I fully understand and appreciate the concept of the Merit system.
But i also think that it's going to hinder the genuine people that post in threads that will not get merited because people either don't want to merit or they just cannot be bothered to use the system like that. which then in turn will take them an age to rank up.
No, it is not going to do that.
If the user reading your post doesn't feel like clicking two times to give you a merit point it simply means your post is not worth it.
would it not be more beneficial to add like/dislike buttons or potentially a up/down voting buttons that can then rank members up or down?
Unlimited votes and newbie accounts having the power to vote would just lead to abuse.
We don't have enough moderators to fight spam, who is going to control all the votes?
So only new users don't have any merit points and have to earn them? Pre-existing members are fine? If I send merit points will they come off my current 500?
I think Lutpin has explained this at least one hundred times
You have Merits, those you cannot send.
You also have sMerits, those you can only send, they have no other purpose.
When someone gives Merit to you they lose sMerit of the amount transfered and you gain Merit as well as sMerit (which in case you can send again).
Example: Should I send 10 Merit to you for a post, my sMerit would decrease by 10.
Your Merit would increase by 10 and your sMerit would increase by 5.
Merits are exclusively earned, but the sMerit part you also get keeps the circulation flowing.
(Ignoring merit sources here, for the sake of making an easy example.)