Having read through the thread there seem to be a few themes in the responses.

1. What about the fact that people can abuse this by giving merits to friends or alts or buying them.

- This is 100% true but it shouldn't be the basis for not implementing something. It's like saying 'we won't make drugs illegal because people can still get them from other sources'. There is no measure that will be perfect but if it stops some people and makes it harder for others then it's a winner.

2. What about the people that don't spam but haven't earned merit.

- These are the guys who'd lose out in this case, there are people who just don't post much or might have been inactive for a while, it's unfair that they lose out.

The biggest suggestion I have and I've said it before and seen it said before in this thread and elsewhere is to stop JR Member accounts. Right now there is no barrier to entry for these accounts, they just sign up, spam 30 posts and they're ready to earn. Remove signatures completely for JR Members and then that problem is gone.

After the problem of an ever increasing number of JR Members is stopped then it shouldn't be so hard for moderators to keep a handle on things and clean up the rest of the place. I always liked the idea of having some system that flagged accounts to moderators if they'd not received a merit within a certain number of posts for example. It wouldn't be an automatic ban or neg trust but would just bring their accounts to attention.