Merit system is a very good system. Now it's hard to achieve Merit.Because of which the disqualification does not up their rank.The reason for this is decreasing the amount of spamming has increased user experience.
I completely agree with you, the merit system cleared the forum of spam and bots. Long live the great system of merit
Long live the great system of merit
Is the merit system the new KING already 
I guess it's a slight improvement since people are trying to make more quality posts because of that. (ironic since i have 0 lol)
The bots etc are still here and will continue to post as it's really difficult to discourage that, the good thing is it's easier to tell between bots and actual posters since the attitude must've changed a bit.