I think if you read the
link I posted much
earlier - it was all discussed there. Using merit to reward spam reporters is no longer done by the Russian moderators because account farmers were abusing that method of awarding merit.
I am sure that they stopped doing it after mdayonliner's topic. At least the last one was 29 june. But several persons have got a lot of merit using this way. Personally I consider it like a fraud.
the merit system works as intended.
There is no ideal system. Personally I see some speculations in such case.