The awarding of merit for reporting posts is discouraging for members who want to see the merit system working to improve the quality of posting.
Spot on mate.
This site could be an absolute cash cow for theymos, yet he has not done a single thing to indicate that is his primary motive. So to me either he is the worst business man on the planet because even a 12 year old could take a site ranked this high and make hundreds of thousands a month OR he has another reason or values the traffic differently.
Absolutely. I had the same thinking of not monetizing the forum but seeing the response from theymos had me no doubt that the motivation behind running this forum is far more noble than making it a cash machine.
mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.
It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.
The motivation is the freedom of doing that you want to do. Problem is there are people who will take advantages from anything.