I understand that the merit system was implemented to improve the quality of posts and reduces spamming in forums.

With 4 months in operation, it seems that merits delivered to some extent on the second objective, but, at least from what I have experienced thus far, missed to improve on the first.

It is still very rare to find a discussion which is not highly technical in focus that is of a somewhat decent quality. I would love to have a good debate about, for instance, the economic, social, financial, ecosystem etc. impact of bitcoin and crypto-currencies, but very quickly every topic gets flooded with one liners, empty statements withouth any reasoning, and often not even connected in any way to the topic of the thread.

It appears as if the merit system encourages good posts, but does not discourage bad ones. I find this really a shame.

I would like to see whether there are some means that could augment the merit system and which would more effective in raising the quality of some of the discussions and posts.

For instance, on other occasions, the concept of dismerits (negative merits) was suggested.

What I found even more effective is the system that's implemented by, for instance, Stackoverflow, where questions and answers are up of down voted. Applying a similar approach to individual posts together with perhaps means to visually emphasize higher rated posts, might just do the trick.

This, or any similar system, is not meant to replace the merit system. The merit system would be still relevant for gaining ranks and the benefits that come with them. And merits would still be awarded for particularly relevant and good posts. But such up and down voting of posts would be less restrictive (e.g. no limit like with sMerits) and if giving a vote is a simple click, would likely also be more actively used than merits.

I have not considered how difficult it would be to implement any such measure in the software, so this is just meant to kick off a conceptual discussion for the moment.