We are all agree that people who reports without expecting any reward is highly valuable, but there wont be much of them to fight against spam later, when new users always coming and increasing, what will happen when spammer is growing faster than the valuable people here? The percentage of spam covered by reports will be decreasing.
I am not saying resetting is the way, but the idea is continuity, after you reach some awareness. Make people dont stop when they have the highest level. This is one of what we needed to do if we want to change the forum and make the forum less spammy.
Resetting the count doesn't make sense. It would be like resetting merit if you haven't earned any within 6 months. Or reducing activity if you haven't logged in within a certain period of time. Using the reset as a motivator would just implicate too many restrictions on the user, which would become a huge demotivated nuisance, as you're saying that you'll be taking away a user's rewards for something they've already accomplished.
Yeah but 1 thing you might forget is, report can be spammed in a day, not based on something hard like quality (merit) and time (activity). So it is kinda easy to achieve the badge I believe. Once again, I'm not saying resetting count is the way.