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Hmmm I see... The ever so common saying "Beying at the right time at the right place"... Well the merit is a good addition anyway, gaining activity is super easy, merit not so much...
Merit system has demonstrated its strong, significant, positive impacts on the forum's users, especially lower-ranked users.
Before the launch of merit system, lower-ranked users likely posted extremely low/ under quality topics/ threads, which didn't contribute anything to the forum and other users. They posted only for their financial purposes.
After merit system's appearance, something have changed dramatically, as you can check by yourself and for yourself if you interested. Those changes are very easy to find.
I hope the system will succeed in eliminate spammers out of the forum forever.