The problem is not so much in the merit drying out, it's more like many people now are focused on getting merit and that is what is wrong. Everyone writing with the only purpose of ranking up, same threads with different names, newbie guides,tips all over the forum.
I'm trying to give away all my merits to the newbies, but lately nothing fresh is coming up, so im meriting from time to time the "usual suspects".
And the results now is that we have a higher quality spam, thats all.
jajaja... you are absolutely right. Last week I had the misfortune of running into one of these "shitnewbies", whose only goal was to earn merits by copying another's ideas, or making whatever to earn some. To me was kind of sad seeing how this person actually got merits, enough to become a member, but, even so, it is not for me to decide who deserve merits, we all have many different points of views.
About the higher quality spam, I think that depends, again on the personal vision. Despite the fact of merit beggers with the costume of a "nice poster", so easy to see, maybe we need to open our minds and think about that in absolute terms. I mean: who deserves to become member? and then, full member? and then...?
To me the most important of all is the attitude the user has towards the forum, so, if I smell merits beggers, no matter the custom they use, I put them immediately on my ignored list, but there are others in between the line, wanting to rank-up but also trying their best. So, as usual, this is a personal matter, I'm afraid. The point, from my perspective, is to show that ranking-up is not so difficult if you care about the forum...