Quote from: ibminer on February 05, 2018, 09:45:06 PM

That being said, it is hard for me to ever conclude that it would be ok to accept someone as an alt because they sent X amount of merits to someone... even though my gut feeling says otherwise in some of the cases.

Take a look at this case and read the part that I quoted from elsewhere (+ the original post which contains a lot more):

Quote from: Lauda on February 05, 2018, 03:08:56 PM

Quote from: hilariousetc on February 05, 2018, 02:42:49 PM

Quote from: stompix on February 05, 2018, 02:34:06 PM

USER PROFILE : RichDaniel
MERIT SUMMARY : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;u=886352
PROOF: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2857163.msg29379539#msg29379539
MISCELLANEOUS: Has received 283 merit in one hour, standing actually on the 7th place for Top-merited users

Probably farmed accounts and almost certainly belong to the same user as RichDaniel. If you look at the accounts every single one of them has the exact same activity/post count which is usually indicative of farming.

I was unable to trivially find connecting addresses, however the pattern is definitely there and that amount of merit is in no way natural. Therefore, we have one of following:

Quote from: nullius on February 05, 2018, 05:54:42 AM

Probable cause: On the face of things (at first sight, prima facie), the accused probably did it.
Moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt: The only way he didnt do it is if space aliens[1] did it instead.

Quote from: hilariousetc on February 05, 2018, 02:42:49 PM

I think the trouble with this merit system is people are going to probably spend more time searching and investigating people abusing the system than actually giving merit.

Indeed.

There is absolutely no way that the user has received 283 legitimate merit in 1 hour for their shitposts.

This should, hopefully, get you to reconsider.