Interesting, I'm willing to support this idea. Like what I expected, this new requirement to rank up to Jr. Member will surely reduce spam but the possible merit abuse will increase. By looking at that Hero member's merit history, I have doubts that those accounts s/he merited were her/his alt accounts or maybe this Hero member was paid by those spammers. This would really be a serious problem and this deMerit is the possible way to stop these abusers. Well, merit abuse has just getting started, lets expect that there will be more abuse later or sooner.

In the other side, I'm not sure if theymos will approve such idea because having a deMerit source will make the rules too strict, those merit abusers that will be caught can received Negative Trust so they can still received enough punishment. Second, I don't know if this will be implemented immediately, we must wait for a couple of weeks or more before he made a decision about this and apply it, theymos is busy as we can see. But overall, I will provide my support to this idea or else things will get worse, we have now successfully achieved lesser spam forum all that left is those abusers to be gone.

The Merit sender has red trust already, so he doesn't care about more red trust. The Merit receivers can't be blamed, as they can never prove their innocence. That's why I think a demerit is the best solution.

Don't worry about it, I'm in no rush, and I have hundreds if not thousands of spammers helping me to convince theymos

Yes - I want to apply as a deMerit source too. I'm even happy to give some of my own merits back to become one.

Well, you were right. So after Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements , this idea would be somehow the last request we can ask theymos for now as these two will already solve most of the existing problems. Spammer are already decreasing and abusers will be punish  


Even though the amount of Merit required on each rank increased, there are still a lot of possible merit abuse out there and there will be more. Can you imagine giving 50 Merits to a garbage post? 50 Merits to a one liner posts? It's a total abuse. So deMerit is the best solution.

Not completely true - the 50 merits would have generted 25 sMerits, and if they were awarded in 2s, then they could be used to generate even more.

Not really required, IMO.

Jr. Members can't do much. People are focusing a little too much on a ranking system, and concentrating their time on something that's not very important. If I were you, I'd rather go play football or you know...go get yourself wasted.

I'm against the idea of demerits to be honest. However, the current problem we have is newbies actually making an effort to make 1 good quality post or a few until they receive their merit, and they'll then go back to spamming their bounty shit, and we'll be no better off. I would of personally preferred the merit requirement to be higher.

1 Merit is so easy to get and not sufficient to remove spammers.  Maybe 5 or 10 is good.

Alternatively, it would be good to require the merit on regular basis to reduce this tendency, e.g. requiring earning 1 Merit/month to stay at the current rank, which shouldn't be an obstacle for those who contribute to the forum regularly.  The opportunity of earning merit is monotonically increasing as time goes by, it would be natural to increase the requirement as time goes by.