On the whole, the Merit System seems to be working as a double-edged sword:
- On the one side, less people are ranking-up (and Im not just talking about the younger members), and at a slower pace too. Those that do rank-up, put quite a bit of effort into it, so from the Forums content perspective that is something favourable.
- On the other side, numbers are pretty low, and even worse if we dissect the profiles of ranked-up members and determine that a large amount are DT tagged or suspicious to say the least.
Content has got much better since the introduction of the merit system, however regarding users ranking up slower; That's working as intended, although it might be true that only exceptional members are going to rank up multiple times we should see an improvement in this when there's a few hundred merit sources.
Since there is no "global ledger" with the cases and their status of resolution, and a protocol that is guided by its use, endless loop situations will occur. But because there are no crystalline rules on how to proceed, so will the abuse continue as a means to bypass the difficulties of getting merited.
Low amounts of merit being traded between alts isn't a problem as they'll likely run out of sMerit before they rank up any of their accounts. If they are trading a large amount between their accounts then this should be fairly easy to recognize. The users that feel they need to trade merit between themselves aren't likely to put in the effort to get external merit either.