I did some research last couple of days.

What I noticed so far is large number of accounts which are posting farming as usual and then all of sudden they post very constructive post just to receive merit, often paraphrasing articles and/or just copying articles here.

On the other hand, it is not really hard to post 50 short lines in off topic or games and rounds and after that to post 10 high quality posts at right place and point them to right people.
I don't think current system will decrease number of farming accounts, spam or account sales and honestly I think 10 merits to rank up to member rank is too low, because people will just create hundred accounts, do exactly what I said above and abuse signature/bounty campaigns, giveaways etc.

For every 10 Smerits received, junior member can easily send 5 Smerits to other account, from that account 2 Smerit to third account and so on - and repeat with many accounts.

So, in my honest opinion this system need little improvement:

Rank	Required activity	Required merit
Jr Member	30	0
Member	60	50
Full Member	120	150
Sr. Member	240	300
Hero Member	480	550
Legendary	Random in the range 775-1030	1050

Raising merit requirement by 50 points will make difference and should solve most "merit" issues, account farming, account sales etc(or at least make them so hard that people will give up doing it) and won't affect on number of merits required for full-hero member to rank up because older users will need the same amount of Smerit to rank up(members will need 100 SMP*, full members 150 SMP, senior member 250 SMP and hero 500 SMP) and it will actually force "new users" to write better posts from first day, which isn't the case at the moment.

However, number of Smerits given to all members should remain the same as it is now, but i guess this is irrelevant because we all already received smerits.

*SMP - sMerit points

It is true that in this way you will make it difficult for all account farmers, but for ordinary users, achieving more merit points will be practically impossible and then the entire ranking system loses meaning.

That's why when you see a suspicious account you can always check their previous posts and find their true intentions. I've seen some good campaign managers do it. Shitposters won't keep pretending forever. At some point they will start doing their thing again.


It's one of the hacked accounts.
All posts in Chinese until September 19, 2014. Then we have a 3 year break in which time we had that data leak and someone grabbed it, sold and suddenly since August 11, 2017 it's running under new, English speaking management.  

Ah, that makes sense then.

I guess I should give him some merit. ROFL

If you go through the response made in this thread, all your doubts will go away. But you want to be spoon fed. Right ?

I once found a conversation that essentially, they will set up a telegram group whose purpose is to exchange Smerit they have

and I realize that spammers still have a cunning way to raise their rank
if so whether this merit point system will be effective ?

The idea of merit is really cool. I believe that it is better to have it like it is now then not to have it at all . However, I would like to point out some disadvantages that possess the current system:

1) Forum participants are not motivated to give merit to good posts .
I see a lot of valuable posts which are not marked with merit. And I have the same experience: as a translator I’ve started around 40 topics (ANNs translations) which by definition are valuable posts. Moreover, I provide everyday a lot of updates and news to those ANN (not all, but at least some part of them must be valuable to readers!). You know what?! I haven’t got a single merit point!!!!

Solution: forum members must be motivated to give merits to quality posts. For instance, if member merits some posts he will receive back a share (let say 0.1 merit) from another merits given to that post by another members after his merit. So people are motivated to become good moderators and they receive back merit for their job! Post with high quality of merits must be moderated manually (just for the case someone will try to use this mechanism for merit redistribution).

2) Disproportion of required merit points for some ranks.
Current merit system is 0 – 10 – 100 – 250 – 500 - 1000
Initial activity system was 30 – 60 – 120 – 240 – 480 – 775+
Comparing these numbers, I see some inconsistency of rating system and namely:

A)   Merits are harder to get than activity but you need more merit points than activity to get the next rank!
B)   Activity system looks quite logical as to get the next rank you need to double your current rank activity. But merit system made a gap between Member and the Full Member as you need to increase merit points in 10 times!!!
C)   To become Jr. Member you need activities but you don’t need merits. Why?

Solution: I assume that under condition that forum users are motivated to give merits for good posts the chance to get merit writing a quality post will rise from 0,01% (which I believe is now) to 10%. So following this assumption, I would offer merit system as follows:
3 – 6 – 12 – 24 – 48 – 96 (from J. Member to Legendary)

3) Unfair starting position of merit points for different rank.
Let assume that some Hero gained his status just posting simple posts. And to become a Hero under new conditions (if it is at all possible) will be much harder. So the past Hero can’t be compared with future Hero. This is true to all other ranks.
Solution: Introduce de-rank procedure. For instance if “past” Hero gains not enough merits for some period of time it will must be de-ranked to previous rank (Sr. Member). This is true to all other ranks.

That's true.  I don't get any sort of reward for giving people merit points--but the thing is is that I like this forum and want to reward people who put in some effort in their posts.  That's the whole reason I spent my time giving negative feedback to shitposters.  So I will certainly give out some merit points when I see people writing good things, and I know other senior members feel likewise. 

Yes, this whole system makes it harder for people to rank up, but that's the point.  And to people who are put off by this:  Why is it so damn important that you rank up?  My guess is that the only reason you're concerned is so that you can earn more money.  Historically, that's been a very bad reason to be here. 

The people who are most concerned about the money have turned out to be the worst posters.

First of all.  Yes, I think that there is a preference for members to be honest, and it is not easy to gage honesty over the internet, except maybe with the passage of time - or  maybe if given some responsibility or time to admit wrongdoing and things like that.  So, there may be a certain level of assumption that posters are being honest, until there is evidence that they are not... And, then when there is a system of dishonesty that develops, then the new presumption might unfairly become that newbies are dishonest, until they are proven otherwise.  So yeah, you have problematic aspects of your account, and doubtful that anyone is against the buying/selling of legitimate accounts, but if they are stolen, then seems that caveat emptor would apply.. which means you are likely a loser if there is any decent level of evidence that your account was not acquired legitimately.





I doubt that there is much of any recourse for you if it is determined that the account was not legitimately transferred.




I think almost anyone agrees about that, except perhaps folks who either engage in crime or endorse it or people with very poor logic skills.



I don't know if that is a paradox, or just a kind of attempt at rationalization of your likely bad situation.. seemingly logical to lose the account.




I doubt that account trading, farming or the ability to sell is a new topic.  I have seen older post on the topic, so difficult to argue that it is some kind of new phenomenon.

I recall that I lost access to my account twice.  Once was my own fault to screw up my method of signing in, and my account got frozen for nearly a month; however, another time, my account was taken over by a hacker. 

Having my account taken over by a hacker caused me to recognize the value of my account and its history, so I did jump through several hoops, and fairly promptly to get access to my account back.  Sometimes, it can take several weeks or longer before legitimate owners might have realized that there account had been compromised, or what to do about such compromised situation.  Further, I imagine that it can be a fairly time-consuming and tedious activity for forum administrators to be returning legitimate access (and verifying) actual owners during seemingly ongoing hacking situations.

I think that I already said as much as I want to say on the topic.  Ultimately it is up to the administrators what to do with your account, and they would likely have access to information that I don't have and I don't know if you have such information, either.



Hacking accounts has to do with ownership claims rather than being a merit system specific topic.    Yet, if merit is given to an account prior to knowing whether there are hacking and/or ownership disputes, then those kinds of questions have been raised in the context of merit, fair merit distribution, etc.



I don't know how you would have missed the topic, because it was raised in light of your own account and in the context of your posting in this thread.



Again, it is not a merit/rank specific topic, and it mostly seems to have come up in connection with your account.



You seem to be both repeating a point that you already made and NOT making such point very clearly.  Buying/selling accounts is not banned; however, if the account was stolen or compromised in that kind of way, then that seems to b where there becomes an issue.  Sure Theymos could change the policy regarding having more than one account and regarding selling/trading accounts, but that does not seem to be a change that is the works, currently... and really, given your current status and situation, I doubt that your input or suggestion would carry very much weight with Theymos were he deliberating changes in such policy/practices.