it is a false equivalence to state that with good quality people will eventually earn the merits they deserve.
What I am trying to say is that people that use the forum for its intended purpose "A meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged." will get the required merit. There is no false equivalence because you're the one ranting on about quality, not me.
Furthermore, if merits are used also in merit trading and other matters, then that again demonstrates that the quality => merits is simply not accurate.
That's a very short term issue, most of the airdrop sMerit has already been abused and that problem has all but disappeared.
As I mentioned previously, as long as the system works to keep spammers in check, I don't really care about these side effects.
It's certainly working. Spammers going to spam. The spam megathreads still get poinless posts tacked on the end of them for signature payment but these guys will never rank up.
But making people believe that the quality of their contribution will be reflected in the amount of merits they gain, is misleading.
I'm not misleading anyone. I was giving myself as an example to prove the person I originally replied to wrong. They stated it was impossible to rank up and I am proof that is not the case. If someone uses the forum in the way I do, mainly to read and learn and then get involved in debates, merit will be less of an obstacle to ranking up than activity is.
Just to show I'm not by any means special here's another example. Full member with 118 earned merit.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1010454
Edit. As you back to back posted here's the reply to your second post.
You can look at the data yourself if you cross-sample users what they were given merits for.
Where? You still don't get it. You can't do statistical analysis of the context of the conversation a post is in.
You seem to be very defensive about your post. So be it. I leave you with your illusion of superiority.
I'm not being defensive, you just unwittingly pointed out a great example of what I'm trying to explain.