Then let us avoid that case. What, then, would you say about deleted posts and merit?
Posts deleted
directly by a moderator should have theirm merits destroyed.
Threads deleted by a moderator should have posts demerited at the moderators' opinion.
Threads deleted by a non-moderator, in my opinion should keep their merits (I think that having a review bit would just make for too much effort for the moderators to try to look at) - they have a lot of work as it is already.
(I also hope that in self-moderated threads, there could be some section to actually check deleted posts. Either non-intrusive or a link off to the side. Maybe in the new forum coming in 3018?)
For merit or just in general?
Maybe a panel like what comes up when you click to ignore people maybe - so you can click "see" or "make visible" to see what the op deleted themselves.
If you're referring to the beta.bitcointalk.org/epochetalk forum, then that will take quite a while I think.
I think that for deleted posts, the merit should simply disappear. If we're avoiding the above case, then meriting a crappy post shouldn't result in a refund. Isn't that pretty prone to abuse?
A refund should not be given to the user who merited the post, I agree with that. Unless it was a self-mod topic where the post got deleted and my suggestion above was not the one adopted, in which case, the original meriter should get some sort of refund - maybe half the sMerits back?