Awesome work, as usual.
So the merit system is really working on stopping non-deserving users to rank-up, but also is showing how it can be corrupted by so many users.
Once detected, what is the path to follow? I mean: when you detect this kind of users, earning merit in such an improbable-fair way, what do you do? Do you report them?
One of my deepest concern regarding the rank system is the spamming: we all have seen how many users are selling merits as a new kind of scam, as well as accounts. On the other hand, we have many users farming alt accounts in order to rank up their alt and join many signatures or be able to scam more users.

Have you thought about a new statistical insight into this misuse? I mean: Can you make another thread (I know you are already tired, but your work is so amazing I'm afraid you are going to have many request ), regarding how many users are scamming the merit system?
And, besides, as you said, a comparison between the ranking activity before and after the merit system?

Sorry for asking you to work even more harder. But I truly admire your work jejee.