Bad/lazy campaign managers and sig campaigns are a big part of the reason why the forum is a cesspool of spam right now...

I believe the merit system is in place partly to combat bad/lazy campaign managers who are not doing their job.  It would be truly stupid to then give them the power that essentially makes the new merit system useless.

I would say based on the earliest of evidence that smerit distribution is probably still a little bit low.  But given time we can hope that it will be adjusted.  Finding the balance point of making merit useful and useless will probably take some time but adjusting that balancing point to much before data is available also seems stupid.