While I'm affected by this change, I support the moderator's decision.

This will minimize spam and account farming in bitcointalk.
Merits are hard to comeby and increasing rank is really difficult nowadays.

I think the "control" of spam and for those account farmers trying to get multiple accounts for bounties should be managed by the account / ICO projects doing bounties (KYC is needed).
That protects the interest of the project by protecting the ico participants by preserving value of the token (bounty hunters are known to dump coins) and for the betterment of post here in bitcointalk.