A slightly off topic but a suggestion: In many of the tech forums where you discuss related to issues and whatnot, the users who ask questions have an option wherein they can vote whether the post helped them solve their issue or not. I'm thinking if those sort of ideas would help or not.
There are a couple of things that came in mind:-
If a query is answered, the user who asked the question can deem it to be helpful/not helpful.
If the issue is solved, the thread will be automatically locked. And no one can necrobump it later on. If not autolocked, the mods can verify the issue to be solved and thread will be locked by them? This would be a hassle for the mods, autolocking feature does help here? This is just a sort of a basic idea. And who knows, this may help stop shitposting same thing over and over again. Maybe even combine this idea along side the merit system.
That's not off topic at all, but if we were to apply such a system it would probably serve best within specific boards. It would be wonderful in the Development & Technical Discussion, Bitcoin Technical Support, Beginners & Help sections and maybe a few others that I am forgetting, but unfortunately I think most of the spam finds itself in other boards. I really like the idea of automatically locking "Solved" threads though, and enabling a User-Friendly way to label posts as the "Solution" in some way. Connecting it with the merit system would enable abuse I think, but without it we might be able to just simply disincentivize spam complimentary to the merit system while remaining separate.
The same thing happened here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2678858.0 Newbie question that was answered to the OPs satisfaction back at the beginning of January and then people just come along and answer it again. I reported the first one that did it this morning but now it is in sight again others just join in. In this case, the OP isn't even active, so unless a moderator locks it this will go on forever.
That should be a more clear cut situation IMO; mods should be perfectly willing to lock a thread that the OP is inactive and has been sufficiently responded to. It would seem common sense to narrow the opportunity of threads to spam in, and ultimately give mods less work in the long run.
The thread starter can always lock a thread if he thinks it has served it's purpose. I locked my thread about today's merit give away, as I thought it hd the potential to become a spam fest.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3136930.0A couple of things that thread starters may not realise are - You can unlock the thread, and add to it, or edit your posts, you can then lock it again. The other thing is that it looks as if merits can still be awarded to posts in locked threads.
You're a good person for having etiquette when you start a thread. I fear that too many users are unaware and uninformed in the worst ways; some might not even know they can lock their threads, some might not know they can unlock it (as you've said) or maybe even fear they won't be able to receive merit. The worst users are those that do not care and simply remove the spamfest they've created from their watchlist.