On the plus side, they could incentivize posters to try harder to make quality posts. It could be a good system in some respects.
It already started to have that effect I noticed after theymos's implementation of the Merit 'system'. In some cases it's very obvious that people are posting in a very forced manner to obtain a Merit or two, but at least they put time and effort into their posts, and that's something we can all be happy with, and especially so when we're a few months away from now. I am glad that theymos allocated his precious time to getting this Merit system up and running -- people for so long were complaining about theymos to not do anything about spammers, and now it shows that he does actually do something to prevent further spamming.
Not exactly the same, but the general idea is the same.
If merit already is for sale, so they will find a way to get merit in a spamming way. Or just have a discussion with themselves, giving merit for nothing.
I could barely dream of obtaining 10 merits to test advanced signatures, but bitcointalk is cruel and only old members have a chance to use all perks.
Another problem is when crypto goes popular there is too many new topics and users. I could understand all this merit system for the best of the forum, but still, have some doubts about its perfection. I'm totally not this kind of user, that will write an academic article and give "very precious advice" to everyone just to earn merit points.
But still how it possible that only legendary members obtain so much merit and don't want to give it away? Why you need soo much? What a genius way to stimulate user activities throughout the greed.
