That is not a solution to this. Assuming they have high ranked accounts as well from the past, they can easily bypass 1 merit limit to reach the next level.
I disagree. I think requiring at least one merit requirement will go a long way to curbing bots and farmers from ranking up to Junior. Besides, if someone was abusing their merit in this way it would become very easy to spot the abuse once they started only meriting newbies or blatant bots with crap posts. Your merit source doesn't last long either and they'll soon run out, but I still think it will be more of a giveaway if they start meriting their own accounts rather than a hindrance.
You have all the rights to disagree. My point was that people with hundreds or thousands of accounts having Member or higher ranks won't really let a simple step of 1 merit requirement completely stop them from doing all this. And, I don't really think they will get a lot of attention if every time they use a different account created in a different date for meriting each of their new accounts. I say that because I know or I can assume how large their collections can be.
There should probably be something more practical to the cause, that should stop this for good, and I know it is not a piece of cake to come up with something that can tackle such actions, but there is no other choice.
It's one of the better options we have, but without other suggestions I don't think you should shoot it down.
That is true. I shouldn't have said that if I wasn't proposing a solution myself. But I just believe we can partly stop this with that, and that is why I said there should be something more aggressive than that to kill the roots, at least for a while.