If you had clicked on the links, you would have seen that the two threads were started by two different people: Jet Cash started the one on the Serious Discussion Board and this guy started the other one.

Does it show two things: if you want to get merit, stay away from anything relevant to newbie and the curent situation of the forum: quality vs quantity?
First thread, by a legendary ranked member, 7 merits awarded, more quality comments. Second thread, by a junior ranked, double number of views, 6 times number of replies while only a half time of existence and of course ratio of quality comment over total comments is lower.

Whether you like it or not, this is what happening in the forum. Meritocracy followers prefer quality; boycott newbies & junk posters. Low ranked members try hard to earn merit, rank up, increase posts or whatsoever and care more about quality.


Not sure what an advertiser would want between quality vs quantity but I lean on the latter. Only poor for theymos, he has to balance everything.

Well, here is what happen today in the Beginners and Help section as one guy decided to repost the sncc's security guide.
See this >

At least he mention the source in a way but still, I don't think this is acceptable, it's more like hunting for merit with someone else's work.
Seems like the new trend for merit hunters. If you translate it and post it the local section, with the permission of the author, it's OK.

The Beginners board probably gets a lot more traffic than the Serious discussion board. If you check out the replies on both of the threads you posted, you will probably find some merit worthy replies in the one that is posted in Beginners section as well, but as you said, there aren't a lot of people carrying sMerits in that section to Merit those posts because most of the times people ignore these threads assuming they will be full of crap, which is true most of the times. On the other side, some people who frequently visit Beginners & Help section and they too have sMerits on them but they probably don't care to reward the posts that at least deserve to be appreciated.

Actually he put it  up the original source reference so that everybody knows. I found some people deliberately put it at last even they are copying  and even forget to put it at last.

By the guidelines , all of them can be reported it is just quoting of source text (and with link) without any addition thought by OP.

Sometime good articles come in Beginner and help Board but they got lost with somebody asking a generic (may be dumb) questions and a rat race to answer that.  There are so many topic created in that board that lies in category of "Can be trashed " due to their duplicity but they do not got trashed.
Every Month I read same 75% duplicate  (approx) only 25% look brand new.

@JetCash
I think , if you repeat the same experiment with Serious Discussion Vs Ivory Tower, your result of views will be same.

That' s due to the difference between the "quality" in both boards. As you have pointed out, in the B&H board a lot of posts are made with the only goal of counting activity, either for signature or ranking purposes. Nevertheless, the Serious Discussion board-mostly- reflects a true preoccupation in engaging in the debate, by some good posting behaviour, for posts count isn't increasing on that one.

Now, it was truly interesting to me to see the stats last week and compare the merit ratio per number of post and board. We were debating about how the Serious Discussion one is the more merited per number of posts. (More info in that discussion: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/4730614.msg44566912#msg44566912)

Don' t you think that, probably, the people are just trying to copy the Serious Discussion board threads ideas because they've actually seen how merited they are? (I'm not talking about this example, but in general) Being the SD one the most merited per number of posts, then maybe a lost person can actually think that, by copying the idea and presenting it in a different board, it will be rewarded as well.

However the initial intention of the second poster was, the difference between the quality of the quotes is almost hilarious, but I am not surprised, to be honest. When joining a conversation with the only goal of gaining some activity, it is natural to see nonsense or non-worked replies. The information this very example provides us it quite obvious: when "just working" in here, the users are not willing to think, to elaborate a good speech or to work hard (time is money, I'm afraid!!!); when just "joining for pleasure" a conversation, it is obvious how the quality differs.
Besides, and despite the merit ratio wasn't your primordial approach to the matter, this example actually shows that the system is working pretty fine too: most elaborate posts, more merits. And that' s just fine.

Thanks for sharing such a great example. It illustrates really well some of the discussed problems in here.

Precisely, to invalidate the post count seems like the very best tool to avoid spammers. Maybe it should be implemented in meta too. 

^^

Why is your motivation tied to receiving Merits for your posts? If you come here to learn or have discussions shouldn't that be motivation enough?

That statement sounds like someone who hates their "Job" because they are not advancing  

Edit: After checking out your thread, no wonder it received no merit. You have helped in providing a glaring comparison in thread quality.