_(psychology)#Negative

 

Well you quoted me, but mistook me for the OP. Though I'm going to reply to your reply to me where you said "While its noble to want to get merit for deserving posts based on your own understanding, there is no unified parameter on what a deserving posts should be because we all have different things we attach values."

That right there is the problem with the merit system. It was built under a false assumption (probably several). That essentially, all new people must be screened by all senior people and that all senior people would know who deserve merit and therefore are the best way to screen all new people. Actually, as it turns out, research shows that untrained judges are really bad at being fair. Humans are humans.

As one of the other respondents said, people have now become obsessed with merit. Just one more unintended consequence of the design flaws.

They don't like it when you beg, even perhaps when you are begging on behalf of others.

But I like your post and it's a great idea. People should collect merit worth posts and add them to this thread because someone should call them out. So what if you don't have merit points to give. That system doesn't work (as your post clearly demonstrates). Perhaps they need some sort of nomination process so older accounts can have some help. These are just people who didn't used to have to be involved at all in rankings and are now now for some reason expected to be rank granters of sorts and judges of post quality. Sucks for them. Who says that (1) want that role or (2) are good at it?

I like your post. I would give you merit for it, but I barley have any. But again, be aware...they are pretty touchy about merit and don't like people making suggestions like yours - from what I've seen.

And as a side, the best way to get merit seems to be to praise the merit system, not criticize it.

Thanks everyone. But it looks like there have not been any publicly released SMART goals that the Merit system was intended to achieve.

If you are not familiar with S.M.A.R.T. goals here is a post form MIT about them (http://hrweb.mit.edu/performance-development/goal-setting-developmental-planning/smart-goals).

S.M.A.R.T. goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

If anyone runs across any, I would love to read them. Thanks again 

That's awesome. Thank you. I think that's a great post, but that's not what I meant  

I'm literally looking for something that would look like this:

The Merit system will decrease spam by XX% within XX months after being launched.

That is a SMART goal because it is:

Specific. It says what the system will do, specifically, it does not say "help the community" which would be too vague to be considered a SMART goal.
Measurable. The percentage set becomes the standard by which success is achieved.
Achievable. A XX% reduction in spam is more achievable able than say the elimination of spam which is unrealistic.
Relevant. Reducing spam as you pointed out is relevant to the community and a tangible reduction would be helpful.
Time-bound. The number of months sets a countdown. If the XX% reduction is achieved, but it takes twice as long as the time amount set, that's not success.

The point of SMART goals is to help ensure success. For example, you can check in on your progress each month and see if you are on track. So if the goal was something like a 10% reduction in spam within the first 6 months, you would expect to have more than a 5% reduction in spam by say month 4 and if not, something is wrong and you might not achieve your goal unless you make some changes.

But again, I love how your wrote that out. Thanks very much!  

Hi,

I'm interested in researching and learning more about the Merit/sMerit system that was rolled out here in BitcoinTalk earlier this year. I have read the OP (original post). But there are over 250 pages of replies to the original post announcing this change and I have not been able to find a particular piece of information, and I'm hoping someone can help.

I'm searching for any information on the stated goals/objectives of the Merit system. In particular, I'm looking for anything close to what would be considered "S.M.A.R.T. goals" for the Merit/sMerit system from authoritative sources.

If you are not familiar with S.M.A.R.T. goals here is a post form MIT about them (http://hrweb.mit.edu/performance-development/goal-setting-developmental-planning/smart-goals).

S.M.A.R.T. goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

Here is my question and I would greatly appreciate your assistance, if you would like to offer it:

Does anyone have any references to any stated S.M.A.R.T. goals or some metric based goals of the Merit/sMerit system that they can kindly post links to? I've asked some people about these who seemed knowledgeable and they could not produce them. I can't find these goals myself. If they exist, I would very much enjoy reading them.  I'm simply asking if anyone knows of written, metric based goals the Merit/sMerit system was intended to achieve that they can help me find and read myself.

Some examples might look like this...

-The Merit system will reduce spam by 10% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will increase the length of posts by 20% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will decrease the quantity of new user accounts by 30% within the first 6 months.

I have seen the vague descriptions that the Merit system's goals was to reduce spam and increase quality. Did anyone produce/set/post more specific goals (again, as described above)?

If anyone has seen any of these from an authoritative source, I would love to read more about them and read that post more thoroughly.

Thanks very much for reading this my fellow crypto community! Have a great day! 

Does anyone have any references to any stated metric based goals of this Merit system they can kindly post links to? I've been engaged with some people on thread who can't find them. I can't find them. If they exist, I would enjoy reading them. No one is required to reply to me and answer my question. I'm simply asking if anyone knows of written, metric based goals the Merit system was intended to achieve that they can help me find and read myself.

Some examples might look like this...

-The Merit system will reduce spam by 10% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will increase length of posts by 20% within the first 6 months.
-The Merit system will decrease the quantity of new user accounts by 30% within the first 6 months.

If anyone has seen any of these from an authoritative source, I would love to read more about them and read that post more thoroughly.

Thanks!

I am guessing you are saying they may have set vague goals? I really don't see an answer to my question. Since you are setting yourself up as some sort of Merit system defense counsel, and you don't know what metric based goals they set, it seems they may not have set any. If that is the case, that's a botched job.

This is a really an important point as the likelihood of success or failure absolutely is impacted by goal setting. First, if they have no metric based goals, they will never be able to determine if they actually achieved their goals. Second, if they have no metric based goals, they will not know how to make course corrections (which are pretty much always needed because with people, things never go perfectly as planned).

When you launch some major intervention impacting thousands of people and don't have any metric based goals, you know what that is called? It is called guessing. If they are guessing, they are playing with fire.

Well here is some data I would like: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30722582#msg30722582 Is any of this public? If so, can you please let me know how to access it? Thanks.

Actually, let me explain what expertise is...expertise is not when Person A says to another Person B, here are the five reasons why you should do X. Expertise is actually when Person A has so much knowledge and understanding that they are able to calculate the situation in their head and recommend to Person B you should do X.

I think what you would like is for me to be a lawyer, or a teacher. I'm neither. And yet, my opinions are still valid and I am indeed an expert in the area of organizational interventions. Which for some reason really bothers you.

BTW, since you don't believe anything I say, look up the chess champions of the world and how they are successful. It's pattern recognition, not step by step thinking. Experts think in patterns, not in pieces. Skills acquisition come through pieces, with teachers (like I mentioned above).

But thanks for reading. It's nice to know someone is still here.

I sure I hope I did all of these inline quotes right. I’m not good at that. Well I finally got this to work, the spacing is horrible, but I'm posting it.

It is a figure of speech. It’s a form of communication to get the person’s attention on the most important point which it what you say next. It is not meant to be taken literally as if this is a court of law.
Well I address this already, but your conclusions are based on faulty assumptions. Try again.

Wishful? Man, you are assuming the wrong sentiment. I’m concerned for Bitcointalk. If I were the one who recommended, designed, and implemented the Merit system…as a professional in my industry I would say I failed. So yes, the Merit system appears to be a botched job from my perspective. Perhaps I have too high of standards, but I would give it a C- maybe a D+, not an F, but anything short of a B+ in my line of work I would call a failure because less than a B+ means you didn’t know what you were doing.



I didn’t know activity was factored in. Thanks for correcting me.
What does this mean? “there has been a dialectic process.”
That could mean too many things for me to guess.
A bunch of assumptions there. But let me ask you to assume something real quick…do you believe they set metric based goals that they have been assessing all along and seeing how things are going? Meaning, they said We expect X% of Y Account will do Z 20% more often after the deployment of Merit? That’s how I would have managed this.

Well, as hard as Merit is to get, for the people without it, 2 is pretty reasonable and these current target are the real comedy. Again. Botched job.

Good point, but realize that random distributions on small amounts would be so widely spread out that companies could not reliably bank on randomly getting Merit. But I failed to say something like 5% random distribution. Such a small amount would not be something business could trust to make money but would add liquidity to the system and be a small hedge against the current system potential (is that better?) failure.
I was not aware activity was considered. I didn’t see that in the explanation documents. But if that was the case, than great.


Really?

Can you be more specific about which presumptions I’ve gotten wrong? I don’t see those pointed out, just a bunch of finger pointing about my word choice and your guessing about what I’m thinking and BTW, you are now guessing at what theymos is thinking – I’m seeing a pattern.

Yes. I am Al Gore. I both invented and own the Internet. Let me just look that up for you real quick and I will report back. Oh here it is…it says…why do you think I would have access to that data. Hmmm. Does that answer your question?


You are confusing the word “status” with “credibility.” Evidence of years of experience is a perfectly reasonable way to determine one’s credibility.


As I’ve said in many other posts, data will clearly answer these questions. If you happen to have this data that you somehow believe is easy to come by…send it my way.
“then that could help you to become more convincing and perhaps even cause some members to send some merits in your direction.” … thank you. You have given me hope in a dark dark world that one day I too can have Merit points. Look…this is not about me. This is not about you. This is about a system that impacts thousands of people day. And although you don’t value my education, years of experience, doesn’t matter. People are people. You build a barrier and people go away. That’s what the masses do. They act like water and erosion. They find the path of least resistance.


Because you don’t actually care what I have to say. That much is clear. You just didn’t like me poking at some system that granted you and your friends all this new power. I get it. People love power and they fear the loss of it.
Yes…but how did the higher ranking member get there? They started out with no rank. So, by slamming the door to new people, this system has effectively stop accepting immigrant. It’s a walled off country. A VERY extreme solution to the spam problem. Just turn off email from anyone without a pre-approved account. I’ve done that. I got so much spam to one address I flipped the switch. It’s all spam unless I whitelist it. I’ve missed some important emails that way on that account.
It’s not about me. I didn’t write a letter to the BitcoinTalk Elders saying “please grant me Merit” I’m just saying what I’m seeing because I care.
 You are still assuming a lot. The real problem is unlike your assumption that a viable option is to just wait and see, I am sure that people are filling finding answer to their questions in Telegram, on Twitter, on Reddit, and Medium and all the other sources because that’s what the barrier has done. It’s given more power to the alternative information sources. Time is not on BitcoinTalk’s side with this issue. But I guess we will just have to wait and see – fine by you, not fine by me.

So...I'm not really skilled at all the inline responses thing on here, but I will figure it out because that is the most detailed passionate response I think I've ever received on here and so, it deserves a detailed response. Plus I'm interested in this topic.

The short response to the theme of your more finger pointing questions/comments about me personally, my ideas, maybe whatever you were doing with all that, like trying to dismiss my ideas? - my short response to that is I would suggest you read all of my posts on this topic if you really want to critique me and my ideas, which you seem interested in doing so here they are...

These are in chronical order and a handful are not really that valuable. But some are pretty detailed and specific.

The first on was on 2/14/2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30489106#msg30489106
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30489361#msg30489361
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30489498#msg30489498
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30490238#msg30490238
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30490314#msg30490314
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30641476#msg30641476
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30722292#msg30722292
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg30722582#msg30722582
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg32368333#msg32368333
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg32368964#msg32368964
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg39184630#msg39184630
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg40901438#msg40901438

I would also like to say that just because I've been predicting the (since failure is too strong of a word for you) lack of great success in the Merit system deployment....just because I've been predicting that for months does not also mean "then likely you are neither attempting to look at the matter objectively..." Really? Or...maybe I know what I'm talking about.

And to the rest of your statement "...or to attempt to see how matters play out." Yes...I don't think experimenting with BitcoinTalk is a good idea to just let play out. That's how you destroy something like BitcoinTalk. So I would absolutely not recommend the wait and see approach. I think enough data is there today. I think enough was there day 30...see my first post.

You brought up data, asked me to support my assertions with data. Man, I would love to! Give me access to the data and I will give you analysis that shows what is wrong with this Merit system (regardless of if that supports my preconceived ideas)...again, see my earlier posts. I told whomever reads these, where to look, and even what this or that analysis result would indicate. I don't know what data they track on here or who has access, but there are a lot of smart Tech people involved here and I'm just assuming access to data for the people touching the servers is not a problem.

Again...I would be happy to run the analysis if anyone cared enough to let me have access to the type of data I would need. But believing that would happen is ridiculous.

I'm not sure what you have against people with professional industry training or years of experience who are trying to apply those skills/experience to helping the crypto world, but that's 100% what I am attempting to do with my many, many posts above.