Please accept my apologies if this has been discussed, I'm not reading through 82 pages.
Currently, the forum's general protocol frowns heavily on the act of asking for positive trust in return for a transaction. Hell, I've been given negative trust (unfairly) for simply stating that I would conduct a transaction for free if the other person would consider giving me trust equal to the experience.
Should the sam rule apply, more seriously, to merit?
I just came across a post where someone explained a simple idea and then said "if you like my idea, send me merit." There is no negative merit, so an ask like this seems more serious than asking for trust.
What's the consensus here, if someone is asking for merit should they be penalized or ostracized or "corrected" as to the correct forum protocol to not do so?
Theymos stated that : Do not beg for merit excessively.
The trust system and the merit system are a two different thing, merits have been designed to improve the quality of posts of those who are here in this forum, and yes there is a consensus here. Because the merit system is different from the trust system you can have negative trusts if you are begging, selling and buying merits.
In simple terms terms you can have -100 plus trust rating even and have 1000 plus merits at the same time.
