Exactly.

I would even agree to a harder banning policy, for example with a new forum rule that explicitly targets the most obvious spam methods (e.g "if more than 50% of an account's contributions are reported because of low quality they get a warning and then be banned"). Above all the high ranked accounts - including me, of course - should stay "under observation" from other members. People should not be afraid to report a "Legendary" or "Hero" if he/she continuously spams the forum, for example participating in the famous "nonsense megathreads". And if they do and continue so even after a warning, they should get red trust or directly be banned, above all if they try to rank their alt accounts up rewarding them with merits.

I also would like to kindly ask the bounty campaign managers, above all those in the altcoin sections working for ICO projects, to control their "workers" more closely and ban spammers from their campaigns. This is even in their interest - if your company appears in a signature below spam posts, nobody (apart from other spammers) would read it, and even worse - it would give them a bad, "fishy" image. Some managers are doing it well already, others less. Bad campaign managers should be sanctioned, too.

I am against a demerit system because of the obvious reasons @Welsh, @athanz88, and @hilariousetc mentioned. There is a reason that there is no "dislike" button at Facebook, for example.