Hello everybody,
i closely reviewed the new merit system now and figured out what might go wrong in the future.
A quote from theymos' official merit announcement:
You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.
This means, the amount of merits gets less over time. Example: User A send 5 merits to user B, who is now able to send 2.5 merit to user C, who is now able to send 1.25 merit to user D... and so on
until zero merits are left.
This circumstance gets "solved" by this feature:
Certain users are designated as "merit sources". They can create new merit out of nothing, up to a limited number per month (which differs per source). I will not be posting a definitive list of merit sources (so that people don't bug them too much), though you'll soon figure out who they are if you pay Attention.
So, basically the ability of enhancing low ranked accounts is sticked to a small number of (hopefully socially advanced) users from the forum. Since everything here is about decentralization and giving the power back to the community, i think this is some kind of hoax.As stated in the title, this is only a criticism in the hope of developping the system further. I really appreciate the new system since quality posts seem to be rare here.