I like the idea of merit. As I said in the main post I think it will help cut down useless posts and spam. It will also help fight against signature campaign fraud and account farming.
My only issue with the system is that I was 30 points away from becoming a hero member, but now, I will also have to wait for another 250 merit points. I think that they should have made the merit equal to activity for its introduction.
I have the same thoughts and sentiment. I have not visited this forum for a year and I was surprised and annoyed when I learned about the new Merit Point System. For me I believe that this Merit Point System has its ups and downs.
But the biggest effect that this Merit Point System brought is that it lessened the number of active users in this forum because as we all know, it became much harder to reach a higher rank because of this system. Obtaining merits is not an easy thing to do and requires luck, time, and more effort.
The good effect of this new system is that I really noticed that the number of dummy accounts has incredibly decreased.