I think that admins need to state publicly that merit trding or selling is against the forum rules. At the moment, it seems that the only offence is for a merit source to sell merits.
Argh, no, don't do that! Not all trading of merit is merit trading, so to speak. I've merited people who have merited me because we were participating in a thread where we were all trying to solve various mining issues - I solved one issue and got merited, then the same person that merited me solved another issue so I merited him*. Of course, I freely admit that I was more inclined to merit someone who had merited me - that's just human nature - but said individual did, indeed, post something merit-worthy.
* - I was merited on this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2046072.msg30157009#msg30157009 & I merited the person who merited me for this post in the same thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2046072.msg30407678#msg30407678That isn't selling merit though and I don't think selling or trading merit is the problem here. If there's a plausible reason why you've merited someone and you don't continue to do so then I'm sure trading merit to someone for helping you with a problem is fine. Unless it's a really simple problem and then it could become fishy but that's why it's very difficult to enforce merit being rewarded. People are going to give others merit who help them with their problems. By the way that response that you merited looks okay too me.
But the act of selling/trading merit out of gain should be banned for all members and not just merit sources.