I sent theymos a PM about (a differently named and more elaborate version of) this idea about a year ago. I don't recall getting a response. In fact, most of the reason I created this topic is because I thought, "I'm getting ready to move on, and I think that this idea is good enough to preserve, so I better make a post about it."

I had a recent exchange with him about this thread, and I think he'll leave some thoughts here when he finds the time.

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I think I've said everything I can usefully say about this idea with the four posts that I've already made in this topic, here, here, here, and here). Honestly, I don't see how someone could read those four posts and still be confused about what's being proposed, but, communication is hard and I know that I'm not the easiest person to understand, so I'll try to wrap this whole thing up into one last attempt to explain this idea...

Firstly, I've seen some persistent confusion around whether or not this system might de-rank people or mess with their merit balance while they're away from the forum. It won't. If they're not making posts, then it can't do anything to their account.

Secondly, I've seen some confusion around people thinking that they'll somehow be penalized if they don't receive merit within ten posts. That's not how it works:


When I wrote the above (in the OP), I picked the words carefully, and things like in effect, on average, and slowly drifting are important cues that, in the general case, nothing bad is going to happen if you write ten posts without receiving any merit (I say in the general case because there will be situations, at least according to what's described in the OP, where you happen to have exactly the amount of merit needed for your jr-member-or-higher rank, and you then happen to make exactly ten posts at a cost of 0.1 merit per post without receiving any merit back for either those posts or any of your previous posts, which will mean that your "carry" balance has then reached the precise point of causing you to drop down one level in rank).

So, the system as proposed already handles the above two points of concern. That is:

(1) You can post 50 times a day, or twice a year, or once a decade, it's fine: You're not expected (or even encouraged) to try to post according to any specific schedule.

(2) You can earn merit either regularly or irregularly, in small amounts or in large amounts, for new posts or for old posts, it's fine: You're not expected (or even encouraged) to try to earn merit according to any specific schedule.

What you are expected to do (and only if you care about maintaining or growing your rank) is to aim for a long-term merit:post ratio of at least 1:10 (and by that I mean a true merit:post ratio of at least 1:10, not a cheeseball ratio accomplished by deleting your posts, which, BTW, will not confuse the system that I'm proposing).

I also feel like it's important to understand the "framework" that's being proposed. The main idea contained in the OP (and refined in later posts) is the idea that merit could be "spendable" (ordinary merit, I mean, not sMerit, obviously). And when I say "spendable", I mean spendable in a partially non-destructive way, as in, in a way that doesn't make it simply disappear once it's been spent (after all, merit is hard-won for many people, including myself). So, when you "spend" (some amount of) your merit, the idea is that it gets converted into a different form called "carry". Once merit has been converted into carry, it loses its utility and can't be spent again. For a really silly example, and one that's actually come up before as an April Fools idea, imagine that Bitcointalk had a cool little "shop" where you could buy cosmetic items for your profile. You've got, let's say, 2000 merit, and you see something special in the shop that you have to have, like maybe a specific song that will play when people look at your profile. The song costs 100 merit. You buy it. Now you have 1900 merit left to spend and 100 carry (aka spent merit). Then you see something else you want, like maybe a feature that allows you to have an animated avatar. The animated avatar feature costs 500 merit. You buy it. Now you have 1400 merit left to spend and 600 carry. And so on. Notice that what's going on here is that you have two balances, one that represents your unspent merit, and one that represents your spent merit. If you add your unspent balance to your spent balance then you'll have your total merit (in the preceding example, the sum is, at every point, 2000).

Now, if you understand the above paragraph then you have everything you need to understand this whole idea. If $merit represents the sum over the ledger-like table that records merit transactions (a database table that already exists), and $carry represents the sum over the ledger-like table that records carry transactions (a database table that I'm proposing), then your unspent merit balance is $merit - floor($carry), and your spent merit balance is floor($carry) (and your total merit balance is just $merit). Let's call your unspent merit balance your UMB, your spent merit balance your SMB, and your total merit balance your TMB. What I'm saying in the OP is that I think it would generally raise the quality of people's posts if their rank depended on their UMB instead of their TMB and if there was a small-but-not-inconsequential payment required to post (unless, as I explained later in the thread, that person has no merit left to spend, in which case they'll effectively be allowed to post "for free").

The questions that need to be answered within this framework (for now) are:

(1) How much merit should it cost to make a post?

(2) How should this UMB vs. SMB vs. TMB stuff be displayed?

My current answer to (1) is: I think 0.1 merit is a reasonable starting point (though, if you read my other posts, you'll see that I also think it's perhaps wise to make things easier for accounts that haven't yet reached "Full Member"). The specific amount of merit that you routinely "pay" to make a post has the effect of establishing the long-term merit:post ratio that, if you care about maintaining or growing your rank, you should aim to reach or exceed. I can't think of any active users that have a merit:post ratio of less than 1:10 (as in, their merit balance divided by their post count is less than 0.1) that I also think can't improve and that I also think would be generally missed if they got frustrated by this system and left Bitcointalk. My concern with setting this value to something very low/forgiving is that this system would then end up making very little difference to the problem that it's attempting to "move the needle" on (which is, basically, mindless/low-effort posting).

My current answer to (2) is: I think the TMB should be displayed next to posts/PMs (that is, like it is currently, so, change nothing in terms of how your merit balance is displayed away from your profile page). I think this will have the effect of making people feel like the merit that they've earned (or been airdropped) still exists in its original form and that they should still be proud of their total balance. On the profile page, I think it should display your TMB while your SMB is zero, otherwise it should display something like "UMB (+SMB)" (which, remember, sums to your TMB, so it's just a slightly more informative way of showing the same thing that it currently shows). For example, let's say that this system has been in effect for a few years and someone has 4000 activity and 1200 merit. When you encounter their posts/PMs and look below their name, those are the metrics you'll see. But, you might also notice something odd, and think, "Hero Member? How can that be? They have enough activity and merit to be a Legendary, so what's going on?", and then when you navigate to their profile page you see that next to "Merit:" it says "900 (+300)". That should be read as, "This account has received 1200 merits, 900 of which remain unspent, and 300 of which have been spent and lost their utility." (And the only change that profile scrapers will have to make is to maybe use a global regex like \d+ and mind the match count. If there's one match, then turn it into an integer and use it as is. If there are two matches, then turn each one into an integer and use the sum. If there are no matches, or more than two, then log an error.)

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I've been working on this post for a few days, and I'm now out of energy to keep re-writing it, but, I do want to maybe revise my above answer to (2). What if, even on the profile page, your TMB was displayed (so, leave it the way it is, basically), and the "UMB (+SMB)" thing only appeared as a tooltip (that is, it was put into a title attribute on the td that contains your merit balance)? That way, it really would feel like your merit balance isn't being "messed with" by this system.

For example, here are my own current metrics:



Now, imagine that I never received another merit and that I made 3000 posts over the next 1000 days. Then my metrics might look like:



And, if you hovered over (or near to) my merit balance, you'd see: