I'd love to know who those members are myself, as I'd be more than happy to give out some merits to them--assuming they're deserving of it by my standards, of course.  I think cryptohunter is looking for quality posts in the altcoin section specifically, and that's a monumental task if you're doing so by the old-school method of reading through threads.  There's so much garbage in all of those subsections that it's almost impossible to find lower-ranked members making good posts.  

Even in Economics, where I do the most reading, it's the Hero & Legendary members who always seem to take the time to write the most detailed and constructive posts.  I'm still trying to find Newbie-Full Member ranked people to give merits to, but most of them are just shitposters.

Cryptohunter IMO is just a cranky contrarian who thinks everyone's brain should function with the logic of a computer, and yet he has this obvious bleeding-heart liberal mentality which manifests itself in him constantly thinking there's some underdog situation on bitcointalk whereby a cabal of senior members are keeping the lower ranks down, like slaves on a 19th century Louisiana plantation.  I just don't see it that way, and I've put him on ignore.  I'm just tired of reading his posts, which are probably made with good intentions but are consistently way off the mark.

"received by" or "received from"? Kinda hard to follow what you're trying to say there. It's not like The Pharmacist can choose who to receive merit from.


Just like cryptohunter, you forgot to post a list of those "merit-deserving members". Multiple merit sources have stated that they would be happy to send merit to those deserving users.

You also seem to be thinking that merits sent within Meta or within top 200 prevent other users from being merited. That's not how it really works. Merits are not scarce. We are sending less than 50% of the total capacity per month.

He is half right and you all know it..

Look at the first 2 posters in this thread. Over 1k merits each wasted if you are of the mindset that merits are for ranking up. But if you believe that merits are just for "good posts" then hell yes these first 2 posters deserve them because they make a ton of great posts. They are well established and experienced members therefore are very capable of making a lot of good posts because they know how things work around here.

Then you look at the proteges of these well established members (police in training) and they get tons of merits because they are in the "circle jerk"..
But they make very good posts according to them, in line with them, so if merits are just for good posts that you agree with then it is rightful. Their posts are also highly visible to them.

I have seen expressed a few times that the merit system is good for holding lower ranks down and keeping legedary status elite. Basically to turn legendary status into a much higher achievement than it has been previously. I can understand this view too because under the old system legendary wasn't as elite as some deserved and their should have been another rank above legendary created for the eliter.

It's 6 of one or a half dozen of another depending on your viewpoint.

Take me for example.
I am going to have 1030 activity for legendary soon but nowhere near enough merits even though I am a damn good poster.
Why? Because I don't make thousands of posts like some people do and legendary truly is a more elite rank to achieve than it used to be. That's fine..
My views are also not completely in line with those mostly in control and I like to bust balls when people get too authoritarian and/or big egos.
I speak out more than I should if I was just trying to achieve whatever high rank/respect/trust/power.  (like this)

You can't tell me that good posters merits are keeping up with their activity. It just is not the case. Much less just decent posters.
Should it be the case? It's just opinion. In my opinion NO, legendary status should become harder to achieve than just the activity requirement but how much? It is up to everyone's opinion separately so it is mostly up to whatever the established members feel is right.

It's a numbers game.
The more posts you make, the more visible, the more inline with the views of those that have merits to give, the more merits you get.
I can put a lot of effort into a post and get no merits, then I say something short, sweet, and funny and get a bunch. But it seems the more posts you make the better chances you get.
Much younger accounts than me get way more merits because they make thousands of posts, 10X as many as I do, and are visible and agreeable to the right people.

Cryptohunter makes a LOT of posts and a lot of them are very big long posts that took a lot of effort but are not inline with the views of those who have merit to give, so he gets few. Not that he needs them for any reason anyway.

It just is what it is. If I was just out to get merits I'd make tons and tons of posts that most sources would agree with, but I don't because I don't care that much to not just chill and be me.

If you just think everyone that disagrees with you over merit distribution is wrong then you should take into account their perspective on the situation and why they might feel that way.
I think a lot of posters that make good posts but are interested in other, non-political, topics have genuine grievances if they think their merit should keep up with activity. But should merit keep up with activity if you are just a good poster? It is just opinion and mine is no not really, high ranks should be harder to achieve than they used to be.  

I have mostly given up on saving my smerits for people that need to rank up and have been giving more to posts that I think are good and make good posts that I agree with..
I'm baaaadd too.. (though I did rank up some guy just now)

Just consider that everyone doesn't come from the same perspective as you and doesn't have the same opinions all the time and that doesn't mean they are wrong because their really is no factual right. This isn't math..

I don’t know if it was suggested earlier. However merit sources can create a topic in Meta and offer to forum users, who believe that their post deserves a merit but was deprived of attention, to provide links to their texts with a small explanation comments.

I definitely don't feel pressured, and I didn't even ask to be a merit source to begin with. 

I still haven't figured out how the source merits get replenished.  It seems like I'm chronically out of them, and if it weren't for Foxpup giving me all those merits (I still can't figure out why he's given me so many), I wouldn't have been able to disperse as many as I have been.  Right now I'm out of source sMerits and earned sMerits.  Fortunately I did find a Jr. Member in the Economics section who wrote a fairly thoughtful post that I merited, but I think I'd do a better job as a merit source if I got more source merits.  Then I might be able to give out 5 at a time or something like that.  As it stands, there's no way I could do that with what I've got.

That's it, I've had enough of this bullshit. I defy you to find a single post of yours that I have merited that didn't deserve to be. I suspect what you really mean is, you can't figure out why nobody else is giving you so many merits, and I believe it's because you're Legendary and Legendaries (in other people's minds) don't deserve merits because they can't rank up. Of course, if people did give more merit to Legendaries, cryptohunter would be even more mad, but as it is, he just gets to be mad at me. Specifically me; he keeps talking about me even after I've stopped responding to his nonsense. I don't know what his problem is.

We know all about that many quality post have unmerited. There is few reason involved. I can see no one replied yet there. It's fine if any quality poster he find. But I don't think so he will find much.

Reason behind unmerited quality post;

1. Post in wrong board. Wrong board means even someone make quality post on like Altcoin Discussion board then he might missed merit due to over spam. Because quality post will not bump many time, no one will reply on it. So thread will go to bottom. Even merit source or merit holder visits board he will not find that post. On the other hand few merit source and merit holder ignored few board then how they will spend merit on that board.

2. Reply on mega thread. Who will bother to read mega thread reply? At least not I am. So even there is quality post how we will hunt it.

3. Airdrop merit holder. We can say them merit HODLER. Means they have HODL merit. I don't know why they don't want to spend merit. Most likely they don't know how hard to earn merit.

There are few more reason but mentioned above reason is main.

We can't compare with first 2 poster. They have mostly merited for appreciation, not only for good post. So forget about that user. Merit deserve on post, not a person. I already describe above why few quality post are unmerited.

Actually I am encourage to send merit to good poster especially newbie or low rank. Even I spend time to find them but rarely I found them. But what can I do if found best post from higher rank  . Also merited them.

I don't think it'd work out. I'm already in a three-way with Moloch (58% of his merit was sent by me alone) and gmaxwell (37%), and like most foxes I only have so many holes available.

Like cryptohunter, you're looking at it the wrong way. It makes perfect sense that the most merited users have the most Merit to give, and since they give it to good posts, it often ends up with the same people.

To stay with your example, let's get some more data on The Pharmacist:
As you can see, he's had Merit transactions with hundreds of people. It's no surprise that most of them don't have many sMerits to send, which leads to the obivous result that most of his Merit came from a small group of users.

And some more data:

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User The Pharmacist (full history)

• Received a total of 1023 Merit up to last Friday.
• Received 27 Merit (2.63%) for 5 (0.07%) of 7020 posts created before the introduction of Merit (0.0038 Merit per old post).
• Received 978 Merit (95.60%) for 406 (15.71%) of 2583 posts created after the introduction of Merit (0.3786 Merit per new post).
• Received 18 Merit (1.75%) for posts that are now deleted.

---

Again: you're looking at this the wrong way. Instead of looking where the Merit came from, you should look at the post it was sent to. Obviously there's some abuse, but I'm pretty sure most of the Top Receivers received it for legit good posts. Why would it matter who gave it, if the post deserves it?
I've merited your post, not because I agree, but because it's worth reading and you're not a spammer.

I'll just respond to this part: that's the wrong mindset Theymos made it very clear we should try to merit great posts, and later backed it down a bit to "good posts".
Merit is only wasted when it is given to bad posts, or spammers.

This is what theymos told me:
The bug is fixed, but I'm pretty sure I could get a larger source amount if I would ask for it. The only reason I haven't asked yet is because I still have 300+ sMerits left. I now manage to keep my source empty most of the time, and I'm slowly eating through my other stash.
Merit isn't scarce. But if a user is limited in sMerit, by all means: don't send it to the Legendary Top Merit Receivers, but find a low ranking user who deserves it. Merit was introduced to stop account farming spammers, and this forum needs new real users to survive in the long run.
According to [TOP-200] Members who support newbies - Thanks! , I've given 41 Newbies their first Merit. I have no intention of keeping Legendary status an elite thing, I was in one of the highest paying signature campaigns before Merit existed, and I care enough about this forum to want to help improve it.
But I can't deny Merit has been much better for me than I ever would have thought! When it was introduced, I didn't quickly rise up to the Top merited users, that took a lot of effort.

Some stats:

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User eddie13 (full history)

• Received a total of 191 Merit up to last Friday.
• Received 1 Merit (0.52%) for 1 (0.07%) of 1352 posts created before the introduction of Merit (0.0007 Merit per old post).
• Received 190 Merit (99.47%) for 65 (17.01%) of 382 posts created after the introduction of Merit (0.4973 Merit per new post).
• Received 0 Merit for posts that are now deleted.

---

I like using the "Merit per post" and "percentage of posts merited" for comparing post quality excluding the effect of the number of posts made by a user. Mine is very close to The Pharmacist. SaltySpitoon, nullius and DdmrDdmr have much higher numbers. Gmaxwell holds the record as far as I know. You (eddie13) are above The Pharmacist and me, which indeed supports your claim of being a good poster, without enough posts to quickly rank up.

True, I've seen you around, and merited you a few times. I try to make it a point to also merit good posts without agreeing, but it's always on my mind that my Merit can be seen as an endorsement for that post.

That's a very good thing!

Try sarcasm, that's the real money Merit maker
Seriously though, you're right. I find it hard to predict which of my posts will receive Merit.

I don't mind disagreeing with cryptohunter. What made me put him on ignore is that he keeps saying the same thing in many different threads. He does make long posts indeed, which makes it a lot of effort to read too. If they're all unique I don't mind, but after reading the same thing ten or more times, I give up.

I think theymos would disagree

I don't even mind bending facts a bit, that can easily be disproven. Just not if it keeps coming back.
I'd like to take cryptohunter off ignore again if he (she?) stops repeating the same thing. Now I feel like I'm repeating myself too

I've made this suggestion a few times to users, without much success.

I think my source sMerit is 200 now, per month. I make it a point to keep it as low as possibe, but I also try to Merit as many different posts and users as possible.
If you're not a Merit source yet, I think you should apply!

Ask theymos, see if he agrees.

The complaint stems from jealousy and a lack of own constructive opinions worth "meriting". This is the classic "everyone else is to blame except me" nonsense. Do people not have something better to do than to create "useful statistics" which only result in TV-like drama regarding who got a lot of useless points from who?

A lot of big posts full of garbage and horrible opinions. A TMAN style "insert random swearing" response to a nonsensical thread is in most cases more worthy of merit.

---

I need to look up who the top givers in these circles are. I'll only read their posts from now on (placing everyone else I see on ignore). Since I see nothing else, meriting their objectively constructive posts is proper use of the merit system. Am I doing this right?

I'm certain that you have a dinner invite planned for me somewhere down the road. Why else would you be showering me with all these merits? Quite classy I must say.