You are over complicating things way too much.

Bitcointalk really turned to shit last year.
Of course, something like this would be implemented because so many spambots were using it to get money.
So just make it so that spambots can't rank up and they will change or go away.
It's totally fine.

But, on the other hand, all of these whining posts do come from somewhere.
Merit is incredibly difficult to get.
Supposedly, you get merit just by, "Doing what you are supposed to do and making quality posts"
The reality is that there just is not enough smerit to go around and their are boards where there are hardly any smerit being passed around at all *cough cough altcoin discusion

The merit system is not some revolutionary proof of brain concept.
It is just a system to try and regulate a forum but has turned out to be arbitrary at best.
That's all.