Taking off from diagran's suggestion:
I think if forum charges a fee per post to have your post count and activity increased and have no post count and activity increased if you are not paying a fee per post or one time fee like $200. all of the members with multiple accounts will stop posting like they are posting now. as long as posting is free and it earns them money, they will never stop.
I'm all for the forums being an open and friendly place to encourage new and old bitcoin users but the problem of spam has been getting out of hand (even after the introduction of activity and merit). What i'm proposing we discuss is the additional of a small fee that is required for users to rank up above the member rank. Many other forums implement this sort of payment system to regulate quality. This could be implemented in two (2) ways as listed below:
1. Fee be
used to replace the merit system
2. Fee be
used in addition to the merit system
Is this something that could be feasible? Fee could be low, subjectively enough to prove you are real. Fees could then be used to purchase better server hardware.