Yesterday not less than 172 sMerit was received by the forum administrator TheyMos for the newly introduced system which later turn out to be April Fools. Can one conclude that sMerit sent was a waits?
I would imagine a large percentage (90% or more) of those dishing out merits for this subject matter either understood that it was an April fools joke or that they were taking the subject matter with a LARGE grain of salt (in the event that they were uncertain about the joke status).
Giving out smerits remains in the eyes of the beholder, so I doubt that we should consider such discretionary choices to send smerits to be wasted.
Just from the nature of this particular joke, it seems quite plausible that Theymos has been giving considerable thought to how the merit system is playing out, yet I could not imagine tweaking the merit system too early in regards to whether too much waste is occurring due to the fact that some members receive a lot of merits, but they might not be in the practice of sending out the generated smerits (that smerits generate at .5 from the receipt of merits). It could take 6 months or more to figure out if there should be some kind of incentive to spend smerits (or punishment for not spending smerits).